POSTING: Firefox users = Core. Thomas Barnett weblog, Posted by Sean Meade on July 2, 2008.
David Eaves compared Tom’s Map to a map of the Firefox 3 download distribution.
Basically, it matched up pretty closely. Be sure to click through to read Eaves’ conclusions on this post and a subsequent one.
Dan tdaxp linked it, too.
POSTING: Get your own foreign policy and Kiva, Thomas Barnett weblog, Posted by Sean Meade on July 2, 2008
Everyone who wants to make a difference should just go ahead and get their own foreign policy and stop waiting on change from above. – Tom Barnett
Reinforces the empowering nature of the internet and globalization and that one person can make a difference.
KIVA provides an interesting model of accountability regarding investments at the grass roots level.
Annals of National Security: Preparing the Battlefield, The Bush Administration steps up its secret moves against Iran, by Seymour M. Hersh, New Yorker, July 7, 2008
Late last year, Congress agreed to a request from President Bush to fund a major escalation of covert operations against Iran ..
These operations, for which the President sought up to four hundred million dollars, were described in a Presidential Finding
Under federal law, a Presidential Finding, which is highly classified, must be issued when a covert intelligence operation gets under way and, at a minimum, must be made known to Democratic and Republican leaders in the House and the Senate and to the ranking members of their respective intelligence committees—the so-called Gang of Eight. Money for the operation can then be reprogrammed from previous appropriations, as needed, by the relevant congressional committees, which also can be briefed.
The Pentagon consultant said, “Fallon went down because, in his own way, he was trying to prevent a war with Iran, and you have to admire him for that.”
Gaza: Mogadishu or Dubai? By Pepe Escobar, THE ROVING EYE, Asia Times, Jun 14, 2008
Sneh has a neat formula to sell his package: "Gaza now is like Mogadishu [capital of Sudan]. It can be Dubai [in the United Arab Emirates]. What you need is to uproot the terrorists and to enable democratic forces to act."
Take According to Sneh, "The problem of Gaza is that there are 1 million people there living in poverty and now without jobs and without hope. And if you want to uproot Hamas – something that Israel must do one day – the way to do it is not just by military option, which would break the military force of Hamas, but to enable the legitimate government of [Prime Minister Salam] Fayyad to restore its authority, and immediately after that to embark in an economic development plan to build, through private enterprise, 100,000 jobs in Gaza."
Ephraim Sneh … is a former deputy defense minister (1999-2001), a retired general and a highly influential Labor member of the Knesset.
Spy Games In Iran, (Washington Post)…David Ignatius, July 2, 2008, Pg. 15
In the new cold war between America and Iran, the United States appears to be running some limited covert operations across the Iranian border.
… The Iranians, by contrast, seem adept at interweaving aggressive operations and diplomacy.
The U.S. covert-action program was revealed this week in the New Yorker by Seymour Hersh. He wrote that late last year, Democratic and Republican leaders in Congress had agreed to a "finding" that authorized up to $400 million for secret operations against Iran, including support of ethnic minorities and opposi
The Iranians make little effort to hide their own covert-action campaigns — including extensive financial and military support for Hezbollah in Lebanon and Hamas in Gaza. The Iranians have used Syria effectively as a platform for these intelligence operations, from political action to paramilitary operations to clandestine terrorism.
Israel, which has had limited success in trying to combat these Iranian-backed groups militarily, has recently opted for diplomacy: It agreed last month to a truce with Hamas and a prisoner swap with Hezbollah. Israel is also conducting peace negotiations with Syria through Turkish intermediaries.
Saudi Arabia has taken a tougher stand to oppose what it sees as Iranian meddling in the region.
The proponents of a tougher U.S. strategy argue that Iran should be confronted everywhere it operates, much as the Reagan administration decided to challenge the Soviet Union, from Afghanistan to Nicaragua. This hard-line faction, usually identified with Vice President Cheney, would like to see a systematic effort to disrupt the Iranian economy, foment internal political opposition and, in general, raise the cost to Iran of its foreign activities. But so far, that argument for a rollback of Iranian power hasn’t prevailed inside a divided administration.
The Iran question will confront the next administration from Day One, and the basic options probably won’t look very different from the current set: Talk or fight, or do something in between?
Message To U.S. Preceded Nuclear Declaration By North Korea, (Washington Post)…Glenn Kessler, July 2, 2008
Pg. 7
Just days before North Korea delivered to China last week its long-awaited declaration on its plutonium-based nuclear programs, Pyongyang privately acknowledged the United States’ long-standing concerns about alleged uranium-enrichment activities and possible proliferation to Syria, U.S. and Asian officials said yesterday.
Before acknowledging U.S. concerns, North Korea had consistently denied having any kind of enrichment program.
The United States also agreed to pay North Korea $2.5 million — down from $5 million originally demanded by Pyongyang — for the televised destruction last week of the steel-reinforced concrete cooling tower attached to the Yongbyon nuclear facility, congressional sources said.
Last week, Bush set in motion a 45-day process under which North Korea will be removed from the list of state sponsors of terrorism.
Why We Went To War In Iraq
(Wall Street Journal)…Douglas J. Feith, July 3, 2008
Pg. 11
A lot of poor commentary has framed the Iraq war as a conflict of "choice" rather than of "necessity." In fact, President George W. Bush chose to remove Saddam Hussein from power because he concluded that doing so was necessary.
When the president ultimately decided that the Iraqi regime must be ousted by force, he was influenced by five key factors:
1) Saddam was a threat to U.S. interests before 9/11.
2) The threat of renewed aggression by Saddam was more troubling and urgent after 9/11.
3) To contain the threat from Saddam, all reasonable means short of war had been tried unsuccessfully for a dozen years.
4) While there were large risks involved in a war, the risks of leaving Saddam in power were even larger.
5) America after 9/11 had a lower tolerance for such dangers.
Mr. Feith, under secretary of defense for policy from 2001 to 2005, is author of "War and Decision: Inside the Pentagon at the Dawn of the War on Terrorism" (HarperCollins, 2008), the author’s proceeds of which are being donated to charities for veterans and their families.
‘Different Kind Of War’, (Washington Times)…Shaun Waterman, United Press International, July 3, 2008
Pg. B1
The new leadership of the Air Force faces the challenge of redefining the service’s role in what many see as the kind of combat the U.S. military will face in the immediate future, namely counterinsurgency. The problem, critics say, is that the Air Force priorities of establishing air supremacy and perfecting the timely and pinpoint delivery of high explosives tend to be less useful in conflicts like Iraq and Afghanistan.
Highlights from the briefing by the Chairman, Joint Chiefs of Staff, Admiral Mullen:
A Shortage Of Troops In Afghanistan
(Washington Post)…Josh White
The nation’s top military officer said yesterday that more U.S. troops are needed in Afghanistan to tamp down an increasingly violent insurgency, but that the Pentagon does not have sufficient forces to send because they are committed to the war in Iraq.Risk To U.S. Troops Seen If Israel Hits Iran
(Los Angeles Times)…Peter Spiegel
The U.S. military’s top officer warned Wednesday that an Israeli airstrike against Iran would make the Middle East more unstable and could add to the stress on overworked American forces in the region.Mullen Warns Of ‘Third Front’ For US
(Financial Times)…Daniel Dombey, Andrew Ward and Harvey Morris
…In comments to the press, Admiral Michael Mullen, the senior US military commander, also said he was “deeply troubled” by what he said was the increasing effectiveness of the Taliban in Afghanistan.Broadcast News Coverage Of Admiral Mullen Briefing, (CNN)…Jamie McIntyre
…Well, John, a candid admission from America’s top military officer that the United States right now really isn’t up for another war. While Adm. Mike Mullen won’t say what message he delivered in recent meetings with Israel’s top generals, the warning to Israel seemed clear: Don’t drag the U.S. into war by launching a preemptive attack on Iran’s nuclear facilities.
OPINION: A Grain Of Salt For Bolton’s View, Wall Street Journal, July 5, 2008
John Bolton’s charges about an alleged “total intellectual collapse” in current Bush administration policy on North Korea (“The Tragic End of Bush’s North Korea Policy,” op-ed, June 30) must be read in the context of the total policy collapse he and his colleagues participated in during the 2002-06 period.
During this time, North Korea moved from having no nuclear weapons and a shut-down reactor in October 2002 to having a tested nuclear weapon and possession of plutonium from 8,000 previously inaccessible spent fuel rods by October 2006. This was all done in the name of dismantling an allegedly “failed” U.S.-Democratic Peoples’ Republic of Korea Agreed Framework.
While such a policy may have been intellectually satisfying to Mr. Bolton, it represented a dangerous worsening of the security threat facing the U.S. The new deal is far from perfect, but Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and her colleagues have wisely recognized the need to stop the bleeding from this prior policy disaster. We will now see what they can make of it.
Prof. James Clay Moltz, Naval Postgraduate School, Monterey, Calif.
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