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Dam Single Points of Failure

By Fester:

Pittsburgh is a massive port.  The rivers provide a cheap, convienent, high volume highway for the transhipment of industrial goods and raw materials, most notably coal.  That coal is used for power generation to supply power both locally and to the mid-Atlantic seaboard, and as an intermediate good in the production steel.  However the river system is full of numerous single points of failures that could have very large repurcussions on both the region and the nation as Forbes reports on the state of the region's navigation system:

Should the Emsworth dam fail, it would isolate river activity around Pittsburgh, Crall said. Public utilities, industry, ecosystems and water supply would be harmed. Nearly 12,000 jobs would at risk...

Without the river transportation system, U.S. Steel would require either 160 railroad cars or 700 trucks a day, instead of 10 barges, to serve its Clairton Coke plant, said Lisa Roudabush, general manager for United States Steel Corp.'s Mon Valley Works.

A few weeks ago, I was looking at the question of best practice dissemination and I am still scratching my head as to why there is not more guerrilla warfare on water.  Some of that is because naval guerrilla warfare is called piracy in most cases, but I think this is an area of luck that we can not count on over the long term. River shipping is prone to single points of failures which in my eyes means attacks on river navigation systems should be high return on investment attacks as the substitution transportation methods are very costly.

For instance, a single barge requires seventy trucks to substitute for its capacity if the barges were stranded.  Paul Krugman posts this convienent chart of the fuel costs of diesel today.  Shifting to trucks instead of transport massively cuts down on profit margins, increases the opportunities for smuggling while also decreasing connectivity and existing elite/governing legitimacy.

These single points of failure are numerous and by their very nature, fairly brittle.  I wonder why similiar structures have not been attacked in Nigeria or Russia where there are significant navigable waterways and insurgent/terrorist groups.  Chechynan guerrillas have demonstrated a capacity for systemic infrastructure attacks in Russia, and MEND in Nigeria has developped its skill sets in taking down oil infrastructure to the point that it is capable of operating in the littoral and near-deep sea areas.  Why not the riverine system as the substitutes to it are expensive, and lacking in capacity to fully shift the load from a failure. 

(h/t to Chris Briem for a post that got this thought rolling for me)

British state capacity and Peak Brent Oil

By Fester:

Great Britain has been the recipient of a massive and fortunate fiscal gift for the past two generations.  It is an industrialized, modern, energy intensive nation that is also an oil exporter.  The North Sea offshore fields provided a steady, dependable counter-cyclical stream of oil revenue to the Exchequer while the mature British economy could produce returns that are comparable to returns on investment in the energy sector so the oil curse was at worse, mildly felt.  However, British oil production is in decline.  Since 2004, Britain has been a net oil importer and it has been importing in the face of record dollar and pound denominated prices.  Imports are increasing and the current account deficit is matching that increase. 

As the North Sea declines, there are fewer barrels of oil for the Government to tax, although it is receiving a much larger fee per barrel due to the price increases.  The North Sea is predicted to decline at double digit annual rates.  This will have a dramatic impact on the budget as a major revenue hole will be created that can not be papered over by higher revenues per barrel produced. 

We have looked at a similar situation in Mexico two months ago as the Mexican government receives roughly 40% of its revenue from taxation of oil production.  Mexico, like Great Britain, is seeing its major fields in serious decline.  Are these scenarios similar?

Higher prices are masking the pain at this point but Mexico is entering the Export-Land problem.  Higher local demand is keeping more of its oil off the international market and thus leading to a decline in hard currency earnings.  One estimate is that Mexican oil exports could go from a 2007 average of 1.67 million barrels per day to less than 280,000 barrels per day in 2016.  Even projecting high per barrel prices this is a net decline in overall revenue and a massive decline in revenue per capita. 

So given these trends, how much ability does the Mexican elite have to maneuver?  Not much at first glance unless they can clean up their own acts to free up resources for effective, responsive and localized public good projects that can not be matched by the drug gangs which are seeking to create a hollowed out and ineffective state. 

Great Britain is starting at a massive advantage over Mexico in that it is not the nexus of massive black market smuggling into the largest market in the world.  It also possesses significantly greater, deeper and more resilient social and civic capital networks.  However the crux of the problem remains; both governments have made very signficant promises that were significantly backed by oil revenues.  In the next few years, those oil revenues are under severe threat due to geology and physics and numerous promises may be broken as services are either not provided, or different constiuencies are taxed.  How will either government resolve the diminishment of their state capacity?

The Possible War with Iran

By BJ

While I do not give great odds for a US/Israeli strike on Iran in the waning days of the Bush administration, the possibility is certainly still there. Of course, as been noted here almost too many times to count, the stated rationale for such an attack is a steaming load of that which exits the south ends of a northbound herd of cattle, but that's never stopped the Bush team before.

In any case, I wanted to point to this excellent article by John Robb pointing out the broad strokes of what's likely to occur if such an attack takes place.

Any attack by the US/Israel on Iran will be ostensibly aimed at suppressing the Iranian nuclear program. However, it will quickly evolve into something much larger, an airpower-based EBO (effects based operation). The objective of this EBO will regime change (see the brief: "Collapsing Iran", April 2006, for more details on this) without a ground invasion.

As Robb notes, there are many who think that near sole reliance on airpower is the best way for the US to fight its wars. It is important to remember that one of the most successful campaigns of this type, the 1998 campaign over Kosovo, took about two-and-a-half months to break the will of a tiny power without little preparation to resist such a campaign and no capacity to cause pain to the wider world or its attackers in an attempt to shorten the campaign's duration.

Iran is much larger, has had time to study and prepare, and has the capacity to inflict damage on its opponents directly and others indirectly.

the Iranians have developed what they call a "Passive Defense" run by its paramilitary (the Basij), based on the lessons learned by Hezbollah during the 2006 war with Israel. Mansharof and Savyon have explored the tenets of Passive Defense with an excellent article now available on MEMRI.

. . .

In addition to Passive Defense, the Iranians are also likely planning asymmetric offensive operations aimed at shortening the engagement -- a form of strategic barrage designed to limit the duration of the EBO. . . . In Iran's case, this means a series of attacks (a combination of guerrilla, missile, and small boat attacks) on oil facilities and oil transportation routes with the intent of making the costs to the global economy so great that political pressure will quickly force an end to the engagement.

And that doesn't even get into the whole Iran-backed militias in Iraq or the groups they have relationships with in Afghanistan. Whatever else, it is abundantly clear that any attack on Iran will incur a far greater cost in blood and treasure than those trying to sell the idea are willing or capable of admitting.

A VAT for Opium

By Fester:

The Value Added Tax (VAT) is a common tax structure where the tax is levied against each stage of production on the basis of the value added by that stage.  For example, let us assume that an oil refinery bought a barrel of heavy sour crude for $110 and after they finished refining the barrel into its gases, gasoline, diesel and heavy fuel oils, they were able to sell that barrel for $150.  In this hypothetical example, the refinery added $40 of value to the barrel of oil and a VAT would be charged against this $40.  The VAT is a very common tax throughout the world. 

It is so common, it looks like the Taliban in Afghanistan is charging what is effectively a VAT tax on opium production.  The BBC reports that the Taliban tax the raw materials and receive a decent sum of money from the farmers:

The Taleban made an estimated $100m (£50m) in 2007 from Afghan farmers growing poppy for the opium trade, the United Nations says.

Antonio Maria Costa, head of the UN’s Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC), said the money was raised by a 10% tax on farmers in Taleban-controlled areas.

As Dr. Taylor at Poliblogger notes, the Taliban is taxing and collecting fees at other points in the value chain, especially at the higher end of the chain.  The Taliban provides security in exchange for signficant pay-offs.  He makes a worrying observation:

The “FARCization” of the Taliban continues…

FARC is a Columbian guerrilla group that has been fighting the Columbian government for almost two generations now.  It is being funded primarily by its connections to the cocaine trade and resource smuggling.  And it is a sustainable model as long as there exists a massive black market for a desirable product which means the suppliers of that product must turn to non-state groups for support and security.  FARC has a similiar quasi-VAT structure on coco and cocaine production. 

It provides a predictable, multi-level revenue stream.  Predictable revenue allows for longer term planning and the provision of credible promises of support.  The Taliban and the Pashtun groups already have strong loyalty claims on some members of its population but the ability to make credible long term promises should expand and strengthen loyalty claims.  That is not good.....

Disseminating DIY weapons best practices

By Fester:

Using the global guerrillas' bazaar of violence analogy, the prediction is best practices for specific situations will be quickly spread through loose tie networks.  This occurs because global guerrillas are operating in a very rapid  Observation, Orientation, Decision, Action (OODA)loop with dozens/hundreds of different actors trying different things and seeing different responses.  Really bad ideas are not replicated because of either learning by doing or capture/death of the practitioners.  Really good ideas are adapted as everyone has an interest in being more effective to both accomplish their objectives and staying alive. 

We have seen significant evidence of this rapid dissemination of best practices and responses to changes in the operational environment at the theater level.  For instance Iraqi insurgency attack patterns followed rhythms of measure, countermeasure, counter-counter measure that sought to maximize their advantages while minimizing disadvantages.  We saw this in a rapid shift away from straight up infantry assaults against US positions to the early RPG attacks to an IED campaign of increasing sophistication that only has slowed down because the US bought out the Sunni Arab insurgent groups.  We have seen the same shifts in Afghanistan as the Taliban has moved to more sophisticated stand-off ambushes.  We have seen this in Nigeria as MEND increases their capabilities and capacity to shut-in wider stretches of Nigerian oil production.  We have seen this in Colombia as the drug smuggling cartels have become even more sophisticated. 

However we are not seeing inter-theater tinkering and information dissemination except in the broadest sense of providing a plausible premise and the basic advice of 'avoid US firepower.'  Why is this happening?  What social choke points are stopping this information flow of best practices?  For instance, why have we not seen MEND copy some of the Columbian drug smuggling submarines as stripped down WWI era boats could be effective in sea denial against the Nigerian Navy's limited capacity?  Why have we not seen the Zetas jury rig UAVs like Hezbollah?  Why have we not seen tv-guided and Iridium phone controlled DIY cruise missiles similar in concept to the German Fritz-X bomb or the Walleye? 

If the global guerrilla  phenomenon is wrong, where is the global dissemination and information sharing for high end tinkerable weapons systems that would greatly enhance the ability of non-state actors to expand their capabilities to run amazingly high return on investment operations?  Imagine what would happen to the world oil markets if a pair of 500 pound spar torpedoes were attached to the Nigerian Bonga platform AND a random tanker that had just left port fully loaded.  Why is this not happening (yet)???

[edited for clarity]

Doing the Oily Hokey Pokey

By Fester:

Put one barrel in, take one barrel out, put one barrel in and you shake it all about... that's what its all about.

This is the song the oil markets are singing as any increased supply news is counteracted by news of decreased supplies.  For instance Bloomberg reports that Saudi Arabia is increasing production by 200,000 barrels per day in a few weeks:

Production will increase by 200,000 barrels a day to 9.7 million barrels starting in July, Saudi Oil Minister Ali al- Naimi told reporters in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, yesterday....

``It is the policy of Saudi Arabia to satisfy the market need when there is a need,'' said Prince Abdulaziz Bin Salman, the kingdom's deputy oil minister.

200,000 barrels per day is not a whole lot of oil, roughly one quarter of one percent of daily global production, but since oil is an inelastic commodity, introducing just a little more supply should take away a lot of the price pressure.  Small changes in supply should lead to medium/large changes in price. 

However the following two stories have also come out this week,  the first is from  earlier this week as reported by Agence France Press:

"We shut down production at the Bonga oilfield following an attack by unknown militants this morning," Shell spokesman Precious Okolobo said.

Bonga lies 120 kilometres (75 miles) offshore and has a daily output capacity of 200,000 barrels of oil and 150 million standard cubic feet of gas

And the follow-up from Friday is via the Wall Street Journal:

Chevron Corp. said Saturday one of its Nigerian joint venture's pipelines had been breached, a disruption claimed by young Nigerian militants and said to have curtailed oil output of 120,000 barrels a day

So the announced Saudi increase in production is a Red Queen race with the supply disruptions in Nigeria.  Multi-billion dollar projects are needed to keep even with several dozen young men with speedboats and Semtex.  This is a game that greatly advantages the supply disruptors and not the producers. 

Resiliency Substitutes

By Fester:

Via John Robb, this New York Times story highlights the breakdown of state authority and stability in Brazil and how local militias have created a niche for themselves within the social eco-system.  The militias are seen as a dirty but effective way of controlling spaces against drug distribution networks and gangs.  However the legitimacy of the militias is based on highly devolved and localized loyalties and is easily supplanted when the state is willing/able to devote resources to a slum:

Rio's slums, or favelas, have proliferated, and now may number more than 800. The militias have multiplied with them, as battles with drug gangs have taken a toll on legitimate police forces.

Low morale and pay have prompted police officers, firefighters and prison workers to moonlight as militia members, police officers and criminologists who have studied them say.

The militias have filled a vacuum of authority by promising residents security in exchange for payments...

Militias within the 4GW context are a substitute for legitimate resiliency.  They fill a niche in the social ecoysystem when disorder and chaos dominate official capacity to respond.  Militias are locally raised, and locally motivated if they are to be effective in the 4GW or counterinsurgency system as they solve the sorting problems of traditional military forces.  The militias have the implicit knowledge of the social, cultural, familial and economic networks and ties that allows them to distinguish between people who belong there and those who do not.  That knowledge is spatially specific and has high transfer costs.  Moving a militia two hundred miles will see its effectiveness massively degraded. Even in traditional 1st and 2nd GW scenarios, militias were almost always most effective when they were fighting close to their homes, as the US troubles in raising national armies composed of local militias  showed. 

ZenPundit is raising the idea of local militias as co-opting agents of counter 4GW and scenario stabilization agents as this could apply to Mexico.  I think this is interesting but wrong for part of the reason that he alludes to:

Even the stealthy Zetas would have trouble operating in a city where the police and Army were backed by, say, 40,000 armed militiamen who were part of a national network. A loyalist paramilitary on steroids.

However, any such hypothetical popular militia will have to come from a social movement as the Mexican state no longer commands enough political legitimacy to recruit such a force to it’s side - even if it had the courage to grasp that kind of wolf by the ears...

Any state that needs to raise such a militia to fight a national insurgency can not claim the primary loyalties of such a militia that would be raised.  The central government's legitimacy and claim to power would have already been diminished and while the militias and the central government  may work towards similar goals, the ability to fragment orientations and realign outlooks exists as a strong possibility.  A strong and legitimate central government would not have the need for the resiliency and legitimacy substitution effects that a militia can provide.   

On the other hand, a weak central government that has created and attempted to co-opt friendly militias such as Columbia can not control those militias nor easily force them to shut down operations once their initial raison d'etre has ended.  The paramilitary groups then operate under the iron law of institutions.  They seek to exist to support their members and loyalty cadres.   A weak central government that has already lost a significant portion of its legitimacy can not control its creations.

Anatomy of an Open Source attack

By Fester

I am watching the Associated Press attempts to remove its hand from the meat grinder by its broad claims of special privileges over blogger rights of fair use.  The story started with seven DMCA take down letters to the Drudge Retort for what was fair use of small excerpts of larger AP articles.  It has since morphed into a very interesting and peaceful analogy to a global guerrilla action.  Let me explain my reasoning here.

The political blogo-spheres are large networks of loose ties with minimal cooperation between various ideological camps and subcamps except on a few core issues including open access to information and minimal restrictions on speech.  The AP's actions were universally seen as violating community norms and therefore lacking in legitimacy.  The AP was picking on a small blog with shallow pockets and believed it could Shock and Awe via the threat of an expensive to defend lawsuit, compliance with its foreign norms.  The Drudge Retort sent out a distress call and multiple bloggers of varying perspectives responded. 

We quickly disseminated the relevant information to our networks and readers creating a common orientation of action and the beginning of a common response of mocking and deriding the AP's decision.   He floated the idea and it has begun to cascade through the long tail of the blogosphere.  Specialized expertise began to emerge to reinforce the bazaar of actions option space, and now the Associated Press was stuck.  At the same time, the initial  reaction had reached critical mass as keying linking nodes on both the left and the right, in the shape of Atrios and Instapundit, amplified the messaging.  The AP was judged to be 'wankers' and violators of community norms.  The bazaar of actions soon became flooded with actors who have strong negative pairwise ties to each other.  However they are able to form loose, transactional ties for one time deals in order to combat this threat.  For example, DailyKos and Michelle Malkin have been on the same page. 

And at this point past history came into play.  Cernig noted that there existed a plausible premise of achieving a defensive objective of restoring full fair use rights through boycott and ridicule.   We, as political bloggers, know that a combination of public mocking, ridicule, and targetted pressure on vulnerable revenue chokepoints and contradictions can create significant change.  We have seen Spocko target advertisers of right wing talk radio, we have seen some success with keeping the Dems from caving on FISA immunity for the past nine months and are taking another whack at it now, and the right wing has had success in overvaluing and overleveraging Cindy Sheehan as an anti-war icon.  We have a credible premise of resistance, and then minimal centralized direction as a thousand bloggers will never agree on anything other than being bloggered sucks. 

And now the AP has a problem.  The Associated Press business model is optimized for large scale one to few and few to few transactions.  It is used to dealing with entities who share a common orientation, and cultural norms which include the perspective of personal ruin if their reputation or access to the AP is ruined.   The fragmented, individualized and decentralized attacks operate outside their decision loop and their shared cultural assumptions.  It will respond to two of the three prongs of attacks as it recognizes them as similiar to past interactions.

The first is the Media Bloggers Association (MBA) offer to negoatiate a settlement.  The MBA is a trade membership group of bloggers and the AP will think it can cut a deal.  The MBA is seeking to maximize its influence (which is minimal) and the AP is looking for a face to interact with to avoid embarrassment. However there is a very significant problem that the AP will run into; the MBA has no legitimacy or buy-in as a negoatiating agent for the overwhelming number of bloggers.  Whatever deal they cut is good for MBA's members and that is it.  It will not bind or constrain my actions or inactions. 

The second group that the AP will be familiar with is the large, moderately deep pocket blog who is looking for a fight.  In this case it is Daily Kos:   

Lots of blogs are calling for boycotts of AP content. Not me. I'm going to keep using it. I will copy and paste as many words as I feel necessary to make my points and that I feel are within bounds of copyright law (and remember, I've got a JD and specialized in media law, so I know the rules pretty well). And I will keep doing so if I get an AP takedown notice (which I will make a big public show of ignoring). And then, either the AP -- an organization famous for taking its members work without credit -- will either back down and shut the hell up, or we'll have a judge resolve the easiest question of law in the history of copyright jurisprudence.

The AP doesn't get to negotiate copyright law. But now, perhaps, they'll threaten someone who can afford to fight back, instead of cowardly going after small bloggers....

Here is a challenge the AP understands and can not touch.  They only have claimed authority in areas of dispute that can not be appealed to agents with high legitimacy and mutually recognized authority, in this case the US federal court system.  And then they get to deal with us rodents which are scurrying and mocking them from underfoot.  And here they lose their credibility as they get to argue with guys named after bad television characters, and flying pigs.  As the Angry Drunk Bureaucrat noted in a seperate case, the power and credibility gained by an actor in another field works against them when they are in the blogosphere:

You are not in Kansas anymore, Dorothy. The simple rules of etiquette that you may have experienced in "the Real World" do not apply anymore. You are not a City Councilman [a major news wire] anymore, just a douche with a keyboard and a cable modem... just like the millions of other douches with keyboards and cable modems. These millions of other douches have no regard for civility, niceties, or pleasantries. They are a vicious pack of dogs (Douche-hounds, if you would) salavating over the mailman that just walked through the gate. This will not end well for you.....

you may not realize this, but there are a whole lot of people on these here interwebs that survive on nothing more than blood. Your blood. My blood. Anyone's blood. Unless you are willing to go toe-to-toe with these psychopathic blogging machines day in and day out, you will fail.... and the bloggers will just be having fun.

So run along home before you get yourself hurt.

Engaging small bloggers with the full weight of the AP's media and legal team may produce short term victories of silence at the cost of delegitimatizing the AP to its best end users.  Winning those fights turns the AP into a douche from a provider of interesting information. 

These elements are common elements in an open source insurgency and an open source take down attack.  Rapid information sharing, a proliferation of loose ties after a plausible premise is identified, fracturing of activities despite the de facto aim of working towards a common goal, massive legitimacy issues, and the power of the individually weak to negate opposing strengths. 

4GW in America's Backyard

By BJ

While the dual insurgencies in Iraq and Afghanistan are what most of us focus on when discussing fourth generation warfare, it isn’t there that the US faces its most dire threat. As John Robb states:

The only existential threat the US faces in the near term, is from global guerrillas in Mexico and not the Middle East. A breakdown there could result in massive population movements, refugee centers, and the spread of guerrilla warfare into US border states.

The LA Times put out a long and interesting article examining just how dire the situation is in Mexico. Though the place names and causes of conflict are different, the article reads very similar to those of the paradoxically far more familiar battlefields half the world away.

Helmeted army troops steer Humvees past strip malls in the border city of Nuevo Laredo, some of the 40,000 soldiers and 5,000 federal police officers President Felipe Calderon has deployed to secure large swaths of the country against entrenched drug traffickers.

. . .

Criminals unleash machine guns and grenades in urban battles that the State Department describes as "equivalent to military small-unit combat."

In the year and a half since Calderon launched a crackdown against drug gangs, about 4,100 people have died, the government says. At least 1,400 have been killed so far this year, including 170 in Tijuana, about 400 in Ciudad Juarez and 270 more in the western state of Sinaloa.

. . .

Political analysts say the campaign has succeeded mainly in pushing violence from one region to another, without uprooting the mafias that are challenging the power of the Mexican state. Federal troops often are introduced only after particularly violent outbreaks. They have helped bring calm to Nuevo Laredo, in Tamaulipas state, for example, only to see the killing increase in Baja California and Chihuahua, or farther south in Guerrero state.

"It's a strategy of temporary occupation that achieves just moments of relative quiet, only to return to worsening violence," said Eduardo Valle, a writer and commentator who once worked as an advisor in the federal attorney general's office.

Even the rhetoric from the Mexican government has a familiar ring to it.

The president asserts that the level of violence is one measure of success. He says the cartels have been hurt badly, and that they are now lashing out at the government and battling one another for control of territory.

Given the likelihood that the various splinter groups formed by the decimation of the “old guard” cartel leadership will eventually slow their internal fighting as territories and influence become more defined, the danger to both the Mexican state and the US will increase dramatically.

It’s clear from some of the assassinations of top cops and officials in the Mexican government and drug raiding teams being ambushed that the power structure has been thoroughly infiltrated. Such infiltration virtually guarantees that efforts to eradicate the gangs will be more cosmetic than effective. That gives the gangs virtual free reign to operate from a safe haven, in much the same way as the Taliban does now in Pakistan. As Bill Lind puts it:

. . . operating within a hollowed-out state may benefit many 4GW entities more than replacing the state. A Potemkin state protects 4GW organizations from foreign attack; the U.S. cannot go after drug gangs within Mexico except in a surreptitious manner, because doing so would violate Mexican sovereignty.

And so one begins to see just what shape part of the threat will take. The other part comes from the US side of the border. How will the threat be treated? To treat it as a war is tempting, because in war the Executive gains great power, but as DNI’s Chet Richards points out, such an usurpation of power may not be wise.

While such powers have proven useful when the country faces the military forces of another country, they also allow the president to undertake activities that would be counterproductive if used against a guerrilla-type opponent, where the outcome depends primarily on moral elements — that is, on our ability to attract allies, maintain our own determination, and dry up the guerrillas’ bases of support.

Granted that for myself, this is almost as far geographically as the wars in the Middle East, but the same can’t be said for my co-bloggers, and the political choices made when there is such a conflict likely to spill across the border will affect everyone on the continent.

Definitely something to keep an eye on as it develops.

Urban Power Resiliency

By Fester

Resiliency is basically the ability of a system to withstand shocks and still perform its intended functions within reasonable parameters of costs, safety, reliability and predictability.  The more resilient a system is, the more damage it can take before catastrophic failure occurs.

The dominant global power infrastructure of centralized generation plants connected to distant consumers by loosely coupled networks of transmission wires and distribution centers is not particularly resilient.  For instance thirty transmission towers knocked down near Baghdad took out that city's power supply for four years straight.  A single point of failure near Cleveland knocked out most of the Northeast's power grid in 2003. Demand overload and blown transformers blacked out large sections of Queens for a week in 2006.   Tightly coupled systems with brittle and numerous failure points are not resilient to deliberate attacks or unusual circumstances. 

Local production as either part of the base load or as an emergency/supplemental system can contribute to local and system wide resiliency.  My post on diesel generation raised the question of rural/off the grid resiliency, but within a wide network of diverse power supplies, diesel is a resiliency adder for short to intermediate time frames. 

Treehugger is pointing out another source of localized power production that can maximize sustainable and resilient power generation; building mounted micro-wind turbines.  They take advantage of urban wind shear and elevation offered by buildings to produce local power.   This idea has been tried several times in the past but it looks like some of the noise and cost issues have been resolved so that this implementation is a more plausible path. 

Local, urban wind power will not supplant centralized production and its economies of scale.  However micro-turbines and other distributed power generation and localized distribution systems can be a critical resiliency add-on so that in most situations buildings and neighborhoods could generate a 20% base load.  This would allow for orderly shut-downs of non-essential equipment in general outages while also decreasing peak loads on the regional distribution system.  Decreasing peak loads also significantly decreases the probabilities of large failures.

This is an interesting development and it is a part of trend of improving local power production past the diesel generator in the hospital's basement that has twenty four hours worth of fuel.  It should be encouraged.   

Counterinsurgency and security bubbles

By Fester:

The Taliban and Pashtun insurgent groups are becoming significantly more active in southern Afghanistan and they are achieving negation victories over the counter-insurgency campaign that is being waged against it.  The Washington Post reports that several villages near Khandahar have fallen to Taliban fighters which are operating in battalion strength.  This is a major set back even if US, NATO and Afghan government forces are able to retake these towns and villages within the next week while decimating the forces that stand and fight.  The security bubble and the credible promise that is the premise of any counterinsurgency effort has been popped yet again.  And despite any probable future Taliban losses, this campaign is a win for them as I explained multiple times in the past:

the counter-insurgent task is a very complex task of seperating the population from the insurgent, and creating credible guarantees of security from any retaliation from the insurgent force....

The counterinsurgent force has to generate a bubble of security that negates the ability of the insurgent force to target informers, cooperators and neutrals. This bubble must be very strong for if the insurgent force can routinely penetrate the bubble, the promises of reward for cooperation with the counter-insurgent force become meaningless, for cooperation credibly means death.

The level of violence is up in Afghanistan and complex operations are being pulled off by the Taliban as they penetrate and pop the bubble of the credible counterinsurgent promise. Expect more violence, and more empty bluster and threats from the Kabul government as the Western forces are stretched too thin with few credible reinforcements in the pipeline and a nasty economic wallup of higher wheat prices and lower opium prices increases suffering and the need of previously neutral Afghanis to trade their allegiance for assistance. 

Tensions Rising on the Afghan-Pakistani Frontier?

By BJ

Yesterday, Fester noted the massive prison break in Khandahar, about which he had this to say:

This is a complex operation with multiple things that could go wrong against a high value and high prestige target.  It is also a Taliban attack that is aimed at delegitimatizing the government by highlighting its ineffectiveness while improving internal cohesion and morale as a demonstrated example of the Taliban taking care of its own.

An example of the highlighted portion can be found in this story, in which Canada's top general is trying to put a positive spin on the event.

. . . one Afghan was not so optimistic, saying it revealed the weakness of the government. One resident of Kandahar told CBC News he's keeping family members inside because they're terrified of the escapees, and tension in the city is high.

The more troubling part of the news today, is that Afghan President Hamid Karzai has apparently learned from his masters in Washington that the best way to answer a challenge to your legitimacy is to focus on an external threat and talk tough, and the external threat he's decided to focus on is Pakistan.

Afghan President Hamid Karzai has threatened to send troops over the border into Pakistan to confront militants based there.

He said that when militants crossed over from Pakistan to kill Afghans and coalition troops, his nation had the right to retaliate in "self-defence".

. . .

He warned that he was prepared to seek out Taleban leaders wherever they were, specifically naming Baitullah Mehsud, who is based in South Waziristan, Pakistan.

"Baitullah Mehsud should know that we will go after him now and hit him in his house," Mr Karzai said, adding that Taleban leader Mullah Omar could expect the same.

There are actually two possibilities here, the first being that this is little more than tough rhetoric since Afghanistan doesn't exactly have the kind of offensive capabilities to be launching attacks against its far more powerful neighbour.

The second, and unfortunately more probable scenario, is that this may be Karzai's way to provide cover for American strikes across the frontier between the two countries. Washington has ever been highly critical of the Pakistani authorities inability or presumed reluctance to root out the Taliban on their side of the border, but the situation has grown tenser in recent days. Via Kat, the outgoing commander of the ISAF just held a press conference regarding Afghanistan, and leaves little doubt as to what he thinks the solution is.

In a sober assessment, Gen. Dan K. McNeill, who departed June 3 after 16 months commanding NATO's International Security Assistance Force, or ISAF, said that although record levels of foreign and Afghan troops have constrained repeated Taliban offensives, stabilizing Afghanistan will be impossible without a more robust military campaign against insurgent havens in Pakistan.

. . .

McNeill criticized Pakistani efforts to crack down on that threat, and -- offering his unofficial view -- described the political situation in Islamabad as "dysfunctional."

He also criticized efforts by the Pakistan government to negotiate peace deals with insurgents on the frontier, saying past agreements have led to increased attacks across the border in Afghanistan. McNeill said the 50 percent increase in attacks in eastern Afghanistan in April compared with the same month last year is "directly attributable to the lack of pressure on the other side of the border."

He also goes on to note a couple of instances where US troops were killed in clashes with the Pakistani Frontier Guards, whose responsibility it is to patrol the border between the two states. No mention of the far more recent incident where around a dozen Pakistani paramilitary soldiers were killed by an American air strike. That incident has stoked anti-American rage in Pakistan and increased the rhetoric on both sides,

The rhetoric used by the Pakistani military Wednesday was the harshest it has leveled since the U.S. intervention in Afghanistan in 2001. The airstrike was a "completely unprovoked and cowardly act" which "hit at the very basis of cooperation and sacrifice with which Pakistani soldiers are supporting the Coalition in the war against terror," asserted the statement issued by the military's Inter-Services Public Affairs.

. . .

"I believe fundamentally if the United States is going to get hit, it is going to come out of the planning of the leadership in the FATA, Al-Qaeda specifically," Adm. Michael Mullen, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said Tuesday. "That is a threat to us that must be dealt with."

U.S. commanders also say that the peace deals negotiated by the Pakistani army have enabled militants to step up their attacks on Afghan and coalition forces inside Afghanistan.

Some U.S. officers in Afghanistan contend that current and former Pakistani army, intelligence and paramilitary officers have secretly continued to aid the insurgents despite Islamabad's avowed support for the Bush administration's "war on terror."

"Their policy for the last four years can be generously described as duplicitous," Army Col. Thomas Lynch, a visiting fellow at the Brookings Institution, a public policy institute in Washington, told McClatchy this week.

Given the pro- and anti-Musharraf forces inside Pakistan seem to be heading towards yet another showdown, this would seem to be a really bad time for the US and its Afghan puppet to be turning up the heat in the pressure-cooker. As China Hand at American Footprints put it a few months back:

The Bush administration is pushing Pakistan into a corner.

It’s not a happy place.

It’s called Musharraf = Shah of Iran territory.

And it really doesn’t have to be that way.

Doesn't have to, but may yet be. If anything else, this shows the necessity of having adults back in the White House who know how to de-escalate tense situations before they blow up in your face, rather than the type who only seem to know how to throw fuel on the fire.

Prison Break in Afghanistan

By Fester:

The Guardian is reporting a massive prison break has occurred in Khandahar, Afghanistan:

militants have attacked the main prison in the southern city of Kandahar with a car bomb and rockets, killing police and setting nearly all of an estimated 1,150 prisoners free.....

Militants first exploded a water tanker near the entrance to the gate of the Kandahar prison, then several suicide bombers entered and detonated their explosives, crumbling two prison walls, Karzai said.

Many police were killed, Karzai said, but he did not immediately know how many.

The prison holds common criminals but also some 400 Taliban militants, who have been fighting against Nato troops and the Afghan government.

This is a complex operation with multiple things that could go wrong against a high value and high prestige target.  It is also a Taliban attack that is aimed at delegitimatizing the government by highlighting its ineffectiveness while improving internal cohesion and morale as a demonstrated example of the Taliban taking care of its own. 

This attack also reminded me of an insurgent attack in Iraq in 2005.  A large field force of Sunni Arab insurgents attempted a similiar style assault on Abu Ghraib but their breaching car bomb got caught up in a ditch before it could hit the wall which spoiled the attack.  The Iraqis in that case ceased their attack and broke contact with minimal pursuit. 

Brandon Friedman at VetVoice notes that the violence rates in Afghanistan are increasing at a rapid rate:

In terms of enemy fire, May 2008 was the second deadliest month of the war since hostilities began in Afghanistan shortly after 9/11.  This also marked the end of the deadliest 12-month period for U.S. troops in combat in Afghanistan since the war began nearly seven years ago....

While hostile fire casualty rates in Iraq have been higher than .04 percent in about half of all months since the invasion, this shows us one fact that cannot be overlooked: The violence in Afghanistan only seems minimal to Americans because there are a mere 33,000 troops there.  But the rate of violence there is clearly comparable to that in Iraq--where 155,000 troops are now serving.  For those 33,000 troops in Afghanistan, for the first time now, life has become more dangerous than in Iraq.

Is there a systemic change in the quality and effectiveness of Taliban ability to organize and direct violence?  Or is this random noise?  I would hazard that it is a change in effectiveness in the Taliban as we have clear proof of their ability to plan and execute a very complex operation in the form of this prison break. 

Diesel generators and resiliency

By Fester

Diesel is much more expensive than regular unleaded which is a change from traditional patterns.  It is also a high demand product as the refineries are making more money on their diesel products than on their regular gasoline products.  Some of this is due to a shift in the composition of the crude oil inputs as heavier assays require more effort to turn crude oil into diesel at the refineries, but a significant portion of the price increase is due to increased demand. 

A portion of this demand is coming from a shift in transportation fuels towards diesel and away from gasoline.  This is noticable in the car market as well as in the train market.  However most of the increased demand is the traditional story of increased wealth in China and India as more areas are electrifying by local generators.  Kat, our researcher, also noted that diesel generators are common power supply systems in Iraq and other unstable/violent areas. 

I am interested in the nature of resiliency that diesel generators posses and whether or not this is an actual feature or an illusion of a feature.  Most of the diesel generators are being installed in areas where there is minimal reliable connections to a centralized or regionalized power grid.  This is either due to large scale system disruption/sabotage enhanced by localized fragmentation such as in Iraq, or the more common story of rural areas in India and China becoming wealthy enough to afford power but due to the combination of burgeoning urban power demand and high costs of connecting to pre-existing and not too reliable grids, localized prodution is the better alternative.

However in almost all scenarios, the localized production is at the tail end of a several thousand mile supply chain that is fairly brittle and volatile.  So is this really resilient when small communities have some interconnectedness with the larger social mileau but also possess point power generation if that power generation is not sustainable from local resources?  Or is this a movement of substitution of irresiliency as localized complexity and energy needs have jumped up while localized production has decreased? 

Badr on the SOFA

By Fester:

UPI is reporting that another major Iraqi faction seems to be coming out against the proposed Status of Forces Agreement that the Bush Administration wants to complete by the middle of this summer.  This time the faction is the Badr/SIIC group of Iranian friendly Shi'a exiles.

A leading Iraqi Shiite cleric said Monday the status of forces agreement between Washington and Baghdad could lead to an uprising in Iraq.

"It is not to the benefit of the U.S. as a major power to lessen the sovereignty of Iraq. This treaty is humiliating to the Iraqi people, and might cause an uprising against it and those who support it," Grand Ayatollah Mohammad al-Modarresi told the Iranian state-run English-language service, Press TV.

Modarresi said the strategic framework between Iraq and the United States needs a full understanding of the situation in Iraq before negotiations on the arrangement proceed. "It will surely fail if kept as it is," he said.

Grand Ayatollah Mohammad al-Modarresi is a long standing member of Badr/SIIC which is the dominant faction of the weakening Maliki government.  This position of opposition is a significant break from the Maliki line that an arrangment will be made but it also allows for an arrangement to be reached on significantly different terms.

A sub-faction of Dawa under the leadership of Jafari has broken off from Dawa to oppose the SOFA while the Sadrists and the Sunni Arabs have no permanent US bases or forces as a long standing objective.  These factions are not quite a majority in parliament but represent the dominant mood of Iraqi public opinion in the Shi'ite and Sunni areas.  The Kurdish region may differ. 

Dawa is fracturing, Badr is wavering and Maliki is stuck in the role of a puppet --- strong enough to be useful and too weak to be independent. 

Revisiting Profits of Instability

By Fester:

I have long argued that a moderate degree of instability in Iraq and other oil producing regions is quite advantageous for numerous actors as oil is the chokepoint supply of economic growth and therefore an opportunity to extract massive economic rents.  From my old blog in 2004:

This presents an interesting dilmena for all of the major oil exporters which are not part of NATO or NAFTA; stability in Iraq and in the Middle East in general is a contiunuum of choices, and the extremes on both ends have extremely expensive payoffs. Extreme levels of stability in Iraq will cost the Russians between fifteen and thirty billion dollars a year, and the Saudis even more money ($17-$35 billion is my best guess). Complete instability such as an Al-Queda led or inspired series of coups starting with the Saudi Royal family and moving down the line of Emirate will cost the current stakeholders their lives and fortunes. Somewhere in between are less dire consequences and therefore more desired states of being. This continuum of instability and its resultant payoff matrix leads to some very mixed incentives that we see acted upon every day....

Some level of instability is extremely profitable to them, especially an instability that so far has not resulted in the destruction of any actual production or export ability....

George Soros is arguing that oil is in a price bubble right now but the counter-argument to the bubble theory is the inventory of oil products is in the normal range. The counter-counter argument is that the inventory data is normal because building new storage capacity is expensive so 'inventory' is being stored in the ground by not pumping it out despite having economically and technically feasible means of doing so.  This theory requires significant spare capacity lying around and OPEC to be a functioning strong cartel.

Let's run with it for the sake of argument and see where the geo-political spin-out could be.  Holding back spare capacity to effectively build silent daily inventory would be a profit maximizing choice and a forms of savings.  Under this scenario, the holders of the spare capacity would have no problems pumping more oil IF there is an equivilant amount of oil being held off the market by other actors.  This would lead to a dollar for dollar shift of income from Nigeria or Mexico or Iraq or Angola to Saudi Arabia or Russia.  In this simplified scenario, we are playing a zero-sum game when available supply is fixed in the short term.

If that is the case, then things can get real interesting as the same dynamic for Iraq's oil exporting neighbors to not be significantly invested in a fully stable Iraq applies on a global scale.  If key bottleneck commodity producers are unstable, other producers of the same commodity have an interest in promoting further instability as this would restrict supplies and lead to higher prices.  The strongest constraints on this type of action is the fear of tit for tat retialiation in the short run and over a longer run the classical OPEC fear that too high of a price for crude oil will lead to a systemic shift to other energy sources and lifestyle modes that require far less crude to run. 

 

Hold and Clear in D.C.

By Fester:

Large scale sweeps have always worked so damn well when they are advertised in advance and take place in areas where the local population has conflicting primary and secondary loyalties towards the sweeping force. Isolating urban communities, denying them interactions and connectivity with other districts and squeezing local economies will be the result of large sweeps and haphazard clear and hold operations.  These results are not the best way to win friends and influence people who are persuadable to move in multiple directions within the social sphere.  We'll see if lessons learned in hundreds of different places will be relearned in D.C. as the city police will be conducting large sweeps and urban isolation efforts in several neighborhoods this summer:

The program will authorize the Metropolitan Police Department to set up public safety checks to help safeguard community members and create safer neighborhoods in the District by increasing police presence aimed at deterring crime....

Potential Neighborhood Safety Zones must be approved by the Chief of Police, and will be in effect for a maximum of 10 days. Public safety checks will be established along the main thoroughfares of the established neighborhoods. Anyone driving into a designated area may be asked to show valid identification with a home address in that neighborhood, or to provide an explanation for entering the NSZ, such as attending church, a doctor’s appointment or visiting friends or relatives. Pedestrians will not be subject to the public safety checks.

I can understand wanting to do something to decrease crime, but checkpoints are not a particularly efficient way of gaining useful intelligence, creating positive personal presence or embedding oneself into the local social milleau.  Instead embedding local cops and integrating into the local social mileau and connecting opportunities and prospects to neighborhoods has a much higher probability of reducing crime.  But those strategies, especially if backed up by good training, data, and multi-system service integration take time while roving roadblocks and hassling classes of people are visible and are evidence that something is being done even if it is ineffective. 

 

Peace through superior firepower

By Fester:

Artillery and air strikes, no matter how precise are not an effective means of winning hearts and minds as the smallest munitions still produce area effects and will kill a significant number of innocents even if best efforts are taken to minimize civilian casualties while firing into high density urban areas.  The recent push into Sadr City had the US provide stand-off fire support for a six week stalemate that was resovlved politically and a significant chunk of that support was from air power; via Abu Muqawama:

The U.S. military has fired more than 200 Hellfire missiles in Baghdad since late March--just six were fired in the previous three months

American ROE require positive visual identification of "hostile act" or "hostile intent" before firing, and U.S. pilots are diligent about following these guidelines, and war is not a video game--real people, including innocent bystanders, die. Sadr City is a slum of 2 million souls stacked on top of one another...

the heavy reliance on airstrikes during the surge is evidence of the lingering attraction overwhelming firepower has for the U.S. military.

This attraction towards heavy firepower is not limited to air strikes.  One US brigade commander uses artillery as a psychological terror weapon by frequent H&I strikes (via Fabius Maximus)

 Well, that’s a great question and one I like talking about. Eleven thousand five hundred rounds, I still believe in the carrot and stick, based on the propensity of this culture to — how they deal with power and authority. And it goes back to — it serves a couple purposes, the whole terrain denial piece.

One, we deny terrain to insurgents, (movement ?) routes, IED placement, those types of things. But it also sends a significant message when we start concentrating on a particular area for four or five days at 75 to 100 rounds a day in a given area, it has a profound impact on the population. Just like if I would start shooting artillery around your neighborhood.

We always do the collateral damage assessments and we will not — we have mathematical formulas that we know the effect, the physical effect of the round going off on anything nearby. So that’s not an issue, but it’s just the psychological impact.

If I would start shooting artillery around your neighborhood, it would quickly get your attention and cause you to start asking questions. Why are they doing this? And most of the time, 99 percent of the time they know why we’re doing it. We just received a series of IEDs that damaged vehicles, hurt our soldiers, et cetera. So they quickly get the message.

Peace through superior firepower is a good bumper sticker but a horrendous method of COIN. 

Conflicting Wheat-Opium Trade-offs

By Fester:

In early April, I was riffing on the idea that the high prices of scarce wheat in comparison to the stagnant prices for abundant opium offered a plausible economic wedge issue for counter-insurgent exploitation in Afghanistan:

The incentive for profit seeking Afghan farmers is to change their production profile from the black market poppy to white-market wheat.  Some of this is due to the price increase in wheat due to shortages, and part of this is the global heroin glut as production has boomed over the past couple of years.  Since a wheat farmer (all else being equal) does not need to fear eradication efforts, the need for Taliban protection decreases massively, as well as Taliban smuggling profits (who wants a black market loaf of bread....). 

The increased white market cash flows to farmers are coming out of local urban markets which may be a bit of a problem as Afghani cities are not that productive and do not produce large surpluses to pay for rural goods. So while rural landowners and steadholders will benefit, the relative prices of living in the cities have gotten a whole lot higher to provide this rural benefit. I do not know enough about Afghan city population composition to intelligently speculate how the Pashtun/non-Pashtun splits are in the cities, BUT on the economics, providing bread subidies as part of a counter-insurgency effort to urban populations could probably mitigate most of the impact of higher local and global wheat prices while tying people closer to the government.

Kip at Abu Muqawana disagrees with this analysis as they outline their take on the food crisis and how it impacts Afghanistan and counter-insurgency efforts:

The global food crisis is perhaps the least reported big event of the year. It stands to kill far more people than the cyclone in Myanmar or the earthquake in China. First it will kill through starvation, and then through the conflict over resources that it spawns. At a conference of experts that Kip observed on Afghanistan several weeks ago, all agreed that rising food prices were the single thing capable of throwing the country into utter and perhaps unrecoverable chaos. The same might be true of nuclear-armed Pakistan as well, not to mention several dozen other weak or failing states....

In Afghanistan, rising [food] prices may result in further entrenching the opium economy as the sure way to provide the cash needed to import grains. This would be bad news for the counterinsurgency effort, which needs to weed the populace and the government off of the proceeds of opium if we are to have a shot at winning....

I agree with Kip that high costs of food and food scarcity is a massive threat of legitimacy of governments in weak and poor states.  However I am grappling with the implied economic dynamics within the Afghanistan example.  One of the big comparative advantages the United States has in a counterinsurgency effort is that we print our own hard currency (albiet a weakened one) and can pass out big blocks of fresh fifty and one hundred dollar bills.  The Taliban and Pashtun insurgent/guerilla bands can not do that.  They actually need to participate in a market to gain cash.  Why not pass out food stamps or cash bread subsidies?   

AQI in Mosul --- two stories...

By Fester:

Last November, the Washington Post reported on the then current Pentagon line on AQI/ISI operations in Iraq --- not primarily an ideological struggle but an economic struggle. It showed an organization that was predominately self-funding through kidnapping, extortion, and smuggling activities.  It was also a relatively small organization:

"We're starting to hear a lot of chatter about the insurgents running out of money," said Twitty, of the 4th Brigade Combat Team, 1st Cavalry Division. "They are not able to get money to pay people for operations."

In a 30-minute interview, Abu Nawall described his work managing the $6 million or so annual budget of the Mosul branch of the Islamic State of Iraq, an insurgent umbrella group believed to have been formed by al-Qaeda in Iraq. ..The 28-year-old said he was responsible for running the bureaucracy and arranging payments to the 500 or so fighters for the group in the city, who he said try to carry out as many as 30 attacks a day....

The U.S. military has launched a propaganda effort to describe Abu Nawall and other insurgents as greedy in order to undermine support for al-Qaeda in Iraq and create infighting among insurgent groups. [my emphasis]

I noted at the time that the return on investment in violence was several thousand percent given the US supplied estimates and that violence would continue for a while.  In that same article, the AQI Mosul financier stated that he was paying off roughly 500 fighters at the height of his organization's size and scope.  Take all of this information with an appropriate grain of salt as this was part of an propaganda effort to wedge AQI and other Sunni Arab group leadership from their street level fighters.

Now this week the Mosul offensive has occurred.  And Maliki is claiming success in rounding up 1,000 prisoners. I agree with Cernig that something does not add up here and the residual is that this looks to be a big publicity sweep instead of anything remotely resembling effective counter-insurgency.  We are working with two different propoganda streams, but it would be nice if the major newspapers remember what they were told seven months ago to inform their analysis. 

More thoughts on Lebanon

By Fester:

I have not written much about Lebanon and Hezbollah's takedown of Beirut and the majority of the militias of their political rivals as I do not know enough about the region to be too intelligent.  However I can free ride off of people who pay much more attention to this region than I do.  Ilan Goldenburg at Attackerman argues that this was a premeditated move by Hezbollah (I agree) that was looking for a causus belli as it was too well planned to be anything spontaneous.  He thinks the Lebanese government misread the situation but Hezbollah had limited and primarily political and credibility objectives rather than a coup on their mind.

He finishes up with three potential future paths; staring at the brink and a step-back from civil war, a pause before a social system disruption event occurs, or a continued stalemate.  He leans towards a stalemate that is similar to the political stalemate that has dominated Lebanon for most of the past year.

The Yorkshire Ranter has another take on this as he sees a significant reshuffling of the political cards past the obvious on the ground gains Hezbollah has seen.  The other winner is the Lebanese Army in this scenario:

all the territory Hezbollah and Amal took was immediately handed over to the official Lebanese military, an increasingly powerful force in politics.

Arguably, this suggests that some of the ideas floated in 2006 about incorporating Hezbollah in the Lebanese military as some sort of reserve/militia/national guard/territorial army/jaegers/greenjackets/cossacks/whatever else you call those crazy bastards on the border, as long as they don't bother you and keep the roads open, are being put in effect de facto....

You could call it the Haganah-isation of Hezbollah; it's changing not just from a guerrilla force to an army, but also from a political party to an unstate with a shadow administration, an economy, and its own infrastructure, just as the Israeli founding generation built a mixed economy, a trade union movement, a shadow civil service, and a highly capable semi-guerrilla army/intelligence service long before the state became a formal reality. I'm only surprised they didn't start a commercial GSM network as cover for their own command-and-control system; perhaps they will.

Meanwhile, again, this is an example of the democratization of technology....

Under this theory the legitimacy of the state is weakened as it does not have a monopoly on force within its capital while the theoretical provider of that monopoly, the Lebanese Army has its de facto legitimacy increased as it divides its sphere of influence with the non-state actor of Hezbollah.  This is hollowing out the state by co-opting a significant pillar of state support if this theory is true... Interesting and worthy of further notice....

What's going on in Sadr City

By Fester:

There are two very distinct views of what is going on in Sadr City and Iraq in general.  Dr iRack at Abu Muquama captures this divergence very well and then presents a very strong and binding constraint of interpretation.  I agree with the second interpretation best:

1. Helping a legitimate Iraqi government (with growing cross-sectarian support) crack down on "criminals," "outlaws," and "thugs" who challenge the "rule of law" and the state's Weberian claim to monopolize violence; or

2. Whether we are simply caught in the middle of an intra-Shia power struggle, empowering one side (Dawa and ISCI) in its effort to weaken its principal rival (Sadr/JAM) in their ongoing competition for control of sourthern Iraq and the hearts and minds of the Shia masses in the lead up to provincial elections.

The significant constraint on interpretation is legitimacy of the Sadrist current.  It has it within its base and the Maliki government does not.  Some of this is identity based, but the majority of the legitimacy is presence base --- the Sadrists have been there for the poor and the dispossessed displaced Shi'ite communities for decades now.  And they have not left despite having that option.  Presence counts in all relationships:

Sadr continues to have more legitimacy than the central government or the coalition. Part of this is due to family reputation, part is due to Sadr's nationalism, and part is due to the extensive efforts by the Sadrists to provide essential services to the impoverished residents of Sadr City. It is also a byproduct of the dysfunctionality of the Maliki government and the inability of the government of Iraq to surge humanitarian aid into Sadr City during the recent fighting. In other words, in the competition to provide governance and legitimacy, the Sadrists have a significant advantage and will likely continue to do so.

Hollowing out of Mexico?

By Fester:

I'm stealing an entire post from Zenpundit as it is excellent work in area that I don't have a lot of knowledge in:

Mexico’s equivalent to an acting FBI director was assassinated earlier on Thursday, most likely by Zetas or similarly skilled team of hitmen working for one of several of Mexico’s crime cartels currently being pressured by recently dispatched Mexican Army troops.

Reminiscent of attacks on the Italian state during the 1970’s and 1980’s by leftist Red Brigades and Mafia, the drug cartels of Mexico are hobbled neither by antiquated Marxist ideology nor old-time, rustic, crime family traditions. They are adaptive, professional, transnational in outlook and far better equipped than state police forces on either side of the border. Mexico’s corrupt political elite by contrast, cannot be bothered to restrain their greed enough to properly pay, train and arm the very security forces that defend their primacy.

I wonder how much capability the Mexican elites have to properly pay, train and arm loyal security forces as much of their hard currency cash flow is tied to oil, black market smuggling, remittances and foreign owned manufacturing plants that are located in the North to take advantage of labor and regulation arbitrage with the United States. Remittances and profits from the maquiladoras are hard to tap into for significant direct cash flows.  The remittances of migrant workers can be conducted on a dollar cash basis and through the informal economy as well as the formal economy while the maquiladoras always have the threat of relocating to China or Vietnam or India as a source of protection. 

That leads to the black market and drug smuggling revenue models and oil production as the two remaining and tappable sources of cash.  And here is where there is a significant problem.  The black market/drug smuggling cash flows are funding the fight against the current Mexican elites.  Any tapping into these flows further weakens the elite's moral claims and orientation as crosscutting incentives create mud, fog and friction in the multiple decision loops.  More corruption, more chaos, more unpredictability and disorder does not favor the entrenched elites. 

And then that leaves us with oil revenues.  Oil provides the Mexican state with 40% of its revenue but there are significant problems in the pipeline that could indicate a significant cash crunch.  The first and most obvious is that Cantarell, Mexico's largest oil field is experiencing significant depletion and declines in its production rate.  Other, smaller and more expensive fields are making up some of the lost production but PeMex is producing less oil now than they were three years ago.  Higher prices are masking the pain at this point but Mexico is entering the Export-Land problem.  Higher local demand is keeping more of its oil off the international market and thus leading to a decline in hard currency earnings.  One estimate is that Mexican oil exports could go from a 2007 average of 1.67 million barrels per day to less than 280,000 barrels per day in 2016.  Even projecting high per barrel prices this is a net decline in overall revenue and a massive decline in revenue per capita. 

So given these trends, how much ability does the Mexican elite have to maneuver?  Not much at first glance unless they can clean up their own acts to free up resources for effective, responsive and localized public good projects that can not be matched by the drug gangs which are seeking to create a hollowed out and ineffective state. 

Somalia and International Law

By BJ

A few folks over at the Slate law blog have been having an interesting discussion over whether or not the airstrikes carried out by the US in Somalia are legal under international law. One of them asks:

Does Anyone Care Whether the Bombing in Somalia Was Legal?

I’m thinking the obvious answer is, “No, not really”. I mean, I understand why it should be important, but even though I wrote a long post on the overall situation in Somalia after the latest US strike, the question of the strike’s legality never even occurred to me. It has just been so long apparent that the US isn’t terribly respectful of others territorial sovereignty that it’s no longer a question.

And this is not about just the Bush administration, whose penchant for flaunting international law has spread to multiple other areas to a far greater degree, but about pretty much every US administration since WWII when the UN Charter became the law that the US was ignoring. Seriously, name me one administration that didn’t in some way, somewhere, go well beyond what is ordinarily considered international law by arranging coups, training and supplying militants and insurgents, bombing and sending in strike teams, all the way up to outright invasions, of some various number of poor, and occasionally not-so-poor, countries?

And then there are the actions of America's main allies in the country,

A leading human rights group on Tuesday accused Ethiopian troops in Somalia of killing civilians and committing atrocities, including slitting people's throats, gouging out eyes and gang-raping women.

Under the circumstances, worrying about whether or not the odd US bombing run is technically legal or not just doesn't seem that important.

Geography of Resiliency???

By Fester:

In the discussion of adapting to much higher energy prices, increased volatility and insecurity and a generalized minimization of effective nation state action, there is a common thread that communities will downsize and minimize their unmediated interactions with outside actors.  This is most commonly expressed in a basic form in the survivalist/off the grid communities and indepedent homesteads.  But I am expecting to read John Robb's next book on resilient communities and I am curious about how he will frame the economics of this discussion.

Cities are amazingly complex and inefficient system of systems that have one salient economic advantage over lower cost, more dispersed and easier to access locations.  That advantage is that cities when they are properly functioning they are an amazing mixing system of loose ties and large social networks that can mobilize towards common goals.  These multiple, disparate, loosely linked mobilizations of self-direct effort occur with low communication and information costs.  This is the central insight into multiple urban economic development theories including cluster analysis, creative class sociological analysis and product cycle/innovation analysis. 

Cities grow in all of these theories by being able to maximize their comparative advantage to overwhelm the high cost of locating in high density/high demand areas by creating new products and new ideas that can not be easily replicated.  Cities stagnate when their innovation cycles that fuel their growth comes to an end.  Non-innovative products are replicable products and economies.  Replicable products can be made anywhere and anywhere often includes places with much lower cost structures. 

If the resilient community is a resilient city there is a massive opportunity for increased urban import substittution as locally produced energy replaces/supplants imported energy and embedded energy products should create a massive amount of new jobs and new economic activity which will lead to increased economy wide innovation and productivity.

However if the resilient community is conceptualized as dispersed, isolated communities that are fundamentally self-sufficient or draw significantly higher proportion of economic activity from a small city region, I have doubts about the economic viability of this concept, or at least the viability of sustained economic growth and innovation.  There is a potential of recreating the feudal manor system in which the local environment is fairly self sufficient but for the import of luxuries and nice to haves.  However this system produced little trade and did not generate significant technological improvements compared to the improvements that were being generated by the nascent cities of the same period.

The low telecommunication costs of WiMax, satellite internet and Skype may mitigate against some of the city advantages but these trends are current extrapolations of current and very near future technologies.  Major cities have faced the decreased communication costs and have thrived because/despite this decrease in their comparatiev advantage.  I am curious if the resilient community concept if it is an isolation effect is a strategic hedgehog against threats --- a hardened target that is able to hold off frontal assaults at the cost of innovation immobility over the long run.  All of this is speculation before seeing the book so who knows where the argument will lead.   

 

Iran is willing to talk

By Fester:

Dr. iRack at Abu Muqawama is passing along a few interesting tidbits concerning Iranian influence and efforts in Iraq.  Right now Iran seems to be looking for a wide ranging set of discussions about spheres of influence and mutually agreeable arrangements on most/all Iraq related issues. 

Dr. iRack took note of some big news today: the Iranians have decided to halt talks with the United States over the security situation in Iraq until American forces stop their assault on Sadr City...

U.S. strikes in Sadr City are aimed at JAM factions rocketing the Green Zone and attacking U.S. forces with Iranian made weapons. In this context, the current U.S. position seems to be that the Iranians want it both ways: they want to keep dialing up the violence in Baghdad but then demand an end to the U.S. (counter-)offensive before talks on calming the overall security situation can resume. Blame for the failure in diplomacy seems to reside squarly on the shoulders of Tehran.

However, the picture may be more complicated. Readers will recall that, in Basra, Iran intervened to de-escalate the conflict (not because they're nice, but because they sought to avoid an all-out intra-Shia civil war in the south). When violence spilled over into Baghdad, however, the Iranians seemed content to keep backing Shia militants in an attempt to bloody American noses. But Dr. iRack has heard credible RUMINT that Iran also offered to initiate talks to help end the fighting in Sadr City in the context of wider discussions on the full range of U.S.-Iranian disputes--that is, the kind of sweeping diplomatic engagement many Iran analysts now recommend--but the United States rejected the overture. Scattered news reports seem to corroborate

He offers a theory that this rejection is partially being shaped by US officials being shell shocked from the intermittent Sadrist/JAM barrages on the Green Zone, but this seems a bit simplistic when a significant faction of the US senior leadership at both the civilian and military level are looking for a fight with Iran.  Holding talks is a great way of slowing down that fight from happening.  And advocating talks or at least a less confrontational posture is not good for an individual's career or prestige as the example of Admiral Fallon shows, and the counter-example of Gen. Petreuas illustrates the incentives for toeing the line within the machinations of Topaki Palace on the Potomac.