taken from Thomaspmbarnett.com/weblog

ARTICLE: Up Close With the Counterinsurgency, By Paul McLeary, Columbia Journalism Review, 4 Feb 2008
Last para says it all:

There is no clear definition of victory in a fight like this. This isn’t to say that we’re winning—or losing—just that we’re at a crucial juncture where things could quickly swing back toward chaos, or ahead toward increased security and stability. The choice at this point really does lie with the Iraqi people, and their government, or whatever branches of their government are actually functioning. Meanwhile, there is a great story to be told—at Camp Courage and throughout Iraq—of the efforts of American soldiers at a crossroads, who are serving simultaneously as fighters, diplomats, civil servants, and tribal consiglieri, while trying to build trust between Sunni and Shia sheiks, the Iraqi Army, the Iraqi police, local Nahia and Qada councils (think city councils) and the Concerned Local Citizens movement, any of whom might be working at cross-purposes with each other at any given time. It’s a down-and-dirty study in the application of counterinsurgency doctrine.
This is a glimpse of the essential SysAdmin effort. My question to you is, do you think this is something that can be run out of the State Department?

If not, do you think it's fair to leave it all to the Pentagon and hope these skills don't get lost in the next resurgence of "Let's get back to basics!"?

That's why I argue for the Department of Everything Else concept. Somebody in the USG needs to want to pull those skills and resources in as required. Otherwise, all of them will die on the vine during a down time.

But the only way you get that possibility is to forge a grand strategy that incorporates these needs within your overall force. Not just a military strategy of one-big-war-plus-X-small-contingencies, but a USG-wide grand strategy that says, "This is the world we seek to achieve and these are the resources we'll put against that paramount goal."

Emerging-market multinationals

Wind of change
Jan 10th 2008
From The Economist print edition

Globalisation is creating a new class of companies; they should fight harder for it

Illustration by Bill Butcher

LAST month Hansen Transmissions International, a maker of gearboxes for wind turbines, was listed on the London Stock Exchange. Nothing noteworthy about that, you might say, despite the jump in the share price on the first day of trading and the handsome gain since: green technology is all the rage, is it not? But Hansen exemplifies another trend too, which should prove every bit as durable: the rise of multinational companies from emerging economies. Its parent is Suzlon, an Indian firm that began life as a textile manufacturer but is now among the world's five leading makers of wind turbines. Along the way, Suzlon has acquired not only Hansen, originally Belgian, but also REpower, a German wind-energy firm, spending over $2 billion on the pair.

The world is now replete with Suzlons: global companies from emerging economies buying businesses in rich countries as well as in poorer places (see article). Another Indian company, Tata Motors, looks likely to add to the list soon, by buying two grand old names of British carmaking, Jaguar and Land Rover, from America's enfeebled Ford. As a symbol of a shift in economic power, this is hard to match.

Economic theory says that this should not happen. Richer countries should export capital to poorer ones, not the other way round. Economists have had to get used to seeing this turned on its head in recent years, as rich countries have run large current-account deficits and borrowed from China and other emerging economies (notably oil exporters) with huge surpluses. Similarly, foreign direct investment (FDI)—the buying of companies and the building of factories and offices abroad—should also flow from rich to poor, and with it managerial and entrepreneurial prowess.

It is not yet time to tear up the textbook on FDI. According to the UN Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD), in 2006 the flow of FDI into developing economies exceeded the outflow by more than $200 billion. But the transfer of finance and expertise is by no means all in one direction. Developing economies accounted for one-seventh of FDI outflows in 2006, most of it in the form of takeovers. Indian companies have done most to catch the eye, but firms from Brazil, China and Mexico, in industries from cement to consumer electronics and aircraft manufacture, have also gone global. Up to a point, emerging-market multinationals have been buying Western know-how. But they have been bringing managerial and entrepreneurial skill, as well as just money, to the companies they buy: British managers bear grudging witness to the financial flair of Mexican cement bosses; Boeing and Airbus may have learnt a thing or two from the global supply chains of Brazil's Embraer.

Perhaps no one should be surprised. Half a century ago, Japan was a poor country: today Sony and Toyota are among the best-known and mightiest companies on the planet. South Korea and Taiwan are still listed as developing countries in UNCTAD's tables, but that seems bizarrely outdated for the homes of Samsung and Taiwan Semiconductor. Now another generation is forming. To its critics, globalisation may be little more than a licence for giant Western companies to colonise the emerging world, yet more and more firms from poorer economies are planting their flags in rich ground.

Time to stand up and be counted
Alas, further liberalisation is not certain. The Doha round of global trade talks has been bogged down, partly in squabbles about farm trade but also over industrial tariffs in the emerging world. The services negotiations are half-hearted and direct talks on FDI were ruled out long ago, largely because of developing countries' fears about rich invaders. And the gains forgone are considerable: a new book by the World Bank estimates that reforming services in developing countries could raise their growth rates by a percentage point. Were OECD countries to allow temporary immigration of skilled workers in service industries, the global gains might exceed $45 billion.

A few emerging-market giants—notably India's software firms—have been prepared to stand up for liberalisation. But most have not made their voices heard. How sad for free trade: such companies would provide much better illustrations of the success of globalisation than the familiar Western names do (unless you think Coca-colonisation sounds really cool). And how short-sighted of them. Even if some of these adolescents grew up behind tariff barriers, that represents their past: their future will surely lie in global markets. If the Doha round fails, the next opportunity may be a long time coming.

Who Gets Stuck with North Korea?

By Robert Haddick : 05 Feb 2008



Is the regime in North Korea about to collapse? Betting on the demise of Kim Jong-Il's reign is a wager frequently made, but yet to pay off. A recent country report from Jane's Information Group speculates on a collapse within six months. The report cites Asian sources who describe the "Dear Leader" moving financial assets before a possible run into exile. By contrast, a team of researchers from the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) gathered the views of leading Chinese government officials, academics, and researchers who specialize in North Korean affairs. As a group, these Chinese experts believe Kim Jong-Il is still firmly in power, and viewed the North Korean economy as improving slightly. They foresaw no threat to the North Korean regime for at least several years.

And yet many of these same Chinese government officials and analysts recommended that the Chinese and U.S. governments begin joint contingency planning for the aftermath of the Kim regime. According to the CSIS report, the Chinese army has already made plans for intervening inside North Korea in order to provide humanitarian relief, maintain civil order, and to secure North Korea's nuclear weapons and fissile material.

The North Korean black hole

The day Kim Jong-Il and his family flee North Korea will be a great day for the cause of human rights. Yet it is also a day that leaders in China, South Korea, and the U.S. dread. Chaos and a security nightmare will replace the previous state of brutal stability. And a gargantuan economic bill, to be borne by someone, will then begin to mount.

Once the North Korean police state collapses, it will be impossible to keep the global media out of the Hermit Kingdom. For the first time, the world will get to view the economic and social depravation imposed by the Kim regime. The pressure for wide-ranging humanitarian and economic relief will be immense.

However, government leaders in China, South Korea, and the U.S. will remember the economic consequences of the reunification of Germany. Germany's reunification resulted in a surge in Europe's inflation rate and a tightening of monetary policy in response, which later led to a painful recession. The economic situation in North Korea is even more extreme, a condition the global media won't let the world ignore.

But those are just the beginning of North Korea's costs. Even if the North Korean army were to assist a Chinese or South Korean or American relief force, such an expeditionary relief force would face large logistical challenges. The first task of the expeditionary force would be to find and seize control of North Korea's stockpiles of nuclear, chemical, and biological weapons, along with any fissile material. Even with the cooperation of the North Koreans, this would be dangerous work. Add to that crowd control and humanitarian relief, and the costs and risks of the expedition multiply.

The intervention force would have to face the prospect that many officers in North Korea's army and secret police would resist an occupation of the country. Thus, the intervention force might very well have to find and seize control of North Korea's weapons of mass destruction (WMD) stockpiles in the face of a terror insurgency armed with these very weapons.

Who wants to volunteer for this job? After assessing these costs and risks, the political leaders in China, South Korea, and the U.S. could hardly be blamed if they chose instead to ignore the aftermath of Kim Jong-Il's collapse. Nor should we be surprised if these countries maneuvered to get someone else stuck with the task of cleaning up North Korea. But how likely is this?

Getting stuck with the dirty work

As much as China, South Korea, and the U.S. would seem to want to avoid the risk and expense of managing North Korea after the collapse of the Kim regime, there are strategic reasons why each of these countries might end up with the job.

China

China fears the arrival of waves of refugees in the wake of a North Korean breakdown. China's border with North Korea is long and difficult to patrol. And these potential North Korean refugees would enter a region of China already unsettled with its own problems. China's leadership fears domestic turmoil more than any other threat. Chaos in China's northeast, sparked by a crisis in North Korean, could be a nightmare scenario for the leadership in Beijing. China's leaders may feel that the best way of preventing a crisis in North Korea from infecting China itself is to move into North Korea and attempt to contain the crisis there.

China would have other strategic reasons for wanting to intervene in North Korea. China has as much to fear from "loose" North Korean WMDs as anyone. This gives China an important incentive to take decisive action. In addition, establishing a Chinese military presence in North Korea would ensure that American ground forces would be kept away from Chinese territory. Finally, Chinese naval and air bases in North Korea would give China a better position from which to deter a future potential Japanese military threat, an important consideration in China's historical memory.

South Korea

Remembering Germany's recent experience with reunification, many statesmen in South Korea must faint when they consider the potential economic costs they would bear with their own reunification with the North. The South Korean leadership might wish to either avoid reunification, or ensure that China, the U.S., Japan, and the wider international community contributed heavily to the financial cost of the relief and clean up. Being already a wealthy country, South Korea may get less sympathy in this regard than it might like.

A strong sense of Korean nationalism and the desire for family reunification and relief may force South Korea's leadership to be more enthusiastic about formal reunification than it might otherwise care to be. Even if South Korea's leadership wished to proceed cautiously after a collapse of the Kim regime, popular sentiment may force a more aggressive and financially costly response. And even if South Koreans wished to approach the costs of reunification and relief soberly, it could be intolerable for them to watch while the Chinese, Americans, or others dominate a large portion of Korean territory.

United States

American political leaders would seem to have no interest in assuming the costs and risks of cleaning up North Korea. South Korea is a wealthy country that has long planned for reunification. And from the American perspective, China bears a large responsibility for North Korea's current state. Many in the U.S. will believe that if there is a large cost for cleaning up the mess, it is only fitting that China should pay it.

Yet the U.S. has its strategic interests in the region. In the wake of the decline of NATO, Japan becomes America's most important ally; it is certainly America's most important ally in Asia. If the U.S. cannot defend the Japanese-American alliance, it would lose credibility everywhere else in the world.

Yet Japan would be the strategic loser in either of the two scenarios described above. A large and sustained Chinese military presence in Korea, exposing the breadth of Japan across the Sea of Japan to China's military power, would be very unsettling to Japan. Likewise, a reunified, nationalistic, and anti-Japanese Korea would also trouble Japan over the long-term.

If the U.S. did nothing while Japan's strategic situation deteriorated, Japan would have to consider the option of significantly expanding its own armed forces. Given the long historical memories in the region, this step would prove to be highly destabilizing.

In addition, the U.S. has an interest in preserving its military basing complex in South Korea. These bases provide a logistics and trans-shipment capability to deploy and project U.S. military power throughout Asia. The U.S. may need to participate in a North Korean relief expedition in order to preserve the option of using these bases in future regional contingencies.

Thus, American political leaders will need to consider what price they would be willing to pay in order to protect America's alliance with Japan, to prevent Chinese military expansion into the Korean peninsula, and to preserve a U.S. basing option in southern Korea.

Two levels of diplomacy are needed

I have described reasons why China, South Korea, and the U.S. could get sucked into the North Korean tar pit in spite of the risks and costs of doing so. With all sides having strategic interests in the problem and obvious reasons for wishing to minimize their own costs and risks, it would seem to make sense for China, South Korea, the U.S., Japan, and others to cooperate now on planning for a post-Kim North Korea.

Although strict defenders of national sovereignty will object to the idea of a group of countries scheming over the collapse of another, the case of North Korea is too dangerous to ignore. Cooperative planning now might prevent a chaotic response later.

But even if these countries provide a smooth response to the collapse of the Kim regime, the strategic conflicts described above will still occur. A coordinated international relief expedition could provide humanitarian relief to North Korea, maintain order, prevent a refugee crisis, control the WMD stockpiles, and begin reconstruction. Yet it will take another level of diplomacy to prevent strategic conflict in the region, even after all of this important work is done.

The author was a U.S. Marine Corps infantry company commander and staff officer. He was the global research director for a large private investment firm and is now a private investor. His blog is Westhawk. He is a TCS contributing writer.

http://www.economist.com/world/asia/PrinterFriendly.cfm?story_id=10497396
Islam in Indonesia

Where “soft Islam” is on the march
Jan 10th 2008 | JAKARTA
From The Economist print edition

Indonesia has some worrying radicals but it seems to be following Turkey, with Islamists moderating as they get closer to power

Magnum

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IS INDONESIA, the most populous Muslim-majority country, undergoing creeping Islamisation? It is not hard to assemble enough recent evidence to give Western Islamophobes goosebumps. In late December a mob attacked and burned a prayer house in West Java belonging to Ahmadiyah, a sect deemed heretical by some mainstream Islamic scholars. Earlier in the month the country's Christian leaders complained that Muslim radicals, helped by local officials, had carried out a string of attacks on churches. Ten Muslim militants were jailed for attacks on Christians on Sulawesi island, including the beheading of three schoolgirls. In late November the religious-affairs ministry barred a liberal Egyptian scholar, Nasr Hamid Abu Zayd (who calls the Koran a “cultural product”), from public speaking in Indonesia.

Behind many recent incidents is a vigilante group, the Islam Defenders' Front (FPI), which in September assaulted bars, cafés and hotels in Bogor, near Jakarta, accusing them of violating Ramadan. Another rising radical force is the Indonesian chapter of Hizb-ut-Tahrir, which wants a caliphate to rule the whole Muslim world. Last August it gathered perhaps 90,000 supporters in a Jakarta stadium. Its leaders condemned democracy on the basis that sovereignty lies in God's hands, not the people's. A not dissimilar attack on pluralism was made in a hardline fatwa issued in 2005 by the Indonesian Ulemas Council (MUI). This same semi-official body recently demanded the banning of the liberal Egyptian scholar.

In 2006 a poll found that one in ten Indonesians supported terrorist attacks like the 2002 Bali bombings if intended to “protect the faith”. Jemaah Islamiah (JI), the terror group behind the Bali attacks, is still running several dozen pesantren (boarding schools), putting who knows what into impressionable teenage heads. The Bali bombers are due to be executed in the next few weeks, possibly triggering a backlash by radicals.

This all sounds worrying. But Indonesia is a huge, varied and complex place, and the radicals—even though some have a semi-official platform—are a small and not very influential minority. Contrary evidence abounds: liberals as well as radicals are making inroads. They have won a big battle over a “pornography” law that Islamists proposed in 2006. It would have banned bikinis and short skirts, for non-Muslim women too, and prohibited the Hindu minority's traditional dances. But a public outcry forced lawmakers to strike out all the controversial bits—and it still has not passed in parliament. Two new anti-terrorist police squads have made much progress in arresting and breaking up JI's leadership. There have been no attacks on foreign targets for two years.

As Indonesia democratised after the fall of the (secular) Suharto regime in 1998, local authorities gained autonomy and became directly elected. Many seized the opportunity to pass sharia-based laws, stoking fears of Islamisation. However, Greg Fealy, an Australian expert on Indonesian Islam, says these laws, though successful in winning votes for the local politicians pushing them, have usually had little practical impact. He recently revisited one such district, Tasikmalaya, where he found “there were more schoolgirls wearing the headscarf but just as much gambling, prostitution and drinking as before.”

The formerly separatist region of Aceh was allowed, under a peace pact with the rebels, to introduce strict sharia. The move was popular at first, says Sidney Jones of the International Crisis Group, a think-tank, but there was widespread revulsion when the authorities started publicly whipping miscreants. As a result the religious police were drastically reined in. Overall, Indonesians seem to prefer the idea of living under “God's law” to the practice of it. Indonesian Islam has always been distinct from the Middle Eastern kind, infusing influences from Hinduism and other religions. This will make it hard for fundamentalists to get far, says Muhammad Hikam, a political consultant.

Whereas a relatively small number of fiery militants and fundamentalists get most attention, Mr Hikam says that liberal Islamic scholars have successfully broken the link between religious piety and political Islam. Indonesians seeking a more overt expression of their faith, as many do nowadays, can still believe in separation of mosque and state. As the 2009 presidential and parliamentary elections approach, secular parties have been attracting voters by creating Islamic—but not Islamist—wings. The in-phrase, says Mr Fealy, is Islam Lunak, “soft Islam”. Pollsters are telling politicians that it helps to add a mild religious tinge to speeches about social justice and anti-corruption. But radical stuff, like preaching an Islamic state, is a turn-off.

Indonesia's two biggest Muslim organisations are Nahdlatul Ulama (NU)—whose long-time leader, Abdurrahman Wahid was president of Indonesia in 1999-2001—and Muhammadiyah, which together claim around 70m members. They indeed used to call for an Islamic state. Nowadays Masdar Farid Mas'udi, a senior NU figure, says all they mean by an “Islamic” state is a just and prosperous one. In some ways the two bodies have come to resemble Europe's mainstream Christian churches: “Catholic” NU stresses traditional rites and the authority of religious leaders, whereas “Protestant” Muhammadiyah stresses the primacy of scripture. As with Catholics and Protestants it is family tradition, rather than theology, that usually determines which group one belongs to. Both now accept Indonesia's secular founding creed, pancasila, which preaches religious tolerance (though you are supposed to believe in God).

Moderate success
Several of the country's political parties began life as the political wings of religious movements such as NU and Muhammidiyah. But the parties and their parent bodies have drifted apart, even as all have mellowed. In recent elections a more religiously conservative group, Prosperous Justice (PKS), has gained votes—but polls now show its support slumping. One reason is that it backed the pornography law and has suffered in the backlash against it.

Another, admits Zulkieflimansyah, a senior PKS parliamentarian, is that it has joined the (secular) coalition of President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono. Its popularity has suffered because of tough policies such as cutting fuel subsidies. Mr Zulkieflimansyah sees his party as undergoing a desirable process of moderation as it “encounters reality”. PKS—like longer-established Muslim parties before it—is now having to ditch the fire and brimstone to transcend minority appeal. Rising younger figures in the party, like him, are more comfortable with this than its older generation, who studied in the Middle East. In general, the country's larger Muslim parties are echoing Turkey's ruling AK party—ditching Islamism while still appealing to the pious. Smaller ones still holding to a hard line may fare badly in 2009: Mr Fealy reckons that in 200 regional elections in the past two-and-a-half years not a single “sectarian” Muslim candidate has won.

Indonesia is, overall, edging away from radical Islamism. But the trend is not irreversible, and the authorities must avoid fostering fundamentalists by pandering to them. The MUI (the council of mullahs) and the FPI (the vigilantes) provide a lesson: both were created, for temporary reasons of expediency, by the Suharto regime but both have lingered to haunt its democratic successors. Mr Yudhoyono now seems to be trying to channel the MUI's radical enthusiasm into issuing fatwas against “deviant” Islamic sects like Ahmadiyah. But this only encourages the FPI to take up its cudgels.

Other, more important ways to make sure Indonesia stays on the path to democratic pluralism are to keep the economy growing and to boost sluggish efforts at reforming graft-ridden public institutions. High unemployment provides recruits for communal violence like that in Sulawesi—whether or not religion is the spark that ignites the tinder. Poverty, combined with disgust at corrupt officialdom, push some people towards the Utopian promises of groups such as Hizb-ut-Tahrir. In Indonesia, unlike most Muslim countries, the ideological struggle between various forms of Islam is being fought largely by democratic means. The violent and the intolerant are still at the margins and, while the country's steady progress persists, look likely to stay there.

Copyright © 2008 The Economist Newspaper and The Economist Group. All rights reserved.

KIGALI, Rwanda — Bob Geldof has parachuted into the White House travel pool here in Rwanda, and will join us on the flight from Air Force One to Ghana tonight.

He's going to interview President Bush for Time magazine and several European outlets, such as Liberacion, about aid to Africa for HIV/AIDS, malaria, and business development.

Mr. Geldof is an Irish rock and roll singer and longtime social activist who has helped, along with U2 rocker Bono, raise awareness about need in Africa. His most well known achievement is organizing the Live Aid concert in 1985, which raised money for debt relief for poor African countries.

But Mr. Geldof has remained closely engaged with African affairs since then, and he spoke off the cuff to reporters today who were waiting for a press conference with Mr. Bush and Rwandan President Paul Kagame.

Mr. Geldof praised Mr. Bush for his work in delivering billions to fight disease and poverty in Africa, and blasted the U.S. press for ignoring the achievement.

Mr. Bush, said Mr. Geldof, "has done more than any other president so far."

"This is the triumph of American policy really," he said. "It was probably unexpected of the man. It was expected of the nation, but not of the man, but both rose to the occasion."

"What's in it for [Mr. Bush]? Absolutely nothing," Mr. Geldof said.

Mr. Geldof said that the president has failed "to articulate this to Americans" but said he is also "pissed off" at the press for their failure to report on this good news story.

"You guys didn't pay attention," Geldof said to a group of reporters from all the major newspapers.

Bush administration officials, incidentally, have also been quite displeased with some of the press coverage on this trip that they have viewed as overly negative and ignoring their achievements.