US Foreign Policy - Hope but no Change

With two entries in the works, I first wanted to bring to your attention this short but interesting tidbit from Der Spiegel:

"When he entered office, US President Barack Obama promised to inject US foreign policy with a new tone of respect and diplomacy. His recent trip to Asia, however, showed that it's not working. A shift to Bush-style bluntness may be coming."

I recommend you all go read it, it's fairly thoughtful and less influenced by domestic politics than most of what we get here. It's also indicative of a gradually-clarifying world opinion on Obama. The honeymoon appears to be over, and now the soft approach and "nice" rhetoric that got him the Peace Prize is being weighed in the scales and found wanting.

The highlight of the piece, as far as I am concerned, is the following statement (emphasis mine):

"Upon taking office, Obama said that he wanted to listen to the world, promising respect instead of arrogance. But Obama's currency isn't as strong as he had believed. Everyone wants respect, but hardly anyone is willing to pay for it. Interests, not emotions, dominate the world of realpolitik."

One might say, convinced that after eight years of Bush, the world was just waiting to be charmed, President Obama and his team are finding that charm only gets you a willing audience, the "Hope" if you will. But the "Change" only occurs after strong, realistic, and well-executed foreign policies are brought into play. Bush's policies were strong, and even occasionally well-executed, but often fatally rooted in personal idealism over practical realism. Obama's policies seem, like Bush's, to consist largely of optimistic idealism, but unlike Bush, his optimism is based not on the persuasive and positive effects of freedom, but on the universal goodness and reasonableness of mankind, an even shakier and less stable foundation.

One has to wonder whether his repeated failures to charm the world into a better place will result in his adoption of a different strategy, one more resembling Bush's aggressive and often preachy stance towards the world.

The Spiegel piece suggests this may already be occurring:

While in Asia, Obama mentioned "consequences" unless it followed his advice. This puts the president, in his tenth month in office, where Bush began -- with threats. "Time is running out," Obama said in Korea. It was the same phrase Bush used against former Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein, shortly before he sent in the bombers.

We are approaching a situation remarkably and dangerously similar to the one we occupied pre-WWII in the Pacific: lecturing Japan on its policies, while sending our forces to deal with conflicts elsewhere. Eventually militant forces in Japan gained the upper hand, and all the outraged blustering Washington could issue weighed little in the face of the new overwhelming Japanese naval supremacy in the region.

Fastforward to the 21st century: Lectures on human rights fall on deaf, unappreciative, and increasingly (and rightfully?) resentful ears in China when our irresponsible economic policies are agitating their own economy. Meanwhile their military is more or less openly stating that their immediate objectives are to deny us air and sea supremacy further and further out from their mainland.

One major difference between then and now: China has more than a handful of nukes. And, as the Spiegel article points out, nuclear disarmament is a non-issue there. Nukes = respect and leveraging power. Why on earth would they want to give them up?

Meanwhile, apparently Obama's playbook has only one entry for China: Demands for transparency, increasing debt, and more lectures on human rights.

The piece goes on to point out the similarities that are being drawn between Obama's foreign policy and that of Jimmy Carter. It might be worth noting that it was under Carter that we funded central asian terrorist groups (Al Qaeda, for example), and Osama Bin Laden.

From weak policy to funding our future enemies... We can hope that weak and misguided policy now does not lead to either of the two parallel situations later. A capable and realistic foreign policy might remember that history has a way of repeating itself...

-()4|<..

The global reign of the dollar is over?

Soon the US Dollar will not be the currency used for oil transactions, The Independent (UK) reports...

"In the most profound financial change in recent Middle East history, Gulf Arabs are planning – along with China, Russia, Japan and France – to end dollar dealings for oil, moving instead to a basket of currencies including the Japanese yen and Chinese yuan, the euro, gold and a new, unified currency planned for nations in the Gulf Co-operation Council, including Saudi Arabia, Abu Dhabi, Kuwait and Qatar."

First thought: I don't really blame them. Our leaders have been irresponsible enough in handling our economy, and our problems have spilled over and affected the entire world's economy. If the dollar is going to be unstable, swapping to a basket of currencies makes sense.

Second thought: "a new, unified currency planned for nations in the Gulf Co-operation Council, including Saudi Arabia, Abu Dhabi, Kuwait and Qatar." - A fledgling pan-Arabic Muslim currency, anyone? That sounds like a portentous global economy shift waiting to happen.

And lest you think that this is merely a hysterical prognosis of some fringe economist:

The plans, confirmed to The Independent by both Gulf Arab and Chinese banking sources in Hong Kong, may help to explain the sudden rise in gold prices, but it also augurs an extraordinary transition from dollar markets within nine years.

The article darkly hints at a future conflict between the US and China over Middle East oil, but we will pass over this idle speculation for the meatier material on actual Chinese involvement in the situation:

China imports 60 per cent of its oil, much of it from the Middle East and Russia. The Chinese have oil production concessions in Iraq – blocked by the US until this year – and since 2008 have held an $8bn agreement with Iran to develop refining capacity and gas resources. China has oil deals in Sudan (where it has substituted for US interests) and has been negotiating for oil concessions with Libya, where all such contracts are joint ventures.

Furthermore, Chinese exports to the region now account for no fewer than 10 per cent of the imports of every country in the Middle East, including a huge range of products from cars to weapon systems, food, clothes, even dolls.

The Chinese tend to be practical economists these days. A burgeoning economy in desperate need of resources such as oil to fuel its rise is well-served by increased economic ties to the countries with said resources. And unlike us, they are not likely to go about things in an ambivalent manner, hesitating between pragmatic manipulation of the areas with the resources we need and condemnations of our "self-serving" involvement there. The Chinese economic engine needs more oil to run on, and thus they will do what it takes to get more oil.

Meanwhile, we won't even drill for the oil we already possess domestically. Small wonder our economy is flagging while theirs is set to pass us by mid-century.

Chinese financial sources believe President Barack Obama is too busy fixing the US economy to concentrate on the extraordinary implications of the transition from the dollar in nine years' time. The current deadline for the currency transition is 2018.

Perhaps this is a misunderstanding. President Obama has given no sign that this would be a move that he disagreed with. In fact, such a shift seems perfectly in line with the "New world order" he likes to give speeches about. (that speech was meant to be uplifting; upon reading the transcript I was instead quite interested in determining exactly what worldview our President holds. Not one in which the British are held in high regard, that much is certain...) I would not be surprised at all if he gave a speech lauding the move away from the US dollar, as a good plan to diminish US hegemony and level the world's playing field. He is, after all, not only a US citizen, but "a fellow citizen of the world." (second paragraph of the transcript)

This means, apparently, that he would never be so jingoistic as to put the concerns of his own country above the concerns of others. Which is lovely, except that he is not the president of the world, he is the president of the United States of America. His responsibility is not to "remake the world once again

Read more at: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2008/07/24/obama-in-berlin-video-of_n_114771.html

" (the last words in his speech), but to lead our nation in a responsible way.

So the dollar is on its way out as a global medium of exchange. Is anyone willing to fight for it?

Not our Elected Citizen of the World in Chief.

-()4|<.

Read more at: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2008/07/24/obama-in-berlin-video-of_n_114771.htm

Walk softly, and carry a big schtick?

Obama is currently in Russia, making more treaties which we will, if history is any indication, be expected to unilaterally honor.

However, in keeping with my general preference to pick out non-obvious (or at least less obvious) aspects of current news, I'd like to analyze a recent quote by Obama made while in Russia.

The quote is as follows:

"The future does not belong to those who gather armies on a field of battle or bury missiles in the ground."

Apart from the odd phrasing in this particular instance, this sentiment is nothing new.
It's the exact opposite of Teddy Roosevelt's bit of wisdom "Walk softly, and carry a big stick.", and represents the opposite approach, of talking big yet bringing no force to back up your words.

This is, as an aside, exactly the philosophy which brought us into the Pacific theater in WWII, with numerous strongly-worded reproaches of Japan's expansionary actions, yet no force in the region to give them weight. The aggressive faction of the Japanese government concluded that ours were idle threats, and proceeded with their imperialistic ambitions.

Russia would naturally be no different, nor would China, who as we've recently seen has no problem with backing up their words with deadly force to subdue unruly outlying provinces.

They are all too happy to hear words denouncing force, when force is exactly what they are accumulating.

In our world, force rules. In other words, in a secular sense, the future belongs precisely to those who -do- gather armies and bury missiles. The US has secured and maintained its freedom only by means of these things, and when it abandons them, its freedom will quickly follow.

Now the leader of our country has denounced both; it must be no coincidence that he clearly despises our freedom as well, a fact underlined by the unprecedentedly rapid dismantling of it since his administration took power.

One is left to wonder whether the last vestiges of our freedom will give way before external forces, or internal dissolution. Time will tell.

-()4|<.

Entitling Ourselves to Death

So this one was obvious, but I couldn't pass it up.
Pelosi is in China, behaving as we have come to expect.

"U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi urged Beijing on Thursday to cooperate on climate change, calling a safe environment a basic human right."

There is beautiful irony in appealing to Beijing to cooperate in the efforts to change our climate (oh, sorry, I mean disrupt the natural cycle of our climate-er, I mean... Bush caused Katrina! There we go.) on the basis of human rights, when Beijing clearly not only has a track record of ignoring human rights complaints, but disagrees with the Western concept of human rights on a fundamental philosophical level altogether.

Of course, Drudge's headline emphasized Pelosi's typically creepy statement that "Every aspect of our lives must be subjected to an inventory ... of how we are taking responsibility."

Granted, that's an interesting and revealing statement of the liberal outlook on life. More on that later, perhaps. But to me, the key phrase comes earlier in the article.

"I do see this opportunity for climate change to be ... a game-changer," she said at Tsinghua. "It's a place where human rights — looking out for the needs of the poor in terms of climate change and healthy environment — are a human right."

A human right? Since when? Are we now entitled to a static climate and optimal living conditions? It's not even possible to control the climate from a human perspective. The most of what we have accomplished so far is to murk things up a bit, and even that pales in comparison to one truly significant volcanic eruption. We might just as well speak of the entitlement to never be cold.

No generation of humans in modern history has been as concerned for the well-being of our environment, or more willing to sacrifice personal freedom (which we are also supposedly entitled to) for the sake of associated causes. And yet we are continually told by our president and other national leaders that we should be prepared to sacrifice for our country.

Pardon my frankness, but while I am quite prepared to sacrifice time, effort, and even my life if necessary for my country, I fail to see that our government deserves any of the above, nor that the interests of our country are being in any way advanced by said government.

An unfortunate event occurred in a town near my home several years back; a steel plant was taken over, the workers all laid off, and the plant dismantled and sold off. This story is unfortunately not uncommon across the country, as "looters" (to borrow a term from Ayn Rand) profit by destroying our producing power to line their pockets.

But now the looters are in Washington, and selling our freedoms isn't paying as well as it used to.
They'll be looking for more soon, which means more entitlements must be discovered.

Our forefathers knew better; we're not entitled to anything. Now we are coasting on the strength of their achievements, but inertia is running out. America was a chance for people to work hard and succeed, not for what they felt they deserved to be given to them by a nanny state.

If Americans have any entitlement, it is the chance for their hard work to pay off.
Perhaps we have forgotten that this is not always how the world works. In some cultures, you work yourself nearly to death, just to stay where you are. In others, a stratified society means that all your hard work will never help you get ahead.

America was never a give-away, it was a tough job with a good starting salary and excellent chances of advancement.

Now we are all "entitled" to prosperity, but not everyone is willing to work hard. Where then, does the money for those people come from? From the people producing all the value in this country. Right now, they are dragging everyone else along with them. But the situation can't continue forever.

If we don't kick the looters out of Washington, and also destroy the culture of entitlement, there simply is no future for America.

-()4|<.

Our Digital September 11th

First, I would like to say that I have no intention for this to become a "Chinaphobic" blog.
While I do cover stories about China when they are of importance, I think it's obvious that indulging in paranoid speculation regarding the East in specific, and China in general, is foolish and often leads others to respond by committing the opposite, equally dangerous error.

If I cover stories on China much more often than stories about other nations, it is for two good reasons. The first is that I have spent some time in that part of the world, and thus know, though perhaps by only a small degree, more of what I am talking about when I address issues from that part of the world. (As an example, one statement I could make from an experiential standpoint is that Chinese people in general, as distinct from their government, are not our enemies at all.) The second is that it is becoming steadily more clear to even the most opaque observer that China has for a long been our rival (declared rival, even) for the world's foremost superpower status, and fully intends to replace us as such, first regionally, then globally.

I say rival, but perhaps the term is misleading. On a national administrative and foreign policy level, it seems quite clear that those of liberal persuasion loathe our status as superpower so intensely that they are practically begging China to take the position from us. They have even taken numerous steps to ensure that they are prepared to do so, from Clinton's military technology transfers to the accumulation and transfer of unprecedented levels of debt into the Chinese government's hands.

One lesson we have from history is that the cultures which apologize for their own existence always give way before the cultures which do not. So, given the situation that exists between our two nations, the self-hating superpower and the would-be superpower, it is probably safe to say that the balance of power will be shifting very soon.

But enough depressing analysis, let us look at the string of stories which inspired today's entry.
Some are recent, others are from the past few years yet remain ongoing situations that have not been dealt with.

The Joint Strike Fighter program. (!)
The Pentagon. (!!)
The Naval War College Network. (?)
The NYPD. (!?)
Our power grid. (!!!)

China also plans, in the event of war, to heavily utilize "cyber" warfare.

You should read the above link if nothing else, there are some very interesting facts buried beneath the alarmist nature of the article.

The Chinese tend to handle things pragmatically. They cannot go toe-to-toe with our carrier groups, and so they develop anti-ship missiles, and extensive hacking networks.
Meeting the F-35 in the air is deadly. Meeting it in cyberspace, not so much.

For the sake of accuracy, I will mention that the Chinese government hotly denies all connection with the intrusions. Which of course, neither adds nor takes away anything from the situation, since that is what they would say whether or not they were involved.

I will say, that the Chinese are a convenient foe to blame every incident on.
Though in many cases, the attacks were traced back to China, the MSM have taken to automatically blaming Chinese hackers for every incident. (though the power grid report does mention that Russian hackers may also be responsible)

In some classes I have taken, they taught us that it's common for hackers in one area to route their attacks through another area. So these attacks may not all be originating from where they appear to be, and those tracing them may be tempted to stop at China when the trail leads farther back.

However, there is both direct and circumstantial evidence that the majority of these attacks are China-based. China has both the means and the incentive to perpetrate this kind of assault in the very high numbers we are seeing. There are also Chinese hackers claiming responsibility for some of the incidents.*

For years before the Sept. 11 attacks, radical Islamists were at war with us. Even through the first attempted bombing of the WTC, and the attack on the U.S.S. Cole, this fact was denied or minimized by the government.

What will it take for the government to acknowledge the ongoing cyber war with China?
What form will a digital Sept 11th take? The crash of our banking networks?
Using our power grid networks to turn off the lights?

We are currently putting up not even a token resistance; we are in essence being pillaged, outrageously expensive programs and highly sensitive information being compromised and taken with no repercussions.

If the US does not respond realistically, quickly, and practically, our national security will be even more gravely compromised, and lives will be lost as a result.

-()4|<.


*- Yes, we link to CNN too, even though we suspect that we, like the tea parties, might be perceived by certain biased media sources to be "right-wing extremists" and "anti-CNN"...

Pirates! 2

In the latest development in the Somali pirates situation, China is sending a small naval detachment to help deal with the problem.

"We are making preparations and
arrangements to deploy naval ships to the Gulf of Aden for escorting
operations," [Foreign Ministry Spokesman] Liu said, without elaborating on details of the mission.

This is a new development for China, who historically has not had a navy prone to global actions. For a long period of Chinese history, there was basically no Chinese navy whatsoever, though at other times China held quite a firm grip on the seas around their borders. Ironically, those seas used to be scourged by Chinese pirates as well, but that's another story.

Meanwhile, as all eyes turn to see what the US Government's reaction will be, the official response was something along the lines of "Hm? Oh, whatever, that's fine.".

A U.S. State Department official said the U.S. has no problem with China "deploying its assets."

"China, like a number of other countries, has decided that we as an international community must act," the official said.

China has a vested interest in seeing that their cargo stays secure while passing through the area, doubtless. And it is a welcome relief to me to see that we don't feel an obligation to right the wrongs of the Gulf of Aden. More interesting is the fact that the local Muslim countries have up until this point done little to diminish it, let alone put a stop to it.

China's intervention may actually make a difference, as they have been heavily investing in Africa for a while now. Though, it has been made clear that Somalia is not really functioning as a nation right now. The "Somali Coast Guard" is actually a piratical organization as well.


-()4|<.

WWII and the Future of Cyber Warfare

For decades, Sci-Fi writers have frantically written the future, attempting to nail it down before it arrived. Pending the mass production of flying cars or psychic internet surfing, however, we who live in the increasingly less mundane present can sometimes catch a glimpse of it.

There was, for example, the cyber-barrage unleashed by Russian hackers that effectively disrupted Estonia's government for a number of days.
(For those interested in such things, Wired magazine has several articles describing how it went down in their archives, and some of it is fascinating.)

Far more troublesome for us here, though, have been the Chinese hackers.
They have caused massive (and under-reported) trouble to defense websites, emails systems, and gotten away with some restricted information. And that's just what has been made public.

Now, it seems the French are learning about this difficult-to-counter expression of Chinese disapproval, after Sarkozy dared to meet with the Dalai Llama. Shortly after, the French embassy in Beijing's website went down.

China, of course, denies it was any official move by their government, which may actually be more or less true. In the infinite web of personal connections within Chinese culture, nearly nothing need be official in a literal sense. However, that doesn't mean they weren't directly responsible either, and I suspect there is some incentivizing going on for Chinese hackers.

Lately I have been slowly digesting a tome recounting WWII, the Pacific Front, and it's been incredibly interesting. One thing that stands out again and again is how American code-breakers supplied the crucial intelligence we needed to form effective strategies and keep ahead of the opponent.

In today's information-based warfare, this edge is no longer a bonus, but absolutely crucial. China's invasive hacker force is a standing liability, as we've seen from their attacks on defense networks.

In the event of a diplomatic or even military stand-off (over Taiwan, exports, China trying to sink our economy by massive debt off-loading, etc)
this resource could be used with great effectiveness.

What are we doing to counter this threat? Making little feints and false-starts in various directions, as usual. If history is any guide, it will take a massive cyber-coup drastically reducing our effectiveness before the military gets serious about starting a force to combat this threat. So far the Air Force has been on the forefront of these efforts, but has not been going about it in either a consistent or particularly logical manner.

The future remains to be seen, but with the world becoming daily a more interesting place, I hope we don't have to suffer a digital Pearl Harbor before we get our act together and take real steps to counter this threat. Right now, it's open season.

-()4|<.

Nuclear Angst

Alabama honor: Bush visits first new reactor to open for decades

We may be thanking God for Mississippi in most state comparison rankings, but Alabama is currently leading the way in the quest for sane and efficient power generation. President Bush will be visiting the Browns Ferry nuclear power plant in Athens on Thursday, where the Unit 1 reactor has recently been restarted. While this may not sound significant, it is the first reactor to be started in the US in 20 years.

You may be asking yourself why this is, considering that nuclear power is the most efficient power generation means available to us by far. The only by-products are hot water and small amounts of very radioactive but containable material. (Yes, this material poses an obvious and enduring health hazard until it's safely under Yucca Mtn., but not nearly as much as the lack of power infrastructure will cause in the event of a national emergency, or even just an over-stressed power grid.) Those situations involving mishaps and the threat of radiation leaks, most notably Three Mile Island in the US and Chernobyl in the Ukraine, are irrelevant at this point: Chernobyl is a nightmarish scenario that is not possible with modern US reactors, and the lessons of Three Mile Island have been well-learned and taken into consideration.

I have noted that Browns Ferry Unit 1 is the first reactor to be started in the US in 20 years, making it unit number 103 in the US as a whole. Contrast this to nuclear efforts in China:
(info from http://www.world-nuclear.org)

* Mainland China has nine nuclear power reactors in commercial operation, a further two units grid connected, four more under construction, and at least four more about to start constuction in 2007.
* Additional reactors are planned, including some of the world's most advanced, to give a fivefold increase in nuclear capacity to 40 GWe by 2020 and then a further three to fourfold increase to 120-160 GWe by 2030.
* The country aims to become self-sufficient in reactor design and construction, as well as other aspects of the fuel cycle.

To summarize, China has plans to increase their nuclear power capacity by 15-20x its current level in the next 27 years.
By contrast, in the past 20 years, we have only shut down or paused the construction of plants, not opened any.
Now, lest I be accused of sinophobia, I will call attention to the fact that China only has 11 working reactors at this point, so it will take some time for them to catch up, even at the rate they are building.

However, my point is not to worry lest we be overtaken in numbers by any specific country, but that we have irresponsibly neglected to keep a robust power infrastructure in place. Remember the rolling blackouts in California? They were at least partially responsible for the referendum that kicked Gray Davis out the door and ushered in the era of the Govinator.

And it's not as if we can solve the nation's energy crunch with the ongoing boom in windmill construction either. Though they may alleviate problems in some areas, as a whole you're not going to help lighten the load on the nation without a veritable sea of them covering vast sections of the Midwest, and the energy required to create and construct said sea of windmills would make such an effort counterproductive.

In the end, nuclear power is the only option that makes sense. There are no coal-based clouds of smoke, no swirling windy blades of death, no acres of solar cells with meager power returns. Though these (coal-powered, wind-powered, solar-powered) solutions make sense in certain locations and contexts, the only technology that makes sense to use as the backbone of a heavily loaded power infrastructure in great need of shoring up is nuclear power. Even France has figured this out.

(That, or we can wait for the even cleaner and more efficient process of nuclear fusion to be perfected. But even setting aside the fact that it is the technology of the future and probably always will be, why do I have this sneaking suspicion that the drinkers of Gore-aid would find some reason to scream out against them too?)

If we continue to allow regulatory dead-locks and people who oppose the idea of power plants on principle (often the same people who think the fewer humans living and disturbing nature's tranquility the better) to prevent the responsible and practical process of increasing our grid capacity, the problems will only get more severe. Let those who complain of global warming go without air conditioning for a summer, and then decide if a few more reactors aren't worth it...


-Oak