Barnett - Tony Cordesman is hard to take in anything but small doses. Like most great analysts, he comes off as incredibly full of himself and stuffy (this is why the humor in my work is so crucial), but truth be told, the man is one of the very best minds we have on military matters.
He recently delivered a speech at the JFK School at Harvard in which he reminded all of us that there is always a lengthy postwar reconstruction following any substantial war. For example, his dating of the Civil War is 1861-1877, meaning he tacks on at least 12 years of tumultuous and violent reconstruction that involved plenty of hunting down the remaining rebels/insurgents, and the ponderous rebuilding of infrastructure both economic and social-political. Think the Confederacy was a paradise for freed slaves in 1866? Think there wasn't a lot of profiteering and war crimes? Think it didn't engender huge amounts of resentment (plenty of it violent) from the masses living there?
Of course it all did.
Think we weren't working Germany and Japan for similar lengths of time (in the latter instance having to put in place a modern state with laws to replace a largely feudal one—sound familiar?)?
And yet, so many are ready to condemn this war and its aftermath as a done deal—a complete and utter failure because it didn't wrap up at the top of the hour like some neat hour-long TV drama.
Yes, it turned out to be a mini-series, and not just an uplifting movie that ends with Iraqi kids waving American flags as the tanks roll by. But unless you're completely ignorant of history, there should be no surprise in any of this.
War is hell, but it's relatively simply and easy to conduct. Peace is like comedy—far harder to master because of its great subtleties (dare I say, even "nuances"?).
Whether we go with Kerry or stick with Bush, eventually this "war on terror" must start defining a finish line, a happy ending, or a peace to be preserved. Call it a "nuisance" or whatever you like, but eventually you have to stop calling it a war.
We can count up insurgents for as long as you like, killing them as fast as we can. Or we can start seeing this war within the context of everything else, and defining the victories along with defeats, and expanding our pool of allies to match our expanding pool of enemies.
How many earths are required?
¦"Group warns of earth's dwindling resources," by Jonathan Fowler, Boston Globe, 22 October 2004, p. A8.
The World Wildlife Fund (to which my spouse funnels money, natch!) put out is annual "ecological footprint" pub, and it's a good one to review. Their point is that, increasingly thanks to globalization, any country's footprint is far larger—in a geographical sense. As a whole (but mostly in the Core), we're "outspending" the world's resources by about a fifth every year, which—of course—in unsustainable.
But instead of needless fear-monging, the report asks the logical question: How is the world going to rationalize that equation. Here I am reminded of the Architect's model of network growth and change: you create something (global economy), it aggregates and grows in size (Old Core joined by New Core), and all that stress needs to be rationalized (rise of environmentalism in most advanced states), but then that new rule set needs to spread across the planet (acceptance).
Can you shove it down the Gap's throats? Or the New Core's? No. You have to encourage them toward development so they can reach those tipping points on their own. Preaching environmentalism to people still stuck in poverty is a cruel sort of hypocrisy. You want them to join the emerging environmental rule set? Let them join the "club" of development as quickly as possible. Their success rates will force current members of the Core to adjust their ecological footprints far better and more quickly than preaching self-denial in the Core and non-self-actualization in the Gap.
The "natural" OPEC
¦"A New OPEC in the Pipeline?" op-ed by Artem Agoulnik, Washington Post, 20 October 2004, p. A27.
Good think-ahead piece on a phenom I've been tracking for years with interest, but not much fear, despite my past life as a Soviet expert: the rising influence of Russia in natural gas markets around the world but especially along its vast borders (I mean, the only places Russia does not border is Africa and Latin America, otherwise it's everywhere!).
Natural gas is "the fastest-growing source of primary energy, with global consumption projected to rise by over 2 percent annually through 2025" (and that's probably low given the much-desired switchover from coal to gas to generate electricity and the reality that—at first at least—most of the hydrogen we tap for the embryonic hydrogen economy will start from natural gas). US use alone is projected to rise almost 40% by 2025.
The piece is a bit alarmist: I'm not sure we need to hear that the "Kremlin has emerged, virtually unchallenged, as the dominant global player in natural gas," for example. I mean, geez, Russia actually has the world's biggest supply, so what exactly are we supposed to challenge about that? So Russia sees a good thing in the making and is doing it's damnedest to set up all sorts of pipelines in every direction possible. What exactly is so bad about that. As I have written before in US Government pubs: "good pipelines make good neighbors." Agoulnik may imagine one-sided dominance, but I see mutually-assured dependence.
Can you believe Russia is now trying to organize the world's biggest producers of natural gas so they can sell at the "highest price possible"? Imagine that! We tell them to become capitalists and they start acting like they should charge us the highest price possible for stuff they have and we want to buy more of over time?
Russia really is in the Core: it's well-educated, wonderfully secular in its government, can police it's own territory without outside help, and seems well on the path of rotating its leadership regularly. Is it close to a one-party state? Yes. Is the police and government role in political life too much? For my tastes, yes. But how much change do you expect in 15 years after seven decades of communism following centuries of absolutist monarchies?
I would trade Russia's gap OPEC for Saudi Arabia's oil OPEC any day. Yes, the Sovs did fund terrorism for many years, but they are out of that business now (a key criteria for joining the Core). The House of Saud, meanwhile . . ..
Posted by Thomas P.M. Barnett |
