(MSNBC) McCain prepared to accept some ‘blame’ for the war in Iraq.

Thank you, Senator John McCain, for your service to your country. By your own account, you were a rough kid, but your lifelong program of self improvement bore magnificent fruit. Quoting,

In his new memoir, he concedes that the war in Iraq he fought so hard to launch and then escalate now “can’t be judged as anything other than a mistake, a very serious one, and I have to accept my share of the blame for it.”

In pursuit of making better history, a mistake should be squeezed for all it is worth.  But if negation of past decisions were a good teacher, we would be better at making history than we are. So perhaps the learning process has a flaw.

In this case, the prospective flaw is thinking of the 2003 Iraq War as a unitary event. This is natural, because, historically, wars have been hard to start and hard to end.  This is why the word has three letters, and rarely has modifiers, like mild, medium, or hot. You can try to choose the temperature, but it can run away from you. And unlike a bowl of chili, it can be impossible to finish the dish. Instead, the dish eats you.

So when the mistakes of war are analyzed, the opinions don’t include “it should have been hotter”, or “cooler.”  Why fight a war for mediocre, inconclusive, conditional goals? Back in the day, the only modification of this was the occasional “intervention”, or “peacekeeping force”, but these deployments lacked contingent thinking about failures of mild persuasion. Hence tragedies like the tragedy of the 1982 deployment of U.S. Marines to Lebanon, with the 1983 Beirut barracks bombings. 

Only in the past decade has there been a change in attitude towards conditional goals, forced upon us by the futility of unconditional victory. We had that victory in Iraq, and found no one to bestow it to. Yet our dream of individual liberty is so compelling,  we staggered into the Syrian conflict with the same chimerical desire to bestow it to a culture that has no interest in it. In the Middle East, tribal and religious hegemony is, to the inhabitants, the natural order of things.

What would the period known as the 2003 Iraq War, and aftermath look like if it had been pursued with limited goals? And what would the current situation be if there had been no war? The cost of the mistake is actually an equation:

Total Cost = Cost of Iraq War  minus Cost of No Iraq War

The Bush Administration contrived the WMD justification as the Cost of No War. It was a great selling point. Because it wasn’t true, popular belief has come to be that the second term did not exist. But perhaps Bush had another, more legitimate reason that couldn’t sell. FDR had the same dilemma through the late 30’s with the rise of Nazi Germany, solved for him by Pearl Harbor.

There were a very few of us who were interested in Saddam’s novels with the apparent self-reference to a caliph-like character, who builds the Caliphate,  capitalized to signify the universal Islamic state.  It is equivalent to the universal  dominion of the Catholic Church that gradually disintegrated beginning in the 15th century.

Among this minority of thinkers, the possibility that Saddam could build a military power strong enough to dominate the Arab Middle East, and threaten the West, was more than theoretical; we considered  the 1529 Siege of Vienna. But the Caliphate as expressed by Saddam was a figment of his novels, lacking expression in fact, since his defeats in the eight-year Iran-Iraq War and  1990-1991 Gulf War.

But on 9/11/2001, we learned that there is very little difference between a figment and an empowering thought. Bin Laden, like Zarqawi, was light on ideology. Both proclaimed a need; the solution was the Caliphate. Again, see  (Brookings, pdf) From Paper State to Caliphate: The Ideology of the Islamic State. 

Between July 1979, when Saddam consolidated absolute power in a purge of the Ba’ath Party, and his fall in 2003, his wars of aggression against other countries in the region occupied almost half the time. The remainder was spent gassing the Kurds and with miscellaneous liquidations.

With the above, Saddam’s expressions of the Caliphate become more significant. Yet in recorded history, there is no case of a war because of something a ruler wrote in a novel. How could you sell it to the world?

I have always wanted to ask George W. Bush whether his WMD justification was in lieu of the danger of Saddam’s dreams. (George, how about a beer?) We are both fans of Tom Wolfe, so he has great literary taste.  And we’re both painters. To Bush, and to the rest of the minority who were thinking about it, the second term in the equation, Cost of No Iraq War, provoked concern. If it is considered as a possibly huge unknown, whether the Iraq War was a mistake becomes the wrong question. It is replaced by at least two separate questions of cost:

• Of the war itself.
• Of the ambitions of the transition to a new civil government.

The critical decision of the Coalition Provisional Authority was De-Ba’athification, known as CPA Order 1, issued in May of 2003. The Ba’ath (“renewal”) Party was a pan-Arab movement with inclinations toward revolutionary and violent struggle, drawing inspiration from Trotskyism. In both Syria and Iraq, slight pluralism in the Ba’ath movement was resolved by coups and assassinations.

It is not hard to see why the neoconservatives wanted Order 1. Ba’ath was the hotbed of pro Saddam sentiment, and it oppressed the Shiite majority. At the time, Order 1 was criticized mainly for the expulsion of trained and qualified civil servants, without a  reservoir of replacement talent.  Although defects in civil government were obvious to close observers, it became visible from afar in the collapse of the Iraqi army in 2014, at the high watermark of ISIS.

But we neglected something that may have been more important, that Ba’ath was also a reservoir of secular thought. Ba’ath spanned Iraq, where Sunnis dominated, and Syria, where the Alawites functioned within, and eventually dominated Ba’ath. By destroying the Ba’ath Party, we destroyed the instrument of secular expression in Iraq.

The CPA had another choice, to leave an eviscerated Ba’ath Party in control. In the history of the Party, only one figure with figments of the Caliphate has appeared, Saddam himself. At the time of Order 1, it was natural to worry that another Saddam might emerge. But it was actually  CPA Order 1 that set the stage for ISIS.

Can a democracy send its sons and daughters to fight a war without the ideals represented by Order 1? Would they have sacrificed so that a bunch of Iraqi politicians with mildly murderous inclinations could stay in a place that gave birth to one of the monsters of the 20th and 21st century? To decide, average people have to look at the deadly equation,

Total Cost = Cost of Iraq War  minus Cost of No Iraq War

and then, maybe kiss their kids goodbye. Maybe this is too much. John McCain and George Bush, what do you think?

Tomorrow reminds us of the cost.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

A basic rule of propaganda: When the propagandist has monopoly of the media, when there is only one message, people will tend to believe that message. This is because critical thinking takes mental energy,  requiring mental rebellion against the imposed order. It takes less energy to go with the flow.

But even when monopoly control of the media is absent, there is a tendency to give more credence to a public figure than would be logical. Part of it is the mental energy issue. Part of it is the dislike of mental void, of an undefined public figure versus one who is self-defined. With nothing to choose from, the citizen fills the void with one possibility: that the figure is telling the truth about himself. The classic example is the politician who runs on the simplest of platforms, “No new taxes.”

Occasionally, when assessing personalities, intelligence analysts fall victim to the trap. When the Coalition Transitional Government of Iraq was succeeded by the first elected government, there was concern that Nouri al-Maliki, proposed to be the first prime minister,  could be an Iranian agent. So he was vetted by the CIA in a series of short interviews. The conclusion of the CIA, that he was not an Iranian agent, was vulnerable to the Turing Test Loophole. Alan Turing’s test attempted to define the meaning of artificial intelligence. If the machine could fool the interlocutor into thinking it was human, then it was intelligent.

This is the application: If Nouri al-Maliki was more intelligent than his interviewers, he could deceive them as to his true allegiances. If he was less intelligent, he could not, implying that conclusions of the CIA were accurate. Exactly what intelligence means in this case is unimportant. The possibilities are obvious. In subsequent events, around the high-water mark of ISIS in 2014, his incompetence was demonstrated. Retrospectively, it improves the CIA’s chances of being right. But at the time?

Intrigue has been characteristic of the region since the latter days of the Ottoman Empire. In the latter 19^th century, the Ottoman military came to be dominated in numbers by Arab officers, who conspired in the secret society al-‘Ahd, against the Ottoman rulers for many years before the open Arab Revolt.  Their last leader, Faisal I of Iraq, was educated in the Ottoman court. (We know him as the ally of T.E. Lawrence, “Lawrence of Arabia”.) Such was the level of deception that the Ottomans never became aware of the centrality of al-‘Ahd. After the Ottoman dissolution, intrigue continued as a political way of life, fueled by tribalism, Arab nationalism, and the arbitrary nature of the child states of the Sykes-Picot Agreement.

Al-‘Ahd was the product of a relatively simple, nomadic culture, under the thumb of the culture for which the expression “Byzantine” was coined. Since 1979, Iran has become the modern example of a Byzantine state. Foreign policy is conducted by multiple entities, with both conflicting and competitive aims. This goes beyond the obvious division between secular and religious. The multiplicity of power centers in Iran has no equal. Facilitated by the bonyads, state capitalism, and endemic corruption, it extends to the religious establishment as well. Money is, of course, the lifeblood of conspiracy.

So what does this have to do with Moqtada al-Sadr? What credence we gives to his self-description is due to murkiness of alternatives. But once alternatives are named, we have what probability theory calls a space of outcomes. His history includes multiple flip-flops and complex social/religious bonds:

• Sectarianism.
• Ethnic inclusiveness (flip-flop).
• Violence with organized militias, notably the Mehdi Army, with funding by Iran.
• Positioning as purely political, abjuring militias and violence, supposedly to oppose secularism. (flip-flop.)
• Prolonged residence in Iran; ethnicity partly Iranian.
• Religious stature largely determined by the Iran religious establishment, which is much larger than Iraq’s.
• Coalition with highly incompatible elements., including the Communist Party of Iraq, while previously he opposed secularism (flip-flop). Communism advocates atheism, to which Islam applies the most severe punishment, death.

We recognize the domestic equivalent in the politician whose platform rapidly changes to get elected, with policies after election that don’t represent the platform. We call it political expediency. But Moqtada al-Sadr is exceptional in the frequency and disruptive nature of his turns.

Moqtada al-Sadr maneuvers at high speed through multinational Middle East politics with the reflexes of a bootleg booze runner. More striking than any particular position is his adroitness at the bootleg turn, where with simultaneous application of throttle and brake, the car swivels and skids 180 degrees, taking off at high speed in the opposite direction. If we admit the possibility that Moqtada al-Sadr actually believes his current platform, his record still suggests that he will change again. And he may not believe it anyway. His politicking may be entirely tactical, in the service of abstracted goals that are not apparent to the Western mind. One part of Shia doctrine, a common legacy of oppressed sects, is deception of outsiders.

Now the space of possibilities opens up. Moqtada al-Sadr could be:

• What he says he is, an inclusive Iraqi nationalist.
• An Iranian agent.
• A user of Iran.
• An inclusive bringer of peace.
• A secret dictator in the prodromal phase.
• A dreamer of the Caliphate. They come in many guises. Abu Musab al-Zarqawi set the stage in post-invasion Iraq; see  (Brookings, pdf) From Paper State to Caliphate: The Ideology of the Islamic State. It becomes explicit with Abū Bakr al-Baghdadi .  This appears to be a fairly common aspiration; Saddam Hussein may have also been a dreamer, as expressed in the novels he wrote (what a versatile guy!). At times, his alliances were as incompatible as those of Moqtada al-Sadr.
  

We’ve activated our critical faculty, diminishing credence in his stated positions, possibly to zero. The enumerated alternatives form a kind of probability space. The chance that any one of them is true, to the mutual exclusion of the others, may be equal.

The one constant of Moqtada al-Sadr is his extreme hostility to the U.S. But in view of his hospitality to kafir Communists, the antipathy lacks a genuine cultural basis. The beneficiary is Iran, adding a little to Byzantine speculations.

In Is Iraq Headed for Another Civil War?, I wrote,

The Shiite Iraq that follows the passing of Sistani will not be a permissive setting for American operations. Other parts of it, such as the Kurdish area, might be. But the kinds of cultural shift and political combinations that would make a viable rump state are prohibited by the strange-to-us cultural animosities.  Iran, a unified and disciplined state, would  steamroller it.

In The Kurd Referendum; Implications for U.S. Policy, I wrote,

Unless Brinton’s sequence can be averted, the U.S. position will become untenable. The nature of extremists could make resolution impossible. The curtain on this conflict rises perhaps a year, or a bit more, from now.

The phenomenon of Moqtada al-Sadr is congruent with these notes.

It’s like a funeral. Time stops, while we have reverent thoughts of memory. We drive away, and life starts up again.

Guns have a single purpose: to kill. It can be justified to kill. Rare is the creed that denies self defense.

The Right to Bear Arms is equivalent to the Right to Kill, provided you are willing to suffer the consequences. This is an equation.

But some diseased minds, and some unformed adolescent minds, do not weigh the consequences. So they are free to act as if the equation does not exist.

Some people in this country clutch tightly their Right to Kill, while denying others their Right to Live.

Although life on earth is full of horrors, it is shocking that the two parties, the Party of Right to Kill and of Party of Right to Live, can’t find a meaningful compromise.

It is saddening that this country chooses to sacrifice the lives of their children for the sake of a principle: The Right to Kill shall not be infringed.

The funeral ends; the mourners disperse; life goes on.

But these funerals could have been prevented.

 

 

 

 

 

Reuters: North Korea casts doubt on Trump summit, suspends talks with South. The given reason is (quoting) “…denouncing military exercises between South Korea and the United States as a provocation and calling off high-level talks with Seoul.”

Of all the possible reasons, the stated one is likely to be a pretext. Diplomacy is, of course, the land of pretexts and handshakes. Reuters takes the crown for running gratuitous handshake photos. Is it because they are cheap to buy from Getty Images? Do diplomats  carry hand sanitizer, or do they suffer constantly from grippe and colds? Will Trump, self described germophobe, wear latex gloves?

In spite possible indications of U.S. flexibility (WaPo, Is Mike Pompeo backing off Trump’s demand that North Korea get rid of its nukes?), Kim Jong-un has watched Trump abrogate the Iran treaty. He has likely come to realize that this administration cannot be gamed. After his useless test site is dynamited for the press, where would the game lead? The military exercises are the last chance for a decent pretext, save indisposition from illness.

Mike Pompeo’s carrot of U.S. investment is dangerous to the KIm dynasty. Kim Jong-un inherits juche, the doctrine of national self-reliance, from his grandfather, Kim Il-sung, the founder of the state. In this patriarchal-to-the-extreme society, this cannot be underestimated. Unlike the carefully curated environment of the Kaesong Industrial Region,  widespread private investment from western sources would expose the sheer horror of songbun, which includes a caste of slaves. North Korea is unique in the world today in the part slavery has in the political system.

Given world sensitivity towards the mere exploitation of labor in Southeast Asia, how could  crimes against humanity be ignored? Even if the U.S. legitimizes North Korea, these issues remain in the broader context for the foreseeable future. Exposed by opening North Korea, they are more dangerous to the regime than starvation.

Because of their shared cultural affinities and common language, the North-South talks are dangerous to the North. Scripted or no, South negotiators would read faces and estimate intent via observations of demeanor. Direct talks with Trump, conducted in stilted language via interpreters, spare Kim at least that danger.

But if Kim has updated his assessment of Trump’s personality, he may have concluded that  obfuscation by the North would lead the U.S. administration to a definite conclusion. If one plays the waiting game, this is to be avoided. There is a way out.

If the Trump-Kim meeting takes place, the military exercises form the base of a stack of complaints, a litany. The meetings could then be consumed working through the litany. One more handshake, maybe even a video, and Kim is safe for another six months. If the North refrains from the bizarre, threatening rhetoric and provocative tests , safety from a U.S. strike could become indefinite. This is the waiting game.

Need we question the sincerity of a handshake? The Ungame continues: Keep your friends close, but your enemies closer.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Tom Wolfe passed away.  He coined the term, new journalism, which in effect on the reader has relation to immersive journalism.

We can expect some new journalism about the Hereafter. It won’t be dull. Now  where can I get editions of his works on acid-free paper?

You may have some curiosity about the style of this blog.  At least part of the time, I try to immerse the reader in some kind of experience, even when writing about a technical subject. Reading Wolfe is an experience in itself, a  melody of words that lingers after you put the book down.  His use of words, with onomatopoetic grammar, is as creative as the strokes of an artist’s brush.

Any subject, save the most abstract, can refer to and relate to the human experience, engaging the reader more.

Thank you, Tom.

On December 10, 2017, in U.S. Embassy Move to Jerusalem, I wrote:

It is reasonable to conclude that the moving of [ the U.S. Embassy to] Jerusalem will result in a shift of the parameters of the bell curve, enlarging the groups who make the radical transition all the way to the tip of the bell curve tail, to terror. This has has nothing to do with rational opinion. If individuals have free will, groups behave with something approaching determinism.

For wise thoughts, refer to the five former heads of Mossad (Times of Israel.)

Two former heads of Shin Bet: (The Guardian) Israel sunk in ‘incremental tyranny’, say former Shin Bet chiefs. 

 

Israel says Iran lied on nuclear arms, pressures U.S. to scrap deal has garnered more short term interest than perhaps any other article I’ve written. By now, I thought I’d be doing talk shows.  🙂 But why is the article so interesting? This is a question of technique, which is a focus of this blog. To keep you reading, we consider a choice for site of a secret plutonium bomb factory.

The article presents a hypothesis, which according to the scientific method is one step short of a theory. Although inspired by observation, a hypothesis need not be testable. A theory adds the requirement that it can be tested. It includes at least one test by which it can be proven wrong.

It’s important to say these things, because deduction, involving sequential logical steps, has acquired a bad name, caused by the abuses of conspiracy theorists. Besides the sleaze of the twisted mind, a common abuse is teleology,  the idea that something is proven by the need for it. For example: The Iranians want the bomb, proving the hypothesis in the last article. This is fallacious reasoning.

Fallacious reasoning, disguised by complexity, has been the bane of Western civilization, ever since Descartes introduced basic mental hygiene. In elaborate perfection, the scientific method is the antidote. But since the method disallows all of philosophy except science, the philosophers needed something more compatible to stay in business, and to argue about. Their answer was logical positivism.

Unlike the scientific method, logical positivism is not standardized. It comes in conflict with the scientific method with the idea that some things are known a priori. Quoting Wikipedia,

Thus, Kant saved Newton’s law of universal gravitation from Hume’s problem of induction by finding uniformity of nature to be a priori knowledge.

Modern physics considers the above to be incorrect. The uniformity of physical laws throughout the cosmos is not to be assumed. Logical positivism is not a prescribed method you can use for, say, drug testing. It is open to widespread corruption, by addition of philosophical gee-gaws.

Yet it has had a profound influence on the way we think. The street version of logical positivism is skepticism, as in show me. This is the ultimate defense against conspiracy theories, which, relying on innuendo, show nothing. We rely on this heavily in casual thought, editing the information flow according to:

• If you can see or experience it, it’s real.
• If you can’t, it’s not.
• If you have a strong personal need to believe in something, you just make an exception.

Since there are a lot of things we would like to believe in that fail the above, we lie to ourselves liberally and invisibly. The worst liar is the self. But the hypothesis, “Iran possesses untested plutonium nukes” is not about the self. So we ratchet up stringency. Since it  can’t be experienced, and there is no positive evidence in open sources, we kick it out of consideration.

The misuse, and overuse, of logical positivism is endemic to modern thought. We have our example. Given the interest in the hypothesis  in the previous article,  “Iran possesses untested plutonium nukes” is that example. Having been edited from consideration by the community of people who think about such things, it suddenly became interesting when presented with a few scientific bits about procedures commonly employed in practical physics calculations.

Most of us aren’t philosophers. We may have never heard of logical positivism. When we overlook something, or make an error or omission of thought, we don’t reach for Aristotle. Whatever positivism means, we are vulnerable to it because of:

• Balkanization of knowledge.
• Credence given to foreign powers that employ deceit as a normal tool of international relations.
• An international regulatory agency, the IAEA, which relies entirely on open inspections and methods of analytic nuclear chemistry to fulfill a mission.

Balkanization is most important. The 20th century was the century of physics. It was then the king of sciences, employing the scientific method with exacting precision. In 1938, the atom was split, with the prospect of unlimited energy for mankind. It was with this sugar pill that the best minds set about to make the most destructive weapon ever seen. They worked on the bomb, not in pride, but necessity, anticipating peaceful benefits of atomic energy.

There was some pride of accomplishment, so it was talked about. That much energy from a new source inspired more amazement than horror. That came later, with the arms race, and proliferation. This is why so much information is in the public domain. But in the 21st century, the focus of hope has shifted to the life sciences, and A.I.  The quests of physics are very much alive, but are mostly incomprehensible to non specialists. There is no bang. There is plenty to write about, but there is no visceral experience. We can all imagine a nuclear explosion, but all of us have trouble with quantum entanglement.

Credence given to foreign powers has a huge impact on the viability of this hypothesis. It is an issue entirely apart from the personal veracity of Russia’s leaders, or truthfulness of  Russia’s leaders to their peer group. Russia’s statements to the foreign policy audience, and to media, are first and foremost  propaganda.  Russian statements have scant regard for truth, as understood in the West.

Russia assures us that after the breakup of the Soviet Union, none of the inadequately secured nuclear materials were misplaced. Refer to page 21, (pdf) GLOBAL FISSILE MATERIAL REPORT 2015. As of 2014, Russia had 88,000 kg of weapons grade plutonium.  A bomb requires only (Page 24) 5 kg.

That plutonium was not smuggled through  the  Wild West Russia of the 90’s, through the Caucasus, to Iran and other Asia destinations, relies on these assertions:

• Russia’s denial.
• Absence of evidence, as seen by Western intelligence services.
• Logical positivism, with the street name of skepticism. This is institutionalized by the IAEA.

The head of the IAEA just resigned without explanation. (RFE) Chief Inspector Unexpectedly Quits UN Nuclear Watchdog. A conspiracy theorist would leap on this. But it does suggest that the  IAEA is dangerously vulnerable to political factors. An excess of logical positivism is used by politicians to influence institutional behavior.

Now for some speculation. If Iran wished to site a plutonium bomb factory, is there an optimal  choice for concealment? IAEA analytic methods,  to detect clandestine nuclear activity,  rely on isotope ratios differing from nature. In Iran, Ramsar County, on the shores of the Caspian, contains areas with the highest levels of natural radioactivity on earth. Iran may hope that high background levels would confuse IAEA methods by obscuring artificial sources.

So if you want to poke around, book your trip to Ramsar now. You’ll come home with that special glow,  from the vacation spot #1 in ionizing radiation. What’s a suntan when you can glow in the dark!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Reuters: Israel says Iran lied on nuclear arms, pressures U.S. to scrap deal.

I was going to  discuss something like this in connection with North Korea, but Netanyahu has scooped me. What follows is not to advocate that the U.S. should scrap the Iran deal. I tend to think like  Mattis.

U.S. nuclear weapons are highly optimized designs, made as well as the mind and hand  of Man can do.  Russian nukes are not quite as good. Of the others, not much is publicly known, but you can throw away a lot of design potential and still get a bang.  Some U.S. warheads, highly optimized for yield (explosive power) per weight, have been deliberately downgraded to smaller yields. This offers more flexible escalation of force. A target can be destroyed with the loss of thousands of lives, instead of millions. Offering POTUS the choice of “an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth”, the barrier to use, still high and horrible, is reduced to an exchange.

If a power knows enough about nuclear weapons, it is not mandatory to test the ones it builds. The knowledge is hard to come by, but it can travel on a thumb drive. It can take these forms:

• Exact design.
• Scaleable model of the whole device.
• Partial models, models of pieces of the puzzle.
• Simulation, a laborious process requiring lots of computer power, required by the less convenient models.

These words do not convey a hierarchy. One can possess a model for part of the design, yet lack for other parts. The Manhattan Project actually had a model for the behavior of the conventional explosives used to create the implosion. John von Neumann created the model with the Taylor shock wave equation . The calculations were carried out by Richard Feynman and his crew, before the advent of the modern computer, using punch card based IBM calculators. Today, your smartphone could solve it in between calls.

But they didn’t have the neutron cross sections that vitally predict the behavior of the plutonium sphere after it is imploded. They were missing parameters, numbers that all models require, and have to be filled in by  experiments. Some of the trials, using the Demon Core, were deadly.

Critical mass is the smallest weight of material that when imploded in a particular shape will undergo chain reaction. If it holds together long enough, there is a  nuclear explosion. The weight is very touchy. A penny under, and nothing happens. A penny over, you lose a city. Because it is so touchy, a lot can be learned by testing with a penny under. This is subcritical.

A major step in the U.S. program was the replacement of nuclear explosions with subcritical tests, in which the explosive power  is solely the effect of the conventional explosives used to implode the plutonium sphere. Because the U.S. program aims for perfection, subcritical tests continue to the current day.

In theory, with enough subcritical tests, and parameters learned from actual nuclear tests, a weapon can be designed and built without actually testing it, with confidence that it will actually work. Since both Secretaries Pompeo and Tillerson were engineers, they know the Taylor Series (not the same Taylor) of freshman calculus. If two Taylor series, one on each side of the critical mass, are matched term-by-term, the result is a crude, open-source approximation of how a rogue state could vault into nuclear prominence.

Because the U.S. nuclear program aims for perfection, we neglect the possibility that a nuclear weapon could be produced solely with subcritical testing, and have a very good chance of serving both political and military aims. Such a weapon might have a 95% chance of not being a complete dud. If an Iranian weapon were designed, without testing, for a 200 kt yield, but the blast it produces when used is only 40 kt, would  it be a failure?

How does this affect a decision for the U.S. to withdraw from the Iran treaty? There have been no apparent leaks of the negotiations. One can only speculate. Naturally, speculation has a strong political element. Some claim an irrational desire by Barack Obama for a successful negotiation. But this is speculation. We have described an alternative procedure to the orthodox path to becoming a nuclear power. Iran may have done this.

During the negotiations, the intelligence community may have decided that by this alternative path, Iran could build the bomb at will.  The exact date at which Iran would build the bomb could be closely bracketed with clandestine knowledge of the supply chain. During this period of scrutiny and negotiation, the  only thing Iran would give up is the actual test of a weapon which, untested, has a high probability of working. And the process of miniaturization has no specific requirement of testing.

So if the US. withdraws,  Iran may in short order test a weapon, already fully miniaturized for delivery by missile. Nevertheless, a U.S. withdrawal from the treaty could be justified so as to politically isolate Iran. Now, as with North Korea, one has to consider how the ecosystem of international relations will react.

This defines the dilemma. I’ll pass on the solution.

 

 

 

 

 

 

The fence of almost-facts consists of four  negations and three assertions. A common element is a blur between fact, and what Kim is likely to consider as fact. Theories that implicitly predict successful negotiations assume that the end of North Korea’s nuclear program is required for these benefits to occur, which is false:

• Lifting or weakening of sanctions.
• An increase in the political legitimacy of Kim Jong-un’s regime.
• An increase in the stability of the regime. Stability and legitimacy are not the same.
• Accession of North Korea to the “community of nations”, a term which implies acceptance instead of ostracism. Although unlikely, this could happen anyway.

The assertions are:

• North Korea’s nuclear program, instead of being dismantled, can be concealed.  While programs of  nuclear proliferation have been approximate recapitulations of the  programs of the original five, it is not necessary. Many more options exist for clandestine development.
• A single personality cannot combine the nature of Kim’s rule with the emotional “glasnost” on display at the recent conference.
• Termination would not result in accession to the “community of nations.” It is neither a requirement or a benefit. There is no coupling at all.

Let’s first consider weakening or lifting of sanctions.

The discrete and  dramatic events of the current confrontation have captured our imaginations as as kind of chess game. Once a game is identified, it becomes an unconscious assumption that the game will continue under the same rules to checkmate or stalemate. And cheating at chess does not mean you aren’t playing chess. When the game changes, there is great fanfare. It seemed that the game might switch to poker, with a Western saloon gun-fight as the culmination.

Kim Jong-un has, in what may be a masterstroke, switched from a competitive game to a  noncompetitive game. See The Ungame. We don’t have to judge  his sincerity to observe that foreign policy mavens, anticipating that chess and poker will continue, have not considered all the twists and turns an ungame would allow.

Rather than immediately negate the potential of the ungame, make a list of Kim’s possible goals. Put yourself in his shoes. If you were Kim, would you actually de-nuke which amounts to maximum concession, no game at all, or would you play the ungame for a while, perhaps for an indefinite period, spinning webs and veils of silk, gauze, and gossamer?

This sudden wisdom may not be entirely his creation. It happened after a train trip to the Celestial Kingdom, the repository of centuries of foreign policy wisdom. Perhaps he was gifted a copy of Sun Tzu’s The Art of War.  For 2500 years, it has been the wise guide to foreign policy for Eastern rulers. Some sample quotes:

• “All warfare is based on deception. Hence, when we are able to attack, we must seem unable; when using our forces, we must appear inactive; when we are near, we must make the enemy believe we are far away; when far away, we must make him believe we are near.”
• “Be extremely subtle, even to the point of formlessness. Be extremely mysterious, even to the point of soundlessness. Thereby you can be the director of the opponent’s fate.”

This is not theoretical.  With 2500 years on the book racks,The Art of War is the best-selling “The Art of…” book of all time. Km Jong-un took a train to Beijing. A complete makeover resulted. What edition did he come home with? Leather-bound, web  links, or merely the impression that it is very important? So important that one maxim popular among risky livers is misattributed to Sun Tzu, “Keep your friends close but your enemies closer.” The gem owes to Mario Puzo and Francis Ford Coppola.

It may now suddenly occur to you that you have no idea how Kim Jong-un can play the Ungame. You grab your Hoyles Rules, and it isn’t even listed. You find you are completely unprepared to estimate whether he can use it to lift sanctions, partly or totally. You discover that

• A significant part of dollar denominated trade, mainly for bulk cargoes that originate and deliver in Asia, could be conducted in the renminbi.
• Another part could be done as goods-swap.
• Yet another could be by service swap, such as facilitating drug transactions via North Korea’s huge submarine fleet.

But with the cooperation of China, how could the above happen?

If someone does you a favor, do you always know why? Is China cooperating with the U.S. solely because of pressure, or is there an additional reason? Is their real concern  nukes, or that they want North Korea  to evolve in the direction of a civilized state? This could be one of Donald Rumsfeld’s “unknown unknowns.” Evolution in North Korea, modest by our standards, could be enough for China to return to a purely regional approach. Their thinking: With time, things will only get better.

So, as per Criticism of Administration Policy Towards North Korea ?, the game is embedded in the international ecosystem.   China’s attitude towards North Korea, up till the current sanctions regime, is explained well by Henry Kissinger in his book On China. China has another approach to regional problems, requiring Eastern patience.

It goes back to the need to deflect  the border tribes, beyond the Great Wall and elsewhere in central Asia, that posed the same threat to the Celestial Kingdom as the Gauls, Visigoths, Vandals, et al  did to Rome. The Romans chose to co-opt; the Chinese chose to corrupt, as in, “Show them the good life”, and make them dependent. China has tried this with North Korea in the form of cross-border commerce, and encouragement of entrepreneurship. It hasn’t worked so far. But while our basic interval of time is 4 years, China’s policies have the patience of centuries.

So sleep on this, the Ungame, and let your Zen-master talents soar to the heights:

If you were Kim Jong-un, how would you effect the wisdom of Sun-Tzu in the short term?

To be continued shortly. In the meantime,

Keep your friends close, but your enemies closer.

 

 

 

 

 

Let’s drop the nuclear physics for a bit. People want know what makes Kim Jong-un tick. Theories abound, but no candidate has the quality that says, “this nails it.”  In the euphoric moment, political types tend to confuse fact and desire. But the intelligence community is not so easily beguiled. (Reuters) Understanding Kim: Inside the U.S. effort to profile the secretive North Korean leader.

My own attempt at a compact theory appears in, Trump says ‘major, major’ conflict with North Korea possible:

• The rule of Kim Jong-un is too weak to survive cancellation of these [missile, nuclear] programs.
• If Kim Jong-un is deposed, it is most likely that he will die. He is too dangerous to his challengers to be left alive.
• In the protracted negotiations with the father, Kim Jong-il, under the 1994 framework, the program slowed, or appeared to stop for periods, but no assets were relinquished by North Korea. Hence the son cannot relinquish assets.
• The portraits of father and son hang side-by-side. This is not for decoration. It is symbolic proclamation that the son is the continuation of the father. A loss of symbolic continuity would immediately activate the weakness of the son’s power base.

with the conclusion,

The bullet list has tight linkages, implying that the object of regime change is identical as a goal with nuclear disarmament of North Korea.

But the human mind is not ultimately knowable. This is a game of almost-facts. The estimate should be read as, “This is likely to be the case.”  Now this estimate is challenged by new emotions, producing new biases, caused by a political meeting that may have featured either genuine sentiment or really good acting.

As a compact chain of logic, my theory may share the inherent weakness  of the three theories presented in (CNN) Why Kim Jong Un came in from the cold: 3 theories. But it should not be an invitation to pick one of the four. That would be like betting at the track without an edge.

The real takeaway is that complicated theories do not work very well by themselves. Deduction has limits. An additional mode of logic must be invoked.  Precedent or consensus are no help, because the meeting is  a singular event. If four theories with at most six logical steps (count the paragraphs) contradict each other,  should we look to more complicated theories, or simpler ones?

I introduced a technique called “fencing” in No successor to Maliki named; fencing the problem. Quoting,

Fencing the problem is an important part of the predictor’s toolkit. Sometimes the fence is made of facts; other times, pseudo facts, things that have higher probabilities than the swirling cloud of amorphous possibilities.

By surrounding the problem with “almost facts” the solution becomes a bounded space. It can be used to knock a theory out of contention. It happens when the theory hits the fence and keeps on going. But let’s first knock down the euphoria a bit. It centers the     mind.

The concept of a personality profile useful in the conduct of  foreign affairs and conflict is rooted in the Second World War. The rulers of the Axis powers were colorful, histrionic, labile demagogues. Their personalities were adorned with quirks as colorful as the feathers of exotic birds. But Joseph Stalin, more relevant to the current question, was ordinary.  See author Simon Sebag Montefiore‘s book Stalin: The Court of the Red Tsar.

When not in a sadistic mood, Stalin’s traits of persuasion earned him the nickname “Uncle Joe.”   He deceived some of the most important political figures in the West. A small circle of diplomats with extensive exposure to the Soviet Union  accurately divined him. But it took until the 1947 publication of the X Article by George F. Kennan, that the political establishment understood what the small circle knew years in advance.

Their story is the subject of The Wise Men; Six Friends and the World They Made, by Walter Isaacon and Evan Thomas. This is a slow-cooked book. It depicts, not a  the wisdom of sudden, magical divination, but the stew of a decade, resulting  in their ability to see what others could not.

That resource for  North Korea does not exist. We have instead the reports of defectors, who, not being members of any intellectual establishment whatsoever, are treated more like raw data than people of respect. Their effect on the political establishment is by the conduit of the intelligence community. Defectors are like microdots. If you magnify them enough, you can see the message, but you can’t feel it. Empathy is lacking.

This conclusion risks being true: Lacking empathy, which is the skill of simulating the mind of another, we diminish the threat  by imagination. It’s analogous to the Stockholm Syndrome.

To be continued shortly.