“You may not be
interested in war, but war is interested in you.” – Leon Trotsky

The truth in
the quote attributed to Trotsky is the fact that more than 14,500 armed
conflicts are recorded in history. They have killed at least 3.5 billion
individuals.

And thus, Iraq
returns, VERY interested in America.

It arrives hot
on the heels of Ukraine, Syria, Libya, The Central African Republic and a dozen
other places.  

Mr. Obama seems unable to articulate
what our strategy in Iraq should be. Since nature doesn’t tolerate a vacuum, up
steps the “Iraq Pack” as Steven Colbert calls them:

He means politicos John Bolton, John McCain, George W. Bush, Paul Wolfowitz and Dick Cheney, who were so very wrong about the Iraq War, but now feel compelled to again tell us what to do.

Salon reports that Colbert declared war on Mr. Cheney’s testicles:

Republicans knee jerk reaction to Obama:

The GOP’s reactions are influenced by facts on the ground:

Iran could be “frenemies” with us in the Iraqi conflict:

And in other news, Dan Snyder has issues with the Redskins trademark:

Kevin McCarthy finds the swamp wasn’t drained by Eric Cantor:

What’s Wrong Today:

Mr. Obama did not call for air strikes in Iraq in his announcement today. That was not what Senator McCain (R-AZ) wanted to hear. McCain wants US airstrikes in the region, if for nothing other than boosting Dick Cheney’s morale.

It is possible, but not likely, that surgical strikes might restore some stability to Iraq, at least near Baghdad, but hope is not a sufficient basis for a foreign policy decision. Iraq is trying (unsuccessfully so far) to cope with its sectarian divisions. It may have acted as a nation in its war against Iran, but that ended in 1988, and it doesn’t feel like a nation any more. As Jim Kunstler asks: “Have they tried diversity training?”

Probably not.

This is not the first time we have heard from Mr. McCain on Iraq. Regarding the potential challenges of a conflict in Iraq, here is a quote from 2002:

Regarding at least part of the reasons for war, consider this 2003 statement by McCain to FoxNews:

This was his view yesterday from The Hill:

McCain said yesterday that political reconciliation between Islamic groups in Iraq is key to peace, but, that it can’t be a “prerequisite for military action”.

Whatever.

We need a comprehensive debate about our strategy in the Middle East and specifically, in Iraq. The debate should be explicit and public, since if/when Iraq descends into chaos or breaks up, there will be further recriminations from our opportunistic politicians and pundits, and the question of “who lost Iraq?” (As if it is ours to lose) will drive our political discourse for many years.

McCain could start by answering the question: Where do airstrikes fit into our overall strategy? Does he have an answer other than there is the big money to be made building drones and Hellfire missiles to blow up Toyota pickups filled with jihadis?

After 8 years, $2+ trillion dollars spent, 4500 American lives sacrificed, 50,000 wounded (plus those of the Iraqis), can the sum total of what was achieved by the US in Iraq be this harvest of ashes?

It might be. Our 8-year nation-building experiment achieved little of substance. Tactical strength on the ground did not overcome strategic weaknesses in the form of Iraq’s demographic divide, its geographic location and porous borders.

Another question is: Which of the following options should we choose?

(a) Stand aside and watch the most virulently hostile anti-American force in the world carve out a swath of territory in Iraq and Syria to use as a base of operations; or

(b) Re-establish a “coalition of the willing” and insert a level of direct military force into Iraq in order to aid the Baghdad government. The peacekeepers should be mainly comprised of soldiers from Arab countries in the Middle East.

Staying out may allow circumstances to unfold which later compel intervention against a direct security threat, like in Afghanistan in 2001.

From a regional geo-political perspective, it is important to note that Israel supports the Kurds. Turkey and Saudi Arabia support ISIS. The USA supports “moderate” Jihadists in Syria. The Obama administration wants a regime change in Baghdad, giving Nuri al-Maliki the boot. Imagine, we want to bring about TWO regime changes in Iraq in 13 years. A coalition of the willing might suffer from the same sectarian divide that is already seen on the ground.

Neither course is certain to meet our Middle East goals. Either course will result in creating more anti-American anger among a large number of dangerous people. If America supports Maliki directly while he declares emergency powers and cracks down on certain groups, it will re-establish our old pattern of US support for antidemocratic strongmen.

That has not served us well in the Middle East.

It appears that the partition of Iraq is about to become a fact on the ground, if not in the minds of some in Washington. The Malaki government cannot retake Anbar Province without outside help, from Iran or the USA. This January, ISIS took over Fallujah (in Anbar Province), 40 miles west of Baghdad, and has held it ever since, despite artillery and air counter attacks. Below is a map that outlines the approximate borders of the sectarian groups in Iraq:

No matter what course we choose, our actions will be seen as insufficient by one side, and an atrocity by the other.

No peace will be gained, but much enmity will accrue to our image in the Middle East.

Let’s close today with a quote from a blog post by Brian Dowling in 2006:

As you see, NOTHING has changed in the intervening 8 years.

Sorry, but if Iraq devolves into 3 states who wage a low-grade war among themselves, so be it. If one of those states creates a haven for anti-American jihadists, we will deal with that when we must.

Our choice today is not between a unified postwar democracy and chaos. Some form of Iraqi democracy has emerged, but a unified democracy does not exist, and may never exist.

It is not a choice between victory and defeat.

It is a choice between a foreign policy based on ideology and hormones, and one based in reality.

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.

 

No
one becomes a China expert in 10 days. But, some things seem clear. China is said
to be part of the Third World. That is misleading, since much of its population
lives in a near-first world environment, enjoying the fruits of a remarkable
advance in China’s standard of living in the past 20 years. China’s government
has succeeded in improving the lives of hundreds of millions of people, even
while depriving them of political liberty. Still, much of China remains a brutal
and poor place, and a significant number live in a third world economy.

For
the two decades since Tiananmen, the overwhelming majority of young Chinese
have been apolitical, and the 25th anniversary of that event passed
without mention in Shenzhen. The “Great Wall” of Internet censorship prevented searches on any of the key words about Tiananmen.

The basic contract has been an understanding that the government
will grow the economy rapidly, that conditions of life in the cities will
continue to improve, that most people will become financially comfortable. Roland
Soong, a Chinese author, has said:

There
is no alternative to the contract. No one speaks critically of the Chinese government,
except in Hong Kong.

We
spent 7 days in Shenzhen proper and its Shekou district. In Shenzhen, we walked
the crowded main shopping street on a Sunday. The department stores were packed
with young families. Housewares were expensive. We saw woks costing nearly
$500, but young couples were purchasing these expensive household goods. We saw
families checking out what we would call efficiency apartment-sized
refrigerators, with double doors and freezer below that were selling for the
RMB equivalent of $6,000. There were 5-10 Android and iPhone stores in the
space of a few blocks. We saw 4 McDonald’s and 3 Starbucks in a 15 minute walk
from the hotel.

Shenzhen
is a construction site, with a new subway project going through downtown, and office
towers going up all around the city. Here is a sign on the Subway construction
project underway outside our hotel:

The
sign says: “Empty talk endangers the
nation, practical work brings prosperity”. Words to live by in China.

One
of the more interesting aspects to life in China is the omnipresence of TV
cameras on all streets and in the subways. We asked our host about whether the
cameras made her feel safe or threatened. She said “safe”, and told about a
time when her husband and their children’s nanny got separated after a
misunderstanding as to where/when to meet. After an hour of searching for the
nanny, who didn’t have a mobile phone, they contacted the police, who searched the available video, found the
nanny with the two kids, sitting in a subway car. She was headed back to the
couple’s apartment. They were able to meet her a short way from home.

In
a nation of economic strivers, the premise is that CCTV helps locate kids and
oldsters who have wandered off. Never mind the other purposes for surveillance.

Another
autocratic government makes the often-said point: “If you have nothing to hide, you have nothing to fear”. That
is originally attributed to Goering, but you will hear it said in America
today, and it pertains in China as well.

Empty talk
hurts the nation, CCTV is a boon to finding lost children. George Orwell would have a
field day with all that. He called this “blackwhite”:

Evan Osnos,
in his book about China, “Age of
Ambition”, quotes publisher Lu Jinbo:

Ms. Oh So
Right spoke at the Shekou People’s Hospital. Shekou is a district of Shenzhen.
It was the first hospital in China to receive accreditation by The Joint
Commission International (JCI). This accreditation is sought by many American
hospitals, is difficult and expensive to get, and not all have it. Shekou
received theirs in July, 2013. The 15 story, 2 wing building was modern with
all medical disciplines represented. It was an extremely busy place, with the
main floor packed the patients and visitors, and a huge pharmacy. In the lobby,
there was a huge electronic board which listed
all the services offered by the hospital, with their associated price.
Below is a picture of the services board:

The above picture is a blow-up from an entrance hall photo. The column on the left is the
service code, the next is a description of the service and the third column
from the left is the price. Say what you will about private enterprise, we will
never have that kind of transparency in the US.

The hospital’s
elevator directory showed that it has a broad and deep service offering:

We then traveled about 25 miles out of Shenzhen to the popular tourist destination of
Dameisha. In Dameisha, Ms. O So Right was speaking at a national convention of nurses
about the need for critical thinking to improve quality care and patient
safety. We stayed at the convention hotel. It is an older tourist hotel,
decidedly mid-level. Yet the parking area held a new Bentley, 2 Porsche
Cayenne’s, a Land Rover, several Audis and VW’s. Cars may not be a perfect
proxy for wealth, but clearly, some guests at the hotel had serious dough. BTW,
most of the hotel guests that day were
Chinese nurses. Here is another hotel on the beach in Dameisha:

This
modern hotel is in a rural area that caters exclusively to the people of
Shenzhen. Interestingly, we saw no satellite dishes on any non-governmental
building while in China, until we got to Hong Kong. Though we did see rooftop
solar on even some modest Chinese apartment buildings:

Despite
all of the Obama administration’s political rhetoric about terror, and/or about
Russia, China is America’s prime competitor in this century, and it should be
our focus. Our efforts should not be to “contain” them politically or geographically.
Instead:

• We
  should be working to out-build them with modern infrastructure

• We
  should be trying to out-work them to win global markets

• We
  should be out-pacing them in education

The
South China Post had an
article today about how Chinese families see education as their way out of
rural poverty. The focus of the piece was on the Chartered Financial Analyst
(CFA) certification, which is an international certification that many analysts
on Wall Street and in other global financial centers hold. A CFA and some
experience can garner a $100k salary on Wall Street. This year, some 150,000 people globally took the exam; 25,000 of
them live in China. Another 6,000 Hong Kong candidates took it as well. That’s about 21% of all who took the exam. 

America
is supposed to be the home of superstar financial engineers, but maybe this is
another area in which we will be eclipsed by China in a few years.

So,
just when many Americans are thinking advanced education is a waste of time,
the Chinese are trying harder. Many of those in attendance at Ms. Oh So Right’s
talks were striving for additional education and the larger salaries and autonomy that comes
with the advanced learning.

What
can we learn from our prime competitor? Can we use what we learn to compete more
effectively with China and make this a richer, safer country for all of us?

Do
we have what it takes to improve the standard of living for tens of millions of
our citizens? Quick and dirty is no way to solve any of our real world problems.

We
need to try harder. Like the Chinese, maybe?

“The
oppressor’s most powerful weapon is the mind of the oppressed.”
– Stephen Biko

We
are ending our visit to in Shenzhen today and are heading for Hong Kong. The people
we met here are focused, businesslike and practical. Everyone seems to be
working extremely hard to make and/or save money, to get a car, a better
apartment, to make a better life for their kids. No one spoke directly or openly
about politics, although they were quite interested in how we perceived
differences between their city and institutions and those in the US. We met no big picture people. More about
China next week after we return.

From
9,000 miles away, it seemed to be a typical week in US politics. The stock market
hit another all-time high, Republicans were for Sgt. Bergdahl before they were
against him, and Mr. Obama remembered D-Day:

Last week, Mr. Boehner said that he wasn’t certain about Climate Change, because after all, he wasn’t a scientist.  Let’s take that to its logical conclusion:

And the Coal industry continues to stand behind its supporters:

The return of Sgt. Bergdahl, who was held by the Taliban for 5 years, predictably upset Republicans. Mr. Obama did not consult them on the release, the Sgt. may have been a deserter, we shouldn’t negotiate with the Taliban, and we gave up too much to get him back…Take your pick:

Speaking of Fox News, HuffPo reports that they have their worst ratings in 13 years, and that wasn’t their biggest problem:

Then, the Bergdahl affair triggered this tweet from Fox’s psychiatrist contributor:

Bergdahl brought out the worst in the GOP: