Donor fatigue and donor fatheads
Thomas Barnett
¦"Farmers, Charities Join Forces To Block Famine-Relief Revamp: Bush Administration Wants to Purchase African Food; Lobby Says Buy American; Proposal Stuck in Congress," by Roger Thurow and Scott Kilman, Wall Street Journal, 26 October 2005, p. A1.
¦"Aid to Quake-Hit Pakistan Trickles: Some Fear Donor Apathy Could Further Inflame Ire At West in Volatile Region," by Zahid Hussain and Peter Wonacott, Wall Street Journal, 26 October 2005, p. A17.
Don't get me wrong, because I think the WSJ is the best. But sometimes it does just repeat stories from the Post or Times, acting like it got there first. I can't remember the exact date, but I blogged the first story (about blocked reform on food aid) a while back, from NYT I believe.
Still, that one was a bit cursory in its treatment and this one is more in-depth, so worth reading.
And it's such a huge reminder that when it comes to stuff, as in our food products, we're more than happy to waste tons of money accomplishing little of utility. But when it comes to actually empowering people, like African farmers, so there isn't so much famine and poverty and conflict and terror on that continent--buddy, that is SO complicated and complex.
I mean, why do right by the Gap (and God) when there are so many constituents and companies and ag corporations and homegrown religious charities whose oxen would be gored. Yes, yes, we can feed mouths and liberate souls over there or we can fill pockets and grease palms over here.
As with so many debates that pretend to be about national security or foreign affairs, this one too is all about the money and who gets to control it.
And that's so sad.
Meanwhile, the donors get fatigued, the disasters get so old (why cover a temblor in Pakistan that kills 100k when you can cover Wilma here at home that kills in the single digits?), and the suffering in the Gap goes unabated.
And yeah, on days like this I do find myself considering the judgments of those who say America gets the terrorism it deserves--not because of what we do abroad (the old canard about our support for Israel) but because of what we don't do abroad, which is value "their" lives (be there foreigners or our own troops) over "our" jobs (or let's just say some jobs in some congressional districts).
Some transitions from the Cold War military go well, others stuck in a time machine
¦"Army/Navy Specials: Once Spurned by Developers, Shut-Down Military Bases Are Now Sought-After Sites," by Michael Corkery, Wall Street Journal, 26 October 2005, p. B1.
¦"When The Army Gets It Wrong: Wounded soldiers often--too often--find themselves having to battle the Pentagon over pay mistakes," by Alex Kingsbury and Julian E. Barnes, U.S. News & World Report, 24 October 2005, p. 24.
Winning the Global War on Terrorism, as I say in the current issue of Esquire>, is all about moving off the Cold War stance and accepting the reality of what it will take, in terms of force structure change, to generate lasting victories (i.e., winning the peace and not just the wars).
We in the national security community do this well in some instances, quite badly in others.
We've had a hard time reducing our basing infrastructure, in large part because so many in Congress fight this process tooth and nail, keeping open facilities in their districts that are no longer needed but provide jobs to their constituents.
Here's the painful rub on that one: time and time again when bases close, the local economy does better in the long run without them. Huge tracts of new land enter the market, both residential and commercial (to include industrial), and our private sector knows no bounds in its cleverness in generating new wealth from these opportunities previously held off-limits. Smart communities welcome base closures, knowing the short-term pain will be surpassed by the long-term gain.
So, sometimes the world's last centrally-planned economy, known as the Pentagon, gets it right (privatization of unneeded infrastructure).
And yet, sometimes it still gets it so wrong, like the horribly stove-piped information systems that so routinely screw up or delay salary payments, medical payments, travel voucher reimbursements, equipment purchase reimbursements, and basically any payment you can name.
If you're a defense contractor with a lot of money on the line, then you adjust and simply waste a lot of time and effort to make sure you get paid. But if you're rank and file, either uniform or civilian, you just suffer the slings and arrows.
When I worked for the government I got routinely shafted on travel, nickled and dimed like you wouldn't believe. Then every so often you'd get dramatically overpaid, and God help you if you pointed that out, because fixing the overages is even harder than fixing the shortfalls.
Here's the description of the pathetic state of affairs today in the Defense Department:
The problems result in part from the military's reliance on separate finance, medical and personnel databases. The current system, designed in the 1970s, is so antiquated that sometimes data on a particular soldier must be manually extracted from one database for use in another. The Defense Department is trying to create a combined system, but the project has fallen behind because of the sheer complexity of the task.
Yes, yes, combining databases in the Fed is SO much more complicated than doing it anywhere else.
Isn't it always amazing how we make changes far more easily in the realm of "stuff" than in the realm of people? Need to divest infrastructure. That works decently. But need to makes things work more efficiently for personnel? That's just SO complex!
But the same thing is true on strategy. Show me a strategic opponent that gets you lotsa stuff and that's a good enemy! But show me one whose defeat will demand mostly manpower. Oooh! That's SO complicated and complex!
But has PACOM read my China piece in Esquire?
As my old boss Hank Gaffney likes to muse, "Mebbe, mebbe not."
I snipped a bit in Pacific Command's direction in the China piece, but frankly I really like seeing Fox Fallon in that post. Having the Navy guy talk about mil-mil cooperation with China is serious "Nixon goes to China" stuff, so the man has a chance to make some real history here, and who doesn't want to do that?
Anyway, despite recently ratcheting up my speaking fees to cut down on the frequency (did same thing when PNM came out), the invites don't slow down. In fact, it only gets better/worse, depending on whether you're my accountant or my kids.
Not all offers come with offers, so to speak, and you get the private sector mostly to pay for the public one. But in certain situations the public side can make offers too (they have their ways), and so I get an invite from PACOM recently with modest fee attached.
Long way to go when you can make same or more much closer to home, but truth be told, PACOM is awfully hard to turn down no matter what, given what good and/or bad it could do in coming years with China.
Real issue here isn't money but time. Going to Hawaii is a lot of time, no mattter how you do it. Invite to CENTCOM or SOCOM in Tampa is a snap, because it's just 24 hours. But Hawaii is a commitment.
But here's how it works out so cool!
We had planned a family vacation in Hawaii the very same week of the invite! So we work something out that's fair to all sides: I get a great talk in, they get a great talk out of me, my family still gets me on vacation, and so on.
Life is rarely this fair to all involved, and I already look forward to this trip. Hawaii is a stunning place. Some of the coolest hiking you'll ever do.
The China Causcus in the House: that's ALSO all about money
¦"China's Rising Clout Splits Republicans: In U.S. Congress, One Faction Stresses Benefits of Trade, While Other Fears Military Threat," by Murray Hiebert, Wall Street Journal, 27 October 2005, p. A4.
Interesting profile in WSJ on the struggle between the "realists" in the China Congressional Caucus, led by China hawks, and the Norman Angell types ("Great Illusion," 1910 and Nobel Peace Prize 1933) who believe peace comes through trade (U.S.-China Study Group). Both are House groups. Rummy favors the hawks, and John Snow favors the traders.
But the real "realism" unites the two sides far more than the hawks would care to admit. The Caucus is chock full of House Armed Services Committee types whose districts are chock full of defense contractors threatened by our growing economic alliance with China (can't wage war if we get too tight), and their economic self-interest differs not one whit from the traders whose districts are commensurately benefiting from China's economic rise. The leader of the Caucus (Randy Forbes) naturally hails from the Navy's major shipbuilding center, located in Virginia. Guess what his answer to China's rise is? Lots and lots of naval ships built in his district. The bigger and more high tech the better, and if they have no real use in the GWOT and don't do a damn thing to keep Americans alive on the ground in Iraq, Afghanistan and all the other places we'll wage war in the future, well that's just too damn bad. The man's got jobs to protect in his district, our soldiers' lives are somebody else's business.
But of course, I say something like that and certainly I'm "soft on defense." I'm "naïve" because I believe wars are to be waged in the Gap instead of the Taiwan Straits.
Yes, yes, I've got nothing on these "realists."
This is trade winners and losers, plain and simple. The hawks just dress their version up as "national security" when it's really all about the all-mighty buck in the end.
Both sides want to profit from China's rise. It's your job as voters to decide which route makes more sense for America in the long run: public-sector defense spending and arms trafficking (.e., we sell abroad what we can't use here in the Pentagon) versus moving our economy on to new levels of high technology that keep us competitive versus the rising manufacturing powerhouse that is China, and finally investing in the SysAdmin force that will create lasting victories in the GWOT instead of simply waging driveby regime change.
But don't kid yourself. Money makes the world go around, especially in Congress. This is not a serious discussion of national security, which in Asia would focus on Taiwan and North Korea. This is all about who makes the most money off China's rise. One side is honest about their greed, the other is not.
And don't get me wrong. I don't have a problem with greed. I prefer it to racism and nationalism and hatred any day of the week.
I just like mine unvarnished, minus the hypocrisy and the flag-waving dress-up by national security "experts" who are simply in-House lobbyists for defense contractors.
The transnational-patriotic gap in America
¦"Spurning America: Liberal elites see the world differently from other Democrats and Americans as a whole," by Michael Barone, U.S. News & World Report, 24 October 2005, p. 28.
Interesting Barone piece on the transnational elites separating culturally over time from the rank-and-file patriotic Americans, the former can't understand this Global War on Terrorism while the latter end up waging it.
Barone cites the same sort of analysis from Sam Huntington that I used from Who Are We? in BFA.
It's a challenging article, and Barone makes good points, but you have to ask yourself if this split is not the breakdown between our definitions of national security and international security. These two were made one by the bomb, MAD, and the superpower rivalry with the Sovs: to attack America was to risk blowing up the world, so the concepts of national and international security were made, for all practical purposes, identical.
That identity is shattered by the collapse of the Cold War. Now, Osama kills one million in Chicago and we can't hold anyone hostage with our nukes, so deterrence disappears and the strong linkages between national and international security are severed. The creation of the Dept. of Homeland Security is an expression of that split, and that's why I consider it such a mistake, not just bureaucratically but as a signal of intent to the rest of the world.
So we see transnationalism and patriotism (our version of nationalism, and yeah, there's a huge difference between the two) at odds in the GWOT, with each side calling the other "naïve" and declaring itself "realistic."
And it's that having to choose sides that I have so much trouble with, so I try to split the difference, especially in Blueprint for Action, and quite naturally, I will be accused of being flippant for doing so, because compromisers and deal-makers are always viewed with suspicion by those who confuse the inability to learn and change their minds with fortitude and character.
And yet the way that connects the two ends of the spectrum, that middle ground, is where all the wiggle room is found, as well as most of the solutions. BFA comes off, in many ways, as one big statement that says all-in-one solution sets don't work, that they never work.
The UN cannot do it all. Nor will Sachs' huge push of aid, nor Bono's debt forgiveness. Nor can SOCOM pull it off on its own, as Kaplan would have you believe. Nor the Marines with the three-block-war. Nor the Army.
Nor the G-8. Nor the International Criminal Court. Nor that prize-winning IAEA.
Not even the all-mighty U.S. Leviathan force that suffered its 2000th casualty recently.
No, just bits and pieces that require a rule set to rule them all, and in its transparency bind them.
The middle way. A blueprint for moving ahead instead of just decrying the present.
Media connectivity and content in the Middle East: the balance is tilting
¦"Rockin' In Iraq: Locals embrace escapist fare as TV biz rises from ashes," by Ali Jaafar, Variety, 24-30 October 2005, p. 1.
¦"At Mipcom, Al-Jazeera fights for global acceptance," by Elizabeth Guider, Variety, 24-30 October 2005, p. 6.
¦"Homer sobers up for Mideast," by Ali Jaafar, Variety, 24-30 October 2005, p. 19.
The reality shows in Iraq are just like ours, but instead of revamping "this old house," they rebuild "this old bomb site." And Iraqi "Idol" contestants need to risk more than their egos to get up on stage.
But despite the dangers, there is no doubt that media connectivity in Iraq has emerged as the untold success story of Saddam's fall:
As the Western media focus on the uncertain results of last week's national elections, there's one story that has flown below the radar: The success of the Iraqi TV business.
Since the April 2003 ouster of Sadam Hussein, the area has seen the birth of 30 TV stations, the same number of radio stations and an estimated 180 newspapers.
The quality of the programming may be uneven, but Iraq's new media moguls have one thing in their favor; When your audience is afraid to go outside, it's good for ratings.
The immediate goals are prestige and entertainment. Entrepreneurs want to reach the people without government interference or propaganda. It's a boom town and folks are moving in.
The best bit on this: one station backed by the U.S. is repurposing Uday Hussein's vast collection of Western movies and soap operas for domestic consumption (soaps are loved the world over).
Each of Iraq's 18 provinces has its own TV station, as does "each ethnic community from the Kurds to the Assyrians to every political party." Then there's the extra dozen or so satellite providers.
As one government spokesman (Iraqi) puts it, "There is hardly a house without a satellite dish and there is hardly a neighborhood without some kind of local broadcasting."
What changes? Everything. As the article notes, "While heavily controlled state media and cultural institutions previously pushed pro-Hussein propaganda, the order of the day now is unprecendented freedom of expression."
No sat dishes were allowed under Saddam. There were 7 million sold in the first year after the invasion.
Most interesting is how young Iraqis have gone wild with text messaging.
Here's the best argument in the piece:
The long-term effects on a generation of Iraqis glued to their sets and cut off from their communities is an open question. But most Iraqis have displayed a remarkable ability to absorb cultural influences from the Middle East and the West, while retaining a uniquely Iraqi flavor.
So the revolution will be televised after all.
Watching Al-Jazeera try to go more global is fascinating, because if it wants viewers, it will have to open up its coverage and take off the ideological blinders. Lotsa Arabs and Muslims in the U.S. that the station wants to capture, but these young viewers, growing up with Comedy Central, "prefer their news delivered with tongue in cheek rather than with earnest advocacy."
Curse that Jon Stewart!
Mipcom refers to a global conference of TV nets coming together to make distro deals. Al-Jazeera wants into the U.S., but how much will it have to change to accomplish that? Well, how much did CNN have to change to become CNN Turkey (where I've appeared)?
Yes, yes, the coming Reformation will be televised--back to the Middle East.
And I, for one, will be watching.
But it's not all love and death. Watching the Simpsons invade the Middle East is equally fascinating. A Dubai-broadcaster gives Homer (now Omar Shamshoon) a make-over: no beer and no pork. Bart is badder, or should I say Badr. Oh, and no satirical references to religion-anybody's.
As always, they want the connectivity, they just want to censor the content somewhat. Inconceivable to us, but very reasonable to them. Our response should be patience. Nobody likes the fire hose when it comes to cultural change.
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