The Value of Newness
By David Ignatius
Sunday, February 24, 2008; B07

"When it comes to foreign policy, experience is a highly overrated asset." So says a former British foreign service officer named Jonathan Clarke, who has created a blog called Swoop ( http://theswoop.net) dedicated to undermining Washington's fondness for conventional wisdom.

What my friend Clarke means is that the set of issues and strategies that shaped the Cold War generation has passed. He's a product of that generation, having served at the sharp end of the spear for the British government in various Cold War hot spots. But that era is over. The intellectual matrix formed by the Soviet threat, and before that by Hitler's rise in Germany, needs to be reworked. There is a new set of problems and personalities -- and if America keeps trotting out the same cast of characters and policy papers, we will fail to make sense of where the world is moving.

The experience issue will dominate the final weeks of the Democratic primary campaign. Hillary Clinton's only remaining trump card is that she has been in the White House before and will be ready, as she repeats so tirelessly, from Day One. But ready for what? For a recapitulation of the people and policies that guided the country in the past? That's an attractive proposition only if you think that the world of the 1990s -- or '80s, or '70s -- can be re-created.

The experience gap will overshadow even more the general election race against John McCain, the presumptive Republican nominee. With his every sinew, McCain embodies the idea of a wise, battle-tested man. "I'm not the youngest candidate, but I am the most experienced," he said after winning the Wisconsin primary Tuesday night. It's clear he hopes this pitch will carry him all the way to the White House. He's the tough old fighter pilot; he has fought the Cold War battles; he knows how to protect the nation in a time of danger. That's the McCain strategy in one compound sentence.

The assumption that experience equates with good judgment is a hard one to shake. We tend naturally to defer to the person who has been there before, measured the adversary, learned how the game is played. Yet if ever there were a test of the efficacy of experience, it was the Bush administration's decision to go to war in Iraq and its subsequent management of the postwar occupation. Bush's national security advisers were arguably the most experienced in modern times. But their performance was often very poor. That was partly, I think, because they overlaid the post-Sept. 11 challenges on a Cold War template about the uses of military power.

We are the last major nation to make the transition from Cold War thinking to something new. China and India are rising thanks to new leadership elites that understand how to succeed in global markets; Russia is about to elect a new president whose formative experiences came after the fall of the Soviet Union; Pakistan has just rebuffed its own durable Cold Warrior, Pervez Musharraf; even Fidel Castro, perhaps the iconic survivor of the Cold War, has decided to step down. Only in America could John McCain seriously campaign for leadership as a symbol of the past.

The utility of inexperience was explained to me last week by Dmitry Peskov, the spokesman for President Vladimir Putin. He said that what's attractive for Russians about Dmitry Medvedev, who is certain to be elected as Putin's successor next Sunday, is that he embodies "a generation that was not shaped by the Soviet Cold War way of thinking." Putin himself is a transition figure, a man formed by his experiences as a KGB officer. But after him, explained Peskov, comes a generation of Russians who don't carry the same baggage. They have traveled the world, seen things their parents could never imagine, looked at problems with fresh eyes.

To prepare for the next stage of the U.S. presidential campaign, try this thought experiment: Imagine the television footage of Barack Obama's first trip abroad as president -- the crowds in the streets of Moscow, Cairo, Nairobi, Shanghai, Paris, Islamabad. Now try to imagine the first visit by President John McCain to those same cities. McCain is a great man, and he would be welcomed with respect, deference, perhaps a bit of fear. Obama would generate different and more intense reactions -- surprise and uncertainty, to be sure, but also idealism and hope. Now tell me which image would foster a stronger and safer America in the 21st century.

Obama has liabilities as a candidate, but his inexperience paradoxically may actually bolster one of his core arguments -- that he would give America a fresh start.

The writer is co-host ofPostGlobal, an online discussion of international issues. His e-mail address isdavidignatius@washpost.com.

Look it up on the web
Feb 14th 2008
From The Economist print edition

http://www.economist.com/spts Utilityecialreports/PrinterFriendly.cfm?story_id=10638121
The growth of i-government
Illustration by Allan Sanders

EVEN the most curmudgeonly critic would have to admit the one great benefit of e-government: it comes twinned with i-government, where i stands for information. As readers under the age of 30 may be only dimly aware, before the internet age simply getting hold of information on any aspect of government was often far from straightforward. Getting the right form and finding out how to fill it in might involve going to a post office, writing a letter (sometimes enclosing a money order or a stamped self-addressed envelope) or visiting a government office and often queuing. Government printing offices sold official documents to cover their costs and sometimes to make a profit.

All this meant that information came at a price in time, effort and fees. In poorer countries it might require more than that. The forms might not be available, or they might have to be bought from profiteering officials or their friends. The layout would change regularly, so that applicants with the wrong form could be fined or encouraged to pay a bribe to have their mistake overlooked. Being in charge of publishing the latest regulations used to be a lucrative niche: a business would pay handsomely for information about a new standard that its products had to comply with.

These days, governments in advanced countries put virtually all documents intended for public consumption online. That gives the citizen-consumer everything he might want, along with much that he probably doesn't. Even e-backwaters such as Turkmenistan or Myanmar provide things like visa application forms on the web, although in other respects they may be invisible online.

It goes without saying that simply providing information is no guarantee of good government (being able to download a form does not mean that the embassy will be efficient, let alone that the applicant will get a visa). All the same, it marks a huge change. Just as scarcity favours corruption, knowledge brings power. Making the right forms freely available is only part of it. More broadly, putting laws, regulations, parliamentary debates and the details of state budgets online makes maladministration harder. Those outside government can ask sharper questions about its decisions and be more confident about making their own. Those inside government have less excuse for misrule.

The flagship project of this kind is America's usa.gov, a multiple award-winner and probably the best single e-government website in the world. It sticks chiefly to providing information. Although it also offers 100-plus online services, these turn out mostly to be links to other sites where you can renew a passport, contact an elected official or download a Polish-language visa application form. It is complemented by a family of other sites, such as benefits.gov, which offers information about every part of the largesse that the taxpayer directs to the needy.

My country, right or wrong
Yet even in this relatively straightforward task of making public information properly public, technology offers plenty of scope for blunder. In its most recent annual report on the world's government websites, America's Brown University catalogued an array of mishaps found last year. For example, the website of Chad's embassy in Washington, DC, had been taken over by a cheeky business, as had that of Libya's mission to the UN and Timor-Leste's ministry of justice. In Nepal, the ministry of industry and commerce, mentioned on the main government site, had no active links. The latest “news” story on the site of Laos's embassy in Washington, DC, dated from 2006. Tonga's national portal offered links such as “about us” and “quick facts” that did not work. Mexico's site for “agriculture/hunting/fishing/rural development” provided links to an “English” option that led nowhere. And some sites carried advertising suggesting a surprising degree of official entrepreneurship: Bolivia's portal, for instance, had a banner ad for passion.com, which promised “sexy personals for passionate singles”.

Even if government websites are not actually wrong or dysfunctional, they are seldom designed with the outsider in mind. For a start, they are often far too numerous and poorly linked. In Britain, Alex Butler, an e-government chief, has closed 551 of the 951 central-government websites that existed in early 2006. No new ones are permitted. The aim is to shift content onto directgov, the British government's central information point, and to a sister site offering online public services to business.

But directgov has its critics too. William Heath, who runs a witty blog on government reform, idealgovernment.com, describes the website as a “random generator of self-referential public-service information”. That may be a bit unfair. Directgov's managers agree that the site's search engine needs improving, but argue that its main role is to package information into useful clusters: “coherent citizen-focused topics”, in e-government-speak.

Yet government websites rarely fit the way that people actually use the internet. A Google search for “UK” “government” “childhood” “obesity” and “help” brings up a site that links to some mildly interesting statistics, but the excellent “children and healthy weight” page on directgov does not come up among the first 100 results. France, which prefers the term “transformation” to “e-government”, has put impressive swathes of government information onto a well-presented and well-designed website.

Companies have mostly understood that visitors to their sites do not necessarily come through the front door. Their websites cater for the fact that consumers often start internet shopping by searching for a particular product or going to a price-comparison site. Governments, by contrast, do not “optimise” their websites to make them easily readable by outside search engines; indeed some actively discourage the idea—for example, by making information available only to registered users.

So even the apparently simple task of publishing well-presented and logically arranged information on the web turns out to be surprisingly difficult—and remains incomplete. The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development has defined four stages of e-government, each more demanding than the last. After information comes “interaction”, then “transaction” and eventually “transformation” (see chart 1). The more transformational the change, the bigger the benefits. But it turns out that, at all stages, the biggest beneficiaries will be governments, so they may have to work at persuading users to accept the changes.

From The Times
February 23, 2008
Will blogger Fidel see trouble?
If it's not careful, Cuba could end up more like Albania than the Bahamas
Moisés Naím
About a year ago Fidel Castro started blogging. Every week or so he posted his “Reflections of the Commander in Chief”. While not strictly a blog, in his internet musings “El Comandante” does what bloggers do: he comments on the news, chastises enemies (Bush, Aznar), extols friends (Hugo!) or rambles on subjects he cares about (sport and politics).

On Tuesday his most recent post, which as usual was also published in Granma, Cuba's leading newspaper, was a bit different: “I will neither aspire to nor will I accept, I repeat, I will neither aspire to nor will I accept the positions of President of the State Council and Commander in Chief”, Castro wrote. Not many bloggers make history with their early morning postings. Moreover, in this history-making post El Comandante did reassure his readers that while he was relinquishing power they should not worry: he was keeping his blog. He would just change its name to “Reflections of El Compañero Fidel”.

Bloggers know that one of the risks is inadvertently to expose too much about themselves. And Fidel was not immune: he too revealed a lot in his postings, often through omission. Indeed, his postings are as informative for what they skip as for what they include.

In Fidel's blog, for example, Raúl Castro was never mentioned. It was only last Tuesday, after months of voluminous blogging, that Fidel felt the need to refer to Raúl, who happened to be his younger brother, the acting president, head of the armed forces and his rumoured successor. Even then Fidel only mentions his brother to emphasise that when he had to hand over power to him: “Raúl... who is also the head of the armed forces thanks to his own merits [my emphasis] as well as other party and state leaders had been reluctant to see me go from my positions, despite my frail health.”

BACKGROUND
Fidel Castro quits: the reaction
New era on hold after Fidel Castro steps down
He stood up to the US - and survived
Profile: Fidel Castro, the 'immortal' ruler
Raúl's invisibility in Fidel's blog is a manifestation of the secretive power struggle to define Cuba's future. Inevitably, several factions are jockeying for dominance in the post-Fidel era. The two main ones are “the Chinese” and “the purists”. The first favours a Chinese-inspired model with an economy open to foreign trade and investment, tightly controlled politics and the military playing a large role running state-owned businesses.

The purists instead maintain that Cuba is now in a position to attain Fidel Castro's socialist dream: a centralised economy with political power firmly concentrated in the State and the party. They argue that Hugo Chávez's oil-fuelled generosity and ideological commitment makes this approach economically viable.

The Chinese faction is led by Raúl Castro, a pragmatic military man more interested in logistics than ideology. The leader of the purists is the Foreign Minister, Felipe Pérez Roque, Fidel Castro's former aide. Pérez Roque also counts on Hugo Chávez. After all, the 110,000 barrels of oil that Chávez ships to Cuba every day must count for something in terms of political influence in an otherwise bankrupt economy.

It is impossible to predict the path that Cuba will follow. The most likely scenario is a messy hybrid that continues with much of the current policies and politics but where different approaches are periodically tested, embraced or discarded. But in addition, interesting insights about Cuba's likely evolution can also be gleaned by looking at the experience of other nations making the transition to a post-communist model.

One sobering lesson is that, in the transition to a democratic market economy, protracted failure is more common than rapid success. More nations are stuck in a disappointing transition than those, such as the Czech Republic, that have progressed quite fast after communism. Another lesson is that the more internationally isolated, centralised, and personalised a former communist regime is, the more traumatic and unsuccessful its transition will be. Ceausescu's Romania is having a more troubled transition than Estonia, for example.

Thirdly, dismantling a communist state is far easier and faster than building a functional replacement for it. Think Yugoslavia. Fourthly, as Russia shows, the brutal, criminal ways of a powerful communist party with a tight grip on public institutions are usually supplanted by the brutal, criminal ways of powerful private business conglomerates with a tight grip on public institutions. Finally, introducing a market economy without a strong and effective State capable of regulating it gives resourceful entrepreneurs more incentive to emulate Al Capone than Bill Gates. Think Bulgaria.

It is therefore safe to assume that if the post-Castro regime suddenly implodes, Cuba will end up looking more like Albania than the Bahamas. Instead of a massive flow of foreign investment into Cuba, America will get a massive inflow of refugees escaping a chaotic nation that no longer can or will stop them from fleeing abroad. Domestic politics will be unstable and nasty, with the Cuban exile community from America adding to their complexity.

If Cubans don't get their transition right and the power struggle leads to unstable politics and poor economics becoming the norm, Cuba may end up becoming the epicentre of the Caribbean drug trade, the source of a huge flood of refugees to the United States, a corruption haven and a black hole for substantial sums of American money spent on refugees and security.

This dire scenario is neither inevitable nor imminent. But it is also not impossible if the internal politics spiral out of control, fuelled by appetites, rivalries, Chávez's meddling and the stubborn commitment of the US to a failed embargo. If that happens, at least we will get interesting updates by scouring Fidel's blog. Especially for what he will avoid mentioning.

Moisés Naím is editor-in-chief of Foreign Policy magazine

Palestinian scheme for mass charge on Gaza-Israel border collapses
February 27, 2008, 11:29 PM (GMT+02:00)

Gaza-Egyptian border wall flattened by Hamas Jan. 24, 2008
DEBKAfile reports: The Palestinian masses did not rise to the summons for 40,000 individuals to turn out Monday, Feb. 25 and draw a human chain along the 40-km border Gazan-Israel to protest the Israeli blockade. Deterred by determined Israeli military preparations to halt their approach to the border and Israeli ministers’ threats to shoot them in the legs if necessary,” only a few demonstrators obeyed the summons. A disturbance by few dozen Palestinians was put down by Israeli border guards, one of whom was slightly injured. The large numbers stayed away when they realized Israel was resolved to forcibly thwart a repeat of Hamas’ success a month ago when they knocked over the Egyptian border to open the gate for a massed Palestinian surge into Sinai.
Sunday night, acting PM foreign minister Tzipi Livni and defense minister Ehud Barak pledged Israeli territory would be defended against infiltration to its sovereign borders. “Hamas is directly responsible for activity which puts civilian population at jeopardy – and not for the first time,” said the statement.
Israel army and police forces, heavily reinforced, deployed in two defensive lines to shield the border and Israeli civilian locations facing Gaza.
Overnight, the air force struck armed Palestinian bands as they streamed from all parts of the Gaza Strip to seize battle positions on the border. Air Force and police helicopters scattered on launching pads the length of the Gaza border, armed with tear gas for crowd dispersal.
Israel also geared up against Palestinian terrorists accessing tunnels burrowed under the border to strike Israeli forces from the rear and batter the border barrier from the Israeli side. Five of those tunnels were discovered Sunday and 50 Palestinian operatives detained for questioning about Palestinian terror tunnel plots.

Barnett's comments on learning about Globilization from American History

Andrew Jackson's "external improvements"

Jackson's two administrations (1829-1837) saw a huge spike in infrastructure development. Befitting his focus on promoting cotton exports, the vast bulk was spent to connect America to the outside world--hence his "internal improvements" were really external improvements!

Everything I needed to know about globalization I learned in American history.

That's why I was fascinated with Fallon's focus on cross-border infrastructural connectivity in Central Asia--the bridge (I wrote that bit with my "non-poison" pen!).

It's that sort of understanding that makes it harder to want to isolate Iran in the region, because the Iranians, whether we like it or not, are natural infrastructure providers in Iraq, Afghanistan, and the Stans in general. Ditto for the Turks and Chinese.

Get used to these postwar partners. They are not going away.