Why Osama is still winning - the genius of 9/11

(Intro from Foreign Affairs magazine....
http://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/140347/michael-j-mazarr/the-rise-and-fall-of-the-failed-state-paradigm

 By Michael J. Mazarr
FROM OUR JANUARY/FEBRUARY 2014 ISSUE

For a decade and a half, from the mid-1990s through about 2010, the dominant national security narrative in the United States stressed the dangers posed by weak or failing states. These were seen to breed terrorism, regional chaos, crime, disease, and environmental catastrophe. To deal with such problems at their roots, the argument ran, the United States had to reach out and help stabilize the countries in question, engaging in state building on a neo-imperial scale. And reach out the United States did -- most obviously during the protracted campaigns in Afghanistan and Iraq.

 After a decade of conflict and effort with precious little to show for it, however, the recent era of interventionist U.S. state building is drawing to a close. And although there are practical reasons for this shift -- the United States can no longer afford such missions, and the public has tired of them -- the decline of the state-building narrative reflects a more profound underlying truth: the obsession with weak states was always more of a mania than a sound strategic doctrine. Its passing will not leave the United States more isolationist and vulnerable but rather free the country to focus on its more important global roles. 

THE BIRTH OF A PARADIGM

In the wake of the Cold War, contemplating a largely benign security environment, many U.S. national security strategists and practitioners concluded that the most important risks were posed by the fragility of state structures and recommended profound shifts in U.S. foreign and defense policy as a result. In an interconnected world, they argued, chaos, violence, and grievances anywhere had the potential to affect U.S. interests, and weak states were factories of such volatility. Experiences in Somalia, Haiti, and the former Yugoslavia helped fuel the concern, and by 1994, the CIA was funding a state-failure task force to get a handle on the problem.

In 1997, the Clinton administration released Presidential Decision Directive 56, “Managing Complex Contingency Operations,” which began with the assertion that “in the wake of the Cold War, attention has focused on a rising number of territorial disputes, armed ethnic conflicts, and civil wars that pose threats to regional and international peace.” A new focus of U.S. policy, accordingly, would be responding to such situations with “multi-dimensional operations composed of such components as political/diplomatic, humanitarian, intelligence, economic development, and security.” Critics of a realist persuasion objected to the emerging narrative, arguing that the Clinton administration’s forays into state building in peripheral areas represented a strategic folly. And during his 2000 presidential campaign, George W. Bush ran as the candidate of foreign policy humility, arguing in part that nation building was a dangerous distraction. His adviser Condoleezza Rice grumbled that U.S. troops should not be asked to escort toddlers to school; his vice presidential candidate, Dick Cheney, suggested that a Bush administration would end U.S. participation in Balkan operations; and the day before the election, Bush himself declared, “Let me tell you what else I’m worried about: I’m worried about an opponent who uses ‘nation building’ and ‘the military’ in the same sentence.”

But the 9/11 attacks swept these hesitations aside, as the practical implications of an interventionist “war on terror” became apparent. The first page of the Bush administration’s 2002 National Security Strategy argued that “America is now threatened less by conquering states than we are by failing ones. We are menaced less by fleets and armies than by catastrophic technologies in the hands of the embittered few.” The new consensus was bipartisan. The Democratic foreign policy hand Susan Rice, for example, wrote in 2003 that Bush was “wise to draw attention to the significant threats to our national security posed by failed and failing states.”

Where the right emphasized security and terrorism, the left added humanitarian concerns. Development specialists jumped on the bandwagon as well, thanks to new studies that highlighted the importance of institutions and good governance as requirements for sustained economic success. In his 2004 book, State-Building, the political scientist Francis Fukuyama wrote, “Weak and failing states have arguably become the single most important problem for international order.” The Washington Post editorialized the same year that “weak states can compromise security -- most obviously by providing havens for terrorists but also by incubating organized crime, spurring waves of migrants, and undermining global efforts to control environmental threats and disease.” This argument, the paper concluded, “is no longer much contested.” A year later, the State Department’s director of policy planning, Stephen Krasner, and its newly minted coordinator for reconstruction and stabilization, Carlos Pascual, argued in these pages that “in today’s increasingly interconnected world, weak and failed states pose an acute risk to U.S. and global security. Indeed, they present one of the most important foreign policy challenges of the contemporary era.”

From one angle, the concern with weak states could be seen as a response to actual conditions on the ground. Problems had always festered in disordered parts of the developing world. Without great- power conflict as an urgent national security priority, those problems were more clearly visible and harder to ignore.

From another angle, it could be seen as a classic meme -- a concept or intellectual fad riding to prominence through social diffusion, articles by prominent thinkers, a flurry of attention from the mainstream press, and a series of foundation grants, think-tank projects, roundtables, and conferences.

From a third angle, however, it could be seen as a solution to an unusual concern confronting U.S. policymakers in this era: what to do with a surplus of national power. The United States entered the 1990s with a dominant international position and no immediate threats. Embracing a substantially reduced U.S. global role would have required a fundamental reassessment of the prevailing consensus in favor of continued primacy, something few in or around the U.S. national security establishment were prepared to consider.

Instead, therefore, whether consciously or not, that establishment generated a new rationale for global engagement, one involving the application of power and influence to issues that at any other time would have been seen as secondary or tertiary. Without a near-peer competitor (or several) to deter or a major war on the horizon, Washington found a new foreign policy calling: renovating weak or failing states.

Imaginative. But, pathetic. 4 reasons reasons that made 2013 great

The Power of Proxy Activism

The Power of Proxy Activism

President Xi queues for dumplings.

Big man, small ego. Confident, powerful and savvy. We need one.

Markets in political stability

Muammar Qaddafi of Libya, the king of Bahrain and the emir of Kuwait are offering one-off handouts to stop people demonstrating. These are princely, worth $4,000 per person in Kuwait and $2,500 per family in Bahrain

Arab economies: Throwing money at the street | The Economist

The blurred reality of humanity - Science, News - The Independent

Neuroscience seems to deny the self. We're just a jazz combo that plays and improvises brilliantly but with no conductor and, maybe, no musical score. So, what of our immortal soul?

The blurred reality of humanity - Science, News - The Independent

The end of the world?

No, the half-life of the radioactive gases like H2, O2, N2 are measured in seconds. That's why the radiation counts in Japan are still within normal limits. After Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Japanese paranoia about radiation is understandable.

The paranoia elsewhere is politically motivated by:

1. "greens" that are adamant against nuclear energy,
2. US establishment that sees this as a way of increasing the dependence of Japan which has been recently assertive under the DPJ.

Unless we can cover the deserts with photovoltaic film to power the grid; wind, tide, hydro and all renewables combined just cannot meet our energy needs. And, if we don't start soon to reserve oil for aircraft that cannot use any other energy source, we will have to use ships for travel.

Real development

It's the median trajectory for the development of societies: struggle, success, complacency ....

The potentially lethal third stage can be avoided if success brings with it a sense of belonging and an interest in intellectual pursuits like music, mathematics, poetry, sculpture ... These in turn stimulate innovations in design, marketing and distribution, finance, architecture and urban development, education and training, maybe even national defence and internal security - a virtuous circle of inspiration, innovation, organisation and more success.

Has this happened here? Personally, I saw lots of it during our early success but progress was blocked by "globalisation" which is neo-colonialism in financial disguise. We now have expat CEOs for home grown enterprises and buildings designed by foreign architects. These CEOs are respectfully listened to by Cabinet Ministers when they justify themselves by describing and explaining our deficiencies! Ministers not included. And the buildings look strangely similar to those designed by the same architect in another city; so maybe we actually asked for these!

I think our condition is not terminal but can be reversed by:

1. Immigration, as suggested by Adam Khoo.
2. Using experts not expats. Techies like banking treasury operations, biomedical engineer, resort entertainment director, international tax lawyer ... But no CEOs whose skill sets are at least 80% generic admin and leadership.
3. Existing CEOs given three years to find a suitable S'pore successor. The first year for executive search, the second for on-the-job training and the third, if it's for a MNC, at HQ for bonding.
4. All government-funded buildings to be designed by S'[poreans. For private developments, faster approvals and discounted development charges for S'pore designs.
5. Schools to teach broad curriculum for International Baccaleurate, requiring at least four arts and four science subjects for examination.. Scholars to be selected from those who have balanced scores for the arts and sciences.
6. Moratorium on engineering scholarships as there are too many Perm Secs and Ministers with engineering major.

Lim Swee Say claimed another world best for Singapore: it's public servants. This includes, presumably, the police force.
http://www.channelnewsasia.com/stories/singaporelocalnews/view/1103473/1/.html

So, how did the best civil service in the world fail to get it's police force to respond to an arrest warrant for Nurdin Cuaca wanted by Interpol on a "Red Notice"?

http://www.interpol.int/public/wanted/default.asp