by Global Guerilla's
TRANSITION TOWNS

Posted: 07 Apr 2008 01:48 PM CDT

"How do we enjoy the benefits of globalization without being vulnerable to its excesses?"

The key to our collective future success (from maximal wealth creation to basic survival), will be in how we mitigate the impact of black swans generated by global instability. One of the best approaches I've encountered is to add resilience to the very fabric of our global system, the community.

NOTE: From the controls engineering perspective this approach both simplifies and adds resilience to the design of the global system. In short, it creates a bow-tie control system that enables extremes of complexity without egregious loses in both stability or efficiency (it's a control system that we see in use with both the Internet and in the energy production subsystem used by cells in our bodies).

One of the early (and very smart) approaches to this can be found in the grassroots Transition Towns movement. This movement started in the UK, with an academic paper and a follow on experiment in a town called Totnes (see the excellent 3 part YouTube presentation by founder Rob Hopkins). The movement has expanded to 600 towns across the world at various stages of implementation.

How To Do It
To focus the effort, the movement assumed two of the many potential black swan scenarios (in this case Peak Oil and Global Warming) would likely occur and their arrival would damage local life. This approach led them to focus on a reduction in oil consumption (and thereby long-distance transportation) as a means to improve resilience (a good start). Through trial and error, they were able to generate a blue-print (PDF and more expansive Wiki) for building local resilience entitled the "Transitions Town" network (note that many of these steps use the approach of open source insurgency and even uses the rule of five). Here are the steps:

Develop a steering group to get it started (a foco). Five people is recommended. Plan to disband this group when things get started.
Raise awareness (basic education on the effects of black swans).
Network with existing groups (go open source).
An event to launch the initiative (the great unleashing).
Form working groups.
Leverage activity with technology (social tech).
Develop visible examples of progress.
Reskilling and teaching (sharing skills/knowledge).
Connect to the government (financial risks).
Connect to elders (narratives and skills).
Let it run itself.
Complete the effort by formalizing a plan through the contributions of the sub-groups.

An Economic Case via Risk Mitigation
One of the most interesting offshoots of this movement is that they were able to generate an economic case for their efforts. Through audits of the energy use by local businesses, they were able to demonstrate the financial risks the businesses faced if energy prices spiked. This provided the movement with the opportunity to help the business source local resource alternatives and/or develop new opportunities that presented less risk.

Author's Note: I'd like to flesh this out in more detail, perhaps through a investigative trip sponsored by a magazine looking for a great article on the future of communities/consumption/etc

How to Secure Israel
Demilitarized land for peace is the key to a settlement
By Merrill A. McPeak
From foreignaffairs.org , March 31, 2008
Summary: Merrill A. McPeak responds to critics of his 1976 Foreign Affairs article.
General Merrill A. McPeak (ret.) is co-chairman of Barack Obama's presidential campaign. He was Chief of Staff of the United States Air Force from 1990-1994.



More than 30 years ago, I was a young Air Force colonel attached to the Council on Foreign Relations as a military fellow. During that excellent academic year in Manhattan, I wrote and Foreign Affairs published an article now being circulated in the blogosphere as evidence of an alleged anti-Israel point of view. Some commentators reach farther, suggesting that since I have been an active supporter of Barack Obama's presidential bid he, too, is anti-Israel. Both these assertions fall flat after any objective reading of the historical record.

I am a long-time admirer (and think myself a friend) of Israel. In the early 1970s, I played a key role in getting advanced weaponry released to the Israeli Air Force -- capabilities it later put to active use. During that period, I made many official visits to Israel and established close relationships there. These contacts turned out to be useful during Operation Desert Storm, when, as chief of staff of the U.S. Air Force, I worked with my Israeli counterparts to help defend Israel from Iraqi Scud missile attacks.

I was a vocal opponent of the George W. Bush Administration's decision to invade Iraq, a strategic blunder made worse by slapdash execution. As we have seen, this star-crossed action took our eye off the ball in Afghanistan, breathed new life into a moribund al Qaeda, and enhanced Iranian influence in this critical region -- all outcomes which damaged both the United States and our ally Israel.

It is my view and hope that Israel will have our continued support. I wish it every success. Of course, what Israel regards as success is up to it to decide. But for friends like me, "success" means a secure Israel at peace with neighbors who recognize and respect its existence. Even so, we should maintain our special relationship and help Israel keep its qualitative military edge.

As for the article, much has changed in 32 years and much has not. The essential argument holds: no set of realistically achievable geographic borders produces safety for Israel. Rather, the security requirement is that any of the territory taken in the Six-Day War and given back as part of a peace settlement should be effectively demilitarized. Of course, the Sinai Peninsula was returned to Egypt long ago in exactly this way, resulting in relative quiet along Israel's southern border and creating a fundamental shift in the regional balance of forces. This opportunity was not skillfully exploited, so the result has been a "cold peace." But it is nevertheless peace and has served the interests of both sides.

My article was, and remains, not an attack on Israel but quite the opposite.

FIXING IT
The Military
How to fix the U.S. military.
By Phillip Carter and Fred Kaplan
Updated Monday, March 31, 2008, at 7:12 AM ET
The next president will inherit a military in strange shambles. Its soldiers fight extremely well, but its army is on the brink of breaking. Its budget is enormous, but most of the money goes to weapons that have little to do with promoting real security. Some official documents detail the problems and outline solutions, but too often they aren't translated into action. The principal task, therefore, is to do just that—in the face of enormous bureaucratic resistance.

• Overhaul the budget. If you'd awakened from a 20-year-long slumber and glanced at the current defense budget, you'd think the Cold War were still raging. President Bush's budget request for the next fiscal year—totaling $541 billion, not including money for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan—is dominated by aircraft carriers, submarines, fighter jets, and ultratech combat fighting vehicles, i.e., the sorts of weapons you'd need to fight the sort of comparably armed superpower that no longer exists. Members of Congress impose no discipline on this extravagance—they scarcely even ask whether all these programs are necessary—for fear of accusations that they're weak on defense or soft on terror.

Yet there is a way out of this paralysis. In each of the past few years, Bush has put all the costs of Iraq, Afghanistan, and "the longer war on terror" into a separate "supplemental" to the budget. The next president should ask the defense secretary to do two things: First, make sure everything in the supplemental really is needed for those wars (tens of billions of dollars' worth don't appear to be); second, announce that everything else is back on the table. There hasn't been a "bottom-up review" of the defense budget—a systematic look at the requirements of security—since the end of the Cold War. It's time to conduct one, seriously. We don't have the money to stay this course.

• Rejigger the military services. One obstacle to rational military planning is that, for the past 40 years, by unspoken agreement, the defense budget has been evenly split among the Army, the Navy, and the Air Force. To do otherwise—to announce, for instance, that the Army needs 20 percent more money and the other services could each get by with 10 percent less—would set off a firestorm inside the Pentagon and wreck the interservice cooperation that has marked U.S. military campaigns in recent years. So, over the next several years, certain missions should be played up, others played down. Because the current Air Force is dominated by fighter pilots, the Air Force's No. 1 priority today is to build as many F-22 fighter planes as it can, at a cost of hundreds of billions of dollars—even though they would play no role in any foreseeable war over the next two decades. One way to wean them off such weapons is to build up (and put more money into) other Air Force missions—for example, cargo-transport planes (to carry ground forces and their gear), close-air-support planes (to fire shells or drop bombs in support of troops on the ground), or to provide security for bases (many Air Force personnel have been reassigned to do just that). The defense secretary could announce that the service's continued share of the budget depends on boosting the importance of those missions. (This is, bureaucratically, a long-term project.)

• Fix the Army. The Army is (barely) meeting its recruitment goals by lowering standards and dishing out large bonuses. And, despite paying equally large rewards for retention bonuses, it is now hemorrhaging talented junior and midgrade officers. The Iraq war, with its grueling and never-ending deployment schedules, is the main reason for this. (Defense Secretary Robert Gates said recently that Army recruiters face a serious challenge as long as signing up means getting assigned to Iraq.) But Iraq is only part of the problem—and thus getting out of Iraq will provide only a part of the solution.

• Invest in people. When the draft ended in 1973, the Army chiefs shifted incentives from veterans' benefits (such as the GI Bill) to enlistment bonuses. This approach has now gone too far, resulting in a "transactional" mindset that hurts morale and warps the military's credo of service. The next defense secretary should shift back to the old approach: Fund civilian education for enlisted personnel and officers; provide leave for them to pursue bachelors' and graduate degrees between deployments; give educational grants to family members as compensation for the hardships of repeated moves; invest in immersive training in foreign languages and cultures. These things will produce better officers, as well as happier ones.

• Promote the right leaders. Owing to a shortage of officers, almost anyone can get promoted to lieutenant colonel. Beyond that, the Army's promotion boards are a hidebound lot—notorious for favoring officers who resemble themselves and for especially screening out intellectuals, mavericks, and strategically minded warriors. (Gen. David Petraeus—who possesses a rare mix of leadership talent, soldierly prowess, intelligence, raw ambition, and luck—is one of a handful of exceptions.) Junior officers read each year's promotion list as they would tea leaves; it tells them what types of officers are desired and what types are not. Many creative officers leave the Army after realizing that it holds no future for them.

Technically, the president and Congress must approve all promotions. Therefore, either could require that a certain percentage of new brigadier generals possess specific qualities or backgrounds—for instance, that they have trained foreign military forces or proven adept in other skills that will likely be essential in future conflicts. (There is precedent for this: As a result of the Goldwater-Nichols reforms passed by Congress in 1986, all new generals must have experience in a joint—i.e., multiservice—unit.) ) The Army should also consider "360-degree evaluation"—i.e., consultation by junior, as well as senior, officers—in order to identify the most talented leaders in its ranks. (Corporate America has long employed this technique.)

• Create incentives for a real nation-building or counterinsurgency capability. The Army's new field manual on "Full-Spectrum Operations" says that "stability operations" are just as important as combat. However, these words will ring hollow unless and until more troops are trained in such operations and more officers with expertise in that area are promoted to general. A year ago, a unit was created in Ft. Riley, Kan., home of the 1st Infantry Division, specifically to train advisers—officers who would go advise Iraqi and Afghan security forces. Several Pentagon officials, including Secretary Robert Gates, said that this was one of the Army's most important missions. The commander of the unit was Lt. Col. John Nagl, one of the Army's top experts in counterinsurgency. But Nagl has since complained that the unit was filled on an "ad hoc" basis and that many of the trainers had no experience as advisers. He has now decided to leave the Army. We—and, more importantly, other officers—will know that the Pentagon is taking this putative goal seriously when the unit is commanded by a general and when officers who go out in the field as advisers are promoted as routinely as those deployed as infantry fighters.

• Spread the responsibilities around. Civilian experts are probably better than sergeants at the kinds of stability operations described above. So, the next president should see that more money goes to the State Department, USAID, and other agencies—many of which have nascent offices of stability operations and foreign assistance—and let them do the jobs. Secretary Gates urged this course (even if he didn't volunteer to hand over any of the Pentagon's billions). Some senior Army officers have told us that, for certain urgent tasks in Iraq and Afghanistan, they would rather have 500 more Foreign Service officers than 5,000 more soldiers. If wars—or foreign policies generally—are national campaigns, the burden should be carried by the national government more broadly.

• Taxes. On that subject, if we're not going to return to military conscription, more citizens have to contribute something to national defense—if not their blood, then more of their treasure. All the steps outlined above—especially those that involve recruiting and retaining qualified personnel—are very expensive. And they can't all be paid for by canceling the F-22 and other Cold War relics. Nor should they be paid for by borrowing more cash from China. If we want to continue the kind of military we're pursuing, and the kinds of wars we're fighting, then let's pass a surtax to pay for it. If we don't want to pay for it, then let's drop the whole idea—scale back our missions in the world and figure out some other way to fulfill them.

Fred Kaplan is Slate's "War Stories" columnist and the author of Daydream Believers: How a Few Grand Ideas Wrecked American Power. Phillip Carter is a former Army officer and Iraq war veteran who edits the Convictions blog for Slate.
Article URL: http://www.slate.com/id/2187616/

Copyright 2008 Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive Co. LLC

April 8, 2008
OP-ED COLUMNIST
A Network of Truces

By DAVID BROOKS
The U.S. brought no shortage of misconceptions into Iraq, but surely the longest lasting has been what you might call: Founding Fatherism. This is the belief that peace will come to the country when the nation’s political elites gather at a convention hall and make a series of grand compromises involving power-sharing and a new constitution.

The Bush administration has been pushing the Iraqis to make this sort of grand compromise for years — to little effect. The Democrats happily declare that there has been no political progress in Iraq because this grand compromise is the only kind of political progress they can conceive of.

The grand compromise model would be appropriate if Iraq were a Western country living in the shadow of the Magna Carta. But Iraq is not that kind of country.

As Philip Carl Salzman argues in “Culture and Conflict in the Middle East” (brilliantly reviewed by Stanley Kurtz in The Weekly Standard), many Middle Eastern societies are tribal. The most salient structure is the local lineage group. National leaders do not make giant sacrifices on behalf of the nation because their higher loyalty is to the sect or clan. Order is achieved not by the top-down imposition of abstract law. Instead, order is achieved through fluid balance of power agreements between local groups.

In a society like this, political progress takes different forms. It’s not top down. It’s bottom up. And this is exactly the sort of progress we are seeing in Iraq. While the Green Zone politicians have taken advantage of the surge by trying to entrench their own power, things are happening at the grass-roots.

Iraqis are growing more optimistic. Fifty-five percent of Iraqis say their lives are going well, up from 39 percent last August, according to a poll conducted by ABC News and other global television networks. Forty-nine percent now say the U.S. was right to invade Iraq, the highest figure recorded since this poll began in 2004.

More generally, the Iraqi people are sick of war and are punishing those leaders and forces that perpetrate it. “A vital factor in the security improvement is public backlash against the chaos and extremism of the past five years,” declared Yahia Said of the Revenue Watch Institute in written testimony to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.

And, as one would expect, the local clans have taken control. Iraqi politics have become hyperlocalized, Colin Kahl, a Georgetown professor and Obama adviser, has observed. The most prestigious groups in Iraqi society are tribes and Awakening Councils. Many of these councils earned legitimacy by fighting during the height of the violence and have now come out in the open as local authorities.

These groups have created a fluid network of fragile truces. They squabble over money, power, ideology and sectarian issues. But they have incentives to keep the peace. Sunni leaders have come to realize that they can’t win a civil war against the Shiites. Shiite militia leaders recognize their own prestige and power drops the more they fight.

As Stephen Biddle of the Council on Foreign Relations observed in his Senate testimony last week: “This does not mean sectarian harmony or brotherly affection in Iraq. But it does mean that cold, hard strategic reality increasingly makes acting on hatred too costly for Sunni insurgents and Shiite militias.”

The surge didn’t create the network of truces, but the truces couldn’t have happened without the surge. More than 70,000 local council members are paid by the Americans. They rely on the U.S. military to enforce bargains and deter truce-breaking. Thanks to these arrangements, ethno-sectarian violence dropped by 90 percent between June 2007 and March 2008. That’s the result of political progress, not just counterinsurgency techniques.

It has become common to belittle these truces. After all, they are not written by legislators on parchment. And indeed there’s a significant chance that they will indeed collapse and the country will devolve into anarchy.

But in certain societies, this is the way order is established, through what Salzman calls “balanced opposition.” As long as the network of truces holds, then the next president (Democrat or Republican) will have an overwhelming incentive to nurture the fragile peace.

That will mean drawing down U.S. troops at a slow pace, continuing the local reconstruction efforts, supporting local elections and reaching an informal agreement with Iran and the Saudis to reduce outside interference. Iraq will look like a lot of places in the world: a series of cold and fragile understandings, with occasional flare-ups (like in Basra), but no genocide and no terror state.

At this week’s hearings on Capitol Hill, Democrats will declare that the surge has not produced political progress and therefore the whole thing is for naught. That’s wrong. There has been political progress. It just doesn’t look the way we expected it to

Geopolitical Diary: Levantine War Rumors and the Iraq Situation

April 8, 2008

The Iranian Foreign Ministry announced April 7 that it has received an official request from the U.S. administration (via the Swiss Embassy in Tehran) for a fourth round of talks on Iraqi security. This announcement comes just days after Mohsen al-Hakim, son of the head of the Islamic Supreme Council of Iraq, also cited a request for talks from Washington – an old Iranian game of making it appear as though the United States is the one desperate for talks. Through it all, Washington has remained quiet, but notably has not denied the statements. (And all this the day before U.S. General David Petraeus and U.S. Ambassador to Iraq Ryan Crocker will testify before Congress on the progress in Iraq.)
Meanwhile, Muqtada al-Sadr also suggested April 7 that he would be willing to disband the Mehdi Army militia if asked to do so by Shiite clerical authorities. This is despite — not because of — an Iraqi military operation in Basra that by most accounts was poorly planned and poorly executed. Not only is the firebrand offering an almost unbelievably enormous concession, but because his militia largely held its ground in Basra against the Iraqi security forces, it is almost as if his concession has been stage-managed — most likely by the Iranians.
Bringing al-Sadr into the fold of the Shiite-dominated Iraqi government will help reduce infighting among the Shia, thus strengthening Tehran’s hand in the country’s affairs even as it reduces Iran’s ability to orchestrate militia violence. Washington knows it must accept some degree of Iranian influence to reach an accommodation with Tehran over Iraq.
But a potential arrestor is lurking in the Levant. Tensions are on the rise between Israel, Syria and Hezbollah. Israel is hosting the largest civil defense exercise in its history, both Israeli and Syrian reserves reportedly have mobilized, and there are rumblings about an impending reprisal attack for the killing of top Hezbollah commander Imad Mughniyah. Concerns across the region continue to mount that Israel is looking for an excuse to step into another war with the Lebanese militant organization Hezbollah, this time with more decisive results.
Such a conflict cuts both ways for the United States, and has a direct bearing on the situation in Iraq.
On the one hand, Israeli military intervention in southern Lebanon would very likely seriously destabilize U.S. efforts in Iraq. Iran is unlikely to sit by and allow its militant proxy, an important tool of Iranian influence in the region, to confront a reinvigorated Israel Defense Forces without support or protest. From the U.S. perspective, Iraq is of fundamental importance — the Levant is not. Washington is not about to sacrifice the gains of the last year in Iraq to allow Israel to take another shot at Hezbollah.
But on the other hand, in the course of its history, the Jewish state repeatedly has reminded Washington that it is not simply a U.S. puppet by acting unilaterally (often subsequently receiving grudging American support). Should Washington begin to see Israeli military action as unpreventable, it could potentially attempt to trade concessions in Iraq for guarantees Iran would remain on the sidelines of the Israeli conflict, sacrificing some points in Iraq to allow Israel the chance to strip Tehran of Hezbollah, one of the Iranians’ key proxies. This is a tempting goal, but one fraught with risk should the Iraq negotiations take a more definitive turn for the worse.
We saw further potential signs of progress in U.S. negotiations with Iran over Iraq today. At the same time, we are continuing to monitor signs of potential war in the Levant. Though their proximate causes are distinct, should both trends continue apace, their inextricable linkage will become all to clear