Time for some update on the assessment of probabilities for the Big Ticket in '08.
At this point, I am working with a basic scenario and a few key variables--: for more in-depth analysis, see here.
If I take the odds from one of the offshore gaming sites--press@intrade.com--(I don't recommend gambling in such places, plus it's illegal (!?) for Americans to vote in this way.)--for Democrats on the nomination, they have (7/25): Clinton 47.2; Obama 38.0; Edwards 5.9; Gore 5.4; Others (by subtraction only) 3.5%. These quoted prices are supposed to conform to percentage chance, as perceived by their trading population.
Republicans, they have: Giuliani 39.0%; Thompson 32%; Romney 16.7%; Mc Cain 6.0%; Others 6.3%.
My conclusions would be: Clinton, though rising, is still cheap for the nomination (until about 60%). Clinton for the Presidency, at 29%, also looks cheap up to about 35-38%. Sell Giuliani and Romney; buy Thompson and McCain.
"Others" is an interesting bet--though I don't think it exists as such. For the Democrats, you can see it is a weak choice, whereas for the Republicans, the existence of the likes of Gingrich and Hagel out there (Jeb Bush!?) and the weakness of all the current candidates make it conceivable. Seven days ago, the same figure by subtraction works out to 4.3%, so it's gone up over 45% in a week!
Saturday, July 28, 2007
Friday, July 27, 2007
Update on the local co-op's Green Energy Issue
Last December, I posted a challenge to our local electric co-op: put green energy on a track to have price parity with the dirty stuff (stoner: Green Energy: What's it Worth To Ya?).
Now, courtesy of Bill Whaley and the Horse Fly (semi-monthly independent paper), we have some new information. It seems that the exclusive, monopolistic supplier to all the local electricity boards (ours, the cooperative Kit Carson Electric, included), named Tri-State, has so far imposed a policy that no more than 5% of the electricity they supply to any customer (read: electric company) will be green.
This puts Kit Carson's pricing mis-alignment (using fully-loaded economics) into perspective. There's no real need to drive green power to Carson's customers, as they can't deliver it if the demand were too high. Setting the price above the "normal" power ensures there won't be much of that problem.
Still, though, I maintain the challenge. If Kit Carson announced their intention to bring the prices to parity, and to supply the extra Green Power themselves, we'd have, as they say in Jamaica, "a situation".
Tri-Power could challenge Kit Carson (who has an exclusive contract with Tri-Power as supplier) and look very, very bad. So bad they would be subject to political defenestration, which would free things up a mite. They could ease up on their 5% limitation, and agree to provide Kit Carson with all the Green Power their customers demanded, which would be accomplished by putting (yet another) price increase on the dirty stuff (without the corresponding increase on the Green). Or they could call Kit Carson's bluff, let them come up with all the Green Power they could add to their network. Which would be the best possible outcome for all down here.
So, I stand corrected, but maintain my challenge to the local rural electric co-op: announce, by January 1, 2009, that you intend to bring the prices of Green and Grey Power in line. Spit out those chips onto the gaming table.
Now, courtesy of Bill Whaley and the Horse Fly (semi-monthly independent paper), we have some new information. It seems that the exclusive, monopolistic supplier to all the local electricity boards (ours, the cooperative Kit Carson Electric, included), named Tri-State, has so far imposed a policy that no more than 5% of the electricity they supply to any customer (read: electric company) will be green.
This puts Kit Carson's pricing mis-alignment (using fully-loaded economics) into perspective. There's no real need to drive green power to Carson's customers, as they can't deliver it if the demand were too high. Setting the price above the "normal" power ensures there won't be much of that problem.
Still, though, I maintain the challenge. If Kit Carson announced their intention to bring the prices to parity, and to supply the extra Green Power themselves, we'd have, as they say in Jamaica, "a situation".
Tri-Power could challenge Kit Carson (who has an exclusive contract with Tri-Power as supplier) and look very, very bad. So bad they would be subject to political defenestration, which would free things up a mite. They could ease up on their 5% limitation, and agree to provide Kit Carson with all the Green Power their customers demanded, which would be accomplished by putting (yet another) price increase on the dirty stuff (without the corresponding increase on the Green). Or they could call Kit Carson's bluff, let them come up with all the Green Power they could add to their network. Which would be the best possible outcome for all down here.
So, I stand corrected, but maintain my challenge to the local rural electric co-op: announce, by January 1, 2009, that you intend to bring the prices of Green and Grey Power in line. Spit out those chips onto the gaming table.
Gaming the Elections
I received the following analysis from a Beltway Talking Head (BTH, or maybe better, Belle Twee Talking Head, or BTTH), via my Father, who got it from his financial adviser (and presumably he paid for this analysis):
Gaming the U.S. Elections - Outside the Box
- Special Edition July 26, 2007
Gaming the U.S. Elections By George Friedman
Domestic politics in most countries normally are of little interest geopolitically.
On the whole this is true of the United States as well. Most political debates are more operatic than meaningful, most political actors are interchangeable and the distinctions between candidates rarely make a difference. The policies they advocate are so transformed by Congress and the Supreme Court -- the checks and balances the Founding Fathers liked so much, coupled with federalism -- that the president rarely decides anything.
That is not how the world perceives the role, however. In spite ofevidence to the contrary, the president of the United States is perceived as the ultimate "decider," someone whose power determines the course of action of the world's strongest nation. Therefore, when presidents weaken, the behavior of foreign powers tends to shift, and when elections approach, their behavior shifts even more. The expectation of change on the burning issue of Iraq is based on the misperception that the American presidency is inherently powerful or that presidents shape the consensus rather than react to it.
The inability of Congress to make any decisive move on Iraq demonstrates that immobility isn't built only into the presidency. The two houses ofCongress are designed to be gridlocked. Moreover, the congressional indecision reveals that behind all of the arias being sung, there is a basic consensus on Iraq: the United States should not have gone into Iraqand now that it is there, it should leave. There is more to it than that,though. The real consensus is that the United States should not simply leave, but rather do it in such a way that it retains the benefits of staying without actually having to be there. To sum up the contradiction, all of the players on the stage want to have their cake and eat it, too.
We are only being a trifle ironic. When all is said and done, that is the policy the system has generated. The United States has been in roughly this same position with the same policy since World War II. The first time was in 1952 in Korea, when the war was at a stalemate, the initial rationale for it forgotten and HarryTruman's popularity about the same as President George W. Bush's is now.The second time was in 1968, when any hope of success in the Vietnam War appeared to be slipping away and Lyndon Johnson's presidency collapsed. In both cases, the new president followed the logic of the popular consensus, regardless of whether it made sense. In the Korean instance,the national position favored decisive action more than withdrawal -- as long as the war would end. In Vietnam the demand was for an end to the war, but without a defeat -- which was not going to happen.
During Korea, Dwight D. Eisenhower appeared a formidable enemy to the Chinese and his secret threat of using nuclear weapons seemed credible.The war ended in a negotiated stalemate. In the case of Vietnam, the public desire to get out of Vietnam without a defeat allowed RichardNixon to be elected on a platform of having a secret plan to end the war. He then continued the war for four years, playing off the fundamental contradiction in the consensus. Adlai Stevenson, who ran against Eisenhower, might not have been nearly as effective in convincing the Chinese to close the deal on Korea, but we doubt that Hubert Humphrey would have differed much from Nixon -- or that Bobby Kennedy, once in power, would have matched his rhetoric with action.
Yet the fact is that the world does not see the limits of the presidency. In the case of Iraq, the perception of the various players in Iraq and in the region is that the president of the United States matters a great deal. Each of them is trying to determine whether he should deal with the current president or with his successor. They wonder who the next president will be and try to forecast the policies that will break the strange consensus that has been reached. Therefore, we need to begin handicapping the presidency as we did in 2004, looking for patterns. In other words, policy implications aside,let's treat the election as we might a geopolitical problem, looking forpredictive patterns.
Let's begin with what we regard as the three rules of American presidential politics since 1960: The first rule is that no Democrat from outside the old Confederacy has won the White House since John F. Kennedy. Lyndon Johnson, Jimmy Carterand Bill Clinton were all from the Confederacy. Walter Mondale, Michael Dukakis and John Kerry were from way outside the Confederacy. Al Gore was from the Confederacy but lost, proving that this is necessary, but not a sufficient basis for a Democratic win. The reason for this rule is simple. Until 1964, the American South was solidly democratic. In 1964 the Deep South flipped Republican and stayed there. If the South and mountain states go Republican, then the Democrats must do extraordinarilywell in the rest of the country. They usually don't do extraordinarily well, so they need a candidate that can break into the South. Carter andClinton did it, while Johnson did extraordinarily well outside the South.
The second rule is that no Republican has won the White House since Eisenhower who wasn't from one of the two huge Sunbelt states: California or Texas (Eisenhower, though born in Texas, was raised in Kansas). Nixonand Reagan were from California. Both Bush presidents were from Texas. Gerald Ford was from Michigan, Robert Dole from Kansas. They both lost. Again the reason is obvious, particularly if the candidate is from California -- pick up the southern and mountain states, pull in Texas and watch the Democrats scramble. Midwestern Republicans lose and northeastern Republicans do not get nominated.
The third rule is that no sitting senator has won the presidency since Kennedy. The reason is, again, simple. Senators make speeches and vote,all of which are carefully recorded in the Congressional record. Governors live in archival obscurity and don't have to address most issues of burning importance to the nation. Johnson came the closest to being a sitting senator but he too had a gap of four years and an assassination before he ran. After him, Former Vice President Nixon, Gov.Carter, Gov. Reagan, Vice President Bush, Gov. Clinton and Gov. Bush allwon the presidency. The path is strewn with fallen senators.
That being the case, the Democrats appear poised to commit electoral suicide again, with two northern senators (Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama) in the lead, and the one southern contender, John Edwards, well back in the race. The Republicans, however, are not able to play to their strength. There are no potential candidates in Texas or California to draw on. Texas right now just doesn't have players ready for the national scene. California does, but Arnold Schwarzenegger is constitutionallyineligible by birth.
In a normal year, a charismatic Republican governor of California would run against a northern Democratic senator and mop thefloor. It's not going to happen this time. Instead, the Republicans appear to be choosing between a Massachusetts governor, Mitt Romney, and a former mayor of New York, Rudy Giuliani. Unless Texan Ron Paul can pull off a miracle, the Republicans appear to be going with their suicide hand just like the Democrats. Even if FredThompson gets the nomination, he comes from Tennessee, and while he can hold the South, he will have to do some heavy lifting elsewhere. Unless Obama and Clinton self-destruct and Edwards creeps in, or Paul does get a miracle, this election is shaping up as one that will break all the rules. Either a northern Democratic senator wins or a northeastern Republican (excluding Thompson for the moment) does.
The entire dynamic of presidential politics is in flux. All bets are off as to the outcome and all bets are off as to the behavior of the new president, whose promises and obligations are completely unpredictable. If one is to ask whether the Iranians look this carefully at U.S.politics and whether they are knowledgeable about the patterns, the answer is absolutely yes. We would say that the Iranians have far more insight into American politics than Americans have into Iranian politics.They have to. Iranians have been playing off the Americans since WorldWar II, whatever their ideology. In due course the underlying weirdness of the pattern this year will begin intruding.
Here is what the Iranian's are seeing: First, they are seeing Bush become increasingly weak. He is still maintaining his ability to act in Iraq,but only barely. Second, they see a Congress that is cautiously bombastic-- making sweeping declarations, but backing off from voting on them.Third, they see a Republican Party splitting in Congress. Finally, they see a presidential election shaping up in unprecedented ways with inherently unexpected outcomes. More important, for example, a Giuliani-Clinton race would be so wildly unpredictable that it is unclear what would emerge on the other side. Any other pairing would be equally unpredictable. This results in diplomatic paralysis across the board.
As the complexity unfolds, no one -- not only in the Iraq arena -- is sure how to play the United States. They don't know how any successor to Bush will behave.They don't know how to game out who the successor to Bush is likely to be. They don't know how the election will play out. From Iraq and Iran to Russia and China, the United States is becoming the enigma and therewon't be a hint of clarity for 18 months. This gives Bush his strange strength. No president this low in the polls should be acting with the confidence he shows. Part of it could be psychological, but part of it has to do with the appreciation that, given the strange dynamics, he is not your normal lame duck. Everyone else is tied in knots in terms of policy and in terms of the election. Bush alone has room to maneuver, and the Iranians are likely calculating that it would probably be safer to deal with this president now rather than expect the unexpected in 2008. Come what may, the current political cycle, with YouTube debates and such, is certainly a move away from our accustomed to Presidential elections.
My response:
Thanks for sending that, Dad.
It does have a different perspective, and I enjoyed the analysis--as far as it went. Unfortunately, I don't think it goes far enough to be actually useful.
Here are the conclusions I see in the article:
1) Recent electoral history provides no guide who will win the Presidential elections in 2008;
2) Though as lame as a duck can be, Bush still has political control of thesituation, though no freedom of movement (I disagree with his assessment ofthe weak executive), simply because the identity of his successor isunpredictable at this point;
3) The Iranians are watching very closely and are actually very astute aboutAmerican politics.
I think these are well-argued but too close to being truisms.
I offer my follow-on analysis for free (please don't let any "Iranian's" see it; on the other hand, they already figured all this out!)
1) Congress--the Senate--can not take any meaningful initiative until 10-15 Republican Senators join in for a change. That will happen soon after Sept.15, when the generals ask for more time. Enough Senators will say, "OK--this is how much more time you get" to make a deal possible, in which U.S. troops on the ground in Iraq will be reduced by 50% or so (and combat missions, more sharply in the final months) by Election Day, but there will not be a total withdrawal. This won't go down too well with the voters, which should help the Democratic nominee. The new President--from either party-- will have the freedom to increase, maintain, or eliminate entirely the remaining forces inIraq. Both Clinton and Obama have preserved some "strategic ambiguity" about what they would do, which is wise.
2) A meaningful challenge to Bush's authority has come just this week from the Democratic frontrunner, Hillary. Her demand--backed up by her role on the Senate Foreign Affairs Committee--to know more about the secret withdrawal contingency planning in Gates' Pentagon (it has certainly happened; their mistake was not to tell her about it) is the sign that she has emerged as the leading contender and is acting like it. The most significant othercontender--Obama--has taken an appropriate position for an outsidercandidate--that he will talk to excluded nations.
3) The electoral test that will decide it: Do Americans want to try to work our way out of this mess, or try a whole new approach?--has yet to happen. I'd say it will be the California primary on February 5. Obama has the chance for an upset, unless there is a major homeland scare; a setback like that might logically argue more strongly for a change, but I think it would go the otherway as people seek a safe haven, which in this case would be Hillary!
4) Giuliani winning the Republican nomination would really surprise me (I'd put my money on Thompson, who, as Friedman suggests, would do well enough to prevent disaster, but lose). The only way Giuliani wins is if there's a homeland terrorist incident in September or October.
The jihadists might make exactly this calculation and try for it--Rudy would be a disaster as President, on the order of the current Bushite one. Which, as desperate men, they would see as their best chance.
Gaming the U.S. Elections - Outside the Box
- Special Edition July 26, 2007
Gaming the U.S. Elections By George Friedman
Domestic politics in most countries normally are of little interest geopolitically.
On the whole this is true of the United States as well. Most political debates are more operatic than meaningful, most political actors are interchangeable and the distinctions between candidates rarely make a difference. The policies they advocate are so transformed by Congress and the Supreme Court -- the checks and balances the Founding Fathers liked so much, coupled with federalism -- that the president rarely decides anything.
That is not how the world perceives the role, however. In spite ofevidence to the contrary, the president of the United States is perceived as the ultimate "decider," someone whose power determines the course of action of the world's strongest nation. Therefore, when presidents weaken, the behavior of foreign powers tends to shift, and when elections approach, their behavior shifts even more. The expectation of change on the burning issue of Iraq is based on the misperception that the American presidency is inherently powerful or that presidents shape the consensus rather than react to it.
The inability of Congress to make any decisive move on Iraq demonstrates that immobility isn't built only into the presidency. The two houses ofCongress are designed to be gridlocked. Moreover, the congressional indecision reveals that behind all of the arias being sung, there is a basic consensus on Iraq: the United States should not have gone into Iraqand now that it is there, it should leave. There is more to it than that,though. The real consensus is that the United States should not simply leave, but rather do it in such a way that it retains the benefits of staying without actually having to be there. To sum up the contradiction, all of the players on the stage want to have their cake and eat it, too.
We are only being a trifle ironic. When all is said and done, that is the policy the system has generated. The United States has been in roughly this same position with the same policy since World War II. The first time was in 1952 in Korea, when the war was at a stalemate, the initial rationale for it forgotten and HarryTruman's popularity about the same as President George W. Bush's is now.The second time was in 1968, when any hope of success in the Vietnam War appeared to be slipping away and Lyndon Johnson's presidency collapsed. In both cases, the new president followed the logic of the popular consensus, regardless of whether it made sense. In the Korean instance,the national position favored decisive action more than withdrawal -- as long as the war would end. In Vietnam the demand was for an end to the war, but without a defeat -- which was not going to happen.
During Korea, Dwight D. Eisenhower appeared a formidable enemy to the Chinese and his secret threat of using nuclear weapons seemed credible.The war ended in a negotiated stalemate. In the case of Vietnam, the public desire to get out of Vietnam without a defeat allowed RichardNixon to be elected on a platform of having a secret plan to end the war. He then continued the war for four years, playing off the fundamental contradiction in the consensus. Adlai Stevenson, who ran against Eisenhower, might not have been nearly as effective in convincing the Chinese to close the deal on Korea, but we doubt that Hubert Humphrey would have differed much from Nixon -- or that Bobby Kennedy, once in power, would have matched his rhetoric with action.
Yet the fact is that the world does not see the limits of the presidency. In the case of Iraq, the perception of the various players in Iraq and in the region is that the president of the United States matters a great deal. Each of them is trying to determine whether he should deal with the current president or with his successor. They wonder who the next president will be and try to forecast the policies that will break the strange consensus that has been reached. Therefore, we need to begin handicapping the presidency as we did in 2004, looking for patterns. In other words, policy implications aside,let's treat the election as we might a geopolitical problem, looking forpredictive patterns.
Let's begin with what we regard as the three rules of American presidential politics since 1960: The first rule is that no Democrat from outside the old Confederacy has won the White House since John F. Kennedy. Lyndon Johnson, Jimmy Carterand Bill Clinton were all from the Confederacy. Walter Mondale, Michael Dukakis and John Kerry were from way outside the Confederacy. Al Gore was from the Confederacy but lost, proving that this is necessary, but not a sufficient basis for a Democratic win. The reason for this rule is simple. Until 1964, the American South was solidly democratic. In 1964 the Deep South flipped Republican and stayed there. If the South and mountain states go Republican, then the Democrats must do extraordinarilywell in the rest of the country. They usually don't do extraordinarily well, so they need a candidate that can break into the South. Carter andClinton did it, while Johnson did extraordinarily well outside the South.
The second rule is that no Republican has won the White House since Eisenhower who wasn't from one of the two huge Sunbelt states: California or Texas (Eisenhower, though born in Texas, was raised in Kansas). Nixonand Reagan were from California. Both Bush presidents were from Texas. Gerald Ford was from Michigan, Robert Dole from Kansas. They both lost. Again the reason is obvious, particularly if the candidate is from California -- pick up the southern and mountain states, pull in Texas and watch the Democrats scramble. Midwestern Republicans lose and northeastern Republicans do not get nominated.
The third rule is that no sitting senator has won the presidency since Kennedy. The reason is, again, simple. Senators make speeches and vote,all of which are carefully recorded in the Congressional record. Governors live in archival obscurity and don't have to address most issues of burning importance to the nation. Johnson came the closest to being a sitting senator but he too had a gap of four years and an assassination before he ran. After him, Former Vice President Nixon, Gov.Carter, Gov. Reagan, Vice President Bush, Gov. Clinton and Gov. Bush allwon the presidency. The path is strewn with fallen senators.
That being the case, the Democrats appear poised to commit electoral suicide again, with two northern senators (Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama) in the lead, and the one southern contender, John Edwards, well back in the race. The Republicans, however, are not able to play to their strength. There are no potential candidates in Texas or California to draw on. Texas right now just doesn't have players ready for the national scene. California does, but Arnold Schwarzenegger is constitutionallyineligible by birth.
In a normal year, a charismatic Republican governor of California would run against a northern Democratic senator and mop thefloor. It's not going to happen this time. Instead, the Republicans appear to be choosing between a Massachusetts governor, Mitt Romney, and a former mayor of New York, Rudy Giuliani. Unless Texan Ron Paul can pull off a miracle, the Republicans appear to be going with their suicide hand just like the Democrats. Even if FredThompson gets the nomination, he comes from Tennessee, and while he can hold the South, he will have to do some heavy lifting elsewhere. Unless Obama and Clinton self-destruct and Edwards creeps in, or Paul does get a miracle, this election is shaping up as one that will break all the rules. Either a northern Democratic senator wins or a northeastern Republican (excluding Thompson for the moment) does.
The entire dynamic of presidential politics is in flux. All bets are off as to the outcome and all bets are off as to the behavior of the new president, whose promises and obligations are completely unpredictable. If one is to ask whether the Iranians look this carefully at U.S.politics and whether they are knowledgeable about the patterns, the answer is absolutely yes. We would say that the Iranians have far more insight into American politics than Americans have into Iranian politics.They have to. Iranians have been playing off the Americans since WorldWar II, whatever their ideology. In due course the underlying weirdness of the pattern this year will begin intruding.
Here is what the Iranian's are seeing: First, they are seeing Bush become increasingly weak. He is still maintaining his ability to act in Iraq,but only barely. Second, they see a Congress that is cautiously bombastic-- making sweeping declarations, but backing off from voting on them.Third, they see a Republican Party splitting in Congress. Finally, they see a presidential election shaping up in unprecedented ways with inherently unexpected outcomes. More important, for example, a Giuliani-Clinton race would be so wildly unpredictable that it is unclear what would emerge on the other side. Any other pairing would be equally unpredictable. This results in diplomatic paralysis across the board.
As the complexity unfolds, no one -- not only in the Iraq arena -- is sure how to play the United States. They don't know how any successor to Bush will behave.They don't know how to game out who the successor to Bush is likely to be. They don't know how the election will play out. From Iraq and Iran to Russia and China, the United States is becoming the enigma and therewon't be a hint of clarity for 18 months. This gives Bush his strange strength. No president this low in the polls should be acting with the confidence he shows. Part of it could be psychological, but part of it has to do with the appreciation that, given the strange dynamics, he is not your normal lame duck. Everyone else is tied in knots in terms of policy and in terms of the election. Bush alone has room to maneuver, and the Iranians are likely calculating that it would probably be safer to deal with this president now rather than expect the unexpected in 2008. Come what may, the current political cycle, with YouTube debates and such, is certainly a move away from our accustomed to Presidential elections.
My response:
Thanks for sending that, Dad.
It does have a different perspective, and I enjoyed the analysis--as far as it went. Unfortunately, I don't think it goes far enough to be actually useful.
Here are the conclusions I see in the article:
1) Recent electoral history provides no guide who will win the Presidential elections in 2008;
2) Though as lame as a duck can be, Bush still has political control of thesituation, though no freedom of movement (I disagree with his assessment ofthe weak executive), simply because the identity of his successor isunpredictable at this point;
3) The Iranians are watching very closely and are actually very astute aboutAmerican politics.
I think these are well-argued but too close to being truisms.
I offer my follow-on analysis for free (please don't let any "Iranian's" see it; on the other hand, they already figured all this out!)
1) Congress--the Senate--can not take any meaningful initiative until 10-15 Republican Senators join in for a change. That will happen soon after Sept.15, when the generals ask for more time. Enough Senators will say, "OK--this is how much more time you get" to make a deal possible, in which U.S. troops on the ground in Iraq will be reduced by 50% or so (and combat missions, more sharply in the final months) by Election Day, but there will not be a total withdrawal. This won't go down too well with the voters, which should help the Democratic nominee. The new President--from either party-- will have the freedom to increase, maintain, or eliminate entirely the remaining forces inIraq. Both Clinton and Obama have preserved some "strategic ambiguity" about what they would do, which is wise.
2) A meaningful challenge to Bush's authority has come just this week from the Democratic frontrunner, Hillary. Her demand--backed up by her role on the Senate Foreign Affairs Committee--to know more about the secret withdrawal contingency planning in Gates' Pentagon (it has certainly happened; their mistake was not to tell her about it) is the sign that she has emerged as the leading contender and is acting like it. The most significant othercontender--Obama--has taken an appropriate position for an outsidercandidate--that he will talk to excluded nations.
3) The electoral test that will decide it: Do Americans want to try to work our way out of this mess, or try a whole new approach?--has yet to happen. I'd say it will be the California primary on February 5. Obama has the chance for an upset, unless there is a major homeland scare; a setback like that might logically argue more strongly for a change, but I think it would go the otherway as people seek a safe haven, which in this case would be Hillary!
4) Giuliani winning the Republican nomination would really surprise me (I'd put my money on Thompson, who, as Friedman suggests, would do well enough to prevent disaster, but lose). The only way Giuliani wins is if there's a homeland terrorist incident in September or October.
The jihadists might make exactly this calculation and try for it--Rudy would be a disaster as President, on the order of the current Bushite one. Which, as desperate men, they would see as their best chance.
Sunday, July 22, 2007
stoner: Summer Reading I: The Pentagon's New Map
Link to my review and recommendations for Thomas Barnett's 2004 exposition of The Pentagon's New Map
Can't Blame a Putin for Trying
The recent Bush-Putin summit in Kennebunkport was interesting to me. The clear purpose of it was for Vladimir to try to utilize his relatively friendly relationship with Dubya to try and save us all from more Bushite stupidity. Unfortunately, he didn't seem to succeed, though perhaps Congress can still step in.
The subject is the latest brainwave from career-challenged Pentagon strategists: why not use our missile defense "capability" in the continuing demarche with Iran over their nuclear program? They seem to have convinced our allies in Northeastern Europe (read: Poland) that it would be a real good idea to put some of our latest high-tech military boondoggle in their country to protect the European Union from Iranian nuclear missile attack.
No doubt the Poles decided it would help protect them from Russian missiles, then let the Russians know that's what they thought. The Russian military folks didn't know how to counter such an illusory but complex threat to their security, so they sent Vlad to try to dissuade our 3-D President, even offering a gambit: instead of Poland, why not put the missile defense where the Russians have a radar in Azerbaijan? We'll share.
Dumb Duck Dubya knew enough, at least, not to get in the chess game with Putin, though why anyone might need this non-functional apparatus is unclear to me. I'd rate the odds that Iran will have nukes capable of being loaded on ballistic missiles within 10 years at 10-1. Similar odds that Iran would choose to launch them toward their friends in Western Europe (to the extent they have any friends--at least that's one region that will deal with them)--those odds basically about equal to the chances they would hit Western Europe if they fired the missiles in a random direction, intermediate-range (vs. about 75% they'd try to hit Tel Aviv). Also, same odds that the missile defense would actually work. Put those independent probabilities together, and we're talking about a 1-in-1000 chance the missile defense system would actually do some good sometime, if indeed the Iranians chose to attack.
I don't doubt the sincerity that the Pentagon missile defense guys have; they would really like to do something useful, and this was the best they could come up with, short of changing jobs. For the senior brass, this is probably a useful gambit, coming up with something besides sanctions that they can throw at Iran. As for the Iranians, I'm sure they will have trouble suppressing their laughter when they discuss the military threat this initiative would create. Finally, I looked into Putin's eyes as he arrived in Maine; he was really only trying to save us the embarrassment continuing this charade would eventually create.
The subject is the latest brainwave from career-challenged Pentagon strategists: why not use our missile defense "capability" in the continuing demarche with Iran over their nuclear program? They seem to have convinced our allies in Northeastern Europe (read: Poland) that it would be a real good idea to put some of our latest high-tech military boondoggle in their country to protect the European Union from Iranian nuclear missile attack.
No doubt the Poles decided it would help protect them from Russian missiles, then let the Russians know that's what they thought. The Russian military folks didn't know how to counter such an illusory but complex threat to their security, so they sent Vlad to try to dissuade our 3-D President, even offering a gambit: instead of Poland, why not put the missile defense where the Russians have a radar in Azerbaijan? We'll share.
Dumb Duck Dubya knew enough, at least, not to get in the chess game with Putin, though why anyone might need this non-functional apparatus is unclear to me. I'd rate the odds that Iran will have nukes capable of being loaded on ballistic missiles within 10 years at 10-1. Similar odds that Iran would choose to launch them toward their friends in Western Europe (to the extent they have any friends--at least that's one region that will deal with them)--those odds basically about equal to the chances they would hit Western Europe if they fired the missiles in a random direction, intermediate-range (vs. about 75% they'd try to hit Tel Aviv). Also, same odds that the missile defense would actually work. Put those independent probabilities together, and we're talking about a 1-in-1000 chance the missile defense system would actually do some good sometime, if indeed the Iranians chose to attack.
I don't doubt the sincerity that the Pentagon missile defense guys have; they would really like to do something useful, and this was the best they could come up with, short of changing jobs. For the senior brass, this is probably a useful gambit, coming up with something besides sanctions that they can throw at Iran. As for the Iranians, I'm sure they will have trouble suppressing their laughter when they discuss the military threat this initiative would create. Finally, I looked into Putin's eyes as he arrived in Maine; he was really only trying to save us the embarrassment continuing this charade would eventually create.
Iraq Bipartisan Policy Still Possible?!
I found myself--rather shockingly--agreeing with a recent Charles Krauthammer editorial the other day. The purpose of his piece was to buck up Republicans who were heading into yet another showdown vote on Iraq. It worked, or at least, the Republicans held together (for the most part) once again, though they know better.
Krauthammer was drawing attention to the new strategy that seems to be working in Anbar province. Broadly simplified, it consists of making deals with Sunni insurgent sheikhs who have soured on working with the madmen of Al Qaeda in Iraq. So, even though these leaders have sent their people up against our forces in the past, they agree to stop doing so and help us battle the Al Qaeda folks. Thus far, they have done so, and it seems to be working in certain areas (principally Ramadi). There's nothing really improper or immoral about it, if you allow the morality or properness of the war itself from both sides (and thus, don't criminalize the insurgents).
Krauthammer wants to give this strategy--and the surge that is somewhat necessary for its success--time to succeed elsewhere in Sunni Iraq. This actually makes some sense, for a couple other provinces (Diyala, Salahuddin, perhaps), though it is not going to "win" Iraq. "The Enemy of our Enemy" will be our friend for the Al Qaeda battles, but then it is likely to go back to duking it out with the Shiites.
Anyway, Bushite Scourge will be given a couple more months--the time pretty much everybody knew they would have, until the dreaded Petraeus Sept. 15 report (in which he will ask for a few months' more time). Then, however, will be the time for the peace initiative on a bipartisan basis. The plan will be to declare victory over Al Qaeda, progressively pull back from involvement in domestic affairs, and let the Iraqis work them out on their own timetable. Americans will focus on training, seeking out any pockets of Al Qaeda, and reduce their numbers by 50% or so before election time.
I am a contrarian on American foreign policy: my thesis is that the insistence that disputes stop at our shores is part of the reason we make/have made so many big mistakes with our diplomacy and military policy. Still, though, there is a time to come together and one such opportunity is coming up. Bush will only be swayed by a strong bipartisan consensus in Congress, and the only aspect of Iraq policy that Democrats and Republicans disagree upon is whether the Republicans are doomed to be punished once again in 2008 for their stubbornness in Iraq. At least, I think they disagree on that, but regardless of their points of view on that item, we all want the best outcome for our troops and our nation.
Krauthammer was drawing attention to the new strategy that seems to be working in Anbar province. Broadly simplified, it consists of making deals with Sunni insurgent sheikhs who have soured on working with the madmen of Al Qaeda in Iraq. So, even though these leaders have sent their people up against our forces in the past, they agree to stop doing so and help us battle the Al Qaeda folks. Thus far, they have done so, and it seems to be working in certain areas (principally Ramadi). There's nothing really improper or immoral about it, if you allow the morality or properness of the war itself from both sides (and thus, don't criminalize the insurgents).
Krauthammer wants to give this strategy--and the surge that is somewhat necessary for its success--time to succeed elsewhere in Sunni Iraq. This actually makes some sense, for a couple other provinces (Diyala, Salahuddin, perhaps), though it is not going to "win" Iraq. "The Enemy of our Enemy" will be our friend for the Al Qaeda battles, but then it is likely to go back to duking it out with the Shiites.
Anyway, Bushite Scourge will be given a couple more months--the time pretty much everybody knew they would have, until the dreaded Petraeus Sept. 15 report (in which he will ask for a few months' more time). Then, however, will be the time for the peace initiative on a bipartisan basis. The plan will be to declare victory over Al Qaeda, progressively pull back from involvement in domestic affairs, and let the Iraqis work them out on their own timetable. Americans will focus on training, seeking out any pockets of Al Qaeda, and reduce their numbers by 50% or so before election time.
I am a contrarian on American foreign policy: my thesis is that the insistence that disputes stop at our shores is part of the reason we make/have made so many big mistakes with our diplomacy and military policy. Still, though, there is a time to come together and one such opportunity is coming up. Bush will only be swayed by a strong bipartisan consensus in Congress, and the only aspect of Iraq policy that Democrats and Republicans disagree upon is whether the Republicans are doomed to be punished once again in 2008 for their stubbornness in Iraq. At least, I think they disagree on that, but regardless of their points of view on that item, we all want the best outcome for our troops and our nation.
Summer Reading I: The Pentagon's New Map
We’re working on the idea of testing the quality of forecasting of our own guesses and those of others as well. This book, by Pentagon civilian analyst Thomas P.N. Barnett from 2004, deserves a second edition. It needs one, as well.
Barnett is a guy who does “killer briefs”. His active career on the Pentagon beat, paid both directly and indirectly, spans 1990-2003, so he worked through some of Bush I and II and all of Clinton. His specialties seem to be working on teams to develop joint presentations, codifying “rule sets” for various international players, and once in a while personally coming up with successful narratives (and accompanying slide visuals) for strategic concepts. His style is storytelling, and he weaves some good ones--convincing, and often drawing from personal experience.. He’s a Democrat; I’d call him “neo-liberal”; he comes at the neocons’ point of view from a humanistic philosophy.
I have plenty of sympathy for those of Barnett’s profession; essentially he did the Pentagon version of what I did my last year in corporate life (convincing our company’s leaders the world was safe for instalment loans). Personally, I found it trying, having to suck up at all levels of the organization, and fortunately I was spared from having to keep doing it (9/11 helped). I am curious how they’re making out in Japan, though; that was one that I was pushing, and if they were smart enough to do it right, they’re much richer for it.
That’s sort of the take I get Barnett has on Iraq. Though he makes no claim to being involved in the Bushite push towards invasion there, he backs it (from this volume’s vantage point of late 2003/early 2004, when things were already looking somewhat sour). This is the kind of bathwater you have to throw out in order to keep the baby well. Here’s my description of Barnett’s Baby:
First, The Map itself, for which Barnett claims credit. Draw a broad ring touching on the hot spots of war, famine, and backwardness in the last 20 years. In “The Pentagon’s New Map”, this is the “Non-Integrating Gap”, or “The Gap”, for short. The “Functioning Core” is composed of Europe (except the S.E. part), North America, Australia/N.Z., and all of N.E. Asia, plus China and India. Also included: South Africa and the ABC’s of South America—Argentina, Brazil, and Chile. Barnett has appropriately combined the First World and the Second World pieces and redefined the old Third/Fourth World boundaries, going beyond the End Cold War viewpoint. I have a few quibbles (see below).
Second, “the future worth creating”: progressively shrink the Gap through integration and security. He also identifies key “Seam States” (though they are inconsistently included or not in the Core)—and the key to winning GWOT (he’s a believer) is to work through the Seams to Gap states to “firewall off the Core from terrorists”, regulate immigration toward the Core, and protect from diseases. This makes good sense, I say (but I’m not a tailor, so my opinion of the proper use of fashion terminology involved is questionable).
Third, he seems to have made some major contributions to the thinking of the senior military officers—or, if not to their thinking, at least to their ability to articulate their thinking. Two in particular that he seems to be able to make a valid claim about are 1) helping the Navy to realize in the mid-‘90’s that, not only did it rule the waves, there will be no challenger anytime soon; and 2) China is not the proper war object of our military strategy. Essentially, they’re on our side now.
In the time since, he’s been proved right about that, and, though he was too polite to note it, I think he observed how the subtlety of Chinese diplomacy eats our State Department alive in international forums like the U.N. Their role was critical in bringing North Korea to heel, and in making us look like heels, diplomatically, in Iraq.
Fourth, and most powerfully, he has something to say in the final chapters about the future of the Pentagon and what might work to shrink the Gap. His strong idea and bold proposal is to break up the Pentagon, separating the hot-war fighting capability (he calls it “the Leviathan”, and backs up the Hobbes reference) from the peacekeeping/nation building capability. This latter he calls “Sys Admin”; computer jocks would fully appreciate the label, I think, though to me it sounds a little too bureaucratic for marketing purposes.
Here’s the point: “the Leviathan” goes in and takes out the enemy’s military, and there’s no doubt that is basically a U.S. operation (you others can join, if you can keep up). But this other thing, this “Department of Everything Else”: this needs to be internationalized fully, not just made separate within the Pentagon. And why the Pentagon at all? Get them out of it, permanently. Yes, there are U.S. military specialists in local political affairs—as the recent successes in Anbar have shown—and they have major contributions to make. But it should be under the U.N. flag, as is being done much more successfully in the World’s Toughest Nation-Building Job (i.e., Afghanistan). It was a mistake to make the Pentagon responsible for Iraq’s occupation, and it should never be repeated.
By the way, I would love to have a tough-minded guy like Barnett working on the U.N. Charter rewrite (maybe he is—beats me? He’s gone private.) He made a quality suggestion--in passing—that the permanent Security Council members (and he’d up it to 15, by my count) would give up their veto “except in cases involving the permanent members themselves”. Excellent suggestion!
Finally, I give him full marks for the reference to “koyaanisqatsi”, and for using it well. Right on, dude!
Testing Specific Predictions
He went on record with these 10 (I oversimplify for bullet-point purposes—you understand, right, Tom?). Given that we predictors can pick our spots, my assessment is that these were made more to build his logical argument, than for analytically supported reasons.
1) Iraq connected in 10 years—jury’s out, but progress nonexistent.
2) Kim Jong Il out—I’m sympathetic, but it seems to be going another route.
3) Iran overthrows mullahs by 2010—This one I’m taking pretty much verbatim. Halfway between his publishing date and the target date, I’d say he has no better than 25%. Yes, I was disappointed that Khatami went quietly away, too.
4) Free-trade America deal by 2015, allowing us to clean up Colombia—I see more hope for Colombia than for the deal. Bushite non-diplomacy is killing us with most of the Western Hemisphere, except Brazil. I see the Caribbean Rim being forced to choose pretty soon between the Venezuela/Cuba/Bolivia side and the Mexico/Chile/Brazil side. And don’t take Argentina for granted, either.
5) Transform the Middle East—I don’t like the odds on this one working; choose any timeframe less than 200 years. If it transforms, we won’t be the ones doing it.
6) China a diplomatic near-peer—See my comment above: we’ve got more influence because we’re more powerful, but in terms of skill they are running circles around us. Still, I give him credit for perceiving their ability; part of their brilliance is in keeping it somewhat obscured, given their relatively weak political and military positions for coercively leveraging other nations.
7) Asian equivalent of NATO—My uninformed view is that this has some potential, with the Six Nations agreement on North Korea being a good harbinger. It doesn’t have to be quite so overtly a military agreement as Barnett suggests, though.
8) Core-wide security alliance—Sure. There’s certainly a “securities” alliance possible, anyway (very little banking joke).
9) US expands by 10 states, even beyond the Western Hemisphere (!)—I have to differ here. There’s no willingness whatsoever to experiment domestically, and that’s the only scale of importance. Look, we can’t D.C. representation figured out (200+ years), or Puerto Rico statehood (30 or so, at least). Now, unless England decides the only way it can get autonomy within Britain is to join the U.S. (now, that would be historic!), I can’t see us going beyond our (extended) shores.
10) Only then we can go after Africa, unless GWOT moves in there big time—He’s right, of course. For that matter, I think he was being generous putting South Africa in the Core—I look at it as being a lot like Jamaica, on a very big scale. Am I wrong?
Conclusion: As a futurist, he’s no prognosticator, but if he gets the big ones right (“The Baby”), that’s more important.
Ambiguities/Revisions Needed for Second Edition
With regard to membership in the Core vs. Gap, I can see why Barnett insists on including China and India, even if the fit isn’t that important. Among other things, these countries make the difference between having two-thirds In and two-thirds Out, which is real important for the perspective of whether this is something we are winning. Particularly, it is the key success area of the last 20 years.
In this one, I--among others--have to swallow hard and accept that there is a notion one can overlook the Tienanmen massacre and allow China among the “civilized”. Barnett is reasonable in saying that there are various blends of political, economic, and judicial “connectedness”. It is a fact that China and India have had constructive roles since the end of the Cold War, and that is a major peacetime dividend.
There’s a real question, though, whether these two have made their progress, or too much of it, in unsustainable ways, and I mean environmentally. This is one of Barnett’s huge blind spots—there is really no problem incorporating this notion into the “Sys Admin” concept, but Barnett at the time was not Greened at all—his view at the time was, there’s plenty of oil, and then there’s coal.
Pakistan is no Core member, as Barnett said quite accurately, their regime “barely controls much of its countryside beyond Islamabad”. But, he seems to have another blind spot when it comes to their nuclear weapons, which I would rate as a bigger threat to world peace than either North Korea or Iran. To the Core, as well, since India’s within it.
Pakistan’s case demonstrates why I can’t agree with Barnett that “arms control is now dead and buried”. It’s endangered, true; I agree that determined national entities are likely to find a channel to success, and sanctions and treaties won’t do the job. Nevertheless, it’s worth preventing proliferation, and the way to do it is to punish proliferators—even the ones we choose to like. The punishment is: you have to learn responsibility, or you feel pain of some kind (not necessarily coercive regime change, which Barnett loves too much).
Russia is an interesting case for discussion. It qualifies as a Core member based on its high-tech capabilities (leftover from Soviet days), and its military, though deteriorated, is still up there in the Top 5. He doesn’t discuss it, but no doubt there are plenty in the Pentagon who still see Russia as the U.S.’ once and future chief rival.
As far as omissions, Turkey, Israel, and Singapore definitely belong in the Core, with Jordan and Egypt two which should be added as key Seam States. Perhaps, as key recipients of American direct and indirect assistance, these nations have been purposefully left out as a favor in the interests of the efficacy of American policy. Anyway, I’ve got no Top Secret clearance like Barnett, so I don’t agree to sweep them under.
Iraq and Preemptive War
I think that his section backing the concept of pre-emption is one of the weakest and might need rewriting for the anticipated Second Edition. He seems to think it’s very simple which Fearless Leaders need to be busted out, when, and how. I’ll grant that the rules are different in the Gap, as he states, but he seems a little too close to the Action Boys on this one.
Anyway, he seems pretty clear that Iraq was not a case of preemptive war in this key passage (p. 288):
America was able to select--long in advance--the spring of 2003 to launch the Big Bang, which gave us maximum time to make our case to the rest of the Core regarding our motives and goals…we made time to argue our case; we were not rash in our strategic tempo.
Again, although I don’t blame him for the Iraq invasion plan at all, he seems to know what he’s talking about here. On this one, I apparently stand corrected: All through the run-up to the invasion, my basic Question was: What Is the Fricking Hurry? Barnett is telling us that the whole thing was deliberate, elective, not prompted by any specific threat (of WMD, aggression, or even ongoing internal massacre). It was the kind of splash intended to provoke ripples, not one of those clean Olympic dives where the diver enters and the water barely moves.
Barnett implicitly buys into the Bushite Operational Plan argument for the timing—he’s too close to Rumsfeld’s office. I must be closer to Karl Rove’s, because I see the answer to the Question as being driven by the Bushite Political Operatives’ Plan and the exigencies of the approaching 2004 election. I think Barnett should take a long, hard look at this and face this incriminating truth: Yes, Politics were Played with This.
Two Howlers—Please Excise for the 2nd and Successive Editions
p. 290 ff. Iraq’s worst case: America’s West Bank. Barnett’s got it right: “the more the occupation becomes an international tar baby, the more likely it is that America alone will be left holding the bag.” Amen. The problem is that it is hard to understand this and still defend a) the initial invasion decision, given that this was clearly one likely outcome any self-respecting futurist could envision; and b) the morality of marketing the invasion of Iraq as one of those “10-1000” casualty-range operations, when there was the intention to go in there and stay, putting it in the “10K-100K” range (as with the prior British occupation—we have had those kind of mortal casualties, only our medical skill is better).
After recognizing that the occupation was in worst-case mode at time of publication, he spends some effort suggesting ways to turn it around. Ways that were, of course, not taken. His last choice of ways to solve it (p. 293) is the second howler:
through the construction of Sharon’s Wall. To him, that will simplify the future provision of aid to Gaza and the West Bank toward their becoming “connected”. Nonsense—the only Core members with the wiring diagrams (or Bluetooth source code) for the Palestine region are the Israelis. To seal themselves off is to write off the zone—it’s that simple, and it’s becoming clearer all the time.
Barnett is a guy who does “killer briefs”. His active career on the Pentagon beat, paid both directly and indirectly, spans 1990-2003, so he worked through some of Bush I and II and all of Clinton. His specialties seem to be working on teams to develop joint presentations, codifying “rule sets” for various international players, and once in a while personally coming up with successful narratives (and accompanying slide visuals) for strategic concepts. His style is storytelling, and he weaves some good ones--convincing, and often drawing from personal experience.. He’s a Democrat; I’d call him “neo-liberal”; he comes at the neocons’ point of view from a humanistic philosophy.
I have plenty of sympathy for those of Barnett’s profession; essentially he did the Pentagon version of what I did my last year in corporate life (convincing our company’s leaders the world was safe for instalment loans). Personally, I found it trying, having to suck up at all levels of the organization, and fortunately I was spared from having to keep doing it (9/11 helped). I am curious how they’re making out in Japan, though; that was one that I was pushing, and if they were smart enough to do it right, they’re much richer for it.
That’s sort of the take I get Barnett has on Iraq. Though he makes no claim to being involved in the Bushite push towards invasion there, he backs it (from this volume’s vantage point of late 2003/early 2004, when things were already looking somewhat sour). This is the kind of bathwater you have to throw out in order to keep the baby well. Here’s my description of Barnett’s Baby:
First, The Map itself, for which Barnett claims credit. Draw a broad ring touching on the hot spots of war, famine, and backwardness in the last 20 years. In “The Pentagon’s New Map”, this is the “Non-Integrating Gap”, or “The Gap”, for short. The “Functioning Core” is composed of Europe (except the S.E. part), North America, Australia/N.Z., and all of N.E. Asia, plus China and India. Also included: South Africa and the ABC’s of South America—Argentina, Brazil, and Chile. Barnett has appropriately combined the First World and the Second World pieces and redefined the old Third/Fourth World boundaries, going beyond the End Cold War viewpoint. I have a few quibbles (see below).
Second, “the future worth creating”: progressively shrink the Gap through integration and security. He also identifies key “Seam States” (though they are inconsistently included or not in the Core)—and the key to winning GWOT (he’s a believer) is to work through the Seams to Gap states to “firewall off the Core from terrorists”, regulate immigration toward the Core, and protect from diseases. This makes good sense, I say (but I’m not a tailor, so my opinion of the proper use of fashion terminology involved is questionable).
Third, he seems to have made some major contributions to the thinking of the senior military officers—or, if not to their thinking, at least to their ability to articulate their thinking. Two in particular that he seems to be able to make a valid claim about are 1) helping the Navy to realize in the mid-‘90’s that, not only did it rule the waves, there will be no challenger anytime soon; and 2) China is not the proper war object of our military strategy. Essentially, they’re on our side now.
In the time since, he’s been proved right about that, and, though he was too polite to note it, I think he observed how the subtlety of Chinese diplomacy eats our State Department alive in international forums like the U.N. Their role was critical in bringing North Korea to heel, and in making us look like heels, diplomatically, in Iraq.
Fourth, and most powerfully, he has something to say in the final chapters about the future of the Pentagon and what might work to shrink the Gap. His strong idea and bold proposal is to break up the Pentagon, separating the hot-war fighting capability (he calls it “the Leviathan”, and backs up the Hobbes reference) from the peacekeeping/nation building capability. This latter he calls “Sys Admin”; computer jocks would fully appreciate the label, I think, though to me it sounds a little too bureaucratic for marketing purposes.
Here’s the point: “the Leviathan” goes in and takes out the enemy’s military, and there’s no doubt that is basically a U.S. operation (you others can join, if you can keep up). But this other thing, this “Department of Everything Else”: this needs to be internationalized fully, not just made separate within the Pentagon. And why the Pentagon at all? Get them out of it, permanently. Yes, there are U.S. military specialists in local political affairs—as the recent successes in Anbar have shown—and they have major contributions to make. But it should be under the U.N. flag, as is being done much more successfully in the World’s Toughest Nation-Building Job (i.e., Afghanistan). It was a mistake to make the Pentagon responsible for Iraq’s occupation, and it should never be repeated.
By the way, I would love to have a tough-minded guy like Barnett working on the U.N. Charter rewrite (maybe he is—beats me? He’s gone private.) He made a quality suggestion--in passing—that the permanent Security Council members (and he’d up it to 15, by my count) would give up their veto “except in cases involving the permanent members themselves”. Excellent suggestion!
Finally, I give him full marks for the reference to “koyaanisqatsi”, and for using it well. Right on, dude!
Testing Specific Predictions
He went on record with these 10 (I oversimplify for bullet-point purposes—you understand, right, Tom?). Given that we predictors can pick our spots, my assessment is that these were made more to build his logical argument, than for analytically supported reasons.
1) Iraq connected in 10 years—jury’s out, but progress nonexistent.
2) Kim Jong Il out—I’m sympathetic, but it seems to be going another route.
3) Iran overthrows mullahs by 2010—This one I’m taking pretty much verbatim. Halfway between his publishing date and the target date, I’d say he has no better than 25%. Yes, I was disappointed that Khatami went quietly away, too.
4) Free-trade America deal by 2015, allowing us to clean up Colombia—I see more hope for Colombia than for the deal. Bushite non-diplomacy is killing us with most of the Western Hemisphere, except Brazil. I see the Caribbean Rim being forced to choose pretty soon between the Venezuela/Cuba/Bolivia side and the Mexico/Chile/Brazil side. And don’t take Argentina for granted, either.
5) Transform the Middle East—I don’t like the odds on this one working; choose any timeframe less than 200 years. If it transforms, we won’t be the ones doing it.
6) China a diplomatic near-peer—See my comment above: we’ve got more influence because we’re more powerful, but in terms of skill they are running circles around us. Still, I give him credit for perceiving their ability; part of their brilliance is in keeping it somewhat obscured, given their relatively weak political and military positions for coercively leveraging other nations.
7) Asian equivalent of NATO—My uninformed view is that this has some potential, with the Six Nations agreement on North Korea being a good harbinger. It doesn’t have to be quite so overtly a military agreement as Barnett suggests, though.
8) Core-wide security alliance—Sure. There’s certainly a “securities” alliance possible, anyway (very little banking joke).
9) US expands by 10 states, even beyond the Western Hemisphere (!)—I have to differ here. There’s no willingness whatsoever to experiment domestically, and that’s the only scale of importance. Look, we can’t D.C. representation figured out (200+ years), or Puerto Rico statehood (30 or so, at least). Now, unless England decides the only way it can get autonomy within Britain is to join the U.S. (now, that would be historic!), I can’t see us going beyond our (extended) shores.
10) Only then we can go after Africa, unless GWOT moves in there big time—He’s right, of course. For that matter, I think he was being generous putting South Africa in the Core—I look at it as being a lot like Jamaica, on a very big scale. Am I wrong?
Conclusion: As a futurist, he’s no prognosticator, but if he gets the big ones right (“The Baby”), that’s more important.
Ambiguities/Revisions Needed for Second Edition
With regard to membership in the Core vs. Gap, I can see why Barnett insists on including China and India, even if the fit isn’t that important. Among other things, these countries make the difference between having two-thirds In and two-thirds Out, which is real important for the perspective of whether this is something we are winning. Particularly, it is the key success area of the last 20 years.
In this one, I--among others--have to swallow hard and accept that there is a notion one can overlook the Tienanmen massacre and allow China among the “civilized”. Barnett is reasonable in saying that there are various blends of political, economic, and judicial “connectedness”. It is a fact that China and India have had constructive roles since the end of the Cold War, and that is a major peacetime dividend.
There’s a real question, though, whether these two have made their progress, or too much of it, in unsustainable ways, and I mean environmentally. This is one of Barnett’s huge blind spots—there is really no problem incorporating this notion into the “Sys Admin” concept, but Barnett at the time was not Greened at all—his view at the time was, there’s plenty of oil, and then there’s coal.
Pakistan is no Core member, as Barnett said quite accurately, their regime “barely controls much of its countryside beyond Islamabad”. But, he seems to have another blind spot when it comes to their nuclear weapons, which I would rate as a bigger threat to world peace than either North Korea or Iran. To the Core, as well, since India’s within it.
Pakistan’s case demonstrates why I can’t agree with Barnett that “arms control is now dead and buried”. It’s endangered, true; I agree that determined national entities are likely to find a channel to success, and sanctions and treaties won’t do the job. Nevertheless, it’s worth preventing proliferation, and the way to do it is to punish proliferators—even the ones we choose to like. The punishment is: you have to learn responsibility, or you feel pain of some kind (not necessarily coercive regime change, which Barnett loves too much).
Russia is an interesting case for discussion. It qualifies as a Core member based on its high-tech capabilities (leftover from Soviet days), and its military, though deteriorated, is still up there in the Top 5. He doesn’t discuss it, but no doubt there are plenty in the Pentagon who still see Russia as the U.S.’ once and future chief rival.
As far as omissions, Turkey, Israel, and Singapore definitely belong in the Core, with Jordan and Egypt two which should be added as key Seam States. Perhaps, as key recipients of American direct and indirect assistance, these nations have been purposefully left out as a favor in the interests of the efficacy of American policy. Anyway, I’ve got no Top Secret clearance like Barnett, so I don’t agree to sweep them under.
Iraq and Preemptive War
I think that his section backing the concept of pre-emption is one of the weakest and might need rewriting for the anticipated Second Edition. He seems to think it’s very simple which Fearless Leaders need to be busted out, when, and how. I’ll grant that the rules are different in the Gap, as he states, but he seems a little too close to the Action Boys on this one.
Anyway, he seems pretty clear that Iraq was not a case of preemptive war in this key passage (p. 288):
America was able to select--long in advance--the spring of 2003 to launch the Big Bang, which gave us maximum time to make our case to the rest of the Core regarding our motives and goals…we made time to argue our case; we were not rash in our strategic tempo.
Again, although I don’t blame him for the Iraq invasion plan at all, he seems to know what he’s talking about here. On this one, I apparently stand corrected: All through the run-up to the invasion, my basic Question was: What Is the Fricking Hurry? Barnett is telling us that the whole thing was deliberate, elective, not prompted by any specific threat (of WMD, aggression, or even ongoing internal massacre). It was the kind of splash intended to provoke ripples, not one of those clean Olympic dives where the diver enters and the water barely moves.
Barnett implicitly buys into the Bushite Operational Plan argument for the timing—he’s too close to Rumsfeld’s office. I must be closer to Karl Rove’s, because I see the answer to the Question as being driven by the Bushite Political Operatives’ Plan and the exigencies of the approaching 2004 election. I think Barnett should take a long, hard look at this and face this incriminating truth: Yes, Politics were Played with This.
Two Howlers—Please Excise for the 2nd and Successive Editions
p. 290 ff. Iraq’s worst case: America’s West Bank. Barnett’s got it right: “the more the occupation becomes an international tar baby, the more likely it is that America alone will be left holding the bag.” Amen. The problem is that it is hard to understand this and still defend a) the initial invasion decision, given that this was clearly one likely outcome any self-respecting futurist could envision; and b) the morality of marketing the invasion of Iraq as one of those “10-1000” casualty-range operations, when there was the intention to go in there and stay, putting it in the “10K-100K” range (as with the prior British occupation—we have had those kind of mortal casualties, only our medical skill is better).
After recognizing that the occupation was in worst-case mode at time of publication, he spends some effort suggesting ways to turn it around. Ways that were, of course, not taken. His last choice of ways to solve it (p. 293) is the second howler:
through the construction of Sharon’s Wall. To him, that will simplify the future provision of aid to Gaza and the West Bank toward their becoming “connected”. Nonsense—the only Core members with the wiring diagrams (or Bluetooth source code) for the Palestine region are the Israelis. To seal themselves off is to write off the zone—it’s that simple, and it’s becoming clearer all the time.
Tuesday, July 10, 2007
Baseball Preseason Predictions 2007
The following was posted on April 2, 2007. I'm posting it now to go on record with my preseason predictions, even though--with the Wall St. Journal prediction categories--many of the subjects of prediction were not my choice. The idea--partly inspired by Nicholas Nassim Taleb's Black Swan (more on this later)--is to make myself accountable for the quality of my forecasting.
I'm about two hours late for the actual beginning of Opening Day As It Should Be (first pitch of the Reds' game)--and for that, I'm truly sorry. I've paid no attention to any result except last night's regular season prelim, which has reminded me to find a way not to pick the Cards for anything.
We'll give the selected scenario or logic around the answers to question 1 (division winners) and breeze through the rest. I'm still utilizing my "3rd starter/CF" quality assessment as a quick shortcut, but I'm relying on it only for the top of the divisions. I learned last year that comparing 3rd starters for the bad teams is an exercise in hilarity only, not critical analysis of baseball teams. I'm also not using the depth charts so slavishly, considering short-term injuries and looking for the 3rd beststarter. The CF quality is more a tiebreaker when there are two decent #3's in a division (rare enough).
AL East--Yanks will fall way behind Botox, BJ's early; Cashman will do the obvious when faced with a "him, or me?" decision and let Torre go around June 1. Coincidentally, the Yanks will start to hit enough when Don Baylor (or somesuch) comes in to manage and Stonebrenner signs Clemens (2nd half year #2 starter). They catch the BJ's near the end and narrowly edge the Indians and Chisox forthe WC. Mussina's #3 in the second half, after Clemens' Wang, and ahead of The Rest. Bosox kick everyone's butt with DMat or Beckett. BJ'sChacin is a better pitcher than most Yanks, in theory only.
AL Central--the most important division. I'll take Robertson (Det.) over Garland (Chi), Westbrook (Cle) and Boof Bonser/Matt Garza (Min).
AL West--Angels (ESantana) over Tex (McCarthy).
NL East--Gotta go with Phils (Freddy Garcia or Cole Hamels) over Mets (have no #3 pitcher).
NL Mediocre--A tough call. My choice would be the Brewers (Capuano) over Cardinals (Anthony Reyes) and the Cubs (appropriately, JasonMarquee). Bill Hall is now at CF for the Crew, clinching it over JimEdmonds. The Cardinals' resurgence started when they traded for Edmonds and will end with his fadeout this year or next.
NL West--Padres (Chris Young, or even better, Greg Maddux) over Dogs (D.Lowe--not a fan) and Giants (Matt Morris, past his day).
Answers to WSJ questions (see below):
1. Boston, Detroit, LA Angels, Phils, Brewers, Padres.
2. Yanks, Mets.
3. Tigers, Mets.
4. Tigers
5. Tigers
6. Devil Rays
7. Johan Santana, Dontrelle Willis (one year I will get him right on this).
8. David Ortiz, Albert Pujols
9. Alex Gordon, Chris Young
10. Whoever's managing the DRays is certainly doomed. Joe Torrewill be #2.
11. Milton Bradley (could be both)
12. Schmidt, Daisuke, Maddux, Zito, Petttittte
13. Orioles, Royals, Nationals, Pirates, DRays
14. 32; I have no idea but let's say 760 (2X 380).
15. Cubs (18), narrowly over Royals, Indians.
16. Oakland (12).
17. ARod--2; Jeet--7. (one series)
18. Two percent down--bad as the pitching is overall, it might be improving slightly.
19. Devil Rays, Pirates (this one's too easy)
20. July 7.
Wall Street Journal Baseball Prediction Contest Questions
THE BASICS (point value in parentheses)
1. Which six teams will be division winners? (5 points each)
2. Which two teams will win the wild cards? (5 each)
3. Which two teams will go to the World Series? (15 each)4. Which team will win the World Series? (30)
5. Which team will have the best regular-season record? (10)
6. Which team will have the worst regular-season record? (10)
7. Who will win the AL and NL Cy Young awards? (10 each)
8. Who will win the AL and NL MVP awards? (10 each)
9. Who will win the AL and NL Rookie of the Year awards? (10 each)
THE NITTY-GRITTY(10 points each. All questions include regular-season games only.Asterisk denotes partial credit will be given.)
10. Which manager will be first to no longer be managing team(whether fired, retired, resigned or otherwise not managing) in 2007?
11. Who will be the highest-salaried player (based on 2007 salary)released or traded?
12. Starting pitchers Greg Maddux, Daisuke Matsuzaka, Andy Pettitte,Jason Schmidt and Barry Zito all signed big contracts with newteams. Rank them in order of regular-season wins, most to fewest, in2007.
13. Rank these teams in order of regular-season wins, most tofewest: Nationals, Pirates, Orioles, Devil Rays, Royals.
14. What will be the most runs scored in any one regular-season game in the majors this year, by the two teams combined? How many games decided by one run will there be in the regular season? *
15. Which team will have the most-improved record, measured inincrease in total victories?
16. Which team will suffer the biggest decline, measured in decrease in total victories?
17. How many postseason hits will Alex Rodriguez have? How about Derek Jeter? *
18. There were 9.72 runs scored per game in the 2006 regular season.By what percentage will that change in 2007? [Round to the nearestpercentage point and specify a direction, up or down] *
19. Name two teams that will have only one All-Star -- counting those who are on the active roster for the game and those who are chosen but skip it (5 for each team you get correct).
20. On what date will Barry Bonds hit career HR No. 756? *
I'm about two hours late for the actual beginning of Opening Day As It Should Be (first pitch of the Reds' game)--and for that, I'm truly sorry. I've paid no attention to any result except last night's regular season prelim, which has reminded me to find a way not to pick the Cards for anything.
We'll give the selected scenario or logic around the answers to question 1 (division winners) and breeze through the rest. I'm still utilizing my "3rd starter/CF" quality assessment as a quick shortcut, but I'm relying on it only for the top of the divisions. I learned last year that comparing 3rd starters for the bad teams is an exercise in hilarity only, not critical analysis of baseball teams. I'm also not using the depth charts so slavishly, considering short-term injuries and looking for the 3rd beststarter. The CF quality is more a tiebreaker when there are two decent #3's in a division (rare enough).
AL East--Yanks will fall way behind Botox, BJ's early; Cashman will do the obvious when faced with a "him, or me?" decision and let Torre go around June 1. Coincidentally, the Yanks will start to hit enough when Don Baylor (or somesuch) comes in to manage and Stonebrenner signs Clemens (2nd half year #2 starter). They catch the BJ's near the end and narrowly edge the Indians and Chisox forthe WC. Mussina's #3 in the second half, after Clemens' Wang, and ahead of The Rest. Bosox kick everyone's butt with DMat or Beckett. BJ'sChacin is a better pitcher than most Yanks, in theory only.
AL Central--the most important division. I'll take Robertson (Det.) over Garland (Chi), Westbrook (Cle) and Boof Bonser/Matt Garza (Min).
AL West--Angels (ESantana) over Tex (McCarthy).
NL East--Gotta go with Phils (Freddy Garcia or Cole Hamels) over Mets (have no #3 pitcher).
NL Mediocre--A tough call. My choice would be the Brewers (Capuano) over Cardinals (Anthony Reyes) and the Cubs (appropriately, JasonMarquee). Bill Hall is now at CF for the Crew, clinching it over JimEdmonds. The Cardinals' resurgence started when they traded for Edmonds and will end with his fadeout this year or next.
NL West--Padres (Chris Young, or even better, Greg Maddux) over Dogs (D.Lowe--not a fan) and Giants (Matt Morris, past his day).
Answers to WSJ questions (see below):
1. Boston, Detroit, LA Angels, Phils, Brewers, Padres.
2. Yanks, Mets.
3. Tigers, Mets.
4. Tigers
5. Tigers
6. Devil Rays
7. Johan Santana, Dontrelle Willis (one year I will get him right on this).
8. David Ortiz, Albert Pujols
9. Alex Gordon, Chris Young
10. Whoever's managing the DRays is certainly doomed. Joe Torrewill be #2.
11. Milton Bradley (could be both)
12. Schmidt, Daisuke, Maddux, Zito, Petttittte
13. Orioles, Royals, Nationals, Pirates, DRays
14. 32; I have no idea but let's say 760 (2X 380).
15. Cubs (18), narrowly over Royals, Indians.
16. Oakland (12).
17. ARod--2; Jeet--7. (one series)
18. Two percent down--bad as the pitching is overall, it might be improving slightly.
19. Devil Rays, Pirates (this one's too easy)
20. July 7.
Wall Street Journal Baseball Prediction Contest Questions
THE BASICS (point value in parentheses)
1. Which six teams will be division winners? (5 points each)
2. Which two teams will win the wild cards? (5 each)
3. Which two teams will go to the World Series? (15 each)4. Which team will win the World Series? (30)
5. Which team will have the best regular-season record? (10)
6. Which team will have the worst regular-season record? (10)
7. Who will win the AL and NL Cy Young awards? (10 each)
8. Who will win the AL and NL MVP awards? (10 each)
9. Who will win the AL and NL Rookie of the Year awards? (10 each)
THE NITTY-GRITTY(10 points each. All questions include regular-season games only.Asterisk denotes partial credit will be given.)
10. Which manager will be first to no longer be managing team(whether fired, retired, resigned or otherwise not managing) in 2007?
11. Who will be the highest-salaried player (based on 2007 salary)released or traded?
12. Starting pitchers Greg Maddux, Daisuke Matsuzaka, Andy Pettitte,Jason Schmidt and Barry Zito all signed big contracts with newteams. Rank them in order of regular-season wins, most to fewest, in2007.
13. Rank these teams in order of regular-season wins, most tofewest: Nationals, Pirates, Orioles, Devil Rays, Royals.
14. What will be the most runs scored in any one regular-season game in the majors this year, by the two teams combined? How many games decided by one run will there be in the regular season? *
15. Which team will have the most-improved record, measured inincrease in total victories?
16. Which team will suffer the biggest decline, measured in decrease in total victories?
17. How many postseason hits will Alex Rodriguez have? How about Derek Jeter? *
18. There were 9.72 runs scored per game in the 2006 regular season.By what percentage will that change in 2007? [Round to the nearestpercentage point and specify a direction, up or down] *
19. Name two teams that will have only one All-Star -- counting those who are on the active roster for the game and those who are chosen but skip it (5 for each team you get correct).
20. On what date will Barry Bonds hit career HR No. 756? *
Wednesday, July 04, 2007
SCOTUS=Alito-sis
Regarding the last offensive 5-4 decision, regarding school desegration:
I see a lot of blame going on for this weak, narrow, and foolish decision. And a lot of daydreaming about changing things.
Get serious! We can't change the Electoral College, or give District of Columbia residents representation in Congress. We are afraid of our own system, and the chances of expanding the Supreme Court, even with a President committed to it and two-thirds majorities in both Houses, is nil.
If we can demonstrate serious political potency in 2008, that wimp swing vote, Kennedy, will swing back the other way.
by chinshihtang on Thu Jun 28, 2007 at 06:05:20 PM PDT
Posted on Daily Kos— http://www.dailykos.com/story/2007/6/28/92351/8761
If, on the other hand, we lose the 2008 election, even narrowly, the Supreme Court will become a major drag on political progress for a decade or more, regardless of what happens in subsequent elections. This is simply because the more vulnerable spots, health-wise, belong to the anti-Bushites, particularly Ginsburg and Stevens.
I see a lot of blame going on for this weak, narrow, and foolish decision. And a lot of daydreaming about changing things.
Get serious! We can't change the Electoral College, or give District of Columbia residents representation in Congress. We are afraid of our own system, and the chances of expanding the Supreme Court, even with a President committed to it and two-thirds majorities in both Houses, is nil.
If we can demonstrate serious political potency in 2008, that wimp swing vote, Kennedy, will swing back the other way.
by chinshihtang on Thu Jun 28, 2007 at 06:05:20 PM PDT
Posted on Daily Kos— http://www.dailykos.com/story/2007/6/28/92351/8761
If, on the other hand, we lose the 2008 election, even narrowly, the Supreme Court will become a major drag on political progress for a decade or more, regardless of what happens in subsequent elections. This is simply because the more vulnerable spots, health-wise, belong to the anti-Bushites, particularly Ginsburg and Stevens.
Scooter, the WHIGs, and The Commuter
My note for MoveOn's petition (it's to Congress):
The thing that bothers me about the case is that the conspiracy--first, to deceive, and then, to subvert justice-- has been so successful.
Its first triumph was that the complete suppression of the WHIG conspiracy to deceive the American people, accomplished in part through the denunciation of Amb. Wilson and his wife, was able to hold together through the 2004 election.
The second was that the conspiracy to maintain silence about the conspirators' effort has so far been successful. The impeachable offenses which can be traced directly to "the Vice President's office" will remain hidden until after 2009.
The judgement of history on the men who drove this libelous conspiracy to avoid proper scrutiny by the electorate of their administration's acts of warmongering, and who absolved and protected the conspirators, will be much harsher than Judge Walton's. And there will be no commutation of that judgement for decades, or centuries.
The thing that bothers me about the case is that the conspiracy--first, to deceive, and then, to subvert justice-- has been so successful.
Its first triumph was that the complete suppression of the WHIG conspiracy to deceive the American people, accomplished in part through the denunciation of Amb. Wilson and his wife, was able to hold together through the 2004 election.
The second was that the conspiracy to maintain silence about the conspirators' effort has so far been successful. The impeachable offenses which can be traced directly to "the Vice President's office" will remain hidden until after 2009.
The judgement of history on the men who drove this libelous conspiracy to avoid proper scrutiny by the electorate of their administration's acts of warmongering, and who absolved and protected the conspirators, will be much harsher than Judge Walton's. And there will be no commutation of that judgement for decades, or centuries.
stoner: The Ace of Spades
To read about the other chief co-conspirator, Karl Rove, and his role in the successful cover-up, read The Ace of Spades.
stoner: The Lady V., and the Bald Man of WHIG
For an explanation of the WHIG conspiracy, and its components, click here.
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