What’s Wrong Today:

Yesterday’s column asked about our goals in Iraq, and our willingness to default to military action whenever a crisis emerges. Since that is our reflexive reaction, let’s take a quick look at how effective our military operations in the Middle East have been. Ian Welsh wrote: (brackets and emphasis by the Wrongologist)

The military as a tool of national strategy is designed to use its resources to inflict costs (loss of territory, weapons and fighters) on the enemy, which the enemy cannot easily replace. Or, that the financial costs of replacement are beyond the ability of the enemy to pay.

In a sense, war fighting is often a battle of attrition of resources, and generally, one side prevails. That was the history of warfare in the 20th century.

Our 21st century experience with fighting Islamist militias is instructive. Our military is brutally expensive. Islamist militias are cheap. The Taliban funds itself with blackmail and drugs. Until they broke the bank in Mosul for $425 million, ISIS ran on donations from rich Muslims along with some state support. Now they are self-funding.

These Islamic armies cost peanuts compared to the US, British or Israeli military. And they are capable of tying down Western militaries for years, using up huge financial resources, and even winning. Hezbollah defeated Israel, which was (before Hezbollah proved otherwise) widely considered one of the most effective militaries in the world. We were held to a tie in both Afghanistan and Iraq.

A military that is hundreds of times more expensive than its main competitor has problems, particularly in a long war. In military operations, effectiveness is most important. But if your effectiveness doesn’t actually deliver a win, in the sense of making your enemies stop fighting, then a hugely expensive military will indeed bleed us white in a prolonged state of warfare.

Our military is aware of these facts: We use drones because they are cheaper than planes. Ground combat robots, which the US army is working to perfect, may ultimately be cheaper than human soldiers, as well as offering the advantage of requiring fewer troops, meaning fewer combat casualties.

In Iraq and Afghanistan, our military leaders completely underestimated the strategic importance of the IED. When the insurgents deployed IEDs, the costs of American occupation soared, and our maneuverability, a perceived strength, slowed to a crawl. Now, IEDs are simply the 21st century version of land mines. It was understandable that our generals thought that we knew how to detect and beat the mine, but with the IED, a cheap and primitive weapon, entire areas of Afghanistan became “no-go” zones, where our troops could only move in convoys of exceptionally large armored vehicles. Traumatic Brain Injury (TBI) caused by IEDs has become a major cause of US casualties in both Iraq and Afghanistan, with soaring costs for extended rehabilitation when the injured soldier returns to the US.

Our generals have not been able to blunt the effectiveness of IEDs, even though we own the most advanced military technologies since the dawn of human society.

We also have a political problem. America is no longer willing to accept high levels of casualties. We, our politicians, and therefore our generals, try exceedingly hard to avoid large numbers of dead and wounded in our “wars”. This has made successfully occupying space in a foreign country impossible. If we are occupying a province or a city in a foreign country, and the lives of our troops come first, we will shoot first and ask questions later. It is better strategically if we accept higher losses than it is to kill innocents in tribal societies, even though that is a very difficult ask of our military. When we kill an innocent, an extended family then hates America. Even if they don’t take up arms, they will then provide support to the insurgents.  

Our soldiers stand out in a Middle Eastern culture. US soldiers did not speak Arabic, did not dress like Iraqis or Afghanis, did not practice the predominant religion or understand its culture. To our troops, all locals became the enemy, and to the locals, the occupying forces come to be seen as the enemy. This is true despite efforts to train our troops to work with locals.

The most amazing fact is that all of this is known/taught/accepted by US military leaders, but they seem to be incapable of behaving differently, or to change the tactics on the ground sufficiently to enable a “win”.

So the West uses highly expensive troops whom we don’t want to die, along with drones, close air support and extensive surveillance. And the Islamic militias, on budgets that aren’t even shoestring by US standards, survive and grow stronger. They are evolving: They communicate via Twitter, we use UHF radios with big, heavy batteries. They get smarter all the time. They are Darwinian organizations: screw up, and you die.

But, in his book, The Generals, Thomas Ricks d
emonstrates that a culture of mediocrity has taken hold within the Army’s top leadership rank, and if it continues, the country’s next war is unlikely to produce better results than the last two. Nor is there much of a relationship between an officer’s battlefield performance and subsequent promotions. He quotes an American civilian official based in Afghanistan in 2007:

Ricks wrote in the Atlantic that the tactical excellence of enlisted soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan may have enabled and amplified the strategic incompetence of the generals in those wars. The Army’s combat effectiveness lets its generals dither for much longer than they could have if the Army had been suffering clear tactical setbacks. He quotes Sean McFarland, brigade commander in Ramadi in 2006: (emphasis by the Wrongologist)

Despite our 13 years of military experience on the ground in the Middle East, our strategies, tactics and weapons remain essentially the same, and they haven’t worked well enough to deliver the strategic objectives we hoped they would.

So, which are the effective methods of stopping or defeating an insurgent or terrorist force in Tribalstan™?

• Kill and/or expel the insurgent militias
• Play ethnic groups against each other
• Colonize the provinces with jobs, infrastructure, schools, and a new legal regime
• Some combination of the above?
• Something completely different?

As a thought experiment, how exactly could the US “win” on the ground in the Middle East, given our current military?

If we cannot “win” on the ground in the Middle East, where does the use of military force fit in our Middle East Strategy?

What’s Wrong Today:

Does America have a goal in Iraq? How does that goal fit into our larger strategy in the Middle East?

Often, our thinking seems to begin and end with the use of military force, which is always the first answer on the Sunday Pundithons. The usual suspects in Washington are calling for air strikes. Why?

• Is it our job to slow the progress of ISIS in their march towards Baghdad?
• Are we defending something we gained in the 8 years we were in Iraq?
• What would air strikes accomplish when ISIS is positioned in partially controlled Sunni cities? Civilian casualties would be the order of the day, on every day that we bombed  

We need some perspective. Here is a viewpoint from Reidar Visser in Foreign Affairs:

We need to understand that Iraq’s problems are its demography and its geography. And while neither can be altered, state power has been drastically altered from a Sunni minority under Saddam Hussein in 2003 to a Shia majority under Nuri al-Maliki today. Maliki has not been a good steward of the young democracy in the 8 years he has been Prime Minister of Iraq.

Many Sunnis are frustrated and alienated by Prime Minister Maliki’s harsh consolidation of power and marginalization of their communities. Some background is useful. Ross Caputi, in Unthinkable Thoughts in the Debate about ISIS in Iraq, said:

Caputi continues:

After the government moved against Fallujah, it was the Sunni militias who took the lead in the fight against the Iraqi government. ISIS arrived later to aid Fallujans in their fight, and to piggy-back on the success of the tribal fighters in order to promote its own goals.

Six months later, the government still has not been able to clear ISIS and the militias from Fallujah.

So, what is the likely outcome on the ground? According to Kenneth Pollack at the Brookings Institution:

Ken Pollack observes that Shias now number 80% of Baghdad’s population. Many will help defend their homes and families in Baghdad and other Shia-dominated cities in the south. The (largely Shia) remnants of the Iraqi Security Force (ISF) are being reinforced by the Shia militias and bolstered by contingents of Iranian Revolutionary Guards. Many new Shia recruits are answering Ayatollah Sistani’s call to defend their community. From Pollack:

That conforms to the pattern of other, similar civil wars. In Syria today, in Afghanistan in the 1990s, and in Lebanon in the 1980s, front lines tended to stalemate along tribal lines. They can shift a little, but generally remain unchanged for years. That’s because militias in civil wars find it far easier to hold territory inhabited by the members of their identity group than to conquer (and hold) territory inhabited by members of a rival identity group.

The absence of US troops since the 2011 withdrawal is a small element in the story. The interaction between the Syrian and Iraqi insurgencies is an accelerant, but again, is only part of the story. In reality, Mr. Maliki’s repeated refusal over 8 years to strike a political accord with the Sunni minority, and his heavy-handed military repression in Sunni areas this year are the key factors in today’s disintegration in Iraq. The shift to an external insurgency that brings the flow of money and weapons to a variety of armed groups are secondary but important reasons that have allowed ISIS to thrive.

So, should we give an open checkbook to Maliki? What goal of American Middle Eastern strategy does that serve? You will hear Washington say we can use this moment of leverage to attach political conditions to any military aid. Conditions we couldn’t get via diplomacy. But, that leverage faces a problem: It will be virtually impossible to force any meaningful political moves in the midst of a crisis, and any promises made now will quickly be forgotten once the crisis has passed.

Do we hold our nose and back Maliki right now? We went into Iraq to get rid of a Sunni dictator. He has been replaced democratically by a triumphalist Shia autocrat who is losing the country.

Or, do we sit this one out?

The answer depends on whether you think a democratic, unified Iraq remains our goal, not just an aspiration. And whether you think it is a realistic possibility. It depends on whether you think we have a constructive role to play in saving it, maybe like the UN, when it provides peacekeepers.

And if America believes, as did Joe Biden back in the day, that three independent states of Sunni, Shia and Kurd peoples is an answer, what should America’s role be in bringing that about? Does bombing and drone striking Sunni areas help achieve America’s goals in Iraq or in the Middle East?

What American goals are we serving by involvement in what promises to be a long civil war, with like Syria, little practical chance of delivering a unified, stable and democratic Iraq?

What’s Wrong Today:

From The Guardian:

Ever heard of the “Stingray”? Few people have. Stingrays emulate a cellphone tower and cause all cell phones in range to register their location and identifying information with the stingray, not just with real cell towers in the area. They can track cell phones whenever the phones are turned on, not just when they are making or receiving calls. So even if you’re not making a call, police can know who you’ve been calling, and for how long, as well as your precise location.

“Stingray” is a trademarked name of the Harris Corporation. While it is a specific product, the name has entered the technical lexicon as a generic term like Kleenex or Xerox. In most sales agreements, Harris has required law enforcement agencies to sign nondisclosure agreements (NDAs) forbidding them from discussing whether or not an agency even possesses such a device, much less describing its capabilities. Since when do the laws requiring public disclosure of certain transactions and activities by public agencies get trumped by a NDA signed with a private company?

Ars Technica helpfully provided this map of the 15 states that are known to employ stingray technology:

Beyond those states, 12 federal law enforcement agencies, ranging from the FBI to the National Security Agency, also employ them.

ACLU attorney Nathan Wessler said in an op-ed last Thursday:

Wessler also said:

You may be asking: How do local cops get their hands on such advanced military technology? Well, the feds are giving it to them for free. When the US government is not loaning police agencies stingrays, the Defense Department and Homeland Security are giving federal grants to cops, which allow departments to purchase the gear at the cost of $400,000 each from contractors like Harris Corporation.

The militarization of police departments has been covered by the Wrongologist here. The New York Times wrote this week detailing all of the other free military gear – like machine guns, armored vehicles and aircraft – that police are receiving from the Pentagon. Since Sept. 11, 2001, the DHS has handed out $34 billion in grants to police departments across the country, many for the purchase of armored vehicles and weapons. This program has created a cottage industry of companies who make militarized equipment and take checks from local towns in exchange for military hardware.

Why haven’t we heard about stingrays?

Stingrays have stayed out of the public eye because local police departments refuse to disclose they’re using them, sometimes even to judges. In one case, although the Tampa, FL police and the ACLU had agreed to an ACLU review, US Marshals seized the stingray records, citing national security reasons. It was not the first time that the US has intervened in many routine state public records cases regarding use of the technology.

The Associated Press reported that the Obama administration has been telling local cops to keep information on stingrays secret from members of the news media, even when it seems like local public records laws would mandate their disclosure:

As WaPo’s Radley Balko wrote this week, the Obama administration could easily limit these tactics to “cases of legitimate national security” – but by distributing stingrays to local police for mass data collection, it has clearly chosen not to do so.

We know that local and federal law enforcement officials aren’t using this technology to catch terrorists. They’re using them for more mundane policing, like catching people suspected of drug crimes. So, the Obama administration is working with local police to prevent knowledge about a technology that may be violating the Fourth Amendment rights of Americans because, in the administration’s opinion, revealing the details of said technology could jeopardize national security.

If details of the technology threatens national security, then the federal government should prohibit local police from using the technology, reserving it only for cases of legitimate national security. Alternatively, the feds can continue what they are currently doing, letting local police use the technology for local cases, possibly violating the rights of American citizens in the course of investigations that have nothing to do with national security.

That would mean that the fed’s current stance of obstructing the dissemination of knowledge of stingrays is a form of conspiracy with those same local police to prevent American citizens from discovering that their rights may have been violated.

To make sense of this, we should look at it from the perspective of our requirement that the relationship between our government and its people not descend into tyranny.

If we continue to allow the Fourth Amendment to be gutted, kept around only for the sake of appearances, Americans will face a state of oppression similar to that which caused us to declare our independence in 1776.  

But the stingray is also part of a larger decay. It, along with the sources and methods of other governmental spying, can be used to build cases against the disliked, to destroy lives even where no real case actually exists.

Domestic spying creates an atmosphere of fear and wariness, which causes people  to let the powers that be do whatever they want, unchecked by the protections afforded citizens (on paper, at least) by the Constitution.

Fewer and fewer people will have the courage to participate meaningfully in government or speak up if and when government has gone too far.

In short, domestic spying enables tyranny, and stingray in the hands of local police is another tool of tyranny.

Welcome back to Iraq Cheneystan! Nation Building may continue unless Mr. Obama shows a backbone to the GOP. The starting point for any meaningful analysis of our possible role should be that “Iraq” is a country in name only. The Kurds want nothing to do with the Arabs, and the Sunni Arabs and the Shia Arabs want only to be dominant over the other. Is it a US issue because of our attempt at Nation Building over the last decade?

Is it our issue if the Sunnis (with the help of other Sunnis outside of Iraq) secede and try to create a reasonably homogeneous country of their own?

Is it our issue if the Kurds (with the help of other Kurds outside of Iraq) try to create a homogeneous country of their own?

If we learned anything from Vietnam and (the possibly former) Iraq, it should be that American power is limited; we should use it first, where there is a reasonable chance that we can actually accomplish something useful, and at a reasonable cost, and second, where it will advance either our national interests or humanitarian interests. 

Giving more weapons or another open checkbook to PM Maliki is unlikely to satisfy either part of that equation. 

Cheney & Bush tried Nation Building without success:

GOP is upset that Democrats wander off script on Iraq:

GOP wants us to have another:

In other news, Rep. Eric Cantor (R-VA) got primaried:

According to Nate Silver, only seven Republicans running for the US House have lost their primaries since 2010, counting Cantor, but not counting those in redistricting races.

That would put the success rate of Republican challenges in the range of 1% to 2%.

Cantor’s shape-shifting and ambition meant that he had few friends in his own party. Certainly, his willingness to torpedo deals worked out between Mr. Obama and Mr. Boehner showed his lack of ability to compromise, and his disloyalty to his leader. 

Down goes Cantor. Remind you at all of Saddam?

Update: Sen. McCain, (R-AZ) has provided us with some blog porn on our post regarding Iraq’s unraveling. Don’t go getting excited as you read the word porn, this blog post has nothing to do with porn you watch on sites like teeni.xxx, sorry to disappoint if I got your hopes up briefly.

Speaking to The Hill, Mr. McCain said:

The
president should get rid of his entire national security team,
including the chairman of the joint chiefs of staff and bring the team
in who won the conflict in Iraq in to turn this situation around, but
it’s going to be extremely difficult to do so

Let us emphasize a part of McCain’s comment:

bring the team in who won the conflict in Iraq

Sure. Use the guys that destroyed Iraq to save Iraq. Call them the “victors”. That is similar to McCain saying that he won the Vietnam War from the Hanoi Hilton.

Now, to the original blog post:

What’s Wrong Today:

Iraq is facing its gravest test since we invaded more than a decade ago. The Iraqi army pleaded “no contest” to Islamist insurgents, who have seized four cities and pillaged military bases and banks. The Guardian reported the extent of the Iraqi army’s defeat at the hands of militants from the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS):

While they gained money and weapons, the most troubling part of the story was the desertion of the Iraqi military: (emphasis by the Wrongologist)

Clearly, there is no coherent government military capability in Iraq. The government has been unable to re-take Fallujah from ISIS in six months of trying. In addition, the local population does not seem willing to fight for their own territory. ISIS troops numbering around 800 took the city of Mosul with a population of three million, within a few hours.

More than 10 years after the United States invaded and two years after our withdrawal, the question of how Iraq fell so far, so fast is on the table.

After the US pullout, Mr. Maliki, the leader of a Shiite political party, promised to run a more inclusive government—to bring more Sunnis into the ministries, to bring more Sunnis from the Sons of Iraq militia into the national army, to settle property disputes in Kirkuk, to negotiate a formula on sharing oil revenue with Sunni districts, and much more. Then, Maliki backpedaled on these commitments, and has pursued policies designed to strengthen Shiites and marginalize Sunnis.

The Sunnis, excluded from the political process, have taken up arms as the route to power. In the process, they have formed alliances with Sunni jihadist groups, like ISIS, which has seized not just Mosul, but much of northern Iraq—on the principle that the enemy of their enemy is their friend.

Since Maliki had no interest in conciliatory politics, his Army simply folded when they came under attack, not because they weren’t equipped or trained to fight back, but because in many cases, they felt no allegiance to Maliki’s government; they had no desire to risk their lives for the sake of its survival.

International Implications

Given the ISIS role in the ongoing fighting in Syria, they might not want to waste soldiers and ammunition on a protracted battle in Iraq. It is one thing to win a city, it is an entirely different matter to hold several cities at the same time. the logistics get more difficult the farther the insurgents are from their original sources of supply.

Some of the ISIS militia stormed the Turkish consulate and kidnapped Turkish diplomats. Under international law, that amounts to an attack on Turkey, and it’s unlikely that the Turks will simply stay on the sidelines. Iran, which is Maliki’s main ally, has no interest in seeing Sunnis regain power in Baghdad.

We are witnessing a systemic breakdown in the Middle East. The war in Syria, which has been a proxy war between the region’s Sunnis and Shiites, has now expanded into Iraq. The violence will intensify, and the neighboring countries will be flooded with refugees (apparently, half a million have already fled Mosul), with few resources to house or feed them.

Depending on what happens in the next few weeks, or maybe even the next few days, we may be witnessing the beginning of either a new political order in the region or another swim in the geostrategic swamp, and its associated humanitarian disaster.

What is our responsibility?

When we withdrew, we said that we were leaving a competent military in Iraq, based on spending $ billions providing military equipment, and more than a decade in training the Iraqi military. Our invasion and subsequent occupation cost America more than a trillion dollars and the lives of more than 4,500 soldiers. It is also thought to have killed at least 100,000 Iraqis. Kevin Drum at MoJo writes:

Moving to the Syrian conflict, Mr. Obama’s decision not to arm the fringe Syrian groups looks better today than it did. Those weapons might have found their way into the hands of the ISIS fighters who are now in Mosul and Tikrit. Alternatively, the Saudi decision to send arms to fringe Syrian groups looks worse than ever.

Jim White at the indispensable Emptywheel captured this ironic screen shot from the NYT:

Juxtaposing these two headlines is more than an ironic coincidence, it demonstrates the thoughtless approach to policy by our neo-con captured government. Jim says:

And leave it to the Wall Street Journal’s Kenneth Pollack to make the first case for bombing:

Apparently Mr. Pollack sees no contradiction between promising the Iraqi government (and Mr. Maliki) that we will make air strikes on the Sunni insurgents if he first mends fences with said Sunnis. Mr. Pollack is at the Brookings Institution, one of the prime US “think” tanks. And the idea that the US can ride back into a country it has no clue about, except how that country and its resources can serve America’s own interests, and attempt to “save” it smacks of the worst of “American Exceptionalism”.

No wonder our foreign policy has been so successful.

When the Sunday morning TV bloviators ask: “Whose fault is it that Iraq may be lost to terrorism?”

Remind them that it’s our fault. We bought the neo-con lies about Iraq time and again.

Remind them that America’s chicken hawks, with their so-called military “expertise,” couldn’t see that intervening in civil wars is a mug’s game.

Remind them that you can’t build a nation that isn’t your own. You can’t control political outcomes in other countries, even with vast expenditures of blood and treasure.

Remind them that you can’t win when you put your big boots on the ground where they’re not wanted.

Some among us still buy the neo-con big lie. Next time you’re feeling “patriotic”, take the time to remember the original patriots in the 1700’s were not fools.

And the neo-cons? They remain dangerous fools.

We returned to the US last night. American East Coast weather was the same as what we had left in Hong Kong.

For our final trip report, let’s start by speaking about infrastructure. We talked about the Shenzhen subway expansion that is underway. It is scheduled to be completed in 2016. Here is a photo of the work underway in downtown Shenzhen:

This is a photo from our hotel room. They started work on most days around 5am, and worked 7 days a week. One morning, the pile driver started at 4:30am. We were reliably told that starting that early is illegal. Also, when the temperature reaches 40°C, the work is supposed to stop.

In Hong Kong, the Airport Express (AE) is a dedicated subway from downtown Hong Kong (HK) to the airport. We had a free shuttle from our hotel to the AE. A one-way ticket costs HK$100 (US$ 12.90) and the trip takes 24 minutes. You can check your bags at your airline counter in the subway before boarding. Here is what the cars look like:

A taxi takes about an hour. If only all the subways around the world could learn from Hong Kong, it would make traveling easier. The train operator is MTR, 77% owned by the government, meaning it is ultimately owned by Beijing, though Hong Kong retains its own government and legal system. According to the WSJ, MTR is public, and made US$548 million in the first half of 2013. It runs lines in Beijing, Shenzhen and Hangzhou, as well as in Melbourne, London and Stockholm.

Then there is the airport. The Wrongologist had visited the old Kai-Tak airport many times. There was one runway that jutted out into Victoria Harbor. Landings at Kai-Tak were dramatic, you could look into the windows of apartment buildings on the final approach, and a few planes took an unexpected bath when they missed the runway. At the northern end of the runway, six story buildings were just across the road. The other three sides of the runway were surrounded by mountains and Victoria Harbor. Kai-Tak closed in 1998 and was replaced by the Hong Kong International Airport:

The new airport is built on a large artificial island formed by levelling Chek Lap Kok Island, and adding land reclaimed from the bay. Even today, there is a significant dredging operation underway to add additional space to what is a very large facility. The airport is the world’s busiest cargo gateway, with Memphis (FedEx) in 2^nd place.

Compare these facilities with international arrivals/departures at New York, LA or San Francisco airports. Please don’t bother comparing the subway to the airport options at our major city airports with the HK Airport Express.

Second, let’s talk Chinese consumerism. It is staggering: One of the most prevalent things you see in Shenzhen and in HK are people using smartphones. Even middle-aged professionals use their smartphones at least as much as American teens, and possibly more. They walk into people while intently viewing the phone screen, often while talking via the speaker. The Android large screen format appears to be the market leader over the iPhone in Shenzhen and HK. Expatriates in HK seem to favor the iPhone, but Chinese favor the Android system, with HTC handsets seeming to be most popular. Despite that, the Apple Store in Central HK was extremely popular:

It is two floors and was packed all day on Sunday with Chinese shoppers. Another very interesting aspect of Chinese consumerism is the popularity of foreign cars. Here is an Audi pop-up showroom in the Harbour Centre in Tsim Sha Tsui. Note that most of the people checking out the cars are Chinese. We even saw a 3-generation Chinese family picking out their seats in an Audi 8:

Even with all their wealth, there are issues. The Financial Times reported on Monday that with HK’s elderly set to be 1/3 of the territory’s population by 2050, the Territory wants to export some of its elderly residents to mainland China:

The Hong Kong government needs to provide homes for almost 30,000 elderly people on their waiting list for subsidized residential care, but property values in HK make finding that space very difficult.

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Hong Kong also has one of the highest elder poverty rates.

HK is looking to neighboring Guangdong province (home of Shenzhen) to provide the living space. The average old person is waiting 30 months for a place in a residential home, so thousands of elderly people die before they ever get one.

The shortage of placements for elder care is not unique to Hong Kong. Mainland China must consider how it cares for its elderly, which will be almost 30% of China’s population by 2050.

In 2013, the Wrongologist reported on China’s demographic danger zone:  

The implications for China’s social safety net spending are obvious. Demographics will be a determining factor in China’s ability to continue the economic contract that keeps civil liberties in check while growing a huge middle class.

The one-child policy will reduce China’s labor force by 67 million people by 2030, equivalent to the population of France. While they have moved away from the policy, the economic impact is already baked in:

A decade after that, China will face a labor shortage of almost 140 million workers, surely the biggest job crunch the world has ever seen. That will have a big impact on wage inflation.

So, where is China heading? China is committed to continuing their significant annual GDP growth. And in order to grow:

• They need to solve their coming worker shortage

• They need more electric power

• To fuel those plants, they need more coal and more water, and both are scarce resources in China

• To feed their growing urban middle class, they need more water to meet the demand for more meat and dairy

• They need to enhance the safety net for the world’s largest elderly population. It will be 300 million (the current size of the US) by 2025

How they solve these simultaneous equations will determine what kind of society they will become and what level of global power they will wield in this Century.

One thing is sure, they have an experienced and capable technocrat class that has managed an amazing transformation of their economy in the past 20 years, something that would be unimaginable in the US.

So, we should expect to see at least one more cycle of high Chinese GDP growth before their aging crunch and concomitant inflation of wages and social costs causes lower growth and more discontent than exists currently.

Today, the Party no longer promises equality; it promises prosperity, pride and national strength. But what happens if there is a loss of the optimism that now fuels their citizens’ current high level of aspiration?

The working relationship between Chinese aspiration and authoritarianism will be tested if there is low GDP growth for an extended period. How will discontent be dealt with? How will the population react if there is a sustained loss of aspiration and optimism, if and when GDP growth slows?

The Internet has created a fugitive political class in China. Things once secret are now known, people are now connected where they used to be alone.

Will any coming political change be evolutionary or revolutionary?

Food for thought. Make mine bean curd.

 

What’s Wrong Today:

No, there is no sausage. With limited access to the Internet today, here are a couple of items on the web that the Wrongologist will not have time to write about, but that are worthy of your consideration.

First, The Incidental Economist alerted about the Journal of the American Medical Association’s report: An Analysis of Campaign Contributions to Federal Elections, 1991 Through 2012. Here is a part of JAMA’s a synopsis of the report:

Here are their key findings:

• Physician contributions to campaigns went from $20 million in 1991-92 to almost $190 million in 2011-12. The percentage of physicians who contributed went from 2.6% to 9.4%.
• The percentage contributing to Republicans has decreased over time. In fact, in both the 2007-8 and 2011-12 elections, more physicians contributed to Democratic campaigns than to Republican campaigns. Never mind that they worked significantly harder in the 2010 Congressional elections to elect Republicans.

The common meme is that most doctors oppose the ACA. If so, they didn’t seem to put their political money where their mouths were/are since 2010.

The report also shows that there are big gender differences among Doctors who contribute. About 52% of male physicians who contributed, gave to Republican candidates, while 76% of female physicians who contributed, gave to Democrats.

We will have to wait and see what the trends look like after the 2014 off-year elections. Perhaps the high point in opposition to the ACA by physicians was in 2010.

Second, Barry Ritholtz reported at his Big Picture blog about The Senate Committee on Foreign Relations hearing on March 21st regarding the renewal of the Authorization for the Use of Force (AUMF) in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Apparently, Senators repeatedly asked representatives from the Department of Defense which groups America is at war with.

Wait for it…

The DOD refused to answer! The ACLU’s deputy legal director and director of the ACLU’s Center for Democracy (Jameel Jaffer) was at the hearing and tweeted:

Senate: Which groups are we at war with? Admin: That’s classified. http://t.co/olW6B6Wy35

— Jameel Jaffer (@JameelJaffer) May 21, 2014

The implication is clear. DOD is saying to the Senate: Don’t ask who or why, just clap louder.  

The DOD says “that’s classified” because there can be no answer. We do not have a coherent enemy. We don’t really have a clue who we are currently at war with. Some days, it probably looks like everybody.

And whoever they are, we think they are going to be shooting at us real soon.

It is Congress’ Constitutional responsibility to declare war. So, the DOD’s answer should be: ‘no one’, because we have not declared ‘war’ on anyone.

The implication, by Senators asking the question, is that Congress has completely abdicated their Constitutional responsibility.

Hypocrisy rules!

(Reader Linda S. points out that in the post below, the Wrongologist says that Max Baucus, Ambassador to China, was formerly a Republican Senator. In fact, Baucus is a Democrat. The Wrongologist regrets this jet-lag induced, but understandable error. Baucus was a Democrat in Name Only).

What’s
Wrong Today:

Today
is a travel day in China. Here are a few early impressions of Shenzhen, plus a
few short items from the Chinese media that are worth your attention. Google
has been inaccessible in China for the past few days, along with the New York
Times. Rumors are that it has to do with the 25th Anniversary (June
4) of the Tiananmen Square uprising. Otherwise, virtually every other URL that
the Wrongologist has tried to access is available, although we have not tried
to get to Facebook or other social sites.

Regarding Shenzhen, it is a big, modern city with
major avenues that are 6 lanes wide, with green space in the middle, similar to
Park Avenue in NYC. Huge office towers line these avenues and traffic is very
busy, mostly cars, smaller trucks and buses, unlike some cities in Asia were
motorbikes and scooters predominate.

Here is a city photo taken yesterday:

The main
boulevards make Shenzhen feel like any modern city anywhere in the world. When
you move two blocks beyond the main roads, Shenzhen begins to look more like a
typical Asian city, with mostly 3-story concrete buildings, combining first
floor storefronts and offices or apartments above.

The streets are packed with people, as you would
expect to see in a city of 10 million. It has the look and feel of a wealthy
city with many, many restaurants and shops. Most cars are foreign, with
Japanese and Korean models dominating.

While General Motors claims to be quite successful
in China, particularly with Buick, there was only one Buick, an older Regal
that was visible, parked on the street. Next is a photo of an apartment block across
from the hotel. Here you are beginning to get the look and feel of a city that
is similar to many in Asia:

Finally, here is a photo of a more upscale
apartment, again within walking distance of the hotel, which has a communal green
space built into the façade. Much like Hong Kong of 40 years ago, wash is hung
out to dry in any available space:

Of interest, Barack Obama’s half-brother
, Mark Okoth Obama Ndesandjo, lives in Shenzhen, and is married to a Chinese
woman. He speaks Chinese. The Obama boys had different mothers, did not grow up
together and are not close. Ndesandjo grew up in Kenya but moved to the US for
college, completing a bachelor’s degree in physics at Brown University and a
master’s in physics from Stanford University. Later, he got an MBA at Emory
University. He wrote a book
describing an abusive relationship with his father, one that is very different
from that which Barack Obama outlined in Dreams of My Father. Ndesandjo is a
minor celebrity in Shenzhen, occasionally being interviewed on local TV.

The English newspaper, China Daily had several interesting items showing the different
opinions on world events. First, an item about Internet
spying:

Now, this is old news, but the article points to an Op-Ed
on the same day that is more pointed, entitled World’s
Largest Internet Hacker:

The
opinion piece concludes:

Also
in the same paper was a description
of Max Baucus’ efforts as our new US Ambassador, to develop better economic ties
with China, wherein Baucus said:

To which Xu
Hongcai, with the China Center for International Economic Exchanges replied:

The article
recalls that the US Congress and an agency that reviews foreign investment
denied a $2.2 billion Chinese takeover of 3Com in 2007, and a proposed $18.5
billion takeover of Unocal in 2005.

Is it only the Wrongologist who
thinks it is laughable that a REPUBLICAN former Senator now wants to rebuild
American infrastructure?
And, using Chinese money, labor and technology?

Finally,
another piece from yesterday’s paper:

That isn’t
a relative cap that is tied to GDP, folks. It isn’t “cap and trade”. It is a
hard cap. The paper reported it was
announced in response to the US’ weak tea, an executive order restricting
carbon emissions from our coal-fired power plants.

Gee, a
government that admits climate change can be slowed by reducing carbon
emissions.

Bet you
thought that couldn’t happen.

What’s Wrong
Today:

Many will remember
the feel-good story of 2010 in which Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg announced his
plan to make a $100 million challenge grant/investment in the Newark, NJ public
schools.

Well, the initial
returns are now in, and it appears that Zuckerberg’s $100 million was a lost
opportunity for Newark. Although none of what has transpired is Zuckerberg’s fault, instead of reform, the district is awash with civic
disunity, union resistance and school district cost overruns.

Zuckerberg had responded
to New Jersey Governor Christie’s and Newark Major Corey Booker’s appeal to
help reform the Newark schools and make them into a model for the rest of
America. Zuck wanted to use Silicon Valley-style bonuses to incent Newark’s best
teachers. He talked about paying 50% bonuses, a routine event at Facebook.

Instead, according to
a long piece in The
New Yorker by Dale Russakoff, his funds have either been spent or are
fully committed, and that much of Zuckerberg’s money funded controversial
charter schools, union contracts, and possibly, some went into the pockets of politically-connected
education reform activists. How did it all go wrong? Was the hoodied
billionaire hoodwinked, (h/t The Baffler) or was this just the natural consequence of naïve money meeting smart
bureaucrats?

The Newark schools
had been run by the state since 1994, when a judge ended local control, citing
corruption and neglect. A state investigation had concluded:

There was no question
that the Newark school district needed reform. For generations, it had been a
source of patronage jobs and sweetheart deals for the connected and the lucky. The
New Yorker quotes Ross Danis, of the nonprofit Newark Trust for Education:

By 2010, the state
had produced no real improvement. So, New Jersey Governor Christie and Newark Major
Corey Booker decided to work together. Booker warned that they would face a brutal battle with unions and
machine politicians. With seven thousand people on the payroll, the school
district was the biggest public employer in a city of 270,000. Russakoff
reports that Christie replied: “Heck, I got maybe six votes in Newark. Why not
do the right thing?” So began the effort to recruit Zuckerberg. From the New Yorker:

Booker said: “We know
what works”. He (and others) blamed vested interests for using poverty as an
excuse for failure, and dismissed competing approaches as incrementalism.
Education needed “transformational change.” Mr. Zuckerberg agreed, and he
pledged his $100 million to Booker’s and Christie’s cause. From Russakoff:

Yet, the school
district is running in the red. Residents recently learned that the overhaul
would require thousands of students to change schools. The community is up in
arms at Christie and Booker, now a US Senator. They want input and local
control restored. In mid-April, 77 members of the clergy signed a letter to
Christie requesting a moratorium on the plan, citing “venomous” public anger
and “the moral imperative” that people need to control their own destiny.

Speaking of people
controlling their own destiny, Helaine Olen writes in The
Baffler of the irony that on the same day The New Yorker
published the Zuckerberg story, the Robin Hood Foundation,
a charity founded by NY hedgie Paul Tudor Jones, held its annual fundraising
dinner in New York City. The event, headlined by John Oliver and Bruno Mars,
raised $60 million for various New York City social services. According to Bloomberg,
attendees at the fundraiser were told that a $250,000 Robin Hood table would pay
for preschool for 2,500 NYC children.

Who in the 1% would say
no to the little children?

Olen reports that New
York City Mayor Bill de Blasio was among the listeners to the private Bruno
Mars concert. Ironically, he had lost the support of these same millionaires
and billionaires earlier this year when he proposed increasing the New York
City income tax on those earning more
than $500,000 annually to pay for free pre-kindergarten for every New York
City child. De Blasio’s plan would have raised an estimated
$532 million. That plan went nowhere.

You see the point:
The amount that would have been raised by the de Blasio tax would be more than eight times the amount
voluntarily raised by the Robin Hood dinner AND from the same people!

No reason to ask us
to pay more taxes, we will just give a little to the little people.

In the previous
decade, billionaires like Bill Gates, Eli Broad, the Walton family, and others had
embraced charitable giving to education. They were hoping to create sweeping
changes to public schooling. In addition to financing the expansion of charter
schools, they helped finance Teach for America and the development of the
Common Core State Standards. But, is this approach effective? Peter Buffett,
the musician son of the fabled investor, became involved in charitable giving
after his father announced in 2006 that he would give away much of his fortune.
Peter Buffett now calls this form of giving “philanthropic colonialism”, showing a nuanced view in a NYT op-ed:

It seems likely
Newark residents already knew that. In May, Ras Baraka, a fierce opponent of
the Zuckerberg-Booker-Christie inspired reforms was elected to serve as Newark’s
next
mayor. The new mayor was a Newark city council member and principal of one
of the city’s high schools. His campaign slogan was “When I become mayor, we
become mayor”, implying a return to local control and business as usual in
Newark’s schools. He won by 2,000 votes.

Zuck? He still has
more than $1 billion unspent in his charitable foundation. The tuition he paid
in philanthropy 101 was costly, but we all know that a good education is
expensive.

 

What’s Wrong Today:

On May 28th, President Obama delivered a speech stating his strategic doctrine on the occasion of the graduation of cadets at West Point. It was remarkable in a variety of ways:

He is restating the Bush Doctrine of intervention and executive authority. Who voted for that?

The speech emphasized Mr. Obama’s continuing support for the policies that have kept us involved in large parts of the Middle East, Africa, and Eurasia. Claiming exceptionalism requires that the country also has the will to use exceptional means. Mr. Obama knows that, so he said:

This is unlikely to work, since a key factor is how many soldiers we would be willing to lose on the battlefield. Since Vietnam, it is unclear that the US will ever be willing to lose more than a thousand soldiers per month, unless we are directly attacked.

This means it is useless to claim we will ever use force on a large scale. Certainly we could never use it against the Chinese or the Russians under any circumstances. Mr. Obama acknowledges this by saying:

Unfortunately, the bind in the Obama doctrine, (using military force only as very last resort) is that the President remains committed to a large counterterrorism posture: (emphasis by the Wrongologist)

Mr. Obama’s comment implies that we have learned from our past mistakes. That we have fine-tuned the art of counterterrorism so it will not involve squandering of our valuable human and financial resources. Does that strike anyone else as absurd? To continue the War on Terror, President Obama announced the creation of a “counterterrorism partnerships fund,” of up to $5 billion. It aims to train security forces in allied states to fight their own battles with terrorists.

Why is that idea believable? It hasn’t worked since the start of the Cold War.

Walter Russell Mead wrote in Foreign Affairs that Mr. Obama came into office planning to cut military spending and reduce the importance of foreign policy in American politics. But, now he finds himself bogged down in exactly the kinds of geopolitical rivalries he had hoped to transcend. The real and implies threats in our relationships with the Chinese, Iran and Russia have changed what was an uncontested status quo at the break-up of the USSR into a contested one today.

US presidents must again be concerned with shoring up America’s geopolitical foundations.

Mr. Obama built his foreign policy on the conviction that the “war on terror” was overblown. He articulated an ambitious agenda: blocking Iran’s drive for nuclear weapons, solving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, negotiating a global climate change treaty, striking Pacific and Atlantic trade deals, signing arms control treaties with Russia, repairing US relations with the Muslim world, restoring trust with European allies, and ending the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

But, his view has changed. We are back to All Terrorism, All The Time. The kernel of truth is that although Washington claims to have eliminated much of the leadership of Al Qaeda, it now faces a serious problem of many affiliated AL-Qaeda groups on the march throughout Africa and the Middle East.

And geopolitics have evolved. The 21st century world is too interconnected to again fully break into blocs. A small country that plugs into cyberspace can deliver as much or more prosperity to its people (think Singapore) than a giant with standing armies.

Unfortunately, Russia didn’t read the memo on 21st century geopolitics. Neither has China’s president, Xi Jinping, who is engaging in gunboat diplomacy against Japan, Vietnam and the Philippines. Syria’s Assad is waging a 20th
century war against his own people, dropping exploding barrels of screws, nails and other shrapnel onto apartment buildings. These countries have not been deterred by the disapproval of their peers, the weight of world opinion, or by Wall Street dumping their bonds.

Even without using military power, there are plenty of ways for the US to cripple an adversary. We can use economic sanctions; financial warfare through the international banking, economic, and trade system; we can use subversion, through the Internet, through support of dissident parties and insurrectionists; there are always proxy wars and drones.

It would be good for the future of the world if the US could find a path back to a realistic foreign policy that refrains from constant threats of the use of force. But if Mr. Obama continues to hold up exceptionalism as doctrine, the inherent contradictions between our claims of exceptionalism and our unwillingness to use exceptional means will rip Obama’s West Point doctrine apart.

A step towards realism requires that America shun both. Good luck with that.

The Obama administration wants to begin its “pivot to Asia”, its plan to counter China’s rise, by projecting, but not using military force. It is difficult to see how that is going to work. Our local allies, who Mr. Obama wants to use as proxies, fear that without a believable threat by the US to cover their asses, there will be no restriction of what China can and will do around its block.

On the other hand, there is little need for the US to try to “contain” China in its local business, unless China’s demands grow to nutty levels. As a practical matter, it is doubtful even in that case that the Obama Doctrine would fly as a matter of realist geopolitics.

We should face a final hard truth. US military force is a blunt instrument. It cannot be used to win what Washington wants it to win (see: Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, Syria); and it hasn’t been tested in battle against a peer-level foe in a very long time (WWII).

Theoretically, use of overwhelming power sounds very nice, but it was unusable against the Russians in the Black Sea when they took Crimea.

And it might not do so well in the South China Sea.