Greg R. Lawson's Blog

Two Days that Shook the World

Greg R Lawson — 2012-02-21T14:53:54Z

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.

Tomorrow, February 22, will be the 66th anniversary of George F. Kennan's famous "Long Telegram" which is generally considered one of the founding documents of the Cold War's "Containment" policy that would guide the U.S. for over 40 years. It, and Kennan's famous "X" article in a 1947 edition of the journal Foreign Affairs, are two documents that any aspiring State Department hand or geopolitician hold in high regard and hope to at some point emulate.

Wikistrat's Ten Paths to Israel-Iran War

Greg R Lawson — 2012-02-17T16:45:33Z

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.

Given the tit-for-tat assassinations that seem to be happening between Iran and Israel along with the multiple pressures being placed on Tehran by the US and the West in general, forecasting war scenarios seems like a worthwhile exercise.

Here is the final article over Zakaria's site. I largely came up with Path #4.

Essentially, it has the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt breaking the Camp David Peace Accords and threatening a second front (Hezbollah as Iran proxy in Lebanon being the first). By the way the MB has already threatened to break the Camp David Accords if the US refuses to keep throwing aid its way...

The Tower of Babel Remains Unbuilt

Greg R Lawson — 2012-02-17T15:05:07Z

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.

Rather, as per Huntington in his Clash of Civilizations thesis would argue that perceptions of recognition differ based on culture which ultimately triumphs over universality. To that end the Tower of Babel remains incomplete.

Just read this on post-Qadaffi Libya as one small example of the point.

American Order and Anarchy

Greg R Lawson — 2012-02-13T16:44:20Z

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...

Tradition and the Road to a "Brave New World"

Greg R Lawson — 2012-02-04T21:38:54Z

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 recent numbers showing a decline in unemployment are positive but hide the fact that the labor pool itself has decreased. This is serious and could well be an indicator of the future of employment. Rather than the temporary result of an economic crisis, it might become a new structural feature of our entire economic landscape. I suspect a major reason for this, paradoxically, is technology advances.

When robots can act as waiters and baristas, you'll realize that even the service economy is no longer safe. Indeed, computer programs are already being using to do certain legal tasks and "Watson" an IBM supercomputer (the one that beat a whole bunch of human Jeopardy champions) is now being used by a major insurance company to facilitate plans of care for clinical patients.

Think about it, drones are now expected to be deployed in the US cities (not just killing terrorists overseas). These changes are happening at an ever rapid pace and while this is advantageous for many, it is not so good for those at the lower end of the socio-economic scale. To be blunt, those with lower educational attainment levels are simply going to be passed right on by.

With the contemporaneous breakdown of union and public sector jobs, traditional careers for blue collar workers simply won't be there in the same way to pick up the slack for the other areas where displacement will take place.

If this sounds increasingly dystopian, it is. It is not inconceivable that there will be a day where the iPhone and Droids will be a harbinger not of instant communication and accessibility, but will have been the pivot to where man as man is no longer really necessary.

Of course, these were the same arguments used by Luddites against the Industrial Revolution and, up to this point, it would seem the Industrial Revolution, despite its early pains, was an unambiguous success for helping humankind achieve unprecedented and even unimaginable standards of living. The question now, however, is- will history largely repeat itself, or are we at a fundamentally different point.

There are many reasons to be thankful for all of this achievement. It is a testament to human ingenuity and it has made our lives incomparably easier than it has been for any other generation. Yet, there is also plenty of reason for unease.

I have argued that tradition is the brake we apply so we can look both ways before we cross the street. It should not stop all movement, much less should it be reactionary and drive us backward to an imagined utopia of days gone by. Yet, it SHOULD stop us from hurtling headlong into the future with no real cognition of what consequences may be confronting us.

I think many who advocate for technology and progress for progress sake seek to dive into a black hole without appreciated how the gravity of a black hole may crush us on the way through. We must be careful and prudent.

So I submit tradition is the needed brake so we can catch our breath before fundamentally changing what it means to be human. The possibility of a Brave New World is real.

The Once Again New Specter... War

Greg R Lawson — 2012-02-04T20:39:49Z

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...

This article describes how what seems impossible today is far from impossible under the right set of circumstances. This is why the wheel of history keeps turning,

Rome as Past, Present and Future?

Greg R Lawson — 2012-01-25T03:32:10Z

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.

This National Review piece paints a picture of what such an analogy could indeed look like. Essentially, Michigan shows how this may look with governor appointed "emergency managers" taking over for elected officials to get bankrupt cities on track. Are these akin to the elected position of "dictator" that the Roman Republic allowed to confront dire circumstances?

And who was the last "Dictator or Life...?" Julius Caesar.

"The Clash at the End of History?"

Greg R Lawson — 2012-01-19T22:29:57Z

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.

Would it be a colossus unleashed in Krauthammer's vision? A neo-Hobbesian state of nature in Kaplan's? A resumption of great power conflict amidst a world of renewed multipolarity as Mearsheimer envisioned?

However, the two theses that attracted by far the most attention were Samuel Huntington's "Clash of Civilizations"and Francis Fukuyama's "End of History." These were the defining texts and chances were that which one you gravitated to would pigeonhole you as either a "liberal capitalist triumphalist" or a "pessimistic cultural determinist."

I have blogged on this at length over the years because these two ideas cut to the core of where we see the world evolving. Is it towards a universal political culture (even if it takes a myriad of detours over time) or is it towards a cacophony of differing perspectives jostling around the world with varying degrees of intersubjective penetration?

Quite frankly, no one knows. It could even be a strange combination of the two, at least in the short to medium term.

Personally, I started off a believer in the Fukuyama vision, not necessarily over night, but as an eventual end state. Over time, I have become far more enthralled by Huntington. Again, I don't think he got it 100 percent right, but I think he captured in broad brushstrokes some very accurate ways for seeing the future.

Of course, Huntington is now deceased, while Fukuyama just published the first of what promises to be a magisterial two volume history on the foundations of political society, the Origins of Political Order. Consequently, Fukuyama will continue to be able to defend and update his thesis. It is too bad Huntington can no longer do the same because these two competing visions represent the battle for the soul of the future of mankind. From which perspective you view the world flows so much of how one will respond to the challenges one faces.

This is especially true of policymakers. Granted, few leading politicians are likely have read either of these books or wrestled intellectually with them, but they should. Both are incredibly nuanced (unlike the critiques of both), but are so important.

I find myself struggling internally at all times. Much like the struggle that Kissinger says with respect to George Kennan,

"The debate in America between idealism and realism, which continues to this day, played itself out inside Kennan’s soul."

The outcome of this struggle in each person will determine our world.

Wikistrat and Obama's "Pivot"

Greg R Lawson — 2012-01-16T15:18:09Z

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.

The potential is limitless.

There are many truly talented people involved in producing great analysis on a myriad of possible major geopolitical issues.

To give an idea of the talent assembled here- Wikistrat's chief strategist is Thomas PM Barnett. Barnett is a well known Pentagon consultant and has columns and blogs that are read in the geopolitical community on a regular basis. Examples include:: a regular Vanity Fair column on foreign policy, a regular column at World Politics Review, an occasional blogger for Time, has written numerous books including the well regarding "Pentagon's New Map."

That's just one.

Anyway, the power of Wikistrat is just now at the first stages of being harnessed. CNN's Fareed Zakaria (and the well known author of books including the controversial "Post-American World") recently asked Wikistrat to outline ten trade-off's resulting from the much ballyhooed Obama "Pivot" to Asia. The Wikistrat opened the question up to us and then Barnett synthesized the information for this piece that ran on Zakaria's CNN webpage to devoted to his TV show, GPS.

I was one of the numerous analysts that contributed ideas for the article and while I think my more "realist" take is a bit of an anomaly among the group, I think my contributions added some value and I am very much looking forward to continuing with this.

In the meantime, I urge anyone interested in geopolitics to check out Wikistrat. I think this is a model that will catch fire over time in terms of helping decision makers in many different arenas navigate their way through the complexities of our globalized world.

Technology and the Future of Jobs

Greg R Lawson — 2012-01-05T13:51:20Z

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,

"Since the beginning of the Industrial Revolution, people have feared that new technologies would permanently erode employment. Over and over again, these dislocations of labor have been temporary: technologies that made some jobs obsolete eventually led to new kinds of work, raising productivity and prosperity with no overall negative effect on employment.

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.

Neo-Middle Ages, Here We (Hopefully Don't) Come

Greg R Lawson — 2012-01-03T22:17:42Z

In the past I have posted extensively on what I think will be the most likely outcome of a retrenchment by AMerica from global affairs. Here are several representative pieces:

Will Atlas Shrug

Welfare at Home, Weakness Abroad

Forget Utopia

Why do I mention these pieces. Because now Zbigniew Brzezinski, one of the foreign policy establishment (and for those that believe in Black Helicopters, one of the founders of the dreaded Trilateral Commission), is writing about it in Foreign Policy magazine and is soon having a new book come out on the subject.

While he appears not to be alarmist, his warning should be sobering. Brzezinski, despite the opprobrium heaped upon him as President Carter's National Security Advisor and an early supporter of President Obama, is a man of intellect whose opinions are widely sought. Indeed, much like Henry Kissinger (whom he is often compared as the Democrat's version of), he as close to a "wise man" as the establishment has.

This may turn some off, even among the less conspiratorial he is controversial, for the more conspiratorial, just Google him and you'd think he was a real life "Dr. Evil" complete with the Blofeld cat.

Yet, those who dislike what he represents should still take seriously his fears that we may soon be descending back towards a Hobbesian world order rather than the Kantian cosmopolitanism one many internationalists perceive.

Note this,

"For if America falters, the world is unlikely to be dominated by a single preeminent successor -- not even China. International uncertainty, increased tension among global competitors, and even outright chaos would be far more likely outcomes...

...No single power will be ready by then to exercise the role that the world, upon the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991, expected the United States to play: the leader of a new, globally cooperative world order. More probable would be a protracted phase of rather inconclusive realignments of both global and regional power, with no grand winners and many more losers, in a setting of international uncertainty and even of potentially fatal risks to global well-being. Rather than a world where dreams of democracy flourish, a Hobbesian world of enhanced national security based on varying fusions of authoritarianism, nationalism, and religion could ensue."

Not a pretty picture is it? These are the stakes in politics and policy. Very serious. I hope those who select our leaders take note. This is more than a popularity contest. It can be about life and death and on a large scale.

Intelligence, Catastrophe and Politics

Greg R Lawson — 2011-12-30T15:17:22Z

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.

History Knows No Plateaus

Greg R Lawson — 2011-12-27T19:20:57Z

I once was engaged in an interesting e-mail exchange with someone whose opinion I valued a great deal. It went back and forth some as we discussed democracy and its future prospects here in the United States. We touched on the "Tytler Cycle" and many other items. I thought this discourse useful for those who want to consider our current state of affairs. By the way as a side note, apparently the Tytler Cycle is a bit of a misnomer as it appears to be an amalgamation of two different quotes not originally from the purported author. Nonetheless, the concept is what is more important than that technicality.

The exchange begins below:

I think the Tytler cycle is largely accurate and that it does reflect on the flawed nature of humans. The striking thing is that because democracy is a product of flawed humans, it contains within itself the seeds of its own demise, so that even though it may well be better than alternatives, its aspirations are ultimately somewhat utopian.

Unlike Marxism and those who like any form of millennial apocalypse, the utopians of democracy may be a bit more tempered in their enthusiasms. It seems they think it possible that while they have not necessarily "solved" the flaw of man, they have at least tamed it enough that it can be sublimated into other pursuits- like seeking wealth and recognition in the context of community. The Alexanders, Caesars and Napoleons of a democratic age are more likely to be a Bill Gates or, at worst, a Rockefeller than the military conquerors of old. That was, if I recollect, a significant element of Fukuyama's thesis about "recognition."

Yet, it seems that even the balances of power brought about through the separation of powers in the Montesquieu sense, though very wisely devised, still cannot overcome human nature's desire for power and/or ease. Those seem to me the Scylla and Charybdis through which a form of government that would be permanent would have to sail. The desire for power of those who feed off of it and the general sloth of the many in the so-called "masses." Those two very human traits unwittingly conspire together to overthrow the only form of government that can bring a modicum of meaningfully peaceful recognition to the human condition. But they always do conspire and set the Tytler cycle (or, depending on one's taste, the Toynbee or Spengler or even Gibbon cycle) in motion.

So I do think it is the human condition that is the fatal flaw, unfortunately, I think that flaw overwhelms even the best efforts to compensate for it. The best we can hope for is a constant shifting between various poles of the condition in order to walk the tightrope that gives us the best possible life. In that sense its a constant and noble pursuit.

Navigating a world filled with flawed humans requires a great deal of dexterity. Institutions, even the best, atrophy and require someone like a "statesman" to reinvigorate them. Each cycle of atrophy and resurrection plays out over a long period of time but those are the oscillations that comprise History. The Tytler Cycle is inescapable. We don't have any Pericles, Ciceros or Washingtons available to us. Democracy will fade, only to return. Its just I fear we are living in the waning time of one great period.

Again, though, we have no choice but to struggle mightily, even if we fail. I know Teddy Roosevelt would not be your favorite, but this seems very appropriate,

"The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat."

After I wrote the above, I began reading Kissinger's memoirs ( believe it or not I have never read them, but have most of his other works). I came across this and while not entirely surprised at its similarity to my own thoughts, it was interesting how much I seem to relate to his tragic sense of the human condition.

"History knows no resting places and no plateaus. All societies of which history informs us went through periods of decline; most of them eventually collapsed. Yet there is a margin between necessity and accident, in which the statesman by perseverance and intuition must choose and thereby shape the destiny of his people. To ignore objective conditions is perilous; to hide behind historical inevitability is tantamount to moral abdication; it is to neglect the elements of strength and hope and inspiration which through the centuries have sustained mankind. The statesman's responsibility is to struggle against transitoriness and not to insist that he be paid in the coin of eternity. He may know that history is the foe of permanence; but no leader is entitled to resignation. He owes it to his people to strive, to create, and to resist the decay that besets all human institutions."

Economics and Values

Greg R Lawson — 2011-12-27T14:09:07Z

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.

Training Oneself to Think "Eastern"

Greg R Lawson — 2011-12-23T21:14:00Z

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.

Here is the bottom line for the 21st Century. It is difficult to envision that the traditional Atlantic-centric mindset of the 19th and 20th centuries can prevail as we move forward.

Europe, as is terribly obvious from an even casual review of headlines, is undergoing significant internal stresses. Its future atop the pyramid of global power came to an end in the ash heap of World War II and Hitler's failed designs. Europe's continuing geopolitical importance for the period from 1945-1989 was largely due to it being the main chessboard on which the major Cold War struggle was played. While Europe is still a massive economy and still will play an important role in world politics, that role will be more of a hinge role that can shift between the consolidated "West" of the U.S. and the new (or, probably more accurately, the newly reacquired) decisive role of the "East."

Meanwhile, Asia had to recover from WWII as well. It also had to contend with the Communist takeover of China and multiple post-colonial and peripheral Cold War conflicts like the Korean War and Vietnam (which started as post colonial with the French and became a Cold War proxy battle with US involvement), along with multiple internal challenges for India.

Now, however, Asia has arisen. Actually, as I alluded to above, it has "re-arisen." Don't forget as recently as the 1820s, China accounted for nearly 30 percent of global GDP. At America's height of economic dominance post WWII, it was only around 25 percent or so (and this is when we did the Marshall Plan and were rebuilding Japan). Check out this graph to understand.

Europe and America jumped ahead during the Industrial Revolution, but now, things seem to be settling back into a more normal range from a historical perspective.

It has already become a cliche in the opinion of much of the foreign and economic policy cognoscenti that the shift in global power has occurred from the Euro-Atlantic to that Asian-Pacific.

But what will this mean over time? How will America respond?

Already President Obama has "pivoted" to Asia as it attempts to partially divest itself from its long conflicts in the Middle East and Central Asia. This is smart and in this area, President Obama deserves credit. The US continues to retain huge advantages that no other nation in the world possesses (two enormous coasts on both the Atlantic and Pacific), great navigable rivers, a huge heartland filled with perhaps the best farmland of any single nation, and a still entrepreneurial spirit. These advantages quite frankly give the US enormous room for error. But those margins, while large, are not infinite. We must become attuned to the future and that future is in the East.

While we cannot ignore Europe and its travails, nor can we leave the explosive tensions of the Middle East completely on their own so long as oil still powers the engines of economic growth, it is in Asia that the next chapters of history will largely be written. This brings us back to the article mentioned above.

There is no sound way to offer prognostications about the future with any degree of certainty, but, there are various prisms through which we can analyze. Training yourself to think this way will be of paramount importance to the next generation of American statesmen.

The Future of "History"

Greg R Lawson — 2011-12-23T00:18:16Z

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.

Even at the end of his purportedly triumphal tome, Fukuyama raises a mournful speculation as below,

"The end of history will be a very sad time. The struggle for recognition, the willingness to risk one's life for a purely abstract goal, the worldwide ideological struggle that called forth daring, courage, imagination, and idealism, will be replaced by economic calculation, the endless solving of technical problems, environmental concerns, and the satisfaction of sophisticated consumer demands. In the post-historical period there will be neither art nor philosophy, just the perpetual caretaking of the museum of human history. I can feel in myself, and see in others around me, a powerful nostalgia for the time when history existed. Such nostalgia, in fact, will continue to fuel competition and conflict even in the post-historical world for some time to come. Even though I recognize its inevitability, I have the most ambivalent feelings for the civilization that has been created in Europe since 1945, with its north Atlantic and Asian offshoots. Perhaps this very prospect of centuries of boredom at the end of history will serve to get history started once again."

So is history linear, or cyclical. Should we follow Hegel, the Bible, Spengler or Toynbee?

Virtue and Soft Despotism

Greg R Lawson — 2011-12-22T22:15:21Z

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

I left the below comment down and thought it useful for further explicating my point on virtue,

"...As Benjamin Rush said,

'The only foundation for... a republic is to be laid in Religion. Without this there can be no virtue, and without virtue there can be no liberty, and liberty is the object and life of all republican governments.'

There is much that can be debated about that point. However, there seems to be something for it in an age of increased secularism.

The bottom line though is virtue. The 'politicians' are mirror images of ourselves. We create them and they ultimately cater to us. Sure, there are factions and special interests galore. Yet, are not each of those made up of a certain number of 'us' despite the fact that each individual grouping obviously differs in composition?

We all want our piece of the pie and support those that will feed it to us. We can't just blame 'them,' we really must blame ourselves too.

Over time we voted for Tocqueville's 'soft despotism.' It has come into existence in a myriad of small and trivial ways that cumulatively add up to what Tocqueville describes below,

'It covers the surface of society with a network of small complicated rules, minute and uniform, through which the most original minds and the most energetic characters cannot penetrate, to rise above the crowd. The will of man is not shattered, but softened, bent, and guided; men are seldom forced by it to act, but they are constantly restrained from acting. Such a power does not destroy, but it prevents existence; it does not tyrannize, but it compresses, enervates, extinguishes, and stupefies a people, till each nation is reduced to nothing better than a flock of timid and industrious animals, of which the government is the shepherd.'"

The Wages of Lost Virtue

Greg R Lawson — 2011-12-21T22:24:19Z

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

He paints an ugly picture of what could almost be called "kleptocracy." He states, eloquently, and I believe accurately the following,

"Ultimately no laws can protect a republic when the people have lost their virtue. If we can’t throw out these bums and find some better people to replace them, American democracy will slowly turn into something very unattractive."

I immediately thought that this is where the Roman analogy plays a large role. There is a reason Caesar rose to power. He was a populist who essentially overthrew an aristocratic kleptocracy. Remember, those who assassinated him on the floor of the Senate were aristocrats fearful of what Caesar would do as "Dictator for Life," but the general masses were so angry by his killing that the conspirators essentially had to flee and lost in a subsequent civil war to the inheritors of Caesar's mantle (Mark Anthony and his ally, albeit temporary, Octavian- soon to become Augustus).

History teaches by inexact analogy, but it it teaches nonetheless.

Whatever one thinks of the "Roman Empire" vs. the "Roman Republic," it didn't just die because of the "Man on Horseback" in Caesar. It was engulfed in internal decay long before, he simply dealt a death blow to a corrupt regime that lost touch with the virile virtues that led Rome to depose their last King and establish a republic in the first place.

Another Chapter for the "Golden Age of Proliferation"

Greg R Lawson — 2011-12-20T11:51:00Z

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?

With the death of Kim jong-Il, the prospects of destabilization on the Korean continent, while not preordained, is a distinct possibility. We simply do not know enough about the new, "Great Successor," Kim jong-Un to be confident of stability during the transition. Who knows what factions there are between the military and civilian leadership or within the military itself. After all, North Korea is unambiguous in only one way- the fact that it is defined by opacity.

However, as this blog mentions, North Korea has already become a central cog in a global system of proliferation. While it is all necessarily murky, North Korea seems, as with the Khan network out of Pakistan, to be very important in to the future of whether we can limit proliferation. Things like the former Bush Administrations, Proliferation Security Initiative is a strong step at mitigating proliferation, though it seems hard to imagine that it will avoid all prospects for smuggling or the losing of nuclear material.

We continue to travel a dangerous path here.