Stop the Presses!

The Washington Post's banner headline is:

Report: Afghan nation-building effort in peril 

Karen DeYoung 4:25 AM ET 

EXCLUSIVE | Hugely expensive U.S. effort has had only limited success and may not survive an American withdrawal, according to the findings of a two-year congressional investigation to be released Wednesday.

I figured that out from watching a movie on VHS in September 2001.

Fun fact:

The report also warns that Afghanistan could slide into a depression with the inevitable decline of the foreign military and development spending that now provides 97 percent of the country’s gross domestic product.

My old articles are archived at iSteve.com -- Steve Sailer

Operation "Murder Qathaf'y" Rolls On

From the NYT:

NATO Attack Destroys Much of Qaddafi Compound 

By JOHN F. BURNS 

TRIPOLI, Libya — In a sudden, sharp escalation of NATO’s air campaign over Libya, warplanes dropped more than 60 bombs on targets in Tripoli on Tuesday, obliterating large areas of Colonel Muammar el-Qaddafi’s Bab al-Aziziya command compound.

Obama's basic foreign affairs philosophy appears to be that it's stupid to invade some third world country when you can score just as many political points by shooting or exploding one guy (along with various bystanders, of course).

My old articles are archived at iSteve.com -- Steve Sailer

Basically, we're trying to murder Gaddafi, right?

The WSJ reports:

North Atlantic Treaty Organization warplanes bombarded targets in Tripoli early Tuesday in what appeared to be the heaviest night of bombing of the Libyan capital since the alliance launched its air campaign against Col. Moammar Gadhafi's forces. 

The airstrikes, which struck around Col. Gadhafi's residential compound, came as the U.S. invited Libya's rebel leadership on Tuesday to open a representative office in Washington and NATO moved toward considering adding ground-attack helicopters to its military campaign in hopes of breaking a stalemate between the Libyan leader and rebels seeking to overthrow him. 

A spokesman for the U.K. Ministry of Defence said Royal Air Force Jets attacked a large military vehicle depot within Col. Gadhafi's Bab Al Aziziyah complex in the center of Libya on Tuesday, as part of a "major" NATO operation over Tripoli. 

Jeffrey Feltman, U.S. assistant secretary of state for Near Eastern affairs, said during a visit to the eastern city of Benghazi on Tuesday that he delivered an oral message to members of the rebels' National Transitional Council from President Barack Obama that promised further support and reiterated America's position that Col. Gadhafi has "lost legitimacy to rule; he cannot regain control of Libya and he must step down immediately, thereby allowing the Libyan people to determine their own future."

If Obama really gets addicted to solving his political problems by killing his enemies, Osama, Gaddafi, etc., well, The Paw better keep on him at all times that pimp's knife.

On the other hand, I can't imagine Bibi has anything to worry about.

My old articles are archived at iSteve.com -- Steve Sailer

Golf and Baseball Diplomacy?

Cuba is finally getting around to approving second through fifth golf courses for foreign tourists. The country has 2100 miles of coastline, and there's nothing golfers like more than playing next to the sea. There's a recently discovered golf course grass that thrives despite salt spray, so it's become easier to build courses next to the ocean than in the past. 

After 50 years of Castro, Cuba is so ridiculously poor that all sorts of financially feasible win-win deals could be worked out between the U.S. and Cuba. Back in 2008, I suggested Baseball Diplomacy to President Bush. Perhaps Obama could try Golf Diplomacy?

But, you never hear much about Cuba as a foreign policy topic. I guess it's too close to America to think about.

My old articles are archived at iSteve.com -- Steve Sailer

The view from Pyongyang

In "Protips for Increased Dictator Longetivity," The Cold Equations draws attention to the view of a North Korean official on the fate of Libya's seven-year-long accord with Washington:

An unidentified North Korean Foreign Ministry official condemned the ongoing coalition airstrikes on Qadhafi forces and told state media that Tripoli was tricked by the West into giving up its nuclear-weapon technology in "an invasion tactic to disarm the country."

In exchange for diplomatic recognition and economic aid, Tripoli surrendered technology that included a largely complete warhead design and 4,000 uranium enrichment centrifuges capable of generating fissile material ...

"The Libyan crisis is teaching the international community a grave lesson," the official said, emphasizing that the North's strategy of building up its own military was "proper in a thousand ways" and the only assurance of stability for the Korean Peninsula.

High-ranking officials in Pyongyang tracking the air assaults on Libya "must feel alarmed, but also deeply satisfied with themselves," Korea University professor Rüdiger Frank wrote in a web posting.

The Qadhafi case was "at least the third instance in two decades that would seem to offer proof that they did something right while others failed and ultimately paid the price," Frank said. He cited the former Soviet Union's determination to stop its military buildup and to "abandon the political option to use their weapons of mass destruction," along with ex-Iraqi strongman Saddam Hussein's acceptance of international WMD monitors into Iraq.

"To put it bluntly in the eyes of the North Korean leadership all three countries took the economic bait, foolishly disarmed themselves, and once they were defenseless, were mercilessly punished by the West," Frank said.

"It requires little imaginative power to see what conclusions will be drawn in Pyongyang," the professor said, asserting that any high-level North Korean voices who supported nuclear disarmament "will now be silent." 

My old articles are archived at iSteve.com -- Steve Sailer

The Toyota War

From Wikipedia, about Kaddafi's 1980s invasion of Chad to the south, which led to classic battles between Libyan tanks vs. the impoverished black country's Toyota pickup trucks:

The Toyota War is the name commonly given to the last phase of the Chadian–Libyan conflict, which took place in 1987 in Northern Chad and on the Libyan-Chadian border. It takes its name from the Toyota pickup trucks used as technicals to provide mobility for the Chadian troops as they fought against the Libyans.^[6] 

The War Nerd explains what a "technical" is:

Habre's rebels took it from the Libyans in a battle which might've been the debut of one of the major new weapons systems of the late 20th century, the "technical." If you've read up on Somalia, you know that a "technical" is just a Toyota 4wd pickup with a big machinegun or grenade launcher welded onto the bed. 

Wikipedia goes on:

The 1987 war resulted in a heavy defeat for Libya, which, according to American sources, lost one tenth of its army, with 7,500 troops killed and 1.5 billion dollars worth of military equipment destroyed or captured.^[7] Chadian losses were 1,000 troops killed.^[5]

... Apparently formidable, the Libyan military disposition in Chad was marred by serious flaws. The Libyans were prepared for a war in which they would provide ground and air support to their Chadian allies, act as assault infantry, and provide reconnaissance. However, by 1987, Gaddafi had lost his allies, exposing Libya's inadequate knowledge of the area. Libyan garrisons came to resemble isolated and vulnerable islands in the Chadian Sahara. Also important was the low morale among the troops, who were fighting in a foreign country, and the structural disorganization of the Libyan army, which was in part induced by Gaddafi's fear of a military coup against him. This fear led him to avoid the professionalization of the armed forces.

My old articles are archived at iSteve.com -- Steve Sailer

A cynical view of the Camp David Accords

A friend writes:

In my opinion, Jimmy Carter decided to buy a foreign policy success.  One with zero content.  But I guess noticing that Sadat has kicked out the Soviets years earlier, that the Suez canal was already open, that even before Camp David  the Mossad had already tipped off Sadat about an assassination plot hatched by Qaddafi - Palestinians backed by Libya  - that'd be cynical. Begin thought that Sadat was satisfied, someone he could live with. And Sadat was satisfied. The purpose of the '73 war had been regaining the canal and self-respect among the Egyptian military, who had been totally humiliated in 67.  That had been achieved.

Real peace happens when the players have decided that they have compatible strategic goals.  That had already happened before Camp David. I guess someone people think that signing treaties is what really defines peace, but of course that is nonsense.   Peace was already a fact well before we paid anyone off.

In much the same way, people seem to think that some clever diplomat caused the rapprochement between China and the US  in the early 1970s. Some silver-tongued devil.  But the real cause was the Soviet threat: they came real close to a nuclear strike [on China's nascent nuclear weapons capability.]  In those circumstances, even _I_ could have been an effective diplomat, even if I had continually addressed the Chinese  as  the "Yellow Peril" in the negotiations.

That reminds me that my son had one of those excruciatingly meta assignments in high school history that have become fashionable: how has the "historiography" of events has changed over time? E.g., how did Northern views of abolitionist terrorist John Brown change from 1859 to 1862 to 1885 to 1975? (The history of history is a great topic for grad school, but just absurdlyhard for high school students who need to learn history first.)

This one was about how have views of the Camp David Accords changed over the last three decades? 

The answer, he found, was that nobody's views had changed at all. The kind of people who had liked it in 1978 -- Washington, Israel, American Jews, and a few at the top of the Egyptian government -- still liked it 30 years later. The kind of people who didn't like it in 1978 -- Palestinians, other Arabs, Russians, and American Arabists -- still didn't like it.

My published articles are archived at iSteve.com -- Steve Sailer

The Deal

The deal struck at Camp David in 1978 was, very roughly, that, in return for no more war, the U.S. would give Israel $3 billion per year and Egypt $2 billion per year, or $50 per Egyptian per year. That wasn't bad money back then. 

But the payoff hasn't gone up since then. And the population of Egypt has doubled, so now rather than $50 per Egyptian per year in 1978 dollars, the bribe is now $25 per Egyptian per year in crummy 2011 dollars.

Meanwhile, the wealth of the American wing of the Israel Fan Club has skyrocketed. This is not a secret in Cairo: they can go to the Forbes 400 website and do the math.

This doesn't mean that a new Egyptian government would want war with Israel. War is stupid; it kills people and breaks stuff. War doesn't pay. 

On the other hand, perhaps under a new regime, the Egyptian border guards who currently keep the Egypt-Gaza Strip border locked down pretty tight might get, say, a little sleepy. And maybe a few shipments of longer range missiles might get through to the hotheads in Gaza, with unfortunate but predictable incidents to follow. 

War doesn't pay, but maybe, ambitious younger men in Egypt might be thinking: Peace can pay. And a lot better than a stinking $25 per head. Mubaruk just wanted to die in luxury and hand his throne over to his son. Younger men might have more to prove.

If peace was worth $2 billion per year in the 1970s, they might reason, what would it be worth in the 2010s? $20 billion? Younger, more energetic Egyptian politicians with less to lose might  have some strong opinions on this subject.

But how could the Egyptians intimidate Israel? Perhaps they could co-opt the Jewish State. After all, if Egypt were to demand an order of magnitude cost of living adjustment up to $20 billion, then it would only be right and fitting for Israel to get $30 billion from the U.S. taxpayers. 

My published articles are archived at iSteve.com -- Steve Sailer

Northeast Asians outpacing Muslims at complicated tech stuff

From the New York Times:

North Korean Nuclear Ability Seen to Far Outpace Iran’s
By DAVID E. SANGER and WILLIAM J. BROAD

WASHINGTON — The Obama administration has concluded that North Korea’s new plant to enrich nuclear fuel uses technology that is “significantly more advanced” than what Iran has struggled over two decades to assemble, according to senior administration and intelligence officials.

North Korea is smaller and much poorer than Iran, has no oil money, and is run by people who make the Iranian rulers look like George Washington for sanity.

Looking at 2009 PISA test scores (p. 155-157), North Korea didn't take the test, but 26% of South Korean 15-year-olds scored in the top two ranks of math tests, the fifth best performance out of 65 regions, behind only Shanghai, Singapore, Hong Kong, and Taiwan.

Iran didn't take the test, but trying to find remotely similar countries, we see Turkey with a respectable 6%, Qatar 2%, and Jordan with under 1%. In science, 12% of South Koreans scored in the top two ranks versus 2% of Turks and vanishingly small percentages of most other Muslim countries. 

Moreover, unlike North Korea, Iran lets people emigrate. A lot of smart Iranians have wound up in Southern California. My wife knows an upper crust Iranian lady who arrived from Iran a decade ago and her son then majored in physics at Caltech. Probably a better decision for the family, all in all, than staying in Iran, having the son get drafted into the nuclear program, and then having the Israelis someday drop a bomb on his head. (In contrast to Iran, there hasn't been a notably large outflow of smart Turks from Turkey. If you've got some money, Turkey is a pretty okay place to live.)

And then there's an interesting game theory paradox to how hard you would work on building a Bomb in Iran v. North Korea if you were an engineer. If you actually got to the verge of a working Bomb, the Israelis would likely drop a bomb on your head, so better to putter around and give each other Powerpoint presentations forever. It's a living! The North Korean engineers aren't too worried about a pre-emptive strike because North Korea already has a deterrent in artillery and small rockets trained on Greater Seoul. The North Koreans have freedom to build a deterrent because they already have a deterrent.

This is all reminiscent of eight years ago when we were assured by The People Who Know that Saddam Hussein was this close to building his own Bomb using crack Iraqi scientists and engineers.

My published articles are archived at iSteve.com -- Steve Sailer