Syzygeist

Students, Conscience, and US Policy

In perusing old notes for a new book, I came upon observations made in an interview with Robert Oxnam, former President of the Asia Society. Oxnam was describing what to him was the need for a true ideology for China, one that could reach beyond "to be rich is glorious" to give the emerging world power a moral and political identity to be proud of, and one that might hold it together more than break it apart.
The real message of Tianenmen Square, Oxnam said, was that students demonstrating for openness, tolerance, and democracy were exercising their right to be students, and to be the conscience of the nation. (My emphasis added).
The phrase stopped me. Where, I wondered, are US students today acting as "the conscience of the nation?" Or did this fade after Vietnam, or go underground after the draft expired?
President Obama, without conferring with Congress, has just put the nation into a third war front in Libya. This is part of a multi-national effort apparently entered into hastily, and without a broad US Mideast military policy to address fomented rebellions there.  This Presidential act, one could argue, overreaches the power of the presidency despite alleged authority to fight terrorism on any front for almost any reason. Obama went on TV to the nation March 28 to explain his rationale for US involvement.
I personally support efforts to block Qaddafi's intent to kill his own citizens (whom he may define as 'terrorists,' if it suits him), in the same way I favor intervening if the man upstairs is beating his wife. Boundaries are not the issue, and time is of the essence. I favor intervention when morally and practically required - but not without Congressional due process, and that does not have to take a lot of time. (In the case of the man upstairs, there is no due process and he does not deserve a warning.)
On another front, we learn this week that Obama no longer believes that suspected terrorists should get the Miranda warning afforded them constitutionally, depending on the circumstances and the perceptions of the FBI agent at the time.
An FBI internal memo revealed this week advises its agents:

1. If applicable, agents should ask any and all questions that are reasonably prompted by an immediate concern for the safety of the public or the arresting agents without advising the arrestee of his Miranda rights.
2. After all applicable public safety questions have been exhausted, agents should advise the arrestee of his Miranda rights and seek a waiver of those rights before any further interrogation occurs, absent exceptional circumstances described below.
3. There may be exceptional cases in which, although all relevant public safety questions have been asked, agents nonetheless conclude that continued unwarned interrogation is necessary to collect valuable and timely intelligence not related to any immediate threat, and that the government's interest in obtaining this intelligence outweighs the disadvantages of proceeding with unwarned interrogation.

I find it hard to believe that someone who has conspired to commit acts of terrorism will talk if he has not been apprised of his Miranda rights but will clam up once informed that he can be represented by an attorney under US law. Really?
If the students I have in mind were to act conscientiously, they would object to the abuse of presidential power, or even the appearance of it, whether or not it is taking the US into war. They would also object to the selective application of Constitutional rights for "terrorists" because it would occur to them that anyone can be considered a terrorist, and treated accordingly. Surely the farmers in the American Revolution were terrorists in the eyes of the British, who probably had no trouble burning the soles of their feet to coax their plans out of them. That was long before the Geneva Convention or the evolution of US Constitutional law that made us a model for the world.
I would like to see our students defending that.

The Quake That Shakes Us All

I was asked to be on a 6 a.m. call this week to London that was cancelled because the European corporate client suddenly had to deal with Japan, its understandable workplace instability amid spreading fears of meltdown and contagion. I had not expected either the call or a related major meeting in Europe to be cancelled, but I was not surprised, given current volatilities around the world.

How prepared are people for the bigger reverberations of major events, and how to deal with them intelligently, of which the first step might be anticipation and planning?

I confess I have not yet read Kenneth Posner’s book, Stalking the Black Swan: Research and Decision Making in a World of Extreme Volatility, although I think it advisable for anyone who applies scenario thinking and other basic risk-management techniques to the rising uncertainties of our time. Posner's attempt, according to reviews, is to mix quantifiable and computer calculation with human instinct, experience and intuition. A worthy goal worth thinking about, and actually trying to do.

(Number me among those readers who attempted Nassim Taleb's The Black Swan and put it down before the end, partly because at a certain point before page 300 I thought I grasped the thesis well enough and because, frankly, Taleb is a writer who does not know why he would use one word if he could use 20. Of those, more than half will be about Taleb's superior view of uncertainty, about which he appears to be uncertain not at all.)

As a longtime scenario practitioner, I have an aversion to certainties of all kinds, partly because it is always the unexpected that changes the way we think and subsequently must behave. Humans must live and work in a constant tension between confidence about what they think they know and flexibility in the face of incomplete information, and sheer ignorance. But how to identify what you do not know well enough and should consider?

Enter Japan's earthquake and unfolding disaster. Were quakes of this kind uncertain? No, they were inevitable (and still are.) Were those plants "safe?" No, they never were, located on the geological "Ring of Fire" that promises serious quakes from here to eternity.

The quake's timing, however, was uncertain, and also the extremity of its effects. We must now all reconsider whether:

- A nuclear cloud will get into the atmosphere and increase cancer risks everywhere

- Anti-nuclear movements will extend globally as the world comprehends that it potentially shares in every other country's nuclear risks

- Nuclear plants should continue to answer the world's energy appetite, given what we now know, and know that we know

- Recalculation of insurance liabilities will render nuclear energy just too costly

- Makers of potassium iodide pills are suddenly a valuable stock investment (Or are you too late?)

I mean this last only partly facetiously. It says something about positive pricing effects in negative macro conditions.

Vital lessons may be taken from Japan's experience - which, pray, does not continue to multiple meltdowns and swathes of dead areas of Japan from nuclear contamination. One lesson might be in the approach that executives and managers take to major "uncertainties" that are likely to unfold at some level and at some point reasonably soon. Don't we know what some of them are?

As much as a U.S. Treasury-market collapse, Middle East (Libya, Saudi-Bahrain) disruptions, oil prices above $120/bbl, rapid global inflation, European financial meltdown and China disruptions are known to be real and proximate possibilities, many corporate and public policy leaders have not really taken the time to think these through. 

Scenario thinking continues to be an invaluable tool in the risk-manager's toolbox because it allows for the unthinkable to be more easily thought and for the unspeakable to be spoken in ways that may be heard and acted upon in time. Examples are many of risks that were contemplated with scenarios and where subsequent actions saved millions or produced strategic options that were acted on profitably. Lives might well be saved as well.

Maybe Japan's quake has shaken the rest of the world enough to reconsider how prepared we are, and are not, on some of these fronts. "What if?" remains a powerful question for managing future risk, but only if you really ask it - the right way with the right people around you - and think it through.

Then you must act.

 

Stop These Wars

It is gratifying to wing opinionated and potentially provocative words into the blogosphere and have words come back, whether affirming or not. The words (and website) below reverberated from my previous question about whether people know the rationale for our waging war in Afghanistan (and a corollary, Iraq), and whether they support it. 

This inquiry caused me to discover and be shocked by the estimated number of nearly ONE MILLION DEAD in combined military and civilian casualties between the two conflicts in the last near decade. Most are civilian. Many of those had nothing to do with terrorism and will not have been drawn closer to the US as a result of the deaths of loved ones, I would suspect.

From a New York City mother of two teenage girls and a younger son:

See www.stopthesewars.org. Check it out.

This will tell you, among other things, that a veterans' protest is scheduled in Washington, DC for March 19, next Saturday, on the anniversary of the Iraq invasion. The argument and its passion may surprise you. You may even be moved to think/feel differently, and possibly to act, on the strength of it.  Also, the demonstrations the following day want to bring awareness to the situation of Bradley Manning, the US Army intelligence analyst currently imprisoned in Quantico and awaiting court marshal, whose allegedly inhumane treatment in custody has been brought to Obama's attention.  

From a former Navy pilot, who came of military age in the Vietnam era:

How about immoral and irrational? The war in Iraq is immoral and the war in Afghanistan is irrational. Iraq sustained the predilection of the US to engage in wars of aggression. Can anyone reasonably doubt that either Vietnam or Iraq was such a war? Both were a departure from our nation's traditional values.
Afghanistan was presumably directed to thwarting Al Quaeda, which in the interim has sprung up like mercury under the thumb in places like Somalia. Nonetheless, we continue to pretend that we are fighting terrorism in Afghanistan. Your "energy lawyer" is spot on, to wit: this is merely a political action initiated by Bush and perpetuated by Obama for political purposes. Can any action possibly be more cynical?
On a related note, the volunteer force disassociates the rest of America, other than the friends and families of those who serve so honorably, from those political conflicts. The detachment permits us to remain disengaged from the conflict. It doesn't touch us so we do not object.
Universal service requires everyone to give something back to the country, and requires each individual in the country (or someone with whom they are related or acquainted) to be "at risk" of serving in each conflict. In addition, it gives those with a VALID moral objection to conflict the mechanism to channel their obligation into an area devoid of the prospect of armed conflict.

As it happens I agree with this reader and feel vindicated that someone of military commitment and bearing sees it this way.

From an author of historical books and former national political reporter:

I of course disagree with your thesis. I don't have much to contribute to the canon on Vietnam - wretched costly mistake steeped in the stupidity of the best and brightest ... but I still think there was a case for invading Iraq and unseating Saddam. The fatal blunders there were:

1. You simply cannot lie about the casus belli for war in a democracy; hanging onto the convenient "Tonkin Gulf" justification of weapons of mass destruction, when at best we had no proof of them and at worst knew they did not exist, laid a flawed foundation for our being there that could not be cured;

2. We did not sustain the wobbly security forces there or replace them with anything else, and did not send enough men - our (Phillips Academy graduate) Andover man Paul "Jerry" Bremer deserves the blame for this, with others; and,

3. We did not respond even remotely adequately to Abu Ghraib. I remember being stuck in a hotel room at Gatwick during Senate hearings when Evan Bayh asked Rumsfeld if he should have resigned over Abu Ghraib, and after a long pause Rumsfeld said, "Yes." He says so again in his new book. Then why, oh why, didn't he? 

As to Afghanistan, I have only a layman's sense that no one can "win" a war there. But it is very hard for me to think that President Obama has some ulterior motive such as re-election driving his support for the surge there - and I do have some qualifications as an expert on presidential elections, so I will say with confidence that I do not see how he picks up a single vote by supporting the surge, but I think he loses some potential support in the primaries for doing so.

I agree that drafting everyone was a vastly fairer and more sensible way of prosecuting wars than the mercenary military we have today. But the reason we do not have universal two-year public service is not the right...it is organized labor.

I cannot anticipate the expressed view of "organized labor" in the universal national service debate. I doubt that "labor" would think and act on this as a monolith. It makes more sense to me that labor in general would favor wars of various kinds, because they are stimulative of basic industries that we have not yet farmed out to other countries. Now that might be considered cynical.

Please do write. 

Or call. 

Someone. 

This is not a neutral topic worthy of indifference or inaction.

These Authorities Have to Go

Libya's Gadhafi struggles to hold on to power the only way that dictators of force can hold on, which is with more force. Just how brutal he will continue to be, and how effective, is still to be determined.
How far will this go, and to what effect? 

The debate over the economy is still fully on between the recovery and double-dip camps, but the spreading uncertainty from Libya to Saudi Arabia may favor the latter. Chinese economist Andy Xie points to Mideast (37% of the world's oil production) instability and potential gas price increases to infer that stagflation may be just around the corner. He notes that the oil shock of 1973  triggered a market crash and laid the foundation for stagflation thereafter. OECD countries now have leverage levels that are 50% too high, and must come down, he observes. That is deflationary on its own. Meanwhile, the US continues to flood the world with dollars, which is inflationary.
What is important here is the degree of uncertainty in the system. The Libyan crisis will have its own effects in that country, and has roiled Saudi Arabia, whose leadership has just announced new levels of largesse to keep the population in line.
But what is really going on here globally?
Authority the world over is being questioned and challenged in new ways - faster, more broadly and deeply - in a new era of communication. In the mid-1990's, we postulated that the Internet would act as a universal solvent to erode authority structures of all kinds, from the top down, bottom up, inside out, and so forth. Power would shift to the "end-user." This was long before Google made answers available to most questions or Twitter allowed differing versions of the truth - as well as lies and distortions - to spread at the speed of light, 140 characters per Tweet.
We now know quickly - as can anyone anywhere who wants to ask - that the Greek government has to meet a major hospital deficit in a hospital that has 42 gardeners but no garden. We know American public safety officers bulk up their hours in their final years so they can retire on pensions of 100 percent or more. We know that Democratic state senators fled Wisconsin in order to dodge their responsibilities to address budget deficits, apparently believing in the power and efficacy of denial. Technology guru Mary Meeker has just published a report to suggest that America Inc. is functionally bankrupt on the costs of Medicare and Medicaid. These two entitlements were approved largely by and for Baby Boomers with apparent disregard for intergenerational fairness, let along practicality.
It's all coming home to roost, all over the world. It has to.
The point here is that "the authorities" have made a mess in many places, not limited to Libya. Gadhafi & Co. did not bother to build infrastructure with its oil billions, leaving a poor and uneducated populace now with a void to fill, when/if Gadhafi falls. (See here the first CNN footage in Benghazi, where Gadhafi has already been pushed out.) His is not the only regime to abuse power and abrogate the responsibilities of leadership. So his is not the only regime to sow the seeds of crisis, which cannot and will not be avoided.
The question now is, what will we do? Violence in the streets is the only choice for those who have no other choice. The US mess hopefully will be addressed by those who stay in the room and try to fix the problems with real solutions. But Wisconsin is not the only state where protesters have picked up the vibe from Middle East and staged long and persistent demonstrations against failed leaders. And material support - in the form of pizza for Wisconsin protesters - is pouring in from Egypt, Turkey, and around the world.
Authority that underestmates this unprecedented connectivity, both in how it connects and educates people, is learning fast that a new model is forcing its way forward, outward and down. It is not contained or slowing, only expanding literally at the speed of light. How does your "official future" fair against the potential for stagflation and continuing global unrest?

In Dubai - the end of oil?

Dubai - November 13, 2007

You would not think looking around here that the world will run out of oil wealth anytime soon. Prince Alwaleed Bin Talal, the Saudi named thirteenth richest in the world among billionaires (says Forbes), just became the first individual buyer of a Boeing A380 superjumbo. I have to wonder if this is a sign of a market top?

Please note that the "Flying Palace" configuration, for which the Prince has paid an undisclosed amount somewhere north of $300 million, has enough floor space for two tennis courts (it can hold 800 regular economy passengers if built to pack 'em in). Rising oil wealth is good for airline sales, as the Gulf Arab states have stepped up to buy about $80 billion worth from Airbus and Boeing, with 70 mid-sized A350s and 11 A380s going to the Dubai-based Emirates.

I just arrived on an Emirates flight from JFK to a McKinsey conference as their guest to speak about the utility of scenarios in contemplating rising global uncertainty. A review of the last month's Financial Times headlines during the flight (you've got 12 hours to play with) suggests that CEOs feel more uncertain than ever about the state of world markets, partly driven by US real estate woes - not to mention the ailing dollar, $100-a-barrel oil and querulous comments among Chinese central bankers who dislike weakening currencies they hold a ton of and can't easily sell. Blackstone just acknowledged amid record losses that it doesn't know "where the sub-prime black hole will end."

To look around Dubai, the world capitol of construction cranes and posh planes (my Emirates business class seat not only would stretch into a bed, it had four styles of internalized vibration massage with touchscreen control, and its own 20-inch TV screen - a wonder I got so much reading done), there is no end in sight of black gold, and the things that money will buy.

Meanwhile, non-oil states have to contemplate futures where the oil price rises as the dollar declines, and many arrangements will not be as they were before, perhaps radically. I wonder if the Prince buying his own jumbo jet is perversely suggestive that there might be an end to oil after all, as recently argued by oil experts on the topic.  This is probably not on the mind of too many others here at the Jumeirah Beach Hotel, a wonder of luxury on the shores of plenty.