The New Rules: China Must 'Pay Globalization Forward' in Africa

Globalization's historical expansion from Europe to North America to Asia has featured a familiar dynamic: The last region "in" becomes the integrator of note for the next region "up." Europe was the primary investor, customer and integrator for the U.S. economy in its rise during the 19th and 20th centuries, and America subsequently "paid it forward" with East Asia in the decades following World War II. Recently, it has been Asia's turn, primarily through China, to pay it forward once again with Africa, arguably the hottest integration zone in the global economy today.

Nonetheless, in Washington -- and especially inside the Pentagon -- China's rising influence across Africa has been viewed with genuine trepidation. Beijing's "non-interference" mantra doesn't exactly jive with President Barack Obama's stern focus on counterterrorism, while China's rapacious hunger for raw materials fosters fears of strategic minerals being "cornered." .

Read entire column at World Politics Review.

Time's Battleland: The Perfect Headline on the Silent Sino-American Limited Liability Partnership

Iranian ships on exercise in Gulf

Comes from Bloomberg:

China Gets Cheaper Iran Oil as U.S. Picks Up Tab for Hormuz Straits Patrols

Brilliant huh?

Read the entire post at Time's Battleland.

How you pressure the Chinese into reforms

What Beijingers refer to (roughly) as "the man taking a dump" building, because it looks like somebody squatting over a toilet.US officials trying to get China to go public with genuinely accurate smog/pollution data, but Beijing refuses, despite the obvious nature of the extreme air pollution in the city and elsewhere.

So instead of a frontal assault, the US Embassy just starts posting its own readings on the web via Twitter.

Beijing now becomes the first Chinese city to publish hourly readings based on the preffered tight measurement standard of (PM2.5, which measures the tinier particles that go deep into the lungs). The presumptive new premier, Li Keqiang, gearing up for his own "Grandpa Wen" model, made a public plea for this three weeks ago.

Nicely done, US Embassy.

Appearance on "The Alyona Show" regarding Obama's strategic "pivot" to Asia

Driven by my WPR column.  Did it Tuesday night.

Worrisome to me in the new house: the upload speed on my cable connection was problematic here, as you'll see in the resulting video via Skype.

I would greatly welcome any ideas on how to improve.

Talking to my AV guy, he said make sure everybody in the house (2 other laptops and 2 desktops) were off the web.  That I didn't do.  He said also to shut down everything on my MacBook Pro, go wired to the modem and turn off my wifi.

Speed testing the wifi just now, I'm 24 mps down and 4 up, so there shouldn't have been a problem. But honestly, there could have been 30 web windows open among the 4 other machines, and I didn't exactly clean up my laptop prior.

NEXT TIME: I'll go wired in the living room that doubles as my video production center and I'll have a Wikistrat pattern behind me and I'll be lit from both sides (with screen forming third point). I'll also take all the steps Greg, my AV guy, outlined.

But again, any other ideas welcomed.

Van Creveld tuned into Iran v. Turkey

CSM op-ed, by way of WPR's media roundup.

As readers will attest, I've been saying this for a long time myself, both here and in columns and posts for other sites, but felt kinda odd that no one else was picking up on it. Knew I wasn't making it up.  Just wondered why the real lead being buried by MSM.

Well, this is one credentializing op-ed from Martin Van Creveld and somebody else.

Check it out.  I don't agree with all of it, but it's a powerful piece.

My annotated rundown:

[SUBTITLE] Many analysts say the Middle East is the focus of a geopolitical power struggle between the United States and Iran. That misses the primary thread of events – namely, the ongoing soft partition of the Arab republics between Turkey and Iran, with Turkey the stronger power.

What's not said: the power Turkey wields is entirely "soft," meaning the attraction of its culture, politics and its economic heft.  Turkey is not threatening with hard power, nor reaching for nukes - none of what Iran does. Instead, it's primary attraction is its success in growing and keeping happy an expanding middle class.

This is primarily China's soft-power attraction, so when we seek to counter it with a military "pivot" to East Asia, we don't look strong but weak.

During the last decade many right-wing American and Israeli analysts have described the geostrategic struggles unfolding in the Middle East as a new “cold war” pitting the United States against Shiite Iran. They have warned of an Arab “Shiite crescent” – stretching from Lebanon to Iraq – connected to Iran via ties of religion, commerce, and geostrategy . . .

Van Creveld puts Iraq too easily in Iran's camp - at least the Arab portion. I don't think it's such a done deal by any stretch, and we've seen plenty of reports that say the Turkish attraction is greater there on a lot of levels.

Back to the argument:

What this view of the Middle East overlooks is the fact that both the US and Iran are mired in internal political and economic difficulties. Simultaneously, inside the region, both are being outmaneuvered by an ascendant Turkey.

I don't think the US is being "outmaneuvered," just outperformed and out-clevered - if you will. Turkey, as a "young" rising power, has the strategic imagination required for the task, whereas the US strategic community is mired in a plethora of 20th-century concepts, many of which are so outdated as to be laughable. Turks just see the region with clearer eyes than we do.  No great mystery there.  Iran, thank Allah, is just as mired in the past.

Moreover, Western observers have missed the primary thread of events – namely, the ongoing asymmetric Turkish-Iranian soft partition of the Arab republics. Concomitantly, the American position as regional hegemon is vanishing. Today, only the Arab monarchies and Israel continue to look to the US as their primary patron.

I believe this to be true, but again, Turkey is winning and Iran's grip is tenable - see Syria.

Following the US withdrawal from Iraq, KRG officials bemoaned their need of a regional patron to protect them from dominance by Baghdad. Landlocked Iraqi Kurdistan also needs a conduit to export its oil to the West. The only country that can fulfill both roles is Turkey. That is why KRG officials, instead of supporting their ethnic brethren inside Turkey, have often sided with Ankara against the Kurdish separatist PKK.

This was made obvious to us when Enterra did its development work in the KRG.

Should more pipelines leading from Iraqi Kurdistan to the Mediterranean via Turkey be built, the result will be the de facto creation of an Iraqi-Kurdish buffer state. 

And frankly, the KRG is the nicest part of Iraq in terms of combined hydrocarbons and arable land.

In the southern part of Iraq, the situation is just the opposite. There, a Shiite Arab buffer state, buttressed by Iran as a bulwark against Turkish, American, or Saudi encroachments, is being created. The last two weeks’ events have removed any doubt that Prime Minister Maliki is “Iran’s man” in Baghdad. 

Again, I differ here on writing off the south, but point taken.

Yet despite this de facto partitioning of Iraq over the last month, Turkey and Iran are not challenging each other’s spheres of influence. Thus, Iraq has reverted to its traditional position as the Poland of the Middle East.

Cool analogy.

In post-Arab Spring North Africa, too, Turkey and Iran have essentially partitioned the resurgent Islamist movements between themselves. The Turks support the victorious “moderate” Islamists from Tunisia to Egypt. Iran backs the Salafist spoilers, even though they are Sunni.

Bingo!

Key point:

Since North Africa lacks indigenous Shiite populations and the “moderate” Islamists have now emerged as the main players in the region, it is Sunni Turkey, along with Qatar, that appears to be the rising political and commercial patron in North Africa.

Not arms, but soft-power backed by serious wealth accumulation.

Next arguments about Turkey and Iran synching their approaches to Israel-Palestine problem strikes me as weak. Van Creveld and his guy are interpreting Turkey's reorientation away from quasi alliance with Israel and a reorientation toward Iran's hard line.  I see nothing of the sort, but rather Turkey proving its Islamist credentials as it openly seeks regional leadership.  Israel here is just the litmus test.

Van Creveld and Pack see a clear struggle between the two powers in Syria, but again with an eye to soft partition, as they put it:

In a fragmented post-Assad Syria, Turkey will support the Sunnis, while Iran will remain the patron of the Alawites. Moreover, both will surely find a way to protect their strategic and financial interests in whatever regime emerges.

Strong finish on a point I have railed incessantly - our obsession with Iran's nukes blinds us to everything else going on in the region:

Throughout 2011, the continued Western obsession with the Iranian nuclear menace prevented policymakers from grasping the most salient dynamics at play in the new Middle East. Those who, like Mohammed Ayoob, have warned that “Beyond the Arab Democratic Wave” lies a “Turko-Persian Future” have been mostly ignored.

The Arab Spring has vastly weakened the Arab states, leaving them open to fragmentation, increased federalism, and outside penetration. With hindsight, 2011 may come to represent as sharp a rupture in the political landscape of the Middle East as 1919 did.

True to my "new map" approach: globalization, entering the Arab world, creates fragmenting tendencies (remapping, as I have long described it), and the two states seeking to take advantage represent polar opposites on adapting themselves to globalization's many challenges: Turkey embraces and is stronger for it, Iran does not and in its fight to keep it out becomes decidedly weaker (here our sanctions do help). Toss Qatar in the same basic globalization camp as Turkey.

Van Creveld and Pack view all this in terms of great power control over weaker states, and yes, we will witness plenty of these dynamics in the initial remapping process, but Turkey won't "own" the Middle East any more than China will "own" SE Asia.  Ultimately, as globalization takes deep root and economic opportunities arise, states will gravitate according to market power, not pol-mil influence.  Turkey will be prominent because of its significant market size (just like China in East Asia or India in South Asia or the US in the Western Hemisphere), adhering to my general principle that what rules in globalization is not supply (especially of hard power) but demand (the ultimate soft attractor).

Sounds like China moving on DPRK diplomatic front

 Reuters reporting on Yahoo News, with my HT to World Politics Review's media roundup email.

To me, this is a very good sign:

North Korea has held secret talks with Japan in what is believed to be their first contact since the death of long-time leader Kim Jong-il, Japanese media said, as Pyongyang's closest allyChina and South Korea vowed to work closely on denuclearizing the North.

Amid a series of diplomatic contacts over North Korea in China, South Korean President Lee Myung-bak met Premier Wen Jiabao in Beijing to discuss ways to preserve stability on the peninsula as the unpredictable North undergoes a delicate transition of power.

Hiroshi Nakai, a former Japanese state minister in charge of the abduction issue, met the North's delegation on Monday for talks on the abduction of Japanese nationals in the 1970s and 80s, Japan's Kyodo news agency quoted sources as saying.

The two sides are also believed to have discussed terms for restarting intergovernmental negotiations, the Mainichi Daily News reported.

Nakai's office confirmed his trip to China. A government official declined to comment on the trip.

Two logical explanations:

1. China didn't want to push anything until Kim Jong Il passed; and
2. Beijing now wants to capture successor Kim Jong Eun on the diplomatic front before any internal purging process pushes Pyongyang toward displays of aggression toward the West.

How does Beijing do this?  It makes a big show of supporting KJE to put him in a good place, and says these efforts are part and parcel of achieving the same internationally.

If this is not China as a "responsible stakeholder," then I don't know what is.

So, again, a very good sign.

Would be nice if Obama Administration made it own overtures amidst this diplomatic flurry. Could prove decisive and keep us suitably in the mix.  Alas, I think the White House is already too invested in its "strategic pivot" to contain Chinese power in East Asia, which, to me, is a perfect 20th century answer to a 21st century phenomenon.

But I can always hope for common sense to re-emerge post-election . . ..

Time's Battleland: How America Painted Itself Into A Corner on North Korean Succession

Great Washington Post piece on China’s intense desire for stability on Korean peninsula, thus the clear backing of the “Great Successor” Kim Jong Eun. Wrap-up paragraph says it all:

The notion of a democratized Korean Peninsula with U.S. troops positioned directly along the Chinese border — one scenario in a North Korean collapse — is threatening to China because of Washington’s other moves in the region. The Obama administration, describing the United States as a new “Pacific power,” has in recent months strengthened economic ties with the Southeast Asian countries it once neglected; it has also built relationships with some of Beijing’s neighbors, particularly Vietnam and Burma, threatening Chinese influence.

My company, the massively multiplayer online consultancy Wikistrat, recently ran a simulation . . .

Read the entire post at Time's Battleland blog.

Time's Battleland: More Evidence of the Glorious Do-Loop That Is the East Asian Arms Race

WSJ lead story about Chinese developing a ballistic missile designed to fragment - like a cluster bomb - on the deck of a U.S. carrier and wipe out all aircraft and personnel.  Naturally, it's unbelievably provocative to us, because in our world view, U.S. carriers get to come right up to the coast of any nation whenever we please, bringing all that magnificent power projection to bear.

What the Chinese tell us with this development - and so many more - is that the days of the U.S. doing that off China's coast are coming to an end.

Unless we pick up the challenge, of course!

Read the entire post at Time's Battleland blog.

WPR's The New Rules: A Foreign Policy Wish List for 2012

Last year was a tough one in terms of global economics, humanitarian disasters and political leadership among the world's great powers. But it was also the year of the glorious Arab Spring and hints of similar developments in Myanmar, Russia and Ethiopia. So while the year's "fundamentals," as the economists like to say, weren't so good, it left us with plenty to be grateful for as globalization continues to awaken the desire of individuals for freedom the world over. Keeping all that in mind, here is my foreign policy wish list for 2012.

Read the entire column at World Politics Review.

Wikistrat post: Fareed Zakaria's GPS blog at CNN World

China eyes North Korea's minerals; what's next?

Editor’s Note: The following piece, exclusive to GPS, comes from Wikistrat, the world's first massively multiplayer online consultancy.  It leverages a global network of subject-matter experts via a patent pending crowd-sourcing methodology to provide unique insights.

Reuters reported that North Korea’s government will shift – for now – to rule by committee instead of by an all-powerful leader.  Most likely, a factional truce was worked out in advance of Kim Jong-il’s death.

Read the entire post at Fareed Zakaria's GPS blog at CNN's Global Public Square.

Here's the voting totals (by readers) as of 1506EST Tuesday:

 

 

India matches China's $3B investment in copper by investing $14B in iron ore

WSJ story from 30 Nov.

India consortium of firms makes winning $14B investment bid on Afghanistan's largest iron-ore deposit, called by experts the crown "jewel" of the country's estimated $1T in minerals.

Supposed to take five years to get mine up and running.  Canadian firm got the fifth block, as the Indian crew won the other four.

This award comes just a couple months after New Delhi and Kabul signed a strategic cooperation agreement.

Article makes the usual noises about Pakistan getting unnerved, but I think this is great - and totally natural. China and India making big investments and ultimately owning the security responsibility surrounding those investments.

To date, China's done nothing with the Aynak copper site, it is reported, due to security concerns.  Chinese companies now projecting a 2014 start date.  

Bet that gets moved up once NATO troops move out sooner.

WPR's New Rules: U.S.-China Relations Need Leadership, not Anachronisms

It is hard to think of a period in the past five decades in which this country was more painfully bereft of national leadership than it currently finds itself. On one side we have an increasingly isolated president who, as Edward Luce opined recently, “prefers to campaign than govern.” On the other is a House-controlling GOP that, in the words of Thomas Friedman, “has gone nuts.” What’s more, the highly negative campaign that 2012 is shaping up to be will secure no governing mandate for the eventual winner, meaning that things are likely to get far worse.

Read the entire column at World Politics Review.

Wikistrat's "The World According to Tom Barnett" 2011 brief, Part 9 - Final (Q&A on postwar stabilization operations and America's future allies)

Last segment of my "big brief" presentation to an international military audience in the Washington DC area in September 2011. Final questions involved postwar operations and who should be involved.

WPR's The New Rules: Obama Must Avoid the 'China Threat' Trap

No credible international affairs specialist would contend that the 2012 presidential election will hinge on U.S. foreign policy, given the state of the U.S. economy and the widespread social anger that one sees bubbling up across the country. What's more, Americans -- if not Beltway partisan pundits -- have achieved a certain sense of consensus on foreign policy under President Barack Obama, whose leadership has displayed a palpable "give them what they want" dynamic that reflects his desire to keep overseas issues on the back burner while he focuses on domestic ones.

Read the entire column at World Politics Review.

Time's Battleland: For all you Iran-is-winning types, the sad truth

You get two variants of this logic: 1) if the US leaves Iraq, Iran wins automatically (or it's won already because the Shiite majority actually rules); and 2) even more than al-Qaeda, Iran is the real beneficiary of the Arab Spring.

Both judgments are wrong in the way that America's capacity for frantic self-doubt and self-blame are routinely wrong.

Read the entire post at Time's Battleland blog.

Time's Battleland: Why America should go slow on declaring victory in Libya - or making promises

[co-written with Michael S. Smith II of Kronos Advisory LLC]

The demise of Col Qaddafi, a despicable despot who should have met this or a worse fate sooner, will likely give rise to power grabs in Libya by groups whose agendas will often be anything other than what meets the eye. Despite many power holders' claims of “secularist” and democratic aims, Washington's policy makers would be wise to exercise great caution when assessing who should be trusted inside Libya. For, at present, it would appear Libya is taking on a political atmosphere that will carry a high Salafist quotient.

Read the entire post at Time's Battleland.

Esquire's Politics Blog: 5 Post-Qaddafi Realities for Libya and the Rest of Us

They came to bury Muammar Qaddafi, not capture him. After more than four decades of rule, he was still in the business of threatening and killing Libyans — a kind of start-up insurgency that would never go away. So if Qaddafi is indeed dead, then so much the better; the great bogeyman has been removed from the scene. Of course the world will (temporarily at least) lament the violence required for his departure from power, but as dictator-toppling exercises go, this one was about as good as it gets: First, the Arab Spring's power of example, then the rebels-turned-ruling-military-force driving him out from below, and finally an enabling from the human rights-minded powers that be.

But still: How did we really get here? And, perhaps more importantly, what now?

Read the entire post at Esquire's The Politics Blog.

WPR's The New Rules: Debunking the Pentagon's Chinese Nationalism Hype

There exists within the Pentagon an unshakeable line of reasoning that says the Chinese military threat to the United States in Asia is profound and growing, that the most likely great-power war conflict will be over Taiwan or the South China Sea, and that the primary trigger will be China's burgeoning -- and uncontrollable -- nationalism. Objectively, China's military capabilities are certainly growing dramatically, but our conventional wisdom tends to break down in the structural plausibility of the scenarios. That's why the firm belief that rampant nationalism will trigger an eventual conflict becomes so crucial, especially when considered in combination with an additional line of speculation that emerged earlier this year, after the Chinese military trotted out a fifth-generation fighter jet the same day that former U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates arrived in Beijing for confidence-building talks: At the time, Gates suggested that maybe the People's Liberation Army was getting too big for its britches, and according to those who emphasize the Chinese threat, when the Chinese Communist Party eventually caves in the face of out-of-control popular nationalism, the PLA will step in and take matters into its own hands.

Read the entire column at World Politics Review.

Being realistic on Iran's long-term influence in Iraq: it will lose out to Turkey and China and Kuwait

Story in WAPO gets the Iran-is-winning crowd all jacked up: Iraq is condemned for not siding with the anti-Assad movement in Syria and actually offering support to the regime! This is spun as clear evidence of Iran's influence, when there are a host of pragmatic reasons why Baghdad isn't so interested in having the Arab Spring topple the dictator Assad.

Some analysis that's far more nuanced and realistic is found in the NYT Sunday ("Vacuum Is Feared as U.S. Quits Iraq, but Iran's Deep Influence May Not Fill It," by Tim Arango).

The best bits:

As the United States draws down its forces in Iraq, fears abound that Iran will simply move into the vacuum and extend its already substantial political influence more deeply through the soft powers of culture and commerce. But here, in this region that is a center of Shiite Islam, some officials say that Iran wore out its welcome long ago.

Surely, Iran has emerged empowered in Iraq over the last eight years, and it has a sympathetic Shiite-dominated government to show for it, as well as close ties to the anti-American cleric Moktada al-Sadr. But for what so far are rather obscure reasons — perhaps the struggling Iranian economy and mistrust toward Iranians that has been nurtured for centuries — it has been unable to extend its reach.

In fact, a host of countries led by Turkey — but not including the United States — have made the biggest inroads, much to the chagrin of people here in Najaf like the governor.

“Before 2003, 90 percent of Najaf people liked Iranians,” said the governor, Adnan al-Zurufi, who has lived in Chicago and Michigan and holds American citizenship. “Now, 90 percent hate them. Iran likes to take, not give” . . .

So big surprise: those who deliver economically achieve real standing. Iran simply cannot do this, because it's economy is broken - just like its "revolution."

Now to address the conventional wisdom: 

A standard narrative has it that the Iraq war opened up a chessboard for the United States and Iran to tussle for power. One of the enduring outcomes has been an emboldened Iran that is politically close to Iraq’s leaders, many of whom escaped to Iran during Saddam Hussein’s government, and that is a large trading partner.

Yet the story is more nuanced, particularly in the Shiite-dominated south that became politically empowered after the American invasion upended Sunni rule. It has been other countries — most powerfully Turkey, but also China, Lebanon and Kuwait — that have cemented influence through economic ties.

The patterns were established soon after the American invasion. Shoddy Iranian goods — particularly low-quality cheese, fruit and yogurt — flooded markets in the south, often at exorbitant prices, said Mahdi Najat Nei, a diplomat who heads the Trade Promotion Organization of Iran office in Baghdad. This sullied Iran’s reputation, even though prices have since plummeted, creating an aversion to Iranian goods that lasts to this day, Mr. Nei said.

This has made it difficult for Iranian businesspeople to make investments in southern Iraq, said Ali Rhida, who is from Iran and is building an iron factory on the outskirts of Najaf. “The real problem is with the mangers of the economy in Iran,” he said. “After the fall of the regime, many Iranian companies came here but they screwed it all up.”

As always, the real winners are the ones who deliver opportunity. Iran makes demands and delivers burdens.

“Investment from Iran has almost stopped,” said Zuheir Sharba, the chairman of Najaf’s provincial council, referring to a phenomenon that has more to do with Iran’s anemic state-run economy than it does to Iranian ambitions. Speaking about Americans, he said, “They were coming, but they’ve stopped.”

Mr. Sharba continued: “We wish that American companies would come here. I wish the American relationship was that, instead of troops, it would be companies.” Mr. Sharba is a cleric, and he spent 14 years in Iran in exile during Mr. Hussein’s government.

Our failure at economy-building staring us in the face.  Why? We became obsessed with the notion that government-building equates to state-building, when it's economy-building that triggers the locals to make their own state happen. We acted like the Gorbachev here: imagining politics determines economics, when we should have played it like Deng, understanding that you start with the economics and let the politics slowly evolve.

Yes, Iran can make trouble, but who cuts the deals?

While Iran may be flagging in the battle for hearts and minds, it is still able to create trouble. A rise this summer in American troop deaths in southern Iraq at the hands of Iranian-backed militias raised alarms in diplomatic circles and became the core of the argument put forth by those who want a longer-lasting American military presence to counter Iran’s clout.

But the troublemaking does not extend to the more important arena of commerce, officials say. “Because of the political sensitivities of Iran, many people say Iran is controlling the economy of Iraq,” said Sami al-Askari, a member of Parliament and a close confidant to Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki. “No, the Turks are.”

Mr. Maliki once lived in Iran, and he surrounds himself with aides who have close ties to Tehran. Yet even these relationships have not translated into economic or cultural influence that could endear Iran to the Iraqi public at large. “I’ve yet to meet an Iraqi who trusts the Iranians,” said Joost Hiltermann, the International Crisis Group’s deputy program director for the Middle East.

But the mythology dies hard in Washington, so eager are we to crap on ourselves and see "loss" in everything right now. It's silly and it's childish, but that's what we are right now.

Kenneth Katzman, a Middle East analyst at the Congressional Research Service in Washington, said that because of numerous small projects — particularly related to religious tourism in Najaf, including a large underground toilet facility, and some construction projects in Basra — “a lot of these myths get perpetrated” about Iran’s influence in the south. “In the aggregate, it doesn’t add up to much,” he said.

Atmospherics trumping reality. Iran is a master at spewing this nonsense and we are adept at swallowing it, much like Ahmadinejad's diatribes and threats against Israel.

The Saudis know better and so do the Turks.  Given the choice, I choose Turkey, which, BTW, is really "winning" in Iraq - and that's just fine by me.

Will we Americans ever grow past this pathetic need to view all interventions in such black-and-white terms? I have great faith in the Millennials. The Boomers were raised in a Manichean childhood, and it permanently ruined their strategic thinking.

Time's Battleland: Arab Spring with same impact as "big bang strategy": Islam at war with self - not West

Nice piece in the NYT at the end of September pointing out that the primary impact of the Arab Spring is that, in giving people chances to rule themselves and not be subject to dictators, Islamic activists find themselves splintering from within . . .

Read the entire post at Time's Battleland.