KnoxNews

URL: http://www.knoxnews.com/kns/opinion_columnists/article/0,1406,KNS_364_5530857,00.html

By THOMAS P.M. BARNETT, tom@thomaspmbarnett.com
May 13, 2007

I'm not shy about criticizing President George W. Bush's foreign policy, but all this talk about Iraq being America's worst foreign policy disaster ever is pure hyperbole. Portraying Iraq as another Vietnam is a tough sell, but it's one our Boomer leaders can't help but make, since they are sad products of their upbringing.
Because America faces no superpower rival today, it's hard to see how our current difficulties in Iraq, no matter how we exit or stay, portend an irreversible loss of respect for U.S. military power globally.

All we've proven is that: (1) America alone can't stabilize - much less rebuild - a country of Iraq's size following regime change, and (2) providing more than 90 percent of the postwar ground forces inevitably cripples our military.

But think back a mere decade to America's successful participation in the dismantling of Yugoslavia, to include positive regime change in malevolent Serbia.

There we waged war and then peace in a near-casualty-free environment, leaving both Bosnia and Kosovo more stable and internationally connected than we found them.

The difference? President Bill Clinton took the time to build a significant international coalition, allowing the U.S. to lead in war but largely follow in the peace, providing less than 10 percent of the peacekeeping force left behind.

Now, NATO actually sends into former Yugoslavia fewer peacekeeping troops than the surviving countries provide NATO in post-conflict situations elsewhere, making these states de facto security exporters.

Imagine how long it will take before we see Iraqi peacekeepers serving alongside Americans outside of the Persian Gulf.

So, sure, Iraq may define the floor of our capabilities for post-conflict reconstruction and stability operations, but it hardly sets the ceiling.

Another reason why the Vietnam comparison doesn't work is that neither our losses nor our continuing military burden in Southwest Asia come anywhere close to our national sacrifice in Southeast Asia in the 1960s and 1970s.

To match our casualties in Vietnam, we'd need to continue our current effort in Iraq for several decades. Likewise, to match our per capita service burden, we'd have to quadruple our military. In 1968, at the peak of the Vietnam War, approximately one out of 200 Americans was in uniform, serving abroad. Today, that burden's dropped to approximately one out of 800 Americans.

As for precipitous withdrawal, Americans are less interested in pulling out of Iraq than they are in reducing casualties, which most view as prohibitively high given our lack of progress to date. Get casualties down, and Americans are no more likely to demand "cut and run" from Iraq than they are from South Korea.

As Kurdistan has enjoyed significant peace and growing prosperity since Saddam's fall, it seems natural to shift the bulk of our in-country presence there.

Doing so would provide us a safe haven from which to conduct whatever stabilization and counter-terrorist operations still make sense amid the rising sectarian strife between Sunnis and Shiia, a fight we cannot stop without becoming the central target for fighters on both sides.

As for any U.S. pullback from combat signaling al-Qaida's "victory," that argument's been overtaken by events. Defeating the Sunni-based insurgency, to which al-Qaida elements contribute, is no longer the long pole in Iraq's tent. Instead, the Sunni-Shiia conflict dominates.

Want to test Tehran's and Riyadh's support to their co-religionists? Then backing out of this clash either calls the bluffs, getting them to the peace negotiations pronto, or speeds the killing that was slated to happen all along. Either way, better to take our troops out of harm's way and live to intervene another day.

Since all front-running presidential candidates profess commitment to the region's stability, the question isn't about reducing America's military presence there, but rather: How should it be used and where should it be deployed?

Remember, the U.S. didn't withdraw from Asia after Vietnam, we simply re-concentrated our presence in those venues that made the most sense, especially our historic role as off-shore regional balancer.

Now, as we watch Vietnam turn increasingly capitalistic in response to rising China's embrace of markets, a reverse domino effect ensues, reminding us that success in long wars, such as the one we now wage against radical Islamic extremism, logically unfolds over decades and not within one president's rule.

Remember that the next time Chicken Little tells you the sky is falling.

Thomas P.M. Barnett is a distinguished strategist at the Oak Ridge Center for Advanced Studies and the senior managing director of Enterra Solutions LLC. Contact him at tom@thomaspmbarnett.com.

Emerging Worldviews
Barnett is the smartest futurist or geopolitical strategist I know. He uncovers the brush and lays bare the underlying issues of World Peace in a way no one else i have ever read.
In my blog alone that is upwards of 1000 articles i would estimate.

Globalization and new rule sets for an increasingly connected world, and how that affects the disconnected.

At any rate, this is an 'audio' feed which I HIGHLY, HIGHLY recommend to those who are seeking a macro understanding of what is happening on our world today.

The link is below. I'd love your feedback after you have listened to it.
=====================================================
Thomas Barnett

[runtime: 00:32:05, 14.7 mb, recorded 2004-10-21]


http://www.itconversations.com/shows/detail238.html


Professor Thomas P.M. Barnett is a Senior Strategic Researcher in the Warfare Analysis & Research Department, Center for Naval Warfare Studies, U.S. Naval War College. Currently, Thomas is on temporary assignment as the Assistant for Strategic Futures, Office of Force Transformation (OFT), Office of the Secretary of Defense, where he is working with OFT Director Vice Admiral Arthur K. Cebrowski (USN, ret.) on a cluster of strategic concepts that link change in the international security environment to the imperative of transforming U.S. military capabilities to meet future threats.

Thomas has published a number of articles explaining these strategic concepts, which he presents comprehensively in a briefing entitled, "A Future Worth Creating: Defense Transformation in the New Security Environment."

At the Naval War College, he serves as Director of the NewRuleSets.Project, an ambitious effort to draw new "maps" of power and influence in the world economy so as to expand the U.S. Military's--and specifically, the U.S. Navy's--vision of where and how it can wield maximum influence across the international security environment of the Era of Globalization.

Thomas has written for Esquire, The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Christian Science Monitor, and The Providence Journal, and published a book with Praeger entitled Romanian and East German Policies in the Third World: Comparing the Strategies of Ceausescu and Honecker (1992)

In December 2002, he was selected by the editorial staff of Esquire as the "The Strategist" for their special edition entitled, "The Best and Brightest," which introduced a few dozen people "who are changing our world."

Thomas has a BA (Honors) from the University of Wisconsin. Following Wisconsin, he earned an AM in Regional Studies: Russia, Eastern Europe and Central Asia and a PhD in Political Science from Harvard University.

This presentation is one of many from the IT Conversations archives of Pop!Tech 2004 held in Camden, Maine, October 21-23, 2004. You'll find graphics accompanying this presentation at Thomas' web site.

This program is from our IT Conversations Legacy Programs series

May 13, 2007
Op-Ed Columnist
Only Halfway There

By THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN
I’m glad Democrats are keeping the pressure on President Bush for a withdrawal date from Iraq. It’s the only way to keep him and Iraqis focused on the endgame. But if Democrats really want to be taken seriously on foreign affairs, they need to recognize that they have only half a policy on Iraq. And it’s the easy half.

You can’t be in favor of setting a date to withdraw from Iraq without also being in favor of a serious energy policy to radically reduce our dependence on oil — now. To call for withdrawing from Iraq by a set date, no matter what the situation is on the ground there — without a serious energy plan here — is reckless. All we would be doing is making ourselves more dependent on an even more unstable Middle East, because any U.S. withdrawal from Iraq is likely, in the short run, to be destabilizing.

The Middle East today is deeply troubled. If we determine that our efforts to tilt that region in a different direction — by building a decent Iraq — have failed, then our efforts to minimize our exposure to that region have to begin. But the last thing we can afford to do is walk away from the Middle East militarily while remaining chained to it economically.

More important, if Iraq totally fails, but we still believe it is in our interest to promote reform in the Middle East, a serious U.S. energy policy that permanently brings down the price of oil — by developing scalable alternative energies — is actually the best Plan B there is. You will see reform in the Arab-Muslim world only when regimes there can’t survive just by extracting oil, but have to extract the talents of their people by educating, empowering and connecting them.

But to hasten that day, Democrats have to be a lot more serious about energy than they have been up to now. Everyone has an energy plan for 2020. But we need one for 2007 that will start to have an impact by 2008 — and there is only one way to do that: get the price of oil right. Either tax gasoline by another 50 cents to $1 a gallon at the pump, or set a $50 floor price per barrel of oil sold in America. Once energy entrepreneurs know they will never again be undercut by cheap oil, you’ll see an explosion of innovation in alternatives.

“Right now we’re looking for solutions in all the wrong places,” argues the noted oil economist Philip Verleger. “The only way one can effectively address this problem today and get an immediate kick is by raising the price at the pump and keeping it there.” Some of the revenue could be used to buy back the most fuel-inefficient vehicles on our roads, he added. “The best monument to 9/11 we could erect would be a mountain of crushed gas guzzlers.”

There are some hopeful signs: Chris Dodd has just broken ranks and become the first presidential candidate to issue a serious, comprehensive energy plan that includes the “T word.” He has called for a “corporate carbon tax” that would both help fight global warming emissions and raise gasoline prices.

“You say the word ‘tax’ and people usually head for the hills,” Mr. Dodd told me. “But this is one where the American people can handle the truth. Unless you address the issue of price, you’re not serious about moving us from Point A to Point B.”

Barack Obama also just got right in Detroit’s face. He went to Motown, called for much tougher fuel economy standards and bluntly told automakers and autoworkers the truth: “For years, while foreign competitors were investing in more fuel-efficient technology for their vehicles, American automakers were spending their time investing in bigger, faster cars. Whenever an attempt was made to raise our fuel efficiency standards, the auto companies would lobby furiously against it, spending millions to prevent the very reform that could’ve saved their industry.” Those are fightin’ words!

Finally, in a move that also merits praise, General Motors announced that it was joining other major U.S. corporations, like General Electric, and signing on to the United States Climate Action Partnership (U.S.C.A.P.), which calls for a cap-and-trade program to control carbon dioxide emissions. G.M. is the first auto company to do so.

None of these go far enough, but they are all new positions and may be harbingers of a new competition in which companies and candidates try to outdo each other in being serious about energy rather than phony. That would be a big deal — and it might give the Democrats a more comprehensive Iraq policy just in the nick of time.

You can’t be serious about getting out of Iraq if you’re not serious about getting off oil.

While there is progress, it doesn't appear (in my opinion) to coupled with the SURGE in Iraqi lawmakers WILL or in its URGENCY to get things done on the political front.

The Iraqi's NEED to go thru their own Civil War and then the regional players will be forced to get involved... primarily Saudi Arabia and Iran being the two main sectarian groups behind the scenes.

So the US receded to bases in Turkey, plays 'black ops' and trainer to the growing Iraqi Army.

Let those feuding look at the grass being 'greener on the other side'.

This is a decades process... NO instant gratification here.

------------------------------------------------------------------------
The Washington Times www.washingtontimes.com
Interim report on the surge

By Michael O'Hanlon
Published May 11, 2007


Viewing trends through April, it is possible to be a bit more specific now about what is and what is not with the surge-based strategy so far. That said, it must be underscored that with only three of the five additional planned U.S. brigades in place, and only about half of all "joint security stations" established throughout Iraq's neighborhoods, results must be viewed as provisional.
On the positive side, extrajudicial killings are down substantially in Iraq, with official U.S. data showing a two-thirds reduction relative to January levels. This reflects a broader reality -- much of the civil warfare that characterized Iraq in 2006 has been suppressed, at least temporarily. This is largely due to the willingness of the major Shia militias, including the Mahdi Army of Sheikh Moqtada al-Sadr, to lie low for the time being. However any such restraint may prove just temporary.
There are some additional good signs. Most notably, the willingness of Sunni tribal leaders in Al Anbar Province to collaborate with each other as well as U.S. and Iraqi authorities in opposing al Qaeda in that region has been very heartening. Correspondingly, violence is down in the region, with reported daily attack rates in and around Ramadi declining from 25 to just four over recent weeks.
That said, on balance it is hard to view the surge as a success to date. Two major problems stand out. As a result of these two unfavorable trends, many derivative problems and challenges remain largely intractable thus far.
The first major enduring problem is the continued resilience of al Qaeda and related terrorist elements. Their use of vehicle bombs and vest bombs has been extensive enough that overall fatality rates in Iraq have not declined since the surge began, at least according to the best available data. A corollary is that the Shia in Iraq are suffering a disproportionately high share of the casualties. (Not all bombings are aimed at them, but many are, and with the Shia militias showing restraint in their extrajudicial killings, the dominant form of violence is in fact most affecting Shia.)
Second, Iraqi political compromise remains very limited. All American officials including Gen. David Petraeus underscore the degree to which the surge cannot succeed based on a narrow military logic. At best, it can create political space for compromise that has often proved elusive during Iraq's periods of most intensive violence. Unfortunately, there is little sign of progress along such lines to date. While the hydrocarbon law that would ensure fair sharing of oil revenues among all Iraqis has made some progress in its journey through parliament, little has happened over the last month, and the bill is still far from becoming law. Other areas where reconciliation and compromise are needed, such as reforming the de-Ba'athification process to allow lower-level Ba'athists to rejoin public life and compete again for jobs, are not showing much progress.
As the Pentagon's special investigator has just confirmed in his latest quarterly report, Iraq's economy remains mediocre at best. The combination of oil revenue and foreign aid, together with last year's wise reforms of overly generous consumer subsidies, mean that federal coffers are in good shape. But even if there is money to spend, it is not being spent, and certainly not being spent well. A combination of violence, corruption, and federal interference in the efficient flow of some funds straight to provincial governments is impeding progress.
Utility performance remains stuck around Saddam Hussein levels at best, for most things (besides telephone and internet access, which are way up). Schools are not functioning well and health infrastructure is in even worse shape. Unemployment remains mired in the 30-plus percent range. None of this is surprising in light of the security picture, but it is disheartening nonetheless.
On balance, the picture in Iraq has some signs of hope, but continues to present more grounds for worry than for confidence. Unless things improve steadily and substantially in the coming months, it will be hard to believe the new surge-based strategy can succeed.
Afterword: National Security Adviser Steven Hadley has recently come under criticism for wanting -- and being unable to quickly find -- a prominent "czar" to help him with Iraq policy at the National Security Council. I think his idea is a good one and expect he will be able to find the right person soon, but it will not be a czar. That term implies a person to rethink the fundamentals of the policy.
Should such rethinking happen again, as may be necessary in coming months if the surge fails, I am confident Mr. Hadley will indeed coordinate that effort, as his job requires. Meanwhile, the administration needs someone to crack heads within the bureaucracy and deliver to Gen. Petraeus and U.S. Ambassador to Iraq Ryan Crocker the resources and people they request as quickly and completely as possible. It is appropriate that Mr. Hadley ask for help with such tasks, which involve the mechanics of government more than high policy, and therefore are appropriate for him to delegate.

Michael O'Hanlon is senior fellow at Brookings Institution

May 12, 2007
Billions in Oil Missing in Iraq, U.S. Study Finds

By JAMES GLANZ
Between 100,000 and 300,000 barrels a day of Iraq’s declared oil production over the past four years is unaccounted for and could have been siphoned off through corruption or smuggling, according to a draft American government report.

Using an average of $50 a barrel, the report said the discrepancy was valued at $5 million to $15 million daily.

The report does not give a final conclusion on what happened to the missing fraction of the roughly two million barrels pumped by Iraq each day, but the findings are sure to reinforce longstanding suspicions that smugglers, insurgents and corrupt officials control significant parts of the country’s oil industry.

The report also covered alternative explanations for the billions of dollars worth of discrepancies, including the possibility that Iraq has been consistently overstating its oil production.

Iraq and the State Department, which reports the numbers, have been under relentless pressure to show tangible progress in Iraq by raising production levels, which have languished well below the United States goal of three million barrels a day. Virtually the entire economy of Iraq is dependent on oil revenues.

The draft report, expected to be released within the next week, was prepared by the United States Government Accountability Office with the help of government energy analysts, and was provided to The New York Times by a separate government office that received a review copy. The accountability office declined to provide a copy or to discuss the draft.

Paul Anderson, a spokesman for the office, said only that “we don’t discuss draft reports.”

But a State Department official who works on energy issues said that there were several possible explanations for the discrepancy, including the loss of oil through sabotage of pipelines and inaccurate reporting of production in southern Iraq, where engineers may not properly account for water that is pumped along with oil in the fields there.

“It could also be theft,” the official said, with suspicion falling primarily on Shiite militias in the south. “Crude oil is not as lucrative in the region as refined products, but we’re not ruling that out either.”

Iraqi and American officials have previously said that smuggling of refined products like gasoline and kerosene is probably costing Iraq billions of dollars a year in lost revenues. The smuggling of those products is particularly feared because officials believe that a large fraction of the proceeds go to insurgent groups. Crude oil is much more difficult to smuggle because it must be shipped to refineries and turned into the more valuable refined products before it can be sold on the market.

The Shiite militia groups hold sway around the rich oil fields of southern Iraq, which dominate the country’s oil production, the State Department official said. For that reason, he said, the Shiite militias are more likely to be involved in theft there than the largely Sunni insurgents, who are believed to benefit mostly from smuggling refined products in the north.

In the south, the official said, “There is not an issue of insurgency, per se, but it could be funding Shia factions, and that could very well be true.”

“That would be a concern if they were using smuggling money to blow up American soldiers or kill Sunnis or do anything that could harm the unity of the country,” the official said.

The report by the accountability office is the most comprehensive look yet at faltering American efforts to rebuild Iraq’s oil and electricity sectors. For the analysis of Iraq’s oil production, the accountability office called upon experts at the Energy Information Administration within the United States Department of Energy, which has long experience in analyzing oil production and exports worldwide.

Erik Kreil, an oil expert at the information administration who is familiar with the analysis, said a review of industry figures around the world — exports, refinery figures and other measures — could not account for all the oil that Iraq says it is producing. The administration also took into account how much crude oil was consumed internally, to do things like fuel Iraqi power plants and refine into gasoline and other products.

When all those uses of the oil were taken into consideration, Mr. Kreil said, Iraq’s stated production figures did not add up.

“Either they’re producing less, or they’re producing what they say and the difference is completely unaccounted for in any of the places we think it should go,” Mr. Kreil said. “Either it’s overly optimistic, or it’s unaccounted for.”

Several analysts outside the government agreed that such a large discrepancy indicated that there was either a major smuggling operation in place or that Iraq was incapable to generate accurate production figures.

“That’s a staggering amount of oil to lose every month,” said Philip K. Verleger Jr., an independent economist and oil expert. “But given everything else that’s been written about Iraq, it’s not a surprise.”

Mr. Verleger added that if the oil was being smuggled out of Iraq, there would be a ready market for it, particularly in smaller refineries not controlled by large Western companies in places like China, the Caribbean and even small European countries.

The report also contains the most comprehensive assessment yet of the billions of dollars the United States and Iraq spent on rebuilding the oil and electricity infrastructure, which is falling further and further behind its performance goals.

Adding together both civilian and military financing, the report concludes that the United States has spent $5.1 billion of the $7.4 billion in American taxpayer money set aside to rebuild the Iraqi electricity and oil sectors. The United States has also spent $3.8 billion of Iraqi money on those sectors, the report says.

Despite those enormous expenditures, the performance is far short of official goals, and in some cases seems to be declining further. The average output of Iraq’s national electricity grid in 2006, for example, was 4,300 megawatts, about equal to its value before the 2003 invasion. By February of this year, the figure had fallen still further, to 3,800 megawatts, the report says.

All of those figures are far short of the longstanding American goal for Iraq: 6,000 megawatts. Even more dispiriting for Iraqis, by February the grid provided power for an average of only 5.1 hours a day in Baghdad and 8.6 hours nationwide. Both of those figures are also down from last year.

The story is similar for the oil sector, where — even if the Iraqi numbers are correct — neither exports nor production have met American goals and have also declined since last year, the report says.

American reconstruction officials have continued to promote what they describe as successes in the rebuilding program, while saying that problems with security have prevented the program from achieving all of its goals. But federal oversight officials have frequently reported that the program has also suffered from inadequate oversight, poor contracting practices, graft, ineffective management and disastrous initial planning.

The discrepancies in the Iraqi oil figures are broadly reminiscent of the ones that turned up when some of the same energy department experts examined Iraq’s oil infrastructure in the wake of the oil-for-food scandals of the Saddam Hussein era. In a United Nations-sponsored program that was supposed to trade Iraq’s oil for food, Mr. Hussein and other smugglers were handsomely profiting from the program, investigations determined.

In reports to Congress before the 2003 invasion that ousted Mr. Hussein, the accountability office, using techniques similar to those called into play in its most recent report, determined that in early 2002, for example, 325,000 to 480,000 barrels of crude oil a day were being smuggled out of Iraq, the majority through a pipeline to Syria.

But substantial amounts also left Iraq through Jordan and Turkey, and by ship in the Persian Gulf, routes that could also be available today, said Robert Ebel, a senior adviser at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington.

“Any number of adjacent countries would be glad to have it if they could make some money,” Mr. Ebel said.

Mr. Ebel said the lack of modern metering equipment, or measuring devices, at Iraq’s wellheads made it especially difficult to track smuggling there. The State Department official agreed that there were no meters at the wellheads, but said that Iraq’s Oil Ministry had signed a contract with Shell Oil to study the possibility of putting in the meters.

The official added that an American-financed project to install meters on Iraq’s main oil platform in the Persian Gulf was scheduled to be completed this month.

As sizable as a discrepancy of as much as 300,000 barrels a day would be in most parts of the world, some analysts said it could be expected in a country with such a long, ingrained history of corruption.

“It would be surprising if it was not the case,” said John Pike, director of GlobalSecurity.org, which closely follows security and economic issues in Iraq. He added, “How could the oil sector be the exception?”