Stratfor and Andie MacDowell

In this Stratfor article George Friedman tries to dress up Obama's increasing isolationist tilt as the U.S. disengages from international flash points a wise move. Me, I'm not so sure -- I think building roads, spreading cells towers and in general hailing American notions of democracy will prove to be much more fertile seeds than a lot of people think at present.

Besides, dirty little wars are the lot of major powers. As much as they may be unpopular, they're kind of inevitable and avoiding them usually costs down the road. We shall see.

As for the Hot Stratfor Babe, since the article dealt with endless war the endless day of the movie Groundhog Day came to mind, and so Andie MacDowell became the easy winner of this article's title of Hot Stratfor Babe.

Ms MacDowell started her career as a print model, turned to television commercials and from there moved onto a very successful stint as a leading lady in movies. She continues to be busy, doing television, film and continues to model.

Avoiding the Wars That Never End
By George Friedman, Founder and Chief Executive Officer, January 15, 2013

Last week, U.S. President Barack Obama announced that the United States would transfer the primary responsibility for combat operations in Afghanistan to the Afghan military in the coming months, a major step toward the withdrawal of U.S. forces. Also last week, France began an intervention in Mali designed to block jihadists from taking control of the country and creating a base of operations in France's former African colonies.

The two events are linked in a way that transcends the issue of Islamist insurgency and points to a larger geopolitical shift. The United States is not just drawing down its combat commitments; it is moving away from the view that it has the primary responsibility for trying to manage the world on behalf of itself, the Europeans and its other allies. Instead, that burden is shifting to those who have immediate interests involved.
Insecurity in 9/11's Wake

It is interesting to recall how the United States involved itself in Afghanistan. After 9/11, the United States was in shock and lacked clear intelligence on al Qaeda. It did not know what additional capabilities al Qaeda had or what the group's intentions were. Lacking intelligence, a political leader has the obligation to act on worst-case scenarios after the enemy has demonstrated hostile intentions and capabilities. The possible scenarios ranged from additional sleeper cells operating and awaiting orders in the United States to al Qaeda having obtained nuclear weapons to destroy cities. When you don't know, it is both prudent and psychologically inevitable to plan for the worst.

The United States had sufficient information to act in Afghanistan. It knew that al Qaeda was operating in Afghanistan and that disrupting the main cell was a useful step in taking some action against the threat. However, the United States did not immediately invade Afghanistan. It bombed the country extensively and inserted limited forces on the ground, but the primary burden of fighting the Taliban government was in the hands of anti-Taliban forces in Afghanistan that had been resisting the Taliban and in the hands of other forces that could be induced to act against the Taliban. The Taliban gave up the cities and prepared for a long war. Al Qaeda's command cell left Afghanistan and shifted to Pakistan.

The United States achieved its primary goal early on. That goal was not to deny al Qaeda the ability to operate in Afghanistan, an objective that would achieve nothing. Rather, the goal was to engage al Qaeda and disrupt its command-and-control structure as a way to degrade the group's ability to plan and execute additional attacks. The move to Pakistan at the very least bought time, and given continued pressure on the main cell, allowed the United States to gather more intelligence about al Qaeda assets around the world.

This second mission -- to identify al Qaeda assets around the world -- required a second effort. The primary means of identifying them was through their electronic communications, and the United States proceeded to create a vast technological mechanism designed to detect communications and use that detection to identify and capture or kill al Qaeda operatives. The problem with this technique -- really the only one available -- was that it was impossible to monitor al Qaeda's communications without monitoring everyone's. If there was a needle in the haystack, the entire haystack had to be examined. This was a radical shift in the government's relationship to the private communications of citizens. The justification was that at a time of war, in which the threat to the United States was uncertain and possibly massive, these measures were necessary.

This action was not unique in American history. Abraham Lincoln violated the Constitution in several ways during the Civil War, from suspending the right to habeas corpus to blocking the Maryland Legislature from voting on a secession measure. Franklin Roosevelt allowed the FBI to open citizens' mail and put Japanese-Americans into internment camps. The idea that civil liberties must be protected in time of war is not historically how the United States, or most countries, operate. In that sense there was nothing unique in the decision to monitor communications in order to find al Qaeda and stop attacks. How else could the needle be found in the haystack? Likewise, detention without trial was not unique. Lincoln and Roosevelt both resorted to it.

The Civil War and World War II were different from the current conflict, however, because their conclusions were clear and decisive. The wars would end, one way or another, and so would the suspension of rights. Unlike those wars, the war in Afghanistan was extended indefinitely by the shift in strategy from disrupting al Qaeda's command cell to fighting the Taliban to building a democratic society in Afghanistan. With the second step, the U.S. military mission changed its focus and increased its presence massively, and with the third, the terminal date of the war became very far away.

But there was a broader issue. The war in Afghanistan was not the main war. Afghanistan happened to be the place where al Qaeda was headquartered on Sept. 11, 2001. The country was not essential to al Qaeda, and creating a democratic society there -- if it were even possible -- would not necessarily weaken al Qaeda. Even destroying al Qaeda would not prevent new Islamist organizations or individuals from rising up.
A New Kind of War

The main war was not against one specific terrorist group, but rather against an idea: the radical tendency in Islamism. Most Muslims are not radicals, but any religion with 1 billion adherents will have its share of extremists. The tendency is there, and it is deeply rooted. If the goal of the war were the destruction of this radical tendency, then it was not going to happen. While the risk of attacks could be reduced -- and indeed there were no further 9/11s despite repeated attempts in the United States -- there was no way to eliminate the threat. No matter how many divisions were deployed, no matter how many systems for electronic detection were created, they could only mitigate the threat, not eliminate it. Therefore, what some called the Long War really became permanent war.

The means by which the war was pursued could not result in victory. They could, however, completely unbalance U.S. strategy by committing massive resources to missions not clearly connected with preventing Islamist terrorism. It also created a situation where emergency intrusions on critical portions of the Bill of Rights -- such as the need to obtain a warrant for certain actions -- became a permanent feature. Permanent war makes for permanent temporary measures.

The break point came, in my opinion, in about 2004. Around that time, al Qaeda was unable to mount attacks on the United States despite multiple efforts. The war in Afghanistan had dislodged al Qaeda and created the Karzai government. The invasion of Iraq -- whatever the rationale might have been -- clearly produced a level of resistance that the United States could not contain or could contain only by making agreements with its enemies in Iraq. At that point, a radical rethinking of the war had to take place. It did not.

The radical rethinking had to do not with Iraq or Afghanistan, but rather with what to do about a permanent threat to the United States, and indeed to many other countries, posed by the global networks of radical Islamists prepared to carry out terrorist attacks. The threat would not go away, and it could not be eliminated. At the same time, it did not threaten the existence of the republic. The 9/11 attacks were atrocious, but they did not threaten the survival of the United States in spite of the human cost. Combating the threat required a degree of proportionality so the fight could be maintained on an ongoing basis, without becoming the only goal of U.S. foreign policy or domestic life. Mitigation was the only possibility; the threat would have to be endured.

Washington found a way to achieve this balance in the past, albeit against very different sorts of threats. The United States emerged as a great power in the early 20th century. During that time, it fought three wars: World War I, World War II and the Cold War, which included Korea, Vietnam and other, smaller engagements. In World War I and World War II, the United States waited for events to unfold, and in Europe in particular it waited until the European powers reached a point where they could not deal with the threat of German hegemony without American intervention. In both instances, it intervened heavily only late in the war, at the point where the Germans had been exhausted by other European powers. It should be remembered that the main American push in World War II did not take place until the summer of 1944. The American strategy was to wait and see whether the Europeans could stabilize the situation themselves, using distance to mobilize as late as possible and intervene decisively only at the critical moment.

The critics of this approach, particularly prior to World War II, called it isolationism. But the United States was not isolationist; it was involved in Asia throughout this period. Rather, it saw itself as being the actor of last resort, capable of acting at the decisive moment with overwhelming force because geography had given the United States the option of time and resources.

During the Cold War, the United States modified this strategy. It still depended on allies, but it now saw itself as the first responder. Partly this could be seen in U.S. nuclear strategy. This could also be seen in Korea and Vietnam, where allies played subsidiary roles, but the primary effort was American. The Cold War was fought on a different set of principles than the two world wars.

The Cold War strategy was applied to the war against radical Islamism, in which the United States -- because of 9/11 but also because of a mindset that could be seen in other interventions -- was the first responder. Other allies followed the United States' lead and provided support to the degree to which they felt comfortable. The allies could withdraw without fundamentally undermining the war effort. The United States could not.

The approach in the U.S.-jihadist war was a complete reversal from the approach taken in the two world wars. This was understandable given that it was triggered by an unexpected and catastrophic event, the reponse to which flowed from a lack of intelligence. When Japan struck Pearl Harbor, emotions were at least as intense, but U.S. strategy in the Pacific was measured and cautious. And the enemy's capabilities were much better understood.
Stepping Back as Global Policeman

The United States cannot fight a war against radical Islamism and win, and it certainly cannot be the sole actor in a war waged primarily in the Eastern Hemisphere. This is why the French intervention in Mali is particularly interesting. France retains interests in its former colonial empire in Africa, and Mali is at the geographic center of these interests. To the north of Mali is Algeria, where France has significant energy investments; to the east of Mali is Niger, where France has a significant stake in the mining of mineral resources, particularly uranium; and to the south of Mali is Ivory Coast, where France plays a major role in cocoa production. The future of Mali matters to France far more than it matters to the United States.

What is most interesting is the absence of the United States in the fight, even if it is providing intelligence and other support, such as mobilizing ground forces from other African countries. The United States is not acting as if this is its fight; it is acting as if this is the fight of an ally, whom it might help in extremis, but not in a time when U.S. assistance is unnecessary. And if the French can't mount an effective operation in Mali, then little help can be given.

This changing approach is also evident in Syria, where the United States has systematically avoided anything beyond limited and covert assistance, and Libya, where the United States intervened after the French and British launched an attack they could not sustain. That was, I believe, a turning point, given the unsatisfactory outcome there. Rather than accepting a broad commitment against radical Islamism everywhere, the United States is allowing the burden to shift to powers that have direct interests in these areas.

Reversing a strategy is difficult. It is uncomfortable for any power to acknowledge that it has overreached, which the United States did both in Iraq and Afghanistan. It is even more difficult to acknowledge that the goals set by President George W. Bush in Iraq and Obama in Afghanistan lacked coherence. But clearly the war has run its course, and what is difficult is also obvious. We are not going to eliminate the threat of radical Islamism. The commitment of force to an unattainable goal twists national strategy out of shape and changes the fabric of domestic life. Obviously, overwatch must be in place against the emergence of an organization like al Qaeda, with global reach, sophisticated operatives and operational discipline. But this is very different from responding to jihadists in Mali, where the United States has limited interests and fewer resources.

Accepting an ongoing threat is also difficult. Mitigating the threat of an enemy rather than defeating the enemy outright goes against an impulse. But it is not something alien to American strategy. The United States is involved in the world, and it can't follow the founders' dictum of staying out of European struggles. But the United States has the option of following U.S. strategy in the two world wars. The United States was patient, accepted risks and shifted the burden to others, and when it acted, it acted out of necessity, with clearly defined goals matched by capabilities. Waiting until there is no choice but to go to war is not isolationism. Allowing others to carry the primary risk is not disengagement. Waging wars that are finite is not irresponsible.

The greatest danger of war is what it can do to one's own society, changing the obligations of citizens and reshaping their rights. The United States has always done this during wars, but those wars would always end. Fighting a war that cannot end reshapes domestic life permanently. A strategy that compels engagement everywhere will exhaust a country. No empire can survive the imperative of permanent, unwinnable warfare. It is fascinating to watch the French deal with Mali. It is even more fascinating to watch the United States wishing them well and mostly staying out of it. It has taken about 10 years, but here we can see the American system stabilize itself by mitigating the threats that can't be eliminated and refusing to be drawn into fights it can let others handle.

Avoiding the Wars That Never End is republished with permission of Stratfor.

Perpetual motion

Perpetual motion is a realm of pipe-dream chasers and fraudsters. This video has some nice examples of old perpetual motion machine designs in action although the hidden pumps and motors aren't discussed.
 

Monster clouds

Image by Alicia Neal (click to enlarge)

Sure, when as a child you looked at them all you saw in your imagination were bunny rabbits and the like, but it turns out that, in spite of the harsh environment, clouds are teeming with life. 

Because of the altitude, along with the extremely cold temperatures,  ultraviolet rays break down the water into toxic compounds are very acidic and contain toxins such as hydrogen peroxide. However, as Ars Technica reports:

[I]t was clear that the bacteria were breaking down a significant amount of the hydrogen peroxide themselves. This is likely a kind of coping mechanism—cells chemically stressed in this way produce an enzyme that helps neutralize oxidants like hydrogen peroxide and hydroxyl radicals.

Organic compounds also appear in these droplets, but the bacteria turned out to be the dominant factor behind their breakdown. For most of these chemicals, the presence of ultraviolet light (and, thus, hydroxyl radicals) was irrelevant to their stability. They only declined when there were bacteria around to munch on them. What’s more, hydrogen peroxide and hydroxyl radicals didn’t slow them down one bit.

So then, it’s likely that bacteria really are active in clouds. And they’re not just bit players—they have a significant effect on the chemistry of cloud water. They’re controlling the concentration of hydroxyl radicals and forming particles that could be future condensation nuclei (making clouds that would be more reflective and less likely to generate precipitation). In order to fully understand the behavior of clouds, researchers are going to have to pay attention to the vagabond microbes eking out a living at 5,000 feet.

Life is pretty amazing, isn't it? They just keep finding it everywhere they look, even in some of the harshest environments. I wonder what the Mars rovers will eventually show? Odds seem increasingly tilted towards something.

You Told Me and Taken

A double dose of Monday morning start of the workweek blues

with Gus Jinkins and his Orchestra.

  

  

Japanese pre-1915 prints

Click any image to enlarge

The Library of congress has a large collection they've posted online. Part of it is their catalog of pre-1915 Japanese prints. These, and the ones that follow after the jump, are just a small sampling of what they offer. Many more are at their Fine Prints: Japanese, pre-1915 pages.

Goofing off

Like the birds at the marina above, I'm goofing off tonight when it comes to posting. Watching the Packers and hoping they pull off a win, although it is at half-time and they've been wobbly, it's still a close game.
  

Der Klopapier-Halter

As near as I can figure out, although I haven't really put that much energy into pondering the matter, this is the World's most elaborate toilet paper dispenser.
  

Stratfor and Raquel Welch

This is an interesting article by Tristan Reed that discusses the importance of human networks, and in deciphering their structure to begin to be able to analyze an organization.

Of course with clandestine organizations this is difficult, and it is made even more of a puzzle as various leaders and subalterns in a group are killed or arrested.

As for the4 article's Hot Stratfor Babe, since the article was speaking of networks it was only natural that the network of human blood vessels would spring to mind, and from there is was only a hop, skip and a jump to the movie Fantastic Journey and its female lead Raquel Welch.

Ms Welch started out as a weather girl and moved on to television and then the movies. She was a little late for the 'Bombshell' period of Hollywood, so her career always seemed like it was a day late and a dollar short in certain ways.

Regardless, she's aged well, both physically and in reputation, with some of her opinions on her status as a sex symbol being a bit of a refreshing surprise these many years later.


Intelligence and Human Networks
By Tristan Reed, January 10, 2012

Stratfor views the world through the lens of geopolitics, the study of hard, physical constraints on man's ability to shape reality. Political decisions are limited by the geography in which they take place, eliminating many of the options concocted by ideologues and making their human decisions easier to predict. But the study of geopolitics only takes the understanding of global affairs so far: It identifies the geographical constraints but leaves an array of options open to human actors. So when forecasting on a shorter time frame, analysis must go beyond geographical constraints to more specific, temporal constraints. For this reason, predicting the short-term activities of human actors requires an understanding of the constraints they face in the human terrain within which they operate.

As a result, one task common to any intelligence organization is defining the human network of a state, criminal organization, militant movement or any other organization to better determine and understand a group's characteristics and abilities. A human network in this sense is a broad term used to describe the intricate web of relations existing in an organization and within a specific region. For anyone or any organization with interests in a given geographic area, understanding the networks of individuals with influence in the region is critical.

Intelligence and Analysis

People use human networks to organize the control of resources and geography. No person alone can control anything of significance. Presidents, drug lords and CEOs rely on people to execute their strategies and are constrained by the capabilities and interests of the people who work for them. Identifying these networks may be a daunting task depending on the network. For obvious reasons, criminal organizations and militant networks strive to keep their membership secret, and it is not always apparent who gives the orders and who carries out the orders in a political body. To discern who's who in a group, and therefore whether an individual matters in a group, requires both intelligence and analysis to make sense of the intelligence.

How intelligence is acquired depends on the resources and methods available to an intelligence organization, while the analysis that follows differs depending on the intent. For example, International Security Assistance Force military operations aimed at disrupting militant networks in Afghanistan would require the collection of informants and signals intelligence followed by analysis to pinpoint the exact location of individuals within a network to enable targeted operations. Simply knowing who belongs to a militant network and their location is not enough; the value lies in the significance and capabilities of an individual in the group. Detaining an individual who lays improvised explosive devices on a road may result in short-term disruptions to the target's area of operations, but identifying and detaining a bombmaker with exclusive experience and training will have a far greater impact.

The true value of analysis lies in understanding the significance of a particular individual in a network. Mapping out a human network begins with the simple question of who belongs to a particular network. Next, identify and define relationships with other known individuals and organizations. For some, this process takes the form of link analysis, which is a visual representation of a network where each individual is represented in a diagram. Links between the individuals who interact with one another are then depicted. These links show an individual's significance in a group and establish whether he is a lowly scout within a transnational criminal organization who may only interact with his paymaster. The paymaster, by contrast, could be linked to dozens of other group members. Examining how many links within a group an individual has, however, is just scratching the surface of understanding the network.

Every individual within a given human network has reasons to be tied to others within the network. Understanding what unites the individuals in an organization provides further depth of understanding. Whether it be ideology, mutual interests, familial ties or paid services, why a relationship exists will help determine the strength of such bonds, the motives of the network and the limitations to what a network can accomplish. For example, when assessing the strength of the Syrian regime, it is imperative to identify and examine the inner circle of President Bashar al Assad. Analyzing these members can indicate which factions of the Syrian population and which political and familial groupings support or reject the al Assad regime. That key posts within the government are now occupied primarily by Alawites indicates a combination of regime distrust of the Sunnis and dwindling levels of support from even high-ranking Sunnis. Similarly, examining the once-strong ties of inner circle members who have defected indicates which factions no longer support the regime and points toward other groups that might also have doubts about remaining loyal.

Rarely is there a completely isolated human network. Human relations typically span multiple regions or even continents. Politicians can have their own business interests, drug traffickers may have counterparts in another country and militant groups may have the sympathy of other groups or even members in a state's government. There are no limits on how separate networks may interact with one another. Understanding a group's ties to other groups further defines the original group's influence. For example, a political leader at odds with the powerful military of his state may find significant constraints in governing (due to the limitations within the human network on figures linking the military assets to political leaders). A drug trafficker with a law enforcement officer on his payroll will likely find less resistance from authorities when conducting illicit business (due to the capabilities that a police officer would provide to the network).

The reasons for, and methods of, defining a human network will vary depending on the intelligence organization. A nation with vast resources like the United States has an exceptionally large focus on human networks around the world and a full array of intelligence disciplines to gather the necessary information. At Stratfor, our reasons to map the intricate web of human relations within an organization differ as we look to understand the constraints that human networks place on actors.

Challenges of Tracking Human Networks

The individuals in an organization are constantly changing. This means the job of mapping the driving forces in an organization never ends, since relations shift, roles change and individuals often are taken out of the picture altogether. As a result, intelligence collectors must continually task their intelligence assets for new information, and analysts must continually update their organizational charts.

Logically, the more fluid the membership of an organization, the more difficult it is for an intelligence organization -- or rival organization -- to follow it. As an example, take Los Zetas, who dominate the Mexican border town of Nuevo Laredo. The group always will have individuals in the city in charge of running daily criminal operations, such as coordinating gunmen, drug shipments, money laundering and retail drug sales. Within a Mexican transnational criminal organization, the person filling this role is typically called a "plaza boss." Several alleged Zetas plaza bosses of Nuevo Laredo were killed or captured during 2012 in Mexican military operations. With each kill or capture, an organization must replace the former plaza boss. This frequent succession of plaza bosses obviously reshapes the human network operating in Nuevo Laredo.

It is no simple matter for a collector to ask his informants about, or to eavesdrop through surveillance, for information about the personnel changes. It takes time for a new plaza boss to assume his new responsibilities. A new office manager must get to know his employees and operations before making critical decisions. Additionally, an intelligence collector's assets may not be able to provide updates right away. In the case of an informant, does the informant have the same access to the new plaza boss as the former? Roles are more constant within an organization and can be split up among individuals. Thus, a person who had handled both gunmen and drug shipments may be replaced by two people to break up the responsibilities. Therefore, collectors and analysts must seek to understand the roles of the new plaza boss and whether he has the same influence as the prior one.

What We Do

Understanding that the players within organizations change frequently, but that the roles and constraints of an organization transform far more slowly, is key to how Stratfor approaches human networks. For the leader of a nation, the geopolitical imperatives of the nation serve as impersonal forces directing the decisions of a rational individual. For a criminal or insurgent leader, there is only so much that can be done while attempting to avoid notice by law enforcement and the military, and the organization's imperatives will likely remain in place. In determining the constraints and imperatives, we can better identify the significance and courses of actions of an organization without necessarily knowing the details about the individuals serving specific roles.

Particularly with more clandestine human networks, we continually examine the external effects of known personnel changes. For example, how has the death of a Taliban leader in Pakistan affected the operations of the Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan as a whole, such as in the case of the Jan. 3 death of Taliban leader Maulvi Nazir in South Waziristan? Nazir commanded a relatively benign faction of the Pakistani Taliban that kept more aggressive, anti-government factions out of South Waziristan. His removal, and the nature of his removal, could invite militants waging an active fight against the Pakistani government to return to South Waziristan. Ultimately, Nazir was a distinct figure in the Pakistani militant network due to his alliance with Islamabad. While his removal won't change the fact that militants will thrive on the Pakistani-Afghan border (which geography dictates), it does marginally tilt the balance away from Islamabad and toward the militants.

With the example of Los Zetas in Nuevo Laredo, we know Nuevo Laredo is a critical location for the transnational criminal organization. As a border town with one of the highest volumes of cross-border commercial shipping to the United States, the city serves as one of the principal sources of revenue for Zetas drug traffickers. For this reason, Los Zetas will certainly continue to replace figures who are removed by military and law enforcement.

Using this known behavior and the imperatives, we can learn about Los Zetas elsewhere in Mexico: By observing the group at a broader geographic level, we can deduce the significance of a capture or death in a specific locale. If the losses of personnel in Nuevo Laredo have had a significant impact on the organization, operations would likely suffer in other geographic areas as the group accommodates its losses in Nuevo Laredo.

In forecasting the political, economic or security climate of a geographic region, understanding human networks must be incorporated into any analysis. Areas such as Mexico and Syria have geographic elements that define conflicts. Mexico's location between the cocaine producers of the northern Andes and cocaine consumers in the United States ensures that groups will profit off the cocaine flow from south to north. The Sierra Madre Occidental and Sierra Madre Oriental divide trafficking corridors between the east and west coasts of Mexico. But geography alone can't be used to predict how groups will organize and compete with each other within those trafficking corridors. Predicting the spread and scope of violence depends on knowledge of the human network and of who controls the resources and terrain. Similarly, the geographic significance of the Levant to Iran and Iraq determines the importance of Syria as an access point to the Mediterranean, but that alone doesn't determine the future of al Assad's regime. Understanding who his most trusted confidants are, what their relationships are based on and watching their moves enables us to filter the constant news of death and destruction coming out of Syria and to focus on the individuals who directly support al Assad and determine his immediate fate.

Inasmuch as humans can overcome geography, they can do so through organizations that control terrain and resources. Understanding the nature of those organizations and how they control those assets requires knowledge of the human network.

Intelligence and Human Networks is republished with permission of Stratfor.

So Nice (Summer Samba)

Get ready for a January weekend of warm weather nostalgia with Bebel Gilberto

  

  

When Google cars get hungry

Sorry for these video clips in a row, but this prank amused me. I'm just a little lazy this week I guess. Enjoy.
   

The space toilet

Just in case you ever wondered -- and who hasn't? -- here's a short talk that explains the mechanics of space toilets.
    

Hidden boundaries

Hidden boundaries by Raymond A. Foss

Soon the walls will be buried
the old stone walls
under the lichen, the leaves, the needles
buried under the snow

Now merely obscured
their straight edges muted
the boundaries merely hidden
under the weight of autumn

The leaves of this season added
to the litter on the ground
the nesting places for many
keeping warm under the layers

The straight lines marking
boundaries no longer with meaning
in another season
when others worked this land
  

Don't anger me

Another fight scene to get you over the hump in hump day. I'm not exactly sure how they end up on the bridge, or when the rope got tied around the bad guys' waists, but it is all a fortuitous turn of events for our hero.
  

Stratfor and Harriette Nelson

In this Stratfor article George Friedman discusses the declining fortunes of the American middle class and wonders what effect the continuation of that trend would have on American power.

It is an interesting read, rarely does Friedman come across so pessimistic.

For the Hot Stratfor Babe, since the article discusses the middle class of yore, I turned to American television's portrayal of the nuclear family and middle class during the 1950s.

After careful consideration, and a wealth of candidates to choose from, I finally selected Harriette Nelson from the Ozzie and Harriette Show.

I doubt the show is even remotely familiar to our younger readers, but it was a hoot in an odd sort of a way. One of the great mysteries of it was what Ozzie, the wise father, did for a living. He sure never appeared to have had a job or done a lick of work in his life.


The Crisis of the Middle Class and American Power
By George Friedman, Founder and Chief Executive Officer, January 8, 2013

Last week I wrote about the crisis of unemployment in Europe. I received a great deal of feedback, with Europeans agreeing that this is the core problem and Americans arguing that the United States has the same problem, asserting that U.S. unemployment is twice as high as the government's official unemployment rate. My counterargument is that unemployment in the United States is not a problem in the same sense that it is in Europe because it does not pose a geopolitical threat. The United States does not face political disintegration from unemployment, whatever the number is. Europe might.

At the same time, I would agree that the United States faces a potentially significant but longer-term geopolitical problem deriving from economic trends. The threat to the United States is the persistent decline in the middle class' standard of living, a problem that is reshaping the social order that has been in place since World War II and that, if it continues, poses a threat to American power.

The Crisis of the American Middle Class

The median household income of Americans in 2011 was $49,103. Adjusted for inflation, the median income is just below what it was in 1989 and is $4,000 less than it was in 2000. Take-home income is a bit less than $40,000 when Social Security and state and federal taxes are included. That means a monthly income, per household, of about $3,300. It is urgent to bear in mind that half of all American households earn less than this. It is also vital to consider not the difference between 1990 and 2011, but the difference between the 1950s and 1960s and the 21st century. This is where the difference in the meaning of middle class becomes most apparent.

In the 1950s and 1960s, the median income allowed you to live with a single earner -- normally the husband, with the wife typically working as homemaker -- and roughly three children. It permitted the purchase of modest tract housing, one late model car and an older one. It allowed a driving vacation somewhere and, with care, some savings as well. I know this because my family was lower-middle class, and this is how we lived, and I know many others in my generation who had the same background. It was not an easy life and many luxuries were denied us, but it wasn't a bad life at all.

Someone earning the median income today might just pull this off, but it wouldn't be easy. Assuming that he did not have college loans to pay off but did have two car loans to pay totaling $700 a month, and that he could buy food, clothing and cover his utilities for $1,200 a month, he would have $1,400 a month for mortgage, real estate taxes and insurance, plus some funds for fixing the air conditioner and dishwasher. At a 5 percent mortgage rate, that would allow him to buy a house in the $200,000 range. He would get a refund back on his taxes from deductions but that would go to pay credit card bills he had from Christmas presents and emergencies. It could be done, but not easily and with great difficulty in major metropolitan areas. And if his employer didn't cover health insurance, that $4,000-5,000 for three or four people would severely limit his expenses. And of course, he would have to have $20,000-40,000 for a down payment and closing costs on his home. There would be little else left over for a week at the seashore with the kids.

And this is for the median. Those below him -- half of all households -- would be shut out of what is considered middle-class life, with the house, the car and the other associated amenities. Those amenities shift upward on the scale for people with at least $70,000 in income. The basics might be available at the median level, given favorable individual circumstance, but below that life becomes surprisingly meager, even in the range of the middle class and certainly what used to be called the lower-middle class.

The Expectation of Upward Mobility

I should pause and mention that this was one of the fundamental causes of the 2007-2008 subprime lending crisis. People below the median took out loans with deferred interest with the expectation that their incomes would continue the rise that was traditional since World War II. The caricature of the borrower as irresponsible misses the point. The expectation of rising real incomes was built into the American culture, and many assumed based on that that the rise would resume in five years. When it didn't they were trapped, but given history, they were not making an irresponsible assumption.

American history was always filled with the assumption that upward mobility was possible. The Midwest and West opened land that could be exploited, and the massive industrialization in the late 19th and early 20th centuries opened opportunities. There was a systemic expectation of upward mobility built into American culture and reality.

The Great Depression was a shock to the system, and it wasn't solved by the New Deal, nor even by World War II alone. The next drive for upward mobility came from post-war programs for veterans, of whom there were more than 10 million. These programs were instrumental in creating post-industrial America, by creating a class of suburban professionals. There were three programs that were critical:

1 - The GI Bill, which allowed veterans to go to college after the war, becoming professionals frequently several notches above their parents.

2 - The part of the GI Bill that provided federally guaranteed mortgages to veterans, allowing low and no down payment mortgages and low interest rates to graduates of publicly funded universities.

3 - The federally funded Interstate Highway System, which made access to land close to but outside of cities easier, enabling both the dispersal of populations on inexpensive land (which made single-family houses possible) and, later, the dispersal of business to the suburbs.

There were undoubtedly many other things that contributed to this, but these three not only reshaped America but also created a new dimension to the upward mobility that was built into American life from the beginning. Moreover, these programs were all directed toward veterans, to whom it was acknowledged a debt was due, or were created for military reasons (the Interstate Highway System was funded to enable the rapid movement of troops from coast to coast, which during World War II was found to be impossible). As a result, there was consensus around the moral propriety of the programs.

The subprime fiasco was rooted in the failure to understand that the foundations of middle class life were not under temporary pressure but something more fundamental. Where a single earner could support a middle class family in the generation after World War II, it now took at least two earners. That meant that the rise of the double-income family corresponded with the decline of the middle class. The lower you go on the income scale, the more likely you are to be a single mother. That shift away from social pressure for two parent homes was certainly part of the problem.

Re-engineering the Corporation

But there was, I think, the crisis of the modern corporation. Corporations provided long-term employment to the middle class. It was not unusual to spend your entire life working for one. Working for a corporation, you received yearly pay increases, either as a union or non-union worker. The middle class had both job security and rising income, along with retirement and other benefits. Over the course of time, the culture of the corporation diverged from the realities, as corporate productivity lagged behind costs and the corporations became more and more dysfunctional and ultimately unsupportable. In addition, the corporations ceased focusing on doing one thing well and instead became conglomerates, with a management frequently unable to keep up with the complexity of multiple lines of business.

For these and many other reasons, the corporation became increasingly inefficient, and in the terms of the 1980s, they had to be re-engineered -- which meant taken apart, pared down, refined and refocused. And the re-engineering of the corporation, designed to make them agile, meant that there was a permanent revolution in business. Everything was being reinvented. Huge amounts of money, managed by people whose specialty was re-engineering companies, were deployed. The choice was between total failure and radical change. From the point of view of the individual worker, this frequently meant the same thing: unemployment. From the view of the economy, it meant the creation of value whether through breaking up companies, closing some of them or sending jobs overseas. It was designed to increase the total efficiency, and it worked for the most part.

This is where the disjuncture occurred. From the point of view of the investor, they had saved the corporation from total meltdown by redesigning it. From the point of view of the workers, some retained the jobs that they would have lost, while others lost the jobs they would have lost anyway. But the important thing is not the subjective bitterness of those who lost their jobs, but something more complex.

As the permanent corporate jobs declined, more people were starting over. Some of them were starting over every few years as the agile corporation grew more efficient and needed fewer employees. That meant that if they got new jobs it would not be at the munificent corporate pay rate but at near entry-level rates in the small companies that were now the growth engine. As these companies failed, were bought or shifted direction, they would lose their jobs and start over again. Wages didn't rise for them and for long periods they might be unemployed, never to get a job again in their now obsolete fields, and certainly not working at a company for the next 20 years.

The restructuring of inefficient companies did create substantial value, but that value did not flow to the now laid-off workers. Some might flow to the remaining workers, but much of it went to the engineers who restructured the companies and the investors they represented. Statistics reveal that, since 1947 (when the data was first compiled), corporate profits as a percentage of gross domestic product are now at their highest level, while wages as a percentage of GDP are now at their lowest level. It was not a question of making the economy more efficient -- it did do that -- it was a question of where the value accumulated. The upper segment of the wage curve and the investors continued to make money. The middle class divided into a segment that entered the upper-middle class, while another faction sank into the lower-middle class.

American society on the whole was never egalitarian. It always accepted that there would be substantial differences in wages and wealth. Indeed, progress was in some ways driven by a desire to emulate the wealthy. There was also the expectation that while others received far more, the entire wealth structure would rise in tandem. It was also understood that, because of skill or luck, others would lose.

What we are facing now is a structural shift, in which the middle class' center, not because of laziness or stupidity, is shifting downward in terms of standard of living. It is a structural shift that is rooted in social change (the breakdown of the conventional family) and economic change (the decline of traditional corporations and the creation of corporate agility that places individual workers at a massive disadvantage).

The inherent crisis rests in an increasingly efficient economy and a population that can't consume what is produced because it can't afford the products. This has happened numerous times in history, but the United States, excepting the Great Depression, was the counterexample.

Obviously, this is a massive political debate, save that political debates identify problems without clarifying them. In political debates, someone must be blamed. In reality, these processes are beyond even the government's ability to control. On one hand, the traditional corporation was beneficial to the workers until it collapsed under the burden of its costs. On the other hand, the efficiencies created threaten to undermine consumption by weakening the effective demand among half of society.

The Long-Term Threat

The greatest danger is one that will not be faced for decades but that is lurking out there. The United States was built on the assumption that a rising tide lifts all ships. That has not been the case for the past generation, and there is no indication that this socio-economic reality will change any time soon. That means that a core assumption is at risk. The problem is that social stability has been built around this assumption -- not on the assumption that everyone is owed a living, but the assumption that on the whole, all benefit from growing productivity and efficiency.

If we move to a system where half of the country is either stagnant or losing ground while the other half is surging, the social fabric of the United States is at risk, and with it the massive global power the United States has accumulated. Other superpowers such as Britain or Rome did not have the idea of a perpetually improving condition of the middle class as a core value. The United States does. If it loses that, it loses one of the pillars of its geopolitical power.

The left would argue that the solution is for laws to transfer wealth from the rich to the middle class. That would increase consumption but, depending on the scope, would threaten the amount of capital available to investment by the transfer itself and by eliminating incentives to invest. You can't invest what you don't have, and you won't accept the risk of investment if the payoff is transferred away from you.

The agility of the American corporation is critical. The right will argue that allowing the free market to function will fix the problem. The free market doesn't guarantee social outcomes, merely economic ones. In other words, it may give more efficiency on the whole and grow the economy as a whole, but by itself it doesn't guarantee how wealth is distributed. The left cannot be indifferent to the historical consequences of extreme redistribution of wealth. The right cannot be indifferent to the political consequences of a middle-class life undermined, nor can it be indifferent to half the population's inability to buy the products and services that businesses sell.

The most significant actions made by governments tend to be unintentional. The GI Bill was designed to limit unemployment among returning serviceman; it inadvertently created a professional class of college graduates. The VA loan was designed to stimulate the construction industry; it created the basis for suburban home ownership. The Interstate Highway System was meant to move troops rapidly in the event of war; it created a new pattern of land use that was suburbia.

It is unclear how the private sector can deal with the problem of pressure on the middle class. Government programs frequently fail to fulfill even minimal intentions while squandering scarce resources. The United States has been a fortunate country, with solutions frequently emerging in unexpected ways.

It would seem to me that unless the United States gets lucky again, its global dominance is in jeopardy. Considering its history, the United States can expect to get lucky again, but it usually gets lucky when it is frightened. And at this point it isn't frightened but angry, believing that if only its own solutions were employed, this problem and all others would go away. I am arguing that the conventional solutions offered by all sides do not yet grasp the magnitude of the problem -- that the foundation of American society is at risk -- and therefore all sides are content to repeat what has been said before.

People who are smarter and luckier than I am will have to craft the solution. I am simply pointing out the potential consequences of the problem and the inadequacy of all the ideas I have seen so far.

The Crisis of the Middle Class and American Power is republished with permission of Stratfor.

Scene from a trombone

David Finlayson of the New York Philharmonic, a trombone and a GoPro camera. What could be finer this Tuesday morning?
  

Nude dancers

Click any image to enlarge

Oh, admit it... even though you knew my title was one of my usual cheesy attempts to lure traffic you couldn't resist clicking the link anyway. At any rate, these pictures are from N.Y. based photographer Shinichi Maruyama. He assembled hundreds of individual photographs into the composite images showing the nude dancer in motion (via Ubersuper).

By the way, I end the series with Marcel Duchamp's Nude Descending a Staircase for comparision purposes. I think I like his version much more.

Next Door Neighbor Blues

Monday morning, sort of the start of the workweek blues by Gary Clark Jr.

  

  

Norman Rockwell's photos

Click any image to enlarge

In the past we've seen how pinup painters used photographs to compose their works. More traditional painters, like Norman Rockwell in these examples, employed the same technoque (source La boite verte).

Stratfor and Q'orianka Kilcher

In this Stratfor article Scott Stewart reminds us that Mexican drug cartels are driven by business rather than political motives, with control of the lucrative drug smuggling route from Central and South America being their core business.

He goes on to discuss cocaine smuggling. Cocaine originates in the triangle of Columbia, Peru and Bolivia and with the U.S. aggressively closing down its traditional smuggling route through the Caribbean, it has become more important to the Mexican cartels, which can squeeze more profit from it as they now control the most lucrative route of Cocaine into the U.S.

For the article's Hot Stratfor babe, since Peru was mentioned I decided to go with a Peruvian actress and, after processing my vast and encyclopedic knowledge of Peruvian actresses, the natural choice for the honor was Q'orianka Kilcher.

Well, OK, OK... Ms Kilcher, who is best known for playing Pochahontas in the film The New World, is only partly of Peruvian descent, was actually born in Germany and raised there and in the U.S., and has had her career in Hollywood rather than Lima, but let us not quibble over minor details.

 Q'orianka is also known for, along with her activist Mother, chaining herself to the White House fence in a protest.


Mexico's Cartels and the Economics of Cocaine
By Scott Stewart, Vice President of Analysis, January 3, 2013

At Stratfor, we follow Mexico's criminal cartels closely. In fact, we are currently finishing our 2013 cartel forecast, which will be released later this month. As we analyze the Mexican cartels, we recognize that to understand their actions and the interactions between them, we need to acknowledge that at their core they are businesses and not politically motivated militant organizations. This means that although violence between and within the cartels grabs much of the spotlight, a careful analysis of the cartels must look beyond the violence to the business factors that drive their interests -- and their bankrolls.

There are several distinct business factors that have a profound impact on cartel behavior. One example is the growing and harvesting cycle of marijuana in the Sierra Madre Occidental. Another is the industrialization of methamphetamine production in Mexico and the increasing profit pool it has provided to the Mexican cartels in recent years. But when we are examining the transnational behavior of the Mexican cartels, the most important factor influencing that behavior is without a doubt the economics of the cocaine trade.

The Cocaine Profit Chain

Cocaine is derived from the leaves of the coca plant, and three countries -- Colombia, Peru and Bolivia -- account for all the coca harvested in the world. Turning coca into cocaine hydrochloride is a relatively simple three-step process. Once the leaves of the coca plant are harvested, they are rendered into what is known as coca paste. From there, the coca paste is processed into cocaine base, which eventually becomes cocaine hydrochloride. The process involves several precursor chemicals: kerosene, sulfuric acid, sodium carbonate, hydrochloric acid, potassium permanganate and acetone. Most of these chemicals are readily available and easily replaced or substituted, making them difficult for authorities to regulate.

According to figures from the U.N. Office on Drugs and Crime, coca farmers in Colombia receive $1.30 for each kilogram of fresh coca leaf. In Peru and Bolivia, where the leaf is air-dried before being sold, farmers receive $3.00 per kilogram.

For the fresh leaf used in processing in Colombia, it takes somewhere between 450 and 600 kilograms of coca leaf to produce 1 kilogram of cocaine base, depending on the variety of coca plant used (some varieties have a higher cocaine alkaloid content). At $1.30 per kilogram, this means that it costs somewhere between $585 and $780 to purchase the coca leaf required to produce one kilogram of cocaine base. One kilogram of cocaine base can then be converted into roughly one kilogram of cocaine hydrochloride, which is commonly referred to as cocaine.




As cocaine progresses from the production site to the end users, it increases in value. According to figures provided by the Colombian National Police, a kilogram of cocaine can be purchased for $2,200 in the jungles in Colombia's interior and for between $5,500 and $7,000 at Colombian ports. But the price increases considerably once it leaves the production areas and is transported closer to consumption markets. In Central America cocaine can be purchased for $10,000 per kilogram, and in southern Mexico that same kilogram sells for $12,000. Once it passes through Mexico, a kilogram of cocaine is worth $16,000 in the border towns of northern Mexico, and it will fetch between $24,000 and $27,000 wholesale on the street in the United States depending on the location. The prices are even higher in Europe, where they can run from $53,000 to $55,000 per kilogram, and prices exceed $200,000 in Australia. The retail prices per gram of cocaine are also relatively high, with a gram costing approximately $100-$150 in the United States, $130-$185 in Europe and $250-$500 in Australia.

Along the supply chain there is also quite a bit of "cutting," which is when substances are added to the cocaine to dilute its purity and stretch profit. According to the Colombian National Police, the purity of cocaine leaving the country is about 85 percent. By the time it reaches the United Kingdom, purity is 60 percent, and it drops further to about 30 percent at the retail level, according to the U.N. World Drug Report 2012.

Cartel Behavior

There has been a thriving two-way flow of contraband goods across the U.S.-Mexico border since its inception. Mexican organized crime groups have been involved in the smuggling of marijuana to the U.S. market since the U.S. government began to restrict marijuana in the early 1900s, and Mexican organized criminals profited handsomely during the Prohibition era in the United States. As U.S. demand for illicit drugs increased in the second half of the 20th century, Mexican organizations branched out to become involved in smuggling other types of drugs, including pharmaceuticals and black tar heroin; poppy cultivation was also introduced to Mexico in the 1930s.

These Mexican organized crime syndicates, such as the Guadalajara cartel, also began to traffic cocaine into the United States in the late 1970s, but for many years the Mexican organizations worked as junior partners for the powerful Colombian cartels in Medellin and Cali. Mexico was a secondary route for cocaine compared to the primary route through the Caribbean. As a result, the Colombians pocketed the lion's share of the profit made on cocaine trafficked through Mexico and the Mexicans received a fee on each kilogram they transported. (However, they did not assume any of the risk of losing shipments between South America and Mexico.)

In the late 1970s and the 1980s -- the early phase of Mexican involvement in the cocaine trade -- Central American middlemen such as Juan Matta-Ballesteros were also heavily involved in the flow of cocaine through Mexico. They moved cocaine from South America to Mexico, becoming wealthy and powerful as a result of the profits they made.

As U.S. interdiction efforts, aided by improvements in aerial and maritime surveillance, curtailed much of the Caribbean cocaine flow in the 1980s and 1990s, and as the Colombian and U.S. governments dismantled the Colombian cartels, the land routes through Central America and Mexico became more important to the flow of cocaine. It is far more difficult to spot and seize contraband moving across the busy U.S.-Mexico border than it is to spot contraband flowing across the Caribbean.

This increase in the importance of Mexico allowed the Mexican cartels to gain leverage in negotiations with their Central American and Colombian partners and to secure a larger share of the profit. Indeed, by the mid-1990s the increasing importance of Mexican organizations to the flow of cocaine to the United States allowed the Mexican cartels to become the senior partners in the business relationship.

In a quest for an even larger portion of the cocaine profit chain, the Mexican cartels have increased their activities in Central and South America over the last two decades. The Mexicans have cut out many of the middlemen in Central America who used to transport cocaine from South America to Mexico and sell it to the Mexican cartels. Their efforts to consolidate their control over Central American smuggling routes continue today.

This move meant that the Mexican cartels assumed responsibility for the losses incurred by transporting cocaine from South America to Mexico, but it also permitted them to reap an increasing portion of the profit pool. Instead of making a set profit of perhaps $1,000 or $1,500 per kilogram of cocaine smuggled into the United States, the Mexican cartels can now buy a kilogram of cocaine for $2,200 or less in South America and sell it for $24,000 or more to their partners in the United States.

But the expansion of the Mexican cartels did not stop in Central America. According to South American authorities, the Mexican cartels are now becoming more involved in the processing of cocaine from coca leaf in Colombia, Peru and Bolivia. There have also been reports of seizures of coca paste being smuggled to cocaine processing laboratories in Honduras and Guatemala. The use of these Central American processing laboratories, which are run by Mexican cartels, appears to be a reaction to the increased efforts of the Colombian National Police to crack down on cocaine laboratories and the availability of cocaine processing chemicals.

U.S. counternarcotics officials report that today the Mexican cartels are the largest players in the global cocaine trade and are steadily working to grab the portion of cocaine smuggling not yet under their control. But the efforts of the Mexican cartels to increase their share of the cocaine profit are not confined to the production side; they have also expanded their involvement in the smuggling of South American cocaine to Europe and Australia and have established a footprint in African, Asian and European countries. Furthermore, they have stepped up their activities in places like the Dominican Republic and Haiti in an attempt to increase their share of the cocaine being smuggled through the Caribbean to the U.S. market. As seen by recent operations launched by U.S. law enforcement, such as Operation Xcellerator, Operation Chokehold and Operation Imperial Emperor, the Mexican cartels have also been increasing their presence at distribution points inside the United States, such as Chicago, Atlanta and Dallas, in an effort to increase their share of the cocaine profit chain inside the United States.

While marijuana sales have always been an important financial source for the Mexican cartels, the large profits from the cocaine trade are what have permitted the cartels to become as powerful as they are today. The billions of dollars of profit to be had from the cocaine trade have not only motivated much of the Mexican cartels' global expansion but have also financed it. Cocaine profits allow the Mexican cartels to buy boats and planes, hire smugglers and assassins ("sicarios") and bribe government officials.

Cocaine is a product that has a very limited and specific growing area. Consequently, that distinct coca growing area and the transportation corridors stretching between the growing area and the end markets are critically important. With a business model of selling cocaine at over 10 times the cost of acquisition -- and even greater over the cost of production -- it is not surprising that the competition among the various Mexican cartels for the smuggling corridors through Mexico to the United States has become quite aggressive.

Mexico's Cartels and the Economics of Cocaine is republished with permission of Stratfor.

California Dreaming

Get ready for a weekend of wishing you were somewhere else
with Martin und Luka.

 

Answering a fire alarm in 1920s NY City

This is a video of the procedure NY City fire fighters used in the 1920s. About 2:20 in there are a lot of shots from a camera mounted on the fire truck as it navigates the chaotic traffic. At points they have to drive on sidewalks to make it through the busy streets. It is absolutely hair raising.

Found via Kottke.
  

We'll need a bigger pub for this lot

Above is a video of Michael van Gerwen throwing 17 perfect darts during a match. I'm not up on darts so I don't know, but the announcer seems to think that is a remarkable feat. What amazed me was the size and enthusiasm of the crowd, and it isn't a small venue.
 

Stratfor and Joan Blondell

In this Stratfor article, in the wake of the release of the unclassified version of the State Department's Accountability Review Board report on Benghazi, Scott Stewart returns to discuss the funding of security at diplomatic missions.

He reviews a history of prior security lapses, and the funding cycle that has chased them.

With all the talk of money, and for no real good reason, the Busby Berkley film The Goldiggers of 1933 sprang to mind and so Joan Blondell, one of its female leads, was selected to represent the article as its Hot Stratfor Babe.

Ms Blondell was born into a vaudeville family and, after winning a beauty contest, she signed a contract to Warner Brothers. She was very much a creature of the studio system, starring in dozens of movies before moving on to television.


The Benghazi Report and the Diplomatic Security Funding Cycle
By Scott Stewart, Vice President of Analysis, December 27, 2012

On Dec. 18, the U.S. State Department's Accountability Review Board released an unclassified version of its investigation into the Sept. 12 attack on the U.S. Consulate in Benghazi, Libya. U.S. Ambassador to Libya Christopher Stevens and three other Americans were killed in the attack, so the report was widely anticipated by the public and by government officials alike.

Four senior State Department officials have been reassigned to other duties since the report's release. Among them were the assistant secretary of state for diplomatic security; two of his deputy assistant secretaries, including the director of the Diplomatic Security Service, the department's most senior special agent; and the deputy assistant secretary responsible for Libya in the State Department's Bureau of Near Eastern Affairs.

The highly critical report and the subsequent personnel reassignments are not simply a low watermark for the State Department; rather, the events following the attack signify another phase in the diplomatic security funding cycle. The new phase will bring about a financial windfall for the State Department security budgets, but increased funding alone will not prevent future attacks from occurring. After all, plenty of attacks have occurred following similar State Department budgetary allocations in the past. Other important factors therefore must be addressed.

Predictable Inquiries

The cycle by which diplomatic security is funded begins as officials gradually cut spending on diplomatic security programs. Then, when major security failures inevitably beset those programs, resultant public outrage compels officials to create a panel to investigate those failures.

The first of these panels dates back to the mid-1980s, following attacks against U.S. facilities in Beirut and Kuwait and the systematic bugging of the U.S. Embassy in Moscow. These security lapses led to the formation of the Secretary of State's Advisory Panel on Overseas Security, chaired by former Deputy CIA Director Adm. Bobby Inman. The law that passed in the wake of the Inman Commission came to be known as the Omnibus Diplomatic Security and Antiterrorism Act of 1986, which requires that an accountability review board be convened following major security incidents.

There are a few subsequent examples of these panels. Former Chairman of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff Adm. William Crowe chaired an Accountability Review Board following the bombings of U.S. embassies in East Africa in 1998. And after the Benghazi attacks, an Accountability Review Board was chaired by former U.S. Ambassador Thomas Pickering. The Dec. 18 report was the findings of the Pickering board.

Predictably, the review boards, including Pickering's, always conclude that inadequate funding and insufficient security personnel are partly to blame for the security breaches. In response to the reports, Congress appropriates more money to diplomatic security programs to remedy the problem. Over time, funds are cut, and the cycle begins anew.

Funding can be cut for several reasons. In times of financial austerity, Congress can more easily cut the relatively small foreign affairs budget than it can entitlement benefits budgets. Cuts to the overall State Department budget generally result in cuts for security programs.

Moreover, rivalries among the various State Department entities can affect spending cuts. The Diplomatic Security Service's budget falls under the main State Department budget, so senior diplomats, rather than Diplomatic Security Service agents, represent the agency's interests on Capitol Hill. Some within the security service do not believe that senior diplomats have their best interests at heart when making the case for their budgets -- at least until a tragedy occurs and Congressional hearings are held to air these problems. For their part, others in the department resent the Diplomatic Security Service for the large budgetary allocations it receives after a security failure.

More than a Matter of Funding

With Congress and the presumed next Secretary of State John Kerry now calling for increased spending on diplomatic security, the financial floodgates are about to reopen. But merely throwing money at the problems uncovered by the accountability review boards will not be enough to solve those problems. Were that the case, the billions of dollars allocated to diplomatic security in the wake of the Inman and Crowe commission reports would have sufficed.

Of course, money can be useful, but injecting large sums of it into the system can create problems if the money provided is too much for the bureaucracy to efficiently metabolize. Government managers tend to spend all the money allocated to them -- sometimes at the expense of efficiency -- under a "use it or lose it" mentality. Since there is no real incentive for them to perform under budget, managers in a variety of U.S. government departments spend massive amounts of money at the end of each fiscal year. The same is true of diplomatic security programs when they are flush with cash. But the inevitable reports of financial waste and mismanagement lead to calls for spending cuts in these programs.

If the U.S. government is ever going to break the cycle of funding cuts and security disasters, the Diplomatic Security Service will need to demonstrate wisdom and prudence in how it spends the funds allocated to them. It will also be necessary for Congress to provide funding in a consistent manner and with an initial appropriation that is not too big to be spent efficiently.

Beyond money management and a consistent level of funding, the State Department will also need to take a hard look at how it currently conducts diplomacy and how it can reduce the demands placed on the Diplomatic Security Service. This will require asking many difficult questions: Is it necessary to maintain large embassies to conduct diplomacy in the information age? Does the United States need to maintain thousands of employees in high-threat places like Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan at the expense of smaller missions, or can the critical work be done by hundreds or even dozens? Is a permanent U.S. presence even required in a place like Benghazi, or can the missions in such locations be accomplished by a combination of visiting diplomats, covert operatives and local employees?

At the very least, the State Department will need to review its policy of designating a facility as a "special mission" -- Benghazi was designated as such -- to exempt it from meeting established physical security standards. If the questions above are answered affirmatively, and if it is deemed necessary to keep a permanent presence in a place like Benghazi, then security standards need to be followed, especially when a facility is in place for several months. Temporary facilities with substandard security cannot be allowed to persist for months and years.

Host Countries

As they consider these issues, officials need to bear in mind that the real key to the security of diplomatic facilities is the protection provided by the host country's security forces as dictated by the Vienna Convention. If the host country will not or cannot protect foreign diplomats, then the physical security measures mandated by security standards can do little more than provide slight delay -- which is what they are designed to do. No physical security measures can stand up to a prolonged assault. If a militant group armed with heavy weaponry is permitted to attack a diplomatic facility for hours with no host government response -- as was the case in Benghazi -- the attack will cause considerable damage and likely cause fatalities despite the security measures in place.

The same is true of a large mob, which given enough time can damage and breach U.S. embassies that meet current department security standards. The U.S. Embassy in Tripoli, a state-of-the-art facility completed in 2009, was heavily damaged by a mob of pro-Gadhafi supporters in May 2011 and rendered unserviceable.

In another example, a large crowd caused extensive damage to the U.S. Embassy in Tunis and the adjacent American School just three days after the Benghazi attack. In that incident, Tunisian authorities responded and did not provide the attacking mob the opportunity to conduct a prolonged assault on the embassy. Though the mob caused millions of dollars worth of damage to the compound, it was unable to breach the main embassy office building. Without host country security support, there is little that can be done to assure the safety of U.S. diplomats, no matter what happens to security budgets.

The Benghazi Report and the Diplomatic Security Funding Cycle is republished with permission of Stratfor.

Hero vs ninjas and fat men

With the holidays it isn't exactly hump day, but that's no reason not to have a fight to get you over the hump. In this one our hero has to rescue a friend who is being held by the Japanese for some sort of nefarious experimentation.

The world's most effective hangover cure

Should you, after a night of New Year's Eve revelry, have woken up with a splitting headache, your pants on backwards and a gap of several hours in your memory, then you'll need a quality hangover cure.

Lucky for you I have just the thing straight from the doctors of Mongolia: all you need is some pickled sheep's eyes -- and who doesn't keep a stoclkof those handy? -- and tomato sauce. Mix it together and guzzle it down. You'll be feeling chipper in no time.

Have a good New Year.