Iraq at ten years

Cartoon found here (in an FT op-ed that fits this post nicely - if orthogonally).

Read through a variety of the tenth-year anniversary reviews, and I thought Thomas Friedman's was the best - despite the weird title (Democrats, Dragons or Drones?).

His basic notion that it takes the next generation to create and shape the subsequent reality is correct.  Friedman pegs it at "9 months and 21 years to develop."

Fair enough. But the question (as he also notes) hinges on that generation's journey.  Done well, it works.  Done badly enough and a vicious spiral ensues.  In truth, the jury remains out on that score.

We won the war - no doubt, and then took a pass on the postwar.  If we hadn't, then questions of "why?" fade away.  In the post-9/11 mood, America possessed the desire to reshape the region and Saddam was the obvious target. Direct causality was not the issue, although Dick Cheney tried to sell that.  Nor was direct threat, referring to the late and frantic oversell of the WMD to Congress.  The purpose - all along - was structural retribution: as in, you reshaped our world, now we reshape yours.  Americans are just deeply uncomfortable admitting that, so we needed a clear and present storyline to drive our revenge-flick dynamics.

The resulting strategic "pre-emption" was oddly symmetrical in ambition but certainly not in cost (and why should it be so between a superpower and a non-state actor?).

So when we take that pass on the aftermath of the war, and basically pretend that what comes next doesn't really matter, we abort the entire regional restructuring ambition (which, if you remember, was on a nice roll for 2-3 years there) and we allow ourselves to be swallowed up (in terms of strategic effort and attention) by an insurgency that was completely foreseeable and completely manageable - if we had bothered to embrace that inevitability.

But instead of embracing it, we did what we always do and called the postwar another war.  And wars yield a singular answer in US military history - called, more firepower.  And then we found that made things worse (go figure).

And then the White House, chastened finally by the 2006 midterms, relabeled the conflict and rebranded the mission - and then we succeeded again.  

But by then the public narrative had already been cast (Bush lied, too many deaths, too much cost).

So ultimately the Bush administration pays the legacy cost for its mistakes, which mostly had to do with stubbornness.  They had their narrative of a successful war and stuck to it - until it hurt so bad that they had to change.

So what are we left with?

In structural terms, I like what the Middle East has become.  The inevitabilities are being processed and Iran is more isolated than ever.  And thanks to larger structural changes in the global economy, the area is coming under new superpower management - inexorably.  None of it is nice, but it was never going to be anything but painful and violent.  The Arab world has an enormous amount of catching up to do WRT globalization, and it will be awful in execution (and with Africa leaping ahead on many fronts, the Middle East and North Africa - or large portions of it - risk becoming globalization's long-term basket case).

If the US had handed off the region still encased in its many dictatorships, China would have a much easier time over the next two decades.  Now, it faces challenges that are likely to alter its own political structure significantly - just like it did to the US.  Some naturally see the "defeat of American empire" in the region, but since empire was never America's goal, that judgment is meaningless.

All that matters is the relative evolutions of the three superpowers of the 21st century:  China, India and America.

America did, per my original Esquire piece, take strategic ownership of the Middle East in a big way.  That ambition was both debilitating and liberating:  we took our shot (badly) and now we're done "owning" things there (besides Iran's nukes).  In that way, Iraq processed our inevitable post-9/11 over-reaching response (we are a democracy) and hurried us along the exhaustion-collapse-rock bottom-recovery-resurrection dynamic that was always slated for us in the post-Cold War world (our inability to handle the success of the "end of history" - aka, the globalization of our economic connectivity model).  We had gotten used to running things, and we weren't going to stop until something made us stop - an unpleasant journey but a necesssary one.

Now, in grand structural terms, the race among my C-I-A trio is well underway.  The Obama administration, needing a switch-over target, sells its Asian pivot.  This is not a good answer, as I have noted frequently - but rather a red herring.  The real struggle in Asia doesn't involve us except in an off-shore balancing role.

Instead, the real struggles of the future involve the very same frontier integration I've been talking about for a decade now.  On that score, we are looking fine enough in our ongoing restructuring of our portfolio, while China's grows frighteningly larger relative to its ability to deliver and manage regions distant from its shores. India is just begining to recognize what responsibilities lie ahead.

You'll say that China will do it differently, but the structure of the system will force the same responses: China cannot afford to lose its growing overseas dependencies (much greater than any borne by the US), and so the responses will be mounted.  And when they don't go well (whoever gets it right - right off the bat?), change will double back upon China - to its general benefit (along with the world's).

Iraq was always a means to an end (when in history has great power war ever been anything else?).  During the real-time execution, it seems like everything - as does every war throughout history.  But half a century later?  It looks very different.  It's a stepping stone for superpowers:  some step up and some step down, some step away and some step in.  None of it is exactly what it appears to be in the light of present-day reporting.  Per Zhou Enlai's take on the French Revolution, we will be witnessing the downstream consequences across the century.

The elder entitlement conundrum: raising retirement age doesn't get you what you want

To me, this is the ideological conflict of the 21st century:  money = access to bio revolution = longer lives, so access to tech is self-licking ice-cream cone (I live longer and therefore vote more and - BTW - have more money to spend on politics, which increases my access to tech, which makes me live longer, which ...).

Check it out from WAPO:

ST. JOHNS COUNTY, Fla. — This prosperous community is the picture of the good and ever longer life — just what policymakers have in mind when they say that raising the eligibility age for Social Security and Medicare is a fair way to rein in the nation’s troublesome debt.

The county’s plentiful and well-tended golf courses teem with youthful-looking retirees. The same is true on the county’s 41 miles of Atlantic Ocean beaches, abundant tennis courts and extensive network of biking and hiking trails.

The healthy lifestyles pay off. Women here can expect to live to be nearly 83, four years longer than they did just two decades earlier, according to research at the University of Washington. Male life expectancy is more than 78 years, six years longer than two decades ago.

But in neighboring Putnam County, life is neither as idyllic nor as long.

Incomes and housing values are about half what they are in St. Johns. And life expectancy in Putnam has barely budged since 1989, rising less than a year for women to just over 78. Meanwhile, it has crept up by a year and a half for men, who can expect to live to be just over 71, seven years less than the men living a few miles away in St. Johns.

The widening gap in life expectancy between these two adjacent Florida counties reflects perhaps the starkest outcome of the nation’s growing economic inequality: Even as the nation’s life expectancy has marched steadily upward, reaching 78.5 years in 2009, a growing body of research shows that those gains are going mostly to those at the upper end of the income ladder.

The tightening economic connection to longevity has profound implications for the simmering debate about trimming the nation’s entitlement programs. Citing rising life expectancy, influential voices including the Simpson-Bowles deficit reduction commission, the Business Roundtable and lawmakers on both sides of the aisle have argued that it makes sense to raise the eligibility age for Social Security and Medicare.

But raising the eligibility ages — currently 65 for Medicare and moving toward 67 for full Social Security benefits — would mean fewer benefits for lower-income workers, who typically die younger than those who make more.

“People who are shorter-lived tend to make less, which means that if you raise the retirement age, low-income populations would be subsidizing the lives of higher-income people,” said Maya Rockeymoore, president and chief executive of Global Policy Solutions, a public policy consultancy. “Whenever I hear a policymaker say people are living longer as a justification for raising the retirement age, I immediately think they don’t understand the research or, worse, they are willfully ignoring what the data say.”

So counter-intuitive:  raising the age = even more disproportional burden on less weathy.

The segregation is already well underway between the long- and short-lived.

The two counties in FLA:

Now globally:

It won't be the "clash of civilizations" in the 21st century, but the clash of generations.

Obama's serious movement toward a genuine foreign policy legacy

NYT front-pager yesterday on "Obama's Bid for Trade Pact with Europe Stirs Hope."

Impossible!  I know.

If trade deals are hard in good times, then they must be harder in tough times, right?  I mean, aren't we told by stern-faced national security experts about how the Great Recession is fostering trade wars and currency wars, so this move - amidst all such rising trade protectionism - is IMPOSSIBLE, correct?

Except trade deals like this get down EXACTLY during slow times.  Remember when we got NAFTA, because this one will end up being just as big or bigger.  NAFTA was Clinton's signature foreign policy achievement.  I know, I got the grand tour of his library from the director when I gave a speech there years back, and NAFTA was front and center.

If successful (and this will be), then this will be Obama's big achievement - the one history will remember.  Compared to this, the wars and the targetted assassinations will be miniscule, because they just deal with the friction caused by globalization's historic expansion, whereas this will fuel another wave.

Get yourself some Chinese (part II) and conquer the BOTP

Missed yesterday on 20-hour workday that featured 4 flights - sweet!  Just to go to fricking Norfolk from Indy. Such is the cost of being able to sleep in your own bed both nights (I have had all the hotels in this world that I care to). Unbelievable logistics that left my head aching from all the up-and-down.  I am going to build a future that has minimal flying and maximum time on the waves.  Count on it.

MS and Huawei do a GM-SAIC (my fave example of getting yourself some Chinese to capture the fortune at the bottom of the pyramid).

Gist:

Microsoft, taking aim at the world’s fastest-growing smartphone market, said on Monday that it would team up with Huawei of China to sell a low-cost Windows smartphone in Africa.

The phone, called the Huawei 4Afrika Windows Phone, will cost $150 and initially be sold in seven countries.

Slick connection, yes?

Africa is the world’s fastest-growing region for smartphones, with an average sales growth of 43 percent a year since 2000, according to the GSM Association, an industry trade group based in London.

In sub-Saharan Africa alone, 10 percent of the 445 million cellphone users have smartphones, but that is expected to increase rapidly as operators expand high-speed networks.

By 2017, most consumers in South Africa will be using smartphones, up from 20 percent last year, according to the GSM Association. In Nigeria, the continent’s most populous country, the outlook for sustained growth is even greater, with smartphone penetration projected to reach just 30 percent by 2017.

The World Bank says that roughly a quarter of the one billion people on the continent are middle-class wage earners, the target group that Microsoft will try to reach with the Huawei phone, Mr. de Sousa said.

“Africans are generally quite conscious of brand, quality and image,” he said.

Some serious bottom-of-the-pyramid stuff.

Think about it:  MS and Wal-Mart making these big moves in Africa.

Biggest analytic mistake I've ever made was overestimating how slowly (yes, my original post had me mis-stating this) Africa would embrace globalization and succeed with it.  Totally blew it.

And that mistake taught me:  the bias of the national security type toward pessimism is a huge analytic weakness WRT globalization.   It really means Washington, by and large, doesn't have a clue - PNT worst of all.

And that's a weird realization, when you remember that this era of globalization is a US-led creation, but now, here we are, and the progenitor and long-time bodyguard has lost its analytic ability to understand its own creation.

WPR Briefing: Trans-Atlantic Ties Still Key to Renewing U.S. Global Leadership

For roughly a decade now, I’ve been advocating that America needs to be unsentimental in choosing its military allies for the 21st century. Europe and Japan are aging and seem increasingly less willing to protect their interests abroad, while India and China are becoming budding superpowers with global interests that, to a stunning degree, overlap with America’s. Most pointedly, we live in an age of “frontier integration” triggered by globalization’s rapid advance, a process in which China and India, and not the “old” West, are the two rising pillars. So it makes sense for America to focus future alliance-building efforts in their direction.

Read the entire article at World Politics Review.

Fmr US Ambassador to Mali: Why we must save country

Nice op-ed in NYT on Tuesday.

A familiar charge:  "Islamist terrorists want a lawless stronghold in West Africa."

US, we are told, has spent $500m over past decade to keep violent Islamic extremists at bay in West Africa, but it's still too busy elsewhere to mount any serious Mali effort.  Thus the onus is on interested local powers like Algeria and interested outside powers like France.  Otherwise we get more Benghazi-style attacks.  This is a natural external cost of the Arab Spring - new garbage to be taken out.

Usual lead-from-behind pitch: US supports with logistics and intell and we need OCT (other countries' troops).

This is the reality of the Obama administration's decision to "pivot" to East Asia and disavow a troop-based approach to frontier settling in Africa.  It's tough love to say the least.

It's just so odd that we're always so intent on simultaneously containing China AND carrying its water (so to speak) elsewhere in the world, except now we're endeavoring mightily to make it somebody else's blood for Chinese resources.  It's just weird that we essentially refuse to cooperate when our strategic interests overlap JUST because of the tensions in East Asia.  Back in the day (read, Nixon & Kissinger), we had more of a linkages perspective.  But with Obama, continuing the Bush thing, it's our way or the highway; you either cooperate across the board or we oppose you across the board.

We need another Nixon to rationalize our relationship with China, because it is beyond Obama's strategic capacity.

Does Obama let the transatlantic bond fade too casually?

I have been preaching for well over a decade now that America needs to realize that it's most productive allies going forward, when it comes to security affairs, are going to be different from those upon whom it relied in the past.

It's a simple logic that fits global trends:  Europe was incentivized big-time before, it's far less so now.  America feels a different responsibility on a global scale.  China and India rise, their global interests expand, and they display more and more interest and capacity to defend those interests.

So not a hard leap:  you work with those most similarly incentivized in the era that you're in right now.  You don't hold to nostalgia.  You want allies with big (and growing) militaries), growing interests, and a clear willingness to go place and kill people to protect those interests.  Crudely put, but there it is.

We are currently in an age of transition from a familiarity and comfort-zone with Europe to one in which we are inevitably drawn into cooperation with India and China to manage this world from a security perspective.

And yet, there is a part of me that says, what matters most going forward is who gets to the shared future in the best shape.  And that means, who processes (as I've said in the brief for a while now) the widespread populist anger and pursues a sufficiently progressive agenda to clean things up and get their countries in shape for the economic competitions still to come.  By that last part, I mean, we see a global middle class rise now, and we face an era of extreme technological change as a result.  Why?  The compelling global need to disconnect standard of living from consumption - plain and simple.

For now, I like the path America is going to have to go down regarding painful reforms and improvements better than I like those of India or China (also a staple of my brief).  We've engaged in such progressive eras before and we're well suited to that task.  We simply lack the political leadership now.

And here's the rub that creates the doubt.  

If we run off too seriously in our strategic "pivot," I fear we engage in the usual escapism ("Look Ma!  I'm fixing the future!") instead of looking within and making the necessary changes happen.

Europe faces many of the same advanced challenges.  We unconsciously model ourselves on them, and they on us, far more than either cares to admit.  Read the Economist if you don't believe me.

So my concern is this:  are we missing the great opportunity for co-evolutionary dynamics if America turns too swiftly and deterministically on this pivot?

Obama is an arrogant man and an even more arrogant president.  Not as bad as Bush, but still.  

I fear this strategic "pivot" is one of the most poorly considered shifts the US has ever made.  I usually cite the foolishness of picking fights with one's banker, and there are many more, but this time I think we're losing our center of gravity some inside globalization.

I also fear we're missing a chance to reform ourselves as needed.  We'll find no answers in China and India on this score.  And - again - the sense of geo-political escapism is palpable regarding the Arab Spring, Africa's churn, our need to integrate more with LATAM.

Don't get me wrong: I don't see scarier worlds out there that need more US military operations.  I see a world of small threats, small wars and small - networked - efforts.

And then I see a president with this grand notion of boxing China in - no matter what fine words he's using - and I see a narrow vision arrogantly pursued.

Indian women and the push against gender violence

NYT story on widespread protests in New Dehli over the apparent gang rape and (eventual) murder of a young female student (23) on a bus.  The woman died from her wounds, which included penetration by a metal rod.

Gruesome stuff, to say the least.

The nature of the violence isn't what catches my sense of historical timing.  Men in packs will do the most atricious things.  

What's interesting here (and it corresponds to a scenario proposed by a Wikistrat analyst at a recent sim we ran) are sociologists linking this growing pack violence against Indian women to a growing disparity in gender numbers - i.e., excess males after years and years of discarding female fetuses.  The result is an age cohort where there are too many guys, too few females to court, and a budding social anger among the males that translates into violence against women and implicit attacks on their rights and standing.  In short, too few women relative to men = social devaluation of females, making them "fair game" in the minds of angry young men.

I will tell you, I buy excess males turning against governments when jobs are not there, and I buy this too.  I've never bought, in the modern context, the bit about having to place excess males in the military and then going to war.  That's applying old logic to modern situations.

But the "war" does come, is the point.  It's just a war against women.

The upside?  It forces women to fight harder and more pervasively for their rights in society, and here the historical timing reminds me of the US in the 1960s and 1970s - a time of seismic and permanent change for women in American society.  I was born (1962) into one world regarding the role of women, but by the time I was a young male courting (1982, when I met my wife and started dating her), it was a very different universe. My wife was the only daughter of a woman who divorced her husband and left to pursue her PhD - I mean, really radical stuff in the early 1970s.  That experience made my spouse a very different person, and thus forced a different relationship (trivial but telling example:  my second middle initial comes from my taking my wife's maiden name of Meussling, thus rendering, in the eyes of the USG, my original name (Thomas Patrick Barnett) as my "maiden name" for all time).

It's a tiny example of how much change happened in the US on womens' issues across the short timespan of my first 25 years of life.  I can't possibly guess at the rate of change that older civilizations like India and China will enjoy/suffer.  I can just speculate that this awakening is coming, and that it's going to be huge.

Time's Battleland: National Security - Just How Intelligent is the National Intelligence Council's Global Trends 2030?

GETTY IMAGES

Every half-decade, the National Intelligence Council’s “Global Trends” series produces a roughly 20-year predictive analysis of the world’s evolution – an analysis considered to be the best long-range geopolitical forecasting conducted by the U.S. government. These multi-year efforts involve consultations with hundreds of experts from around the world (the last two drills have featured interviews and presentations from yours truly.) The NIC also conducts global “road shows” to collect feedback for great powers like Russia, China and various European states.

Simply stated, the biggest problem with this year’s Global Trends 2030: Alternative Worlds is the lack of internally consistent logic throughout each of the worlds presented.

Read the entire post at Time's Battleland blog.

Shale gas revolution triggers FDI boom for US

FT front-page story on shale gas boom in US already identifiably responsible for additional $90b foreign direct investment flow into US.

Subtitles are telling:

• Investments drive US industrial renaissance
• European companies fear growing divide

Industries that benefit from cheap feedstocks are being targeted, and European counterparts fear they will be at systematic disadvantage in any industry that is fuel-intensive.

Yes, some of these same industries in US argue now for no LNG exports, lest the advantage slip away.  But most energy experts say we can export at will and probably raise the MMBTU price by maybe only one dollar.  We are now about 8-10$ cheaper than LNG prices in Europe and about $15 less than what Asians (mostly the Japanese) are paying.

So yeah, we can have our cake and eat it too.

Forever? 

No, but arguably for a solid generation's time.

So much for "peak oil" determining all.

The growing Sino-America co-dependency on food

FT story on a subject I've been harping on since my last book (and in it):  the stunning co-dependency that arrives with America increasingly feeding China, making our ag output as important to Beijing as the PG's energy exports.

Some data points on China's total imports (so not all NorthAm or US):

• Cereal imports into China up almost 13,000 percent since 2008 to current 5.2m MT
• Wheat up 6,000% to 3m MT
• Rice up 264% to 1.6m MT
• Overall rise from low-point of 2008 is from 2m MT to 12m MT.
• China is now the 7th biggest importer in world, after Japan, Egypt (remember that when you imagine Egypt going rogue under the MB), Mexico, EU-27, Saudi Arabia, and SoKo.  Japan is #1 at just under 25m MT.

Note that US is biggest world exporter of wheat, corn and soybeans.

Yes, China is planting like crazy, so its own ag output is up.  It's just that demand is rising much faster.

The key line of the piece: 

China still has an official policy that mandates 95 percent self-sufficiency - a policy known as the "red line" - but recent comments suggest that the insistence on self-sufficiency is waning.

The US is waking up to China as THE ag export market.  Nebraska's top ag official:

China represents a huge export market . . . [and] a growing export destination.  

Nebraska's corn exports to China have doubled in the last half-decade.

China is already the world's biggest soybean importer (and - again - the US is the biggest exporter), and "is adding corn, wheat, barley and rice to its shopping list" (and - again - the US is the biggest exporter of corn and wheat).

WSJ front-pager on "global gas push" mirrors Wikistrat sim scenario

Per the recent Wikistrat simulation, "North America's Energy Export Boom," we had a scenario called "Fit of Peaks" in which the US "got it right" (fracking revolution) but much of the rest of the world had a hard time cashing in similarly.

The WSJ front-pager, entitled "Global Gas Push Stalls: Firms Hit Hurdles Trying to Replicate U.S. Success Abroad" fits that model nicely.

Key finding:

Among the reasons for the glacial pace are government ownership of mineral rights, environmental concerns and a lack of infrastructure to drill and transport gas and oil. In addition, much less is known about the geology in most foreign countries than in the U.S., where drilling activity has been going on for more than a century.

The upshot:  the U.S. and Canada could remain the main countries to reap the economic advantages of shale development for some time.

The serious advantage: the gas and ethane glut lures petrochem and fertilizer companies to NorthAm to take advantage of the cost differential - "a huge change after years of shifting production abroad."

Bottom line:  about a decade head-start for NorthAm.

I speak this morning in Houston at a board meeting of a national offshore industries association member company.  This emerging strategic reality is coming to dominate my career right now.

Big GM investment in China

 

GM reached out to China's auto firm SAIC in the late 1990s, and the fruits of that JV continue to pile up, according to the WSJ last Thursday:

General Motors C. and Chinese joint-venture partners agreed to build a third commercial vehicle factory in southwest China to meet growing demand and protect GM's status as the largest auto maker by volume in the country.

$1b plant looking to crank 400k vehicles by 2015, giving GM and its partners a total capacity of 2m vehicles. China's light vehicles market will top 20m next year, while the US remains around 15m.  600 or so new dealerships planned across China, bringing the volume to 3500 total.

Nothing marks you more fully as globalization's demand center than to have the car market.  That was America in the 20th century, and it's China in the 21st.

Fracking confronts the reality of limited water resources

WSJ piece noting that all this hydralic fracturing (fracking) is coming up against local water limits.  Already, US fracking uses water on par with the city of Chicago or Houston.

So the industry jumps into figuring out how to reuse the water multiple times by cleaning it up (not enough for drinking but enough to reuse).  Already in PA the percentage use of recycled water is up to 17% this year, jumping from 13% last year.

This is a huge issue, because we're looking at 1 million more fracking wells globally by 2035, according to Schlumberger (oilfield services co.).  The issue is expressed both in unwanted externalities (enviro risks/damage) and cost within the industry (acquiring and disposing).

Something to keep an eye on, as the industry competes with Mother Nature (climate change), agriculture and urbanization globally.

Saudi America

Title of the WSJ's lead editorial on Tuesday.

Two charts displaying the tectonic shift afforded by fracking technology.

This, plus fiscal constraints, makes for a new definition of US superpower-dom.

Let the debate begin ...

4-5 in presidential elections

Lost to Reagan twice and HW once.

Won twice with Clinton.

Lost twice with Bush.

Won twice with Obama.

Voted once in WI, twice in MA, once in MD, once in VA, twice in RI and twice now in IN.

What always gets me in the end?  Supreme Court Justice picks. You don't think about it much on election day, but man, do you ever when somebody announces a retirement (or death).  I just keep thinking about all those 5-4 decisions, like the recent one on the healthcare law (which I support).

Also this time: the sense that the GOP is losing its grip.  Way too obstructionist over Obama's first term.  Now polling lower than Independents, which stuns me.  Losing women, which is a long-term issue of significance. Losing Hispanics, another long-term issue.  The GOP is not a healthy lot, and their talent seems thinner than ever.  it is becoming the party of scared white people in a multinational union experiencing unprecedented demographic change.  That's not a winning proposition.

The Dems, meanwhile, have much better long-term prospects.  Thus some genuine system utility in hopefully seeing the GOP realize how far they've drifted.

Yes, there will be many within the GOP that says "we lost because we nominated a moderate."  But a hardliner would have done far worse, in my opinion - just driving up the Dem advantages on minorities and gender and sexual orientation (not a small percentage to ignore by any means).  Simply put, that tent needs to be expanded because the GOP is running third right now.

And no, I don't think the GOP should draw much satisfaction from the popular vote.  It's simply amazing that Obama won with the recovery coming so late.  Six months from now he'd win by a much bigger margin.

Why do I worry about the GOP?  In the end, they are more likely to be the agent of triggering a new progressive era (remember TR) than the Dems.  I can see the Dems joining in with relish.  I just suspect they won't have enough panic within their ranks to initiate.

So I'm hoping the GOP eventually locates that panic.

The clear pattern:  states with borders largely go Dem and inland states overwhelmingly go Republican.  It's just like China's emerging split and that of risers everywhere.  States that face out versus states that face in.  In the U.S., it's who's more open on immigration and less China-bashing versus who's tougher on immigration and more China-bashing.  The GOP simply doesn't work as the party of fear.

How Romney (and the Republicans) are screwed by demographics

Pair of WSJ stories.

Front-pager lead from yesterday notes that "Election May Hinge On Latino Turnout."  Get used to that headline, and get used to it working against the immigration-unfriendly GOP.

Obama is currently polling at 70% (Romney 25%) among the fastest growing segment of the electorate.

The key to Obama's win, we are told, is getting out the vote.

Second story covers that in a way that will infuriate Republicans, but it's their own damn fault:

Thousands of illegal-immigrant youths are at the forefront of national efforts to get immigrant and Latino citizens to the polls next week, the latest demonstration of the increasingly organized and vocal group's power.

In swing states like Florida, Ohio and Colorado, the young people—often referred to as Dreamers after the failed Dream Act legislation that would have offered them a path to citizenship—are running phone banks, going door to door and approaching students on college campuses to encourage voting. They also are active in California, a Democratic stronghold, and Texas, where Republicans have the edge.

The group is targeting Latinos, the fastest-growing electorate in the U.S., whose turnout at the polls is traditionally lower than that of blacks and whites. Polls show an overwhelming advantage for President Barack Obama among Latino voters, but the Dreamers efforts also could boost Democratic support in state and congressional races, supporters and opponents agree.

The revenge of the denied citizens!

We shoot ourselves in the foot regarding Latin America, which, over the long term, is our greatest source of economic growth and ultimately power.

We shoot ourselves in the foot over immigration and drugs.

Immigration is what keeps this country "young."  We are mean age 36 right now, but that will rise to just under 40 at 2050, primarily because of immigration and the high fertility associated with that (for the first 2-3 generations).  By way of contrast, China, which is also 36 years old now, will reach almost 48 by 2050, which will constitute a huge drag on its economy.

But China's long-term advantage is this:  it's surrounded by younger regions poised for lengthy demographic dividends (high proportion of workers to dependents).  First there's SE Asia, which will enjoy a demographic dividend on par with China's of the last 4 decades, and then there's India, which will enjoy an even bigger one through mid-century.

Being surrounded by faster growing economies is a sure way to lift your own as growth tapers off due to modernity, advanced status, slowing demographics, etc.  So, long term, China gets a lot of help.

We could too via Latin America, if we didn't make the drug war the centerpiece of our foreign policy throughout the hemisphere.  Instead, we cede a lot of that growth to others (Europe, Asia) when we should be expanding southward as a center of gravity in free-trade zones and ultimately as a multinational union.

But that will all come with time.  We just don't have any political leaders with genuine vision.

But get us to 2050, when one of three US voters will have some Hispanic blood in them?  Hmm.  Much will change.

Republicans will lose more and more elections until they change their anti-growth tune.  They are swimming against the tide called the future.

The sad truth about a second Obama presidency

From David Brooks in the NYT yesterday:  the reality that a Romney presidency compromising with a Democratic Senate would lead to a decent amount of necessary reform (including dropping the Bush tax cuts), while an Obama presidency would lead to very little advance and continue the general political gridlock in DC.

Why?

Romney isn't much of a right-winger.  That's all a sales job that's been rather effectively ditched in recent days and weeks to emphasize he'd really rule center-right.  If he squeaks in, that's the mandate he'd have.  He'd be realistic, as he was in Massachusetts, with the Democratic Senate, and things would get done.  Plenty of compromises would follow, and Romney would largely be villified by the far-right - not the far-left.

In truth, Obama isn't much of a left-winger.  He'd continue ruling center-left, but the nutcases in the GOP-dominated House would continue doing their best to sabotage all progress, pushing him, in his second term, primarily into foreign affairs as a refuge.  For Obama to win, as he looks like he will (just barely), via a very negative campaign, he'll enter office with virtually no mandate.  Dems will be happy enough to forestall the GOP nutcases in the House, but we'd be looking at 4 more years of stasis (and no, the complete nonsense sales-job of America going whatever by 2016 under Obama doesn't register with me).  Frankly, I think Romney would likely do a far better job of finessing Obamacare (originally, Romneycare) into full existence.

I agree with Brooks' analysis completely.  As much as I dislike the vast majority of the Republican agenda, this is my primary reason for preferring Romney to a second Obama term:  I see the promise of advance under Romney; and I see virtually no chance of any under Obama.

And I prefer some progress to none - simple as that.

But, in truth, I have no individual say in the matter.  Indiana will go Romney by a wide margin, so my vote will be meaningless.

Brilliant pro-Obama bit by Simpsons' animators

Very slick.  I make a good portion of my living narrating visual explanations (PPT) of complex concepts, and I appreciate a good presentation.

The missing concept here:  the trickle-down argument can make sense, in my opinion, in a more closed economic enviroment, or in a national economy less dependent on trade and less subject to international competitive pressures.  In today's globalized economy, however, I think it's a distinct beggaring proposition that the supply-siders (and yes, even the Chicago School types) have never admitted - much less figured out.  We no longer live in a world where economic philosophies pitched at the nation-state level hold sway.  There is a new Washington Consensus to be found.

As somebody who's paid a top-line tax rate for maybe 1/3-1/2 of my adult life, I have to say that I am deeply disturbed by what has happened to the middle class over the past decade, because, as a foreign policy expert, I know that the intolerance and inward-vision bred by flat incomes impacts our power projection capabilities immensely.

I honestly can't see the argument for keeping the Bush tax cuts.  Not in our fiscal situation, debt trajectory, and my deep understanding of the progressive-era tasks on our plate.  I'm just not that greedy.  I want to leave behind a better country for my kids.

I'm made a lot of money across my career and I am no stranger to hard times, so I don't write as someone who's only lived one type of existence.  When you make a lot, you should pay a lot - as in, a higher percentage.  The Bush tax cuts should go.  They are not in our country's best interests going foward.

I don't see it as a way to a strong defence.  I don't see it yielding a strong anything.

The coming global progressive era will focus on healthcare

WSJ story on Kremlin ordered crackdown on smoking rates, right after China "plans 'harsh' anti-smoking rules.

This is the reality:  with globalization and development comes heightened smoking rates, which in turn triggers massive healthcare costs.

Then there's the secondary reality that Old Core North America, sick of smoking a while ago, sent Big Tobacco packing (globally) and that led to those companies going heavy into emerging markets, spreading their . . . whatever.  So Big Tobacco is going to be given its second great historical "boot," which will push it into even more emerging markets and the merry chase continues - much like with anti-globalization terror networks (another great purveyor of death).

What does NorthAm Core turn to now as its own progressive era kicks in?  Bloomberg has already given you the clue with the mega soda pop ban.  It's obesity. 

We'll see that crusade shift to New Core in about a decade.