WPR's The New Rules: A Post-NATO Europe Should Look East

Among the mutual recriminations ringing out between the U.S. and Europe regarding NATO's already stressed-out intervention in Libya, we have seen the usual raft of analyses regarding that military alliance's utility -- or lack thereof. As someone who has argued for close to a decade now that America will inevitably find that China, India and other rising powers make better and more appropriate allies for managing this world, I don't find such arguments surprising. You don't have to be a genius to do the math: Our primary allies aren't having enough babies and have chosen to shrink their defense budgets, while rising powers build up their forces and increasingly flex their muscles. In terms of future superpowers, beyond the "CIA" trio -- China, India and America -- nobody else is worth mentioning.

Read the entire column at World Politics Review.

WPR's The New Rules: Strategic Balancing vs. Global Development

The World Bank's 2011 World Development Report is out, and this year's version highlights the interplay between "conflict, security, and development." That's a welcome theme to someone who's spent the last decade describing how globalization's spreading connectivity and rules have rendered certain regions stable, while their absence has condemned others to perpetual strife. But although the growing international awareness of these crosscutting issues is long overdue, the report ultimately disappoints by focusing only on the available tools with which great powers might collaborate on these stubborn problems, while ignoring the motivations that prevent them from doing so. 

Read the entire column at World Politics Review.

WPR's The New Rules: U.S. Global Role Depends on Hard Fiscal Choices

Much of the global perception of America's long-term decline as the world's sole surviving superpower is in fact driven by our fiscal decline. That's why I was disturbed to hear Democrats so quickly dismiss GOP Sen. Paul Ryan's bold, if flawed, federal budget proposal on the grounds that it would "end Medicare as we know it."  Frankly, arresting our decline means ending a lot of things "as we know them." That's simply what being on an unsustainable path forces you to do.

Read the entire column at World Politics Review.

Eurasia Group's Ian Bremmer and David Gordon cite top geo-pol risks for 2011

David Gordon is an old friend, who, as the National Intelligence Officer for economics and globalization in the National Intelligence Council, came to most of my wargames at the Naval War College and World Trade Center in NYC.  He later became Vice Chair of the NIC and then head of policy and planning at State in the final Bush years (when diplomacy made quite the comeback).  One of the smartest guys I know and just a great guy all around.  After Bush ended, he left government and went to direct research at Ian Bremmer's Eurasia Group, which specializes in political risk consulting.

Ian, you know from his books ("J Curve," "Fat Tail," "End of the Free Market"), all of which have made it into my own books or columns.  Ian and I did a back-and-forth on his "The Call" blog at Foreign Policy regarding the last one.  Ian is deservedly recognized as THE political risk guru out there (he often writes with Nouriel Roubini) and he's done an amazing job of building up Eurasia Group from nothing in just over a dozen years.  Having worked with Steve DeAngelis is building up Enterra Solutions over the past 6 years, I truly appreciate what that takes.  

I've been working for Dave and Ian since January as a consultant on a project for the government that's been a lot of fun and there are others in the hopper, so this is turning out to be a nice working relationship in addition to my other affiliations.  I've missed working for the USG these past few years, so it's been great to get back to that sort of analysis.

The top ten risks cited will also sound familiar enough to readers of this blog.  Here's the opening, plus the list as links to the report:

The risks that exercise us most usually center on a country, an issue, an event. We worry over political chaos before or after an election, a coup in a fragile regime, or military conflict with a rogue nation. But for the first time since we've been writing, the political risk environment is much broader this year. It's the change in the world order itself that gives us most cause for concern.

Two years after the financial crisis, there's a strong argument to be made for optimism. The American economy is poised for (at least modest) growth and emerging markets are still churning ahead. By that logic, it's high time for governments, captains of industry, banks, and citizens to get back to business. Time to leave behind record gold prices and put the trillions of dollars sitting on the sidelines back to work.

But that conclusion implies a level of confidence, if not quite comfort, with where the world is headed. Whatever your expected shape of economic recovery—a U-curve, V-curve, L-curve, or something else—we're entering an entirely new world order. That means new ways for states to relate with one another both politically and economically. It means new areas of conflict. 2011 looks to be the year that our understanding of how the world works becomes out of date.

This is scary not because it's incomprehensible but because the scale of change is so great that it becomes difficult to manage. Few of us have experienced a transition of this scope. Following the collapse of the Soviet Union two decades ago, it was fashionable, briefly, to herald a new world order. The pronouncements were premature. Soviet collapse remade the global security balance, but its economic impact was considerably more modest. The advanced industrialized economies had ruled the global economic system; the end of the cold war meant a move from the G7 to the "G7 plus one." Globalization sped up a bit, the West had new countries to invest in (at least for a while), and some of the old ones (Germany) got stronger. "Plus one" didn't imply a new world order.

That's not true today. After the financial crisis, the G7 was replaced by the G20. This change brought no challenge to America's global military supremacy. But the rules of the economic road are a different story and the new geopolitical order is shaped not by a military balance but by an economic one. This new world order marks the end of a decades-long agreement on how the global economy should function. This is world-changing indeed, because the dominant economic trend of the last half century, globalization, now faces a direct challenge from geopolitics.

---

The rise of this new order will have a profound impact on nearly all of the world's big-picture, long-term trends. A lack of coordinated governance on key economic issues will become entrenched and give rise to lasting international conflict. States and corporations will become more closely aligned in both developed and developing states. Most significantly, we'll see a shift in the highest levels of global conflict to the region where globalization and geopolitics collide with greatest force: for the past twenty years, the sharpest geopolitical tensions were to be found in the Middle East; we'll now see a decisive and long-term shift of those tensions to Asia.

All the risks we're looking at in 2011—conflict from the North Korean succession process, the unwillingness of China to budge under international pressure, the lack of political and economic coordination in Europe, currency controls intensifying global economic misalignment, the geopolitics of cybersecurity—are intensified by this transition to a new world order. The red herrings on our list avoid risk in spite of it.

Surprisingly, and despite all the anxiety these changes have created, there's no name for this new era. We propose the G-Zero. This is the lens through which we'll understand global events in the coming years. It's our top risk for 2011.

THE RISKS

1	The G-Zero
2	Europe
3	Cybersecurity and geopolitics
4	China
5	North Korea
6	Capital controls
7	US gridlock
8	Pakistan
9	Mexico
10	Emerging markets
*Red herrings

Being Mr. Counterintuitive, I like the "red herrings" the best. They are Iran, Turkey, Sudan and Nigeria. I like the optimism on each.

What recreates the "Yugosphere"? Not politics but business

Economist piece that highlights the biggest corporate takeover inside the Balkans in recent memory.  A Slovene food brands company (Droga Kolinska) was bought up by a Croatian group. The prize was a collection of brands long recognized across the entirety of the former Yugoslav republic.

The acquisition prompted Croatian commentators to speak of a revived Yugosphere among the seven successor states. The Croatian group's revenue, post-takeover, will now being only one-third concentrated in Croatia, with half coming from the rest of the old republic.  Point being, none of the states are big enough markets for decent-sized companies, but their combined total of 22m is another story.  

So the Economist sees this as part of a larger trend of former regional companies seeking to reestablish themselves--Yugosphere-wide.  Better than that, firms from the richer states (Croatia, Slovenia) are buying or building factories in the poorer ones, taking advantage of cheaper labor and lower taxes.

The wars have been over for about a decade, and the re-integration proceeds.  You really can't label the Balkans as Gap anymore, and I don't.

Strange days

Economist cover story on coming wave of Chinese takeovers.

As the chart shows, China's outward stock of FDI (accumulated overseas foreign direct investment) remains low, by historical standards.  But since it's got the money, it's naturally going to rise.

Fascinating really:  you can see the decline of the British empire, then the US stepping in to fund so much of the world post-WWII, and then our own progressive decline as the rest of the West recovered, then Japan rose (and fell), and now China rises.  Naturally, some will wish to make the comparison of the decline of the US "empire" with that of the Brits', but our system was never set up to maintain dominance.  It was set up to encourage the rise of others peacefully, which it's done (65 years of no great power war and counting, the biggest increase in human wealth/income ever seen, billions avoid poverty).  The world simply couldn't handle the rise of great powers--until we came along and forced a system that could. It is, without doubt, the greatest accomplishment of any great power in human history.

But with our success comes adjustment, especially since, in our most recent decades of encouraging globalization's rise, we got addicted to the cheap money mindset afforded us by having the world's reserve currency.  Again, granted, the rise of so many powers simultaneously in Asia is a huge accomplishment, but now we seem intent on turning that wonderful thing into something dangerous--dangerous enough to torpedo the system.

And we're alone in this quest.  NATO's new strategic concept, as summed up beautifully by The Economist, is to expect "fewer dragons, more snakes."  But we seem to reverse that equation, at least in our AirSea Battle power-projection forces (Navy, Air Force).  I realize we've been Leviathan for a long time, but we're setting ourselves up for hedging/containment/struggle with our bankers--truly an awkward choice.  

And we're sending these tough signals at a time when it's clear, if we're going to tap inbound FDI in coming years, we best figure out how to accept it from China, lest we go into a funk that calls into question all manner of met responsibilities around the world.  

China is most definitely cheating its way to the top, just like we did in the 19th century, and more recently in the obviously mercantilist rise of both Japan and South Korea.  We imagine them cheating their way right past us, but, as history has shown, it's one thing to dig stuff out of the ground, make steel and then build buildings and infrastructure, but it's quite another thing to dominant innovation-based industries.

China has its way of taking over Western companies, and the flavoring smells of all sorts of legacy communist mindset (meaning, state in charge), but what is the great success rate here? Not as high as imagined.  They have no secret capabilities, just secret plans they imagine are unique and unfathomable. They are neither.  

The more China reaches out and tries to own, the more it will become subject to global rules, just like any other firm that operates effectively.  If China chooses politics over efficiency, its "reign" will be historically short, and its vast pool of money mostly wasted.  

We can pull for such an outcome--most definitely.  But it's a cutting-off-our-noses-to-spite-our-face logic.  We can benefit from China's money.  Indeed, it seems hard to imagine our recovery without further integration with those to whom we've sent so much money, thanks to our deficit spending.  It will not be an easy path. We'll be working out this clash of cultures mentally in movies, TV and books for years to come, just like we did with the great Japanese "threat" that preceded. The only real difference here is size--as in China's market and wealth and our responsibilities and debts.  

So no, at this time in history and globalization's evolution, I wouldn't be arguing for the U.S. to be planning and preparing openly for war with China (how else do you describe the AirSea Battle Concept?), no matter how carefully I hedged my language. Everybody knows what we're capable of, and that we have the only great-power military in the world with any sort of hardcore recent combat experience (and lots of it). By doing this, we invite uncertainty at unacceptable levels and risk China's long-term effort to shut us out of Asia defensively, because, yeah, a rising power of that size and strength deserves its place in the world--not merely the small space in its own region that we offer it. Did Britain have military bases surrounding the U.S. during it's rise in the late 19th century?  Did it constantly get up into our grill?  No, it was more sensible than that and we should be too.

China's integration into the global economy enters a whole new phase now. We can accept that and seek to shape it--hopefully to our own short-term economic advantage, or we can play long-term blocker, and watch the money and the relationships go elsewhere.  

Europe isn't preparing for war with China, but we are.

The France-UK accord on "defence"

FT story on UK-France defence agreement.

The basics:

Nuclear weapons

For the first time ever, both states are collaborating over their independent nuclear deterrents

A facility at Valduc in France will model the performance of both countries’ nuclear warheads to ensure long-term security and safety. This will be supported by a joint Technology Development Centre at Aldermaston, UK

This will cut costs for both the UK and France, and involves an unprecedented sharing of knowledge about nuclear weapons

Future deployment of aircraft carriers

From 2020, Britain and France will probably have one operational carrier each. The timing of refits will be co-ordinated to ensure one carrier is always deployable. When one nation’s carrier is being refitted, the other will not be forced to deploy its vessel in operations against its will

The aim of this is to ensure that Britain and France can always offer up a carrier to the major international missions – Nato, the EU or United Nations - that might need one

Future deployment of ground troops

Britain and France will develop a rapid reaction force, with training beginning next year. This is not aimed at creating a mixed brigade as some eurospectics fear. Instead, a British brigade and French brigade – around 5,000 troops each – will be trained to fight alongside each other on joint missions under a commander from either state. This will enhance France’s ability to operate in Nato. Because France was outside Nato in the four decades after 1966, it does not operate to Nato norms

Industrial co-operation

Both countries will work together on the next generation of Unmanned Air Surveillance Systems – or drones. In the longer term they will jointly assess requirements for the next generation of Unmanned Combat Air Systems from 2030. A joint technological and industrial roadmap will be developed over the next two years. British and French contractors are warmly welcoming this agreement because it gives long-term guidance over how they should work together

This will be called a lot of things, the big criticism being a "surrender of sovereignty," as the piece notes.

But to me it's just a load of common sense.  The UK and France don't face different security environments, even as they do often disagree on how to respond to things that arise.  But as this point in their shared evolution, an action that cannot achieve reasonably good approval ratings from both sides of the Channel probably isn't something either of them would want to pursue on their own.  So rather than a loss of sovereignty, I would say the people in both countries are now unusually empowered to veto overseas operations.

And I don't think that's a bad or unrealistic thing in this day and age.  For NATO countries to be fighting and losing people in Afghanistan while it's clear that other nations, far closer to the scene, have more to lose--and gain, is simply not tenable in a long-term sense.  

I do think this is a harbinger of things to come:  the pooling of national security resources to a degree unthinkable just a few short years ago.  The demographics will simply demand it in terms of money, and the public will learn to both live with it and enjoy--as they age--more say over what actually gets done.

To me, the rising powers of the East and South would be wise not to crow about this or see only in this the decline of once-great powers.  What it really represents is the West moving progressively to reduce dramatically its long-term security efforts on behalf of the collective global community.  Rising powers may instinctively sense more freedom of actions for themselves, but what they should see is more responsibility being dumped on their laps.

The days of free-riding are coming to an end.  Ditto for America's "special relationship" with the Brits, as our ex just got remarried to somebody who doesn't approve of nights out with the boys.

How the Old Core profits from China's rise: the example of Germany

The basics:

As Americans fret over high unemployment and the prospect of another recession, an economic renaissance is putting Germans back to work and propelling the economy at a pace not seen since the fall of the Berlin Wall.

Ask a German executive why, and you are likely to get the same one-word answer that slips like silk off Gunter Scheipermeier's tongue: "China."

Vilified in the United States as a great sucking sound on the American economy, China is courted here as a revered client. Fast-growing demand from Asia's giant is helping to fuel the strong German recovery, and Germany now stands as proof that a rich nation can profit off China's rise.

China passed the United States last year as the No. 1 overseas market for big-ticket German machinery, with Teutonic titans from Siemens to Volkswagen - which so far this year has sold 1.3 million cars in China, five times as many as it has in the United States - ramping up production and payrolls to fill Chinese orders.

More important, China is driving growth at smaller German manufacturing firms like Scheipermeier's Nobilia that form the true backbone of Europe's largest economy. A family-run company making modular kitchens in a half-mile-long factory, where free-roaming robots work alongside humans on the most advanced assembly line of its kind in the world, Nobilia is treating nouveau riche Chinese like Americans of the 1950s - when nothing said success such as a sparkling, modern kitchen.

At the same time, the company is aiding Germany's domination in the surging Chinese market for imported household goods. Through alliances with other German companies, Nobilia is selling kitchens to the Chinese that fit standard European-size appliances, 24-inch-wide ovens, for example. These kitchens do not accommodate the larger ovens commonly made by U.S. manufacturers and built for American families cooking Thanksgiving turkeys and Sunday rib roasts.

Overdependence on China for exports growth, many here say, could hurt Germany as the economy there eventually cools. And German companies, like their American and Japanese counterparts, are facing increasingly sophisticated piracy threats from a nation where blackmarketeers can copy an entire BMW roadster or Mercedes sedan.

But with showrooms in 17 cities and sales surging 40 percent this year alone, Nobilia now sells more kitchens in China than all but two domestic Chinese manufacturers, with no American challengers in the top 10.

"China is vital to Germany's future," Scheipermeier said. If he has his way, he said, "Chinese duck will be cooked in kitchens more like those designed for German chickens than American turkeys."

A trade competition

One thing is for sure: When it comes to building a healthy trading relationship with China, Germany is cooking America's goose. U.S. exports to the world's second-largest economy surged 25 percent in the second quarter of this year, but German sales to China grew twice as fast. Overall, German exports have jumped 17 percent this year, driven in large part by a 55 percent rise in China of imports. Although the United States still exports more to China in total dollar terms, adjusted for the size of their economies, Germany is now out-exporting the United States to China by a factor of three to one.

How has this been achieved?  A commitment to excellence:

In recent decades, as countries including the United States and Britain put greater emphasis on financial services and property values, the Germans have hyper-focused on the art of manufacturing. Even relatively small German companies have grown into global market leaders for the products Chinese want, from drilling equipment to optical mirrors to prefabricated kitchens. Exports now account for more than one-third of Germany's national output, more than double the rate in the United States, with Germany's $1.2 trillion in annual exports roughly equal to the entire gross national product of India.

Lessons clearly to be learned.

Latest Balkan divorce ruling to go uncontested by Serbia

Guardian piece via WPR's Media Roundup.

Serbia decides to accept--grudgingly--the UN court decision allowing Kosovo independence.

The A-to-Z system for dismantling the fake state of Yugoslavia has advanced to the point where, now, its remaining issues are processed in international courts--and respected by the loser (still Serbia--Monty Python's Black Knight reduced to mouthing back and little else)

An improvement, I would say.  Dare I say a "maturation"?

Don't worry.  We'll have plenty of other chances to work the process elsewhere--like in Sudan in a few months.  No shortage of fake states out there.

Germany retools its military

I'm training here! I'm TRAINING!

image here

NYT story on new plan by German defense minister to end draft and cut end strength (number of troops) by 90k (from 250k to 163,000)  Currently, the Bundeswehr can project only about 7k troops abroad at any one time.  The goal, long expressed, is to double that to 14,000, but that couldn't be achieved absent this restructuring, says the defense minister.

Driving dynamic is to cut 8B euro from the budget over 2011-2014 timeframe.

If we're realistic, we admit Europe is a minor military partner in the decades ahead, leaving us to court million-man armies in Asia (India, China--a goal that's worthy simply for making sure the two don't mix it up for real).

Everything else is peanuts.

Don't forget Kosovo!

map here

NYT “Washington memo” reminding us that roughly 1,500 US troops still help keep the peace in the Balkans, along with 8k other troops (mostly European).

And still Kosovo wobbles, 11 years after Milosevic fell and two years after the small nation declared its independence—the last of the breakaways.  The recent International Court of Justice approval of that declaration pissed off Serbia and Russia, but so be it.

The key thing is that:

Kosovo, at least, is largely free of the violence that tore it apart two presidents ago, and Mr. Obama can afford to leave it to his vice president or secretary of state, both of whom played a role in the 1999 war.  But it remains unnerving to those in Washington with their eyes on larger problems that the impasse continues to defy efforts to move on.

Oh boo-hoo.  Recovery and full resolution is a generational affair—quelle surprise!

What's clear to me: the fight over the kids ain't over.  Check out the Serb-heavy slice to the north.  If Kosovo wants the clean break, it needs to break off that chunk and send it on its way.

Chart of the day: German militarism is dead

Economist chart showing the demilitarization of conscription in Germany over the post-Cold War years.  When the 1990s began, the ratio of conscripts going into actual military service compared to community service was 2-to-1.  Now, more go into community service than military service, primarily because the number going into military service has collapsed to just over one-quarter of the 1990s total.

A sign of how Europe is opting out of the kinetic side of frontier integration in this age, which means we have no alternative but to go with the rising powers of the age—aka, the incentivized.

Open season on Chinese business practices

FT front-pager.

One thing for GE to bitch and moan, as Americans as expected to complain about China, but another for Siemens and BASF, two traditional ostriches, to squawk so.  If anything, these guys have been vocal China boosters in the past.

But their unprecedented complaints come "against a backdrop of rising discontent among foreign businesses operating in China."

Especially striking is that the German CEOs said this to Wen Jibbao's face--in Beijing!  Wen countered with bland denials that the investment environment had deteriorated.

Merkel tried to smooth it over afterwards, but I think we're seeing the start of something big.

Being numero uno means being the world's biggest target for complaints.  We'll see how China likes that.

Chart of the day: the aging of Europe

Economist piece that notes:

Between 2005 and 2030 the working-age population of the European Union will shrink by 20m, and the number of those over 65 will increase by 40m. Thanks to the focus on crumbling public finances, that demographic time-bomb is now a common part of European public debate. Governments in places like Britain or the Netherlands have been able to propose paying pensions at 67 or even 70, without angry protests.

Far bigger changes will inevitably ensue.  Europe will invariably be forced to backfill even more than it is today, which leads many thinkers to propose the EU pre-emptively embraces the entirety of the Mediterranean in the manner of the old Roman Empire.

Can't beat 'em demographically, so might as well join them.

Increasingly secularism among European Muslims hardly remarkable

Rare enough that my old friend Dan Pipes posts any good news on developments in the Islamic world, so I jump on this post, thanks to reader Dan Hare.

Pipes I know from my Naval War College research days (he too spent a stint there as prof), and although he comes off to many as THE firebrand, I personally know him to be a gentle soul and a first-class thinker, so I read him and listen whenever he's on TV, despite disagreeing with him a lot--no surer sign of respect.

What he notes from a European newspaper report on a recent study of mosque attendance:

It sounds unlikely, but Aftenposten, relying on new statistics, may be on to an important new trend ofdeclining Muslim mosque-going in Europe. Here, as reported by the "Islam in Europe," are some snippets:

The number of church-goers has dropped steadily for decades, but now there also a lot of space in mosques around Europe. Recent data from the extensive European Social Survey (ESS) show that the number of Muslim immigrants who regularly go to the mosque drops significantly after they've lived in their new homeland for some time.

The ESS figures, which are being published for the first time in Europe in Aftenposten, show that 60.5% of Muslims immigrants who have lived less than a year in Europe regularly go to the mosque. But after they've lived more than a year in their new homeland, the figure drops to 48.8%. More than half rarely or never go to the mosque to pray.

"In all European countries we see that Muslim immigrants are integrated and adapt to their new society. Part of that is that they become less religious and that they reject the traditional religious practice which their parents had in their homeland. They become more secular, says the famous Finnish religion-sociologist Heikki Ervasti from the University of Turku.

Ervasti, who analyzed the ESS figures, emphasizes that this development doesn't happen quickly. "This secularization process will take generations, and for the individual the changes aren't as dramatic. Even it it doesn't happen fast, it's a clear trend," says Ervasti, who says that this same development also occurs among immigrants of other faiths.… 

What this data reminds us of is the underlying reality that, when people immigrate from a more religious environment to a less religious environment, they're not doing it to export their religion but to take advantage of the economic opportunities they are certain they will find there.  Given enough time and opportunity, secularization follows.  But not all succeed in this quest, and those dissatisfied types are particularly susceptible to radicalization--in that classic, Marxist alienated sense.

Thus, a big flow of immigrants sees two trends emerge:  1) an overall slow secularization among the bulk; and 2) a scary radicalization among the vastly unsuccessful minority.  On the second point, don't assume that economic failure is required to qualify, because anything that makes you unhappy in your new life can do it. Thus the classic case is the moderately successful, well-educated type who, for some combination of reasons, feels deeply alienated in his new world.

And yeah, a certain lack of success in one's personal life is frequent within this crowd, so maybe they got the education, and maybe they're struggling a bit in their career, but what really irks them is this sense that life has not panned out as hoped for in terms of success in marriage, family and so on.  EVERYBODY is susceptible to this disillusionment in life, but discombobulated immigrants more so.  And when a radicalized alternative pathway is dangled in front of one's face by recruiters, it can easily become the path of least resistance. Immigrants are particularly susceptible because they feel some guilt for leaving the homeland and the old ways.

Point being, keep some perspective on both the macro (positive) and micro (negative) trends when evaluating immigrant flows.

Balkans: the remapping isn't done?

Economist piece.

The US and EU want no redrawing of borders between Serbia and Kosovo, and no diplos on either side makes the case publicly yet.

And yet, expectations are rising that a slice of Serb-heavy northern Kosovo will get handed over in the ongoing custody battle.  Why?  Something like half of Kosovo's Serbs are found there.

The EU warns Serbia that it's jeopardizing its admission application, and yet, nobody wants a new Cyprus.

Very familiar dynamic: small population tied to neighbor is trapped inside border; that nation's government can't really extend its writ there; so the upshot is continued unrest and non-resolution, because the would-be-breakaway region can neither break away or come under stabilizing rule.

Custody decisions get revised all the time.  This one should too.

Two recent mentions overseas: China (People's Daily) and Italy (Il Tempo)

Two recent overseas pieces reference the blog and the vision.  The first is an op-ed in the English-language version of the People's Daily Online, the Chinese Communist Party's mainline publication.  The authors provide this dual biography:

John Milligan-Whyte is called the "new Edgar Snow" and the "21st century Kissinger" and is the only non-Chinese to be elected the winner of the Social Responsibility Award from the China Business Leaders Summit. John Milligan-Whyte and Dai Min are the executive producers and co-hosts of the Collaboration of Civilizations television series adapted by the eight books they wrote in the America-China Partnership Book Series published in English and Mandarin in 2009-2010 that created the "New School of America-China Relations." They founded the America-China Partnership Foundation and Forum in 2008 and the Center for America-China Partnershipin 2005, which was recognized in 2009 as "the first American think tank to combine and integrate American and Chinese perspectives providing a complete answer for America and China's success in the 21st century."

 I am rightfully accused of being a peace-monger on China in a column titled, "Thomas Barnett recommends US never go to war with China."  Tripping through the piece:

Peaceful coexistence has today become both all that the US can afford militarily and economically and essential for US economic and national security. The Iran and North Korea crises are becoming impossible for the US to defuse without long over due new US policies towards China. The limitations of American military and economic power are unfortunately dangerously self-evident. The US military is already over extended and bogged down in two long wars. The US financial, economic, unemployment and government solvency crises are relentlessly entering even more dangerous stages. It is easy for the US to start or be forced into new wars that are impossible for anyone to win given the potential speed and economic impact of major wars. The world has changed. Conventional American policies and policymakers' mindsets must change faster than they can. 

Fortunately, President Obama recognizes the need for and is now urgently searching for unconventional policies capable of bring the US back from the brink of economic collapse and unbearable humiliation or catastrophic wars with Iran and North Korea that can overnight engulf the Middle East, Asia and the world in economic, social and political collapse . . . 

What is China to do? New American policies towards China are essential for the US and China to be able to solve the America's economic and the North Korea, Iran and other national security crises. Conventional American policies exacerbate rather than solve these crises for the reasons explained by the Center for America China Partnership's books and articles and now fortunately by Thomas P.M. Barnett. 

On June 2, 2010 Thomas Barnett stated that China: "can now legitimately claim to be working on behalf of the global economic security as much or more than America. In short, it can claim that 'what is good for China is good for the world,' an argument to which only America could lay serious claim in past decades. This is why we're never going to war with China; codendency on globalization is profound." 

US News & World Reports describes Thomas Barnett as "one of the leading strategic thinkers of our time." Barnett has seen and understood the world from his roles of senior advisor to the US Secretary of Defense, Chief of Staff, Central Command, Special Operations, and led the five-year NewRulesSet.Project for the U.S. military. He is the author of two books that have been profoundly influential: The Pentagon's New Map: War and Peace in the 21st Century and Blueprint for Action: A Future Worth Creating. Barnett's comments were posted on his website,http://www.thomaspmbarnett.com/globlogization/tag/china, in response to an article in the Financial Times on May 24, 2010, http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/de337ab6-66ca-11df-aeb1-00144feab49a.html.

The Financial Times article titled "The way to increase America's exports to China" was published as the second round of the Strategic and Economic Dialogues began by Dr. Huo Jianguo, president of the Chinese Academy of International Trade and Economic Cooperation, a subsidiary of China's Ministry of Commerce, and John Milligan-Whyte, chairman of the Center for America China Partnership. Barnett quoted five paragraphs from the article stating that they are a "nice summary of China's thinking regarding our bilateral economic relationship" and "an excellent and hard-to-refute summary argument" . . . 

Thomas Barnett has an extraordinarily American reputation and track record of successfully prompting American policymakers to realize that profound changes in US military strategic thinking are required. Today the US's conventional economic and national security policies have not provided either economic or national security although the US economy is by far the largest in the world and US military spending is over half of all nations . . . 

Then we get some Paul Kennedy--not exactly my favorite take.

Then this interesting twist:

Chinese policymakers have understood for thirty years, as Thomas Barnett stated this week, that America and China must never go to war. President Obama implementing that advice requires healthy changes America's whole relationship with China. China's military spending is 12 percent of the US, although its population is 500 percent larger. China has been at peace with all nations since 1979 and had the fastest growing economy in the world because it's policymakers adopted Deng Xiaoping's policies of opening up to foreign investment and peaceful coexistence with America and all other nations. America must now reciprocate Deng Xiaoping's policies. President Obama must become America's Deng Xiaoping.

For 60 years there has been a fundamental core problem in US-China relations that only President Obama can and needs to change now: US policymakers and policies have not accepted the legitimacy of the Chinese government. Chinese policymakers were optimistic when President Obama was elected with the promise and mandate for change at a time of profound American economic and national security crises. It has been 60 years since the birth of modern China and resulting outbreak of the Korean War, which never formally ended as the sinking of a South Korean naval vessel reminded us. The views of Thomas Barnett quoted above support an unconventional perspective for American policymaking: that America should accept peaceful coexistence with the 22 percent of mankind and the legitimacy and success of their indigenous government. It has been very successful in managing sustained economic growth, social and political stability, peaceful foreign and defense policies, and reform and opening up to American investment .  .  .

The cool twist was the reverse imaging on Deng-Obama.  The second para oversells the lack of legitimacy argument, but I suppose that's a backhanded reference on Taiwan, because that's where the text goes next.

A bit down the road:

American policymakers wonder what has changed, since they are merely continuing conventional US policies of selling arms to Taiwan irrespective of China's national security needs? Everything has changed. American policymakers do not understand sufficiently that the US's relationship with China has abruptly and prematurely forever entered a new 21st century era when the US Federal Reserve Chairman Bernanke and Treasury Secretary Paulson told the world that the US financial system and economy would collapse without immediate government bail out of insolvent American banks and insurance companies. Now America is itself, like many nations, insolvent. What has changed is what Paul Kennedy feared would happen in The Rise and Fall of Great Nations published in 1987. Hopefully, President Obama will agree with Thomas Barnett's recommendations . . . 

A bit of Chinese hubris, I might argue.

Better bit, which I argue with wholly:

The third question is does President Obama believe that many existing American policies towards China undermine America's economic and national security? The White Paper cites as an example, that US policy is to prevent Chinese oil companies from buying American oil companies, prevent China from interfering with America's sources of oil and acquiring oil from nations America disapproves of such as Iran. This approach seeks to be win-win only for America and is not realistic. America and China, the two largest economies, consume more oil than they produce. Many US policymakers today believe that this makes war between the two nations inevitable. 

It means exactly the opposite. The two nations that consume 42 percent of the world's oil must be both economic and military allies, aligning their economic and national security in a new era of peaceful coexistence, or neither will have the oil they require. It benefits no nation for oil to vary in price from 47 to 147 US dollars a barrel. Collaborating America and China could stabilize the price of oil at a price of 65 to 70 US dollars a barrel benefiting all nations and militarily and economically ensure the peace that is essential for steady oil production and transportation globally. The US and China entering a new era of really collaboration, because they both recognized they will never go to war, would change the Iran and other issues profoundly.

In a style typical for People's Daily, a certain listing of grievances packs the piece, which ends with a near-term reference to the slighting of Gates.

In summary, Chinese policymakers refusing the US Defense Secretary's request to visit China signals President Obama personally that conventional American policymaking will not be effective in the Iran and North Korea crises. It signals President Obama personally that Chinese policymakers need the US to accept the legitimacy and success and reciprocate the peaceful coexistence policies of China's indigenous government, and to reciprocate and open up to Chinese companies investing, and thus creating US and Chinese economic and employment growth. That breakthrough is what is essential to make the world governable.

Overall, pretty interesting to watch a fellow peace-monger work the argument from the other side, clearly operating within certain sensitivities (e.g., all pertinent grievances must be aired--very Chinese).  To my knowledge, this guy is the only American I've ever heard of--maybe even the only foreigner--ever to have a foreign affairs column at the People's Daily, so he's certainly in a fascinating category--whatever it is.  Upon sending him an email, he sent me back a long reply that catalogues all the content he's running through their system as a one-man content empire, so once I get his most recent tome, I'll either review it here or at WPR, because it's all certainly indicative of something worth commenting on.

Anyway, something to remember:  Christianity is all about sin, so it's all about repentance equating to salvation. Confucianism deals with the problem of disorder, so the solution is all about harmony leading to social order. In other words, the old justice-versus-order conundrum.  There is a middle ground upon which the two sides can meet, but we have to have to understand how differently the Chinese view the world and its dangers.  We will accept a lot of disorder in the name of justice; they will not.  Somewhere between lies globalization's path for a long time to come.

Second reference comes in Il Tempo.

Piece about PM Berlusconi and his foreign policy ambitions in Africa, with a special notion of taming Gaddafi.

My left-over Romanian is such that I can just about understand the reference to the libro PNM.

Non a caso la Cina sta investendo miliardi di dollari in Africa e gli Stati Uniti hanno deciso di rilanciare la loro politica di cooperazione e sviluppo nell'area. Il continente dimenticato, in un mondo che si fa sempre più stretto e affollato, diventerà molto presto la scacchiera dove le grandi potenze si contenderanno il primato. In fondo la storia anche in questo caso ama ripetersi. Fu così anche nell'epoca coloniale, quando gli imperi decisero di allargare i loro confini. Fu una delle tappe della globalizzazione. Gli effetti sono quelli di una società connessa che ha le sue aree di crisi e di guerra dove è disconnessa. Quest'ultimo è un concetto sviluppato da un pensatore strategico di nome Thomas P.M. Barnett che in un libro intitolato «La nuova mappa del Pentagono» spiega come siano le società disconnesse (dalle relazioni internazionali, dall'economia, dalla rete) a creare focolai di crisi pericolosi per la stabilità mondiale. Pensateci bene, per lungo tempo anche la Libia è stato un Paese disconnesso, fuori dal network internazionale, isolato e, purtroppo, terrorista.

The piece seems to argue that Berlusconi is pursuing a strategy of heightened connectivity with North Africa. How very Roman.