Tag Archives: nuclear weapons

giants of Cold War era nuclear strategy

This New York Times Book Review article goes through some of the key architects of Cold War era nuclear strategy.

The theories of Cold War defense intellectuals now seem the stuff of a surreal madness that seized Washington during the last half of the 20th century. The core doctrine of nuclear deterrence was Mutual Assured Destruction, aptly known as MAD. It postulated that the best way to prevent a nuclear war with the Kremlin was to build an enormous atomic arsenal that would annihilate the Soviet Union if it dared attack the United States. Effective, yes, but a White House or Kremlin miscalculation would have left millions dead, nations destroyed and the planet reeling.

Albert Wohlstetter, an analyst at the RAND Corporation, was one of the most formidable of the nuclear policy savants. A combative champion of defense spending, he argued that the balance of terror inherent in MAD was unstable. Instead of assuming the MAD standoff would assure a durable cold peace, he feared a Pearl Harbor-like Soviet attack outside the imagined scenarios of defense planners, and he pressed for a nuclear war-winning policy. His ideas coursed through American defense strategy for decades, swaying presidents, attracting acolytes, infuriating opponents and igniting furious debates that ricochet through official circles to this day…

Robin, president of the University of Haifa in Israel, recalls many of the thinkers and baroque theories of the nuclear age. Some attracted national attention at midcentury, including Henry Kissinger, whose 1957 book, “Nuclear Weapons and Foreign Policy,” became an unexpected best seller, and Herman Kahn, whose chilling ruminations on winning and surviving a nuclear conflict made him an oracle of the unthinkable. Bernard Brodie, the intellectual father of nuclear deterrence theory, played a pivotal role in shaping Cold War nuclear policy.

August 2016 in Review

3 most frightening stories

3 most hopeful stories

3 most interesting stories

  • Bokashi is a system that essentially pickles your compost.
  • There is an unlikely but plausible scenario where Gary Johnson, the Libertarian candidate, could become President of the United States this fall. Speaking of implausible scenarios, I learned that RIchard Nixon made a serious attempt to pass a basic income bill in 1969.
  • Here is a short video explaining the Fermi Paradox, which asks why there are no aliens. Meanwhile Russian astronomers are saying there might be aliens.

Syria as a proxy war

Jeffrey Sachs says the war in Syria has morphed into a proxy war between the U.S., Saudi Arabia and allies on one side, and Iran and Russia (and the Syrian government) on the other side. He also says the U.S. role is much larger than the public has been led to believe, and the media is not doing its job of asking questions.

the curtain gets lifted from time to time. In January, the New York Times finally reportedon a secret 2013 Presidential order to the CIA to arm Syrian rebels. As the account explained, Saudi Arabia provides substantial financing of the armaments, while the CIA, under Obama’s orders, provides organizational support and training…

Through occasional leaks, investigative reports, statements by other governments, and rare statements by US officials, we know that America is engaged in an active, ongoing, CIA-coordinated war both to overthrow Assad and to fight ISIS. America’s allies in the anti-Assad effort include Saudi Arabia, Turkey, Qatar, and other countries in the region. The US has spent billions of dollars on arms, training, special operations forces, air strikes, and logistical support for the rebel forces, including international mercenaries. American allies have spent billions of dollars more. The precise sums are not reported…

The stakes of this war are much higher and much more dangerous than America’s proxy warriors imagine. As the US has prosecuted its war against Assad, Russia has stepped up its military support to his government. In the US mainstream media, Russia’s behavior is an affront: how dare the Kremlin block the US from overthrowing the Syrian government? The result is a widening diplomatic clash with Russia, one that could escalate and lead – perhaps inadvertently – to the point of military conflict.

Obviously, the U.S. and Russia are massive nuclear powers. Iran may have nuclear weapons, and rumor has it Saudi Arabia has a nuclear arsenal ready to go in Pakistan. So in addition to the human tragedy unfolding, the risk of World War 3 appears to be a real one here.

the party platforms on nuclear weapons

Yesterday I suggested a realistic path to elimination of U.S. nuclear weapons – phasing out of everything but submarine-launched weapons as they become obsolete, renewed participation in global nonproliferation efforts, negotiations with other nuclear powers to give up their weapons in exchange for elimination of the submarine weapons, then finally robust inspections and verification. Let’s see what the U.S. political party platforms have to say.

The Republican Platform:

We must modernize nuclear weapons and their delivery platforms, end the policy of Mutually Assured Destruction, and rebuild relationships with our allies, who understand that as long as the U.S. nuclear arsenal is their shield, they do not need to engage in nuclear proliferation.

The Democratic Platform:

Democrats are committed to preventing the spread of nuclear, chemical, and biological weapons and to eventually ridding the planet of these catastrophic weapons. We believe America will be safer in a world with fewer weapons of mass destruction. Donald Trump encourages the spread of nuclear weapons across Asia and the Middle East, which would weaken the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT), and he is unwilling to rule out using a nuclear weapon against ISIS.

Democrats want to reduce the number of nuclear, chemical, and biological weapons around the world, as well as their means of delivery, while retaining a strong deterrent as long as others maintain nuclear strike capabilities. We will strengthen the NPT, push for the ratification of the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty, and stop the spread of loose nuclear material. Democrats will be informed by a new Nuclear Posture Review in determining continued ways to appropriately shape our nuclear deterrent, with the aim of reducing our reliance on nuclear weapons while meeting our national security obligations. Democrats will also seek new opportunities for further arms control and avoid taking steps that create incentives for the expansion of existing nuclear weapons programs. To this end, we will work to reduce excessive spending on nuclear weapons-related programs that are projected to cost $1 trillion over the next 30 years.

The Green Platform:

Our government should establish a policy to abolish nuclear weapons. It should set the conditions and schedule for fulfilling that goal by taking the following steps:

  • Declare a no-first-strike policy.
  • Declare a no-pre-emptive strike policy.
  • Declare that the U.S. will never threaten or use a nuclear weapon, regardless of size, on a non-nuclear nation.
  • Sign the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (CTBT). Our pledge to end testing will open the way for non-nuclear states to sign the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), which has been held up by our refusal to sign the CTBT. Honor the conditions set in the NPT for nuclear nations.
  • Reverse our withdrawal from the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty and honor its stipulations.
  • End the research, testing and stockpiling of all nuclear weapons of any size.
  • Dismantle all nuclear warheads from their missiles.

The Libertarian Platform

No individual, group, or government may initiate force against any other individual, group, or government.

The protection of individual rights is the only proper purpose of government. Government is constitutionally limited so as to prevent the infringement of individual rights by the government itself. The principle of non-initiation of force should guide the relationships between governments.

We support the maintenance of a sufficient military to defend the United States against aggression. The United States should both avoid entangling alliances and abandon its attempts to act as policeman for the world.

I suppose I like the Green statement best, but I am enough of a realist to suggest we establish moral authority by eliminating most of our weapons, but could keep a small number of submarine-based weapons in place and use them as a bargaining chip to get concessions from others. I am also enough of a realist that unless and until we have some sort of runoff or ranking-based voting, I’ll vote for the best candidate with a reasonable chance of winning. That pretty much leaves me supporting the Democrats’ somewhat tepid but basically on-target message. Getting defense-industry money out of politics would make it more likely that a Democratic leader could actually make real progress toward implementing their rhetoric.

Bill Perry on today’s nuclear threat

Bill Perry, who was secretary of defense under Bill Clinton, has released a new book called My Journey at the Nuclear Brink – here’s an article at New York Review of Books. He was present at the front lines through a number of historic events, from Hiroshima to the Cuban missile crisis to development of submarine-launched missiles to efforts to secure weapons following the Soviet collapse. I’ll pick a short excerpt below but this whole article is really worth a read.

…Perry concluded that there could be no acceptable defense against a mass nuclear attack, an opinion from which he has never deviated. Many political leaders, including several presidents, have disagreed with Perry and have sponsored various types of anti-missile defense systems, the latest being the ballistic missile defense system now being installed in Eastern Europe.

Then as now, Perry writes, he believed that America would possess all the deterrence it needs with just one leg of the so-called triad: the Trident submarine. It is very difficult for armies to track and destroy it, and it contains more than enough firepower to act as a deterrent. The bombers provide only an insurance policy for the unlikely contingency of a temporary problem with the Trident force, and also have a dual role in strengthening our conventional forces. Our ICBM force is in his mind redundant. Indeed the danger of starting an accidental nuclear war as a result of a false alarm outweighs its deterrent value.

…nuclear weapons can’t actually be used—the risk of uncontrollable and catastrophic escalation is too high. They are only good for threatening the enemy with nuclear retaliation. Our submarine force, equipped with nuclear weapons, is virtually invulnerable and can perform that deterrent function well. (It should be noted that the doctrine of deterrence is severely criticized by those who worry about the implications of threatening mass slaughter.)

He talks about how there was a brief period of good will and cooperation between the U.S. and Russia after the dissolution of the Soviet empire, when the former adversaries cooperated on weapons reductions, securing of loose weapons, and the conflict in the Balkans. That all ended when the U.S. insisted on expanding NATO “right up to the Russian border”, which Perry considers a huge mistake. He also talks about the catastrophic fallout from an India-Pakistan nuclear exchange, and the risk of nuclear terrorism in a U.S. city like Washington D.C.

This article suggests a couple clear policies. One is that the U.S. could unilaterally eliminate all its nuclear weapons right away except for the submarine force. This would actually reduce risk for our country and the entire world. If our leaders don’t have the courage to do this tomorrow, they could at least cancel “modernization” plans for all but the submarine force, and phase weapons out as they become obsolete. This would give us the moral high ground when we insist somewhat hypocritically on nuclear nonproliferation for everyone else. The final step would be to negotiate with other nuclear powers to eliminate their weapons in exchange for elimination of the U.S. submarine weapons, with a robust worldwide inspection and verification program.

This would save tens of billions of dollars every year, some of which could be invested in homeland security and intelligence to counter the terrorist threat, and some of which could be invested in infrastructure or education or tax cuts. I see no logical argument against any of this.

May 2016 in Review

3 most frightening stories

  • There are scary and seemingly reckless confrontations going on between U.S. and Russian planes and ships in the Indian Ocean. And yet, it is bizarrely humorous when real life imitates Top Gun.
  • The situation in Venezuela may be a preview of what the collapse of a modern country looks like.
  • Obama went to Hiroshima, where he said we can “chart a course that leads to the destruction” of nuclear weapons, only not in his lifetime. Obama out.

3 most hopeful stories

3 most interesting stories

  • I try not to let this blog get too political, really I do. But in an election season I just can’t help myself. This is a blog about the future of civilization, and the behavior of U.S. political, bureaucratic, and military elites obviously has some bearing on that. In May I mused on whether the U.S. could possibly be suffering from “too much democracy“, Dick Cheney, equality and equal opportunity, and what’s wrong with Pennsylvania. And yes, I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, TRUMP IS A FASCIST!
  • The world has about a billion dogs.
  • It turns out coffee grounds may not make good compost.

What is the U.S. up to in Japan?

Well, Marines and sailors on Okinawa are raping and killing women, as usual. And President Obama is visiting Hiroshima and sort of mentioning but not really apologizing for dropping nuclear weapons on it.

I think it’s nice that Obama visited Hiroshima. I thought it would have been a nice place to announce a major nuclear stockpile reduction effort early in his second term. Here’s what he had to say about that:

among those nations like my own that hold nuclear stockpiles, we must have the courage to escape the logic of fear and pursue a world without them.

We may not realize this goal in my lifetime, but persistent effort can roll back the possibility of catastrophe. We can chart a course that leads to the destruction of these stockpiles. We can stop the spread to new nations and secure deadly materials from fanatics.

That’s a bit disappointing to me. We could drastically scale them back, creating good will around the world and giving us some moral high ground to work with other countries to scale them back. We could tackle the emerging and possibly far scarier biological weapons threat. We could scale back our footprints in Japan and Korea and leave those rich, modern, democratic nations to provide for their own defense while staying engaged with them through trade and diplomacy.

I am an Obama fan though. He is someone who chose to do as much good as he could within the constraints of the system. It is possible that if he had pushed the system harder he might have gotten more done, but it is also possible it would have been counterproductive. We will never know. I like his last minute attempts to begin the process of putting some thorny historical issues to bed with Cuba, Iran, Japan, and Vietnam. In Vietnam in particular I am struck by how little ill will the public seems to bear us, when they might have the most reason to of all those countries. These efforts build some good will internationally and provide a better starting point for future leaders to build on than the same old stale Cold War positions we’ve had for the last 50 years.

2015 Year in Review

I’m going to try picking the most frightening, most hopeful, and most interesting post from each month. If the most interesting is also the most frightening or most hopeful, I’ll pick the next most interesting. Then I’ll have 12 nominees in each category and I’ll try to pick the most frightening, hopeful, and interesting posts of the year.

JANUARY

Most frightening: Johan Rockstrom and company have updated their 2009 planetary boundaries work. The news is not getting any better. 4 of the 9 boundaries are not in the “safe operating space”: climate change, loss of biosphere integrity, land-system change, altered biogeochemical cycles (phosphorus and nitrogen).

Most hopeful: It is starting to seem politically possible for the U.S. to strengthen regulation of risk-taking by huge financial firms.

Most interesting: Taxi medallions have been called the “best investment in America”, but now ride-sharing services may destroy them.

FEBRUARY

Most frightening: There are some depressing new books out there about all the bad things that could happen to the world, from nuclear terrorism to pandemics. Also a “financial black hole”, a “major breakdown of the Internet”, “the underpopulation bomb”, the “death of death”, and more!

Most hopeful: A new study suggests a sudden, catastrophic climate tipping point may not be too likely.

Most interesting: Government fragmentation explains at least part of suburban sprawl and urban decline in U.S. states, with Pennsylvania among the worst.

MARCH

Most frightening: The drought in California and the U.S. Southwest is the worst ever, including one that wiped out an earlier civilization in the same spot. At least it is being taken seriously and some policies are being put in place. Meanwhile Sao Paulo, Brazil is emerging as a cautionary tale of what happens when the political and professional leadership in a major urban area fail to take drought seriously. Some people are predicting that water shortages could spark serious social unrest in developing countries.

Most hopeful: If we want to design ecosystems or just do some wildlife-friendly gardening, there is plenty of information on plants, butterflies, and pollinators out there. There is also an emerging literature on spatial habitat fragmentation and how it can be purposely designed and controlled for maximum benefit.

Most interesting (I just couldn’t choose between these):

  • Innovation in synthetic drugs is quickly outpacing the ability of regulatory agencies to adapt. (I struggled whether to put this in the negative or positive column. Drugs certainly cause suffering and social problems. But that is true of legal tobacco and alcohol, and prescription drugs, as well as illegal drugs. The policy frameworks countries have used to deal with illegal drugs in the past half century or so, most conspicuously the U.S. “war” on drugs, have led to more harm than good, and it is a good thing that governments are starting to acknowledge this and consider new policies for the changing times.)
  • “Germ-line engineering is much further along than anyone imagined.” This means basically editing the DNA of egg and sperm cells at will. I put this in the positive column because it can mean huge health advances. Obviously there are risks and ethical concerns too.

APRIL

Most frightening: A group of well-known economists is concerned that the entire world has entered a period of persistently low economic growth, or “secular stagnation“.

Most hopeful: Donald Shoup, author of The High Cost of Free Parking, is retiring. That might sound bad, but his ground-breaking ideas are continuing on and actually seem to be going mainstream.

Most interesting:

  • Biotechnology may soon bring us the tools to seriously monkey with photosynthesis. (This is one of those stories where I struggle between the positive and negative columns, but clearly there is a potential upside when we will have so many mouths to feed.)
  • Peter Thiel thinks we can live forever. (positive, but do see my earlier comment about mouths to feed…)

MAY

Most frightening: We’ve hit 400 ppm carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, not just some places sometimes but pretty much everywhere, all the time.

Most hopeful: The rhetoric on renewable energy is really changing as it starts to seriously challenge fossil fuels on economic grounds. Following the Fukushima disaster, when all Japan’s nuclear reactors were shut down, the gap was made up largely with liquid natural gas and with almost no disruption of consumer service. But renewables also grew explosively. Some are suggesting Saudi Arabia is supporting lower oil prices in part to stay competitive with renewables. Wind and solar capacity are growing quickly in many parts of the world.Lester Brown says the tide has turned and renewables are now unstoppable.

Most interesting: Human chemical use to combat diseases, bugs, and weeds is causing the diseases, bugs and weeds to evolve fast.

JUNE

Most frightening: One estimate says that climate change may reduce global economic growth by 3% in 2050 and 7-8% by 2100. Climate change may also double the frequency of El Nino. The DICE model is available to look at climate-economy linkages. Dennis Meadows and Jorgen Randers describe what a coming long, slow decline might look like. Rising temperatures in the Arctic are drying things out, leading to more fires, which burns more carbon, which raises temperatures, in an accelerating feedback loop.

Most hopeful: Stock values of U.S. coal companies have collapsed.

Most interesting: According to Paul Romer, academic economics has lost its way and is bogged down in “mathiness”.

JULY

Most frightening: James Hansen is warning of much faster and greater sea level rise than current mainstream expectations.

Most hopeful: Edible Forest Gardens is a great two book set that lays out an agenda for productive and low-input ecological garden design in eastern North America. You can turn your lawn into a food forest today.

Most interesting:

AUGUST

Most frightening: Steven Hawking is worried about an artificial intelligence arms race starting “within years, not decades”.

Most hopeful: It may be possible to capture atmospheric carbon and turn it into high-strength, valuable carbon fiber. This sounds like a potential game-changer to me, because if carbon fiber were cheap it could be substituted for a lot of heavy, toxic and energy-intensive materials we use now, and open up possibilities for entirely new types of structures and vehicles.

Most interesting:

  • “gene drive” technology helps make sure that genetically engineered traits are passed along to offspring.
  • Technology marches on – quantum computing is in early emergence, the “internet of things” is arriving at the “peak of inflated expectations”, big data is crashing into the “trough of disillusionment”, virtual reality is beginning its assent to the “plateau of productivity”, and speech recognition is arriving on the plateau. And super-intelligent rodents may be on the way.
  • Robotics may be on the verge of a Cambrian explosion, which will almost certainly be bad for some types of jobs, but will also bring us things like cars that avoid pedestrians and computer chips powered by sweat. I for one am excited to be alive at this moment in history.

SEPTEMBER

Most frightening: Climate may be playing a role in the current refugee crisis, and the future may hold much more of this.

Most hopeful: The right mix of variety and repetition might be the key to learning.

Most interesting: Edward Tufte does not like Infographics.

OCTOBER

Most frightening: Corrupt Russian officials appear to be selling nuclear materials in Moldova.

Most hopeful: Elephants seem to have very low rates of cancer. Maybe we could learn their secrets.

Most interesting: Stephen Hawking is worried about inequality and technological unemployment.

NOVEMBER

Most frightening: I noticed that Robert Costanza in 2014 issued an update to his seminal 1997 paper on ecosystem services. He now estimates their value at $125 trillion per year, compared to a world economy of $77 trillion per year. Each year we are using up about $4-20 trillion in value more than the Earth is able to replenish. The correct conclusion here is that we can’t live without ecosystem services any time soon with our current level of knowledge and wealth, and yet we are depleting the natural capital that produces them. We were all lucky enough to inherit an enormous trust fund of natural capital at birth, and we are spending it down like the spoiled trust fund babies we are. We are living it up, and we measure our wealth based on that lifestyle, but we don’t have a bank statement so we don’t actually know when that nest egg is going to run out.

Most hopeful: There are plenty of ways to store intermittent solar and wind power so they can provide a constant, reliable electricity source.

Most interesting: Asimov’s yeast vats are finally here. This is good because it allows us to produce food without photosynthesis, but bad because it allows us to produce food without photosynthesis.

DECEMBER

Most frightening: Cyberattacks or superflares could destroy the U.S. electric grid.

Most hopeful: We had the Paris agreement. It is possible to be cynical about this agreement but it is the best agreement we have had so far.

Most interesting: I mused about whether it is really possible the U.S. could go down a fascist path. I reviewed Robert Paxton’s five stages of fascism. I am a little worried, but some knowledgeable people say not to worry. After reading Alice Goffman’s book On the Runthough, one could conclude that a certain segment of our population is living in a fascist police state right now. There is some fairly strong evidence that financial crises have tended to favor the rise of the right wing in Europe.

DISCUSSION

Well, one thing that certainly jumps out on the technology front is biotechnology. We have a couple articles about the possibility of drastic increases in the human lifespan, and what that would mean. “Germ-line engineering”, “gene drive”, and “CRISPR” are all ways of monkeying with DNA directly, even in ways that get passed along to offspring. To produce more food, we may be able to monkey with the fundamentals of photosynthesis, and if that doesn’t work we can use genetically engineered yeast to bypass photosythesis entirely.

At the risk of copyright infringement, I am reproducing the “Gartner hype cycle” below, which was mentioned in one of the posts from August.

Gartner Hype Cycle

Gartner Hype Cycle

Government and corporate labs have been making huge advances in biotechnology in the last decade or so, so it is well beyond the “innovation trigger”. It has not yet reached the “peak of inflated expectations” where it would explode onto the commercial and media scene with a lot of fanfare. I expect that will happen. We will probably see a biotech boom, a biotech bubble, and a biotech bust similar to what we saw with the computers and the internet. And then it will quietly pervade every aspect of our daily lives similar to computers and the internet, and our children will shrug and assume it has always been that way.

Obviously there are dangers. A generation of people that refuse to die on time would be one. Bioterrorism is obviously one. Then there is the more subtle matter that as we raise the limit on the size our population and consumption level can attain, the footprint of our civilization will just grow to meet the new limit. When and how we come up against these limits, and what to do about it, is the subject of the updates to two seminal papers on these issues, by Rockstrom and Costanza. We have entered an “unsafe operating space” (Rockstrom), where we are depleting much more natural capital each year than the planet can replenish (Costanza), and there will be consequences. The Paris agreement is one hopeful sign that our civilization might be able to deal with these problems, but even if we deal with the carbon emission problem, it might be too late to prevent the worst consequences, and there are going to be “layers of limits” as the authors of Limits to Growth put it all those decades ago. If we take care of the global warming problem and figure out a way to grow food for 50 billion people, eventually we will grow to 50 billion people and have to think of something else.

So without further ado:

Most frightening: I can’t pick just one. In the relatively near term, it’s the stalling out of the world economy; the convergence of climate change, drought, and the challenge of feeding so many people; and the ongoing risks from nuclear and biological weapons.

Most hopeful: I see some hope on energy and land use issues. The Paris agreement, combined with renewable energy and energy storage breakthroughs, the potential for much more efficient use of space in cities rather than letting cars take up most of the space, are all hopeful. The possibility of making carbon fiber out of carbon emissions is a particularly intriguing one. At my personal scale, I am excited to do some sustainable gardening of native species that can feed both people and wildlife. I don’t expect my tiny garden to make a major difference in the world, but if we all had sustainable gardens, they were all connected, and we weren’t wasting so much space on roads and parking, it could start adding up to a much more sustainable land use pattern.

Most interesting: I’ve already mentioned a lot of stuff, so I will just pick something I haven’t already mentioned in the discussion above: the rise of synthetic drugs. It’s just an interesting article and makes you think about what it will mean to have advanced chemical, information, and biological technologies in the hands of the little guy, actually many, many little guys. It is a brave, new, dangerous, exciting world indeed. Happy new year!

November 2015 in Review

What did I learn in November? Let’s start with the bad and then go to the good.

Negative stories (-10):

  • The World Economic Forum’s 2015 Global Risks Report came out. Some of the top risks are interstate conflict, water crisis, failure of climate change adaptation, unemployment and underemployment. Hmm, that “interstate conflict” items might be what we used to call “war”. And I think there might be one underway right now in the Middle East, which Jimmy Carter says we are getting all wrong. And it just might be caused by the other items on the list. And speaking of war, there is a new book on the Vietnam War aimed at the middle grades, but it seems pretty harsh for that age to me. (-2)
  • I noticed that Robert Costanza in 2014 issued an update to his seminal 1997 paper on ecosystem services. He now estimates their value at $125 trillion per year, compared to a world economy of $77 trillion per year. Each year we are using up about $4-20 trillion in value more than the Earth is able to replenish. The correct conclusion here is that we can’t live without ecosystem services any time soon with our current level of knowledge and wealth, and yet we are depleting the natural capital that produces them. We were all lucky enough to inherit an enormous trust fund of natural capital at birth, and we are spending it down like the spoiled trust fund babies we are. We are living it up, and we measure our wealth based on that lifestyle, but we don’t have a bank statement so we don’t actually know when that nest egg is going to run out. (-3)
  • This crop of presidential candidates is easy for comedians to make fun of. I enjoy it but think it may be a contrary indicator for the health of the country. (-1)
  • Bicycle helmets are not making U.S. bicycle riders any safer. This is why we need streets designed on the European model to be safe for driving, bicycling, and walking. It’s 100% known technology and there can be no excuses! (-2)
  • In current events, we had the awful, shocking terrorist attacks in Paris. I suggested that the long-term answer to violence caused by angry young men anywhere is to understand why they are angry, address their legitimate grievances, and give them productive work to do. Short term, we also have to detect and disrupt any plots involving nuclear or biological weapons, of course, because we can’t afford even one. (-2)

Positive stories (+9):

Jimmy Carter on Syria

This Jimmy Carter op-ed in the New York Times is a bit eyebrow raising.

The Carter Center had been deeply involved in Syria since the early 1980s, and we shared our insights with top officials in Washington, seeking to preserve an opportunity for a political solution to the rapidly growing conflict. Despite our persistent but confidential protests, the early American position was that the first step in resolving the dispute had to be the removal of Mr. Assad from office. Those who knew him saw this as a fruitless demand, but it has been maintained for more than four years. In effect, our prerequisite for peace efforts has been an impossibility…

The involvement of Russia and Iran is essential. Mr. Assad’s only concession in four years of war was giving up chemical weapons, and he did so only under pressure from Russia and Iran. Similarly, he will not end the war by accepting concessions imposed by the West, but is likely to do so if urged by his allies.

Mr. Assad’s governing authority could then be ended in an orderly process, an acceptable government established in Syria, and a concerted effort could then be made to stamp out the threat of the Islamic State.

The needed concessions are not from the combatants in Syria, but from the proud nations that claim to want peace but refuse to cooperate with one another.

It’s eyebrow raising both because if it is right it makes U.S. foreign policy look pretty bumbling, and also because these statements are being made in public seemingly after many years of behind-the-scenes frustration.

I think back to the 1990 Gulf War. The Cold War was over and we still had faith in international institutions. Iraq’s invasion of Kuwait was a clear violation across sovereign borders. A coalition was formed and backed by the U.N. Security Council. As imperfect as all of this was, at least it had the feel of the rule of law. 15 years later, we have sovereign nations invading other sovereign nations, shadowy commando activity and drone assassinations across national borders from Europe to Africa to Asia. That hope we all felt when the wall fell in 1989 (well, maybe Jimmy Carter should ask his good friend Gorbachev how he felt at the time) seems to be receding further into history. And on top of the geopolitical instability we have more people, more weapons, climate change, and a shaky global economy.