.
A couple of posts back, I wrote The Road to Hell is Paved...... a dispatch by Michael Yon. In his post he traveled into the wilds of Afghanistan to interview men who claimed to be Taliban, The Road to Hell .
The reason I re-posted this story, is because over the past two weeks a major discussion has broken out on the blogospherse regarding, Nir Rosen's Rolling Stones piece about the Taliban. The battle began when Small Wars Journals editor Dave Dilegge wrote, A Personal Problem With Nir Rosen's Dance With The Devil (Updated) » it was followed by this post by Bing West, An American Journalist » . The interesting thing about this, is how much discussion has been raised by other bloggerss and to an even greater degree, by the comments section under each post. Two blogs which I hold in high esteem have weighted in on both sides of this discussion. abu mugqawama with, If only we could all be as tough and patriotic as Bing West with 74 comments and counting. And Information Dissemination who writes, The Bias, Balance, and Independence of Journalism, followed by numerous comments.
The reason I decided to offer some comment, is that Michael Yon did something very similar to Nir Rosen. He, like Mr. Rosen traveled to a remote area of Afghanistan and interviewed several men, some who claimed to have been Taliban. Yon's interview was centered on discovering details about the ambush in August of French soldiers near Sarobi.
Shortly after returning from this trip he came into possession of a thumb drive and upon downloading the photos they revealed an inside look at the Taliban. Both Yon and Rosen's reports should be viewed for their worth as a method to understand your enemy.
Comparisons to World War II or other state on state wars are a bit weak, since censorship of the press was strictly enforced to prevent information being inadvertently shared with the enemy. In this latest generation of warfare, propaganda, hiding under the guise of journalism has become a tool for stateless actors to pick away at the natural scepticism of war weary democratic societies. The value of whose report was the most balanced must be left to the eyes of the reader. Both Yon and Rosen took chances to bring their reports to the attention of the American public, how they managed to secure their safe return seems to be the major sticking point for many.
For me, a major difference between Yon's and Rosen's "Excellent adventures in Talibanland," seems to be the type of insurance policy that was taken out to insure their safe return.
In Yon's case, he traveled with two freelance westerners who he introduces this way.
In Kabul, I met Tim Lynch and Shem Klimiuk (a retired USMC and ex-Aussie paratrooper, respectively), and we drove in an unarmored truck east to Jalalabad. The canyon-filled drive would be dangerous even if there was no war, but there is a war – a rapidly growing one — and Tim pointed out burnt spots on the road where ambushes had occurred. I was unarmed, and counting on the military experience of my two guides as well as their combined seven years experience in Afghanistan. In the weeks that I would spend with Tim and Shem, we drove more than a thousand miles up and down Afghan roads without the slightest drama, except that Tim scares me with his driving. If you are rich and want the adventure of a lifetime, contact Tim Lynch. You might die. But if you live, you’ll come back with a new perspective on Afghanistan.
Yon continues to describe the meeting:
And so the meeting began. The man on the left said his name is Mohamood Farooq, and the man on the right identified himself as Abdul Samad. Both of them were from Sper Kundy. Mohamood said he was “Taliban,” while Abdul claimed he was not. In fact, Abdul said he hated the Taliban. Mohamood Farooq is also the name of a Taliban commander whose family had recently been killed in an airstrike that was targeting Farooq but missed. Apparently this was a different Farooq because I asked about his family and he said his family was fine.
After the meeting, and on their way back, Yon reports a curious development.
The seven of us loaded back into the truck and started back toward Sarobi. When we came to a good view of Sarobi, the men from Sper Kundy wanted to take a picture, which I found curious. Why would a man who has lived here all his life suddenly want a photo of Sarobi? Maybe he had a new camera. Had it belonged to a French soldier?
A major part of the continuing controversy over Rosen's adventure, involves how Rosen's contacts insured his safety the old fashion way. " If anything happens to our friend, we kill you and all your family." This has set off a firestorm that has engulfed the discussion and blotted out any insight that may be gleaned from Rosen's work. Rosen for his part has responded to his many critics and in doing so has sparked an even more important debate about journalism and ethics.
Personally, I concur with the views expressed with fellow blogger Galrahn of Information Dissemination when he writes.
Does our elected political leadership have the wisdom to make moral distinctions on media content in wartime regarding domestic media coverage of the war without influencing our system of free political speech through the media? I don't know, but I do know that regardless of the best intentions, it isn't as easy as it seems.
The thing that struck me while reading these two accounts, was that Michael Yon filed his report without trying to enhance his own importance, by name dropping the method of insurance precautions taken to ensure his story getting out. In fact several times during the trip Yon mentioned that their greatest fear was being mistaken by a predator drone for the Taliban.
Courage and morality are in the eyes of the beholder. Michael Yon traveled into harms way and relied on two stalwart guides and his own sense of survival. Nir Rosen, relied on methods that conformed to the Afghan tribal ways of a Hobbesian "state of nature, to be his insurance policy. It is up to your the reader to make your own call on which side of morality you come down on.
Friday, October 31, 2008
Sunday, October 26, 2008
HG's Sunday Paper
Fabius Maximus
Financial Crisis in America
Michael Yon
Great Powers: America and the World After BushThis has been busy week for me, I have final papers coming in from two classes, so my blogging will be curtained until they are properly graded and responded too. In lieu of that, I have created a sort of online Sunday paper to point visitors to blogs with interesting and timely posts.
Fabius Maximus opens with two posts. He has been active in offering solutions for solving the current financial crisis and this is the latest in a long series of thought provoking posts.
New recommendations to solve our financial crisis (and I admit that I was wrong)
Fabius begins:
Parts 1 and 2 are being implemented, much as described. Part 3 was described as necessary at some point in the future. I said that these probably would not work over the medium to long term, but would mitigate the downturn (slow or even reduce the economic decline, and alleviate the resulting suffering). It appears that I was wrong.
The rate of decline — destabilization of the global financial system – has become so great that these measures will prove insufficient. In my opinion (these are, of course, guesses). Since I doubt our leaders have a Plan B, here is a suggestion:
The rate of decline — destabilization of the global financial system – has become so great that these measures will prove insufficient. In my opinion (these are, of course, guesses). Since I doubt our leaders have a Plan B, here is a suggestion:
We need extreme mobilization by the government of our economic resources, as we have done during wars.
This Fab post raises interesting observations about the global warming issue that has graced our national conscious for the better of two decades.
He opens his post with.
Evidence continues to trickle in that we need not fear global temperatures rising to ruinous levels. Anthony Watts provides a reality check at his invaluable site “What’s Up with That?“ This is the same material, reformatted and condensed — with some additional material to give a better context. As always, I recommend reading the full articles.
Good news about global warming!
Turning to the world stage and war news. Small Wars Journal as usual does a superlative job of covering the latest with their concise daily roundups and informative blog discussion links. Here is a post that stood out for it's demonstration of timeless wisdom.
John M. Collins began to amass military experience when he enlisted in the Army as a private in 1942. Thirty years and three wars later, in 1972, he retired as a colonel. He spent the next quarter century as the leading analyst on military and defense issues at the Congressional Research Service. Many of us address him as Warlord.
Collins offers this introduction.
Alice in Wonderland asked the Cheshire Cat, "Would you tell me, please, which way I ought to go from here?"
The answer was, "That depends a good deal on where you want to get to."
The Honorable Les Aspin, as Chairman of the House Armed Services Committee, asked much the same question on 9 October 1985 when he held hearings entitled "What Have We Got for a Trillion dollars?"
The world has changed a lot since then, when the US-Soviet military balance was still center stage, but structured ways of appraising national security problems and potential solutions have not. I'm therefore resurrecting my 23-year-old testimony for reconsideration, because it deals with a flock of fundamentals that the new Administration might usefully apply in its quest for ways to match military ends, ways, and means most successfully. Mismatches between forces and objectives, forces and threats, forces and strategies, forces and other forces remain prominent today.
I recommend taking the time to read all of John Collin's testimony, it is timeless in it's wisdom.
This is just in from the blogsosphere's most intrepid war correspondent, Michael Yon.
Brother, Can You Spare an Afghani? and Jurassic Trailer Park These articles serves a duel purpose of reporting the war and representing our Travel Section. Yon files a revealing photo essay and story that begins with the following observation.
Traveling along the roads of Afghanistan (when there are roads) provides a different perspective on life back home. Folks in the U.S. are worried about the economy, and while I can understand that many are struggling, it’s easy to forget how much we still have. In Afghanistan, and other countries all over the world, there are many people who literally beg for their next meals.
No Sunday paper would be complete with out it's OP-ED page. Continuing a Sunday tradition Thomas Barnett files this column.
There is an old Washington saying that "where you stand depends on where you sit," meaning policy views correlate to bureaucratic position.
This is worth remembering as General David Petraeus begins his strategy review of Afghanistan. Those looking for an instant replay of his counterinsurgency tactics in Iraq will be disappointed.
No Sunday news would be complete without a financial page and Martin Wolf writing in the Financial Times has this to say about the banking crisis.
He begins:
The worst consequences of the banking crisis – a true depression – have been avoided. But the impact of the implosion of what economist Nouriel Roubini calls “the largest leveraged asset bubble and credit bubble in history” is hitting real economies hard,
Closing out this Sunday Edition is our book corner where Zenpundit has this teaser on pending book reviews.
Reading…. Where Zen give hints of three of the latest books he is devouring.
And The AntiLibrary is available for those who are looking for more reviews.
Thanks for taking the time drop by. I hope you find the articles as thought provoking and informative as I did.
Sunday, October 19, 2008
America's Future
American Faces
New Citizens
Van Tran, California Assemblyman
Route of Human Expansion .
This Sunday was a time for catch up for me. I just finished voting via absentee ballot and in an unrelated task, sent in my DNA sample to the Genographic project sponsored by the National Geographic Society.
.Then I read Tom Barnett's column and I though how it related to the two tasks above.
Thomas Barnett leads off this Sunday with a optimist column that should give every American a greater understanding of our role in the world.
He begins:
As our financial crisis unfolds, Americans suffer a serious bout of existential ennui. Unsure of whom we are or our global role anymore, our self-doubt scares the world in near-equal measure. Predictably, both skeptics at home and challengers abroad tell us that we must get used to this post-American world. My advice is to resist these sirens' song.
From the perspective of grand strategy, such pessimism is unwarranted: just as our international liberal trade order -- known now as globalization -- encompasses the near-totality of the planet, vastly outreaching all previous attempts to establish a global order and doing so in a manner that both enriches and empowers individuals, too many Americans feel alienated from this world so clearly of our creation.
Dr. Frankenstein should recognize in this alleged monster the sum of his ambitions.
....As such, the proximate causes of our angst are readily identified: we've taken in a record number of immigrants in recent years, giving us a relatively high percentage of foreign-born residents, and we're suffering a magnificent economic correction. In the past when such conditions have met, we've isolated ourselves from a "chaotic" world, painfully attempting to transform our decidedly blended identity into one uniformly organic -- as in, "real" Americans.
Read the whole column:Post-Caucasian world hardly post-American world
In my own local area, the changes that Tom Barnett describes has taken major purchase. For example, Vietnamese Americans, in the span of a generation are entering politics and assimilating at a rate almost unseen in our history. Orange County, California, bastion of conservative politics and the butt of jokes about it's perceived WASPist demographics, is now seeing the inclusion of Asian Americans in positions ranging from school boards, councilpersons, county supervisors, to the state legislature. Vietnamese American politicians are coming of age in Westminster ... This is just a micro look at what is happening and will happen across our land.
Like Tom's column points out with this excerpt:
...America has always been a land to which strangers came for re-invention, for we choose our family instead of merely accepting what tradition mandates. We have abandoned homelands and clans, married outside of race and class, and swapped religions with a unique urgency. The chance to be born again is the quintessential American right -- the pursuit of happiness individually defined.
I have written several posts defining my own experiences with the world, beginning with my service in Vietnam over 40 years ago, and re-examined during my passage to my current avocation. That conclusion is the importance of recognizing our strength as a country is in our ability to assimilate almost everyone into a nation of volunteers. A Resilient Nation.
If anyone needs further convincing of the fact that we are all cousins, you are invited to take the challenge and sign up for the National Geographic Genographic project. The great advantage is as American Cousins we have chosen on our own to be a family. And for those who are dissatisfied with the family and want to leave, unlike some places the express freedom of choice in America, allows the option to move. Although, it is better to stay and try and effect change in an environment that allows for change.
It is simple, and worth the fee to trace your genetic family tree back to it's source in Africa over 60,000 years ago. For those who are hesitant to accept this for creationism reasons, consider this. According to the data collected thus far, all people living today can be traced back to a single surviving genetic marker mother who lived in Africa about 100,000 years ago. Those whose roots can be traced back to other parts of the globe can trace their tree back to a single women and man living in Africa about 60,000 years ago. Don't take my word for it. I urge you to visit the link above and if you feel the need to know, plunk down the fee and swab your cheeks, send in the sample and await the results. It will be a fascinating journey!
Saturday, October 18, 2008
Recommended Reads of The Week
Top Billing:
My blog friend Mark, master of Zenpundit posted the following headline Kagan on the Greeks at Open Yale.
Mark says:
A hundred plus years ago, when most Americans did not finish their elemntary school education, much less go on to high school, philanthropists like Andrew Carnegie liked to build public libraries because they were the university of the poor man. Today when the overwhelming percentage of Americans graduate high school, however marginal the actual competence of the grads might be and a significant plurality have at least some college, platforms like Yale Open courses and Stanford iTunes let anyone with an internet connection access the best education available on mainstream subjects on their own time, their own pace and for free.
I think this is a great advance in education and a bold move by Yale University to offer access to anyone with the inclination to take the time to learn.
And another blog friend Adam Elkus of Rethinking Security has founded a new blog The Anti-Library. I have been invited to contribute and am looking forward to expanding my own reading list.
As Adam says:
It will focus on reviews of books, film, and discussions about the art--and--science of reading.
And from abu mugqawama contributor, Londonstani comes a concise history of Darfur and the conflict that has engulfed the region. The first of three parts begins below.
Darfur is one of the most covered and least understood conflicts in the world. It has become a politically correct cause, where all reasonable people are expected to equate the Sudanese government with Hitler and the Nazis without question. But such moral sweeps prevent a closer examination of the Sudanese government's motives and methods. From the outset, the Sudanese government's aim was to pacify Darfur's rebels. Their approach led to the humanitarian disaster and political powder keg we see today.
Understanding the Darfur conflict, where it might head and ultimately, how to stop it, rests on understanding its history.
When the war started, life in Darfur was pretty much as it has probably been for thousands of years. Isolated villages of straw huts dotted the landscape, there was no electricity or sanitation and journeys were measured by how much distance a donkey could cover in a day. Darfur used to be run by a loose central authority that, in the Islamic tradition, called itself a Sultanate. It's main job was to mediate conflict - which usually involved watering and grazing rights. The Sultanate was abolished in 1917, when Darfur became the last part of Sudan to fall to British control.
Counterinsurgency: Darfur style
Finally I want to introduce another new blog that I recently was invited to be a contributor.
Understanding Each Other, Diversity and Dissent founded and hosted by pavocavalry. The blog offers a chance for people to exchange ideas and come together to meet the goals set out in the blogs mission statement. Pavocavalry brings the prospective of someone with vast experience in the affairs of South Central Asia and brings a cornucopia of history and commentary to his blog.
Mission Statement:
This forum is devoted to increasing understanding and reducing the Clash of Civilisations. We intend to share perspectives aimed at decipher the present global geopolitical situation. The goal of this forum is decentralisation and encouragement of expression of all viewpoints in order to foster tolerance.
Everything that anyone has to say is valuable and can act as a catalyst to constructive and meaningful discussion, so please do not hesitate to express yourself or to comment on anything. Nothing is off limits.
I hope everyone enjoys reading the above links as much as I have. They each have something to offer to educate, inform and inspire.
Wednesday, October 15, 2008
The Road to Hell is Paved......
Sarobi, Afghanistan
French Patrol, Afghanistan
French SoldiersMichael Yon has a new post describing his latest adventure in Afghanistan. His story reads like something Kipling would have written as he traveled what Yon describes as the Wilds.
His story begins:
The Wilds, Afghanistan
Since leaving the British embed, I’ve gone unilateral. I flew back and forth between Kandahar and Lashkar Gah, drove around and talked with people down south, then flew up to Kabul. In Kabul, I met Tim Lynch and Shem Klimiuk (a retired USMC and ex-Aussie paratrooper, respectively), and we drove in an unarmored truck east to Jalalabad. The canyon-filled drive would be dangerous even if there was no war, but there is a war – a rapidly growing one — and Tim pointed out burnt spots on the road where ambushes had occurred. I was unarmed, and counting on the military experience of my two guides as well as their combined seven years experience in Afghanistan. In the weeks that I would spend with Tim and Shem, we drove more than a thousand miles up and down Afghan roads without the slightest drama, except that Tim scares me with his driving. If you are rich and want the adventure of a lifetime, contact Tim Lynch. You might die. But if you live, you’ll come back with a new perspective on Afghanistan.
His travels took him and his companions to the spot where ten French soldiers were killed in an ambush in August.
On our first trip, we drove from Kabul to Jalalabad. The road passes through a village called Sarobi. Sarobi has become known as the place where ten French soldiers were killed on 18 August, 2008, although they were not actually killed in Sarobi, but near Sper Kundy. The French soldiers were on a reconnaissance patrol in the Uzbin Valley, about 40 kilometers east of Kabul. At approximately 15:00 local time, they were spread out over a steep slope and started taking fire from the ridges above. The gunfire was fierce and accurate. After 90 minutes, the French vehicles ran out of ammunition, and they abandoned a counterattack. They fought for four hours without reinforcements, which were slow to come because the French troops lost radio contact and could not call in air support or reinforcements
Yon manages to come face to face with the enemy and describes it.
And so the meeting began. The man on the left said his name is Mohamood Farooq, and the man on the right identified himself as Abdul Samad. Both of them were from Sper Kundy. Mohamood said he was “Taliban,” while Abdul claimed he was not. In fact, Abdul said he hated the Taliban. Mohamood Farooq is also the name of a Taliban commander whose family had recently been killed in an airstrike that was targeting Farooq but missed. Apparently this was a different Farooq because I asked about his family and he said his family was fine.
It was Ramadan and there was white on Abdul’s lower lip that looked like salt from dehydration. Z, the interpreter, said he was so thirsty he could drink a lake. Mohamood and Abdul were respectful and direct. I did not sense that these men would try to harm us. I sensed they only wanted to tell their side of the story.
Abdul said that the villagers had liked the French and the Americans before the fighting, but now they hated them. Abdul called himself the Malik of Sper Kundy, meaning the head man. Mohamood and Abdul both said they were teachers. Abdul taught math and English. Abdul said he was from the Sahak tribe, and both men were Pashtun (the largest ethnic and linguistic group in Afghanistan). Abdul pointed out that there were no Taliban in Sper Kundy, which contradicted Mohamood who teaches in the same school and claimed on sidebar to Z to be Taliban. Abdul said there was Taliban in neighboring villages, though. Abdul said that about 350 families live in Sper Kundy for a total of about 1,200 people, which seemed like a small population for so many families.
I asked them to describe the fighting with the French.
Yon's report is filled with photos taken of the men he met and of pictures taken by the Taliban of their spoils of war, French weapons and uniforms stripped from the dead.
Michael pays tribute to the French soldiers who came to our aid, just as American forces came to France's aid in two wars. He then offers his gut instinct of where the Afghanistan War is headed.
Is this war winnable? I don’t know, but my gut instinct is that Afghanistan/Pakistan will devolve into something worse than Iraq ever was.
Afghanistan is considered “The Good War” only by people who don’t realize (or refuse to acknowledge) how difficult the situation is. The road to hell is paved with good intentions. And that seems to be the road we’re on in Afghanistan.
But for the moment, let’s forget geopolitics, and remember the soldiers who gave their lives not just for their country, or Afghanistan, but also for us.
Americans love to visit the beaches of Normandy and pay tribute to their countrymen who died for France. Well, here are the names of the ten French soldiers who were lost in combat on 18 August 2008, in a battle for Uzbin Valley. They, too, deserve our gratitude and respect.
Take the time to read Michaels report and reflect on the road ahead.
Sunday, October 12, 2008
Changing of the Guard
One of the first blogs I read on Sunday morning, is Thomas Barnett's column. This weeks topic, The end of the boomer presidency looks to the future and the next generation of leaders we will entrust to lead our nation.
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Tom begins:
Whatever this national election's outcome, one thing seems clear: it marks the end of the boomers' presidential reign. As if applying a devastating coda to this era's highly leveraged lifestyle, our current financial crisis indicates that we have reached the end of that political generation's dysfunctional hyper-partisanship and lack of fiscal discipline.
Nothing displays our collective desire to move beyond the boomers more than the fact that the two most exciting national candidates fielded in this election are -- in effect --post-boomers: Barack Obama and Sarah Palin. Even the Republicans' turn toward John McCain represents an implicit rebuke of the boomers' political generation in that he promises a pre-boomer return to adult supervision in Washington.
Nothing displays our collective desire to move beyond the boomers more than the fact that the two most exciting national candidates fielded in this election are -- in effect --post-boomers: Barack Obama and Sarah Palin. Even the Republicans' turn toward John McCain represents an implicit rebuke of the boomers' political generation in that he promises a pre-boomer return to adult supervision in Washington.
The dullard of the four? That would be the quintessential boomer Joe Biden.
This column led me to reflect on a book written almost 20 years ago by William Strauss and Neil Howe, Generations: The History of America's Future, 1584 to 2069. In their book they divide American history into seasonal cycles of history. These seasons are further divided into generations by birth year and are classified as one of four types of generations or historical periods. Since the 15th century, the only exception to the "four-season" cycle was the our Civil War, when the generation type jumped from Reactive to Adaptive with no Civic generation.
Strauss and Howe had warned in their book about electing Idealist "Boomers" to lead the nation before their elder years. I decided to take a little trip back in history and in an unscientific glance test their theory.
Using a source from American Generations - Cycles in U.S. History , found at http://www.timepage.org/ I will examine the leadership of generations from the Revolution to today.
The only noted near leaders of this generation were Benjamin Franklin, and Samuel Adams, advisers to those who actually led.
Compromise Generation - Artist, Adaptive Type (1767-1791)Andrew Jackson, John Quincy Adams, Martin Van Buren, William Harrison, John Tyler, Zachary Taylor, James Buchanan, Dolley Madison.
Transcendental Generation - Prophet, Idealist Type (1792-1821) Abraham Lincoln, James Polk, Millard Fillmore, Franklin Pierce, Andrew Johnson.
Gilded Generation - Nomad, Reactive Type (1822-1842) Ulysses S. Grant, Rutherford Hayes, James Garfield, Chester Arthur, Grover Cleveland, Benjamin Harrison,
Civil War Era - 4th Turning, Crisis (1860-1865)
Progressive Generation - Artist, Adaptive Type (1843-1859)Theodore Roosevelt, William McKinley, William Taft, and Woodrow Wilson.
Progressive Generation - Artist, Adaptive Type (1843-1859)Theodore Roosevelt, William McKinley, William Taft, and Woodrow Wilson.
Missionary Generation - Prophet, Idealist Type (1860-1882)Franklin Delano Roosevelt, Warren Harding , Calvin Coolidge , Herbert Hoover.
G.I. Generation - Hero, Civic Type (1901-1924)John Kennedy, Lyndon Johnson, Richard Nixon, Gerald Ford, Jimmy Carter, Ronald Reagan, and George Bush Sr.
Silent Generation - Artist, Adaptive Type (1925-1942) As yet only also-rans, populate this group Walter Mondale, Robert F. Kennedy, Edward M. Kennedy and the question mark? John McCain.
Thirteenth Generation (Generation X) - Nomad, Reactive Type (1961-1981) Barack Obama and Sarah Palin. One of these two, will be either President or the Vice President.
As we examine the list above, a couple of things stand out. The only generation that seems to produce any abundance of great leaders is the Civic generations. The others, usually only have one or two, standouts among many whose names are know only to historians. The two great leaders that were produced by the Idealistic generations, Lincoln and Franklin Roosevelt came to power during times of crisis and in Roosevelt's case came to his greatest hour in his elder years. Howe and Strauss had expressed concern that Idealist coming to power during their middle years would have a difficult time overcoming a crisis, IE, George W Bush. They also noted that the military leaders during a crisis were most successful when they came from a reactive generation. Washington, U.S. Grant and Eisenhower, all of our current military leaders are Boomers, soon to be replaced by up and coming Reactive X-Geners.
The above observations are only brain food for thinking about the past and a hint at what the future may produce.
Saturday, October 11, 2008
The Most Consequential Elections in History: Part 3
The final installment of as series of essays by Kenneth T. Walsh White House correspondent, about the 10 most consequential elections in American history—the races that produced the biggest change and had the most lasting impact, is featured below. Previously I posted Consequential Elections: A Brief History and Consequential Elections: A Brief History, Part II
Friday, October 10, 2008
In A Storm, Always Keep Your Eyes On The Horizon
This last week the gigantic economic storm that has hovered on the horizon crashed with a fury on the fleet of sovereign states that make up the global community. This post is a reminder that even with our current collective minds on what was wrought by spending what can be best described as our communal seed corn. Our course is clear, we must turn our ships of state into the storm and batter our way to calm waters. The next two posts help us to think about the future and hopefully the opportunities that await Americans if they are willing to take risks and look for opportunities amid the developing world. The payoff will be a stronger economy and a better world.
Steve DeAngelis of Enterra Solutions Has two important posts that remind us that to keep from slipping into a world of a few generations ago Portent, we must keep ourselves focused on staying engaged with the rest of the World.
Quick on the heels of Secretary of Defense Robert Gates' talk about the need to rebalance the military (see my post Shocked and Awed), the Department of Defense has released a new field manual on Stability Operations ["Standard Warfare May Be Eclipsed By Nation-Building," by Ann Scott Tyson, Washington Post, 5 October 2008]. The new manual takes its place beside the field manual on Counterinsurgency Operations. The change in doctrine has been a long time coming. Eleven years ago Bradd Hayes, Enterra Solutions' Senior Director of Communications and Research -- who was then working as a professor at the U.S. Naval War College -- and his colleague Jeffrey Sands, wrote a book titled Doing Windows: Non-Traditional Military Responses to Complex Emergencies, in which they encouraged the military to pay more attention to nation-building missions.
Seven years later, Tom Barnett, Enterra Solutions' Senior Managing Director, who was then also working at the Naval War College, wrote his New York Times' best seller The Pentagon's New Map in which he recommended creation of a System Administrator (SysAdmin) force to conduct nation-building and help secure the peace.
The follow-on to securing the peace is Fixing Fragile States.
Globalization has both its proponents and opponents. Its proponents point to the fact that globalization has helped billions of people climb up the economic pyramid and out of poverty's grasp. Opponents note that it doesn't seem to be helping the remaining 1.4 billion people still locked in poverty's grip. Most of these so-called "bottom billion" are trapped inside nation states that have little going for them except a recognized international border. These states have variously been labeled, failed, failing, weak, and fragile. Seth Kaplan, a business consultant and entrepreneur who has run multinational firms and founded successful local corporations in Asia, Africa, and the Middle East, believes there is a difference between failed, weak, and fragile states. Kaplan also believes that past efforts to support such states have not recognized the differences nor the idiosyncratic circumstances each such nation faces. In a new book, Fixing Fragile States, Kaplan provides his prescription for addressing the challenges that keep such states from progressing.
Steve lists the ten parts of Kaplan's plan.
1. Adopt Local Models
2. Closely Integrate State and Society
3. Design Institutions around Identity Groups.
4. Construct States Bottom-Up
5. Exploit the Advantages of Regionalism
6. Unify Disparate Peoples
7. Supplement State Capacity
8. Reinforce and Complement Local Processes
9. Foster Private Investment and Competition
10. Creatively and Gradually Increase Accountability
DeAngelis ends by summarizing Kaplan's plan.
I can certainly support that conclusion. I also believe he gets the priorities right -- security, stability and then prosperity. For anyone interested in development, Kaplan's book is a welcomed addition to the growing library of literature dealing with the subject. The competition of ideas is important for discovering what works and what doesn't. Kaplan's stress on using idiosyncratic approaches that match local conditions is important. On the other hand, the approaches utilized can't be so unique that they isolate a developing country from the larger international community. In my post Explaining Development-in-a-Box™, I noted that connecting to the global economy requires an emerging market country to garner the trust of others and the fastest way to do that is to adopt internationally accepted standards and best practices. I wrote that "it makes no sense for each emerging market country to reinvent these standards and practices. They can be imported as 'in the box' solutions and, when necessary, be adapted to local conditions. Because they don't have to be reinvented or rediscovered in each new situation, valuable time is saved and precious resources aren't squandered." The development community needs as many tools in its kit as it can find. Kaplan's book provides a few more of those tools.
I know that is seems premature to consider the other side of the coin, when that may be the only coin in our pocket, but we must learn from history and stay focused on the future. The people of the United States have been handed a challenge by discovering a Black Swan that instantly changed the playbook and made Americans vulnerable in a way unknown in over half a century.
During that previous time, we did many things, like build the Empire State Building, the Golden Gate Bridge, Hoover Dam and laid the ground work for the industrial capacity to supply the rest of the Allies with the tools of war and 12 million soldiers to defeat the Axis. Our destiny is ours to chose if we are willing as a people to take responsibility for our own future.
Wednesday, October 8, 2008
Hump Day Reads.
Wednesdays have always been noted as being Hump day for millions of Americans whose work week is Monday thru Friday. Unfortunately, the slipping economy may erase this benchmark of the passage of time for many of those millions who stand to lose their jobs during this latest self-inflicted wound to our national psychic.
Let's be honest folks, Wall Street wolves, saw easy pickings that Congress and a passive war focused Administration placed on their doorstep. A few weeks ago an engineer here in California ran his train into an oncoming freight train and killed 25 souls, while he busily exchanged text messages with some youthful train buffs. Our government, both branches were busy sending each other the equivalent of text messages as our economic train crashed into reality. After the crash, the Congress and the Administration began behaving like two drunk drivers trying to say the other was driving.
The links below offer analysis and suggestions of what this will all mean for not only Americans but the global community. Later in a revealing post, Michael Barone calls attention to something that should raise a big question mark in everyone's mind.
Thomas Barnett offers his analysis of what he tags as the greatest system perturbation of this century.
How to view this system perturbation
Barnett opens with this:
The analyst in me detaches in fascination: the profound interdependency of global economics being asserted negatively, it makes everything that came before it (9/11, Afghanistan, Iraq, SARS/avian flu, tsunamis, Russia/Georgia) seem minuscule in comparison.
This is the financial Y2K of our nightmares: demonstrating an undeniable, inescapable connectivity that renders all fantasies of great power conflicts essentially moot. The "common wealth," as Sachs would put it, is simply made manifest.
Arguably, this is the first great, system-perturbing crisis of globalization, because it truly captures all the main players in a way that previous ones did not.
And filed this post earlier.
The more strategic analysis of the financial crisis emerges
Martin Wolf of Financial Times writes:
It is time for comprehensive rescues of financial systems
And looking beyond Wall Street, Michael Barone, of U.S. News and World Report, filed this report on October 8, 2008.
Immigration and the Mortgage Meltdown
Wall Street Journal has this graphic to illustrate their report.
http://s.wsj.net/public/resources/documents/info-launch08.html?project=Underwater0809
Closing out the evening is Zenpundit who was kind enough to add a previous article of mine to a post he entitled: Sturm und Angst Politischen Ökonomie
UPDATE:
Victor Davis Hanson has this lesson about Wall Street.
Wall Street 101
Let's be honest folks, Wall Street wolves, saw easy pickings that Congress and a passive war focused Administration placed on their doorstep. A few weeks ago an engineer here in California ran his train into an oncoming freight train and killed 25 souls, while he busily exchanged text messages with some youthful train buffs. Our government, both branches were busy sending each other the equivalent of text messages as our economic train crashed into reality. After the crash, the Congress and the Administration began behaving like two drunk drivers trying to say the other was driving.
The links below offer analysis and suggestions of what this will all mean for not only Americans but the global community. Later in a revealing post, Michael Barone calls attention to something that should raise a big question mark in everyone's mind.
Thomas Barnett offers his analysis of what he tags as the greatest system perturbation of this century.
How to view this system perturbation
Barnett opens with this:
The analyst in me detaches in fascination: the profound interdependency of global economics being asserted negatively, it makes everything that came before it (9/11, Afghanistan, Iraq, SARS/avian flu, tsunamis, Russia/Georgia) seem minuscule in comparison.
This is the financial Y2K of our nightmares: demonstrating an undeniable, inescapable connectivity that renders all fantasies of great power conflicts essentially moot. The "common wealth," as Sachs would put it, is simply made manifest.
Arguably, this is the first great, system-perturbing crisis of globalization, because it truly captures all the main players in a way that previous ones did not.
And filed this post earlier.
The more strategic analysis of the financial crisis emerges
Martin Wolf of Financial Times writes:
It is time for comprehensive rescues of financial systems
And looking beyond Wall Street, Michael Barone, of U.S. News and World Report, filed this report on October 8, 2008.
Immigration and the Mortgage Meltdown
Wall Street Journal has this graphic to illustrate their report.
http://s.wsj.net/public/resources/documents/info-launch08.html?project=Underwater0809
Closing out the evening is Zenpundit who was kind enough to add a previous article of mine to a post he entitled: Sturm und Angst Politischen Ökonomie
UPDATE:
Victor Davis Hanson has this lesson about Wall Street.
Wall Street 101
Saturday, October 4, 2008
The End of Prosperity, or A Better Future?
Back about twenty five years ago, their was a wave of Pyramid schemes that swept accross the United States. People gathered in large numbers at night in meeting rooms to willingly join in what turned out to be a Ponzi scheme that ended with 99% of the participants loosing their money. The fad died out, but not before thousands lost their investment. The current economic crisis is much more serious, but carries the scent of a similar animal. Americans were encouraged to live beyond their means. Borrow, re-finance, flip-their property, and spend, spend, spend to keep the economy churning. Easy credit, and consuming as if this was the last decade on Earth, brought us to this point.
We have become in many ways a country who's domestic economy resembles the ancient Spartans. Many of our citizens, especially those living in upscale urban areas, enjoy what could be be termed the services of twenty first century helots in the form of undocumented aliens who clean their homes, cook their food and raise their children. Not to mention, those who still work in the few factories and family farms to supply their insatiable desires. It seems ironic that the urban and suburban areas of our country seem to enjoy the bulk of these services and look at disdain on those who reside in the more rural areas, as country bumpkins, gun toting, bible thumping clods, who are too unsophisticated to be allowed to be a part of the decision making of this nation. Now, those people are being asked to bail out those who played this national pyramid game of living beyond their means. I personally, am pissed off at having to dig deep to bail out people who let greed fuel their lives. There is enough blame to go around, both political parties are in deep shit as far as I am concerned.
We have become in many ways a country who's domestic economy resembles the ancient Spartans. Many of our citizens, especially those living in upscale urban areas, enjoy what could be be termed the services of twenty first century helots in the form of undocumented aliens who clean their homes, cook their food and raise their children. Not to mention, those who still work in the few factories and family farms to supply their insatiable desires. It seems ironic that the urban and suburban areas of our country seem to enjoy the bulk of these services and look at disdain on those who reside in the more rural areas, as country bumpkins, gun toting, bible thumping clods, who are too unsophisticated to be allowed to be a part of the decision making of this nation. Now, those people are being asked to bail out those who played this national pyramid game of living beyond their means. I personally, am pissed off at having to dig deep to bail out people who let greed fuel their lives. There is enough blame to go around, both political parties are in deep shit as far as I am concerned.
.
The Bush Administration gave away their economic oversight to those in Congress who wanted easy credit and economic access without thresholds, for their continued support for the war effort. This smacks of Lyndon Johnson trying to fuel the "Great Society" while fighting the Vietnam War. This taking the eye of the economic ball, may turn out to be more damaging to our well being than ten, 9/11's. Bush can not escape the fact, that he was the captain of our "Ship of State" when we hit this iceberg. His legacy, regardless of success in Iraq, may turn out to be more like Hoover's, than Truman's another unpopular president, whose legacy was recognized generations later.
Now is not the time for revenge. We must find a way to get out of this manure pile so that our children don't have to spend the rest of their lives growing turnips on the balconies of their state provided housing units, just to survive.
Below are two articles that offer some ideas of how we got here and how we can salvage something for the next generation.
Historian and author, Niall Ferguson penned this article in Time magazine, about the question that is on everyone's mind if not their lips. "Are we headed into a second Great Depression?"
He begins:
Congress's initial rejection of the Bush Administration's $700 billion bailout plan calls to mind an unhappy precedent. Back in 1930, the Senate passed the Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act, which raised duties on some 20,000 imported goods. Historians define this as one of the critical steps that led to the Great Depression — a tipping point when the world realized that partisan self-interest had trumped global leadership on Capitol Hill.
He explains what happened to tip the scales.
The U.S. — not to mention Western Europe — is in the grip of a downward spiral that financial experts call deleveraging. Having accumulated debts beyond what's sustainable, households and financial institutions are being forced to reduce them. The pressure to do so results from a decline in the price of the assets they bought with the money they borrowed. It's a vicious feedback loop. When families and banks tip into bankruptcy, more assets get dumped on the market, driving prices down further and necessitating more deleveraging. This process now has so much momentum that even $700 billion in taxpayers' money may not suffice to stop it.
Ferguson, a historian who specializes in economic history outlines the historical parallels of this current crisis and the Great Depression.
We tend to think of the Depression as having been triggered by the stock-market crash of 1929. The Wall Street crash is conventionally said to have begun on "Black Thursday" — Oct. 24, 1929, when the Dow Jones industrial average declined 2% — though in fact the market had been slipping since early September. On "Black Monday" (Oct. 28), it plunged 13%, the next day a further 12%. Over the next three years, the U.S. stock market declined a staggering 89%, reaching its nadir in July 1932. The index did not regain its 1929 peak until 1954.
On Sept. 29 of this year, as investors and traders reacted to Congress's rejection of the bailout plan presented by Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson, the stock market sell-off was dramatic: the Dow fell nearly 7% that day, a one-day drop that has been matched only 17 times since the index's birth in 1896. From its peak last October, the Dow has fallen more than 25%.
Yet the underlying cause of the Great Depression — as Milton Friedman and Anna Jacobson Schwartz argued in their seminal book A Monetary History of the United States: 1867-1960, published in 1963 — was not the stock-market crash but a "great contraction" of credit due to an epidemic of bank failures.
Ferguson offers thoughts about how this plunging economic jumbo jet can be pulled out before slamming to earth.
He writes this about our relationship with the other big economic player, China.
The notion that Asia has somehow "decoupled" itself from the U.S. now seems fanciful. China and America have come so close to merging financially that we can almost speak of "Chimerica." When Fannie and Freddie were on the brink of collapse, many were surprised to learn that fully a fifth of China's currency reserves was composed of their bonds. Small wonder. Having spent much of the past decade intervening on currency markets to prevent the appreciation of its renminbi, China has accumulated a huge hoard of dollar-denominated bonds. No foreign nation stands to lose more from a U.S. financial collapse.
....But while we certainly face a global slowdown, we may yet avoid another depression. Now, unlike in the Great Depression, central banks and finance ministries know it's better to run deficits and print money than to suffer massive losses of output and jobs....
His final words, offer some hope.
Given the immensity of the crisis, a Congress-approved bailout may be just a short-term fix. But a short-term fix is better than no fix. If nothing else, it would signal to the world that — unlike in 1930 — the U.S. is doing what it can to avoid financial calamity and sidestep Depression 2.0.
The whole story:
The End of Prosperity?
Steve DeAngelis of Enterra Solutions penned this optimistic post about how the United States might try and recover some of it's economic luster after the current crisis and downturn has settled.
He begins:
When the cloud of economic dust created by the implosion of large U.S. financial institutions finally begins to settle, some optimistic analysts believe that the U.S. economy that will emerge from the debris will be quite different than the economy that faltered. They believe that the U.S. will innovate its way back to health ["Can America Invent Its Way Back?" by Michael Mandel, BusinessWeek, 11 September 2008]. As readers of this blog know, innovation is one of the topics to which I continually return. Creativity not only fascinates me, but as an entrepreneur I see it as the engine that powers the future. That is exactly what the "innovation economists" are counting on.
DeAngelis sees hope amid the rubble of what is left after American's began to eat their seed corn.
The world has reason to be concerned with the latest financial crisis but has no reason to be forlorn. Mankind has managed to create more wealth in the last two hundred years than in all of the rest of history combined. One reason, of course, is that the explosion of knowledge and technology has made mankind more productive than ever. There is little reason to believe such progress will end -- even if it has been slowed down for the moment.
He ends his post with words that have been the driving force behind every entrepreneur since man moved beyond being a hunter-gatherer to develop civilization.
I have noted before that entrepreneurs are optimistic by nature. They believe in the future or they wouldn't be entrepreneurs. I'm certainly no different. I see opportunities everywhere I travel. I get invigorated being around other entrepreneurs who also see a bright future and are working to make it happen. Innovators, whether found in established or entrepreneurial organizations, share a common bond of hope. I suspect that the reason that McCain and Obama have embraced innovation as part of their campaigns is that hope is in short supply at the moment. It remains to be seen whether the U.S. can invent its way out of the current financial downturn, but my gut tells me it can.
Read the whole post here:
Innovation Economics
Thanks for taking the time to read this, and the important links.
Now is not the time for revenge. We must find a way to get out of this manure pile so that our children don't have to spend the rest of their lives growing turnips on the balconies of their state provided housing units, just to survive.
Below are two articles that offer some ideas of how we got here and how we can salvage something for the next generation.
Historian and author, Niall Ferguson penned this article in Time magazine, about the question that is on everyone's mind if not their lips. "Are we headed into a second Great Depression?"
He begins:
Congress's initial rejection of the Bush Administration's $700 billion bailout plan calls to mind an unhappy precedent. Back in 1930, the Senate passed the Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act, which raised duties on some 20,000 imported goods. Historians define this as one of the critical steps that led to the Great Depression — a tipping point when the world realized that partisan self-interest had trumped global leadership on Capitol Hill.
He explains what happened to tip the scales.
The U.S. — not to mention Western Europe — is in the grip of a downward spiral that financial experts call deleveraging. Having accumulated debts beyond what's sustainable, households and financial institutions are being forced to reduce them. The pressure to do so results from a decline in the price of the assets they bought with the money they borrowed. It's a vicious feedback loop. When families and banks tip into bankruptcy, more assets get dumped on the market, driving prices down further and necessitating more deleveraging. This process now has so much momentum that even $700 billion in taxpayers' money may not suffice to stop it.
Ferguson, a historian who specializes in economic history outlines the historical parallels of this current crisis and the Great Depression.
We tend to think of the Depression as having been triggered by the stock-market crash of 1929. The Wall Street crash is conventionally said to have begun on "Black Thursday" — Oct. 24, 1929, when the Dow Jones industrial average declined 2% — though in fact the market had been slipping since early September. On "Black Monday" (Oct. 28), it plunged 13%, the next day a further 12%. Over the next three years, the U.S. stock market declined a staggering 89%, reaching its nadir in July 1932. The index did not regain its 1929 peak until 1954.
On Sept. 29 of this year, as investors and traders reacted to Congress's rejection of the bailout plan presented by Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson, the stock market sell-off was dramatic: the Dow fell nearly 7% that day, a one-day drop that has been matched only 17 times since the index's birth in 1896. From its peak last October, the Dow has fallen more than 25%.
Yet the underlying cause of the Great Depression — as Milton Friedman and Anna Jacobson Schwartz argued in their seminal book A Monetary History of the United States: 1867-1960, published in 1963 — was not the stock-market crash but a "great contraction" of credit due to an epidemic of bank failures.
Ferguson offers thoughts about how this plunging economic jumbo jet can be pulled out before slamming to earth.
He writes this about our relationship with the other big economic player, China.
The notion that Asia has somehow "decoupled" itself from the U.S. now seems fanciful. China and America have come so close to merging financially that we can almost speak of "Chimerica." When Fannie and Freddie were on the brink of collapse, many were surprised to learn that fully a fifth of China's currency reserves was composed of their bonds. Small wonder. Having spent much of the past decade intervening on currency markets to prevent the appreciation of its renminbi, China has accumulated a huge hoard of dollar-denominated bonds. No foreign nation stands to lose more from a U.S. financial collapse.
....But while we certainly face a global slowdown, we may yet avoid another depression. Now, unlike in the Great Depression, central banks and finance ministries know it's better to run deficits and print money than to suffer massive losses of output and jobs....
His final words, offer some hope.
Given the immensity of the crisis, a Congress-approved bailout may be just a short-term fix. But a short-term fix is better than no fix. If nothing else, it would signal to the world that — unlike in 1930 — the U.S. is doing what it can to avoid financial calamity and sidestep Depression 2.0.
The whole story:
The End of Prosperity?
Steve DeAngelis of Enterra Solutions penned this optimistic post about how the United States might try and recover some of it's economic luster after the current crisis and downturn has settled.
He begins:
When the cloud of economic dust created by the implosion of large U.S. financial institutions finally begins to settle, some optimistic analysts believe that the U.S. economy that will emerge from the debris will be quite different than the economy that faltered. They believe that the U.S. will innovate its way back to health ["Can America Invent Its Way Back?" by Michael Mandel, BusinessWeek, 11 September 2008]. As readers of this blog know, innovation is one of the topics to which I continually return. Creativity not only fascinates me, but as an entrepreneur I see it as the engine that powers the future. That is exactly what the "innovation economists" are counting on.
DeAngelis sees hope amid the rubble of what is left after American's began to eat their seed corn.
The world has reason to be concerned with the latest financial crisis but has no reason to be forlorn. Mankind has managed to create more wealth in the last two hundred years than in all of the rest of history combined. One reason, of course, is that the explosion of knowledge and technology has made mankind more productive than ever. There is little reason to believe such progress will end -- even if it has been slowed down for the moment.
He ends his post with words that have been the driving force behind every entrepreneur since man moved beyond being a hunter-gatherer to develop civilization.
I have noted before that entrepreneurs are optimistic by nature. They believe in the future or they wouldn't be entrepreneurs. I'm certainly no different. I see opportunities everywhere I travel. I get invigorated being around other entrepreneurs who also see a bright future and are working to make it happen. Innovators, whether found in established or entrepreneurial organizations, share a common bond of hope. I suspect that the reason that McCain and Obama have embraced innovation as part of their campaigns is that hope is in short supply at the moment. It remains to be seen whether the U.S. can invent its way out of the current financial downturn, but my gut tells me it can.
Read the whole post here:
Innovation Economics
Thanks for taking the time to read this, and the important links.
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