With Iraq's recent victory in the Asian Cup Final over Saudi Arabia, Iraq joins Italy (World champion), Brazil (South American champion), USA (North American champion), and South Africa (host country) as the teams currently qualified for the Confederations Cup in June 2009. The remaining three spots will go to an Oceanic team (probably Australia), an African team, and a European team. The Confederations Cup is a warm-up tournament that will make sure South Africa is ready to host the World Cup the following year.
The Confederations Cup is run like so: two groups of four in a round-robin style, followed by semi-finals and then the final. Assuming Australia qualifies for the Confederations Cup, it is likely that Iraq will play either a former (Italy) or current occupying power (USA, Australia). Iraq and the USA have a 50-50 chance of playing each other in the group stage, and if either team were to advance (likely for the USA, unlikely for Iraq) the chances naturally go up. It is further possible that England, Poland, or the Czech Republic could qualify through the European spot by winning Euro2008, further occupying countries that could meet Iraq. If the European spot is taken by a member of the Coalition of the Willing, then it is a mathematical certainty that Iraq will play a current or former Coalition member.
Violence at the game will be unlikely - I don't foresee large numbers of Iraqi hooligans traveling to South Africa to attack Americans when they can do it at home (a new iteration of the flypaper theory!). Furthermore, the presence of South Korean troops on Iraqi soil didn't seem to be raised as an issue during Iraq's semifinal against South Korea. However, given the "special relationship" between Iraq and the USA, if any American troops are still in Iraq in June of 2009, I'd advise them to stay indoors.
The US team is much better than Iraq's team, especially if many of Iraq's players use the opportunity of their success to get contracts playing abroad and leave Iraq permanently (adding to the diaspora), or are assassinated. However, in the event of a Iraq vs. USA, Iraq vs. Australia, or Iraq vs. England, Iraq will be singularly motivated. This far out, I will refrain from offering a prediction on the match itself.
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Dialogue with Iran
US, Iran will cooperate on Iraq security
Jeff Jacoby - Why are we rewarding Iran?
Bill Richardson made a comment during the Youtube debates to the effect of "talking to people doesn't mean you're losing." Well it does mean you're losing if you see the world only in terms of power - if you don't have the power to enforce your will by force and have to talk instead, it means you lose power.
This is a conflict of two (or more) worldviews - Jacoby's hard-power-centric view of the world as run by America, doling out rewards and spanking countries when they come home after midnight, against the view of America as one of many leaders of the world, leading by example, and keeping open channels of communication with everyone we can. People that think like that don't realize that power relationships have qualitatively changed due to continuous Revolutions in Military Affairs (RMA) and individual superempowerement. In my view, talking is now more necessary than it has been in the past. Related to TDAXP's conception of generational warfare's relationship to the OODA loop, if countering the opponent's actions is too difficult because of the number of decentralized potential actors, its best to "go deep" and challenge the observations and orientation of the potential enemy. Treat the disease (underlying orientation) rather than the symptoms (the individual attacks), and hopefully before any symptoms manifest.
To me, it seems that if you are "professional" who makes this kind of stuff your career, you'd have to be an idiot to not understand this. But I think that is the nature of people operating in different worldviews/paradigms/whatever you call it. I and others like me are starting from X and proceeding logically (at least I hope so), and Jeff Jacoby, Bill Kristol, Newt Gingrich, Dick Cheney, Norman Podhoretz, and others like them are starting from Y and proceeding logically (giving them the benefit of the doubt), and we end up talking past each other. Unfortunately I have not read Thomas Kuhn.
Jeff Jacoby - Why are we rewarding Iran?
Bill Richardson made a comment during the Youtube debates to the effect of "talking to people doesn't mean you're losing." Well it does mean you're losing if you see the world only in terms of power - if you don't have the power to enforce your will by force and have to talk instead, it means you lose power.
This is a conflict of two (or more) worldviews - Jacoby's hard-power-centric view of the world as run by America, doling out rewards and spanking countries when they come home after midnight, against the view of America as one of many leaders of the world, leading by example, and keeping open channels of communication with everyone we can. People that think like that don't realize that power relationships have qualitatively changed due to continuous Revolutions in Military Affairs (RMA) and individual superempowerement. In my view, talking is now more necessary than it has been in the past. Related to TDAXP's conception of generational warfare's relationship to the OODA loop, if countering the opponent's actions is too difficult because of the number of decentralized potential actors, its best to "go deep" and challenge the observations and orientation of the potential enemy. Treat the disease (underlying orientation) rather than the symptoms (the individual attacks), and hopefully before any symptoms manifest.
To me, it seems that if you are "professional" who makes this kind of stuff your career, you'd have to be an idiot to not understand this. But I think that is the nature of people operating in different worldviews/paradigms/whatever you call it. I and others like me are starting from X and proceeding logically (at least I hope so), and Jeff Jacoby, Bill Kristol, Newt Gingrich, Dick Cheney, Norman Podhoretz, and others like them are starting from Y and proceeding logically (giving them the benefit of the doubt), and we end up talking past each other. Unfortunately I have not read Thomas Kuhn.
Iraq wins Asian Cup
A united Iraqi soccer team wins the Asian Cup.
Especially interesting is that the Iraqi victory was celebrated by waving the Iraqi flag in Kurdistan. The Iraqi team had Kurds, Shia Arabs and Sunni Arabs. And the Yugoslav national team had a successful World Cup in 1990, making it to the quarterfinals... and broke up anyway. Here's a fascinating video on that era - haven't finished watching it myself. Most of it is in Serbo-Croat but it's subtitled in French with occasional English. But really the atmosphere is what you pick up on - Croats chanting "We love Croatia, let's go massacre some Serbs" and Serbs singing songs about massacring Croats. Yet 3 or 4 years earlier, these fans were all cheering for the same team.
And a hilarious (black humor) quote passed on from a friend of mine:
Update: New Yorker in DC also has a post on the victory.
Especially interesting is that the Iraqi victory was celebrated by waving the Iraqi flag in Kurdistan. The Iraqi team had Kurds, Shia Arabs and Sunni Arabs. And the Yugoslav national team had a successful World Cup in 1990, making it to the quarterfinals... and broke up anyway. Here's a fascinating video on that era - haven't finished watching it myself. Most of it is in Serbo-Croat but it's subtitled in French with occasional English. But really the atmosphere is what you pick up on - Croats chanting "We love Croatia, let's go massacre some Serbs" and Serbs singing songs about massacring Croats. Yet 3 or 4 years earlier, these fans were all cheering for the same team.
And a hilarious (black humor) quote passed on from a friend of mine:
Ellen: Holy crap, Iraq won the Asian cup!
Andy: I know! You know why? Because we didn't try to help them with it.
Update: New Yorker in DC also has a post on the victory.
Republicans hate their candidates, part 2
At Salon, confirmation that current Republican poll numbers for 2008 are largely meaningless.
Why the Republicans don't like their candidates.
(Republicans can't stand their own candidates)
Why the Republicans don't like their candidates.
(Republicans can't stand their own candidates)
Climate change intelligence, continued
Kent's Imperative has a new post up, continuing the discussion on climate intelligence. This specific discussion started with Michael Tanji's post, leading to my response. Then Kent's Imperative (KI) jumped in, I responded, raised the issue again recently, and KI responded most recently. I think that with KI's latest post, we find common ground.
Essentially, KI argues that, with limited resources, priority goes to intelligence supporting the warfighter. It's hard to disagree with that. KI also mentions Google's 20% rule, where Google employees theoretically get 20% of their paid time to focus on their own projects. In the intelligence business, this could translate to the strategic intelligence that customers don't know they need/want yet, and therefore won't ask for. The problem with that, I suppose, is that you have no guarantee that anybody will read your '20% time' reports - then again, you can only lead a horse to water, you can't force it to drink.
I'm going to make at least one more climate intelligence post relatively soon, once I get around to reading this paper on the correlation between climate change and conflict frequency in China.
Essentially, KI argues that, with limited resources, priority goes to intelligence supporting the warfighter. It's hard to disagree with that. KI also mentions Google's 20% rule, where Google employees theoretically get 20% of their paid time to focus on their own projects. In the intelligence business, this could translate to the strategic intelligence that customers don't know they need/want yet, and therefore won't ask for. The problem with that, I suppose, is that you have no guarantee that anybody will read your '20% time' reports - then again, you can only lead a horse to water, you can't force it to drink.
I'm going to make at least one more climate intelligence post relatively soon, once I get around to reading this paper on the correlation between climate change and conflict frequency in China.
Beckham?
David Beckham made his LA Galaxy debut yesterday, in a friendly match with Chelsea FC from England (of whom I'm a fan).
The highlights from the game focused exclusively on Beckham - driving to the game, sitting on the bench, his friends and family watching, etc. This irks a long-time fan of the beautiful game like myself. So, in honor of Beckham's arrival in America, here's a four-minute highlight reel of the player who many consider the best player in MLS.... Dwayne De Rosario.
The highlights from the game focused exclusively on Beckham - driving to the game, sitting on the bench, his friends and family watching, etc. This irks a long-time fan of the beautiful game like myself. So, in honor of Beckham's arrival in America, here's a four-minute highlight reel of the player who many consider the best player in MLS.... Dwayne De Rosario.
Shrink the Gap yourself (an RFI)
Recently I wrote a few posts on economic development and the trade vs. aid debate on Africa, generalizable to the developing world.
Dan, at TDAXP, has put forth the suggestion that the Department of Homeland Security be a uniformed branch of the government. The casual logic works like this:
we should shrink the gap; America currently doesn't have the political will to shrink the gap; capabilities create intentions; create the capability to shrink the gap and the political will to shrink the gap will follow:
Is Thomas Barnett to international security what Bono is to economic development? In his quest to find a mission for America abroad, is he forgetting the role of locals (especially in an open-source security environment common in developing states)? If we create a uniformed service branch of DHS designed to help the developing world "outsource security" to use, does that mean it has all the problems of traditional economic aid, including dependency, blowback, corruption, weaponization, and non-scalability? And have other people (book reviews, blogs, other responses) already asked these questions?
While I've seen his brief and occasionally read his blog, I admit I haven't read either of his books (and I already have a reading list for the summer!). I request input from any who have.
Dan, at TDAXP, has put forth the suggestion that the Department of Homeland Security be a uniformed branch of the government. The casual logic works like this:
we should shrink the gap; America currently doesn't have the political will to shrink the gap; capabilities create intentions; create the capability to shrink the gap and the political will to shrink the gap will follow:
We need to give our policy makers a Military-Industrial-Sysadmin-Complex so that more problems in the Gap looks like jobs for the Sysadmin.For those unfamiliar with Thomas Barnett's work, "shrinking the gap" means helping third world countries (the gap) modernize and integrate into the global economy. The Sysadmin is the name he gives to the force that would handle the "everything else" of war - nation building, infrastructure building, investment, counterinsurgency and policing, etc. In effect, the Sysadmin is like aid for the national security functions of developing nations's governments.
Is Thomas Barnett to international security what Bono is to economic development? In his quest to find a mission for America abroad, is he forgetting the role of locals (especially in an open-source security environment common in developing states)? If we create a uniformed service branch of DHS designed to help the developing world "outsource security" to use, does that mean it has all the problems of traditional economic aid, including dependency, blowback, corruption, weaponization, and non-scalability? And have other people (book reviews, blogs, other responses) already asked these questions?
While I've seen his brief and occasionally read his blog, I admit I haven't read either of his books (and I already have a reading list for the summer!). I request input from any who have.
Africa links
Following up on my mobile banking and African development posts from earlier this week, here are some more links on development in Africa:
Geekcorps. As CurrentConductor pointed out, I probably should have mentioned them in the original post.
Africabeat - How to invest in Africa. Some excellent comments.
AfricanLoft - The 2nd Edition of Africa Enterprising Blog Carnival Opens. Links to a lot of different blogs on "Trade Vs Aid", "Entrepreneurship", "Business and Investment", etc.
beninmwangi - Zambian Head of State Joins Africa's Trade -vs- Aid Debate. Key quotations:
Geekcorps. As CurrentConductor pointed out, I probably should have mentioned them in the original post.
Africabeat - How to invest in Africa. Some excellent comments.
AfricanLoft - The 2nd Edition of Africa Enterprising Blog Carnival Opens. Links to a lot of different blogs on "Trade Vs Aid", "Entrepreneurship", "Business and Investment", etc.
beninmwangi - Zambian Head of State Joins Africa's Trade -vs- Aid Debate. Key quotations:
...it is investment and not aid that will bring about sustainable growth and development in our economies. This is not to say that aid is not important, as it does help bring about the requisite conditions for growth.Human Security Review - Bono's Africa, A Case Study. Chris Albon, a PhD student at UC-Davis, has a humorous take on a recent UNICEF ad campaign.
My government applauds China’s opening up of her markets to 28 African countries...
...leaders of African countries need to do more in the area of infrastructure development.
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