zenpundit.com

HARD TO IMAGINE THAT THERE IS ANYTHING LEFT TO CRACK DOWN ON

North Korea’s lunatic regime, which makes Iran look like a hedonistic disneyland in comparison, is engaged in a ” harsh crackdown” as cross-border connectivity with China is causing the mores within the hardline state to disintegrate, causing a rise in crime and even political dissent. Comparisons of Pyongyang with Bucharest in 1989 when Gorbachev withdrew Soviet support for Ceaucescu’s Stalinist regime are being drawn.

Kim Jong-Il still has his academic apologists in the West and has been reaching out to other, thuggish, anti-American regimes like Syria for support. South Korea’s left-wing ruling party is desperate to prop up the DPRK any way they can, fearing an implosion and costly reunification. Fingers in the dike. What really matters here though is the attitude of China.

East Germany collapsed because its neighbors no longer would help keep Germans locked behind Honecker’s bloody wall. Ceaucescu and his harpy wife met their end before a gleeful firing squad because Moscow renounced the Brezhnev Doctrine. If China’s leaders support Kim’s regime he will continue to muddle through as the Earth’s worst ruler. If Beijing should continue look with indulgence upon goods, information and even political dissent flowing across North Korea’s borders Kim Jong-Il will fall. If not at the hands of his people then by the machinations of his closest collaborators eager to save their own necks.

The question is – does Kim know it ?

SOME ( crypto)LOGICAL OUTCOMES FOR QUANTUM ENCRYPTION

Scientific American, recently had a fine article on the parameters of the quantum encryption field which is producing ” unbreakable” codes via the principles of Quantum mechanics. For those without a SciAm subscription, who want an explanation of QE, go here.

The big picture good news is that the assurance of security for financial and informational transactions provided by QE will make the establishment and spread of ” Connectivity” in the Gap relatively cheaper by leapfrogging over the problem of decayed or absent infrastructure that plagues most of these countries. “Connecting up ” to Core standards for the fledgling Gap entrepreneur will eventually ( though not today) require only a laptop, a wireless connection and some software but not the building of hundreds of billions of dollars worth of old fashioned telephone systems that many corrupt and dysfunctional regimes seem incapable of providing or maintaining.

The bad news of course, is that all the wrong people will also want to use ” unbreakable” encryption – transnational crime syndicates, rebel groups, narco-traffickers, rogue states and Islamist terrorists. That being the case I can only imagine that the world’s premier intelligence agencies have either tried to establish covert relationships with QE companies like id Quantiqe or MagiQ or to infiltrate them outright in order to have access to the proprietary key technology ( commentary on QE is notably absent from the NSA website).

Since this technology is not ” containable” the only acceptable strategy is to allow relatively cheap but not quite state of the art versions to be commercially available, thus yielding the longitudinal economic benefits but keeping the NSA type SIGINT agencies ahead of the bad guys and discouraging others from pursuing expensive R&D of QE on their own.

NOT BLOGGERIFIC

Having a terrible time with Blogger today…this is more or less a test before I invest precious time writing. If I lose another post I might throw the computer out the goddamned window.

IS EXPORTING SECURITY THE KEYSTONE FOR REBUILDING FAILED STATES?

The Economist has an article on failing and failed states that all but screams ” System Administration Now !”. The article is worth your time to read.

One point that I thought was particularly insightful:

“Lawlessness, it is often argued, creates space for terrorists to operate. This is sometimes true: there are almost certainly al-Qaeda operatives lurking in Somalia and the wilder parts of Pakistan. But the most-cited example, Afghanistan, does not really support this argument. Osama bin Laden used Afghanistan as a base not because it was a failed state, but because its government invited him to.”

Somalia may offer al Qaida operatives freedom from state interference but its total lack of functioning rule-sets make the region a tough place to set up shop on a large scale. Taliban-ruled Afghanistan provided enough order to grow Bin Laden’s network of training camps, safe houses, command and control centers and fortified redoubts – all of which require the uninterrupted flow of food, water, supplies, recruits and information. Somalia can provide none of these things with certainty or regularity.

There is state-sponsored terror like the relationship between Hezbollah and Syria and Iran. There is socially sponsored terror by elements of the Saudi and Pakistani elite in defiance or in tolerance of their respective states. There is also the parasitical relationship enjoyed by al Qaida which grafted onto the larger, ruder, Taliban mass and eventually came to dominate the host movement so thoroughly that Mullah Omar led his group to destruction on Bin Laden’s behalf.

We should be looking for al Qaida’s next likely host.

BUSH II TAKES A FEW SHOTS AT THE BUSH I ” STABILITARIAN-REALIST” CROWD EVEN AS HE PRAISES EUROPE

Marc Shulman of The American Future has posted President Bush’s address at National Defense University in its entirety. I encourage you to go read it for yourself. It was an important foreign policy speech given at a venue Bush has previously used to indicate significant changes in American policy. This speech was crafted to allow President Bush to send a variety of signals, including one sharp elbow to his father’s closest associates:

“The advance of hope in the Middle East also requires new thinking in the capitals of great democracies, including Washington, D.C.

By now it should be clear that decades of excusing and accommodating tyranny in the pursuit of stability have only led to injustice and instability and tragedy.

It should be clear that the advance of democracy leads to peace because governments that respect the rights of their people also respect the rights of their neighbors.

It should be clear that the best antidote to radicalism and terror is the tolerance and hope kindled in free societies.

And our duty is now clear: For the sake of our long-term security, all free nations must stand with the forces of democracy and justice that have begun to transform the Middle East. “

[ Emphasis mine]

A more complete repudiation of the GOP-Realist school of foreign policy by a Republican White House would be hard to imagine, short of burning Henry Kissinger in effigy in the Rose Garden.

Bush and his top aides have grown increasingly exasperated with the public criticism emanating from Brent Scowcroft and Lawrence Eagleburger, formerly National Security Adviser and Secretary of State in the administration of Bush I. General Scowcroft in particular, must have struck a nerve with his comments prior to the Iraqi elections. George W. Bush is not the type to forgive such things which is why Scowcroft is out as Chairman of the PFIAB and out of the loop these days.

Scowcroft’s bias for not breaking the china was well-suited to the slow-motion collapse of the USSR where he and Bush senior and James Baker helped prevent a momentous event from becoming a catastrophe of unimaginable proportions. On the Middle-East, Iraq and democracy, however, the Realist’s prescriptions for living with the status quo have been flatly wrong – though the incompetence of the Bremer CPA/Occupation did go a long way to justifying their predictions of disaster. The Bush administration was very, very, fortunate, after having wasted a year with self-inflicted wounds, to make a fragile but promising recovery to the point of retaking the initiative. Statesmen seldom get second chances and George W. Bush did.

The key to that reversal of fortune was following through on their democratic message with deeds. Having learned that lesson, Bush would seem to be moving to institutionalize it to balance out the Bush Doctrine of preemption with a revived Wilsonianism in the expectation that Hope will play out better than Fear.