The End of Open-source?

Six years ago I speculated on one factor that could spell the demise of open source. Here are some more.

I've spent the last year looking for the perfect Linux desktop; and concluded not only that it doesn't exist, but that it never will, nor ever could. In the last 10 years, I've used Fedora, Ubuntu, Crunchbang, Xubuntu; I've tried Debian, openSUSE, CentOS, Scientific Linux, and Mageia. All have drawbacks, none are immune to crashes, freezes, or other irritating flaws. So while Linux works very well as a server, as platform for a desktop environment, it simply can't compete with OSX and Windows. In part that's because I still need to use products like Excel and Word which almost run in Wine and do, sort of, in Crossover. But it's also a function of the fundamental design flaw in the production process by which open-source is created. 

Just as Economics as a field has benefited hugely from having a broadly unified paradigm, so have Windows and OSX. If something needs fixing it gets fixed, generally relatively quickly; in the open-source community it's done when someone has time. And since contributions to open-source are motivated more directly by self interest (itch-scratching and status within the community), the connection between the market and the production process is weaker and less strategically oriented than it is in the proprietary world. What gets fixed in open-source depends not on what the as yet unserved users might need but on what existing users want. This is akin to Clay Christiansen's "Innovators dilemma"- serving current users rather than the larger potential market.

Without a unified guiding vision and a single roadmap, efforts are unfocused and energy is wasted on tens if not hundreds of different Linux distributions. That wasted effort illustrates well how competition in the face of network externalities can impeded the toppling of an oligopoly. It's said that a camel is a horse designed by committee, and increasingly that's what Liunx for the desktop is looking like. There's no vision; but an ever evolving hodgepodge of elements that are almost but not quite ever ready for prime time. It takes as much effort to get a product from 90% to 99% as it does to get to 90%; so a lot of open-source products 'satisficing'; not perfect, but '(almost) good enough'.  

On top of this disorganization, costs are rising (partly due to the fragmentation of efforts) and time and money are running out. The open-source community has begun asking for monetary contributions (Wikipedia and Firefox this morning). I've made a few donations but after a while it becomes clear that this is a fairly futile exercise. No amount of money is going to lead to a product that just works.

It may take another fifteen years, or it may survive for a tool for a very few, but Linux will never compete in any meaningful way with Windows and OSX in the non-technical desktop market. Anyway, the battleground has moved away from desktops; Sony won the format wars the second time around (having lost to VHS) but Blue-ray's victory is phyric as content delivery moves to the internet. Microsoft (with Apple a good runner up) has won the desktop, just as the focus moves to tablets and phones: which means that innovation in this space will decline and what we have now will be with us for a long time.

So I'm considering moving back to Windows as my main platform. I'll still use Linux for coding, but for most of my day-to-day (reading, writing and emailing) not spending quite as much time on platform maintenance looks increasingly attractive.

Structure matters

The last few weeks have seen a huge drop in the price of crude oil (and gasoline, but not air fares). This has been attributed to the Saudi's keeping the taps on. The argument is that they are trying to drive the US frackers out of business, which seems reasonable. And of course they can just as quickly reduce supply driving prices back up.

What is missing from the discussion is that the structure of the industry has changed. The cost of entering is now orders of magnitude lower than it used to be. A useful parallel is the change from integrated iron and steel making to mini-mills.

The industry has been controlled by an oligopoly (OPEC) which could coordinate output and therefore control price. But with a large number of new entrants, none of whom are part of that cartel, the industry has become, at least at the margin, highly fragmented.

And we now have a contestable market; so if OPEC wants to keep the frackers at bay, it will have to keep the price below their costs which are falling as fracking technology improves. So the Saudi's can certainly put a lot of frackers out of business, but as soon as they reduce output and the price of crude rises, there will be more waiting in the wings, probably with better, cheaper technology.

All of which suggests that lower oil prices are here to stay, at least in the medium term.           

Once more unto the breach...

Kenneth Branagh as Henry V^th

Henry V^th's stirring words, at least as imagined by Shakespeare; the words of a bold leader, a man of action and courage, leading literally from the front. Portrayed by Kenneth Branagh, Henry is 'ruggedly hansom' as Richard Castle [sic] likes to say of himself, although, the portrait of Henry in the National Portrait Gallery shows an effete, monk-like figure, hardly the stuff of cinematic hero-worship.   Which leads one to wonder if the victors re-wrote history... But I digress.

The idealized image of Henry, indeed that of any sovereign (and more latterly president) as a bold and courageous leader is an enduring one.  What is certainly true of any long-lasting leader is that their ability to stay at the top of the heap owes more to their political cunning than than to their ability to wield a broad sword or shoot an M-16.  

Henry V^th, National Portrait Gallery

Barak Obama, for all his careful judgment and nuanced deliberation, will likely not be remembered as one of the US' great presidents: he lacks political nous. He has neither the instinct nor the stomach for the dirty political machinations needed for to be remembered as having been an effective leader, regardless of his actual accomplishments. The court of public opinion is very different from a court of law. For starters there is no constraint on mendacity, not is there any interest in searching for the truth (thank-you Television Networks). 

Anyway, attribution is often post hoc rationalization. Who we give credit to, in a complex web of causality, may have little to do with what happened on the ground.

Courage, at least as personified by Shakespeare's stirring speeches, is a narrow sliver of a broader array of action-taking. And sometimes, taking no action is actually the most courageous thing to do; the teen who refuses to drink when all his or her peers are egging him on is courageous; cowardice is giving in to peer pressure when you know that what they are encouraging you to do is wrong.

That's part of the reason, I think, why Obama will not be fondly remembered. His detractors on the right would never admit as a matter of principle (a rather strange ill defined and amorphous principle, though but that's another story) that anything he did could possibly have been right.

And many on the left, at least those who didn't cut an run at the first sign of electoral woes, are disappointed by how uncourageous he appears to have become. The right accuse him of being unbending while the left think he has bent so far that he is almost unrecognizable as the bold senator who campaigned in 2008.

"Damm; this is harder than I thought."

A lot has happened in the last 6 years. The gap between rich and poor has widened; the middle class is being hollowed out; wages for the majority have declined in real terms; politics has become less about issues and even more about money (98% of electoral races this cycle were one by the candidate on whose behalf the most money was spent); and I've gotten grayer and more disillusioned. The 'economy' at least as measured by the stock market, has recovered though most people aren't better off than they were 7 years ago. We were out of Iraq but now we are, at last in spirit (and in the eyes of half the combatants), back in the fray. And the investments in infrastructure and education made in the 50s and 60s that were the antecedents to the economic growth of the last part of the 20th century have been allowed to fall into disrepair.  And the anger, somewhat mis-directed, that most people feel towards their representatives and leaders has, ironically, turned the Congress to stone. Most people agree that "America is on the wrong track" yet no one seems to be able to agree on what track it should be on.

Perhaps that's the leadership deficit; in wrestling with the quotidian demands and pressures of office,  Obama has lost his way, lost a guiding vision of where he think America should be heading. Perhaps he lacked the courage, the will, and the ruthlessness, to maintain the ideals that motivated him to run in the first place. 

As Larry Elison said of Apple, "we've done that experiment": we now know that good (apolitical) academics are ill-suited to high political office. So, given the choice between the Henry of the cinema, the head-strong rush-in-where-angels-fear-to-tread leader and the National Portrait Gallery's shrewd Machiavellian pragmatist, I think we'd probably be better off with the latter (although that would ultimately depend on who funded Henry's campaign).

The Internet of Things - a Starting Point?

One of the difficulties with arming rebel insurgent groups in the pursuit of foreign policy goals is that they come and go but the weapons remain. ISIL wouldn't be so spectacularly well equipped had the US not poured billions of dollars into arming the Iraqi army (which became disaffected by the sectarian discriminatory policies of the Maliki government, widespread corruption and resulted in massive desertion in the face of ISIL's rapid and murderous advance).  

One solution has been as to ask recipients of America's military largess to turn in video every time the weapons are used; but this obviously isn't fool proof.
So why not make this one of the first applications of the Internet of Things.

Each weapon would be equipped with a 'kill switch' [sic] that would allow it to be deactivated remotely, just as we are now doing with the slightly less lethal smart-phone. It might also feature an integral barrel-mounted camera that streamed video back to the donor's servers every time the trigger is touched. The weapon might also be programmed not to fire at targets with particular digital signatures, such as other similar weapons or clothing, flack jackets for example, that are also 'Internet enabled'.

The issue will be persuading gun manufacturers to research and adopt such technology. The gun lobby in the United States will likely resist any such ideas and so it will be up to Europe to advance the research agenda, implement and deploy these weapons. If military diplomacy is increasingly to be conducted by proxy, using nebulous self-organizing groups, this would a way of preventing the kind of blow-back we have seen so often over the past 30 years.

            

Moral Hazard in Foreign Affairs

No, this is not a post about the risk and morality of a 'liaison dangereuse', but a commentary on letting others do your dirty work, something I remarked on briefly at the end of my post in June. Marwan Muasher, a former foreign minister of Jordan, noted on GPS today that none of Iraq's (Muslim Arab) neighbors would likely be sending troops to fight ISIS.

Indeed, why should they; after all, isn't that that America is for? The US helps one side or another in a violent regional squabble, taking the blame from the vanquished and leaving the local victors in the clear. They didn't kill innocent civilians; that was the Yanks...

There is every reason in the world for Jordan, the Saudis, the UAE and Turkey not to put their countrymen in harm's way; and until the US stops treating every problem in the world as one it, and only it, can sort out, nor will there be any reason for then to do so.

A situation which presents moral hazard is one in which actors behave in a ways that they would not otherwise do, because they are insulated, to some degree, from the negative consequences of their actions. The US penchant for fixing everyone else's problems, even when well intentioned, creates just this problem (as is also abundantly evident in the failure of many European countries to meet their NATO commitments on defense spending).      

Henry Kissinger noted that of the five military conflicts in which the US has been involved since the Second World War (Korea, Viet Nam, Iraq I, Iraq II, Afghanistan) in only one (Iraq I) were the original goals of the intervention achieved. You'd have thought that might be a lesson worth remembering.  

ISIS and inaction in Syria

The Neocons have been critical of the President for not arming the Syrian opposition. ISIL, they claim is, the result of that failure to act. But in fact ISIS might be exactly the case that justifies the President's decision.
 
The reason for not arming the the Syrian opposition fighters was that we weren't sure they were all reasonable moderates - some might be extremists;  Obama felt it was too difficult to ensure that those weapons wouldn't fall into the hands of more radical, fringe elements with anti-Western designs.

Ironically, that's precisely what happened, albeit via a slightly different route; we gave weapons to the Iraqi's who were overwhelmed by more the motivated ISIL fighters and those weapons ended up in ISIL's hands. Exactly the same would have happened, just a lot sooner, had we followed Senator McCain's advice.

The Senior Senator from Arizona was once a fairly reasonable man but his brush with half-term Alaska Governor Palin seems to have changed him; unfortunately not for the better.  

Oh no: Not Again

The president made a good speech this evening. The case for the action he is taking was carefully made. He also articulated a measured account of America’s role in the world, and the criteria for intervention. "When we helped prevent the massacre of civilians trapped on a distant mountain, here's what one of them said: 'We owe our American friends our lives. Our children will always remember that there was someone who felt our struggle and made a long journey to protect innocent people.' That is the difference we make in the world". This was a statement about the benevolent use of America power with which it is impossible to argue. 

The weakest part of his argument was an explanation of the gravity of the direct threat to the US ISIS represents. He admitted that US intelligence had no evidence of any imminent threat, just the possibility of ISIS bringing the fight to US shores… And there’s the rub.

So, why did ISIS make and publish the two videos of Americans being so brutally murdered? To recruit? Probably not, at least not directly. Partly it was  to show it has no fear, that it will not be in intimidated by a superpower; but in part it was probably to poke the sleeping bear—and it worked.  It turned much of public opinion from disinterest and disillusion, if not to a lust for retribution, at least to a resolve to take large scale military, action that would reinvigorate anti-American hatred, and so bolster their cause and their ranks.

Fortunately, Obama didn’t take the bait as the neo-cons wanted and would have hook line and sinker. This time there are others, local regional players, including Turkey, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, and Iran who will be dragged into the fray with us, and that will work against ISIS.

If its plan was to whip up anti-American sentiment by provoking America into retaliation with massive force for the killing of its two citizens, Obama deftly sidestepped the trap. And with good reason. Someone on one of last Sunday's talk shows made a telling comment; that it will take a generation for the violent Arab anti-American sentiments, and Shia-Sunni hatred to abate; a generation is a very long time. 

Just as the Yazidi families America helped rescue will remember the good we have done for many many years, equally long lasting will be the hatred and resentment for the meddling, the collateral damage (read: the killing of innocent bystanders), the humiliation, and the self righteousness imposition of a foreign model of governance of the Iraq war. It it this, I think, that the President has been working tirelessly to avoid; to avoid a repeat of the disaster that was the Bush-Chaney doctrine.

It's also interesting that Congress doesn't want to touch the hot potato of deciding to go to war. Despite the right's criticisms for the Obama's 'lack of leadership' (code for 'doesn't seem to want to fight'), when asked if they would stand up and make the call they head for the hills. (Commander in Chief must be the loneliest job in the world).   

But when all is said and done, one is will left with a vexing question as to why the the very public killing of two Americans sparked sufficient outrage to lead the country back to war, when 289 people died at the hands of Ukranian separatists on Malasia Airlines Flight 17 and 40 people are murdered in the US every day.  As Douglas Adams pointed out many years ago, the one thing we can't afford is a sense of perspective.

Coll: "International Policy Failure"

Steve Coll

Two trends lie at the heart of the rise of the rise of ISIS. First, the rapidly falling cost of communication, and economic stagnation in the Middle East. Without dealing with the consequences of these, everything else is simply applying a band-aid to a severed artery.

The falling cost of communications has done two things; first, is has facilitated communication and coordination between people and groups that were previously disparate. That has allowed those with the most extreme views to find one another, coalesce and organize themselves. Second it has allowed people suffering both political persecution and economic hardship to see more acutely their plight, and to form views, in a more global framing, as to the causes of their inequity.

The second is the failure of governments in the Middle East to bring their populations into the 20th century, economically and intellectually. Economic underdevelopment is tightly coupled to a lack of education. Educated people are less likely to tolerate inequities and injustices, so it often serves the purpose of many in power to restrict access to education. But that only helps to slow economic growth and perpetuate the hardships of the underprivileged.

Frustration and ignorance are a breeding ground for a per-enlightenment approach to problem solving, an unwaivering reliance on doctrine and scripture, that is as ruthlessly exploited by the power hungry and ambitious today as it was in the middle ages.

Steve Coll, Henry R. Luce Professor of Journalism and Dean of the Columbia School of Journalism, described the antecedents of the current situation in the Levant as and "international policy failure". Indeed; the failure to address the consequences of these trends will condemn the region to a perpetual and unwinnable struggle to suppress forces whose root causes are only growing stronger.        
  

Nothing beats stupid

This weekend, yet again, we have been treated to Senator McCain calling for bombing and special forces on the ground in Iraq and presumably Syria. And of course there's Fox News with its incessant blaming of a president it viscerally hates, regardless of the situation or facts. (If you slipped on a banana peel, Fox would find a way to link it to presidential action or inaction). So here's my take.

An honest gaffe

Obviously, in a culture that often tends to celebrate action and 'can-do' over thinking and analysis, an 'ask questions first, shoot later' posture is never going to be wildly popular. This is particularly so when so many people have no appetite for understanding the complexities of a situation and thinking things through; indeed, most of the media is pandering to, and in so doing, fostering, and attitude of "give me a simple (140 character) answer and let me go back to not having to think". So admitting that that you don't have a strategy for dealing with ISIS, while honest, will be pounced on as weakness by others who, albeit mistakenly, think (or are pretending) that they do. But a political mistake does not mean a policy mistake; and the latter matters more in the end.

Simplistic comparisons are misleading

Much was made of the fact that Britain raised its terrorism threat level while America did not. That ignores important dissimilarities. First, the UK has had less experience and is less effective than the US in integrating immigrant communities. It has been more lax about allowing zealots stir up religious hatred. Consequently, it has a much more isolated, less culturally and societally integrated Muslim population than the US. It has a rather unsavoury history of not calling out and stamping out religious stereotyping, animosity and xenophobia. As a result, there are many more British citizens actively involved as ISIS fighters than the US. The threat from radicalised citizens, now trained by ISIS, returning to commit acts of domestic terrorism is probably much more severe in the UK than in the US. That's not to say it's non-existent her, but any claim that not raising the terrorism threat level here because Britain has done so, misses the important nuances of the differences in context.   

No plan is better than a stupid plan

Senator McCain and Ex-VP Chaney, amongst others, still seem to believe in the effectiveness of military force to make our enemies fear us (remember shock and awe?), and thus we "win the day"; it will be another "mission accomplished", apparently. They're wrong. Bullying and beating on others to get what you want may yield short term gains, but doesn't solve the problem long term; indeed it is likely to do just the reverse. Any quasi-equilibrium so achieved is an unstable one; systems under tension behave less predictably than ones that are not highly stressed.

Chaney and other arm-chair militarists have never been in a position of being on the receiving end of vastly superior fire-power, so they don't understand that it doesn't create submissiveness. Both Adolph Hitler and Air Marshal Arthur Harris made the same mistake in the Second World War in thinking that massive bombing of enemy cities would cow the enemy into submission. As the public became fed up with war they would pressure their leaders to disengage, went the theory. They were both wrong; in fact it had the reverse effect, steeling the enemy's resolve and focusing their ire. Military oppression creates hatred and resentment in the street, both of which fuel violent resistance.

So while the President is working on a long term plan, something his predecessor never had, no plan is vastly better than a stupid one. So what might an intelligent strategy take into account?

What is ISIS?

Part of the issue is understanding what ISIS really is. Simplistic categorization is unhelpful. It is clearly not a 'state' despite the name. Nor is it your typical terrorist organization like the Tamil Tigers, the PKK, Boko Haram, Lashkar-e Tayyiba, the FARC, al-Qa'ida, ETA, or the IRA. It's not fighting for self-determination, or a particular ethnic group, though it does cloak itself the mantle of a religious ideology. It isn't fighting an underground covert resistance war, melting back into the population as many terrorists do.

It has acquired a large stockpile of heavy armor and up-to-date weaponry. It is exploiting fear and disaffection with governments among oppressed groups, principally Suni Muslims. It is expanding geographically, capturing, holding and 'governing', ousting and replacing existing power structures. So just calling ISIS a terrorist organization is less than helpful.

A logic of appropriateness, while less intellectually taxing, in this case is less useful than a logic of consequences. Sometimes in chess you meet a situation that isn't susceptible to pattern recognition and labeling, and requires thinking from first principles; this is one of those times.

For example, knocking on doors and arresting active and high ranking members isn't realistic. Nor is blowing them up with drone strikes that create significant collateral damage which in turn fuels ISIS' argument about breaking free of Western oppression. It may be part of a solution but however much we yearn for a quick fix, it's not the solution in an of itself. This isn't a snake you can de-fang; those fangs will grow back. Any solution needs to prevent violent groups from recruiting the disaffected, and not giving them ready made arguments is a start.

Framing the problem

It is crucial to frame the problem not as a struggle between one religious group and another but between, on the one hand, the rule of accountable, responsive government, and law and order, and on the other, chaos, violence and the rule of ruthless unaccountable demagogues. If ISIS is attacked by the West while those nearer the action believe this is another example of imperialism, seeing that action though the lens of a sectarian divide, will provide it with a fertile recruiting ground.

Those who have deep differences, the Sunnis and the Shia in Iraq, Sunnis and Alawites in Syria, must come to believe that law and order and a negotiated solution is preferable to violence and chaos. (The same goes for Israel and Hamas).

Going it alone

Unilateral action is easier than a coordinated multilateral response. It's not even clear that unilateral actions is going to be that easy to set in motion; the hawks want to ramp up military involvement but Congress as a whole seem unwilling to authorize another war.

In any globally coordinated response, you have even more conflicting interests. Not only do you have to take into account each countries' national strategic interests but their domestic politics too. That makes getting a coordinated multilateral response much more difficult, but no less essential. If new ISIS fighters are recruited with rhetoric demonizing a trigger happy super power ignoring national sovereignty and acting with force wherever it chooses, then a multi-lateral response is indispensable.

The US' leadership role

While some (mostly Fox pundits and friends) have suggested that the world needs the US to be the world's (self-appointed) sheriff, other countries may justifiably disagree. And every time the US comes in to fix things other countries or coalitions have failed to address, we create a moral hazard problem. The President's reluctance to act unilaterally is a welcome change. The US should lead but with unilateralism and military action as a last resort. Leadership is not about going it alone (as any quarterback or team captain will tell you); it's about getting everyone on the same side motivated and committed. Often that takes time as is evident by the difficulties getting a concerted European response to the Russian annexation of Crimea, and it more recent invasion of eastern Ukraine.           

What should be done?

I have neither enough information, nor enough time to develop a strategy for dealing with ISIS; and since this is tightly coupled to a much broader set of problems in the Middle East including issues in Egypt, Syria, Lybia, Israel and the Palestinians, the problem can't be simply resolved in isolation. But if there is one thing of which I am certain, and which history suggests (and will confirm as we look back decades from now) about which I'm not wrong, it is that a 'bomb them into submission' approach that relies solely on military superiority will be as disastrous for everyone as the catalog of terrible decisions taken in the last administration's ill-fated nation-building in Iraq has been.

Maliki has gone and that's a start. Importantly, his departure was seen as legitimate since it came about through a democratic process rather than unilaterally imposed from outside. That's not to diminish the important coalition building role of the State Department, which managed to get a variety of regional governments to weigh in. His departure is a step in the right direction in terms of solving the underlying problems he (and Paul Bremer and Dick Chaney) created in de-Ba'athification and sectarian discrimination. But it will, in hindsight, be a clear demonstration that a process of coalition building is the best way to wield power effectively.      

Can doing nothing be a strategy?

Richard Hass,  President,
Council on Foreign Relations

Richard Hass asserted today on Fareed Zakaria's GPS show that what America needs is a strategy to defeat ISIL; which got me to wondering, first whether one always needs a strategy, and second whether a strategy can be to do nothing.

A strategy implies acting to change the course of events, with the intent of furthering the goals of the strategizing entity. Mintzberg calls this intended strategy.

The issue in the Middle East is that the problem, at least for American interests, is that the US is seen as an overbearing meddling foreign power, the "Great Satan". Regardless of the good intentions behind the strategy, intervention, in and of itself, creates resentment and fuels anti-American sentiment. So doing anything will, in all likelihood, exacerbate the problem (that is unless someone can suggest a way of meddling in another countries affairs that is not resented). Britain, with some history in the field of international meddling, could probably attest to the fact that this is very unlikely. For decades after the end of its colonial empire, its former colonies still harboured some ill will towards their former colonial master and occupier.

So, as antithetical as it is to the American 'can-do' attitude, doing nothing, at least militarily and unilaterally, may well be the best option. And as unappealing as it will be to see fanatical groups killing innocent bystanders as well as one another to gain influence for their particular brand of per-enlightenment ideology, American direct action will not only not stem the tide, it will embroil and implicate it as an enemy in the struggle.

The fanatics will only be beaten when the silent middle realizes that peace and security come from accommodation and tolerance, and ceases to allow, by action or inaction, the extremists to wage war. Once violence starts, the path to a solution changes irrevocably.

It is neither easy nor will it be quickly accomplished, as the peace process in Northern Ireland showed. But if one thing is clear from the province, it is that a military solution is not the answer.

So to answer my original question, yes it's probably better to have a strategy than to have none; inaction may well lead to more unexpected outcomes than some (but not all) courses of action. But what is implicit in most of the calls for 'a strategy' (including Hillary Clinton's critique that "don't do stupid stuff" isn't a strategy), particularity those coming from the trigger happy right, is an intervention  of a military nature, whether it's just the supply of weapons to boots on the ground. So any strategy with a chance of making things better in the Middle east should start with two axioms; first, that military force should be the last resort (indeed it may even be better to assert publicly that it isn't 'on the table' - much as Obama has done in stressing that there won't be American boots on the ground), and second that multilateral, rather than unilateral action is essential.

There are plenty of possibilities that might be pursued from this starting point, and if President Obama does deserve any criticisms it is that while his policy of no intervention is certainly a step in the right direction, he might have done more to build an alliance to work collectively on dealing with ISIL. But to criticize him for not giving weapons to one side or the other is folly. As he pointed out, giving arms to one group who we consider a potential partner doesn't guarantee them not ending up in the hands of those who will use them against us. The fact the ISIL is driving around in the latest US armored vehicles heavy artillery illustrates the point.

Regrettably, President Obama hasn't been able to articulate as clearly and a pithily as the 140 character sound byte driven media want the rational for what he is trying to do, leaving the airwaves open for the chattering classes to make up ill-informed nonsense that passes for policy prescription.

 

The neo-cons

It's a testament to our neutered media that the neo-con hawks (Cheney, Rumsfeld, Crystal, Wolfowitz, McCain) aren't being publicly ridiculed for yet again suggesting that the way to solve problems in the Middle East is through the use of military force.

America went into Iraq under false pretences. A shockingly ill-informed and ignorant post invasion dismantling of the institutions of law and order along a largely sectarian divide unleashed pent-up resentment and led to a conflagration that was contained largely by a US troop presence. The promoting of, and support for, a polarizing Shiite prime minister exacerbated that divide.

Now the very people who made these decision, who created the mess, are advocating getting back into the fray; are telling us we should be taking sides in a civil war between two religious groups, one who had suffered oppression under the old regime, the other suffering under the new. Ask anyone from Britain how well 20 years of peace keeping in Northern Ireland went.

In April 1994, Richard Cheney, Secretary of Defence under President George H. W. Bush, explained that going onto Baghdad during Desert Storm would have been a terrible idea:

"Do you think US or UN forces should have moved into Baghdad?"

"No."

"Why not?"

"Because if we'd gone to Baghdad we would have been all alone, there wouldn't' have been anyone one else with us, it would have been a US occupation of Iraq, none of the Arab forces that were willing to fight with us in Kuwait were willing to invade Iraq. Once you got to Iraq and took it over, and took down Saddam Hussein's government then what are you going to put in its place? That's a very volatile part of the world, and if you take down the central government in Iraq you could easily see pieces of Iraq fly off. Part of it the Syrians would like to have to the west, part of eastern Iraq the Iranians would like to claim, fought over for 8 years. In the north you've got the Kurds; if the Kurds spin loose and join with the Kurds in Turkey, then you threaten the territorial integrity of Turkey, its a quagmire, if you go that far and try to take over Iraq. "

Twelve years later he did exactly what he had been cautioning against. And history has shown anyone willing to look how right he was 20 years ago.

What explains this extraordinary willingness to ignore the facts? Either, the neo-cons have such short memories that decisions taken before 2008 aren't remembered; or they are too feeble-minded to understand what happened. Neither is plausible; these are smart and capable individuals. Which leaves only the possibility that they are advocating this for purely political gain: hoping either that if President Obama does not intervene militarily that accusations of inaction, indecision, and 'leading from behind' will help them in the 2014 and 2016 elections; or if he does, it will go so badly (as it must) that the failure can be blamed on Obama and the democrats again helping them in the next two election cycles.    

Unless President Obama (and/or Hillary Clinton - though she has been interestingly quiet on the subject) can make the case for not intervening simple enough for the Twitterverse, the electoral choice puts them between a rock and a hard place; but one (the neo-con) option involves further inflaming the situation, reinforcing the moral hazard problem we created, without any likelihood that the death toll will be any less.

      
                   

The third Iraq war

I.S.I.L. fighters have taken control of Mosul and Tikrit. Hawks in the US are insisting that Iraq is of vital national security interest and something be done. As usual they are short on particulars other than that whatever the President did, or is thinking of doing is wrong. They haven't explained what the vital national security interest is; crude oil and the fear of creating a failed state and a breeding ground for terrorism, possibly? (More concerning is the possibility that Iran's reach will extend further in the region).

The President this morning pointed out quite rightly that without the political will on the part of the Shiites to teat the Sunnis more inclusively than they have since Saddam Husein's regime was toppled, military intervention would, in the longer run, accomplish nothing, just as it didn't a decade ago. No one can seriously think it a good idea to put troops back into a what has become sectarian blood bath; first would they be committed for another decade or more (which we cannot afford - but of course the hawks who didn't pay for the last war are conspicuously quiet as to who will pay for the next one - Dick Cheney promised that the Iraqis would pay the bill but that didn't work out so well last time around). 

Military intervention, absent a political solution, would not just be costly and pointless; it would likely be counter productive. It would refocus the perception of the Great Satan across the Middle East, giving extremists more reason to turn their murderous attentions towards the US rather than each other.

Too much has probably been made of I.S.I.L.'s effectiveness. It was helped in no small measure by the anti Shiite sentiment in towns that are predominantly Suni, who have borne the brunt of the exclusionary policies of the Malicki government, which is what makes a political settlement crucial.  If the US steps in again and bolsters the Malicki regime it will not only harden Sunni extremists' views of the US as the meddling enemy, but will create an incentive for Malicki to continue to avoid the hard choices that political compromise with the Sunnis requires. In other words, intervention creates a moral hazard problem; until Malicki realizes that he has to negotiate seriously with the Sunnis the conflict and the violence will not go away.

The hawks are as ever swift to reach for the gun - but fail to clarify precisely what they hope to accomplish, what their goals are, or to answer the "Then what?" question.

Eric Cantor's primary defeat

That Eric Cantor was defeated by a more conservative opponent is really not particularly surprising. There are however two things that were shocking.

First that the right, science deniers in particular, who have little time for book learning, voted for an academic.

Second, that the Dave Brat accomplished this spending less that 5% of the money Cantor spent. This is truly astounding; and strangely both give me some cause for cautious optimism.

If issues do matter to voters more than the slurs and character assassination that campaign advertising generally engages in, then there is hope that our democracy will represent the people's views, and not those of wealthy interest groups.

   

  

The Future of Ukraine

Tom Friedman, a journalist for whom I have great respect suggested it was far too early to make predictions about the future of Ukraine. He's probably right, but I have less to lose than he in speculating.

First, an update; Putin, in a speech this morning, has vowed not to invade Ukraine proper. Whether this is a tactical move to take the wind out of the sails of the increasingly upset Europeans or whether it is a real commitment is unclear; my money's on the former. He'll let the Europeans think they won a small reprieve (but no rolling back; Crimea will henceforth remain Russian) so that they turn their attention elsewhere.

 The future turns on what happens in Ukraine. If it succeeds in establishing a passably working democratic government, Putin may be content to leave well alone. He has secured the navy's access to the Black Sea, has boosted his popularity at home, and among the Russiophiles in the Crimea. If it fails, unrest may well follow, and Putin may once again feel 'obligated' to look after those being oppressed in a neighboring country; and Russia will invade and annex Ukraine in its entirety. And if it succeeds, and with help from Europe, then it's hard to say what he will do; success would threaten the Russian political and economic model and potentially fuel unrest at home. But he may not be willing to invade a country that is thriving politically and economically without the pretext of saving people from corrupt and thuggish governments; to do so would expose him to more robust international political pressure than he has been so far.

But my guess is that Ukraine may well fail in its bid to Westernize. Since its independence, it has tried two different political parties, both of which by all accounts were corrupt and incompetent. There is little to suggest that the new administration, however well intentioned, will be much different. What is missing are the robust institutions needed to provide constraints on the excesses of elected politicians; that may sound counter intuitive, but a strong (and honest) civil service helps prevent elected politicians from taking first steps on the slippery slope from responsiveness to voters, to pandering to powerful interests to outright corruption.

David Sanger noted that in relying heavily on sanctions, Obama is "playing a long game". But it may be so long that neither he nor Putin will be in office by the time they begin have an effect on policy. Sanger also suggested that Obama is trying to reverse the policy of closer economic integration with Russia. The argument, and extension of that used after the Second World War was the countries whose economies are intertwined won't go to war with one another. While it may have worked in Europe for 70 years, it is a policy that doesn't apply to Russia, largely because of the concentration of wealth. When war between economically coupled countries means everyone suffers, that acts as a deterrent. When wealth is concentrated, the majority have little to lose and the elites have enough not to worry; so economic integration is no longer such an effective brake on military aggression. That's why Obama's bid to isolate Russia economically makes sense.

The End of the Beginning

“Now this is not the end. It is not even the beginning of the end. But it is.. ..the end of the beginning”. So said Winston Churchill in 1942. Crimea is gone; the question is “what next”. There is a disconnect between rhetoric and reality. Calls for adherence to international law and threats of 'dire consequences' are falling on tin ears. Can the West get what it wants on its current path?

Competing narratives  

Where the West sees a justified popular uprising, Putin sees the undemocratic overthrow of an elected government. The West characterizes the unrest that led to Yanukovych's departure as spontaneous; Putin charges it was provoked by intentionally destabilizing overtures from the UE and possibly by clandestine activity on the ground (a change lent some credibility by Robert Gates' account of his time a the CIA).  And while the justification for invading the Crimea was trumped up and supported by an ideologically and politically motivated Russian media, Russia isn't the first country to go to war on spurious grounds supported by a biased and fact-free media.

Realpolitik  

Past

Crimea was until 1952, part of Russia. Many there still consider themselves Russian. They have lived in a deteriorating economy whose trajectory has continued downward since the fall of the Berlin Wall and the collapse of the Soviet Union. For this, with some justification, they blame the Ukrainian government.  

Present

In Crimean, the choice for the Ukrainian Russophiles is not between the old Ukrainian government and the new, both of which they distrust equally. It is between the Ukrainian and Russian governments. Whatever the legality or otherwise of the referendum and the wisdom or lack thereof of their choice, the majority of those in Crimea have expressed a preference to return to Russian rule; and Putin is happy to accommodate them. Nothing the West will do, aside from going to war, will change that. And the West will not go to war over the Crimea.   

Future

The only question is what will Russia do in Eastern Ukraine. The most optimistic scenario is nothing. Here, the West maintains the sanctions it imposed on Monday for a while; then in a few year Europe relaxes them and goes back to buying Russian energy and banking Russian oligarchs' money. New players in Russia replace the old and the individually targeted sanctions cease to be relevant. In five years, the entire episode will be a vague memory for most of us.

A second scenario is that Russia invades Eastern Ukraine. The West then faces a difficult decision; three courses of action seem possible. The first is that it does nothing but make speeches, none of which will have much impact except at the margins. Here, the risk is that Putin will see this as green light to invade the rest of Ukraine and rebuild something like the old empire. To annex the east and leave the West leaving a divided West Ukraine to form stronger ties to Europe would be something Putin would be unlikely to countenance. He may be seeming this endgame as similar to a divided Germany, which ultimately worked out fairly well for West Germany.

The West's second option is to dramatically increase economic and diplomatic pressure. This will be a long game; sanctions against Iran have produced some results but it has taken years and the game isn't over by any means. The efficacy of this course of action is uncertain. At best it will prevent further Russian incursions; but it will never turn the clock back.

A third possibility, but one for which the West likely has no stomach, is to move Nato forces into the threatened areas. While this may be the only way to guarantee a change of course in Putin's odyssey, the risks inherent in such an escalation are almost unimaginable; with the fall of the USSR, the threat of mutually assured destruction was, we thought, behind us; to go this route would put all of that back on the table. If we get there, it will be by accident rather than by design.

China

China has can't be seen to support a  region's self-proclaimed independence, so it cannot support Russia in this. At the same time it has been calling attention to some double standards in international relations. But if there's one thing China needs domestically it's a stable or growing export market. If Russia and the West come to blows, economically or militarily, China's exports will suffer and its own growth, on which the legitimacy and support of the Party depend, will be eroded. So China has a stake in keeping the peace. Indeed some in China are calling for their country to take an active role in mediating between the two side. Were that to happen it would signal a monumental shift in the world order.

Anthony Wedgwood Benn, (2nd Viscount Stansgate)

Tony Benn 1925-2014 I grew up with Tony Benn; or rather he was a prominent, often influential figure, in British politics in the 1960s, 70s and 80s. On the left wing of the Labor Party, he was constant in reminding political leaders of matters of fairness and principle, a constant supporter of the poor, the powerless, the downtrodden, the disenfranchised. His idealism, often at odds with the reality of power and politics, was both refreshing and disheartening. A man of integrity he once said “I would be ashamed if I ever said anything I didn’t believe in, to get on personally”. One of the last of a nearly extinct class of politician, the idealist: “We are not just here to manage capitalism but to change society and to define its finer values”. (On a personal note, I was surprised to see he was several years younger than my parents; I'd always thought he was older).

Crazy like a fox

Robert Gates pointed out this morning that those like me who saw Putin as wanting to return to the glory days of the Cold War have is wrong; Putin wants the power and influence in his near-abroad without the economic headache of Ukraine's moribund economy.

And while we're on the subject, Robert Gates noted in his book "From the Shadows" that the CIA proposed a series of initiatives aimed at fomenting anti-Soviet sentiment in the USSR's satellite countries, including Ukraine (p91). While he laments that fact that the State Department slowed and watered down the initial proposal, he concludes that: "there was still a significant increase in the quantity of dissident and Western information and literature smuggled into Eastern Europe and the USSR" (p94).

So when Putin claims that the West is interfering and trying to stir up trouble in Ukraine, he may indeed have some basis for that claim. He sees Europe's offer of EU membership as an attempt to drive a wedge between Russia and Ukraine which seems a reasonable assumption; and even if CIA isn't currently fomenting dissent and revolt today, there is historic precedent that given his KGB heritage, may be salient in his calculation.

And in another triumph for self-interested lobbying, Britain is dragging its feet over sanctions (not to mention asset freezing) lest it harm financial interests in the City of London, something of concern to a few wealthy individuals but of relatively little import to the man on the proverbial red omnibus.

"Surprize, surprize, surprize..." !

Alexander Khudoteply/AFP/Getty Image

Russian troops have now unambiguously begun their country's invasion of Ukraine. The Obama's administration has been, regrettably, predictable but in this instance ill-thought out. It's goal of disentangling the US from the ill conceived democracy-building initiatives of the Bush era in Iraq and Afghanistan, while sensible in that context, make little sense in Eastern Europe.

Congress' inability to compromise on a budget in 2011 which has led to sequestration, has required cuts in military spending, and while much less drastic than those proposed by then Defense Secretary Dick Cheney and George H.W. Bush in 1990 in 1990, do send a signal that the US is more reluctant that it has been in the last quarter century to intervene militarily.

The administration's response has been bluster and no visible action. That action need not be military; but to make brash public statements and then not follow through (as for example with the red-line and chemical weapons in Syria) has created the same dynamic between Obama and Putin as existed between Kennedy and Khrushchev in 1962. And a strategy as ingenious and robust as Kennedy's is needed now. Instead of speaking softly and carrying a big stick, Obama has been speaking loudly (and publicly) but carrying no stick.

From Putin's perspective, a West-leaning government in Ukraine jeopardizes Russia's strategic interests, given importance of the naval base in Sabastipol and Russia's access to the black Sea and the Mediterranean. Given too, the similarly corrupt nature of the old Ukrainian regime to Russia's plutocracy, it also represents a democratic challenge to the Russian political status quo. Since Putin has relied increasingly on 20th century style approached to the suppression of dissent internally, a democratic putsch in Ukraine encourages domestic dissent that imperils his position at home. So this was never going to end well, that is to say with a diplomatic solution not backed by unpleasant or costly outcomes for Putin and for Russia. Russia's economy may be in bad shape (and Ukraine's in worse) but Europe gets 60% of it's gas from Russia. So Putin thinks he holds test strongest cards; America is war-weary and (traditionally) disinterested in Europe, and Europe is disorganized and held hostage to Russia's gas.

Europe's response
Europe's collective response to developments in the region has been astonishing. Given its proximity and history, a much more robust stance and greater preparedness would have been needed to prevent the situation from reaching its current juncture.

Ironically, the EU as an institution has made a coordinated European response harder; individual nation states in different and contextually appropriately configured alliances would have acted faster and more decisively than the EU as a whole will ever be able to. On March 2, the day after Russian troops invaded, the top story on the EU's website was "Gender Pay Gap stagnates at 16.4% across Europe". The top stories featured on the European Parliament's website were: 'Getting the economy back on track', 'Syria'. 'Air Passenger Rights', 'Data Protection' and 'Quality of life: the vital ingredient'. It was as if nothing in the least bit out of the ordinary was going on.

Europe's Deputy Prime Minister and Foreign Minister, Evangelos Venizelos began his statement on returning from the Ukraine, March 2nd, with this absurd comment: "The meeting gave me the opportunity to better understand the situation and to convey the Greek message as well as the European message." "I made special mention of the Greek community of Mariupol and of the wider region in general, and I am pleased that the transitional Ukrainian government is prepared to deal with these issues." (There are only 92,548 ethnic Greeks in Ukraine, less than 0.2% of the population, according to a 2001 census).

What Now?
Given the likelihood that many Russian government officials and politicians have profited handsomely since the fall of Communism, freezing overseas bank assets would certainly hurt. That would be a start. International recognition of the new Ukrainian government would probably help too. Whether the EU (or the US) want's to get into a bidding war to bail out a country whose economy, by current estimates, needs an injection of $25b is far from clear. Germany's reluctance to foot other peoples' bills, seen clearly in the case of Greece, makes it doubtful that any money will be made available in the next few weeks or even months. The IMF will want to attach financial strings and conditions, arguable harder to fulfill than the political strings Russia attached to its $15b offer of last year.

From here, where?
Crimea will return to Russia; that's already a fait accompli. The only question is whether Russia will invade Ukraine, as it did in Hungary (1956) and Czechoslovakia (1968); and all signs are that absent a more robust response from the US and Europe, that it will. Perhaps the most optimistic scenario is that Ukraine will split along ethnic and religious lines with Ukrainians in one state and Russians in another. A more pessimistic one is that Russia invades the entire country and installs a puppet regime, tightly linked, as during the Cold War, to Russia. Events are moving quickly, much faster than Europe or the US appears able to keep up with. Russia has the initiative and we have been caught napping without an appropriate policy response.

4' 33"

Returning to the Cold War; dividing the spoils

Photo by Sean Gallup/Getty Images

Troops wearing uniforms without identifying insignia took control of key instillations in Crimea in the east of Ukraine yesterday; they are very probably Russian. And as President Putin is rattling sabers just across the boarder in an ostensibly 'long-planned military exercise', assurances from Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov that Russia will not interfere stretch credulity.

I'm old enough to remember the Russian invasion of Czechoslovakia in 1968, not forgetting its military intervention in Georgia. Putin is a product of the KGB and the Cold War and his thinking seems stuck there; he sees perestroika and glasnost as terrible mistakes, and wants a return to the former glories of the USSR. The only difference being that today it's not about ideology but power, national pride  and international influence.

He has little to lose in behaving 'badly' (i.e., not paying nice with the West); the US and Europe on the other hand do. Europe relies heavily on Russian natural gas for its energy needs. The US wants, at a minimum, Putin's acquiescence in dealing with Syria, Iran and North Korea where Russia's veto on the UN Security Council gives it considerable leverage. Russian isn't about to give up it's naval base in Sevastopol by letting a Westward looking government control  Ukraine's destiny.

Since historically half of the country is mostly ethnically and Russian religiously Russian Orthodox, it seems inconceivable that the Ukraine will remain a single entity; a 'two state' solution, seems inevitable. Yugoslavia, a manufactured amalgam of peoples, splintered in the 1990s. The Ukraine will probably follow the same path. And the sooner everyone acknowledges that the less traumatic the country's future will be.

 

Gun ownerhip unrelated to gun homicides

In an idle moment recently, I regressed homicide rates against rates of gun ownership and the World Bank's Gini index for 62 countries. Gun ownership was not statistically significant (p = 0.58) while the Gini index was (p < 0.001) It appears, oddly, that the NRA is right when it says that guns aren't the underlying cause of gun-involved homicides: income inequality is.

The evolution of the Syrian opposition

A year ago, I thought that the Syrian uprising should be encouraged, though not with direct US military intervention: now I'm less sure. Today one faction, reputedly with links to Al Qaeda shot a high ranking official in the Free Syrian Army. This is exactly the kind of thing those who were reluctant to provide the opposition with armaments were worried about.

Hope and despair

Strange times, oscillating between hope and despair. On the one hand: Syria; Iran; Russia; Iraq; Afghanistan, South Sudan, 45 million people in poverty in the worlds richest country. George Stephanopoulos, once a member of Clinton's cabinet selling out (one must assume for the money) to host one of the most vapid morning talk shows. And Fox 'News'. Kafka would be at home in this logic-defying world. Drought in Califronia, flooding in Sussex, freak winter ice storms and snow in Atlanta. Half a million people temporarily without electricity in the worlds most technologically advanced country. The Obama administration appointing big donors as ambassadors to Norway, Argentina and Iceland. And when things seem at their nadir...

Congress just raised the debt ceiling, passed the Farm Bill (ugh!) and a budget, all without fuss. Marco Rubio sounding sensible on opportunity and education in the PBS New Hour.  I have (fairly) successfully modelled the ICBSC data, my playing is improving, I have a robust system for developing film, the air is clean and fresh. Spaghetti, tuna in marinara sauce and half a bottle of a nice Paso Robles, shared with Jon and Stephen.    

We do live interesting times - and I am often confused. But on balance, I take issue with Slartibarfast; life isn't completely wasted on the living.