Who would pay for a global cop?

Lee Kuan Yew had some interesting words to say recently with regard to current events in a piece titled "East Asia and the Bush Victory".

Asia's main concern is security. So strong was the conviction that George W. Bush was the leader to counter the threats from Islamist terrorists, North Korea's nuclear weapons and a possible war with China if Taiwan moves toward independence that Japan's and Australia's prime ministers, Junichiro Koizumi and John Howard, ignored diplomatic niceties and publicly declared, before the election, their strong support for the President. Many other Asian leaders privately shared these views but observed diplomatic reticence. Whatever reservations Muslim leaders in Indonesia and Malaysia had, they knew clearly where President Bush stood on key issues.

The subtext of this is that Asia has outsourced global security to the USA. Is the USA the de facto global cop, bankrolled by Asia? Consider also this statistic gleaned from the Asia Times, December 5, 2004:

The central banks of Japan and China have the world's largest foreign-exchange reserves, and much of this is invested in the Treasury bills that the US Federal Reserve uses to underwrite budget deficits and stabilize the dollar. Combined holdings of government debt by the two countries are believed to amount to at least $1.2 trillion, offering an unparalleled ability to influence internal policies, if they wish.

It is a reasonable inference to conclude that they are satisfied with Bush and with US external policy. In addition, by backing the USA indirectly, China and Japan would avoid attracting the direct ire of radical Islamic militants.

Whence outreach?

According to Associated Press, fewer foreign students are attending US high schools. The Christian Science Monitor notes that foreign enrollment at US colleges is dropping. It had also been noted last year that foreign visits to the US had dropped sharply. This will have negative consequences on the brain drain (to which the H1B visa contributes) that the US has traditionally gained from, as well as reducing one mode of cultural outreach on the personal level, slowing the spread of American values in the world.

That's worth contrasting with the recent report of the Defense Science Board critical of how the US was engaging the world.

To succeed, we must understand the United States is engaged in a generational and global struggle about ideas, not a war between the West and Islam. It is more than a war against the tactic of terrorism...
...those who shaped overseas information and cultural activities believed the challenges required an American response, not just a government response. It was not a task for diplomats and military commanders only. Writers, film directors, scholars, journalists, poets, playwrights, librarians, scientists, foundation executives, business leaders, and labor leaders became involved directly through temporary service in government and indirectly through exchanges and other means.

Impending water tug-of-war in Central Asia?

Here's one proposal for a megaproject that doesn't seem to have moved much since it was (re)announced.

Russian scientists are reviving an old Soviet plan to divert some of Siberia's mightiest rivers [the Ob and Irtysh] to the parched former Soviet republics of central Asia.
Its backers say it will solve a growing water crisis in [central Asia] and replenish the now desiccated Aral Sea...
Recent increases in the flows of Siberia's rivers, probably due to global warming, have raised fears that a less salty Arctic Ocean could shut down the Gulf Stream and trigger icy winters across Europe. Diverting part of the flow of the rivers could prevent that.

The global warming bit is probably a ploy to garner international support, i.e. funding. According to the piece, Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan are growing cotton, a water-intensive crop; as a result, they have the highest water consumption per capita in the world.

Meanwhile, an NGO in Kazakhstan is getting edgy about China's increased water usage in Xinjiang as the region is developed.

Mels Eleusizov heads the Kazakh nongovernmental organization Tabigat (Nature). He said the Irtysh and Ili rivers, which both originate in mountainous areas of Xinjiang before crossing into Kazakhstan, are being increasingly drained to serve China’s needs.

It would certainly reduce the value of the Russian water diversion megaproject if the Chinese diverted the Irtysh at its source.

Why youth bulges are dangerous

According to a report by Population Action International, young adults are correlated with civil conflict:

Countries in which young adults made up a large proportion of the adult population — 40 percent or more — were more than twice as likely to experience an outbreak of civil conflict during the 1990s as those below this benchmark. These youth-bulge countries are in the developing world, where youth unemployment rates are generally three to five times that of adults.
High fertility rates coupled with declining infant mortality are the major reason for high proportions of young adults. In East Asia, proportions of young adults began to decline significantly less than two decades after fertility began its own fall.

Immature frontal lobe development seems to be a likely neurological candidate explanation. According to thie piece on teenage brains, full maturation of self-control doesn't happen until people reach their mid-20s:

Ron Dahl, a pediatrician and child psychiatric researcher at the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center, says a desire for thrills and taking risks is a building block of adolescence. The frontal lobes help put the brakes on such behavior, but they're also one of the last areas of the brain to develop fully. Located right behind the forehead, the frontal lobes actually grow larger than adult size in puberty. But the process is far from complete; refinement of the frontal lobes can continue into the early 20s.

Thus, the young would tend to have a lower threshold for violence, as their brains literally have fewer checks and balances.

Obvious in retrospect

This is an idea now obvious in retrospect that it's remarkable that SF writers didn't seem to seize upon it earlier. Perhaps the notion of machines being inflexible and humans having to adapt was part of the cyberpunk ethos.

A device that automatically moves electrodes through the brain to seek out the strongest signals is taking the idea of neural implants to a new level. Scary as this sounds, its developers at the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena say devices like this will be essential if brain implants are ever going to work.

In short, the device will adapt dynamically as the neurons about it shift. The brain is a dynamic, organic process, not merely a machine to plug into once and easily forgotten. Perhaps in a decade or few this type of interface will enable neurally linked cybernetic prosthetics.

Was Haiti the model for democracy in Iraq?

Was Clinton's experience with Haiti the playbook for the current administration's nationbuilding efforts in Iraq? Consider these remarks by Ambassador James F. Dobbins in 1995.

At the height of the U.S. military presence, shortly after the MNF's initial deployment, over 23,000 American military personnel were stationed in Haiti. As of September 1995, there were 2,500 American soldiers, out of a total of 6,000 UN peacekeeping troops, and 800 UN civilian police, drawn from thirty-one countries. In February 1996, the mission of this peacekeeping force will be concluded. The troops will return home, having successfully completed a complex and challenging operation.
Completion of this operation has been keyed to two processes. The first of these has been the disbanding of Haiti's old institutions of repression and the creation of a new professional civilian police force, along with the reform of the judiciary. The second process has been one of democratic renewal and the constitutional transfer of power. This process involves the holding of local, municipal, parliamentary, and finally, presidential elections, so that by the time U.S. and other military forces leave Haiti in February 1996, the entire Haitian government structure, from the lowest to the highest levels, will be renewed, based on a new exercise of democratic choice, within the framework of the Haitian constitution.

The first point of comparison is the disbanding of Iraq's institutions of repression. The Iraqi army and security apparatus were disbanded. The professional civilian police force is being reconstituted. We don't hear much about the Iraqi judiciary, though. Things haven't turned out as scripted, but no need to belabor the point here.

The second point is the emphasis on renewing the government structure, capped off with presidential elections. We are on course for national elections in Iraq next year.

There was also "a massive level of international assistance" to revive Haiti's economy; this corresponds roughly with the administration's reconstruction efforts.

Staying the course

Tawhid and Jihad has apparently declared its alliegience to al Qaida and Osama bin Laden; the alleged statement also affirmed the common goal of expelling "infidels" from the Arabian peninsula. One analyst was quoted as saying it was a media stunt to frustrate the USA, their common enemy, as well as leveraging the reputation of al Qaida to boost their own.

I'd say there's more to this psyop. Consider the recent tape from al Qaida's number two operative a mere two months ago:

"The defeat of America in Iraq and Afghanistan has become a matter of time, with God’s help," al-Zawahri said on the tape. "The Americans in both countries are between two fires, if they continue they bleed to death and if they withdraw they lose everything."

Given that stated "two fires" objective of al Qaida, it is reasonble to infer that the announcement from Tawhid and Jihad was also intended to force the USA to maintain its force levels in Iraq after the election regardless of who wins, and thus keep pressure off Afghanistan. The statement does not affect Bush's position, but it is a counter to Kerry's attempt to distinguish the conflict in Iraq from the larger War on Terror.

Trouble in paradise

In 2002, suicide bombers hit a hotel in Kenya. In 2003, terrorists hit a Marriott in Malaysia. Recently, rockets were fired at a Sheraton in Iraq. Now a Hilton was bombed in Egypt.

Hotels likely offer a high concentration of foreigners, and thus are attractive to insurgents in that they're less likely to kill locals. Soft targets it is.

Fear is the mind killer

Researchers have found in rats that anxiety takes cognition offline; the affected rats reverted to habit under stress. They contrasted cognitive learning with stimulus-response (habit) learning, and found the mechanisms competed.

There are two obvious ways to compensate for the impact of fear. One is to ingrain habits which would be adaptive responses when facing stressful situations. The other is stress management. The latter has the benefit of enabling cognition.

The waiting game

The chief of the US Army Reserve warned of a serious risk of running out of critical specialists. This is in line with the earlier reports of the Selective Service System preparing for the scenario of a skills-based draft, targeting computer skills and foreign languages.

It's clear that those fighting the USA are likely in a waiting game, prolonging conflict with the expectation that exhaustion will set in for the US armed forces. With the US less able to project force, they would be able to act more freely with fewer concerns about US intervention. From their vantage point, the greater the amount of US intervention now, the faster they can bring about such a state. Limits have been already reached. For instance, the USA cannot intervene in Sudan, as it doesn't have the forces to spare.

The USA is pushing to train local forces in nine countries in Africa and other countries in Central Asia, diverting more resources to training Iraqi police.

Such initiatives and cooperation can be interpreted as the outsourcing of security. Whatever it takes to reasonably avoid a draft in the US.

Blast or no?

According to one report, there was a mushroom cloud observed in North Korea. US officials have denied that it was a nuclear blast, suggesting that it could have been a forest fire. However, there's also a missile base and underground test range in the area. It could have been an accident, conventional or nuclear, which would be consistent with the lack of triumphant rhetoric from North Korea.

Hard numbers about US power grid vulnerabilities

It turns out that a loss as little as 2% of the grid substations can take down the entire system in a cascade failure; presumably high load-boarding substations were targeted in that simulation. The nature of the vulnerability is not new to those who have kept up with scale-free analyses of the power grid, but the figure is. Among the proposed solutions is keeping an eye on increasing redundancy in the network when making future expansions. Redundancy is less efficient, and not automatically rewarded by market forces. You can have cheaper power, but not without risk.

Not simply insane

According to a press release by Royal College of Psychiatrists, terrorists are not technically insane.

The term 'terrorist' is not a psychiatric diagnosis, the Royal College of Psychiatrists heard today. Dr Andrew Silke, a forensic psychologist at the University of Leicester and an adviser to the UN, said the outstanding characteristic of terrorists is 'normality' with forensic assessments of terrorists from the Baader Meinhof to Al Queda revealing high levels of mental health.
The widespread view that terrorists are isolated, vulnerable young men with paranoid or borderline personality disorders, is false. It is entirely perpetuated by experts relying on second hand reports, he told the conference.
A survey of 180 members of Al Queda revealed that all came from middle or upper class backgrounds, with two thirds being college educated, one in ten with a postgraduate degree and 73 per cent married with children, he said.
Dr Wilfred Rusch, a Berlin psychiatrist employed by the German Government to assess Baader Meinhof terrorists concluded that none of these people are crazy - there is no psychiatric explanation as to why they were involved in terrorism.

This makes intuitive sense when one considers that those who are unable to maintain the appearance of normality are unsuitable for use as sleepers. Therefore, those with impulse control are selected for. So what does drive them?

Dr Silke said it was important to understand that the word terrorist is a political not a psychiatric diagnosis, with catalyst events, usually involving violence, creating the energy and the desire for revenge and the wish to punish the state.

More recently, brain scans revealed portions of the brain which are hardwired to enjoy anticipating revenge. It's a key piece of the puzzle.

Planning revenge sparks enough satisfaction to motivate getting even — and the amount of satisfaction actually predicts who will go to greater lengths to do so, report Swiss researchers who monitored people's brain activity during an elaborate game of double-cross...
But beyond helping to unravel how the brain makes social and moral decisions, the study illustrates growing interest in the interaction between emotion and cognition — which in turn influences other fields such as how to better model the economy.
The new study chips "yet another sliver from the rational model of economic man," said Stanford University psychologist Brian Knutson, who reviewed the Swiss research. "Instead of cold, calculated reason, it is passion that may plant the seeds of revenge," he said.
People often are eager to punish wrongdoers even if the revenge brings them no personal gain or actually costs them something. From a practical standpoint, that may seem irrational.

Apparently irrational, but seemingly normal, and certainly rational so far as they can plan and achieve operational goals. Regarding hearts and minds, the former is far more volatile.

Wrong holy cities?

Hindsight is always 20/20, but it's things like this which make me question the reliability of briefings presented to the US administration. From a February 2003 DoD press release:

Wolfowitz: First of all, let's talk about Saudi Arabia. We won't need troops in Saudi Arabia when there's no longer an Iraqi threat. The Saudi problem will be transformed. In Iraq, first of all the Iraqi population is completely different from the Saudi population. The Iraqis are among the most educated people in the Arab world. They are by and large quite secular. They are overwhelmingly Shia which is different from the Wahabis of the peninsula, and they don't bring the sensitivity of having the holy cities of Islam being on their territory. They are totally different situations. But the most fundamental difference is that, let me put it this way. We're seeing today how much the people of Poland and Central and Eastern Europe appreciate what the United States did to help liberate them from the tyranny of the Soviet Union. I think you're going to see even more of that sentiment in Iraq.
There's not going to be the hostility that you described Saturday. There simply won't be.

At the time, he apparently hadn't been briefed on Karbala:

KARBALA, Iraq (CNN) -- Crowds of Shia Muslims Wednesday chanted and danced in the streets of this holy city on the final day of a pilgrimage long suppressed under Saddam Hussein's rule...
Karbala is where Muslim martyr Imam Hussein bin Ali -- grandson of the prophet Mohammed -- was killed and entombed more than 1,300 years ago.

Or Najaf:

U.S. tanks rumbled Friday into a vast cemetery in the southern city of Najaf, one of Shiite Islam's most sacred places, in pursuit of insurgents loyal to the rebel Shiite cleric Moqtada Sadr. The fighting, which coincided with skirmishes in the other major Shiite holy city, Karbala, demonstrated some of the most aggressive tactics yet employed by U.S. forces against Sadr's Shiite militia.

Did someone forget to do their homework to check if the Shiites had holy cities too?

Water wars in the offing?

Via New Scientist:

India is at the epicentre of the pump revolution. Using technology adapted from the oil industry, smallholder farmers have drilled 21 million tube wells into the saturated strata beneath their fields.
Every year, farmers bring another million wells into service, most of them outside the control of the state irrigation authorities. The pumps, powered by heavily subsidised electricity, work day and night to irrigate fields of thirsty crops like rice, sugar cane and alfalfa.
But this massive, unregulated expansion of pumps and wells is threatening to suck India dry. "Nobody knows where the tube wells are or who owns them. There is no way anyone can control what happens to them," says Tushaar Shah, head of the International Water Management Institute's groundwater station, based in Gujarat. "When the balloon bursts, untold anarchy will be the lot of rural India," he says.
Shah gave his apocalyptic warning at the annual Stockholm Water Symposium in Sweden last week. His research suggests that the pumps, which transformed Indian farming, bring 200 cubic kilometres of water to the surface each year. But only a fraction of that is replaced by the monsoon rains.

Pakistan, Vietnam, and northern China are also pumping up ground water faster than it can be replaced.

An explosive hypothesis

It appears that insurgents in Thailand, Nepal, and India are picking up tricks with regard to improvised explosive devices after the recent successes demonstrated in Iraq.

Meanwhile, investigations are underway for the two Russian flights down with interesting results so far. Courtesy of VOA:

In Russia, investigators looking into the cause of two near simultaneous airliner crashes, are focusing their attention on two female passengers, who purchased tickets for each flight at the last minute. On Friday, investigators at one of the crash sites reported finding traces of an explosive...
The body parts of one woman were scattered widely on the ground. Officials said parts of her legs were found in the toilet section of one plane, leading to speculation that she might have detonated some kind of explosive from there.

Other reports have cited hexogen, previously implicated in explosions blamed on Chechen insurgents in Russia, so I did a bit of digging. Hexogen is known by different names.

RDX stands for Royal Demolition eXplosive. It is also known as cyclonite or hexogen. The chemical name for RDX is 1,3,5-trinitro-1,3,5-triazine. It is a white powder and is very explosive.

It's also a component in plastic explosives, such as Semtex.

Stanislav Brebera spent much of his life developing Semtex, the best plastic explosive in the world. It feels like Play Dough, has no smell, and was designed in 1966 to clear land-mines and improve industrial safety. It is also undetectable by dogs and airport security devices...
... this extraordinarily stable compound of RDX (Cyclonite) and PETN (Penaerythrite Tetranitrate) slips through airport security scans as easily as a pair of nylons. According to the FBI, Semtex has an indefinite shelf life and is far stronger than traditional explosives such as TNT. It is also easily available on the black market.
Semtex became infamous when just 12 ounces of the substance, molded inside a Toshiba cassette recorder, blasted Pan Am flight 103 out of the sky above Lockerbie, Scotland, in December 1988... Some experts now put worldwide stockpiles of Semtex at 40,000 tons.

RDX is less stable than Semtex, but more stable than TNT. Given that Semtex has no discernable odor, it's likely hexogen has the similar property. I presume that a belt of explosives would have been caught during routine airport screening. Given the positioning of one of the remains of one of the likely attackers, I'd posit that the explosive and/or detonator was smuggled aboard via a body cavity, and the explosive device assembled while in the lavoratory. It's either that or else Russian airport security was really slack.

It keeps on going and going

US scientists have genetically engineered mice with twice the endurance of ordinary mice. Apparently uncoming drugs may be able to simulate this effect, at least in part. How long until such is also part of the arsenal of ingested combat enhancements, along with modafinil?

[Edit: here's the original press release.]

So how about that axis?

Tucked away at the bottom of a piece from June:

Foreign policy analyst John Loftus told Fox News that the "diplomatic solution" could involve preventing trade out of Iran and North Korea, which intelligence sources say has been sending enriched uranium to Iran.
"We're going to use a little persuasion. In the last week, virtually every carrier group in the United States Navy has been ordered to put to sea and they're heading in two directions — one for the Arabian peninsula and the other into the Pacific. Now, just by coincidence, the largest maritime exercise in military history, RIMPAC, Operation Pacific Rim, will take place off the coast of Hawaii in August...
"In August, they will have finished their exercise and they'll be within easy sailng distance of the Korean peninsula...

Assuming that the naval deployments have gone as expected, it would be clear from actions that contingencies are being planned for. The phrase axis of evil has been remarkably absent from US election campaign rhetoric.

While I'm at it, here's two countries to worry about: Nepal and Uzbekistan.

The US plans to boost its troop presence in Uzbekistan as a "lily pad", as well as Poland and Romania. However, the Uzbek government is confronting a low intensity insurgency of Islamic militants, complete with suicide bombers.

In Nepal, Maoist rebels have laid siege to the capital. In Maoist doctrine, taking cities would be the final phase, after having secured the countryside.

Time reported in September 2003:

They say they are now embarked on the final phase of Mao's revolutionary timetable: eliminating all enemies of the revolution, bringing a terrorized capital to its knees and, eventually, overrunning the city and seizing power. "We control all the countryside," gloats Maoist political officer Ram Lohani Chaudhray. "The government and most of the army hide in Kathmandu. But we have many fighters there. We have them holed up and we will wipe them out."

Is this the endgame, as they say?

The shape of the pullout to come

The recently announced worldwide troop pullouts by the USA serves multiple purposes.

1. Improved domestic trickle-down effect from military spending. Basing more troops on US soil will increase domestic spending, which should have a net effect of boosting the American economy in the long term.
2. Reduction of support for competing economies. In particular, Germany will be the subject of the most reductions. If there was any intent to punish Germany for its lack of support leading up to the recent US coalition-Iraq war, it'll come to pass in the form of the loss of over a billion dollars in spending.
3. Minor budget reduction. According to the Congressional Budget Office, the estimated cost savings of one billion per year, the troop shift would pay for itself in seven years.

As well, it sets the stage for a more lightweight footprint for American forces overseas. Key phrases to look for: lily pads, Striker Brigade, and Global Strike bomber. Expect fewer and smaller permanent bases overseas, but with capacity to handle temporary swells in troops, increased emphasis on rapid reaction forces able to deploy globally on short notice, and bombers based on US-soil which will be capable of delivering smart weapons anywhere in the world.

Once likely consequence is additional incentive for the EU to boost its own rapid reaction force if it is to maintain a political policy course distinct from the USA and NATO.

Bubbles and oil

Business Week carried an interesting piece regarding the trading of oil futures on the commodities markets.

New players are helping to push up the volume of crude-oil contracts traded on the New York Mercantile Exchange (Nymex). Such trades are on their way to an all-time record this year, up 13% through July. Data from the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) show that the amount of money flowing into commodity funds -- many of which include a good chunk of oil investments -- has surged whenever the stock market has swooned over the past five years. Today, there are more than 3,200 funds registered with the cftc, almost twice the number in 1999.

Regardless of the long-term prospects for oil prices, given the potential for risk to be overestimated and the impact of consensus on pricing, the elements are in place for a price bubble in the short-term.

An unstated implication is that low interest rates are also behind the push towards commodities as an alternate means of increasing returns over the more traditional balancing act between stocks and bonds.

Agriculture and terror

According to the UN's International Labour Organization, young people aged 15-24 make up almost half of the jobless in the world. If they are not successfully integrated economically into society, it's not a far stretch to see them turn to crime. There's also the correlation with terrorism. Western farm subsidies are clearly not helping in this regard, as the dumping of the resulting commodities hurts farmers in poorer countries.

According to a May 2003 piece:

... notes the Oxfam report: "By driving down prices for these farmers, US taxpayers -- along with their European counterparts in other product groups -- bear a direct responsibility for poverty in Africa." It charges that US subsidies directly led to losses amounting to more than $300 mn in potential revenue in sub-Saharan Africa during the 2001/02 season. US subsidies have a major influence on the world market because a large proportion of US production -- more than 50 per cent -- is exported, making the country the largest exporter by a wide margin.

The USA rightly points out that the EU is also to blame.

Subsidies and other supports to farmers in the EU amounted to an estimated $93 bn last year -- nearly double the $49 bn the US spent. To illustrate the absurdity of the subsidies in relation to human development, World Bank chief economist Nicholas Stern uses the example of an average European cow, which receives $2.50 per day in subsidies while 75 per cent of Africans live on less than $2 a day. These subsidies have allowed the region to dominate world trade even in the most unlikely of agricultural products.

The export of subsidized agricultural goods is the export of poverty. Correlated linkages with resulting crime, instability, and terrorism can be a form of blowback.

Squeeze play

Having been encircled by shifts in Afghanistan and Iraq, and distanced from the EU because of the ongoing nuclear scuffle via the IAEA, Iran is reaching out to Turkey. This is particularly interesting given the current administration's consistent push for the EU to accept Turkey as a member. Though the EU has balked so far, in part due to cultural xenophobia, such an emergent linkage would permit population flows from Iran and Turkey to the EU, and also link up economies further. Strategically, this would be in line with Barnett's Core and Gap framing.

Goss is in

As I predicted back in June, Goss has been tipped as the new head for the CIA.

Washington Times surprised at China

On July 16, the Washington Times expressed surprise at China's new Yuan-class attack submarine.

China's naval buildup has produced a new type of attack submarine that U.S. intelligence did not know was under construction, according to U.S. defense and intelligence officials.

I find that a difficult claim to believe. Perhaps they should subscribe to Stratfor. This apparent mirror of an April 4, 2001 sample is illuminating. From the summary:

A series of incidents – stretching back several years and culminating in the apparent loss of the EP-3E aircraft – indicates that the United States has been hunting for signs of a breakthrough in Chinese submarine technology. Sources inside China and a series of incidents stretching back months and years indicate that Western militaries have been intensively hunting for clues to two new classes of submarines. One is a quiet, diesel design. The other is a potential breakthrough: a homegrown version of the Russian Victor III that would allow Beijing’s navy for the first time to threaten America’s most powerful conventional weapon, the aircraft carrier.

The inference from the piece is that the USA has been looking for evidence of new homegrown subs since at least 1999. Since such developments were anticipated, can it really be a surprise?

It's public knowledge which shipyard built the sub.

China’s Wuhan Shipyard has recently (May 2004?) launched a new generation conventional diesel-electric submarine (SSK), which is named Yuan class by the U.S. intelligence. It is estimated that the programme might have begun in 2002, with first boat laid down at Wuhan Shipyard in later 2003 or early 2004. Photos of this submarine were first seen on Internet in July 2004...

Also note that two Russian Kilo class submarines were taken out of service in 2000. The suggestion was that they were sent for repairs because of battery issues; whatever the reasons, they were likely taken offline for reverse engineering as well.

Nor is the USA unaware of the emerging threat. Back in May 2001, this report noted that Rumsfeld contemplated cutting existing aircraft carriers in favor of smaller carriers which would be harder to target.

In the mid-1990s, Chinese planners concluded that future strategy would be geared towards submarines.

A group of PLAN strategists summarized their analysis of the mid-1990s revolution in military affairs (RMA) as follows: “We can conclude that during the First World War, the dominant vessel was the battleship, and in World War Two, it was the aircraft carrier. In future global wars, the most powerful weapon will be the submarine… [because] submarines will experience less impact from reconnaissance technology than other platforms.” Current developments suggest that this view reflects the dominant thinking of the PLA high command.

Motive, means, and opportunity. So where exactly is the surprise here?

Trends in Sudan

I expect we will see the emerging genocide continue essentially unchallenged in Sudan. The flypaper strategy in Iraq has given a lesson to everyone in the world on how to resist the West. The Sudanese army combined with the Janjawid could go plainclothes, fade into the population, and proceed to wage a classic insurgency against Western troops and aid personnel. This likely makes the West wary of sending troops in. Furthermore, Europe has an additional disincentive, as they are involved with Sudanese oil. Finally, environmental degradation is exacerbating resource competition. This bodes ill for the next few decades, as Sudan's population is expected to grow further; cf. the population pyramid charts for Sudan over 2000, 2025, and 2050.

Hearts, minds, money, and trust

Newsweek is carrying a story about behavioral economics. I found these results interesting with regard to economic decision-making:

Quartz has also seen intriguing differences between men and women in the scanner. Men's brains tend to shut down after they've made their decision, awaiting a reply from the other subject. But women ... show continued activity in at least three areas—the ventral striatum (the brain's center for anticipating rewards), the ventral medial prefrontal cortex (which is involved with planning and organizing) and the caudate nucleus (a checking and monitoring region ...). Women, says Quartz, seem to obsess more over whether they did the right thing—and how the other subject will react to them.

Thus implies that there are at least two stable strategies that can be pursued. It would be premature to conclude that either emergent strategy is superior. Both likely have survival value in order to be reinforced via selection.

Also of note:

... with approximately 85 percent accuracy, the subjects, separated by the distance from Los Angeles to Texas, can guess whether they're playing against a man or a woman. They appear to be picking up on subtle clues in the interactions...

Can such differences be applied constructively to hearts and minds campaigns by the West? Perhaps one size does not fit all.

The breaking of the seals

Iran has broken the IAEA seals on nuclear equipment and has resumed building and testing centrifuges. It's apparently a diplomatic signal, assuming it's true that they've not actually restarted uranium enrichment.

Over a week ago, Jane's assessed the likelihood of a preemptive strike on Iranian nuclear facilities. The odds have just gone up.

The case for Iran

Up until now, it seemed that Syria was next up at bat, what with economic sanctions being applied by the USA in light of apparent support of Iraqi insurgents by some official elements within Syria. Recent comments by Bush about investigations into the possibility that Iran played any role in the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks may signal a shift in focus.

Iran has been giving the IAEA grief, reluctantly giving up details of their nuclear program and possibly concealing a covert nuclear weapons program. The case for Iran is stronger than it was for Iraq. International officials have found traces of weapons-grade uranium, though it was explained away as contamination. Iran acquired centrifuge and other nuclear technology from Pakistan, and apparently recently sought out a number of specialized magnets in greater quantity than would be required for merely a research program. Al Jazeera reports that Iran sought out 4000 magnets, sufficient to equip 2000 centrifuges. Iran has uranium deposits on native soil and can produce yellow cake.

I'll wager hardliners in Iran saw the writing on the wall after Iraq fell to coalition forces and are scrambling to get nuclear offensive capability in order to deter the USA. Iran is within striking range for nuking Israel and possess proven missile technology, thanks in part to North Korea judging from the designs. Russia has not been helping any, as they've refused to stop assisting work on the Bushehr nuclear reactor in Iran. By Iran's official reckoning, 1500 specialists from Russia and other CIS countries are assisting.

Things could get tricky if Shia-dominated portions of southern Iraq opt to break away and join a nuclear Iran.

The logic of preemption implies that the prevention of WMD cannot stop at merely Iraq. Even if war is avoided, the impact upon a fledging Iraq could lead to break-up.

What next indeed?

Boston surprise?

According to Clarke, the detonation of a LNG (liquid natural gas) tanker could wipe out Boston. Such tankers were also used to smuggle in al Qaida operatives from Algeria. Perhaps something worth noting given the Democratic National Convention being held in Boston later this month. An explosive laden speedboat in the style of that which took out the USS Cole could make things a lot messier than any tea party.

I assign this scenario low odds since countermeasures are in place, but it's clear that this is one reason why the USA has pushed hard on the port security front internationally.

Nationializing Yukos?

So the Russian government froze Yukos' assets. We'll see if they end up (re)nationalizing the oil company. This is not helping the price of oil any. It could also be serving double-duty as an indirect means to harm the US economy in hopes of making it harder for Bush to be reelected.

Why did Bush back condoms?

According to a piece originally in the New York Times, in a Philadelphia speech, Bush backed condoms in the fight against AIDS, citing the case of Uganda. This appears at first glance to be a reversal in the administration's abstinence-based stance regarding condoms and AIDS strategy, the truth is US foreign aid to Africa targeting AIDS did not rule out the use of condoms.

Though this may unsettle some conservative groups, there's a deeper reason for this shift in tack: terrorism. It appears consensus is building over AIDS as a driver for future failed states and therefore breeding grounds for terrorists. Al Qaida has a presence in several African countries already. Like it or not, condoms are part of the arsenal in the War on Terror.

The proxy war is on in Iraq

Without mincing words, the USA is currently engaged in proxy warfare with Syria and Iran. Although the Iraqi Governing Council did not name names officially, unofficially they pointed the finger at the two countries as the worst offenders for supporting insurgents. There are indications that there are sympathizers within Syria's border guards and intelligence services. Given the stakes, both Iran and Syria are likely continuing clandestine efforts to develop and acquire nuclear weapons as insurance against US military intervention.

This is not a surprising outcome, though. What's interesting is that neither the Democrats nor the Republicans seem interested in framing the Iraq situation in this manner. Perhaps Republicans fear this would be tantamount to an admission that that America isn't yet safer from terrorism and preemption has not been effective as a nonproliferation strategy; perhaps Democrats fear that said situation would justify if not require ongoing US troop presence.

No calls for organic farming?

Are modern industrial agricultural practices leading to a rise in schizophrenia? A lack of omega-3 fatty acids in the resulting diet is being fingered as a culprit. Oily fish is one fix, but we need to make more progress at sustainable fishing to prevent the depletion of fish stocks.

Invasion? Slim odds, but watch for surprises

Russia continues to sell fighters to China which outperform the F-15. Chen Shui-Bian and Jiang Zemin have a bad dynamic happening, with the former's independence drive clashing with the latter's hard-nosed nationalism. Given this uncertainty, there's a slim but nonzero chance that the annual military (invasion) exercises China has scheduled for the end of the month may mask a genuine attempt. Having their forces deployed forward would minimize the reaction time of any Taiwanese and US defense forces. US air superiority being overwhelming against China may not be a sure thing, potentially limiting the effectiveness of US defenders. As well, China has an unusual window of opportunity in that US land forces are extended elsewhere globally. We'll see if they bite or not.

The USA has run simulated wargames in conjunction with Taiwan, but is keeping quiet about the results. I'm wagering the USA is keeping a close eye on the situation.

Cutting past spin

Remember back in March a piece circulated in the media about virginity pledgers experiencing the same rate of STDs as non-pledgers? Sometimes in contentious issues, it's useful to go to the source to see what's really being said. No offense to blog or op ed types, but pundits making conclusions based on a selective reading of media reports are potentially compounding error upon error. One of the authors of the report, Bearman, has a web page where the relevant paper is available as a PDF under the heading "Rules, Behaviors and Networks that Influence STD Prevention among Adolescents. National STD Prevention Conference, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania." I found the paper there far more insightful than what I gleaned from the he-said, she-said media reporting:

For those who do not like detective stories: Pledgers have STD rates as young adults as high as non-pledgers. More interesting, where the proportion of pledgers in a community is high, STD rates in that community among both pledgers and non-pledgers are high...
What causes STD rates to be high in contexts where there are a lot of pledgers? Simply put, where there are a lot of pledgers, young adults don't get what is going on.
...STD rates are highest when people underestimate their risk of infection... Because pledgers make a public pledge, the sex that they have is more likely to be hidden. It is also more likely to be unsafe. The combination of hidden sex and unsafe sex fuels the absence of knowledge that pledgers and others have about the real risk of STDs.
In this regard, just saying no, without understanding risk or how to protect oneself from risk, turns out to create greater risk and heightened STD acquisition than should be the case.
Pledging does not protect young adults from STDs; in fact, in some contexts it increases their risk and the risk for others.

To use an economics analogy, risky behavior tends to be covert and hidden from potential investors. The resulting cost-benefit analysis is then based on public information, which falsely underreports risk. It's a crooked market. Lack of condom use is not the key problem; it's merely a symptom of a larger systemic problem which neither the left nor the right appears to have caught on to. From an objective results-based perspective, it appears neither the left nor the right has a superior solution, given the compariable long-term STD rates of pledgers and non-pledgers. More creativity is needed here.

Viruses in the war against drugs?

Recently, a virus was used to pass antibodies through the blood-brain barrier to innoculate rats against cocaine. An abusive scenario would be to use this not merely on untreatable addicts but to innoculate the general population against cocaine, forcibly cutting demand down to the last individual. Prisoners have fewer rights; would they be viable candidates for such a preemptive procedure? I wonder how such would play out in countries with poor human rights.

He shall not stray

Gene therapy on meadow voles turned promiscuous males into monogamous mates. How soon before some person or group wants this particular technology to be applied to humans?

No evidence? Get over it already

People should back off on giving the 9/11 commission flak. It should not be a surprise at all that they concluded that they "found no evidence that Saddam Hussein cooperated with al-Qaida terrorists to target the United States". The key point here is demonstrable evidence or cooperation, as opposed to hearsay which may be contaminated with disinfo. It is worth noting that Bush himself said as recently as September last year that "We have no evidence that Saddam Hussein was involved with the 11 September attacks." Hunches and uncorroborated beliefs, whether they be right or wrong, are not evidence; they are opinion. Bush has reasons for his opinion, but they do not constitute evidence.

We can rewrite you

I ran across this disturbing piece regarding false memory implantation.

"We can easily distort memories for the details of an event that you did experience," says Loftus. "And we can also go so far as to plant entirely false memories - we call them rich false memories because they are so detailed and so big."
...On average, studies show that around a third of those subjected to the "misinformation effect" wholly or partially adopt a false memory, but it seems to depend on both the person and the memory.

Unscrupulous advertisers would find value in harnessing this effect.

There's a lot more to the interaction of memory and stress in the piece. I also read about research that found interrogation impaired recognition of interrogators by the victims.

They studied over 500 soldiers, sailors and pilots at "survival schools" - three mock POW camps run by the US military, who partly funded the study. The subjects, whose mean age was 25, were being trained to withstand the mental and physical stresses of capture.
After 48 hours without food or sleep, they were subjected to intense interrogation. Half of the subjects were physically threatened, and this caused them to show all the signs of intense physiological stress - very high heart rate and levels of adrenalin and cortisol, combined with plummeting sex hormones.
Twenty-four hours after release from the camp, the subjects were asked to identify their interrogators...
The performance of all groups was abysmal. Only 30 per cent could find the right person in a line-up, 34 per cent from a photo-spread and 49 per cent from sequential photos - though the clothing cue boosted correct identification to 66 per cent. Thirty people got the gender wrong, and those subjected to physical threats were the worst at recognising their interrogator.

Memory can be fragile, and thus complicate investigations.

Putting a greenhouse gas into the ground

According to the results of a study, we should be putting carbon back into the ground in order to ensure food security. Combined with a need to sequester carbon to avoid global warming, this seems to be a win-win proposition. While not a solution in of itself, it would buy time and improve crop productivity.

Cutting to the core of human nature

I came across this book review on Being Indian, a book by Pavan K. Varma. The review alone seems uncompromisingly candid:

The stereotypes in which foreigners see Indians and the self-image that Indians project about themselves are both inaccurate. Indians are considered democratic, spiritual, tolerant, peaceful etc. But Varma's value-neutral reappraisal throws up surprising conclusions that can be embarrassing. Indians respect the powerful and will collude with them for personal gain. They are extremely hierarchical, bending before superiors and subjugating inferiors. They have never been "other-worldly" and hanker for material prosperity. Spiritualism is "mostly a means to harness divine support for power and [s]elf". (p 7) Morality is a theoretical construct abjured as impractical in real life. Indians also sanction violence when convinced of numerical strength and surety of victory. Varma's thesis is that some uncomplimentary facets of Indians are actually assets that make them resilient, tough and successful.

Having read the review in full, I couldn't help reflecting that these aspects Varma identifies are far from unique to India and in fact found in many if not most cultures around the world. Such realism is therefore worth keeping in mind when considering the psychology of the people of any country or culture.

Who's next?

So CIA Director Tenet is out. Resigned for personal reasons. While Deputy John McLachalan will be acting in top CIA post until it is formally filled, I'm willing to say odds are that Florida Republican Porter Goss will get the spot. He's being floated as a candidate.

Keeping score

Iran is still playing coy about its enriched uranium manufacturing capabilities. It's brinkmanship. They're pushing the UN and the USA to see how much they can get away with. I therefore conclude that the lesson of Iraq was not a deterrent as US forces are effectively locked in place, fully extended, unable to redeploy rapidly, and thus incapable of exerting pressure in coercive diplomacy. Therefore, the US isn't deemed a credible threat.

Judging from the recent attack on foreign oil workers in Saudi Arabia, al Qaida is apparently playing a careful game of targeted oil infrastructure by killing non-Muslim Westerners while at the same time avoiding targeting the Saudi royal family or the refineries themselves in order to avoid the consolidation of opinion against them. The fact that three militants escaped three rings of security to freedom is troubling. Did someone on the inside give them information on how to get out? One source reported that a European was beheaded, his head hurled out a window. I'd hate to see that be verified as a trend, as it would mean they're copycats in an ugly way; in an earlier attack in Khobar, the body of an Westerner was dragged through the streets behind a car, perhaps in imitation of the desecration of contractors' bodies in Fallujah.

Warning given to North Korean cyberwarriors?

A week ago, it was reported that two South Korean companies had their computers hijacked.

Korean police and their U.S counterpart began a joint investigation as several computers of an army unit under the U.S Air Force Space Command (SPACECOM) were hacked by an individual in a third country via a Korean firms’ computers in mid-February.

Today, I came across the news that North Korea's cyberwarfare unit has been stepping up its activities recently.

The Defense Security Command, the military unit responsible for overseeing the army's internal affairs and for counter-espionage, has been operating a specialized unit designed to combat potential cyber attacks from North Korea. According to Lieutenant-general Song Young-keun, who commands the Defense Security Command, North Korea operates a special cyber warfare unit. The special unit is said to have been established under the direct orders of North Korean leader Kim Jong-il. It is responsible for collecting intelligence on South Korea's governmental and research organizations, and for building a capability to launch cyber attacks against the South.

While the report stops short of an open accusation, apparently for diplomatic reasons, the public reporting of such details serves as a warning.

Though, it is possible that the apparently failed probe of SPACECOM was launched by other countries known to be developing cyberwar capabilities (e.g. China), the timing is suggestive.

The real reason for the rise of American conservative churches?

I ran across this article in Christianity Today which had a thought-provoking examination of the underpinnings of this growth. The dominant view is that ideological strictness has been the reason. However, dissenting sociologists point to a different underlying basis: demographics.

Earlier I also ran across a paper in PDF format titled "Growth and Decline of Religious Subgroups" by John Hayward presenting systemic models for growth via conversion, starting off with a simple model of unlimited enthusiasm, then elaborating by accounting for births and deaths, reversions, then finally the impact of lessening zeal over time. The simulations and the resulting diagrams are illuminating, and in my view provide additional plausibility to the demographic hypothesis. Show and tell, right?

The logical consequence of this model is that social conservatives looking at the big picture should consider supporting gay marriage or civil union. If the liberal reproduction rate is diminished, then conservatives gain a demographic advantage and will rise in relative influence in a few generations.

Iran's military-industrial complex?

I saw this EurasiaNet report on Iran's Revolutionary Guard getting more politically active. This sentence raised a red flag for me:

Prior to taking on a higher political profile, the Revolutionary Guards established itself as an economic force in the country, launching a vast array of financial and economic enterprises.

The report's conclusions seem too conservative to me. With economic clout, political clout soon follows. Combined with the prestige from their nuclear program, the Revolutionary Guard has evolved into a military-industrial complex. This would not be unprecedented. China's People's Liberation Army followed a similar route of branching into business and emerging as a military-industrial complex in the 1980s and onward.

Napoleon is said to have stated that an army marches on its stomach. Today, that logistical stomach in peacetime is the capacity to fund its operations. The military-industrial complex is one solution to this funding problem; when successful, it's less of a drain of government coffers. This model is likely being replicated in other countries as well.

Ineffective

According to the U.S. Department of Defense, the alleged sarin round that was detonated in Iraq has been deemed not a credible threat. It was designed to mix properly only when fired as an artillery round.

However, when the [binary chemical] round is used in an improvised explosive device, Kimmitt said, the chemicals don't properly mix, so they produce only "very, very small traces" of sarin gas. "When you rig it as an IED, it just blows up and you have … minor amounts (of the chemical) going in different directions," he said. "It's virtually ineffective as a chemical weapon."

GM food is here to stay

The EU lifted a 6-year ban on GM food to permit the import of GM corn from Swiss-base Syngenta. Sure, US agro will potentially benefit from the lifting of the ban, but I can't help thinking that the ban was in place strategically to prevent the EU from being locked in to buying US GM seed.

The UN food agency recently gave the nod to GM food. Last year, the Vatican approved of GM food after apparently skewing a conference in order to get the requisite support.

I suppose the logic is inevitable. There are an increasing number of people in the world, and GM crops offer the hope of feeding them. However, these varieties tend to be energy-intensive, in that they require more fertilizer. Much of the manufacture of modern fertilizer relies on petroleum. Oil is food.

Assuming for the moment that pesticide-resistant genes from GM food doesn't eventually escape into the wild, there's apparently an unintended consequence happening right now. Coastal water dead zones are being created, apparently triggered by fertilizer runoff.

I don't have any easy answers.

Not so fast with that disinfo, bub

I ran across this piece about 50 alleged anomolies about the Berg video.

My intuition says no on this one.

The piece references a bunch of blog links, and media sites talking about the list. Totally self-referential, which makes me suspicious right out of the gate.

I'd like to see independent confirmation on some of those alleged discrepancies. For one, I doubt a professional intelligence agency would be that sloppy.

I suppose I trust a newspaper a bit more when it comes to vetting because reporters and even editors can be canned if they go over the line. Witness the UK newspaper editor stepping down over alleged staged Iraqi prison abuse photos portrayed as the real deal.

I guess it doesn't help their case that the original author(s) misspelled "Zarqawi" as "Zaraqawi" either.

In fact, I cannot find a single independent reference on the net that Zarqawi has a tattoo even. The terms "zarqawi tattoo" only led me to 273 links on Google, all apparently spurious or else repetitions of the 50 alleged points (i.e. only single-sourced). That's a damning lacuna, suggesting at least that one point was outright manufactured.

Even the alleged prosthesis isn't confirmed. It's intelligence. And I'm sure Zarqawi isn't about to correct any misconceptions about himself. Alternet as a whole surely has no vested interest in confirming the official American story. Look at this bit from 2003:

From there on, rumors have Zarqawi and his new (but unconfirmed) prosthesis visiting the Ansar group in northern Kurdistan to see how their poisons were coming along; traveling to the Pankisi Gorge in Georgia; and attending a "terrorist summit" in south Lebanon. While in Bangkok, he is also alleged to have ordered the assassination of a USAID official in Jordan.

So no tattoo. So much for point 40. Even the prosthesis is in doubt. And that's merely one point I picked at random to hunt down on the net.

I grabbed a reasonable quality version of the video floating around the filesharing network. I watched it. Didn't seem that blurry to me, all in all, so I'd dispute point 23. There was plenty of blood on the ground; bye-bye point 16. Reality is more prosaic than the sensibilities of said piece's author(s). Points 19 and 25 are inconsistent when taken together: the time gap (as evident from the clock in the lower right) of over a minute during the beheading accounts for the apparent speed of beheading. Can't have it both ways, claiming that the beheading was in fact too fast and that the relevant sequence was cut. The lack of motion as alleged in point 17 is due to Berg being bound and pinned; no mystery there.

I'll stop here. It's just not worth it anymore. Not even a challenge.

I'd say the 50 "anomalies" are an excellent case study of disconfirmation bias to the point of overreaching in an effort to disprove something because it disagrees with the author's or authors' existing beliefs. There's not even a serious attempt to ensure that the line of argument is self-consistent. With respect to logic, the author(s) did a judo throw on themselves. Game over.

Al Qaida sleepers in the Saudi National Guard?

Or is it an outright low-intensity civil war in Saudi Arabia? According to this report in The Independent, former Vinnell trainers of the Saudi National Guard who were injured in the attack of May 2003 claim that there was inside help and that both Vinnell and the Saudi royal family did nothing to heighten security after repeated warnings of such an attack being planned. Benign neglect? Not good if true. Attacks indicate that al Qaida seeks to destabilize the pro-Western kingdom.

For the record, Vinnell, as US company, has been in Saudi Arabia since 1975 training their national guard. Apparently, al Qaida's first attack in 1995 targeted Vinnell. It's unclear to me how much Osama bin Laden was outraged by the nepotism of the royal family and US support thereto.

Saudi Arabia has problems. It's a monarchy, fueled by oil wealth. They filters the Internet to censor criticism of the royal family. They only recently openly acknowledged that poverty is a serious problem. Combined with a population boom underway, they are in need oil revenue to pump their economy up and provide sufficient employment. The situation is not sustainable as is, so change is underway, albeit slowly. Time will tell if it will be too slow or not. On the economic side, they need to diversify further from reliance on oil wealth.

While outright democracy might seem an obvious solution from a Western standpoint, some policy makers are also concerned that attempts at political reform might lead to an anti-US government. Not all the royals are fond of the USA.

While the country isn't about to topple overnight in an Islamic revolution, the situation remains uncertain. It is perhaps telling that the USA pulled troops from Saudi Arabia. Technically this move was appeasement of al Qaida. That US air base, set up in 1991 during the first Gulf War, was specifically mentioned early on in Osama bin Laden's fatwa of 1998, which deemed its seven-year presence in Saudi Arabia to be an occupation.

Not the first

Poor Nick Berg. This isn't the first beheading on video in recent times. Daniel Pearl was beheaded on video; mercifully, most haven't seen it. Abu Sayyaf also made a videotape of Philippine soldiers being beheaded, apparently for internal consumption. There's also apparently a video floating around of a Russian soldier being beheaded (or at least murdered up close and personal) by Chechens, but I haven't verified it. All these details one can check via a search engine.

I'll chalk beheading up to a fad, with terrorist groups try to outdo each other for ferocity.

Beheading is still a method of capital punishment in Saudi Arabia, though they try to get it done in one swift cut. Those not into public specatcle should avoid "Chop-Chop" Square in Riyadh on Fridays.

What would John Boyd do?

From a seminar at National Defense University:

Boyd would have criticized the US strategy after major combat operations had ended. As part of his strategy, Boyd stated that a proper exit strategy is needed that will end the conflict on favorable terms, and will not sow the seeds for future conflict. His criticism would revolve around the fact that US strategic planners had not anticipated the "underlying self-interests, critical differences of opinion, internal contradictions, frictions, and obsessions" of the Iraqi people, and until the US gains a grasp of these conditions, a climate for a favorable outcome in the campaign cannot be achieved. Boyd would say today, that the US must now conduct operations in Iraq to break the guerrillas' moral-mental-physical hold over the population by analyzing and operating inside the OODA loop of the Iraqi guerrillas.

John Boyd also had a strategy for combatting guerrilla warfare. It's a shame more people aren't aware of it.

Better buckle up and hope the USA learns fast on the fly, or else it could be a rough ride ahead.

Unsolicited advice on Iraq

After reading an interview with an Iraqi researcher about the situation there, I have some constructive advice. Be warned, it's worth what you pay for it here.

Firstly, some sort of detainee oversight system based on checks and balances will help with building trust, a key requirement for rule of law. Perhaps permitting periodic prison inspections by the UN or some other third-party deemed neutral would be a workable diplomatic solution. It won't fix things, but it would signal a willingness to combat the problem of prisoner abuse, and thus engender Iraqi trust that political systems and institutions can meet their needs.

This conflict has a moral front, an aspect the USA has to deal with more proactively and not shy away from.

If the US is to move out of policing urban areas, either local constabulary and/or troops from other countries (possibly a UN banner) will have to fill the security gap. It's not going to happen overnight.

Nevertheless, time is of the essence. I would recommend that US primary reconstruction contracts be opened to all countries willing to put up significant numbers of peacekeeping forces. Relying on moral suasion alone isn't cutting it. Having a stake would be greater incentive to take the risk of sending troops, as well as being something with a vested interest for them to protect and not pull out and away from.

It goes without saying that care must be taken to ensure the Iraqi security force is viable and trustworthy. However, it's also important that it not be overly dependent upon coalition and/or UN assistance. The goal here is long-term stability and self-sufficiency; liberation, not caretaking.

Sensitivity training is an overused term. However, maintaining an increased geopolitical awareness on the part of US troops is key to adherence with grand strategy. The more they are appraised of the big picture of what US goals are, the better they can align their actions to meet that mission.

Dollar hegemony doesn't hold oil

The notion that the USA invaded Iraq to bolster dollar hegemony by ensuring Iraq wouldn't price in Euros is baseless. Witness the grumblings out of OPEC from January 12:

Several members of the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries are seeking formal talks on using the euro, as well as the U.S. dollar, when determining price targets for crude, a senior oil minister within the cartel said Monday...
Mr. Ramirez did not specify which OPEC members are pushing the proposal, but much of the impetus is believed to come from Persian Gulf producers.
They have seen their purchasing power in Europe pinched as the U.S. dollar loses ground against the euro — including touching a record low Monday.

Clearly, invasions don't eliminate the fundamental economic incentive to price oil in Euros, spurred by the decline of the US dollar relative to the Euro. You can't fight the market.

This gold bug site noted that the price of crude oil has been steady against the Euro from 2001-2003. (It's also worth observing that while gold may be appreciating against the US dollar recently, it's been essentially range-bound against the Euro during that same span.)

The market has a simple message: that Euro has dictated the effective price of oil and gold since 2001, not the US dollar. The Euro is a price-stabilizing influence in the global economy, evidence of its emergence as an economic locus.

O'Reilly on Canada: bankrupt?

From O'Reilly's glib summarization from December 11, 2003:

Canada can't help us anyway. They have no military to speak of. And the socialistic system they have there has nearly bankrupted them. So Chretien is history. A new administration is upcoming. We should be trying to work things out with Canada.

Bankrupted? From December 3, 2003:

The federal government's coffers brimmed with a surplus of $7 billion for the last fiscal year, Finance Minister John Manley reported Wednesday. The entire surplus will go to pay down the national debt.
The surplus for the 2002-2003 fiscal year, which ended on March 31 was the sixth straight year that Ottawa's books have been in the black...

Canada has been underfunding its military for years, but that's been a deliberate policy choice of where to apply budget cuts. The current Prime Minister, Paul Martin, was part of that, having served as Finance Minister from 1993 to 2002. Nor is this budget surplus new, as implied by this UK columnist critical of said underfunding and its impact upon the equipment for Canadian troops in Afghanistan.

With regard to bankruptcy, some perspective is needed. A quick check of the public debt per capita in Canada versus the USA for 2002 reveals that it's $24,892 and $21,937 respectively after adjusting for purchasing power parity. Only 13.5% more bankrupt per capita.

That being said, with an election in the offing, don't expect Canada to ramp up its military spending any time soon. It's just not in the cards. Healthcare funding is higher on the domestic agenda.

Thoughts regarding genetic profiling

Given the trends in law enforcement, it seems that the buildup of DNA databases is inevitable.

While DNA dragnets may reduce the social intrusiveness of law enforcement, the databases themselves pose a new risk to privacy. While it might be a boon to medical care, it also means that insurance companies could price discriminate against people who they deem to be high risk. One's genetic profile could become a new type of credit rating. Already we are finding genes associated with various mental illnesses. Will market forces push for the creation of a socioeconomic underclass by discriminating against the vulnerable, and thus push them into more stressful economic situations, creating a self-fulfilling prophecy? There will be conflict over who gets access to such genomic information.

Despite being touted as the next big thing, it's worth remembering that genetic profiling isn't infallible. Lab errors happen.

I've also noticed a certain collective cognitive dissonance in the debate over DNA profiling by law enforcement. Authorities tend to deny that there's racial profiling happening. Yet at least one of the genetic profiling companies involved in phenotyping effectively claims on their website that they can identify and trace the heritable component of what people call race; thus, it can function as a scientific form of racial profiling. There's going to be conflict between those who reject anything which resembles racial profiling in structure and those who push for genetic profiling in all its aspects. I expect technological expediency will win out regardless of sensibilities, since genetic profiling can be touted as something more objective.

Given the overall trend, I can't rule out the possibility of a future out of Gattaca.

DNA shotguns and family trees

The BBC reports that ambitious new techniques are being used to identify a sex offender. The initial geographical narrowing was accomplished via a comparison at Florida's DNAPrint genomics. Samples from up to 200 police officers of a related geographic origin will be further used to narrow down the offender, or at least his family.

Assuming these techniques meet success, the next logical step would be to attempt to correlate DNA samples with known family relations, such as the database provided by Mormon genealogy database. Already AncestryByDNA, apparently a DNAPrint spinoff, offers a service to identify the ancestral origins of clients, broken down by "major historical population groups", which they identify as the heritable component of "race".

As more individuals are sampled and added to the combined databases, in principle it will require yet fewer additional collected samples to narrow a person down. Cuckoldry and unreported adoptions will be among the sources of error that such an effort would have to cope with.

Apparently depending on technique, thirteen regions or ten markers are used for comparison. Depending on the extent of variation in these regions of the genome, it may be eventually feasible to deploy rapid assay technologies enabling law enforcement to perform a check in the field within minutes thanks to nanotech advances.

Friend or foe? Yes and no...

This early article on fourth generation warfare had a then provocative statement:

In broad terms, fourth generation warfare seems likely to be widely dispersed and largely undefined; the distinction between war and peace will be blurred to the vanishing point. It will be nonlinear, possibly to the point of having no definable battlefields or fronts. The distinction between "civilian" and "military" may disappear.

It seems clear now that employment and integration into society is one of those battle fronts. Consider the two data points below.

In Afghanistan, Karzai is calling for the rank-and-file Taliban to return to the fold.

Afghan President Hamid Karzai returned Sunday to a Taliban stronghold where he was nearly assassinated 19 months ago, and said he would welcome rank-and-file members of the militia back into society...
"Our problem is mainly with the top Taliban -- who may number no more than 150 people -- who had links with Al Qaeda," Karzai said. "Those people are the enemies of Afghanistan, and we are against them.
"But those Taliban who are doing jobs and tilling the fields and working as shopkeepers, we want to welcome those Taliban."

That took guts. A bomb attack against Karzai was foiled just the day before.

A few days ago in Iraq, Bremer announced that former card-carrying Baathists could regain their jobs, provided they didn't act criminally.

The top U.S. administrator in Iraq announced Friday an easing of the ban on public sector jobs for members of Saddam Hussein's disbanded party. The move will allow thousands of former Baathists to return to positions in the military and Iraqi schools and universities...
The U.S. decision to disband Hussein's military and the Baath Party after Hussein's fall was at first popular. But it led to widespread unemployment, especially among the Sunni minority that formed the core of Hussein's regime. Some of the unemployed went on to join the ranks of the anti-U.S. insurgency, Iraqis and U.S. commanders say...

The West has a saying, that idle hands are the devil's tools. Those who are occupied at making a living have less time on their hands to make revolution. While it may be discouraging that 10 percent of the hired Iraqi security forces worked against US interests, the odds of an unemployed Baathist working against US interests was likely higher.

Clausewitz stated that the key to victory was defeating the enemy's will to fight. It must be remembered that this is a goal quite distinct from sheer destruction of the enemy. If insurgents and sympathizers can be convinced to buy into local democratic governments, then US interests are still being advanced.

While rhetoric stating that terrorists have no soul and lack a conscience might apparently be fine for a pep talk on the home front, the reality in the field is more complex.

No Communion for Kerry?

Voice of America was one of several outlets which carried the story about Cardinal Arinze's pointed comments with regard to the US election.

At a Vatican news conference, Cardinal Francis Arinze said priests should deny the sacrament of communion to any Catholic politician who supports the right of a woman to have an abortion.
But the cardinal fell short of singling out Senator Kerry who [is a Catholic and] has long supported abortion rights.

What the reports generally fail to mention is that Cardinal Arinze is considered to be a viable candidate for the Papacy; as a Nigerian, he stands a chance of being the first African Pope in over 15 centuries. I also find it interesting that politicians were singled out. Less forgiveness and a more exacting standard for those in politics? I suppose that's human.

Addendum circa 3 PM: With regard to the above church influence upon politics, it may be worth considering the words of Belgian Cardinal Gustaaf Joos as reported back on January 22:

He expressed contempt for Belgian politicians who had pushed through some of the world's most avant-garde laws on gay marriages, euthanasia and abortion. "Politics, democracy. Don't make me laugh. The right to vote, what is that all about? I find it strange that a snot-nosed 18-year-old has the same vote as a father of seven. One has no responsibilities whatsoever, the other provides tomorrow's citizens," he said. It is the first time a leading cleric has appeared to endorse calls by right-wing Catholics for an end to the principle of one person, one vote.

While this view with regard to democracy isn't mainstream, it deserves monitoring.

DNA and degrees of separation

New Scientist carries a report that a brother's DNA was used to track down a criminal. What they did was to locate a near match in their database of over 2.5 million entries and then investigated the relatives thereto. Network analysis meets DNA analysis. They're also finding that as they get more false matches, they'll have to use more genetic markers to fine-tune their search. Taking this to its logical conclusion, if they are able to sample a sufficient number of genetic hubs, the odds of being able to indirectly narrow down possible suspects via DNA would be greatly increased. In short, they could essentially be able to effectively search an entire population by sampling a well-connected fraction.

Conservative appeasement: a blast from the past

Back on November 9, 1999, the Cato Daily Dispatch presented an isolationist argument for appeasement of the same form that some antiwar liberals did. Guess who they hoped to appease?

"Osama bin Laden--who seeks to overthrow the Saudi government and is related by marriage to Mohammed Jamal Khalifa, a recruiter of Islamic extremists in the Philippines--asserts that 'Muslims burn with anger at America,'" Ivan Eland wrote in the Cato Policy Analysis "Protecting the Homeland: The Best Defense Is to Give No Offense". "The wealthy Saudi's anti-Americanism and financing of terrorism are motivated by his perception that American assistance to Saudi Arabia against Iraq in the Gulf War was an act against Arabs. Such American intervention can spur even normally moderate groups to threaten terrorist acts... Terrorists and religious cults have an obsession with the United States because of its superpower status and behavior...
"If the United States adopted a less interventionist foreign policy, it would be much less of a target for acts of both minor and mass terror. Using similar logic, the nation's Founders, including George Washington and Thomas Jefferson, fashioned a foreign policy that kept us out of Europe's conflicts so that the European powers would have little cause to intervene in America. That restrained foreign policy served the country well for more than a century and a half, and it should be reinstated...
"With the best of intentions--enhancing stability--the United States has conducted a number of ill-advised interventions in the post-Cold War environment, most notably in Somalia, Haiti, and Bosnia. Instability in such far-flung and international system. In none of those cases did the intervention have any significant relationship to U.S. security. Furthermore, such interventions rarely increase stability or make things better, even in the target country... In response to those types of interventions, a disgruntled faction could sponsor a terrorist attack using WMD or information warfare on U.S. soil. As the Senate Committee on Governmental Affairs noted in Proliferation Primer, the United States is now, like Gulliver, a vulnerable giant. Are such questionable interventions really worth the potential catastrophic consequences to the American people? The answer is a resounding no."

Structurally, the latter part is parallel to some antiwar arguments as to why the USA should not have invaded Afghanistan or Iraq.

In retrospect, it appears conservatives were wrong to label Clinton's attacks on Osama bin Laden to be a case of "wag the dog". It would appear that Clinton's push into Kosovo ultimately increased American influence in "New Europe" and Central Asia. I was struck by this passage from the March 1999 Phylllis Schlafly Report:

...by putting U.S. troops in Kosovo, Clinton is provoking terrorist attacks by Islamic radicals connected to Saudi renegade Osama bin Laden, who has declared a worldwide war on Americans. Fanatics bent on jihad against the "Great Satan" United States could hardly ask for a more tempting target than Americans deployed close to terrorist bases in northern Albania. Even more dangerous, entering the Kosovo war may provoke terrorist retaliation within the United States. It's not only our U.S. troops who will be put in mortal danger. Bin Laden has stated unequivocally that all Americans, including "those who pay taxes," are targets. At a recent Senate hearing, CIA Director George Tenet warned against the danger of a stepped-up terrorist campaign, saying, "There is not the slightest doubt that Osama bin Laden, his worldwide allies, and his sympathizers are planning further attacks against us."

Replace Albania with Iraq and Clinton with Bush, and this could be the same argument used by some in the antiwar movement why the USA should not attack Afghanistan or Iraq. History is full of ironies.

A reminder that there's more to the war on terror than Iraq

While this summary is not comprehensive, it's worth keeping track of other notable fronts in the US-led war on terror.

Pakistan

- nuclear tech trade plugged; ongoing war against insurgents

Afghanistan

- shaky, as opium production has skyrocketed, funding insurgents and warlords; trade routes go through Central Asia

Uzbekistan

- fighting insurgents; US backing; human rights issues

Tajikistan

- politically stable, however mafia is likely in opium drug trade

Thailand

- low intensity war against insurgents; terrorist bombing skills fortunately unimpressive

Malaysia

- piracy threat in region; cooperating with Thailand against insurgents

Indonesia

- shares regional piracy threat; apparently successful in containing Jemaah Islamiyah

Saudi Arabia

- engaged in low intensity war with insurgents; high threat level

Jordan

- hunting insurgents; apparently has just prevented a spectacular chemical attack by al Qaida

Sudan

- currently facing a flare-up in local insurgency; negotiations still apparently ongoing

Yemen

- bought off tribes as part of their apparently successful dismantling of al Qaida

Kenya

- still hunting for attackers (US embassy bombing, SAM attack)

Phillipines

- fitful progress against Abu Sayyaf; recent jail break is unsettling

Russia

- fight is still ongoing with Chechnya rebels; may escalate to transnational conflict

Nepal

- ongoing war with anti-royalist Maoists; currently experiencing pro-democracy protests; US backing

When affirmative action is in the interest of national security

Special operations forces are increasingly being key to US military operations. The April 2004 issue of National Defense Magazine features an article calling for increased cultural sensitivity. The motivation is entirely pragmatic.

Schwartz advocates creating “purpose-filled” organizations. Tactical units should possess both human intelligence and signals intelligence capabilities, scientific and analytical skills. Information operations should be emphasized, and, most importantly, SOF units should have “a cultural advisor or facilitator function,” he said.
SOF needs to recruit and select personnel with the right language and ethnic background for the regions around the world where they conduct operations. Knowledge of the cultural, social and behavior patterns of the adversary “would be an incredible power for SOF,” he said...
SOF needs will be met best by “tapping into information that can only be provided by locals. We must improve our ability to exploit that,” Schwartz said. To break through cultural barriers, SOF units must include troops from multiple ethnic backgrounds.

Increased cultural sensitivity would enable winning over hearts and minds at the tactical level, as well as providing a more accurate picture of how to defeat the adversary's will to fight. Sun Tzu's dictum to know the enemy still holds to this day.

Unintended consequences

In the rhetoric running up to the recent wars in Afghanistan, some warned that the result would be a strengthening of fundamentalist Islam. But what happens when you bomb a liberal democracy?

From The Guardian:
The incoming prime minister, José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero, set Spain on a radical course of social change yesterday by promising to legalise gay marriage and amend the constitution to give women the equal right of succession to the throne.

Thanks to the regime change in Spain, accelerated by the train bombings attributed to al Qaida, that liberal democracy is becoming even more liberal.

Americans might not realize that another partner in the War on Terrorism, the UK, is on its way to legalizing civil unions; the bill got some conservative support even.

It would be ironic if the end result of al Qaida's war upon the West and its values ultimately drove the West further into putting the liberal in liberal democracy. Blowback works both ways.

Are we all pre-suspects?

Some people are concerned about racial profiling, given that 690 black men have been DNA tested in the hunt for a suspect in a case of a serial rapist. Police Chief Timothy J. Longo had some interesting words when speaking to the public.

From AP via CNN:
One woman in the audience asked if the police would conduct widespread testing of white men if the rapist were white.
"Absolutely," Longo said, adding that he'd do the same if a criminal suspect were Asian or a woman. "I will do them all."

He sounded pretty gung-ho about getting DNA of possible suspects. I'm wiling to bet those samples will likely stay in state labs for future reference. Deborah Daniels, assistant U.S. attorney general for justice programs, says that DNA is "the future of law enforcement in this country". In the piece below, we learn Virginia has been adding arrestees and juvenile offenders added to the state DNA database system. No convictions apparently required in the case of the arrestees.

From USA Today:
Adding profiles from thousands of adult arrestees and juvenile offenders would greatly expand the [national] DNA system's worth by increasing the number of potential matches...
"Not all juveniles are going to become adult criminals," says Paul Ferrara, director of Virginia's DNA program. "But for the few who are, the sooner we have them in the system the better."

Why wouldn't Virginia law enforcement want to keep DNA data on pre-suspects, even after they've been ruled out as suspects in a case under investigation?