Some retrospection is useful. In Buying Yemen, I offered that one of the several motivations for the current Saudi use of the oil weapon is to keep Iran too poor to compete in the bidding for tribal loyalties. In Saudi, Houthis, Yemen & Pirates of Penzance, noting a lack of success in the buying, I wrote, “The  unlimited money of the House of Saud, and evident inability to use it to cause the Sunni tribes to coalesce, is itself a debacle.”

Although Saudi airstrikes are the visible part of Saudi support, the checkbook is again vindicated.  Regaining of Aden by Saudi-friendly forces, which means those friendly to Yemen president Abd Rabbuh Mansur Hadi, indicates that Saudi money has bought some success. But checkbook power is not unlimited. If it were, the Saudis would have bought off the Houthis, and there would presently be no  war. It’s  like scissors-paper-rock. Religion is the scissors; money is paper, and rocks are bullets.

Money works where a fault line can be exploited, and fault lines are what enabled the conflict to grow right through the hard religious boundary of Sunni/Shiite antagonism.  In November, 2011, following the “Arab Spring” event in Yemen, the  former president, Ali Abdullah Saleh, ceded power to Hadi. Hadi seemed well on the way to unifying the country, when the Houthis seized on the practical problems of extreme poverty with a demand of universal appeal, restoration of the fuel subsidy. This activated a fault line among the Sunni tribes, among whom  Saleh commands a considerable loyalty, and, at the time, the largest militia. In politics, the slogan  “cheap gas”  works almost anywhere.

In Buying Yemen, I speculated that the Saudis might buy Saleh himself. The result would have been widespread collapse of the rebellion, and the likely retreat of Houthis back into their native territory.  But Saleh could not be bought.   Plausibly, Houthi promises of political power were more important to Saleh, though he did not broadcast his allegiance until the Saudis bombed his house. In May ’14, Hadi’s National Dialogue Conference claimed transformational progress, with one of the goals disarmament of the militias. This would have been fatal to Saleh’s conception of existence, of tribesmen with guns, bound by personal loyalty to him. A business suit does not a Western outlook make.

Although alliances shift like blowing sand dunes, it was a surprise to find Saleh on the Houthi side, because under his presidency, the Houthi movement’s attempt to fracture Yemen resulted in repression of the movement. The founder, Hussein al-Houthi, was killed by Saleh’s forces in September, 2004.

With a little education on the issues, a little persuasion from overhead, and a little grease on the palm, a Sunni soldier in Saleh’s militia might become skeptical of  promises of prosperity in a new Yemen shared by Houthis with a blood grudge.  A few defections were first reported in May, but lacked the implication of a fundamental shift. The taking of Aden provides that implication.

The Aden supply line runs through the port of Aden, so it cannot be interdicted by the Houthis.  The risk at sea is small, subject only to hypothetical piracy or Iranian pot shots. The compactness of Aden and the security of the rear facilitates force concentration.  This asymmetry favors the Saudi backed forces in the vicinity of Aden.  But as the Saudi backed forces attempt to extend their pocket, with the eventual objective of Sana’a , the asymmetries turn against them.  Aden is on a coastal plane. Beyond the plain,  rugged terrain favors the defender and the harasser.

But the capture of Aden lowers the buy-price for desertion of Saleh’s men.  Since Aden is the principle port,  the Saudis can now offer, in addition to the abstraction called money, the lure of tangibles, such as gas, food, bottled water, and little luxuries as well. Perhaps they can buy enough loyalties to disintegrate Saleh’s tribal patchwork.

Life in Yemen is indescribably hard. Every man has his price. What’s yours?

Quoting Reuters, “Maria Gaidar, whose father Yegor was Russia’s first reformist prime minister after the 1991 collapse of the Soviet Union, was appointed last Friday to be deputy governor of Ukraine’s southern Odessa region, a political hotspot now led by former Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili.”

Maria Gaidar is Russian, and she holds Russian citizenship. There is no obvious notation of Ukrainian, or part-Ukrainian ancestry, that would put in a less jarring context the appointment of a Russian citizen to the Ukraine administration of Petro Poroshenko. Her father was a prime minister of Russia. From 2/09 to 6/11, Maria herself was a deputy governor of Kirov Oblast, which, note, is nowhere near the Caucasus or Ukraine.

The demographics of entire Odessa Oblast are not at my fingertips, so here are the (Wikipedia) 2001 demos of the Odessa-the-city,  the largest city and capital of the region:

1. Ukrainians: 622,900 people (61.6%)
2. Russians: 292,000 people (29.0%)
3. Bulgarians: 13,300 people (1.3%)
4. Jews: 12,400 people (1.2%)
5. Moldovans: 7,600 people (0.7%)
6. Belarusians: 6,400 people (0.6%)
7. Armenians: 4,400 people (0.4%)
8. Poles: 2,100 people (0.2%)

The governor of Odessa Oblast isn’t Russian either; Mikheil Saakashvili is former president of Georgia. The strangeness is apparently caused by a desire to find rulers who can’t be bribed by Odessans. But the numbers do not imply that the appointment of a Russian has any particular  political benefit, such as the pacification of hostile ethnics. The appointment of an ethnic Russian, however liberal or hospitable, is vaguely analogous to appointing during World War II, a member of the Japanese pre-war social democratic parties to some mid level position in the state government of Hawaii.

The Odsessans don’t seem to care. The Ukrainian fascists must, but their opinion apparently means little away from the front lines. Maria Gaidar’s motives are obvious. In Russia, her life is in danger. The Odessa appointment is an opportunity to continue in political life, doing…something. From Russia come loud noises of indignation.

A surmise. The field of possible choices for the position could not have been small.  For the position of deputy governor, there exists a huge pool of qualified individuals, both domestic and foreign. Have you ever wanted to be deputy governor of Odessa? Here’s your chance. Send your resume stat to

President of Ukraine , 11 Bankova Str., 01220, Kyiv, Ukraine

Perhaps we are missing something. Surely, somewhere, there must be at least one Ukrainian who is both as honest as the day is long and unafraid of getting whacked by the Odessa mafia. Could it be that there is method in the madness of appointing a Russian woman to a political post in far western Ukraine?

Since Donald Trump would snap up this appointment in a heartbeat, there well might be, a message to Putin:

“If the rebel leaders, who seem intellectually underendowed to the extent that their knuckles drag the ground, were instead, some other  enlightened  Russians, of whom Maria Gaidar is an exuberant example, we might come to terms.”

Perhaps you’ve noticed that I’ve passed on the obvious Greece question: “Will Greece stay in the EU?” This prediction problem draws attention to a paradox. Greece, a parliamentary democracy with a Western ethos, a country to which the West traces a large part of cultural inheritance, is familiar to us. The Greece debt crisis involves other Western countries, with which we are at least as familiar. Shouldn’t the outcome be more transparent to prediction than the comparatively different cultures of the Middle East? All the workings and gears of the Greek crisis are open to minute examination. Russia presents a puzzling combination of opacity and sudden insight, yet this blog is full of Russia analysis.

Something pops out: The difficulty of prediction is not simply a matter of facility to observe. It also depends upon the number of actors. The vocabulary of political science is large, but governments are commonly graded on how democratic they are. The taxonomy of political science is largely inherited from ideologies. Some political science theorists have attempted to renovate the study of power. But the new work is not pointed specifically at the prediction problem.

So it has something to do with the number of actors, and independence. Hypothetically, in a society in which all political opinions were in perfect lockstep, all the actors would count as one. Since the national intelligence agencies have intensive interest in the mathematical formulation of intelligence problems, it’s worth mentioning the analogies to linear system theory. A system is deemed observable if all the internal variables can be determined by external observation. The number of internal variables correspond to the actors. The rank of the system corresponds to the number of independent actors.

But this is not golden, because nothing that has to do with human beings is linear – with the limited exception of trend extrapolation. Trends end unpredictably. In non mathematical terms, the number of actors is huge, including not only heads of government and monetary authorities, but, in a very real sense, the electorates or special interests they are responsible to. Some, such as Alexis Tsipras, are standing on the political equivalent of quicksand. Prediction would be much easier if he were a dictator, but he is not. Modern Greece is a surprising mix of political responsibility that transcends party lines, political irresponsibility, greed, reasonable concern for pensioners, a lack of final comprehension until the cash machines shut down, widespread leftist sympathies, gross hypocrisy, and attitudes and interests that defy enumeration.

The attention of the press is selective, not inclusive. To derive a prediction solution from open sources, it helps to have a long memory, and to be attentive to details as they are reported. The flaws of the euro were discussed, a few years back, when several EU countries had similar crisis. Martin Feldstein’s article emphasizes that in an area served by a single currency,  the workforce must be mobile. But it  was more obviously noted at the inception of the euro that it created a separation between the national power to spend, and the power to mint money. See the Credit Writedowns article, “The Euro System Contains a Serious Flaw.”

Such observations are very old, dating to 1999 and earlier. As they say, the road to hell is paved with good intentions. Thanks to the selective attention of the press, we now have a list of “almost facts”:

• The debt load of the the new agreement could, perhaps, be serviced by someone with the perseverance of Sisyphus, who, because of his deceit in running up national debt, was compelled to roll a boulder up a hill in perpetuity.
• The “Euro rules” disallow the possibility of a haircut for bondholders. Whether this almost-fact remains a fact is critical to the conclusion.
• The Greeks, who, polls indicate, have the sentiment of wealthy communists owning multiple dachas with undeclared backyard swimming pools,  do not have the perseverance of Sisyphus. One Greek explained to me that this is why there are so many Greek restaurants, and so few hundred-year-old family owned companies, like Leitz, Zeiss, Krupp, Bosch, Mercedes, or Porche.  The short, sweet life of many a restaurant ends when it burns to collect the insurance.
• Greece has the most gorgeous weather in the world. Maybe it’s better to be broke there than busy in Stuttgart.
• If Greece were not in the Euro zone, the new drachma could be devalued according to requirements for foreign currency, attracting hoards of Chinese tourists to feast on souvlaki. This is why German finance minister Wolfgang Schäuble proposed Greece take a break from the euro,  fixing the flaw described by the Credit Writedowns article.
• The recent rapid shifts of the Tsipras government have two intepretations: intelligent, hardball negotiation tactics, or an unstable mix of ideological betrayal and practical panic. That Greece simply burnt through the previous loans is more congruent with the latter.

So now to the motives. Tsipras won’t have to tell his mother for a while longer.  The Germans would prefer it all to end with a whimper, not a bang. Greece will exit the euro, with a sequence of events as  passively biased as a cataclysm can be.

It’s a tragedy with comic overtones; a fragile, if not defective, economic theory, incompetent against relatively mild centrifugal forces of nationalism within the E.U. Since Greeks, even wealthy ones who own multiple dachas with undeclared backyard swimming pools, tend to describe themselves as leftist, this will be an opportunity to test their commitment to the collective. Suicide, from eviction, or business failure, is one of the most tragic consequences of prescribed austerity.

Communist countries hardly excel at success, but some of them, notably Cuba, have managed failure well. But for all the gushing of leftism, the economic elite are well respected in Greece. The devise of novel structures to circumvent the disenfranchisement of a rogue nation cannot be excluded — if all the “almost-facts”, particularly the no-haircut factoid, hold.

Take a look at a slide show presentation, “Nonverbal Communication in a Police Interrogation.” Compared to Dan Hill’s article, it is both more precise, and more tentative. Now look at this picture of Vladimir Putin, and Russian Foreign Secretary Sergei Lavrov. Doesn’t Lavrov look more expansive and jolly than Putin? And yet, their world views must be very close. From this picture, decide who you would rather go to the movies with. Your buddy Lavrov?

Hill writes, “Reading a person’s emotions is crucial to fully understanding them and it is true that people’s faces best reflect and communicate their emotions.” The implication is that the tools to read other individuals are available to all of us. But  why are we taken in by others so easily? if hidden intentions could be made so easily visible, we would not be so commonly surprised by what other people do.

One way to resolve this paradox is to speculate that people are divided into three groups: the gullible, the skeptical, and the knowing.  The first two are victims of their innate characteristics, while the third, either by Hill’s assertions, or some other talent, are able to divine the intentions of others. But the existence of the third group is frustrated by the characteristics of the psychopath who, by varying estimates, comprise 2-5% of the male population, and about half that frequency in the female.

The popular conception of the psychopath imagines Hannibal-Lector violent criminality, and it is false.  Psychopaths are all over the place. They are particularly evident in the workplace, where it isn’t possible to choose your companions. Like all other human traits, they exist on a continuum, meaning there is no particular boundary at which a person is normal or nuts. Unfortunately for nice guys, the traits of the psychopath are advantageous in certain professions, such as CEO, or surgeon.

Analysis of facial expressions is a part of the division of psychometry concerned with personality traits. The lie detector, actually a variety of devices that measure involuntary responses that accompany emotions, is a tool of the same interrogators who train from  the slide show. The psychopath can defeat both types of tools, because his involuntary responses are decoupled from what he is actually thinking. So are his emotions. The weakness of the psychopath’s emotionality is a boon for survival in some kinds of situations. An extension of the ability to fluently lie, it is in some way the attempt of a “selfish gene” to propagate, in a preference for individual survival over that of  the group.

Refer again to the flashing pictures of Dan Hill’s article, and compare to Lavrov’s broad, toothy smile. Putin’s face is highly expressive, and not artificially pleasant — exactly the opposite of the psychopath, the type science most closely identifies with the religious “has no soul.” Lavrov’s toothy smile says he’s the guy you want to go to the movies with. But on the continuum of psychopathology, Lavrov is probably a little higher on the scale — an asset for constant exposure on the world stage.

The psychopath confounds the bullshit detector with the opposite assertion: The man you think you can trust is the man you can’t. Professional interrogators know  this. But they don’t look for souls; they look for “tells”, the body language by which a poker player sizes up his opponent. For instance, a subject may, when evasive, avert his gaze in the direction of his dominant cerebral hemisphere. Human variability, which Dan Hill conveniently ignores, is partly factored out by a process of calibration of the individual under interrogation. This is why a lie detector examination includes a large variety of inane questions, offered at irregular intervals. Only by comparison can the interrogator obtain information with even a probability of correctness.

In case you have been mislead by the picture of Kerry and Lavrov, you should go  to the movies with Kerry. Lavrov will eat all the popcorn.

Reuters has run a really silly article, “Want to know Vladimir Putin’s secrets? They’re all right on his face.” On other occasions, I’ve responded to silly articles with dour condemnation, for example, when Reuters engaged a comic-book writer to critique the F-35. But Dan Hill’s article, which touches on whether Putin has a soul, offers all kinds of opportunities to be silly myself. I try to keep open source intelligence a serious endeavor, which means a limit on how far I am willing to go, publicly, on a hunch. But with Putin’s soul on the table, the sky’s the limit.

The article cites Bush the Second and Joe Biden as having conducted ophthalmic examinations of Putin’s eyes. Although not visible in official pictures, Bush and Biden must have used the opthalmic instrument known as the funduscope to clearly image Putin’s retinas. No mention is made of cataracts or macular degeneration, although Drs. Bush and Biden differed as to whether a soul was observed. Since the medical records do not indicate that Putin’s eyes were dilated for the examination, it is hard to understand the confidence of the examining physicians regarding the presence or absence of soul pathology.

Somebody, somewhere, said  “the eyes are the windows of the soul”, and it was catchy. The great authority, Spirit Science and Metaphysics, says it’s true, so it must be. This is why the U.S. Government, as part of the security clearance process, looks long and carefully into the applicant’s eyes, and notes the presence or absence of a soul. It is a requirement for many responsible positions that the applicant have a soul, with exceptions made for bond traders and bank presidents. And, as is well known, in criminal courts adhering to English common law, the presence or absence of a soul is admissible evidence. In cases of doubt, innocence or guilt can be established by ducking, stocks, or trial by fire.

Further adding to the mess is the recollection of New Yorker columnist Evan Osnos. Quoting the Reuters article, “An unfazed Putin, Biden recalled during a later conversation with the New Yorker’s Evan Osnos, replied with a smile, ‘We understand one another’.” Testimony by Osnos would be inadmissible hearsay. And, of course, Putin is protected by the Fifth Amendment from direct questioning about his soulfulness.

The above, and the contradictory findings of Drs. Bush and Biden, raise doubt as to whether the finding of soul should be admissible evidence into the trial of a person’s character. If at some point in the future, Putin is brought to trial before the International Criminal Court, he might try to have the case dismissed, based upon his uniquely variable condition of soul capacity. In all the annals, it is has been either one or the other.

Whether Putin has a soul must be left to some future occasion, when perhaps, an impartial panel of experts armed with the most modern opthalmic equipment will reach a firm conclusion. So let us move on.  In preface, I am no apologist for Putin.  Putin’s destruction of the free press, and other transgressions against Western ideals, are tragic. When he revived nationalism within the borders of Russia, I thought it was an ugly curiosity. Partnering with a bunch of apes to tear apart Ukraine is unforgivable.

Nevertheless,  four paragraphs of a Reuters article devoted to an idea as tenuous as the soul, and an idea is all it is, contributes to the demonization of Vladimir Putin. This simplification is unhelpful to understanding someone who, at this moment, must be considered our opponent. As  they are understood by the superstitious, demons are very simple entities, because they serve only one purpose, “evil”,  so abstractly pure, it supposedly, according to believers, requires no further explanation. But Putin has all kinds of motives. He may believe many or all of them are good. He may believe others are excusable errors, or casualties of circumstance, such as the shooting down of MH-370. The mix is infinite. Demonization deprives us of the ability to see him as a complex individual, a creation of his time, his country, his life experiences, and personality: the combination psychologists call nature/nurture. For those of you who stare into people’s eyes, I have few words. Modernize yourselves; read William James’ monument, Psychology. It’s been in print since 1892.

To be continued shortly.

Pivot To Asia; Force Projection, Part 3 is a discussion of hard power. Symmetry suggests that “soft power” is a symmetric opposite. At least, that’s what I thought when I finished with, “Next: hard versus soft.” But it’s not. Soft power encompasses every aspect of competition between societies. Perhaps, in outer aspect, in gaining allies by offering favors, there is a symmetry. But the deepest forms of strength and attraction stem from societal perfection.  If the U.S. was Shangri-La,  the world would beat a path to our door. In fact, to the poorest of the poor, the U.S. and Europe are, literally, “to die for.”

So the topic of “soft power” could fill a library. In various guises, it has occupied thinkers for centuries, and had practical use as well. In World Order, Henry Kissinger describes the use by the Celestial Empire of soft power to gain control of bordering barbarian tribes, by corruption with luxuries.  What finally stirred me out of lethargy is Reuters opinion by Barry C. Lynn, “Why China has the upper hand in the South China Sea.”

Lynn’s piece is in the style of “revealed truth“, so popular with religions, as the category seems to encapsulate complicated problems in facts so simple they have to be right. Simply by the history of the category of axe-grinding revealed truths, it is a good bet that Lynn is almost completely wrong. Historically, the category  has given humanity nothing but trouble, a long train of fallacious ideas, each lasting a few short years until the next, then replaced by another one of the same ilk but with opposite polarity.

The common denominator of these revealed truths is that they are things we can, presumably, act upon. The scary part comes first, followed by the invocation to act, which is usually left vague, as the writer himself is at a loss for the details.

The immediate predecessor of Lynn’s idea was the polar opposite. In the early 2000’s, when China was ramping up but not yet perceived as a threat, it became popular to replicate the opinion that the U.S. economy was now “post-industrial”, and had become an “information economy”, solidly based in intangibles.  At one point, some economic nabobs awarded the U.S. “maximum reutilization of capital”, applauding how quickly capital here was recycled into an endless loop of investment instruments. In 2007, it suddenly dawned on the same nabobs that the financial markets had succeeded only in creating an almost infinite web of interdependence, which, according to the now hot topic of long-tail catastrophe theory, is an accident waiting to happen.

It took about five years to do the post-mortem, learn the lessons, and forget the lessons, so we are ripe for a new revealed truth. Lynn worries that China makes so many of our basic needs, they could turn this place into something like Cuba before the embargo was lifted. But Lynn doesn’t mention finance at all. Finance, having been disgraced by the 2007-08 meltdown, is beneath consideration.

Finance is neither what financiers conceive it to be, nor as unimportant as Lynn might imply by omitting a direct reference. In omission, his article has a curious analogy to the survivalist nuts, thinking that they can survive the collapse of society if only they have enough toothbrushes and dry food to hold them over.

Money is an intangible, but intangibles do matter. When the Obama administration put the banks back together, it was not due to any love of banks. It was because, if they walked through the door of multiple too-big-to-fail failures, they were afraid of what lay on the other side. It is possible to destroy an economy by destroying confidence in the currency. And what is confidence, but a complete abstraction?

Mr. Lynn has a valid concern. But in naming that concern as the “why”, the article implicitly advocates direct action against that concern. In fact, Lynn’s issue is a part of an ecology of world trade, an issue without remedy of direct action.  With central banks desperately twisting the interest rate taps, a trade war would send us all to the bottom.

Formerly, the U.S. economy enjoyed unrivaled economies of scale. The rapid expansion of the U.S. in the 20th century gives unfounded basis to the religious devotees of C.B. MacPherson’s interpretations  of Thomas Locke, meaning, unbridled capitalism.

Of late, the U.S. concept of unbridled capitalism has taken some hits. There is mounting evidence that it cannot compete with state sponsored capitalism. Small scale efforts at state manipulation of the economy along the lines of Solyndra generally fail. Sometimes they succeed, as with the “Chrysler Corporation Loan Guarantee Act of 1979.” Sometimes they succeed brilliantly, as with Sematech.

But all of the above are a thimble-full compared to Lynn’s plaint. So now I shall give my magic prescription that will salve all your cares.

But then, I would be another axe-grinder. The competition of societies is the biggest topic there is. Whatever is done, it must be thoroughly analyzed in the context of total interdependence of all the dynamical structures of interaction between societies. Of these, the material concerns of Mr. Lynn are a small part.

How thoroughly must we analyze? A Moldavian professor advocated the  Russian method of testing bridges for structural integrity.  As he explained, they drive ten loaded dump trucks onto the bridge. If the bridge holds, it is sound. (A few years back, they lost ten dump trucks.) But an address of the Competition Between Societies is beyond that kind of analysis. A bridge stand still; societies are constantly in flux.

So now, here are some guidelines to stay out of trouble  with the next great idea(s):

• The  total system(s) must be considered together.
• Such changes as are promoted must  be imperceptible to the casual observer. Specialists must get bored watching the evolution.
• Strategies must be persistent, implying more political cohesion and continuity than currently exists in the U.S.

Stock up on toothbrushes and light bulbs while they’re still cheap.

June 5, un.org. Quoting Reuters, “Several Western council members noted that the unanimously adopted statement had the backing of Russia, which has strongly supported the government of President Bashar al-Assad.”

Russian foreign policy  exemplifies the practice of realpolitik, well summarized by the first paragraph of the Wikipedia article as

“Realpolitik (from German: real “realistic”, “practical”, or “actual”; and Politik “politics”, German pronunciation: [ʁeˈaːlpoliˌtɪk]) is politics or diplomacy based primarily on power and on practical and material factors and considerations, rather than explicit ideological notions or moral or ethical premises. In this respect, it shares aspects of its philosophical approach with those of realism and pragmatism. The term Realpolitik is sometimes used pejoratively to imply politics that are coercive, amoral, or Machiavellian.”

That Russian foreign policy adheres to realpolitik does not imply that the Russian principals are themselves without conscience. They rationalize, as well all do, by subordination of their personal feelings to what they consider the Greater Good. Those of us who dislike Russian realpolitik feel  their conception of the Greater Good is flawed. It is also likely that Russian policy makers allow themselves to offer the milk of human kindness as a secondary gesture, provided that the objectives of realpolitik are met.

The few exceptions to the rigorous practice of realpolitik occur with respect to foreign countries with large representations of the Russian diaspora. So many Russians live in Israel that relations are better than one would expect with a staunch ally of the U.S.  And pairing of Russian men and Syrian women, extensive for many years, has influenced Moscow’s affection for Assad . (Ironically, the largest contingent of the diaspora is in the U.S. Russian is the 12th most spoken language in the U.S.)

But personal affection is not a gear in the machine of realpolitik, so its  influence is beyond calculation. In contrast to the moral agony of U.S. foreign policy, realpolitik is a simple machine, with just a few well oiled deterministic gears. The messy moral component is missing, so it is remarkably easy to simulate. The loyalty of Russia to the Assad regime now shows a crack. Since realpolitik admits no consideration of human suffering, the “increasing brutality” of the Assad regime is not a factor in Russian assent to the June 5 statement of the Security Council. Russian assent to this particular statement cloaks what realpolitik would offer as the real reason.

Diplomacy has back channels that do not show in open source media.  In some situations of diplomacy, particularly where the U.S. is not involved, there are also “dark channels”,  widely used by states where lines of communication are not restrained by the apparent formal structure of government. Russia is such a state. Saudi Arabia, ruled mostly by an extended family, is another. So it does not rise to the level of conspiratorial thinking to assume that they know more of what their opposites want than we do.

Russia wants a security landscape in the Middle East, that minimizes, to Russian eyes, spillover to the Caucasus of militancy and unrest typified by ISIS. The Russian view of Sunni Islam is that it is a wellspring of stateless terrorism. By contrast, Shi’ism, with a hierarchical religious structure, is inhospitable to stateless terrorism.  And so goes Iran, which is Shi’ite theocracy. So it is in the interest of Russia to practice balance-of-power by alliance with the Shi’ite powers in the area.

A Shiite alliance also solves part of the map-coloring problem. Since Islam in the Russian (northern) Caucasus is predominantly Sunni, the map-line of Iranian part of the border is reinforced by religious distinction.  This may sound silly, but the reasoning goes way back, when historically a state would adopt a state religion contrasting with others in the area, making of  each village priest or pastor a border cop.

Since Iran actually has historical claims on Russian parts of the Caucasus, the Russian attitude must be something of the nature, “We’ll worry about that when it happens.” Russia, unlike the U.S., does not enjoy the luxury of uncontested borders.

Saudi Arabia has three concerns:

• Iranian expansion, via Houthi proxies, onto the Arabian peninsula.
• Assad’s casual atrocities targeting the Sunni majority of Syria.
• An alleged interest in derailing the fracking business in the U.S. Skeptically, the Saudis, with their business experience and intimate knowledge of oil, must have known that fracking is an impossible target for their oil weapon, impossible because the capital needs of fracking are far smaller than the cost of their weapon.

Formerly, the Russians could play with realpolitik and balance-of-power without compunction. But now, the house is on fire. The realpolitik board game has changed. Adjustments must be made. The Russian economy desperately needs higher oil prices, and the Assad regime is doomed. Since realpolitik admits no sentimentality, it’s time to sell them out. Avoiding a sheriff’s sale, or taking of the Assad Property by ISIS “eminent domain” seizure, is the next job of Russian diplomacy.

The Assad Property is due for redevelopment. The bidders are Iran, through their Hezbollah proxy, and Saudi Group. Both bidders bring unique assets to the table. Hezbollah is a strong builder but short on dough, contrasting with Saudi  Group, who have weak builders but lots of dough.

The two groups have different aesthetic tastes, so the Assad Property will be split into a patchwork of subdivisions, so each can build in their own style of religious motifs. But the Assad Property is in a very rough area of town, dominated by the ISIS Boys. In an adjoining area, Iraq Town,  rival developer U.S. Properties tried community-based development for years, but the place is still a dump.

Can the parties bridge their differences enough to clean the place up?

The NSA spy program expired at midnight, 40 minutes ago.

In The Senate Report, Torture, & Anatomy of Fear, I ended with, “Next: But what could there possibly be to be afraid of?” But I didn’t write about it, because I felt that illumination of what there is to be afraid of might inspire evil-doers. I did not want an explication to be captured by search engines.

I still don’t want that. But now, 40 minutes after the expiration, I am very, very afraid. You should share my fear. The security situation is actually much worse than you know, unless you are one of those who is in the know.

After 9/11, our government was caught on the horns of a dilemma. If the public was fully aware of our vulnerability, paralysis of normal life would occur. In the opposite direction, if the public were assured that we have been, as a nation, victorious in the war on terror, we would conversely become more vulnerable.

Now, 14 years later, we have become innured to the pinpricks of lone wolves, but the fear of another 9/11, or worse, has receded. Fear has gone away because it is an emotion, and emotions dim with time. But the risk has never gone away. It may have increased. Here’s a list of sentences. Take home the one that feels like a gut-punch:

• The security situation is much worse than you know.
• The responsible persons at the FBI do not sleep very well at night.
• The risk of casualties in the millions is greater than zero. The risk of casualties in the hundreds of thousands is very real.
• Events of the above magnitude would cause the suspension, for a very long time,  of civil liberties as we today enjoy.
• Of Senate obstruction, even for a brief period of time, those responsible must bear the burden of those lives.

The Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court rubber stamped NSA activities. There have been abuses at the NSA. But to enjoy civil liberties, you have to be alive.

Reuters reports, “Russia masses heavy firepower on border with Ukraine”. Also from Reuters, “As Russia growls, EU goes cool on eastern promises”.

“Eastern Promises” is a pun on the title of an excellent movie. If you’re into indie film, it’s a must-watch.  It is a voyeur’s delight, a vision of the unique Russian contribution to criminal culture, the “thief in law.” The movie title is nonsensical, but it perfectly expresses the EU retreat from the promise of membership to former Soviet-bloc states. The reporting of the Latvia meeting provides a read of EU sentiment that is surprisingly hard to obtain by other methods. It offers the the open-sourcer an opportunity to compete, prognostically speaking, with the insiders. In this case, it suggests that the cost to Moscow of an additional grab is minimal, provided that it does not add fuel to the potential instability of right wing extremism. The assassination of Alexey Mozgovoy may have mitigated the immediate hazard.

Perhaps the difficulty of estimating  the size of the Russian bite  is because the Russians did not know themselves. This depended more on the EU response than perhaps the EU would care to admit.  Moscow “rattled the saber”, which in this case was nonsensical talk about nuclear war, and the press sang the song of fear. The softness of Western psychology was music to Moscow’s ears.

Ukraine actually had a terrific chance to join the West. After the Soviet breakup, and before the election of Viktor Yanukovych, Ukraine predated itself with a level of political corruption that makes Russia look like an honest place.  Perhaps Russia’s decision to predate Ukraine, born in the minds of men, was not solely, coldly, based on strategic interests. Perhaps an element of disrespect also figures. None of this is an excuse for Russia.

The lynchpin of EU response is Angela Merkel. Of all the  individuals with an influence on the future existence of Ukraine, Merkel is, or was, paramount. In his 2001 book, Does America Need a Foreign Policy, Henry Kissinger wrote (page 41),

As Germany's relative role and power grow, and as Russia recovers, there will emerge temptations for a special Russo-German rapproachment based on the Bismarckian tradition that the two countries prospered when they were close and suffered when they were in conflict.

Kissinger’s remark was prescient. While the U.S. may have illusions of autonomy, Germany is a trading nation. Until a few years ago, it was the world’s largest exporter of finished industrial goods.

A German once said to me (paraphrasing), “If your country should have an economic disaster, and the economy should stop, eventually you would be able to get it started again. If the economy of Germany stopped, it might be impossible to restart it.”  He was thinking of post World War I Germany. Until recently, no German could forget it. Historically, the German family owned business has had a sense of responsibility to the worker.  Angela Merkel is burdened with a sense of responsibility to the German economy over and above considerations of foreign policy that are not at the core of the western alliance.

The invasion and annexation of Crimea was a planned action, motivated by the strategic need to secure the Black Sea naval base. But the subsequent invasion of Ukraine appears to have been provoked by the separatists, who accused Putin of abandonment. Some stories, relevant regardless of accuracy:

• The man who sends Russian mercenaries from Ekaterinburg to Ukraine
• Igor Girkin’s claim that he started it.

Russian nationalists dragged Putin in,  he found the water  warm,  it grew to a surfer’s delight, the Big One, and then a monster that worries him a bit. One could hopefully desire that the Russian armor concentration is just a warning to Ukrainian nationalists. But mind reading is beyond our ability, particularly as Putin’s thinking appears to have a dynamic element.

The stories suggest that the initial Russian incursion was ad hoc, which makes the idea of a Russian strategy absurd. They’ve been playing it by ear, but they do have an idea of costs and benefits. Some benefits:

• Russia doesn’t have a decent shipyard. The Black Sea Shipyard, actually a complex of three yards, is located at  46°56’49.51″N,  31°58’9.66″E , lies 96 miles from Crimea, on the opposite, western side of the Dnieper. It is a modern industrial jewel that would energize rebuilding Russian naval power. The shipyards are located 328 miles from the present concentration of Russian armor at Matvev Kurgan.
• The Dnieper River, a conventional barrier to land invasion, bisects Ukraine. To a modern strategist, it seems ludicrous, but the river figured prominently in World War II.
• Food. Russia is a large grain exporter, but with a population of 144 million. The high export figures are due also to a trade with the EU for processed foods. The maximum population that Russia can support with theoretical self-sufficiency has historically been limited by the northern latitudes of grain belts, which makes them less productive than those of southern Ukraine.  Renovation of the Russian agricultural economy could increase the supportable population . As of 2015, it is still a limitation. Kherson Oblast, on the road to the Black Sea Shipyards, is highly productive land for winter wheat. See grain map.
• Human. Eastern Ukraine has a skilled industrial labor force.

The costs are three:

• Economic. The acquired territory should preferably be an economic asset. Western Ukraine is not such an asset.
• Sanctions. Putin has said that the sanctions will be in place for a long time. The EU holds that the annexation of Crimea is illegal, which means the sanctions can abate only by gradual decay. The Cuban Embargo is analogous: 52 years without fundamental change in either Cuba or the U.S., abandoned by the assumption of new attitudes. 52 years of resolve is not likely with Ukraine. The degree of resolve depends upon whether the insult to EU sensibilities subsides by virtue of “no news”, or becomes in some way a permanent irritation.
• Import of political instability, covered here. I have been wondering if Putin will freeze the conflict now, or make one more acquisition.

Several scenarios can now be graded for attractiveness:

• An incursion far west into Ukraine would create a large number of displaced persons, the equivalent of Cuban exiles. This would be impossible for the EU to forget.
• Acquisition of the Dnieper River as a border would add  a lot of mouths to feed, without any particularly productive land. The Soviet occupation of Austria, between 1948 and 1955, was abandoned in steps, influenced by the inability of the occupiers to run expropriated industries at a profit.
• A sweep across southern Ukraine would acquire the Black Sea Shipyard, and provide a land bridge between Crimea and Russia. It would cut Ukraine off from a major part of their industrial base. And the Russians can grab a bite to eat along the way.

Among Kremlin strategists, there is likely a popular game. How many years of sanctions must they pay for each of these goals?

CNN.

Carter’s statement of the situation is doubtless accurate. He has reliable observers, and no inclination to bias. But “will to fight” sounds like description of a virtue. In places and times, it is. The phrase risks mislabeling Iraqi soldiering as a moral issue. It distracts from our issues, which are U.S. interests. If one decided (and I am not doing so here) that Iraqi soldiers were yellow-bellied cowards, it would still be in the interest of the U.S. for them to win.

It is not in U.S. interest for a lion-hearted ISIS  to prevail over a cowardly Iraqi army.

T.E. Lawrence, fighting in the same general area between 1916 and 1918, described exactly what Carter remarks about. Better known as Lawrence of Arabia, he put his experiences together in a great read, Seven Pillars of Wisdom, published in 1922. Not much has changed since then. In the interim, in the shadow of a protectorate and then a weak monarchy, a thin crust of intellectuals toyed with nationalism among themselves, until they were booted by strongmen in 1958. It was all downhill from there, with a Ba’ath coup in 1963. The father of their countries, Winston Churchill, had ulterior motives usually skipped in discussions of his greatness.

Since American soldiers fight so remarkably well, it is perhaps natural to expect the same from other cultures. But little has changed since Lawrence of Arabia led charges against Turkish trains defended by heavy weapons. His tribal fighters were interested in booty, not nation building. If there was a train to sack, they charged. If the goal was a strategic objective, they went home. We might call this desertion.

I wish we could just send George S. Patton over to deliver his speech.  A less profane adaptation: Listen now, it’s important. Of those Americans who soldier, and among many who do not, it strikes a chord. Don’t be embarrassed, because, at the time, it was an exhortation to save humanity by making the unthinkable thinkable.

About Americans, Patton said,

“Men, all this stuff you hear about America not wanting to fight, wanting to stay out of the war, is a lot of bullshit. Americans love to fight. All real Americans love the sting and clash of battle. When you were kids, you all admired the champion marble shooter, the fastest runner, the big-league ball players and the toughest boxers. Americans love a winner and will not tolerate a loser. Americans play to win all the time. That’s why Americans have never lost and will never lose a war. The very thought of losing is hateful to Americans. Battle is the most significant competition in which a man can indulge. It brings out all that is best and it removes all that is base.”

The Iraqis don’t have the cultural hooks described above, so the speech would not make any particular impression. Not so long ago,  how the U.S. Marines turned men into soldiers was demonstrated by R. Lee Ermy in Stanley Kubrick’s Full Metal Jacket (clip).  The  U.S., with a population of 320 million, has since replaced the conscript army with a volunteer army, so  harsh psychological manipulation is no longer a necessary part of basic training.

The psychological hooks of our secular society, that make possible the transformation of ordinary young men into exceptional soldiers, are not available in Iraq. The Iranians do it, with their own soldiers, and the Iraqi militia, but the hook is religious, not secular. Mullahs travel with the militias, delivering religious exhortations from pickup trucks with loud speakers. Religious indoctrination is reinforced daily.

While Americans can be convinced to fight for “duty, honor, country”, the corresponding Iraqi concept is martyrdom. On the subject of martyrdom, Patton said, “No bastard ever won a war by dying for his country. He won it by making the other poor dumb bastard die for his country.”

So, with respect to the roots of will to fight, the cultures of the U.S. and Iraq have no common logic.  Unfortunately, mullahs with loudspeakers on pickup trucks are not part of the U.S. arsenal. Perhaps a line item should be included in the next defense budget. The morale builders available to us are demonstrations of success. We have a saying, “Success breeds success.” The converse is also true. Prior to the modern era, part of the salvage of victory from defeat was to show that the enemy was not invincible.

We don’t have mullahs; we have no direct psychological hooks, but we do have Tac Air Control Parties, which would, at the very least, boost morale. In November 2014, the Iraqis successfully repelled an assault on Ramadi, so perhaps success can breed success. Useful assessment of the idea could be provided by individuals, now retired, who worked with indigenous elements in Afghanistan between 2001 and 2003.

Deployment is not without risk. In the current environment, betrayal to the enemy is not inconceivable, resulting in a prolonged national nightmare. But then we must ask, how important is it to us that Iraq survive as a country? We could allow Iran to take the better part of it, leaving a rump state of unknown composition. It may happen anyway. In October of last year, I wrote,

Southern Iraq is bound to Iran by culture and religion dating back to 680 A.D.  The connections are vastly powerful, yet curiously under weighted by U.S. strategists. There is, in the scheme of things, an exceedingly minor theological rift between the religious institutions of Iraq and Iran. With the passing of Grand Ayatollah Sistani, who is currently 84, integration of the religious establishments of Qom and Karbalā will become total. Secular fusion will inevitably follow.

Whether we consciously allow it to happen, consciously or by default, will become immaterial in a few years. But the fact of it will  persist.