What, me worry about Africa?

ARTICLE: Lush Land Dries Up, Withering Kenya's Hopes, By JEFFREY GETTLEMAN, New York Times, September 7, 2009

If climate change predictions are accurate, it'll be a much tougher future for much of sub-Saharan Africa.

Will the resulting violence matter globally? No.

But it will matter to the locals, and those dependent on rising connectivity to these places--like rising Asia.

That's why this strategic dialogue should start now.

If you think this system's workin'...

ARTICLE: Firefighters Become Medics to the Poor, By IAN URBINA, New York Times, September 3, 2009

This is the hidden reality of the lack of healthcare for so many in our society: ERs are jammed up with minor cases better treated preventatively and firefighters do all the house calls.

Globalization will grow. Will we embrace it?

ARTICLE: Crux of Afghan Debate: Will More Troops Curb Terror, By ERIC SCHMITT and SCOTT SHANE, New York Times, September 7, 2009

The return of the Powell Doctrine of limited regret and limited effort. As Bruce Hoffman notes, it is entirely seductive. But as I will point out, and have for years, it's on the wrong side of history.

Globalization will not go into stasis on our command. It will continue to expand into frontier areas, making every perceived off-grid location part of our networked world.

What is sadly missing in this debate is the burden sharing--beyond NATO. We conduct this entire discussion in American-centric terms: What does it take to prevent an attack on our soil? How many American troops? How much can America afford? We understand NATO to be a severely declining asset--in demographic terms.

And yet, we cannot imagine danger that is not solely directed at the West, when a destabilizing hit on China would be just as bad as anything that could happen on our shore, if it caused Beijing to move down certain paths.

Bottom line: we grown past the self-delusions of the Powell Doctrine, despite it many temptations.

But we do not see the world in all its complexity. Only the West is ever "in danger," and so only the West must muster the effort--meaning primarily the U.S.

The learning curve continues, even as most people populating this debate have seen their world visions overtaken by events.

In arms supply, second place is way back there

ARTICLE: Despite Slump, U.S. Role as Top Arms Supplier Grows, By THOM SHANKER, New York Times September 6, 2009

Numbers to remember when we fantasize about great-power competitions and rivalries inside the Gap:

Despite a recession that knocked down global arms sales last year, the United States expanded its role as the world's leading weapons supplier, increasing its share to more than two-thirds of all foreign armaments deals, according to a new Congressional study.

The United States signed weapons agreements valued at $37.8 billion in 2008, or 68.4 percent of all business in the global arms bazaar, up significantly from American sales of $25.4 billion the year before.

Italy was a distant second, with $3.7 billion in worldwide weapons sales in 2008, while Russia was third with $3.5 billion in arms sales last year -- down considerably from the $10.8 billion in weapons deals signed by Moscow in 2007.

The growth in weapons sales by the United States last year was particularly noticeable against worldwide trends. The value of global arms sales in 2008 was $55.2 billion, a drop of 7.6 percent from 2007 and the lowest total for international weapons agreements since 2005.

Point being, we have no real competition.

For a New Economic Era, We Need New Allies

President Barack Obama's performance at the United Nations last week was widely hailed -- and condemned -- as a clear departure from that of his predecessor, George W. Bush. His most telling statement spoke volumes about the limits of U.S. power in an interdependent world: "Those who used to chastise America for acting alone in the world cannot now stand by and wait for America to solve the world's problems alone." Subtext? Atlas has put down the heavy globe and has neither the intention nor the wherewithal to pick it up again.

Continue reading this week's New Rules column at WPR.

How about we work the actionable problems?

ARTICLE: Security Council Adopts Nuclear Arms Measure, By DAVID E. SANGER, New York Times, September 24, 2009

The basics:

PITTSBURGH -- President Obama moved Thursday to tighten the noose around Iran, North Korea and other nations that have exploited gaping loopholes in the patchwork of global nuclear regulations. He pushed through a new United Nations Security Council resolution that would, if enforced, make it more difficult to turn peaceful nuclear programs into weapons projects.

But as Mr. Obama sat in New York as chairman of the Security Council -- a first for an American president, meant to symbolize his commitment to rebuilding the Council's tattered authority -- he received a taste of the opposition he is likely to face on some of his nuclear initiatives.

Some developing and nonnuclear nations bridled at the idea of Security Council mandates and talked of a "nuclear free zone" in the Middle East. That is widely recognized as a code phrase for requiring Israel to give up its unacknowledged nuclear arsenal.

Key phrase there: if enforced.

Our hypocrisy on the subject is rank: only our friend in the Middle East can have nukes.

People want to make this a thing about autocracies and democracies, but that's--quite frankly--completely irrelevant. For Iran, it's about keeping a democratic America from invading it.

Obama is pissing in the wind on this one, along with his flowery rhetoric on a nuclear-free world. Better he work problems he can actually impact rather than play--meaninglessly--to the history books.

'All in' in AfPak, but we need some financial assistance

OP-ED: The Afghan Imperative, By DAVID BROOKS, New York Times, September 24, 2009

Perfectly fine description of why the U.S. must remain "all in" on COIN in AfPak.

But, as with all such U.S.-centric explanations, it stops there and doesn't raise any issues about eliciting allied help beyond NATO.

In the end, without that, we're just stretching out the loss--and the pain.

We no longer run the planet

ARTICLE: Good Will, but Few Foreign Policy Benefits for Obama, By PETER BAKER, New York Times, September 19, 2009

Good analysis, but it misses the point. Obama has made it clear to the world that America (under him at least) no longer lives the illusion of running the planet, and so now we make nice.

But a lot of people seem to think that, by making nice, we'll still get to run the planet: framing every issue OUR way and looking for OUR preferred outcomes.

The learning is just beginning . . ..

The doctor is in

OP-ED: A Better Missile Defense for a Safer Europe, By ROBERT M. GATES, New York Times, September 19, 2009

For the record, Gates' very intelligent presentation of the thinking behind the decision to scrap the Bush missile defense plan in Europe and go with something more flexible.

Avoiding trade wars

OP-ED: Present at the Trade Wars, By DAVID ROCKEFELLER, New York Times, September 20, 2009

Some sage words from David Rockefeller to Obama on avoiding trade wars.

The Balkans aren't Gap-bad anymore

ARTICLE: While Europe Sleeps, Bosnia Seethes, By NICHOLAS KULISH, New York Times, September 5, 2009

The point of my description of "success" in the Balkans isn't that the place is now perfect or that instability can't still occur there. The point is, the Balkans are no longer a flashpoint. No one can imagine wider war on this basis. When the region shifts its discussion from defense to security, then it's part of the Core.

If the drift of public attention away from Bosnia is a result of more pressing issues in an age of terrorism and rogue nuclear states, it is also a function of the simple fact that this ethnically divided country finds itself in the middle of a far more united, stable and at times downright boring Europe than in the days of the civil war.

Bosnia could well return to violence, but it has lost a large measure of what might be called its Franz Ferdinand threat. For all of the moral and humanitarian arguments for getting involved in the violent dissolution of Yugoslavia, there was also the severe lesson from Archduke Ferdinand's assassination in 1914, which provided the spark for World War I. That lesson was simple: conflicts start in the Balkans, but they do not necessarily stay there.

The end of the cold war brought elation but also trepidation. In hindsight, the march of countries like Poland, Hungary and Romania from the Warsaw Pact into NATO and the European Union may appear steady and all but predestined, but the paths of those newly freed countries were anything but certain at the time. Bosnia was a starkly destabilizing factor in a far more unstable continent. The fighting that began in the spring of 1992 was not quite three years after the fall of the Berlin Wall, and less than a year after the attempted coup of August 1991 in Russia, and came hard on the heels of the collapse of the Soviet Union.

Today, the picture has changed again. Now that Europe is no longer the fault line of a divided world, it looks ever more like a retirement community with good food and an excellent cultural calendar. Spies cut from the George Smiley cloth could really come in from the cold, retiring with legions of their countrymen to the Spanish coast, with no more to worry about than the decline of the pound against the euro and the sinking value of their condos.

The European Union has its share of problems, including a rapidly graying population projected to shrink by 50 million people by 2050 and deep troubles in integrating the immigrants -- particularly from Muslim countries -- it so drastically needs to reverse the demographic slide. And the union's energy security depends on its often capricious and at times menacing neighbor to the east, Russia.

Russia's invasion of Georgia last summer served as a stern reminder that things can still get rough outside of the gated community, and certainly made newer members like Poland and Estonia nervous about the sturdiness of the fence.
Renewed fighting in Bosnia may not launch World War III, but it could well spread to other parts of the former Yugoslavia, including Kosovo.

Kosovo, you dare say?

Again, the point is that the Balkans scenario has been dramatically reduced in its potency. The worst situations (Bosnia and Kosovo) remain, but bad neighborhoods will always be part of the Core's landscape. Dealing with those bad neighborhoods is a complex affair, all right, and the dependency state created in Bosnia has done little good and much harm.

But the strategic conversation has been totally altered.

Why we can't go light in Afghanistan

ARTICLE: Taliban Widen Afghan Attacks From Base in Pakistan, By ERIC SCHMITT and MARK MAZZETTI, New York Times, September 23, 2009

Reporting makes clear what will happen if we go light and abandon Afghanistan to the Taliban. We can't kill enough Al-Qaeda to make that formula work.

More ham-handed Chinese net mismanagement

ARTICLE: China Web Sites Seeking Users' Names, By JONATHAN ANSFIELD, New York Times, September 5, 2009

The struggle continues inside China regarding the regulation of netizen discourse. Real-name registration is being implemented at news sites for commenting. My guess is that this will only drive the discourse to other locations, depriving China of the feedback.

One opinion among many expressed in the article:

Hu Yong, a new media specialist at Peking University, said government-enforced registration requirements carried long-term side effects.

"Netizens will have less trust in the government, and to a certain extent, the development of the industry will be impeded," he said.

From a comparison of the most commented-on articles in July and August on a number of portals it was hard to determine whether the volume of posts had been affected so far.
But both editors at two of the major portals affected said their sites had shown marked drop-offs.

You can always chose control of content over freer forms of connectivity, but it always comes with a cost. As China's society--and thus its problems--grows more complex, the cost of suppressing free debate will skyrocket. What the blowback provides, when it is allowed, are hints about which paths shouldn't be taken. So the more Beijing suppresses, the more likely it will chose unwisely and pay the price in other forms of social instability.

This is form over substance, and it never works.

China learning its growing responsibility

ARTICLE: China Oil Deal Is New Source of Strife Among Iraqis, By TIMOTHY WILLIAMS, New York Times, September 5, 2009

China is just beginning to learn the responsibilities of its new role as extractor-supreme inside the Gap:

WASIT PROVINCE, Iraq -- When China's biggest oil company signed the first post-invasion oil field development contract in Iraq last year, the deal was seen as a test of Iraq's willingness to open an industry that had previously prohibited foreign investment.

One year later, the China National Petroleum Corporation has struck oil at the Ahdab field in Wasit Province, southeast of Baghdad. And while the relationship between the company and the Iraqi government has gone smoothly, the presence of a foreign company with vast resources drilling for oil in this poor, rural corner of Iraq has awakened a wave of discontent here.

"We get nothing directly from the Chinese company, and we are suffering," said Mahmoud Abdul Ridha, head of the Wasit provincial council, whose budget has been cut in half by Baghdad in the past year because of lower international oil prices. "There is an unemployment crisis. We need roads, schools, water treatment plants. We need everything."

The result has been a local-rights movement -- extraordinary in a country where political dissent has historically carried the risk of death -- that in the past few months has begun demanding that at least $1 of each barrel of oil produced at the Ahdab field be used to improve access to clean water, health services, schools, paved roads and other needs in the province, which is among Iraq's poorest.

The ripples are traveling far beyond this province, too. Frustrations have spilled over into sabotage and intimidation of Chinese oil workers, turning the Ahdab field into a cautionary tale for international oil companies seeking to join the rush to profit from Iraq's vast untapped oil reserves.

A $3b development project with virtually no local impact, a point to remember as we track China's $3B investment in copper in Afghanistan.

The key thing is the local resolve to demand better. The connectivity is creating logical backlash, and this changes internal political dynamics in Iraq.

So, while painful, a good dynamic all around, yielding us a more uppity Iraqi population and a China that's forced to deal with it.

Yes, it will be nasty up front:

Some local farmers began reacting by destroying the company's generators and severing electrical hoses, angry because they believed that their fields were being unfairly handed over to the company. Other residents began expressing outrage that very few jobs were being opened to them.

But that's how you get people's attention.

This bit reminds you of descriptions of U.S. bases in Iraq:

Now, the field's 100 or so Chinese workers rarely leave their spartan compound for fear of being kidnapped, the company said, even though the Iraqi government recently deployed extra security to the area.

So, you see, the situation isn't that different. It starts with enclaves, but it's not sustainable. When you network into globalization's embrace, it typically unfolds as an all-or-nothing deal.

Why will China change its approach?

The Ahdab field contains about one billion barrels of oil, modest by Iraq's standards. In comparison, the Rumaila field in southern Iraq, for which the Chinese company and British Petroleum signed a development deal in June, is Iraq's largest field with an estimated 17.8 billion barrels.

Because this field is just the tip of the desired iceberg.

And so the dynamic will continue to unfold, with the usual accusations on both sides:

Earlier this year, the area's farmers complained that the oil company's electrical and seismic equipment -- used to help determine where wells should be drilled -- was damaging fragile homes and crops.

About the same time, electrical lines, many of which were laid across farmland, were severed or stolen, as were expensive generators and other equipment. This spring, a rocket was fired, though it fell harmlessly. Mr. Han said he believed that it had been aimed at a nearby American military base, though local farmers said they suspected that the Ahdab field was the target.

More trouble could be on the way next spring when 1,000 Chinese workers arrive to build a central processing plant.

Mr. Han said hiring Iraqis to do the job was out of the question. "We don't have enough time to train local people to do that work," he said.

The days when the Chinese will be able to hide behind the skirt of the U.S. military are coming to an end. They won't be able to bribe their way out of every local uproar.

Very bad misuse of history

OP-ED: Reliving the Past, By BOB HERBERT, New York Times, September 4, 2009

The structural dynamics here are completely different from a Cold War proxy war. It is not us-versus-them in any meaningful way. The real issue today is America being stuck with the global policing bill because: 1) others like free-riding; 2) we can't imagine allies beyond the West; and 3) we like to be in charge so the outcomes can be ours alone to shape (a chimera if ever there was one).

Using Cold War analogies today on COIN situations is as dumb as using pre-nuke analogies (Hitler being the fave) with emergent nuclear powers. Once you pass into the new world, you can't let yourself be trapped by this thinking. We know the reality we're in. Retreating to the past is not an option. We can't unthink what we've learned.

The perfect expression of this nonsense: Afghanistan has lasted longer than WWI and WWII combined, in terms of U.S. effort.

Somebody needs to read some history of our involvement in Cuba or the Philippines around the turn of the 20th century. These are useless comparisons, like saying my chemo treatments have gone on for weeks longer than my radiation treatments (What's up with that, anyway?).

Blowin' in the wind

OP-ED: From Baby-Sitting to Adoption, By THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN, New York Times, September 5, 2009

A poor piece from Friedman with a useless analogy that reveals his hopelessly American-centric take on the subject. It was always going to be a very long babysitting job, just like Iraq (where I first used that phrase in the original PNM article for Esquire in 2003).

The "adoption" concept is almost Cold War-ish in its limited logic: only America can assume full guardianship.

For a long-term thinker, Friedman changes his mind way too often. That's why he's ill-suited as a guide on strategy. He reflects popular thinking, but he's not up for truly driving it.

Consistency makes you a more boring pundit, but there's no role in educating the public if you're always responding to their fears.

Tom around the web

+ Have you checked our GP on Google Books lately? They have a Wordle-type 'Common terms and phrases' illustration:

+ Thoughts on Everything under the Sun or I am a guilty Secularist posted the Map (via Bezoar).
+ culture unplugged is serving the TED video (which I found via AOL Video UK).
+ Internet Anthropologist Think Tank linked Sullivan's superior takedown.
+ Szone.us quoted Tom on the Boomers.
+ Obiter Dictum linked Tiller as preview of radical right attempts to pre-emptively sanction Obama's assassination.
+ We the People Politics misapplied Tom's quote about allies to Israel.

+ Kris Lane linked The greatest analyst of Marxism who ever lived.
+ Artphile linked Susan A. Barnett/Fine Art Photographer.
+ Raul Moreno assigned 'Six Ways to Cool Down Over the Climate-Change Security Scare' to his composition class.
+ Off the Map quoted Tom on empowering women.
+ Looks like Tom's going to be appearing at the Kellogg School of Management.
+ Coming Anarchy linked Pining for the days when China was our foe.

At Edward Jones w #1 son for game

Short 4 hrs from Indy. We're on Pack 15 YL, 13th row.

Just before sack, alas.

2nd possession.

Good developments at the G-20

ARTICLE: Group of 20 Agrees on Far-Reaching Economic Plan, By EDMUND L. ANDREWS, New York Times, September 25, 2009

Pretty much as predicted:

The agreements, if carried out by national governments, would lead to much tighter regulation over financial institutions, complex financial instruments and executive pay. They could also lead to big changes and more outside scrutiny over the economic strategies of individual countries, including the United States.

Love that picture of the main table! Globalization's board of directors--indeed.

Confirming the essence of my analysis in last week's Esquire column:

The ideas are not new, and there is no enforcement mechanism to penalize countries if they stick to their old habits. But for the first time ever, each country agreed to submit its policies to a "peer review" from the other governments as well as to monitoring by the International Monetary Fund.

That in itself would be a big change, given how prickly national leaders have often been toward outside criticism of their policies. American officials, who pushed for the plan during weeks of negotiations before the summit meeting, argued that governments were so shocked by the economic crisis that they were willing to rethink what was in their self-interest.

"I'm quite impressed," said Eswar S. Prasad, an economist at Cornell University who had initially been skeptical about the proposed "framework" for stable growth. "A commitment by the U.S. to take the process seriously is a potential game-changer that would give the framework some credibility."

This is why I've long argued for the G-20 as the executive decision-making body of globalization, to include the clash of rules on interventions--kinetic or otherwise (see my WPR column tomorrow).

Shocking Iranian nuke admission!

ARTICLE: U.S., Allies Say Iran Has Secret Nuclear Facility, By Karen DeYoung and Michael D. Shear, Washington Post, September 26, 2009

"I am shocked! Shocked to find out there's gambling going on in this institution!"

--"Colonel, your enriched uranium."

"Ah yes. Round up the usual suspects!"

Bet on Iran having already set up the sites where they'll continue enrichment AFTER Israel bombs them.