Iranians not unique in democratic aspirations

Interesting op-ed in WSJ by Israeli political researcher who explains his rather sophisticated attempts to surreptiously measure democratic attitudes across Iran.  It's a very impressive effort, really.

Left scale says Iran is terribly undemocratic, but bottom scale says Iranians are middle of the pack on democratic aspirations, meaning the argument that says "Iranians get what they deserve/want/etc" is absolutely wrong.  It's not an authoritarian society - just an authoritarian government.

Yuval Porat's final words

Our findings demonstrate that Iranian society as a whole is characterized by a pro-liberal value structure that is deeply at odds with the fundamentalist regime.  This presents considerable potential for regime change in Iran and for the development of liberal democracy.

You can read that statement two ways:  

1. If you take the kinetic route on regime change, you will ultimately be rewarded; or 
2. The soft-kill approach is the way to go.

While I have written that I think Israel will be hard-pressed not to attack in the end, I still maintain - as I have since 2005 - that the soft-kill on Iran will work.  To me, the soft-kill is the detente here, just like it was with the Sovs.  Open up ties, admit the regime is valid, blow off the nuke pursuit (which grants Iran nothing in terms of leverage with anybody - including already nuked-up Israel), and let the connectivity that results do the rest in terms of regime delegitimizing from within leading to eventual democratization.

Ultimately, this strategy - and not Star Wars - brought down the Sovs, and it can do the same on Iran - in far faster order.

Not a risk-free path, nor one that obviates unpleasant developments along the way (Russia, for example, is still a pain in the neck), but it does work.  It dismantled the Soviet system and it can do the same with the IRGC-dominated mafia-system in Iran.

Find Porat's full report at www.iranresearch.org.

WPR's The New Rules: In Globalized World, Time Is on America's Side

Second-to-last column at WPR.

There is a popular tendency to characterize globalization as an elite-based conspiracy or as something imposed by greedy outsiders upon unsuspecting native populations, hence the enduring belief in the possibility of its systemic reversal. In truth, the spread of modern globalization reflects a bottom-up demand function, not a top-down supply imposition. People simply crave connectivity -- in all its physical and virtual forms -- as well as the freedom of choice that it unleashes. This simple truth is worth remembering when we contemplate America’s global role in the decades ahead.

Read the entire column at World Politics Review.

Wikistrat post @ CNN-GPS: Myanmar's Opening

First op-ed by a Wiksitrat analyst at CNN's GPS site.

Editor’s Note: Teresita Cruz-del Rosario is Visiting Associate Professor at the Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy in Singapore and a Senior Analyst at the geopolitical consultancy Wikistrat.

Boothie is a photojournalist for The Myanmar Times, the only English newspaper in Burma.   Boothie used to be cautious when taking pictures to avoid being hauled in for questioning or arrest for projecting images of Myanmar’s “dark side” - a broad enough charge to cover anything.

These days however, Boothie travels openly with his camera.  No longer hidden beneath the folds of his longyi as he surreptitiously shoots photos of a country that until very recently preferred to remain invisible.  He brandishes his Canon camera much like Clint Eastwood flaunted his Magnum 44.

Read the entire column at CNN's GPS blog.

Christmas, actually . . .

FT story that reminds me of scenario I ginned up as part of Wikistrat teaser for simulation looking at rising consumerism in East Asia and its impact on various consumer products and food & bev industries.

I can't remember the first time I was in China during the Christmas holiday, but it was probably close to a half decade ago, and I was stunned by how much people embraced the whole concept while treating it as an essentially non-religious holiday.  I mean the country has a huge winter festival holiday (Lunar New Year) that runs in the Jan-Feb timeframe, so how could they pick this up too?

Well, it's that rising middle class that seeks more outlets for its downtime and money. So the Chinese are picking up all sorts of foreign/Western holidays on top of the ones they already celebrate.  Fairly American, actually.

The quote from local expert:

Christmas is like Chinese New Year, even poor people have to celebrate it. Hotels, kindergartens, schools, supermarkets, they all have Christmas decorations. As people born after the 1980s and 1990s grow up, the [Christmas] culture is having a growing influence.

So inscrutable, these people!

Plus, this year, Chinese decorations companies are surviving the downturn in the West by selling far more at home.

Time's Battleland: "According to new Pentagon cyber strategy, state-of-war conditions now exist between the US and China"

China has been pre-approved for kinetic war strikes from the United States at any time.  Let me explain how.

First off, what the strategy says (according to the same WSJ front-page article Mark cited yesterday):

The Pentagon has concluded that computer sabotage coming from another country can constitute an act of war, a finding that for the first time opens the door for the U.S. to respond using traditional military force.

In other words, if you, Country C, take down or just plain attack what we consider a crucial cyber network, we reserve the right to interpret that as an act of war justifying an immediately "equivalent" kinetic response (along with any cyber response, naturally).  If this new strategy frightens you, then you just might be a rational actor.

Read the entire post at Time's Battleland blog.

Bhutan's gross national happiness is about to get adjusted

Is that a crane coming out of your head, or are you just happy to see me investing?

WSJ story on little old Bhutan, home of the "gross national happiness" stat, opening itself up to outside investors to jumpstart its embryonic democracy.

Wedged between India and China, just like Nepal, Bhutan was shut out from the world, Shangri-Lala-land-like, until recently.

No tourists allowed until 1970s and no TV even until the late 1990s.  No traffic lights in the capital city of Thimphu (none in my hometown of Boscobel either, when I was a kid there in the 1960s, so I commiserate).  

But you knew something was going to break after the monarch allowed (actually enabled) a peaceful transition to a parliamentary democracy two years ago.

Only 700k people, and the leadership worries that, absent heightened economic connectivity with the outside world, the place won't survive.

So now they want a domestic airline, IT park and billion-dollar education city that draws in Western universities. 

That, my friends, is some ambition.

But you have to worry about the "contact civilization" characteristics.  This is a place where businessmen, we are told, may spend several hours each day in archery competitions with each other.

McKinsey & Co, the US consulting firm, is advising the government, but the opposition leader says he doesn't think the company has a clue about the nation's real worries.  

McKinsey wants the place to go from a few thousand tourists each year to more like a quarter-million.

To be watched . . ..

What does mass blogging in China tell us?

image here

Thomas Friedman column on blogging in China becoming the true voice of the people at 70 million strong.

Positive or negative trend?  Because you're talking relatively successful people in a fast rising country, the overall voice is going to be one of nationalistic pride--even hubris, leading Friedman to hypothesize that aggressive bloggers are already becoming yet another source of populism that Beijing is both scared and mindful of in its decision-making.

Already, notes Freidman, the US ambassador is hosting big-time bloggers in an effort to get out America's message to the people with less official filtering.

Key point and a cool bit from Friedman:

“China for the first time has a public sphere to discuss everything affecting Chinese citizens,” explained Hu Yong, a blogosphere expert at Peking University. “Under traditional media, only elite people had a voice, but the Internet changed that.” He added, “We now have a transnational media. It is the whole society talking, so people from various regions of China can discuss now when something happens in a remote village — and the news spreads everywhere.” But this Internet world “is more populist and nationalistic,” he continued. “Many years of education that our enemies are trying to keep us down has produced a whole generation of young people whose thinking is like this, and they now have a whole Internet to express it.”

Watch this space. The days when Nixon and Mao could manage this relationship in secret are long gone. There are a lot of unstable chemicals at work out here today, and so many more players with the power to inflame or calm U.S.-China relations. Or to paraphrase Princess Diana, there are three of us in this marriage.

I see an advantage for us in all of these developments: our system is much more comfortable processing such popular pressures than China's is--and a lot more experienced to boot.

A lot of strategists on our side salivate at the notion that China will be forced into military confrontations with the West by all this rising nationalistic spirit, but the truth is just the opposite: fear of enraging the population by accepting any form of defeat keeps the Chinese leadership very keen to avoid any scuffle with the U.S. that it cannot control.

Connectivity creates boom market in outlier fatwas in Saudi Arabia

Too many opinionated, helping hands in the Kingdom, according to this WAPO story.

The details:

Abdullah has tried to curtail some of the powers of conservatives, including the religious scholars, and taken cautious steps to improve the situations of women and of Shiite Muslims, a religious minority in Saudi Arabia.

In June, however, the Saudi public was startled by a fatwa advocating that women breast-feed unrelated men to establish "maternal relations" and thus get around the Islamic prohibition on the mixing of the sexes. A few months earlier, another scholar had urged the killing of anyone who facilitated the mixing of men and women in workplaces and universities.

Those are extreme examples of a torrent of rulings on all aspects of life by Saudi scholars making the most of their recently acquired access to much wider audiences.

"Fatwas have become a huge problem, especially after satellite TV and the Internet," said Hamza al-Mozaini, a liberal newspaper columnist. "It has become something like a business for religious scholars, and they race to outdo each other."

As with any sudden onset of connectivity, the crazies quickly predominate--largely discrediting themselves in their aggregate nonsense. But the fear market is likewise there early on, so the King is right to move on this.

Central Asia's silk roads re-spun by China

image here

Nice sensible piece by Parag Khanna in the NYT.

Gist:

The fate of the massive deposits of lithium recently discovered in Afghanistan is destined to be no different from that of landlocked Central Asia’s other natural resources: tapped by the West, and eventually controlled by the East.

Siberian timber, Mongolian iron ore, Kazakh oil, Turkmen natural gas and Afghan copper are already channeled directly to China through a newly built East-bound network that is fueling the rapid development of the world’s largest population.

China’s head-start in building roads, railways and pipelines across Central Asia creates an opportunity for the West — and the region itself. Rather than engaging in a high-stakes competition for Central Asia’s valuable resources — a new round of the 19th century Great Game — the West should support China’s initial steps by coaching local governments on how to expand textile and agricultural exports and avoid the resource curse that blights many developing, one-commodity nations.

China has paved the way to finally open up landlocked Central Asia, and the West should build on its success, creating a new, oil-fueled, East-West Silk Road.

Oil pipelines from the Caspian Sea across Kazakhstan, the recently opened gas pipeline from Turkmenistan via Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan, and other planned roads and railways across Russia as well as down to the deep sea port of Gwadar in Pakistan are all part of China’s effort to turn Central Asia from a region of buffer states into a transit corridor between East and West. Beijing’s leaders have rightfully looked to Eurasia as a rich source of natural resources to fuel their booming economy.

Rather than think of China’s moves into Central Asia — and into Africa — as a suspicious form of neocolonialism, Western countries should focus on how to use Chinese-built roads and railways to make their own floundering regional strategy a success. This means cooperation rather than competition, and it can happen through heavy infrastructure investment, building new lines on the map that transcend arbitrary borders and bring real economic value.

As a longtime argument of mine (globalization:  "the last in, the next [phase of frontier integration] to begin"), I couldn't agree more.  I still spend a good chunk of my current brief arguing that we need to widen our perspective on potential allies in shrinking the Gap.  Lotsa times, I feel stupid still making this arguments almost a decade after I started using the slides, but this is still somewhat radical thinking in a US national security establishment that prefers its China as a threatening near-peer competitor. Why?  No China threat, no good argument on keeping the Leviathan fat dumb and happy in acquisitions while continuing to starve the SysAdmin.

The sheer discovery that is simply analyzing all this new connectivity

Cool Economist piece on the social web in its Technology Quarterly, but it's really about business intelligence, a field that is skyrocketing in its ability to monitor, analyze and create new marketing strategies from the wealth of info that is naturally captured by online behavior.  Similar thing is coming down the pike in the healthcare industry with the advent of electronic medical records--huge bonanza.

In the first instance, a lot of biz intell used to simply keep existing customers by making them happier.  The most sophisticated stuff will be used to sniff our fraud and criminal behavior.

A classic example of an old concept of mine--actually the heart and soul of the "new map":  with connectivity comes circumscribed behavior because each connection reveals you to others, but in return you are offered fabulous access and efficiencies and the more tailored meeting of your desires.  It is a transaction: the more you reveal, the more respondents can predict your needs and wants and behaviors--both good and bad.

And the mapping technology (like my wonderful Google maps on my Motorola Droid) only kicks that process into high gear.

An amazing amount of new rules to work out on all of this--a fascinating process to witness in coming years.

Rapid connectivity creates more suspicions than understanding

Old strawman given another good beating:  connectivity doesn't instantly heal all wounds!

Economist story on how social media doesn't change people over night by exposing them to different people and creating instant wisdom.

(sigh!)

It turns out, research shows, that "people are online what they are offline: divided, and slow to build bridges."

I'm actually more pessimistic than that:  I believe that rapid connectivity gains generally create more unrest than peace at first.   That's why I called it the "Pentagon's new map."

Piece concludes that the Internet is just a tool, and as such, does nothing on its own.

My take:  sheer connectivity on its own does not trump real-world experience or generational weight, so expect the change to be gradual versus instant.  The Millennials will not be the Boomers, but they will not replace them overnight thanks to social media, and each country's version of the first-all-digital-generation will make its influence and thinking felt on a different timescale.

In other words, even in this connected age, change typically arrives no faster than we can handle it, because if it comes too fast, we simply ignore it and render its impact meaningless.

Crowdsourcing request: interview subjects for cyber governance

For a side writing project I'm working on, I'm looking to do some interviews (either by email or phone) on the subject of cyber governance.

What interests me:  What are the models out there in the real world for doing this?  What's the experience base of success and failure?  What are the major schools of thought?  Where is this debate heading and what does the future of cyber governance look like--especially as we migrate from the early perceptions of a totally free Web to something more fenced off?

You can either submit a comment or just email me at thomaspmbarnett@mac.com.

Trying to wrap this up quickly, so speak up if you want a conversation.  Nobody needs to know everything; just make sure you've got something to say or can get me someone with an interesting perspective/experience base.

Likewise, if you know of some great citation on the subject, pass it along.

The internet as trade pact

Great line from Economist "Leaders" bit on the web's "new walls":

 The internet is as much a trade pact as an invention.

Actually, until it became a trade pact, it was an interesting bit of technology and not much else--a fantasy of a back-up comms net once the bombs started dropping ("Can you read this?  Oh my God!  At least the two of us survived!  Now what?").

So the web really only works when people see commercial value, and when that commerce rears its beautiful head, barriers naturally arise.  Governments want to fence off its value proposition for national firms (far more than they care to keep out "bad" content).  Companies want to create "walled gardens" for their proprietary offerings.  Some net providers want sites to pay for premier promotion.

These are all unremarkable developments.  The web is certainly a generation or two beyond the telephone, but why it was supposed to be some everything-is-free nirvana is beyond me, any more than phones were going to change everything before and the telegraph before that.

These are the three types of walls cited by the Economist: national, company, and the possible downfall of the net-neutrality vision.  So Wired says the net is dead--that goes too far says The Economist.

It has been my proposition going back to the mid-1990s, that everybody wants the connectivity, but everyone also wants to control the content--to their tastes, to their fears, and--most definitely--to their advantage.

The fencing off of the web is not all that different from the fencing off of the American West.  If you want something to be truly tended, and not suffer the fate of the commons, people will need to own it and care about it.

But the free trade point made by the mag is equally valid; it just won't be the commons we imagined it to be.

And so it will need to go through the same negotiations--bilateral, multilateral, global, that regular trade goes through.

I'm not worried about the web.  I see this as a natural evolution.

Chart of the Day (2): Who censors the web more?

Economist piece on the "balkanizing web."

Admit it, you would have expected China, Iran, North Korea, Saudi Arabia, etc. to be on top of this list (governments' content-removal requests to Google).

Instead we get Brazil (democracy), Germany (democracy), India (democracy), the US (democracy), South Korea (democracy), and so on.

Of course, this is a gross measure, so perhaps all this says is that these states are more connected and allow the freest content and so it makes eminent sense that the most abuses are encountered--and countered--on their sites.

But still, a bit counter-intutive--ja?

Iran: doing its best to block out sat TV

Iranians' love of foreign media is a well-documented fact, from the obsession with "Lost" to South Korea soaps.

Newsweek reports that the regime maintains its insane enmity to the Brits and the BBC, though.  After the putsch, the Revolutionary Guards made a supreme effort to block BBC's Persian TV channel. They blocked it by uplinking static to the satellite, but in doing so they scrambled a lot of popular fare from the same satellite.  

The problem:

Iran's domestic TV broadcasts--key to the regime's ability to maintain control and stability--depend on the very European satellites Iran is toying with to get its signals distributed across the country. (Arab-owned satellites have quit carrying Iran's broadcasts, and Iran has no satellies of its own.)

So chairman of broadcasting in Iran admits that when Iran messes with other people's broadcasts, they can easily retaliate, "So we have to make sure that we don't overreach ourselves."

Connectivity comes with code.

Charts of the day: The connectors!--an Emirates Airline production

Economist article on the amazing rise of the airline industry in the energy-rich-but-tiny Persian Gulf principalities.

Anybody who's been through Dubai (amazing airport) or flown Emirates (unforgettably good) is aware of the capacity, which has been growing at a stunning pace in the last five years.

Emirates, for example, now has only 138 wide-bodies, with 140 on order.  It plans to sport a fleet of 400, making it the biggest long-hauler on the planet. Profits last year were $1B--in a tough year!

Competitors allege all manner of unfair gov subsidies, and most of these charges are likely true, but this is a very big good for the region, and the logic is sound: as wealth creation spreads across the Gap, these super-connectors plan to take advantage of the resulting rise in demand for travel.

Twenty years from now, Emirates Airline will be better known than al Qaeda, and far more powerful a force in enabling globalization's spread than than al Qaeda has been in trying to stop it. 

Education follows the flag

Bloomberg BusinessWeek profile of John Sexton, president of NY University, who, with the help of Abu Dhabi's Crown Prince Al Nahyan, is trying to franchise his institution in the Persian Gulf.

Sexton's dream:  a circulating experience for students that connects them to six world-class universities spread around the world, with NYU as the anchor.

Sexton's use of foreign money to fuel global expansion is considered a model.  NYU has only a $2.2B endowment, or $50k a student.  Harvard's numbers are more like $26B and $1.3m per student.

My takeaway:  A lot of US universities going into countries that are friendly with us militarily.  It's a huge investment for both sides, so you want to go with people whom you have long and strong relationships, and with whom you're pushing connectivity.

Forget that offending billboard in Cairo. Take it online, kids!

Photo here.

Bloomberg BusinessWeek article pointing out how online advertizing is beginning to take off in the Middle East, thanks to more Arabs going online and getting mobiles.  Broadband penetration remains low (12% compared to 64% in North America and we’re no great shakes either).  Another trick:  5% of web users/consumers are Arab, but only 1% of the content is Arabic.

Still, there is a leap-frog quality to this development: maybe traditional advertising never makes it in the region like it has in the West, but maybe the online version fills the gap and obviates the old models, which, for a lot of reasons, are trickier to navigate in that part of the world.

Gaza's tunnel economy

image here

Naturally, the Israeli graphic focuses on weaponry, but the larger truth is this is how most of the economy works--sad to say.  It's like one giant "Shawshank Redemption" (or a gritty "Hogan's Heroes," depending on your ideological take).  

Either way, it's an imprisoned society doing what people do when they face such circumstances:  they adapt and work around the best they can--and the middlemen profiteer nicely.

Key point from FT story:

For close to three years [the length of the blockade], the tunnels below Rafah have offered a unique lifeline to Gazans, who are otherwise deprived of all but the most basic humanitarian supplies.  They have also allowed Hamas, the Islamist group that controls the strip, to replenish its coffers and rebuild its military arsenal, making the tunnels a target for Israel.

The 200-300 surviving tunnels (there are air strikes) have become so efficient that "shops all over Gaza are bursting with goods."

But the local businessmen say this is no answer.  They insist that the smugglers "are creating a false sense of economic improvement while damaging the territory's battered private sector."  In other words, the tunnels bring in the same goods that could be produced locally, providing formal sector jobs--if the blockade was lifted.

One entrepenuer:

We are just replacing legitimate businessmen with illegitimate businessmen.

This is what gets you aid flotillas.

The "butcher of Beijing"--redux

graphic here

The Butcher of Beijing is a well-known hacktivist who blogs, tweets and uploads his way into the heart of the Chinese Communist Party.

He is one of the most daring of a growing band of full-time, internet-savvy, Chinese social activists who are beginning to take their calls for justice and transparency from the virtual into the real world.

Got tech and entrepreneurial background--no surprise.  Real name Wu Gan.

Focus:  defending downtrodden citizens who take on the might of the system, with a penchant for women's rights stories.  The 37-year-old radiates impending martyrdom in interviews.

The aha! moment for many of the newest netizen activists?  The 2008 government coverup on the milk scandal.

Very Upton Sinclair.