Incomes, Inequality, and the World Bank

The Post has a story about a World Bank report that came out recently, describing the broad-spectrum failings of poverty alleviation programs.  In short, according to the report, 60% of countries receiving poverty-alleviation loans from the Bank have remained stagnant, or actually lost ground in the "war on poverty".

 

My favorite, exerpted quote, though is this:

"For a sustained reduction in poverty over a period of time, it really pays to worry about both growth and distribution," said Vinod Thomas, director-general of the Independent Evaluation Group. "It has been a mistaken notion that you can grow first and worry about the distribution later."

As China-watchers (and Chinese themselves) can speak on, one of the main concerns for the CCP right now is growing income inequality (and the social unrest that is coming along with it).

 

There are two big challenges that I see on this right now.  First, finding a plan for any given country that will allow it to effectively redistribute wealth/income while not creating a 'welfare state'; and Second, how to convince those who are accumulating the wealth and earning the income that it's actually a good idea for them to surrender some of that wealth.

 

My guess is that the first person who figures out a highly effective way to do this is going to earn a Nobel Prize.

 

 

The Anxiety Kingdom

There is a story in today's Post that, in microcosm, describes China's growing economic problem: Unemployable college graduates. Not because they lack the skills to get decent jobs (the jobs their parents assume college will open the doors for them to get), but because China's economic and regulatory environment make it too hard for the business to start to provide an opportunity to the young people with energy and creativity.

Like so many things, there's a catch. China can't afford to simply free up the restraints on their economic and business sytems. Why? Because it will tear apart the economy from too much economic growth. It's currently caught between a rock and a hard place, both of it's own making: it needs as many college graduates as possible to provide upward mobility for a population enormously in need of hope; but at the same time it has to slow (to a modest 8 or 9%)the economic growth so that the economy doesn't destabilize the whole country.

I'm a bit worried that we're going to have more of this kind of news before we hear less.

Global warming and economics

Global Warming To Cost Up To 20% of Global GDP

In college and in grad school, I had ongoing debates with my roommates and friends about the need to quantify, in dollar terms, the costs of global warming, if we wanted the businesses and governments around the world to start taking it seriously. If there isn't a dollar value attached to it, it doesn't affect their bottom line, and they don't have to worry about it.

Sir Nicholas Stern has just done this, in a 700 page report he prepared under a commission from the Chancellor of the Exchequer, Gordon Brown, in the UK. In his report he presents the costs of global warming at between 5-20% of annual global GDP over the next century plus. If this were an average loss to everyone on the planet, it would mean the average american would earn 8,000 less a year, just because of global warming.

It's a long report, the executive summary is even 27 pages. The middle of the summary is pretty interesting. I'd suggest starting to read at page 10 or so.

Bitter Partisanship

If you thought bitter partisanship was constrained to the Western Hemisphere (where outside the U.S., Mexico is also bitterly--and evenly--divided) there is news from Eastern Europe showing how we are not alone in our "I'm right and you're wrong" attitude. At least we haven't resorted to tear gas, rubber bullets, or fire hoses yet, as is happening in Budapest now.

Today is the 50th anniversary of their 1956 uprising against the Soviet Union. So maybe, in a bittersweet sense, it is fitting.

North Korean Situation

News From the Frontier
This is a good story from the Monterey Herald about the situation in one spot along the Chinese-North Korean border. It does a good job of giving a glimmer of what is and what could happen, depending on how the situation unfolds.

Take a look, here.

From the Security Council
The AP also has a good recap of the Security Council resolution, including additional restrictions imposed by individual countries: U.S., Japan, and potentially Australia.

The Security Council voted Saturday to impose the following sanctions on North Korea, in response to its claim that it has conducted a nuclear test:

_ an embargo on major weapons hardware such as tanks, warships, combat aircraft and missiles.

_ the freezing of the assets of people or businesses connected to weapons programs.

_ a travel ban for anyone involved in weapons program.

_ a ban on the sale of luxury goods to North Korea.

_ a ban on the importing of materials that could be used in unconventional weapons or ballistic missiles.

_ a call for inspections of all cargo leaving and arriving in North Korea to prevent any illegal trafficking in unconventional weapons or ballistic missiles.

In addition to the U.N. resolution, the United States maintains its own sanctions on North Korea, including:

_ a ban on U.S. defense exports and sales to the country.

_ a ban on U.S. aid, including a halt in food deliveries through the World Food Program, though not all food assistance has been banned.

_ several financial restrictions that oppose support for North Korea from international financial institutions and restrict business with banks that the U.S. alleges have helped the regime counterfeit and launder money.

_ strict limits on the amount of trade between the two countries.

Japan has imposed the following additional measures and is considering several more:

_ a ban on the entry of North Korean ships to its ports.

_ a trade embargo.

_ a continued ban on the Mangyongbong-92 ferry's entry into Japanese waters. Japan has restricted the movement of the ferry, which once served a major conduit for trade, since July when North Korea test-fired seven missiles into the waters between the two countries.

Australia is considering the following additional sanctions:

_ a ban on the entry of North Korean ships to its ports.

Shot heard 'round the world

Thanks to everyone who has called, written, or text messaged to let me know that, about 24 hours ago, North Korea detonated a nuclear weapon. For those who don't know me, I've spent the last year and a half procrastinating finishing a master's paper on North Korea. I'm just about finished (presented oral arguments a couple of weeks ago) and have been held up from making final corrections as life has intervened a bit.

While it is quite likely that Kim Jong Il, the "Dear Leader" of the DPRK is misguided, I think it very unlikely that he and his advisors have abandoned reason. Quite the contrary. It seems more likely that the North Korean leadership is playing a game of Chinese-style self-interested real politik. Here's why:

1. South Korea's President Roh has based his foreign policy on improving relations with North Korea. He is most likely to go for reconcilliation rather than conflict.
2. Japan has a new Prime Minister--quite publically a 'hawk' when it comes to North Korea--so North Korea doesn't lose anything by incurring his wrath. Especially since Japan still doesn't have offensive military capabilities.
3. The U.S. is too bogged down in Afghanistan and Iraq to mount a serious, sustained military action against the DPRK. Further, with the U.S. still holding war-time command authority on the Korean Peninsula, the South Korean forces (though fairly capable themselves) are effectively held to defensive actions without a more robust U.S. presence to use as an offensive force.
4. This may be the most significant, though the least certain: North Korea has wagered that China's drive for internal stability and economic growth (especially presently, during the once every 5-year plenary session of the National People's Congress) will outweigh China's desire to put resources into maintaining the previous status quo along it's periphery.

This last piece, though a gamble by North Korea, if correct, could allow North Korea to dramatically shift the terms of battle in their favor. And whether intentional or not, they would be using precisely the same tactic the West did against the USSR during the Cold War. The U.S. knew the Red Army was signficantly larger than our own forces, and would be able to reach deeply into Western Europe before we could mount a serious resistance or counter attack. So the U.S. used our forward stationed troops as "trip wires". If the Soviets began a major assault on Western Europe, word would quickly get back to Washington, and we'd fire nuclear weapons against the Soviets. (It's not ironic the concept for the ultimate shape of this conflict was "MAD".)

At present, though, it seems to be a general consensus that the North Koreans are unable to mount nuclear weapons on a missile for delivery at any distance (with accuracy). Their last (and first) long range missile test blew up just above the launch pad. This means that the only conceivable targets (in a traditional, nuclear combat scenario) are South Korea, or China. We can fairly well rule out China, if for no other reason, that the Chinese, if attacked, would have no mercy--and the North Koreans know this. This leaves South Korea as the main target.

The impact of using this type of weapon against Seoul, or another major population center in South Korea would be devastating. Likely, tens of millions of people would die within a few days or weeks. South Korea would be devestated--not just physically, but psychologically and emotionally as well. Remember, it is a very (geographically) small country. The resulting retaliation South Korea--and it's newfound allies around the world--would wreak upon North Korea preclude this option as well unless as a completely desperate act.

So if you were Kim Jong Il and had these nuclear weapons, and wanted to get something, what would you do? My guess is that he will try to blackmail China, S. Korea, Japan, and the U.S. into either buying the weapons, or more likely, leave open the idea that the material might somehow be sold to other parties interested in acuiring nuclear material.

But this still leaves the question--which I have yet to come up with a plausible answer for--of what is it that North Korea is seeking in it's game of real politik? If you have ideas, please send them my way.

A uniquely American crisis

The U.S. is facing a crisis. It has to do with Iraq, but our involvement in Iraq is only a symptom of the broader problem. This thought is still forming, and remains a bit rough around the edges, but I want to through it out because it's been so long since my last post.

The U.S. military has become so effective, so powerful, so efficient at it's job: defeating identified enemies, that it has far outpaced not only our enemies and adversaries ability to fight back, but it has outpaced even our own ability to prepare for the aftermath.

What am I talking about? The men and women in our armed forces can, on very short notice, be nearly anywhere in the world, engaging in successful operations against nearly any traditional enemy we could face. The problem this creates--and where the crisis comes in--is that the rest of our government is not, and I believe should not be, in a position to deal with the consequences of such rapid victories.

Put in a concrete situation, the U.S. force in Iraq was 1. enormously effective at eliminating the Iraqi threat; and 2. Woefully prepared to handle the post-conflict element of operations in Iraq. Recent publications from George Packer's "Assassin's Gate" and Bob Woodward's "State of Denial" suggest that much of this has been caused by the administration's unwillingness to face the realities caused by America's actions.

If true, this attitude would clearly be a major contributing factor to the problem. It, alone, is not sufficient, however. Planning an attack, or a campaign, against a target or a country is a complex undertaking. It requires an understanding of the force being faced, it's strengths and weaknesses, the terrain, and myriad other items. But it is fairly transferrable from one place to another: tanks are always tanks; guns are always guns. Achieving victory, then, is something that takes a great deal of effort--but is something that our military is eminently well suited to do.

Achieving peace, prosperity, and ultimately political success, is something our military has not trained for, and is not presently equipped to do. Unfortunately, neither are any of our other federal departments or agencies. Creating a stable, productive, and peaceful country where there was a despotic autocracy requires a very differents set of skills and knowledge--and a country (or even provincial-level) expertise that our soldiers do not have the luxury to afford. On V-E and V-J day in world war two, the U.S. Generals in charge had spent the entirety of those wars facing the adversaries. They had at their disposal staffs with extensive knowledge of the countries and cultures in play--not just the relevant military information, but extensive information about history, culture, society, and in-country networks that existed or were believed to exist. And they had several years of working with these people to develop a clear sense of what would be needed not only to win the war, but, to use a cliche, "to win the peace."

Since World War II, our military has in both real and relative terms become a force unrivaled. Our experience in Vietnam gave us the "Powell Doctrine" of using "overwhelming force" to defeat an enemy. These two together, have left the U.S. in a position where our political leadership, and our military commanders no longer have the time to gain sufficient knowledge about a place, or establish networks of people who have this information, to create and put in place (much less execute) a plan that will allow the U.S. to succeed after the military operation has been successful.

This is not just a problem, it is a crisis. Unless we can bring our ability to win peace in line with our ability to fight wars, the United States will have more situations like Iraq in our future, not less. We will identify threats to our safety. We will neutralize them. And, perversely, we will be less secure after the threat is gone then we were when the threat was there.

Peacekeeping? Not a recipe for success

The concept of peacekeeping troops seems to have gained great ascendancy, and suffered appropriate ignominy in the short span of my life.  It came about as a response to the collapse of Somalia into what, euphemistically, was called a civil war but in reality was a number of uber-thugs and warlords fighting for control of territory in a country where the government had been stripped of all practical power.  Peacekeeping as an idea suffered a setback in the U.S. when American troops were captured and their bodies were dragged through the streets of Mogadishu after they had been killed.

 

In spite of this, the practice was attempted again only a few years later in the Balkans as a response to the “ethnic cleansing” going on as another state dissolved into chaos; this time Yugoslavia.  UN peacekeepers became synonymous with incompetence as the rules of engagement they operated under frequently stopped them from using the weapons they possessed even in self-defense.  Most notably, a squadron was captured by a local militia/army unit using captured UN uniforms.

 

Some would have us believe that right now the world is spinning into chaos.  North Korea is rattling it’s worn and rusty saber; the U.S. military is pinned down in Iraq and Afghanistan attempting to perpetrate a democracy on local populations that seem unwilling or incapable of standing up on their own.  Perhaps most significantly in many the minds of many Americans, Israel is once again at war with its neighbors.

 

This last piece is the one I’d like to talk about, as regards peacekeepers, though the ideas can be applied to the other situations as well.

 

In today’s Washington Post, columnist Harold Meyerson writes from the safety of not needing to make decisions that,

“Real border security is going to require the kind of force that didn't exist as World War I loomed. With the Lebanese army no match for Hezbollah, a genuine international army such as that proposed by Kofi Annan and Tony Blair (and bigger and more assertive than the Boy Scout troops that the United Nations periodically deploys) is needed to restore the peace.”

 

Regardless of how much “bigger” or how much more “assertive” a force in the Middle East would be than it’s predecessor Peacekeeping cousins, it would be doomed to fail without a couple of simple preconditions:

1. That the countries contributing troops be prepared to lose a large number of young men (and women, depending on the country) in uniform;
2. That the countries be willing to put these troops on the ground in a region that has been suffering violence regularly for the past 40 years;
3. That the countries be willing to engage the Israeli Defense Force, Hamas, and Hezbollah equally for likely violations of the terms of truce that the peacekeeping force would itself have to establish—with or without consent from the hostile parties
4. That the contributing countries would be willing (and their troops able) to enforce marshal law over large, urban populations, where underground paramilitary activity (Hamas and Hezbollah) have become accustomed to operating in this capacity for decades.
5. Certainly not least significant, that the countries contributing troops to this exercise would have to be willing to see images on Al Jazeera, the BBC and CNN of their troops firing missiles into schools and hospitals, killing women and children, because terrorists/insurgents would use these facilities for refuge, or because the troops mistakenly thought so.

 

All of these would happen because this would not be a peacekeeping mission, but a peace-forcing or peace-creating one.  It would involve inserting an additional hostile force between two (actually 3) forces already engaged in combat.  It would happen because war is ugly, destructive, ends lives, and makes the lives of those involved the worse for its experience.

 

My opinion: good luck getting a “peacekeeping” force that is either effective designed to succeed through a single government on Earth, much less through the recalcitrant UN Security Council.