Putin's Political Tipping Point: He's Bad for Business
Thomas P.M. Barnett :: Weblog
thomaspmbarnett.com
¦"In Putin's Russia, Business Struggles For a Foothold: Across Country, Bureaucracy Strangles Free Enterprise; Ms. Ivashina Closes Shop," by Guy Chazan, Wall Street Journal, 27 April 2005, p. A1.
¦"Yukos Puts Putin in Quandary: Mixed Signals Raise Questions About Control Over Government," by Gregory L. White, Wall Street Journal, 25 April 2005, p. A12.
The worst signs for Putin's rule are the declining morale of the business community. If he is half as smart as he seems to be—or even thinks he is—he better soon come to the conclusion that he and his party won't have much to protect come the 2008 election unless they shift this growing perception.
Frankly, when tax agencies continue to wage their terrorism by taxation techniques, especially against foreign firms, it makes it look like Putin is just a puppet of the silovki (power-types; sil is the Russian root for power and ovki is an all-purpose Russian suffix to turn an adjective into a noun, as in "power" to "the power guys" of "the powerful") who really run the Kremlin.
Posted by Thomas P.M. Barnett at 07:40 AM Evoked? Provoked? Ask Tom
The Leviathan's Squeezed, but the SysAdmin Bleeds
¦ "A New Workhorse's Heavy Load: Nine-Nation Jet Fighter Project Runs Over Budget and Faces Cutbacks," by Leslie Wayne, New York Times, 27 April 2005, p. C1.
¦"Bloodied Marines Sound Off About Want of Armor and Men," by Michael Moss, New York Times, 25 April 2005, p. A1.
The Joint Strike Fighter is the be all and end all fighter for the "born joint" force, meaning a force that is bought with an eye to economizing and making as efficient as possible the purchases for the four services so that their fielded forces fight most effectively in a combined fashion. Nine nations involved (all NATO Core, plus Seam State Turkey and major non-NATO ally Australia). U.S. in for about $16 billion so far, and other 8 have put in a good $4b. The program will end up costing—last check—just over a quarter trillion dollars, but don't hold me to that number!
This workhorse of the Leviathan force, and it will be owned mostly by the U.S., given the incredible cost.
Meanwhile, the SysAdmin Marines are plenty pissed to think that lives are being lost for lack of armor, both for their bodies and their vehicles. And they are right to be pissed, meaning we have to start asking ourselves collectively across the Core: How much do we want to spend on our competing versions of Leviathan, when much of that spending is aimed at one another, and how much could we collectively muster to fund a Core-wide SysAdmin force?
The second thought on any military "stuff" is—however—that stuff is rarely the main difference between life and death. How you use it is. That's what the military calls tactics, techniques and procedures, or TTP. You provide the best armor in the world and He will eventually figure some other way to screw you over: by piercing it, going around it, whatever. Point being: the "stuff" alone is never what's wanting. There is never enough gear, there is only enough adjustments and innovation in tactics, techniques and procedures.
It's right and good to complain about the lack of stuff, but where—in all these deaths and injuries—are we hearing complaints about, and adjustments to, the TTP? I know those stories must be out there, right? If so, who's covering them?
Posted by Thomas P.M. Barnett at 07:40 AM Evoked? Provoked? Ask Tom
Guess the World's Still Got Some Curves!
¦"Fewer Foreign Student Applying to School in USA," "Snapshots" by April Umminger and Alejandro Gonzalez, USA Today, 26 April 2005, p. 1A.
Factoid chart on page 1, lower left.
The declining rate of foreign students applying to graduate schools in the U.S. slowed down quite a bit in '04-'05 from the '03-'04 school year. China and India still drop, but far less. South Korea stayed stead after 14% drop the previous year. The Middle East gained six percent after gaining 4% the previous year.
The China and India numbers reflect the Indian and Chinese "threat" a la Friedman's Flat Earth global society.
But hey, maybe the Arabs don't hate us as much as we thought? Or was the previous year's drop that fantastic that it naturally had to go up?
Posted by Thomas P.M. Barnett at 07:39 AM Evoked? Provoked? Ask Tom
The Real Specter Stalking Africa
¦"Malaria Trial Could Set a Model For Financing of Costly Vaccines," by Marilyn Chase, Wall Street Journal, 26 April 2005, p. A1.
¦"In Africa: Guns Aren't the Only Killers," by Marc Lacey, New York Times (big print edition), 21-27 March 2005, p. 3.
You have to give it to Bill Gates. Man has some great passions and may accomplish some great things. Gates and British finance minister Gordon Brown are champions of new funding tools. One is a proposed International Finance Facility for Immunization, where Core nations float bonds to raise billions to supply Gap states with existing vaccines. Another tool is preordering vaccines at a set price to encourage Big Pharma to make the effort to create them (vaccines for most Gap diseases are basically money losers, so the Core governments basically guarantee a return on their investment.
Both seem like simple but brilliant new rule sets to shrink the Gap.
Boy, it would be fun to have a $30 billion foundation that could do things like that!
Why does it matter?
As the Lacey (brilliant reporter) piece points out in the larger-print edition retread of an old article I already blogged: data from Africa suggests that in a conflict zone, less than 5 percent of the deaths are due to the violence, with somewhere in the range of 98 percent of them due to the everything else that happens when people are forced to flee (illness being the biggie, but also malnutrition, exhaustion, etc.)
The fighting in the Congo is now believed to have killed 3.8 million since 1998, the most deaths in any conflict since World War II. So deep in Gap that there's no real effort by the Core to stop any of the killing, just some pathetic bits here and there by the UN. Really makes you want to believe in international organizations, does it?
Me, it just makes me less sensitive to the charge of "imperialism" and "hubris" and all the rest of that crap.
Posted by Thomas P.M. Barnett at 07:39 AM Evoked? Provoked? Ask Tom
The SysAdmin's Job Sucks, But Somebody Has to Do It
¦"U.S. Training Pakistani Units Fighting Qaeda," by Carlotta Gall, New York Times, 27 April 2005, p. A6.
¦"Anti-Drug Gains in Colombia Don't Reduce Flow to U.S.: $3 Billion Brings Successes, but Traffickers Still Get the Narcotics Out," by Joel Brinkley, New York Times, 28 April 2005, p. A3.
Two stories on tough SysAdmin work.
U.S. admits it's training Pakistani military on night flying and airborne assault tactics. No great surprise, just not admitted publicly until now. Obviously, as the story says, the presence of U.S. troops in Pakistan is "extremely delicate." The Lt. General involved, David Barno, says:
If you were to look back five years ago, you would see large training camps and a large footprint. And now it's more very, very small groups—of three or four or five. They spend a short time getting some training here and then maybe move to get some training somewhere else.
Long slow job, that draining the swamp. But it's awfully important stuff in Pakistan. The big bad bomb goes off in the U.S. and we are more than likely to trace activity back to Pakistan, so the urge to do something dramatic in that country would be stronbg. Better to keep them on the run in their preferred location then let that event go down. That's why the Special Forces are so important. They do their jobs right and little will be heard.
More importantly, little will be required.
You don't get that same feeling in Colombia. Less effort, obviously, but also far less perceived payoff.
Something like this is run in an interagency manner, meaning a variety of federal departments being involved (obviously Defense, Justice, Homeland Security) and the whole thing coordinated by national security council. What is their view of this disparity? We are told "there is little interagency consensus."
Working the supply issue on terrorists seems to work, because the U.S. has no "demand" for terrorism. Wish the same were true on narcotics, but it has to make you wonder if we're attacking the right problem. |
