Steve Clemons

The presidential candidacy of Mubarak spy chief Omar Suleiman was hatched more than eight months ago, possibly with the support then of the Muslim Brotherhood.  But then the deal came undone.

photo credit: Reuters

Egypt's Presidential Election Commission has deemed ten candidates unqualified for the upcoming election battle to succeed the toppled Hosni Mubarak.  They include the surprise candidate from the Muslim Brotherhood, Khairat al-Shater; the more radical Islamist Hazem Salah Abu Ismail; and Omar Suleiman, Mubarak's long time spymaster.

Egyptian citizens are massing in Tahrir Square protesting anti-democratic manipulation by the Commission as well as protesting in various pockets of the square this or that candidate on the roster -- or, as it were, not on the roster.

Of those in the current public glare, however, Omar Suleiman is the person I find most fascinating and perhaps consequential. 

First of all, last September I was told by a well connected Arab associate of mine that the military would put Suleiman up to stand for the presidency but would act as if he was separate from them.  I was also told that a secret deal had been made with the Muslim Brotherhood to 'acquiesce' to Suleiman, who despite having served for decades as a powerful head of intelligence in the previous regime was known not to be corrupt.

This was very hard to believe. 

I did not write about what I learned at the time as i could not get anyone from the Muslim Brotherhood or anyone in or close to the military to confirm this fantastical idea.

What I did was share what I learned with some at senior levels of the State Department, White House, Pentagon and CIA -- hoping for some feedback or traded information that might help confirm what I had heard about Suleiman, who had been after all a key ally and supporter of US interests for many years but particularly since 9/11.

In each case, the individual from the Obama administration or diplomatic/national security bureaucracy I spoke to simply thanked me for the information and never came back with anything.  This doesn't imply complicity; perhaps my administration contacts were as incredulous as I was that the military would put forward someone like Suleiman.  I don't know.

What I do know now is that Suleiman did not come out as a candidate at the last minute in some tactical game being played by the Commission and the Army to block and disqualify the Islamist candidates.  Gehad El-Haddad, steering committee member for the Muslim Brotherhood's Renaissance Project, has said "We have a strong understanding that Suleiman came to the scene just (so he could) be removed with Shater and Abu Ismail to afford the decision a higher level of legitimacy."

With due respect to El-Haddad, this was not the case as Suleiman's candidacy had been hatched eight months earlier -- and some of El-Haddad's brothers may have known he was coming down the pike. 

In the final days of the month of January 2012, protestors and revelers massed in Tahir to celebrate the first anniversary of the revolution and to protest the slowness of political reforms.  What was interesting during these events was that many of the regime's lead personalities -- not just the Mubaraks but many Ministers of state and security chiefs -- were targeted and lambasted in the protests as enemies of Egypt and of Islam.  The Muslim Brotherhood organized many of these protests and identified and created the Mubarak-era human targets around which to rally. 

Omar Suleiman, the long time head of intelligence who had participated in many US and European intel confabs to target, render, and occasionally torture Islamists in the wake of 9-11 and who was selected by Mubarak to be his Vice President in the wobbly moments before Mubarak fell from power, was never mentioned or protested against during these January-February 2012 rallies. 

For me, this was circumstantially supportive of the still seemingly bizarre notion that Suleiman would be put forward as a candidate for Egypt's presidency.

I don't know what undid the alleged secret deal between the Muslim Brotherhood and the Army-supported Ruling Council in Egypt, but the entry into the race of the popular Salafist Abu Ismail seems to have triggered the decision for the more 'moderate' Muslim Brotherhood to break its pledge not to enter a candidate and push forward businessman Khairat al-Shater.

Suleiman, who as I wrote some time ago was doing US bidding in both pretending to be a broker promoting reunification talks between the Palestinian Fatah and Hamas parties and yet the principal saboteur of the process, entered the race so that the Ruling Council had their option in -- though Suleiman has publicly disavowed any connection to Egypt's current rulers and the Army.

It's nearly inconceivable that the three candidates whose support comes from the strongest factions of Egyptian society will remain out of the race.  If the ruling stands, violence will likely increase -- or puppet candidates will be put forward with these strong men and their institutions behind them.

But don't count Suleiman out.  He is the phoenix who seems to keep rising out of the ashes of deals gone bad and broken regimes.

George Soros has gone to Berlin to tell the Germans that their policies are leading to the disintegration of not just the Euro, but Europe itself.

Yesterday in a panel on the "Future of Europe" at a conference organized by the Institute for New Economic Thinking, Soros said:

The Euro has really broken down. It has sprung defects, some of which could have been anticipated and some were anticipated. But some actually couldn't. Effectively, heavily indebted countries [in Europe] have ended up in the position of a third world country that is heavily indebted in a foreign currency. And that is only one of the unanticipated results of how things worked out [with the Euro].

Soros went on to say that Europe is simultaneously suffering from a Euro Crisis, a sovereign debt crisis, a balance of payments crisis, a banking crisis, a competitiveness crisis and suffering from other serious structural defects.

Bottom line. Soros thinks Europe is over unless Germany immediately changes course and develops a policy framework that is far more flexible and pragmatic than it is forcing now.

Here is the clip of George Soros on the "Future of Europe" panel:
 

More on the INET meeting in Berlin soon.

What is frightening many in Europe today is that German Finance Minister Schäuble's views are mainstream in Germany, a current account surplus national oasis in a world plagued by debt desertification.

photo credit: Reuters

German Minister of Finance Wolfgang Schäuble in his welcome note to an Institute of New Economic Thinking convening of some of the world's leading economic theorists and practitioners in Berlin this week wrote:

I would also like to point out that it is not just new thinking that we need.  Rather, it is often equally important to recall older ideas and approaches that may have fallen out of the limelight in the meantime.  For example, we in Germany have sharpened our focus on the necessity of pursuing economic and fiscal policies that are consistent with the principles of markets and competition -- what we call Ordnungspolitik.  This approach can make crucial contributions to the concrete design of policies and especially institutions.  In my view, Germany's "debt brake" is an institution that lays the groundwork for reliable long-term policymaking and that by itself can counteract undesriable fiscal and economic developments.

Ordnungspolitik seems to roughly translate into a government debt-averse, laissez-faire approach to economic policy that runs along similar lines to what Republican House Budget Committee Paul Ryan is promoting.

What is frightening many in Europe today is that Schäuble's views are mainstream in Germany, a current account surplus national oasis in a world plagued by debt desertification.

In other words, Germany is not only unwilling to extend a real lifeline to other sinking economies in Europe, it's using this moment in history to promote an ideological austerity that it wants to compel other nations -- when their economies are reeling -- to do the same as the price for German support.

George Soros, anchor speaker among many luminaries at this INET conference, has offered contrarian views to those of Schäuble and published this oped in yesterday's Financial Times, "Europe's Future Not up to Bundesbank."  However, in the side chatter here, most believe that the gap between Germany's economic prescriptions and floundering European siblings won't be bridged.

There is sort of a feeling among many here that the European titanic is sinking and that Germany has control of all the life boats and won't let them out.

In a way, developing 'new economic thinking' is similar to researching and promoting use of renewable energy sources -- vital but it takes a long time and major investment to retrofit a world organized around traditional energy. 

Soros and some others at this conference have been arguing that the very foundation of equilibrium-driven economics is wrong, that markets are instead prone to bubbles and collapse and require constant regulatory involvement. 

But just as the gap between Germany on one side and Spain, Italy, Greece, Portugal, and others on the other is growing -- so too is the gap between market fundamentalists like German Finance Minister Schäuble and 'new economic thinking' market skeptics.

While millions of other-than-German Europeans may sink given Germany's tenaciousness about a debt brake for all and a conservative Ordnungspolitik, also hit hard could be President Obama's reelection aspirations.  Stay tuned.

More »

I just got word that an impressive project designed to help Americans connect with global issues beyond a 'fear-mongering frame' is shuttering itself but will live on through the various reports it produced via the web.

The U.S. in the World Initiative, first launched many years ago by Priscilla Lewis, P.J. Simmons, and Sue Veres -- all then at the Rockefeller Brothers Fund -- was housed in various stages of its development at the Aspen Institute, New America Foundation, and Demos.

Today's toxic political climate and the extreme polarization of views after 9/11 on a number of fronts -- ranging from energy and climate policy to economic questions to national security -- seemed to force politicians and policy-focused organizations to chase people at the extremes rather than to make the case for healthy civic debate, a deliberative process about trade-offs, and decisions based on interests rather than fear.

The U.S. in the World Initiative did a compelling job assembling people from across the political spectrum who were committed to the idea of healthy civic engagement that included respect for minority or divergent views and prepared outlines for those speaking to classrooms, community groups, in the media, or elsewhere in how they might present positions on climate, war and peace, energy, terrorism, and other issues in a way that dialed down the hyperbole, took a big tent approach to the discussion, and yet still conveyed serious data about the respective challenge.

I have thought for years that we needed this kind of initiative on a much more massive scale -- but despite successful swimming against ideological and financing tides for years, to build out USITW just wasn't possible.

Folks may want to check the original U.S. in the World Guide -- which I had a small role in helping to support, and other materials (mostly in pdf format) available throughout the website.

I particularly liked USITW's recent work titled "Managing the Fear Factor."  Two interesting reports that grew out of this project, again in pdf format are "If This Isn't a War on Terrorism, What is it?" and also "Talking Security with Americans, Ten Years after 9/11." 

The first report considers opportunities and challenges associated with eight 'big ideas' that influential communicators might deploy to help change the conversation about terrorism and national security toward less fear-driven directions.  The second is a user-friendly communicators' toolkit based on insights from the Fear Factor project.

The folks that assembled these essays, reports, and toolkits were painstakingly diligent in including commissioned focus group analyses as well as worked with a vast number of communications, psychology, and sociology professionals supplemented by issue specific-experts.

I found this material useful over the years and am glad that it will remain online for some time -- but will certainly miss the U.S. in the World Initiative. 

Clearly the world still needs someone working hard on rationality over unmanaged emotion -- and making the case for healthy civic engagement instead of the regular toxic bickering, policy foodfights and paralysis that we see today.

A few days ago, I shared the key elements of a discussion I had with immediate past International Energy Agency Executive Director Nobuo Tanaka about his concerns about Japan's energy fragility at the moment. 

The bottom line from the talk was that Tanaka, now Global Associate for Energy Security and Sustainability at Japan's Institute of Energy Economics, was that Japan needed to get its nuclear energy production back online, that it could not now afford the allergy that has been shutting down Japan's 54 nuclear energy reactors -- even despite the tragedy at the Fukushima facility after a devastating earthquake and tsunami in the Sendai region.  He also argued that America could help its often taken-for-granted ally by offering sale of its surplus liquefied natural gas (LNG) and could help restore Japanese citizens' trust in their own government and nuclear energy authorities by establishing a peer-level ad hoc commission of US nuclear experts and former U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission commissioners.

I had a number of interesting responses to the piece that I want to share.

The first of this is from Nobuo Tanaka himself who said he agreed with the key tenets of my article but that I actually underestimated (unintentionally) another weak pillar of Japan's energy options -- particularly if a crisis with Iran further escalates. 

Tanaka writes:

Steve.  I read your article carefully again, and I now understand your calculation of total shortage of 800kbd.  Nuclear replacement needed of 500kbd plus Iranian 300kbd*.  This is fine.

But situation can be worse because if Hormuz strait is blocked, Japan will lose 4 million bd rather than 300kbd of Iranian oil.  I said that Saudi Arabia cannot help Japan because they cannot send oil through Hormuz. 

But otherwise this article is strong and correct.

Nobuo TANAKA

Two other informed readers, however, took issue with Nobuo Tanaka's calculations of the 'real costs' of nuclear energy -- and got a bit more expansive about their own critique of the Japanese government and private sector in the wake of the Fukushima disaster.

One reader writes:

I just came back from Japan, and having visited two of the tsunami devastated cities of Kesennuma and Ishinomaki north of Sendai, I am happy to report that recovery is ongoing.
But in terms of Mr. Tanaka's take on Japan's Energy stituation, I am wondering if you did not miss something, namely, if he did not try to:
 

a) Acknowledge that past energy policies (before 3.11) promoting nuclear power generation as the center piece was fool hardy.

b) Recognize the enormity of the damage and suffering that the disaster at Fukushima #1 has caused not just to the immediate people affected, but the entire national psyche.

c) Express some sympathy and even remorse for the suffering of the 100,000 or so people that had to be evacuated with literary "clothes on their backs".

The energy equation of not running 40 or more nuclear reactors at any given time is straight forward--any high school kid can do the calculation, i.e. the Government and the people know that part of the cost.

Perhaps what Mr. Tanaka, METI and TEPCO does not disclose and admit is what the people and the Governors (as politicians) are painfully aware of, namely, that the status and consequence of the complete meltdown of Units 1, 2 and 3 as well as the massive pile of spent fuel of Unit 4 are still unclear.  Hence, it is only sensible and reasonable to wait until the facts are known.

Steve, I need not remind you that Japan is a democracy and the Governors are elected officials who represent the voters, while the bureaucrats such as Mr. Tanaka are not.  Instead of scaring the people of Japan with scenarios of dire consequences if they do not revive METI's failed (some room for argument?) nuclear energy policies, he could listen to their concerns and even urge his former colleagues in METI to map out a different energy path (non-nuclear or greatly reduced nuclear) for Japan--a positive role for METI.

Another reader offers this critique:

Thanks for the article.

I don't have time to reply in detail, but Tanaka's argument for nuclear power is very typical of the kind of scare tactics (``Japanese manufacturing may leave the country'') the nuclear power lobby is using to try and get the nuclear power plants back on.

As Tetsunari Iida of the Institute for Sustainable Energy Policies (and an advisor to numerous local governments as well as the Kan administration) says: ``Go ahead''. He calls the bluff of people like Tanaka in an excellent book refuting the kind of arguments the pro-nuclear lobby is making, showing that the odds of Japanese large firms pulling up stakes and leaving the country because of high fuel prices over the coming months, or even years, are slim because, for most of them, there really is nowhere else to go and few if any have the money to completely start over in a foreign country. Add to that the various political risks and cultural difficulties, Iida-san convincingly argues that the argumentJ apanese firms will pull up stakes is just hot air.

Second, Tanaka probably told you something like "nuclear power costs only five or six yen per kilowatt hour''. That's the official figure, and it's simply not correct. If you add the hidden costs of waste disposal (not included in either METI's or IEA's official calculations but passed along to consumers in each and every monthly utility bill) plus all of the other subsidies needed to build plants, the real cost, according to one study done by an economic professor at Ritsumeikan and now widely endorsed by other economists, is around 15 yen per kilowatt/hour, about the price of wind.

The reaility is nuclear [energy] was a heavily subsidized industry, and this allowed for overproduction and overcapacity, and for hiding the true cost. Everybody benifitted, of course. but now the public and Japan's service and light manufacturing industries, which don't use huge amounts of electricity, want a more objective cost analysis, and an objective series of projections of what the costs are going to be with, or without, nuclear. Instead, they get scare tactics from Keidanren, the steel lobby, the utilities, and people like Tanaka.

As for the mid to long-term future, ask anybody a series of simple questions: Upon what economic statistics and future projections do Japanese government and utility officials make predictions about short, mid, and long-term energy demand? Is there an assumed annual GDP for this year, next year, and the next 10 or 20 years? Do they take into account the fact Japan's population is aging and the number of working age Japanese is dropping with each year? Do they assume the population of 127 million people will remain the same (presumably with massive foreign immigration) over the coming decades? Does fewer Japanese, either in the workplace or in general, mean more total electrictiy consumption or less? For two decades, I've been trying to get answers to the above questions, and nobody seems to really know, including the IEA officials I spoke to.

I don't have time here to write in detail about renewable energy, aging nuclear plants and the varies risks, and increasing costs which will be passed along to consumers, of operating them, etc. I'm sure Tanaka-san believes in his cause. And yes, the short term for some heavy industries (like those that support the IEA) is going to be painful.

But companies like Sharp, Sanyo, Kyocera, and even Toshiba and Mitsubishi see massive potential for non-nuclear energies and are quietly investing in them. The energy future for Japan, in my opinion, is not nearly as dire as Tanaka-san depicts it if everyone outside the nuclear village ignores its warnings and calmly moves forward.

Am I optimstic this will happen? No, to be truthful. However, with a bit of luck, only one or two nuclear plants will come back on in the short-term (those providing power to heavily industrialized areas that are the least energy efficient) and, over the next decade or so, Japan will ease into non-fossil fuel energies. As a nation that imports the vast majority of its energy needs, Japan has far more incentive than most others to become truly self-sufficient, and when Japanese politicians finally realize that Japanese-produced renewable energy allows them to play the ``patriotism'' card (which some like Osaka mayor Toru Hashimoto are already doing) then things are going to get very interesting.

Finally, let me point out I do agree with many of the things Tanaka-san said in the latter part of the piece. I, too, hope some sort of agreement between the U.S. and Japan can be worked out to send LNG from the U.S. to Japan, and I'm following that debate as closely as I can.

These are both highly thoughtful and informed counter-points to Nobuo Tanaka's frame on Japan's dire energy situation -- and like legislators say on the floor of the US Senate, I wanted to offer these for the record.

My sense from my discussion with Tanaka and knowing his take on energy options, that what is driving him now is a risk calculation based on Japan's dependence on external energy inputs, the scale of Japan's dependence, and the possibility that serious disruptions could occur in the near term.  Long term, lots of things could change -- but if serious disruptions occur in the near term, Japan could be facing very bleak times.

However, my own question -- unanswered at the time of this writing -- is that if Japan has a year's worth of strategic oil supplies stockpiled -- which I believe it does, couldn't Japan after an Iranian oil shock use that supply and then in the most dire of situations return the nuclear energy facilities to full operation?

We didn't get this through Wikileaks, but we just acquired an internal Al Jazeera memo to staff indicating a serious downsizing of the DC-based news operations of Al Jazeera English.

Dear All,
 
Today in our Washington DC office we are completing the "next frontier" project to restructure our broadcast model for News contribution from America.

From April 15th, we will no longer be opting-in with presentation from the DC Centre into news bulletins.  Instead we will be taking more live contribution from the field from stories we are covering across the USA.  We will continue to produce Inside Story from DC five days a week.

In addition to the changes in News output, in Programmes we are also moving Empire to New York later this year.  Though Empire does broadcast from locations which are specific to the subject of the show, New York is a natural base given its global make up and its global influence.

This change is part of the wider restructure which began over two years ago in order to enhance one of our core strengths of news gathering and reporting from the field.   We recently started up our bureau in Chicago.  We are soon to formally open our office in Los Angeles.  And we are now fully operational from Miami.  These bureaux add to our existing presence and strength in Washington DC, and New York, and our bureaux across Latin America.   Our commitment to coverage of the Americas remains as strong as ever.  With the US and Mexican elections this year, and with all the other stories from the United States and global stories which relate to the USA it is very important we continue to improve and enhance our coverage from the region.

Very best,

Al

AL ANSTEY |  MANAGING DIRECTOR
AL JAZEERA ENGLISH
www.aljazeera.net/english

We'll have to see what happens -- but this sounds like a pretty big disruption of Al Jazeera's high quality coverage of the American based political scene.  That said, the Al Jazeera English bureaus opening in Chicago, Miami and Los Angeles are reversals of the trend in many major global news operations that are shutting down overseas bureaus.

It's been interesting to watch Al Jazeera gain prominence in Washington over recent years -- with the likes of Hillary Clinton, David Petraeus, Stanley McChrystal, Leon Panetta, Susan Rice and others appearing on Al Jazeera and Al Jazeera English.  President Obama still seems to be maintaining an informal, perhaps unintentional, boycott of the news channel, which still smarts a bit from Obama's decision to grant an exclusive interview to the smaller Al Arabiya during his first year in office.

Many of these high level political interviews might not have been secured if Al Jazeera had not had the robust array of DC-based news products in house at the time.

Many employees of AJ English now fear layoffs will decimate their operation. 

And all this after Al Jazeera just did a deal to move their highly cramped operations to a new building in DC. 

Guess they won't need all that space after all?

photo credit:  Reuters/Alexander Demianchuk

Nobuo Tanaka's hair is on fire.  The immediate past executive director of the International Energy Agency is on a mission attempting to alert officials in the United States, Japan, Europe, China and elsewhere that post-Fukushima Japan may be approaching an energy death spiral.

Tanaka's argument is mathematical at its core.  He argues that if Japan does not find a way to 'turn on' its now shuttered nuclear energy reactors, not only will Japan's already sluggish economic condition be crushed with much larger oil and gas imports from Russia, Southeast Asia and the Middle East -- but because of the costs and risk uncertainty -- Japan's powerful manufacturing base may begin pulling out of the world's third largest economy.  In a morning meeting with me last week, Nobuo Tanaka said that if Japan didn't get its domestic energy production back on line soon, Japan would experience serious 'deindustrialization.'

Tanaka explained that at current levels, Japan consumes about 5 million barrels of oil a day.  Without domestically produced nuclear energy -- for which Japan has stockpiled for decades the world's largest non-weaponized highly processed plutonium reserves -- Japan falls about 10% or half a million barrels of oil short of what it must have. 

Japan has 54 nuclear energy reactors -- only two of which are running at the moment and both of which are scheduled for regular check ups and will shut down either late this month or in early May 2012.  As regular maintenance has required shutting down plant after plant, none of Japan's governors has allowed the nuclear energy plants to be returned to operation.

On top of the post-Fukushima nuclear plant disaster, global tensions with Iran are threatening Japan's dependence on Iranian oil exports, which Japan's share amounts to about 300,000 barrels a day. 

This makes Japan's current potential daily energy deficit about 800,000 barrels per day. 

Tanaka, who after leaving the International Energy Agency is biding his time now as Global Associate for Energy Security and Sustainability at Japan's Institute of Energy Economics, acknowledges that the Saudis have offered Japan, Europe and others who are jittery about the growing tensions with Iran more of its own domestic capacity, which most put at about 2 million barrels a day.  Tanaka says the problem is that that's just not enough to manage global shortfalls if there is a strike on Iran and oil flows are interrupted -- and he believes that the Saudis will favor European needs over Japan's.

On top of the gloom about nuclear energy supply doldrums in Japan, the hard consequences of tensions with Iran, there is a third area of concern Tanaka has:  the weather.  He said that if Japan has a very hot summer -- which some are projecting -- Japan will run another 10% short of supplies on top of the shortages it already projects.

But even all this is not the end of the squeeze.

Japan's other partial energy option is the importation of liquified natural gas (LNG) -- which it imports from Malaysia, Brunei, Qatar, UAE, Indonesia and Australia. Japan needs to further boost imports if it can but prices for LNG are surging.  The combined energy deficit Japan is facing would require a net increase, according to Tanaka, of LNG and oil that would run about $40 billion a year -- wiping out completely Japan's trade surpluses and more.

In meetings hosted by the Center for Strategic and International Studies this past week, Nobuo Tanaka made an appeal for the US to export some of its cheap LNG supply to Japan.  The price of LNG in Japan is currently four times the price in the United States. 

However, House of Representatives Natural Resources Committee Ranking Member Edward Markey has over the last several months been agitating in speeches and correspondence with Energy Secretary for the US to restrict LNG exports -- thus keeping prices low in the United States and leaving key strategic allies like Japan vulnerable to surging global LNG prices and to the geostrategic flirtations from Russia.  Tanaka said that with Russia, about which the US has increasing concerns about its mercantilist global energy behavior, Japan may be forced to build new grid and pipeline infrastructure with Russia given the cold shoulder the US is thus far showing Japan.

Tanaka told me that one high-ranking Chinese official recently approached him asking if and when Japan would turn its nuclear reactors back on -- as Japan's massive energy needs now were disrupting supply patterns and costs and could affect China's energy investment picture if Japan's needs were to become structurally permanent.

To some degree, without the Pulitzer and best-selling energy reality books to his name, Nobuo Tanaka is the Daniel Yergin of Japan and has an encyclopaedic knowledge of the patterns and vectors of energy production and consumption by all the major global energy actors.  His warnings matter -- and yet Japan's political leaders, he believes, have not honestly talked with the Japanese public about the hard choices it faces and a possible economic unraveling that comes with the status quo national nuclear energy allergy.

Tanaka thinks that the U.S. could play a constructive role in helping Japan weather its challenges -- not just in exporting cheaper LNG but it helping bridge the 'trust gap' between Japanese citizens and their government.

The former senior Japan Ministry of Economy Trade & Industry official joked that the only place in the world where an elected legislature may be less popular with its citizens that the US Congress is Japan -- where government incompetence and false statements made during and after the earthquake, tsunami, and nuclear plant disasters have collapsed Japanese trust in their officials.  And trust wasn't high before these incidents.

Tanaka realizes that there is a legitimate debate to be had about the safety and management of Japan's nuclear energy facilities and that standards need to be improved and a national conversation has to take place -- but that a total rejection of nuclear energy will send Japan over a cliff as deindustrialization is triggered by energy shocks.

One solution he thinks is for former US Nuclear Regulatory Commission commissioners and other US-based, respected nuclear energy experts form an ad hoc commission designed to consult with the Japanese nuclear energy industry and political authorities -- and to create what would be a bilateral, or perhaps even an international, peer review structure.  This might allow Japanese citizens to possibly fasten their trust in the international Commission even if doubtful about the solvency of their own business, political, and energy leaders.

It's an interesting proposal -- one that gets to the core issue of trust and lurking uncertainties about nuclear energy in Japan.  Some critics could argue that creating such a US-Japan or international commission would allow Japan to push this needed debate under the rug and cover up dangers lurking in Japan's energy system.

Maybe so -- but it also seems that Nobuo Tanaka could be right that Japan's economic future further unravels if it doesn't figure out some way to get safe nuclear energy back online. 

I've just been on a whirlwind trip in the Middle East and am now in Dubai planning to fly back to Washington tonight.

Don't have much time to write tonight -- but the one impression I can share from talking to a few folks here is that a seemingly brewing storm with Iran is not felt among the regular folks.  Jim Fallows once told me that while he was out doing some work in Seattle at Microsoft and then on various trips to Silicon Valley in California that he experienced an eery distance there from anything that a self-serious Washington was obsessed with. 

I don't want to minimize the dance that the Iranians, Europeans, Americans and Israelis are doing over Iran's nuclear aspirations -- with some involvement from the GCC countries -- but the issue of Iran is not high profile in the Arabic press I was looking at or in the conversations I've had with folks here.

Just a highly subjective snapshot -- but of note to me anyway.

More soon.

Politico's Dylan Byers has written one of the fairest, most earnest reviews of another journalist's work that I've read in some time, particularly when it is about a writer who enjoys enviably high degrees of access at the White House, CIA, State Department and Pentagon.  There is none of the cheap shot snark that invades too much of today's punditry.

I am referring to Byers' piece that just appeared today profiling the work of David Ignatius, who recently was given some insider access to Osama bin Laden files taken during the Navy SEAL Team 6 raid on bin Laden's compound in Abbottabad; and in general has been a valuable lead in the journalistic corps digging out detail on the Obama administration's course that many others have been unable to do.

Just today, Ignatius continues his exclusive reporting on the bin Laden files in the Washington Post with a piece titled "A Lion in Winter."  Here is an interesting excerpt from Ignatius article highlighting bin Laden's lament about al Qaeda's situation and fears about the state of his movement and the deaths of his key followers:

Bin Laden wanted to save what remained of his network by evacuating it from the free-fire zone of Pakistan's tribal areas. He noted "the importance of the exit from Waziristan of the brother leaders. . . . Choose distant locations to which to move them, away from aircraft photography and bombardment."

This evacuation order comes in the most revealing document I was shown, which is a voluminous 48-page directive to Atiyah Abd al-Rahman, who served, in effect, as bin Laden's chief of staff. Throughout this document, bin Laden pondered the likelihood that al-Qaeda had failed in its mission of jihad.

Bin Laden begins by recalling the glory days after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks when his al-Qaeda mujaheddin were "the vanguard and standard-bearers of the Islamic community in fighting the Crusader-Zionist alliance."

But the al-Qaeda leader turns immediately to a bitter reflection on mistakes made by his followers -- especially their killing of Muslims in Iraq and elsewhere. The result, he said, "would lead us to winning several battles while losing the war at the end." Bin Laden ruminated on the "extremely great damage" caused by these overzealous jihadists. Not only is the organization's reputation being damaged, he noted, but "tens of thousands are being arrested" in Egypt and Saudi Arabia.

I was pleased to see that Sally Quinn, wife of legendary Washington Post executive editor Benjamin Bradlee and editor-in-chief and co-founder with Jon Meacham of On Faith, credits the book America and the World: Conversations on the Future of US Foreign Policy with Zbigniew Brzezinski and Brent Scowcroft as a pivot point helping to trigger Ignatius' recent three year ascent to the top of national security columnists. 

Ignatius was the 'interviewer' in this book -- which I put together with then Basic Books editor (now editor at Yale University Press) William Frucht as part of the New America Foundation/Basic Books series.  This book, which I think is still highly relevant to today's geostrategic challenges was selected in 2008 as among New York Times book review editor Michiko Kakutani's top ten favorite books of the year.

From Dylan Byers' article:

But it is in the past three years, during the Obama administration, that Ignatius has really earned his reputation as perhaps the most important media voice in national security circles, particularly related to the Middle East.

Quinn, who says Ignatius is "at the pinnacle" of his career, believes he began to take off in 2008 with the publication of "America and the World," a book of conversations between Zbigniew Brzezinski and Brent Scowcroft moderated by Ignatius.

Clemons, who commissioned the book, agrees and recalls the book party in Sen. John Kerry's backyard that marked a watershed moment in Ignatius's career. "When Chuck Hagel and John Kerry did the book launch for us at John Kerry's home, and Ignatius interviewed Scowcroft and Brzezinki in Kerry's backyard, it was a signal to the national security community that David Ignatius had broadened his portfolio significantly."

Ignatius is also respected among White House officials because of his nonideological approach to national security, which puts him at odds with the Post's editorial page editor, Fred Hiatt.

"Fred sees himself as a liberal interventionist, which David definitely is not," Clemons said. "David has a moral spine, but he is fundamentally a realist." (Hiatt told POLITICO he wasn't "big on labels," but acknowledged his support for a foreign policy "founded on ideals, helping those who are striving for freedom and human rights.")

During the George W. Bush administration, Ignatius wrote a piece profiling the then hardly-reported-on David Addington, titled "Cheney's Cheney."  He wrote this piece after an off-the-record salon dinner the New America Foundation had hosted with former top National Security Council lawyer and then Counselor to the Secretary of State John Bellinger -- in which battles between Bellinger and Addington inside the administration about the legality and course of the Bush/Cheney's anti-terror measures were beginning to surface.  It was a very important article at the time as Addington had largely escaped any media interest in his activities until then.

It's in that spirit that I title today's response to Dylan Byers' good essay, "David Ignatius: A National Security Wonk's National Security Wonk."

photo credit:  Charlie Rose Show

More »

The New York Times editors nail it today in a piece ridiculing the settlement between too-big-to-fail banks and states designed to assist anti-foreclosure efforts and underwater home mortgage victims.

Although the Obama administration did get some financial sector reforms through, like Dodd-Frank, the result seems to have been not a rewiring of the system to change the balance of power between economic stakeholders, particularly consumers and workers, but rather a resuscitation of the old system with some fig leafs (like this $26 billion foreclosure settlement) designed to cover up the corruption.

The editors write:

When it comes to helping homeowners, banks are treated as if they still need to be protected from drains on their capital. But when it comes to rewarding executives and other bank shareholders, paying out capital is the name of the game.

And at a time of economic weakness, using bank capital for investor payouts leaves the banks more exposed to shocks. So homeowners are still bearing the brunt of the mortgage debacle. Taxpayers are still supporting too-big-to-fail banks. And banks are still not being held accountable.

National Journal Chief Correspondent Michael Hirsh concurs, writing along these lines a few days ago, "Has Wall Street Really Changed?" as well as his "A Tale of Two Financial Heroes" which pivots off The Atlantic's Economy Summit that brought together the likes of Paul Volcker, Robert Rubin, Sheila Bair, Lawrence Lindsey, Douglas Holtz-Eakin, Lawrence Summers, Gene Sperling, Laura Tyson, Allan Meltzer and others.

photo credit: Reuters

Happy St. Patrick's Day to all.  I'm not really all that into this festive day but I can be dragged along to get into the fun now and then.  That said, A friend has been wearing this O'Bama shirt all day today.

And what it makes me think of is Sarah Palin as depicted in the film Game Change repeatedly saying "O'Biden."

I really, really want a green O'Biden shirt, coffee mug, refrigerator magnet, bumper sticker. . .And to be totally balanced, I'd enjoy some O'Romney paraphernalia too.  Someone get Cafe Press on it.

Happy St. Patrick's to all of the O'Bidens and all of you.

UPDATE:

A reader sends in this note that is well informed about the abbreviation battles sounding St. Patrick's Day:

This was always St. Paddy's day (short for Padraic or Padraig) until recently, when it turned into St. Patty's Day for reasons I don't understand.  I thought that you would be interested in this clarification, complete with the rolling Twitter feed at the bottom.

http://paddynotpatty.com/ 

This morning, starting at 9:15 am EST, I'll be having a discussion with Virgin Group founder Richard Branson on his new campaign to decriminalize drug possession and to generally knock out the rationale of the so-called Global War on Drugs.

Also joining us will be Drug Policy Alliance Executive Director Ethan Nadelmann who will forever be remembered for the zinger line to Bill Maher: "Pot is the new gay."

Feel free to join us -- starting in less than an hour.

 
Live broadcast by Ustream

Today, more than 800 people will attend "The US Economy Summit" organized by The Atlantic and presented at the Capital Hilton Hotel.

The entire program (here is pdf of schedule) will stream live here on this blog as well as the Atlantic Live site -- and will air in full, live, on C-Span and also be featured in certain segments on Bloomberg TV and CNBC.

The program features a full 360 degree view of the economy policy debate from major, and some controversial, thinkers and policy practitioners from across the political and economic spectrum.  The program includes former Fed Chairman Paul Volcker, former Treasury Secretary Robert Rubin, former Clinton economic adviser Laura Tyson, former FDIC chief Sheila Bair, former McCain campaign economic adviser Douglas Holtz-Eakin, former Treasury Secretary Lawrence Summers, Obama economic adviser Gene Sperling, Export-Import Bank President Fred Hochberg, former G.W. Bush economic adviser Lawrence Lindsey, Federal Reserve Board expert and economist Allan Meltzer, former Ron Paul economic adviser Peter Schiff, among many others.


Free desktop streaming application by Ustream
Each of these people have been tasked with addressing not only what is fragile and not working in the economy today -- both substantively and politically -- but what they'd do to fix things.

What would you do?  I'd like to hear thoughtful, constructive thinking on this -- and add the smart commentary that may come in by email or comments to a roster of what we'd consider the best ideas from the day on this important subject.

Out on the news stands today is also the April 2012 issue of The Atlantic which features Ben Bernanke on the cover with a profile of his work -- a great and interesting story that weighs whether he is a hero or villain.

More soon.  Hope you find the live broadcast of the program interesting.

Last year, I ran into the Washington Post's veteran President watcher Bob Woodward over at National Airport and chatted with him about Libya and the choices and perspectives swarming around President Obama at the time.  I can't compromise our conversation other than to say that we thought that we ought to create some sort of two-week foreign policy boot camp that we got every White House aspirant to agree to go through before running for the presidency -- not only about important national security case studies but how to manage divergent factions around him or her.

After watching the recent reckless calls of Senators John McCain, Lindsey Graham and Joe Lieberman for direct US military involvement in Syria -- I feel that the pool of foreign policy boot camp students should be expanded to everyone who runs for the US Senate.  Maybe in a year or two we could add the House of Representatives candidates.

After he retires at the end of this Congress in 2012, Senator James Webb would make the ideal teacher -- maybe even the headmaster -- at this Foreign Policy Boot Camp.  Woodward and I could be adjuncts.

On Wednesday, Jim Webb went down and said what needed to be said about America's limited options in the worsening crisis in Syria -- and also stated that Libya was an anomaly when it came to US military action, not a rule. 

From a press release that the Senator's office released:

Senator Webb reiterated his concerns about the precedent set by the President's unilateral decision to use force in Libya, where historical definitions of national security interest were not clearly met. "I have a great deal of concern when you look at the Libya model where the basic justification has been humanitarian assistance, which is very vague and is not under the historical precepts that we have otherwise used," said Senator Webb.

Webb's comments about Syria were constructive and, in my view, indirectly chided those Senators in the Chamber chomping at the bit for yet another deployment of US military force abroad. 

Webb stated:

When people are talking about the need for leadership, we need to have a little sense of history. Leadership is not always taking precipitant action when the emotions are going. It is in achieving results that will bring about long-term objectives. . .Probably the greatest strategic victory in our lifetime was the Cold War. That was a conscious, decades-long, application of strategy with the right signals with respect to our national security apparatus.

What Senator Webb is saying is that emotional impulses may feel good at the time but they rarely achieve intended results.  Americans may feel sympathy for and the pain of those Syrians being ruthlessly attacked by security forces of their own government -- but to lash out emotionally, to commit to bombing campaigns, to arm the apparent rebels with US weapons may not achieve neither an outcome that stabilizes Syria or one that protects American interests in the long run.

I think Webb is impressively resisting the sweeping currents of passion about Syria in the right way -- and calling for sensible strategy.  Syria and Libya are vastly different in the way that government forces and those trying to rebel are standing off.  In the 1990s, Turkey moved hundreds of thousands of troops to the Syrian border during unrest then because of fears that Syrian-based Kurds would move across the border into Turkey.  Arab fighters could decide to flood into Syria if the fighting there turns into a sectarian Civil War.

Graham, McCain, and Lieberman need to realize that there are other powers with equities in the Syria situation -- and that they can also apply pressure and operate in ways that the US cannot.  But a near term, large scale US military intervention, or bombing campaign, in Syria will not stabilize Syria.

I would like to see the victims of and those standing against Assad's thuggery prevail -- but it's important for those watching these uprisings to remember that revolutions are mostly domestic affairs -- and that sometimes it takes the horrors of conflicts like the one we are seeing in Syria to galvanize the people enough to throw off their government and to select another one.  The role of outside powers is usually and should be minimal -- and if a nation like the US deeply intervenes, which is what McCain, Lieberman and Graham want -- then the legitimacy of the successor government could be undermined.

Former Senator and compulsive diarist Bob Graham along with former Senator Bob Kerrey (who has just announced his plans to run in Nebraska for the Senate again) have said that they think that the Saudi government may have been involved in the 9/11 terrorist attacks.

From a report in the New York Times that ran last week:

Now, in sworn statements that seem likely to reignite the debate, two former senators who were privy to top secret information on the Saudis' activities say they believe that the Saudi government might have played a direct role in the terrorist attacks.

"I am convinced that there was a direct line between at least some of the terrorists who carried out the September 11th attacks and the government of Saudi Arabia," former Senator Bob Graham, Democrat of Florida, said in an affidavit filed as part of a lawsuit brought against the Saudi government and dozens of institutions in the country by families of Sept. 11 victims and others. Mr. Graham led a joint 2002 Congressional inquiry into the attacks.

I'd love to see what evidence or key questions they think are unresolved or which lead to Saudi government sponsorship of this terror attack.

But strategically, their assertions about Saudi behavior make zero sense.  The attacks precipitated a direct military intervention in the region that brought down Saddam Hussein -- which unleashed the constraints on arch-Saudi rival, Iran.  These attacks created massive tensions between the Arab world and the US -- and have made the generally pro-US foreign policy role played behind the scenes by the Saudis much more complicated.

Fantastic conspiracy theories are part of the currency of the Middle East, but perhaps the trend is spreading to America.  Will be watching to hear more detail on this. 

More »

My Atlantic colleague Jeffrey Goldberg just scored an extensive interview with President Obama in which Obama says to Iran and Israel, "As President of the United States, I don't bluff."

Goldberg's preamble is important and must-read, but the interview itself is vital and gives one a good sense of both Obama's strategic strengths and weaknesses.

The decision of the White House to talk to Goldberg reflects their desire to speak to what Obama defined in the interview as "the Israeli people, and. . .the pro-Israel community in this country" less than a week before the annual Washington meeting of AIPAC, the American Israel Public Affairs Committee. 

This was not an interview designed to warn Iran of the consequences of proceeding down a nuclear weapons acquisition track. This read more like a combination of assurances to the American Jewish community that Obama was a serious national security hawk on Iran during an election year.  It felt like pandering -- not too dissimilar to presidential candidate Obama's speech to AIPAC in 2008 when he made the remarkable, provocative, Arab-offending statement, "Jerusalem will remain the capital of Israel, and it must remain undivided."

During the interview, Obama expressed dismay that despite standing with Israel on challenge after challenge -- every key issue facing the country -- that many doubted the sincerity of his support for Israel.  The President sounded emotionally 'needy', wanting validation that the American Jewish community and Israelis really, really liked him and understand that he's on their side. 

This is not presidential; this is not the way the President of the United States should be positioning himself -- and it's clear that the emotional and political leverage that Netanyahu has engineered over Obama has had a real impact. 

Israel is a client state of the United States -- and while it has its own interests, Israel's security is deeply entwined with the strategic choices the United States makes, which is what this Iran debate is about. 

Israel, under Netanyahu's leadership, seems to want to drive a dynamic in which it demonstrates its power by compelling the President to attack Iran on its behalf, to set up triggers and red-lines, and railroad track that lead to a binary choice of bombing Iran or acquiescing to and appeasing a new nuclear weapons power.  This is neither in Israel's real interests -- nor America's. 

Obama tries to convey this stating that Iran is "self-interested", i.e. rational.  He says that over the last three decades, Iran's leadership has demonstrated that it does care about the regime's survival and is sensitive to the opinions of their citizens and disturbed by Iran's general global isolation.

Obama states:

They know, for example, that when these kinds of sanctions are applied, it puts a world of hurt on them. They are able to make decisions based on trying to avoid bad outcomes from their perspective. So if they're presented with options that lead to either a lot of pain from their perspective, or potentially a better path, then there's no guarantee that they can't make a better decision.

But what Obama seems not to understand in the well-meaning description of his attempted Iran strategy is that he is actually creating a railroad track to disaster.  He conveys in the interview a disinterest in containment, suggesting that Iran acquiring a nuclear weapon changes the world and triggers a rampant and dangerous proliferation in an unstable part of the global neighborhood. 

Not all nuclear bombs are the same.  Israel's 200 plus thermonuclear warheads are not simple fission devices and have a destructive capacity that could seriously end Iran as a functioning state.  Iran, even if it were to produce a nuclear warhead tomorrow, would have none of the destructive capacity that Israel could rain down on the Islamic Republic of Iran. Anthony Cordesman, David Albright and others have done extremely important and useful, admittedly Stangelovian analyses of what a back-and-forth firing exchange of nuclear weapons would mean for both states.  As Cordesman told me recently, Israel would survive fine -- Iran would be devastated.

Many analysts believe that Iran's appetite for either a nuclear weapons capacity or a Japan-like "near nuke" capacity (meaning it has the potential but does not actually build the systems) would help provide Iran with a shield behind which it could protect itself while then continuing to operate global, transnational terror networks with impunity.  Perhaps this is true -- or perhaps three decades of paranoia about American calls for regime change in Iran have hard-wired the place to want anything that solves its security dilemma.  I see both tracks as having merit.

That said, what Obama is doing in this interview and in his needy solicitation of American Jewish community and Israeli citizen support is the opposite of where he started his interview with Jeffrey Goldberg:  :"I...don't, as a matter of sound policy, go around advertising exactly what our intentions are."

But he did.  Obama essentially is saying in this interview that Iran is one of the top five foreign policy concerns of his since moving into the White House, that he is attempting to organize a pressure-based effort to cause pain for Iran's leaders and move it to a different course, and that he won't accept failure -- that he will squeeze and surround and bomb (if needed) Iran to compel it never to acquire nuclear weapons.  That's not strategy.  Obama is overplaying the endgame and creating expectations that if sanctions don't work -- which they often and usually don't -- that he will bomb the country.  This is irresponsible and harmful to American and Israeli and broad Middle Eastern interests. 

Obama needs to call former National Security Advisor Brent Scowcroft and have a long chat.  President Obama, Tom Donilon, Denis McDonough and other members of the NSC team often reference Scowcroft as one of their north stars on strategic policy -- but word is that the President has rarely connected with the sage strategist.   And then the President should check in with Zbigniew Brzezinski who could help the President understand the chess board in front of him a bit better.

Both would tell him that it is a mistake for a US President to constrain himself to two choices -- and he should keep his powder entirely dry.  He should not be telegraphing key red lines to Netanyahu who has been one of his global adversaries and antagonists -- who has been the key reason why so many Israelis and members of the American Jewish community have doubts about Obama's seriousness and resolve about Israel's core security. 

Netanyahu has done more to create global doubts about Obama's toughness as the result of the Obama-Netanyahu skirmish over the further expansion of Israeli settlements during the fragile, early efforts to move Israel-Palestine peace talks forward.  Netanyahu became the Krushchev to Obama's Kennedy -- and Obama, to this day, is struggling to look strong when he's in the same room or engaged with Israel's pugnacious prime minister.

Jeffrey Goldberg's interview with Obama was serious and reasoned -- but the one area that I think he missed, or didn't give Obama a chance to unload on Israel's strategic mistake in not doing more on the Palestine peace effort. 

What didn't come out in this interview is what happens the day after the US might bomb Iran; or better yet, if Israel bombs Iran.  Given what we have seen in the Arab spring, which Arab governments will crumble and which will survive after they see an American or Israel strike against Iran? 

My sense is that the Arab street will churn, that the depth and breadth of Islamic political movements will grow.  I've often said that US security commitments to Israel are like a New Orleans levy -- working fine for the time being -- but beware a massive storm.

Israel's failure to do more to resolve a serious and sustained peace with Palestinians has demonstrated how it has undermined its own long term security interests with short-sighted, impulsively narrow obsession with territorial expansion.   This pugnacious disinterest in doing anything to change the Palestinian status quo undermines even luke-warm support for Israel in the region among Arab citizens and limits the ability of realpolitik-driven Arab governments from doing too much to embrace Israel's concerns, even if the many Sunni governments in the region largely fear Iran's rise as well.

President Obama should have used this interview to counsel Israelis about the strategic myopia of their government.

Obama told Goldberg that "we've got Israel's back."  What Obama failed to ask is whether "Israel has America's back." 

If Israel worked harder at achieving regional peace, if it did less to undermine the perception of American power and the capabilities of President Obama, if it put options on the table other than a desperate need to know when the US would 'bomb' Iran, then Israel might have America's back. 

But there is little indication that Israel is shifting its behavior despite the uncertainties brought by the Arab spring and the rise of political Islamic movements around it.  A kinetic, direct military confrontation with Iran could actually produce the nightmare Israel and the US want to avoide -- a completely alienated, isolated Iran whose nuclear program is delayed but eventually achieved and scores to settle.

Admittedly, this is a little Dr. Strangelovish -- but was very intrigued by this video clip a reader sent of "Robot Quadrotors Performing James Bond Theme."

The reader who sent me this wrote to me that this might have been an alternative way to do   (expensive as high tech approach, but cheap in terms of lives sacrificed).   He writes:

Imagine militarized versions of this flying around in the COIN zone, with not only the capacity to observe, but to strike. As in, if this bird- or maybe insect-sized drone flitting around all the time at ground level catches you with weapons, bomb materials, cell phones tune to suspicious channels, etc., the little sumbitch will simply zap you dead in your bed, while not blasting your entire clan.  

Not ACLU approved, to be sure, but this would be true shock and awe.  That is, perhaps something so paralyzingly scary that it might have the effect, in the 21st century, that the machine gun had in the 19th century.    So scary that it simply shuts down opposition.   

As you know, I am not particularly fond of COIN in general, in the sense of thinking that it's something that the US should be doing much of, but if we are going to do it, we ought to do it right.  The problem with the neocons is that they were so hopped up on moral clarity that they neglected the technology that would have made their schemes possibly--possibly--work.

Whether one buys this argument or not, what this video reminds me of is that as former Center for a New American Security President John Nagl would often say:  "There are more musicians working for the Pentagon than there are diplomats in the State Department."

Musical copters -- Like unmanned bombers (drones), perhaps we are one day going to see unmanned marching bands.

Take it easy.  It's Friday. . .

More »

Formally led by the Queen of England, this collection of former British colonies could reconvene into something new and powerful.

Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper, Nigerian President Goodluck Jonathan, Australian Prime Minister Julia Gillard, British Prime Minister David Cameron and Pakistani Prime Minister Yusuf Raza Gilani hold a joint news conference at the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting in Perth / Reuters

India, once considered the jewel in the crown of the British empire, is a member of the fossilized skeletal remains left behind, the Commonwealth of Nations -- but is also a member of the BRICS, the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (SAARC), the G-20, the ASEAN Regional Forum (ARF), the East Asia Summit, IBSA (India, Brazil, South Africa), the NAM (or Non-Aligned Movement), the United Nations, World Bank, International Monetary Fund, and the World Trade Organization.

Most big nations -- and even small ones -- are increasingly enmeshed in lots of overlapping global clubs. In part this is hedging, not wanting to be left out, not knowing what will eventually happen to the old-US fashioned, post-World War II structures that just don't align with global power realities today.

Brazil, Australia, Turkey, South Africa, and China today are among the world's leading innovators in engineering even more new associations that let some nations in and keep others out -- all as potential economic or security buffers particularly in a world that is  pulled away from over-arching, one size fits all, global institutions, to increasingly powerful regional structures and associations.

The Commonwealth of Nations, a voluntary association of 54 independent countries (though one is suspended at the moment) -- "nearly all of which were formerly under British rule" is not a cluster of countries that one would think of as the potential forefront of a globally agile growth club.  Just the acronyms of BRICS or IBSA sound much more hip.

But Michael Ancram, also known as Lord Lothian -- a former conservative party shadow defense minister and foreign minister -- has proposed a 'Neo-Commonwealthianism' to kick-start the hopes and aspirations of both elder powers (like the UK), rising powers like India and South Africa -- and powers like Nigeria that matter but are flagging.

In a provocative paper titled "Farewell to Drift: A New Foreign Policy for a Network World", Ancram notes that the Commonwealth -- whose 'head' remains today the Queen of England -- covers 30% of the population, has members on every continent, and strong representation of the world's most significant religions.  Ancram believes that this left-behind infrastructure, that appears arthritic and worn out to most, could be revitalized into "a dynamic vehicle for proactive and constructive diplomacy."

He notes that:

Too often the Commonwealth is scorned internationally as antiquated and irrelevant. Nothing could be further from the truth.  Over half of its 1.7 billion members are under 25 and the principles it espouses are those that modern and progressive leaders the world over seek to propagate and support.

Ancram then slides into the touchy subject of what these clusters in part are about -- which is to in part promote like-mindedness among the members and their interests vs an outside set of national players.  He notes that today's government in Russia and the Communist regime in China are still occasionally uncomfortable for fast growing democracies like Brazil, Turkey, South Africa, and India.

While the BRICS has Brazil, India, South Africa and does include China and Russia -- it is also interesting to note that IBSA gives India, Brazil and South Africa room to coordinate and engage with each other without Russia and China on occasion.

Ancram writes about democracy promotion opportunities via the Commonwealth as well:

While problems of fostering democratic states in the Middle East and South Asia have left a vastly diminished international appetite and capacity for similar exercises, there is still a need for budding democracy in developing countries to be encouraged and supported. Other initiatives seem to be withering on the branch. 'Dropping democracy from 10,000 feet thankfully seems to have run its course. Extending EU membership appears almost to have reached stalemate. The global community in any event cannot be dogmatic or squeamish about democratic principles as often the most pressing matters of international business involve un-democratic nations such as Russia and China. The disagreements that so regularly paralyse the Security Council would afflict any group of leading democracies.

The quiet promotion of democracy is therefore one of the major roles that the Commonwealth can undertake. The exclusion of both Fiji and Pakistan from the Commonwealth provided much-needed incentive and momentum for a return to democracy in those countries. The "badge of respectability" that Commonwealth membership bestows can add to internal pressures towards democracy.

Some of the obvious leaders in Commonwealth 2.0 arrangement would be India, Canada, New Zealand, Australia, South Africa, Singapore, and Malaysia.  Oil-rich Nigeria is also a key tone-setter on the African continent.

I asked Michael Ancram whether he really thought that these countries would be ready for the push of reset on one of the world's old colonial artifices -- and he quickly said, no -- not headquartered as the Commonwealth is today in London.   Ancram stated that the capital of Commonwealth 2.0 had to be based in India.  "India needs to lead this," Ancram said.

Whether or not he convinces India, and South Africa to tilt more of their attention to revitalizing an old global network that includes states like the UK and thus de-emphasizing the time they put into the BRICS and IBSA, the proposal is a novel one. 

Like old designs on museum pieces and costumes from Tokugawa era Japan, or the early Renaissance in Europe making their way into the trendiest fashions today, Michael Ancram may be on to something important in revitalizing a network that once was the most powerful in the world.

Photo credit: TED

This evening, The Atlantic's new event series, Atlantic Exchange, will host former Al Jazeera Director General Wadah Khanfar for a discussion I will moderate titled "Arab Revolutions Televised, Tweeted and Blogged: The Exit & Entrance Interview with Wadah Khanfar."

Khanfar is now the founding President of the Sharq Forum.

This will stream live here (see below) on this site between 5:45 pm EST and 7:00 pm EST.

For those who want an early dose of Wadah Khanfar, here is his mesmerizing talk about media and the Arab Spring given at TED last year.

If you have any questions you want posed, send to my Twitter Account, @SCClemons.

 
Live broadcast by Ustream
Should be interesting.

The world's emerging economies will need more than just cheap labor to keep growing.

People pass by a billboard of a Chinese family in the financial district of Shanghai / Reuters

The BRICS comprise four distinct trillion-dollar plus economies (Brazil, Russia, India & China) plus the recent addition of South Africa which has nearly a half trillion dollar GDP.  Whether it was a marketing ploy or brilliantly prescient, Goldman Sachs economist Jim O'Neill -- who coined the BRICs moniker -- created a new portal into debating and thinking about the future global distribution of power that has more dynamism than the conventional binary framing of America vs. Asia or more flamboyantly, the West vs. the Rest. 

Many have tinkered with the question of whether the BRICS nations are the right ones to celebrate as tomorrow's national wunderkinds or not.  I'm guilty of this as well -- suggesting at the recent Halifax International Security Forum that Turkey, itself closing in on membership in the trillion dollar GDP club, be considered the "silent T" in TBRICS.

In contrast, George Mason University's Jack Goldstone tosses out the decade old skeletal structure of BRICS and says that new significant trends have changed which nations will be up and which down.  He suggests that TIMBIs be the new acronym -- Turkey, India, Mexico, Brazil and Indonesia.

Goldstone tosses out Russia and China on demographic grounds, arguing that labor force growth will determine which economies are most fast-growing and vibrant.  Russia's population is shrinking while China's workforce will age fairly rapidly.

The argument I find more compelling, however, is that the density and breadth of a country's middle class -- more than the size of labor force -- may determine whether a rising nation jumps up to the level of a stable, enduring, high-wage job generating economy. 


Source:  OECD Development Centre Working Paper 285

Two must read treatments of this subject are first, The Bridge to a Global Middle Class by Sherle Schwenninger and Walter Russell Mead published in 2003 by the Council on Foreign Relations; and second, an OECD Development Centre Working Paper titled "The Emerging Middle Class in Developing Countries," by Homi Kharas published in January 2010. 

Here is the pdf of the 54-page Kharas paper.  Regrettably, the Schwenninger/Mead book is priced by the Council on Foreign Relations at $150.00 -- not very middle class friendly -- but they have a number of shorter articles that can be googled and this survey of their thinking by Glenn Yago and James Barth captures the key principles of their smart book.

What Schwenninger and Mead argue is that the development of stable financial instruments and social support structures that hold and direct capital to productive investment in a country -- like a stable (not corrupt) home mortgage framework.  Other middle class-oriented structures include the creation of retirement savings systems and broadly deployed health care networks.  These institutions can create legitimacy for the state in contrast to the hot money flows from outside that can undermine governments.  These structures also help create a class of vital middle class stakeholders whose self interest can moderate the potential bad decisions and extremes of politicians.

As Barth and Yago summarize:

[Schwenninger and Mead] convincingly argue that for market-oriented reforms to succeed and produce lasting stability, they must hold out the prospect that all citizens will directly benefit from them. Reforms, for example, must be designed to allow ordinary people access to home ownership through the availability of affordable long-term financing or for private entrepreneurs to enter long protected, government directed business markets. Expanding economic participation in home and business ownership is key to the expansion of consumption and production in these economies. Not only will a program of middle-class oriented development create a constituency that will support reform, but it will be the best guarantor of global stability.

But what are the prospects for middle class oriented development among the BRICS countries and other parts of the world?

Homi Kharas' interesting report doesn't do a line item review of nations -- but he does of regions.  And he delves into China's and India's growth vectors in great detail in his paper -- as well as comparing many other high growth economies, including Brazil's.

What he argues is that while there are serious structural constraints facing the super sizing of China's and India's middle class -- both are poised to grow this segment of their economy faster than nearly any other part of the world in the decades to come.  Kharas writes that China's 157 million person middle class is now only second to the United States in absolute size.  China is now the world's largest user of energy, the largest vehicle market, the number one cell phone market.  Kharas also argues that "China's new middle class is eager to become the world's leading consumers" nothing that Chinese consumers shop 9.8 hours per week compared to 3.6 hours a week for the average American.

Kharas cautiously notes that China's middle class is still small -- only 12% -- but that the growth rate of the middle class may help it overcome Brazil's middle class distribution "trap."

About Brazil, Kharas writes:

In this regard, China would do well to look to the contrasting experiences of Brazil and South Korea. Between 1965 and 1980, Brazil grew at an average of 5.6 per cent per capita per year, becoming a middle-income country with a per capita income level of USD7600 (PPP). Yet due to its high income inequality, Brazil's middle class made up only 29 per cent of the country's population in 1980.

This made it impossible for the country to rely on middle-class consumption to drive the transformation into an innovation-based economy. Since 1980 the country has remained primarily a commodity exporter, and has struggled to sustain growth. Per capita incomes today are only slightly higher than they were thirty years ago (0.7 per cent annual growth), and the middle class never took off, currently accounting for just 38 per cent of total population. Brazil's recent growth performance is more hopeful and it may yet join the club of convergers, especially if it can leverage recent oil finds into sustained growth.

In the chart at the top of this article, one sees what happens to the distribution of global middle class consumption if Kharas' assumptions are correct.

Essentially, North America's share of middle class consumption plummets from 26% in 2009 to 10% by 2030; Europe from 38% in 2009 to 20% by 2030; the Asia Pacific from 23% in 2009 to 59% in 2030.  Central and South America falls from 7% in 2009 to 6% over this period; Sub-Saran Africa remains at 1% during the time span while the Middle East and North Africa remain flat at 4% over those two decades.

One sees why President Obama and his National Security Advisor Tom Donilon have committed to strategically rebalancing America's assets toward Asia and are reducing the footprint of attention and resources directed at South Asia and the Middle East. The Asia Pacific is where a juggernaut of world economic growth will be.

Another great chart to understand trends in the world is this one: