When looking at the likely future pathways for world order, the fundamental question is this: does fear prevent peace?

I spoke highly of Thomas PM Barnett's book, Great Powers, in a recent post.  I concluded by saying his vision was quintessentially American and optimistic to the core.  I admire that.

However, I concluded with this,

"We are an ideal.  Beautiful and aspirational.  The world is tragic.  America sees hope around every corner.  History is tale of zigzagging progress, dizzying heights and precipitous falls.  Americans assume that tomorrow will be better than today and much better than yesterday.  Despite our periodic bouts of self doubt, hope and optimism are baked into our DNA. 

Barnett taps this deep reservoir and offers a grand vision of a world that could be.  The problem becomes whether what could be will be.  Has America allowed the world to finally break the cycles of rise and fall?  That would be a gift too exquisite to articulate in mere words.  Or is America living on the fumes of its past greatness at just the time where disorder re-enters history on a scale not seen since the beginning of the last century?

Hope vs. tragedy.  American, New World idealism vs. Old World pessimism.  We may not face such a clean, binary situation, but it is on the horns of these perceptions that I find myself touching ever so gingerly hoping not to become fully impaled by falling on the wrong side."

Today I read this interview with John Mearsheimer.  He is a famous International Relations theorist most famous for his pre-9/11 book The Tragedy of Great Power Politics.

He concludes the interview with this,

"The sad fact is that you can have a situation where two countries are satisfied with the status quo and have no interest in using military force to alter it, but they still are doomed to compete with each other for power.  The reason is that neither side can be certain about the other side's intentions.  Therefore leaders on both sides have to assume the worst case; they have to assume the other side is a revisionist state, not a status quo power, and compete for power with the other side.  That is the tragedy of great power conflict."

While that comment is specifically about US-Chinese relations, it has a universal quality to it with which one must intellectually grapple.  A lack of trust breeds fear and fear breeds a vicious cycle.  Ultimately, this is what drives international relations.  While agreements can be reached and peace secured under certain circumstances, usually under balances of power, it will all crumble.

Every nation seeks to secure itself against this inevitability even if those efforts are exactly the actions that make such an undesired outcome come to fruition.

Ultimately fear prevents peace by destroying the needed balances and shredding idealism.  

Can that be conquered?  That continues to be mankind's most pressing question.

At that time, China was clearly the lesser power and required bolstering. The time for the United States to consider an inversion of that policy may soon become ripe.

The strategic environment today is vastly different than when Nixon met Mao. The Cold War is over, the Soviet Union is no more and China is rapidly ascending to the position of a global superpower. Under these conditions, the United States are struggling to manage a multiplicity of strategic interests in every major region of the world. Paramount among those are relations with China.

While no one disputes outgoing World Bank President Robert Zoellick’s statement that it would be advantageous for China to become a “responsible stakeholder” in global affairs, the prospect of this not happening means that the United States need additional levers to balance against China in the soon to be economically dominant Asia.

The Obama Administration’s vaunted “pivot” shows Washington’s recognition of this need. To fully embrace this strategy, though, the United States must secure its Western flank from instability. This means securing Europe.

Inconveniently for the United States as it seeks to shift its focus to Asia, the ongoing European fiscal crisis opens the door to all kinds of medium to long term challenges. It also opens the door for Russian mischief under the nationalistic president Vladimir Putin.

Left unattended and unresolved, the Russian question could become a significant enough distraction that the United States find themselves unable to be decisive in Asia.

To the extent that the Obama Administration realized building better relations with the Russians would be essential for European stability, it should be commended. Yet, its much vaunted “reset” looks set to run aground as Putin reassumes his undisputed position on the top of the Kremlin’s power pyramid.

This can be confirmed from recent news of Russian threats of preemption against NATO missile defense sites in Europe. If the United States are not to be squeezed by a perennially dissatisfied Russia in Central Asia and Eastern Europe while trying to deal with China, they are going to have to move beyond the “reset” and seek a more comprehensive engagement.

This entails opening the door to a legitimate and wide ranging understanding with Russia that can finally deal with the lingering aftermath of the collapse of the Soviet Union and President Putin’s taste for revanchism.

Discarding the mere symbolism of the “reset,” the United States should consider a broader and deeper outreach to Russia in order to pull it into a far less bellicose attitude vis-à-vis the West. In essence, much as Nixon and Kissinger sought the “dragon” to balance against the stronger “bear,” the United States must consider the reverse.

Doing so could minimize Russian aggression toward Europe. Even more important, having Russia ensconced in the West will offer the United States an additional lever it can employ to force China to divert its military focus from Asia.

Such a move could also expand the economic base of the West by capturing the huge hydrocarbon wealth of both Russia and Central Asia while having more ability to squeeze China’s energy supply if it is ever seen as necessary due to geopolitical tensions with the Middle Kingdom.

Such a policy has many possible pitfalls.

First, distrust pervades Western and, particularly, NATO relations with Russia. Moscow continues to believe that NATO expansion in Central and Eastern Europe violates promises made in the George H.W. Bush Administration and during the immediate aftermath of the Soviet implosion. It is essential to address this substantively, through mechanisms such as American support for NATO opening missile defense cooperation to Russia rather than insisting on two separate systems.

In addition, the United States should reduce funding to nongovernmental organizations in critical countries such as Ukraine and Georgia and quietly move from supporting the mercurial Mikheil Saakashvili.

The United States should also encourage President Putin’s push for a “Eurasian Union.” This would entail the United States no longer hectoring Russia over the slow pace of political reform. By contrast, it should simply argue for an “eventual transition to genuine multiparty democracy founded on generally liberal principles.”

Other policy options over the longer term could include an expansion of a free trade zone to encompass not only the traditional “transatlantic” partnership with the European Union but also an eventual “Eurasian Union.”

Finally, a real invitation for Russia to join NATO should eventually be considered but not made contingent upon the domestic political evolution of the Russian state.

Fundamentally, this is about changing Lord Ismay’s comments on NATO and changing its raison d’être from “keeping the Russians out, the Americans in and the Germans down” to “keeping both the Americans and Russians in and the rest of Europe quiet” while Asia rises.

In light of current headlines, these policy proposals seem fanciful. Yet, it is important to recollect the arc of Russian history.

Russia has long been torn between its desire enter a more Western orbit, something Russian modernizers since Peter the Great have desired, and its Byzantine based Orthodox Christian heritage, as well as a tendency towards “Oriental Despotism” as inherited from its time under the Mongol Yoke.

With its current demographic challenges and the return to great power status of multiple Asian states, Russia faces several choices: attempt to compete with China and maintain an independent pole of power based on Central Asia, embrace China and become a junior partner, or join the West. Each of those options appeals to one of Russia’s historical self images while also raising fears in certain segments of Russian society.

The jury is out as to which direction Russia will ultimately choose. It is up to the United States to incentivize Russia to make the final decision of tilting toward the West, which will also enable it to more fully realize its Central Asian goals.

A new global reality demands creativity and flexibility as opposed to rigidity. Moving to bring Russia into the West could be the most dramatic diplomatic move in a generation. Such a policy clearly runs against many American traditions. Yet, so did the Nixon policy when he traveled to Beijing in 1972. That move is now considered a powerful triumph.

Walter Russel Mead continues to write provocative blogs concerning the decline of what he terms the "Blue State model."  They are always insightful even if one does not necessarily subscribe to every component piece.

Rather, they were “accelerated” by revolutionary vanguards who just then happened to be authoritarian in order to impose what was supposed to happen inexorably and without necessarily the application of force, or at least force of the kind those murderous regimes utilized.

Communism was only supposed to happen once capitalism made labor superfluous and bounty abound. Under present trends, we are closer to that vision than when Lenin led the Bolsheviks.

I am not saying it is inevitable for Communism to make a renewed appearance on the historical stage, but it cannot be discounted.

In essence, “Communism” as properly understood is an experiment that actually has yet to be run and could only be run as we get nearer to the plenty we are now becoming fully capable of achieving'

Of course, Communism seems to forget human nature and human acquisitiveness. So it is possible that capitalism will be a perpetual whirlwind of Schumpeterian “Creative Destruction” so there will be no period where people will stop to partake of the fruits of their machines labor, because new machines will need to be built for new products. As Kissinger says, “History knows no plateaus” and Communism would, in theory, be a plateau.

I just wonder if there is more of an ideological battle to emerge than we think, which could lay question once more to Fukuyama’s “End of History” as that which was consigned to the “Ash Heap of History” recycles itself a bit in a new age."

I commented over at the Lowy Institute's blog regarding an outline one of their authors is putting together for a possible academic piece about the return of global bipolarity.   I suggested we are entering a phase of non-polarity instead.  Here is my comment and here is the article prompting it.

The interesting long-term question about this is whether Europe will eventually fall into constituent pieces in a de facto as opposed to du jure sense. If its internal problems lead to a two-track Eurozone or to a slow and partial, but nonetheless real, reintroduction of internal European animosities, bipolarity could turn into something closer to Richard Haas' notion of 'non-polarity'. Even Brzezinski has begun sounding the alarm about non-polarity in his new tome 'Strategic Vision', as have authors like Gideon Rachman from the Financial Times with'Zero-Sum Future'.

Personally, I think signs are pointing more and more in that direction. Watch also Chinese counters to the American pivot. Will China begin buying Euro Treasuries to diversify away from America as it gets more concerned about encirclement? Obviously, that may make little economic sense currently, but it could make strategic sense over time and could enhance these non-polar type trends by peeling 'Western' nations into strange power configurations."

I commented on this great article over at the Atlantic Community.  This particular piece was great by showcasing a different angle than much contemporary commentary on geopolitical events.  Here is the main thrust of the piece,

Considering Iranian psychology, we have a proud nation on the other hand that in the distant past ruled one of the greatest empires of the world but has suffered repeated humilitations from Alexander over the Romans to the colonial powers of the modern age. For many Muslims, the emergence of Israel resembles (at least emotionally) a resurrection of the Crusaders. Last but not least, the fact that Iran is mainly Shi'a means that Iranians are sometimes treated as underdogs in the Muslim world. In summary, many Iranians may feel they are being humilitated again although following all laws and staying on the path of justice. A matching survivor myth is present as well, as this time the Mahdi may finally return and restore justice after the armageddon."

My comment below,

David P. Goldman who writes the psuedonymous "Spengler" columns I have frequently cited, recently wrote an article for Asia Times that is simultaneously over the top, amusing, cold and erudite.  In it, he conjures the ghost of Cardinal Richelieu.

Below is the text of my op-ed for the Atlantic Community on the need for reinvigorating trans-Atlanticism.  

There are many conversations about the need to confront proliferation of WMDs, trans-national terrorism, global warming, health pandemics, and even economic pandemics but the one unifying challenge that exacerbates each of these threats is complacency. A newly reinvigorated transatlantic partnership must focus on banishing post-Cold War complacency. Unfortunately, so much focus is spent on these other international agenda items, that it is often overlooked and papered over. The end of the Cold War did not usher in a purely cosmopolitan, quasi-Hegelian "End of History" as postulated famously by Francis Fukuyama. Rather. Samuel Huntington's "Clash of Civilizations" thesis has been more on target for describing the new era of both unprecedented international cooperation as well as a new era of competition.

Unfortunately, many in the U.S, and Europe, the twin pillars of the transatlantic alliance, have not found ways to cooperate as fully as when they were confronted by the Soviet leviathan. Instead, the alliance has been allowed to become too much of a "talking shop" where grandiose rhetoric and economic competition displace a strategic vision for confronting the real evil of global order- the "anarchy" at the heart of the international system.
The United States is an offshoot of Europe. Its founding fathers were avowed disciples of thinkers like Locke and Montesquieu.

The United States was founded predominately by European immigrants. This means there was, is, and should be a cultural affinity between these two regions that transcends the transitoriness of mere geopolitical advantage. In fact, the true geopolitical advantage is to understand that as economic power shifts from its Western locus to the East; the U.S. and Europe must truly hang together or hang separately. Not appreciating this fact is the core reason for transatlantic complacency.

While technology has facilitated instant communication and long-distance travel, it has not eliminated geography as a highly influential factor in economic and political relations. Culture also, as Huntington made clear, also matters. Indeed, geography and culture could well be the defining characteristics of a new form of regionalism. It will be up to the next generation of transatlantic leaders to realize that globalization could easily devolve into a world of competing regionalisms.

To confront this possibility, a reinvigoration of cultural exchange programs would be wise. Yet, ultimately, a Transatlantic Free Trade Zone (FTZ) should fix the advantages of size and scope while underlining cultural ties. Additionally, NATO member states (with the possible of exception of Turkey) should set aside a set percentage of the revenue growth achieved after the adoption of the FTZ for NATO hardware and training. Such an effort would show that complacency is dead and that the transatlantic relationship is prepared to recognize its truly existential challenges.

The next generation of transatlantic leaders need not reinvent the wheel, but they do need to dust off the old one. If a statesman must bridge the gap between experience and vision, for Americans and Europeans; the collective vision is of an experience that has already taken place, it just needs rejuvenation.

Today, February 21 is the 40th anniversary of the day President Nixon met Chairman Mao in China.  Clearly, geopolitics had a tectonic shift on that day and we still are living with the ramifications today with the rise of China and the feelings of concern so manifest in daily American life.

As a researcher over at Wikistrat, the world's first multiplayer strategic risk and geopolitical forecasting firm, I have participated in several collectively written articles that run on the popular website of CNN's Fareed Zakaria.

There may be no final, best form of governance as per Fukuyama.  I don't think all people want the same "recognition."  That was the core of his message in the End of History.

Robert Kagan is a big name in foreign policy circles.  This op-ed, which I assume mirrors much of the tenor of his new book, outlines a full throated endorsement of the American backed international order of the day.  I have long written that absent American power, the order will atrophy and we will be in a "neo-Middle Ages" where no power is stabilizing.  This would be a world of "non-polarity" to use the CFR President Richard Haas' phrase.  Kagan seems to think this.  So should a lot of others.  Great power peace is not pre-ordained. 

Check this quote,

"But international order is not an evolution; it is an imposition. It is the domination of one vision over others—in America's case, the domination of free-market and democratic principles, together with an international system that supports them. The present order will last only as long as those who favor it and benefit from it retain the will and capacity to defend it.

There was nothing inevitable about the world that was created after World War II. No divine providence or unfolding Hegelian dialectic required the triumph of democracy and capitalism, and there is no guarantee that their success will outlast the powerful nations that have fought for them. Democratic progress and liberal economics have been and can be reversed and undone. The ancient democracies of Greece and the republics of Rome and Venice all fell to more powerful forces or through their own failings. The evolving liberal economic order of Europe collapsed in the 1920s and 1930s. The better idea doesn't have to win just because it is a better idea. It requires great powers to champion it.

If and when American power declines, the institutions and norms that American power has supported will decline, too. Or more likely, if history is a guide, they may collapse altogether as we make a transition to another kind of world order, or to disorder. We may discover then that the U.S. was essential to keeping the present world order together and that the alternative to American power was not peace and harmony but chaos and catastrophe—which is what the world looked like right before the American order came into being."

How well does this dovetail with what I wrote over at the Atlantic Community over a year and a half ago?

"However, we are entering an uncharted time where new powers are rising and America's star seems to be fading.  It is in this contextual milieu that the recent speech by U.S. Secretary of Defense Robert Gates, at the United States Navy League's "Sea, Air and Space" Exposition, becomes deeply troubling. While he certainly does not indicate an abandonment of American naval supremacy, one of the keys, along with nuclear weapons, to America's post-World War II military dominance, it is evident that he is willing to allow a relative decline based on the assumption that Great Power conflict is a thing of the past.

This policy, combined with President Obama's almost pollyannaish vision of a nuclear-free world, is a toxic view to maintain at a time of great uncertainty.  It also takes for granted that the relatively peaceful conditions of the present day can be projected into the future. Sadly, this is misguided. A lack of knowledge about the future means one should hedge their bets.  Today's prognostications of what types of threats will emerge and where they will emerge from can look decidedly myopic within a matter of moments, much less years or decades. The U.S. cannot allow itself to become tired of its global responsibilities.

Credibility matters. If the US is perceived as  declining, we really cannot be sure what will happen if others test our resolve. This could pave the way for the destabilization of the regional balances of power.  It is through that door that renewed Great Power conflict could step and shock a world that has forgotten that relative peace is secured through strength."

I riffed on this in an op-ed I wrote called "Beyond the Great Illusion" as well,

"Every generation thinks itself the one to "end war" for all time and create a "just" world order.  Each generation is disabused of these notions as reality stares them in the face. 

 

The current American generation needs to become disabused sooner than previous ones for the storms brewing beneath the surface of our false tranquility (even after the economic crisis) are real and will not be tamed by rhetoric, resolutions, and vague concepts of hopeful cooperation.  They will be tamed by eternal vigilance and recognition that even as the world undergoes profound transformations, fundamentally, man is still man. The old emotions, so well described by Thucydides’ History of the Peloponnesian War, of envy, fear, and greed are just as present now as love, respect, and humility. 

 

While more of the latter is to be hoped for, more of the former should be prepared for.  We must move beyond our own “great illusion” and defend order rather than expecting it to spontaneously emerge through economics and international treaties that are unable to be backed up."

These are the stakes when we vote.  Elections may seem to be glorified beauty contests these days, but look above, there are real stakes when we vote.  History seems to indicate oscillations between order, or at least relative order, and chaos.  When even elites like Kagan and Haas start talking this way, it is time to pay attention.  Especially, as the Syrian situation and the Iranian situation morph into one potentially Sarajevo 1914 type moments...

I recently blogged about how technology and the rampant increase in tis capacity may lead to a long-term structural unemployment challenge.  In many ways this is already happening.  For all the gnashing of teeth regarding outsourcing and illegal immigration, the greatest long-term challenge to employment is the simple fact that machines and computers will, overtime, obviate the need for typical employment.

The specter of war in Europe is certainly off stage for now. Time will tell if it raises itself yet again, however. For not all specters banished by light one day are gone forever, they tend to return when the light (in this case economic growth and stability) fades...

Given that I have made this analogy many times myself, I can admit that it s a bit tired, but the America/Rome analogy is not just the product of a feverish imagination infected by too much historical innuendo. 

The immediate post-Cold War period proved fertile for imaginative scholars looking to set the terms of the debate over what the future world order would look like.  From Charles Krauthammer's "Unipolar Moment" to Robert Kaplan's "Coming Anarchy" and John Mearsheimer's "Tragedy of Great Power Politics," each tried to forecast what the world could expect.

First, let me say, I am very pleased to be a part of Wikistrat.  This is a new type of consultancy that is best described as a combination of Facebook and Wikipedia merging with geopolitics.  Eventually clients, which will include governments, think tanks, and private corporations will be able to suggest scenarios for the consultancy to game out for them as they look to uncover potential outcomes.  In fact, it is my understanding there will be a lot of interplay where clients can even introduce "shocks" into a scenario.  So a group could be analyzing the outcome of the North Korean power transition after Kim jong-Il's death and a client could ask the group to game out the impact of an assassination attempt on successor Kim jong-Un.  

This is no time to call out a bunch of neo-Luddites, but this article from Technology review points to a potentially problematic trend- technology is displacing employment.  Check out the following,

There's nothing to suggest that this dynamic no longer operates, but new research is showing that advances in workplace automation are being deployed at a faster pace than ever, making it more difficult for workers to adapt and wreaking havoc on the middle class: the clerks, accountants, and production-line workers whose tasks can increasingly be mastered by software and robots. "Do I think we will have permanently high unemployment as a consequence of technology? No," says Peter Diamond, the MIT economist who won a 2010 Nobel Prize for his work on market imperfections, including those that affect employment. "What's different now is that the nature of jobs going away has changed. Communication and computer abilities mean that the type of jobs affected have moved up the income distribution."

There is a real silver lining here.  Eventually people will become trained in the new technologies and that will likely mean more fulfilling, probably better paying jobs for many people.  This is very similar to how the Industrial Revolution displaces so many farmers, but yielded incredible enhancements in quality of life (after awhile at least).  

The problem is, however, that in the interim period, long bouts of displacement breed resentment, sociological disturbances and (as we seem to see all the time), political volatility.

Consequently, the transition is going to be painful for the majority of people as they change their lifestyles and workplaces.  Hopefully, the tumult of this will soon start to be offset by what should be the inevitable gains.  But the timing is important. Long-term, perceived structural unemployment will create that unpleasant and tumultuous backlash.  

If that gets out of hand, then all bets could be off.

Charles Krauthammer is probably my favorite columnist.  I have long thought him to be the most cogent writer critiquing President Obama.  He was scathing, but respectful which is something many who dislike the President seem to refuse to be.

However, his latest column is truly great because it makes a compelling case for why we must engage in politics.  He does this in a round about way that touches on the search for sentient life beyond our own planet.  This may seem a strange segue into a conversation about the need for politics, but it is, in fact one of the best.

Here are several relevant sections,

"...Modern satellite data, applied to the Drake Equation, suggest that the number should be very high. So why the silence? Carl Sagan (among others) thought that the answer is to be found, tragically, in the final variable: the high probability that advanced civilizations destroy themselves.

In other words, this silent universe is conveying not a flattering lesson about our uniqueness but a tragic story about our destiny. It is telling us that intelligence may be the most cursed faculty in the entire universe — an endowment not just ultimately fatal but, on the scale of cosmic time, nearly instantly so.

This is not mere theory. Look around. On the very day that astronomers rejoiced at the discovery of the two Earth-size planets, the National Science Advisory Board for Biosecurity urged two leading scientific journals not to publish details of lab experiments that had created a lethal and highly transmittable form of bird flu virus, lest that fateful knowledge fall into the wrong hands.

Wrong hands, human hands. This is not just the age of holy terror but also the threshold of an age of hyper-proliferation. Nuclear weapons in the hands of half-mad tyrants (North Korea) and radical apocalypticists (Iran) are only the beginning. Lethal biologic agents may soon find their way into the hands of those for whom genocidal pandemics loosed upon infidels are the royal road to redemption."

He concludes by waxing lyrically on how politics, for all its grunginess and stupidity, at the core, is the necessary precondition for surviving and channeling our intelligence, if we can, in a way so as to avoid true catastrophe.

"We grow justly weary of our politics. But we must remember this: Politics — in all its grubby, grasping, corrupt, contemptible manifestations — is sovereign in human affairs. Everything ultimately rests upon it.

Fairly or not, politics is the driver of history. It will determine whether we will live long enough to be heard one day. Out there. By them, the few — the only — who got it right."

So haunting and so potentially prophetic.  This is why anyone who engages with politics, and does so for the right reasons, is worthy of respect.

I don't always like David Brooks, but his op-ed in today's New York Times hits on some very interesting themes regarding the unique challenges America and America's economy face today.  He attempts, and I think he does so very well, to debunk the notion that was so popular at the beginning of the Obama Administration that we are in a new "Progressive Era."

He does this in ways that would both appeal and, quite possibly terrify conservatives.  In my mind the most searing line in the piece is the following,

"One hundred years ago, we had libertarian economics but conservative values. Today we have oligarchic economics and libertarian moral values — a bad combination."

He goes on to say,

"In sum, in the progressive era, the country was young and vibrant. The job was to impose economic order. Today, the country is middle-aged but self-indulgent. Bad habits have accumulated. Interest groups have emerged to protect the status quo. The job is to restore old disciplines, strip away decaying structures and reform the welfare state. The country needs a productive midlife crisis."

Many, if not practically all, self described conservatives would declare the Progressive Era as a very bad thing, something almost like an "Original Sin."  So to ever say anything positive about it at all would strike them as heretical.  However, one thing to keep in mind is that when there is too much stratification in society, that society becomes unstable and prone to overact to both internal and external shocks.

We may be nearing a tipping point in America from which we cannot return.  It is incumbent upon leaders to be far more aggressive than they have been and it will require major changes in our own personal self-indulgences too.  

We should certainly should not hold the Progressive Era up as our be all and end all model, but neither should we entirely discount the inexact analogies it may offer for our own increasingly troubled times and much of it has to do with our values.  No technical tweaks to our system can overcome a degenerated value system, because a value system unable to hold its own will succumb to every stray gust of wind that blows its way.

Below is a list of suggested reading to help understand the pending, potential "Asian Century" as outlined in the post below:

This is a great summation piece on multiple trends playing themselves out is Eastern Asia and any serious student of world history should at least peruse it.

Francis Fukuyama of "End of History" fame raises some intriguing questions in his latest Foreign Affairs article (Warning: subscriber alert).  He raises the prospect that liberal democracy may be unable to survive the decline of a middle class.  Coming from the former high prophet of neoconservative triumphalism this is a sobering, dark, though not entirely surprising position.

I read with interest the many comments elicited by Walter Mead's blog post that I riffed off of yesterday.

This is a great blog by Walter Mead (probably my favorite blogger besides David P. Goldman).  

I have written many times on the "Golden Age of Proliferation" and see nothing that has changed in recent times to alter my view that contrary to a world of "Global Zero," we face the increasing likelihood of multiple additional powers obtaining at least rudimentary nuclear weapons capability.  Who will give them up now with the lesson of dead Qadaffi (who withdrew from the nuclear sweepstakes in the early 2000s) fresh in their memory?

This is a great piece by David P. Goldman, the psuedonymous "Spengler" over at his economics focused Inner Workings blog.  It is very interesting and highlights the likelihood that Europe will split and the EU will be largely a northern affair.  Something, I surmise, like the Hanseatic League of the 13th-17th centuries.

Another op-ed I wrote that was cross posted at the Atlantic Community and at the Young Transatlantic Conservative Alliance.

The below is an article that was posted in several places including the Atlantic Community and Eurasia Review.

I have not updated my blog recently as most can tell.  Largely, this is due to having a second son earlier in the year (Alexander, with Augustus our first) and some of the time constraints that creates.

Charles Krauthammer hits the nail on the head when he says in this piece that we are entering the post non-proliferation age.  While arms control experts and various activists will insist on disarmament, the truth is (as I have posted before), once the genie was out, it could never be put back in.  I know of the examples showing a nation did forgo nuclear weapons programs after starting them, South Africa being one of the most notable, however, it is increasingly unlikely this will continue.

The argument that we must disarm so as to appropriately incentivize other nations to not pursue nuclear weapons as an equalizing force has more merit than many on the "conservative" side usually ascribe, yet there is a fundamental flaw.  Even if we were to be "good faith" actors, how could ever guarantee other nations weren't cheating?  To assume they won't seek such weapons in the abscence of a threat ignores the nature of geopolitics throughout history.  Nations have always sought to maximize their power in the best way they can because, despite "international law", at the end of the day, in the abscence of a "Global Levaithan" no one can count on another Whie Knight to save them if one of the neighborhood bullies gets out of hand.  They have to be able to take care of themselves with the most potent defense they can muster.  Today, nuclear technology is no longer prohibitively expensive nor is the necessary knowledge base locked away within the heavily industrialized world.  This is the anarchy of international politics (and a fundamental tenat of realist thought).

Would Iran ever trust America is "really" dispensing with its arsenal?  Would Russia?  Would China?  How could we "know" definitively that any of them are?  Just look at all the challenges getting a petty regime like North Korea to "open up" and "disclose" their nuclear programs.  Consequently, we would always have to be prepared for the undesired.  For a leader to do otherwise is to be derelict in their responsibilities to preserve the nation they lead. 

Sadly, the only way to stop proliferation was to never create nuclear weapons in the first place.  Now it is inevitable that it will remain a permanent feature of global life.  Wishing it away is an exercise in futility.  Krauthammer makes it clear that deterrence once more will be a needed feature of international relations.  Brutally honest explanations of consequences is necessary to be sure that pragmatic leaders retain control over such weapons as opposed to fanatical (or apocalyptic) leaders.  Naturally, as nonproliferation advocates assert, this is till unstable, miscommunication can lead to poor decisions even by the most rational of leaders.  However, what alternatives remain open?  Disarmament is now as utopian as "perpetual peace."  As Krauthammer states unequivocally,

"We have entered the post-nonproliferation age. It's time to take our heads out of the sand and deal with it."

Now that Vladimir Putin will become Prime Minister after the swearing in today of Dmitry Medvedev as the new President, we will wait to see what happens.  This article shows how Putin seems to have consolidated real political power in the Prime Minister's office.

I can't believe I am reading what is in this link.  Vincent Bugliosi, the famous prosecutor of Charles Manson and writer of "Helter Skelter" is actually laying a case for prosecuting President Bush for murder.  Since this is only a snippet of his apparently forthcoming book and is posted on the Huffington Post, I do not know if this is a "going through the motions" kind of thing to sell the book or if he is actually serious, so I suppose I'll reserve judgement on his sanity.