The Left Mark

What is the Right Government Role in the Sale of Unocal?

As the debate widens about the pending sale of the American company, Unocal, whether or not the US government should have a role in such a transaction seems to me to be one of the more interesting debate topics to hit the news pages in some time.     The facts are as follows:   Unocal is a large, but certainly nowhere close to the largest (at ~1% of US prodcution), American oil company.    Chevon was about to purchase the company for $16.6B, but was trumped last week by an unsolicited bid for $18.5B by Chinese company, CNOOC.   CNOOC, which is contolled by and 70% owned by the Chinese government, will be financing its bid largely through cheap financing structures made available at below market prices by the Chinese government.

The question on everyone's mind is, given that we are in the early stages of a 50 year "war" for contol of the world's fuel supply with China, should the US goverment somehow move to stop this transaction in the interests of national security?   

Paul Krugman wrote an op-ed piece in the New York Times today saying that he believes the US gov. should move to block the transaction.     Forbes weighed in as well, discussign the growing debate in Congress on the issue.    Chinese publications are also weighing in on the conversation.    Finally, no debate would be complete without a piece from the Washington Times :), in this case, a piece about imminent war between the US and China over Taiwan.    Let's hope that reports lacks as much credibility as the newspaper that published it.

While I understand the concern, I have to say that this seems to me to be a very, very slippery slope and that the US government has no business stepping in to stop a transaction of this nature.    It seems that a better reaction would be to use this as a catalyst to get serious about funding R&D for new forms of energy, both because it makes strategic sense, and because we just might find ourselves in a position with something to export to the rest of the world....which would be a welcome change.

I'm interested to hear people's thougths on this sensitive issue, though, as I know that this is a deep and complex debate that we'll still be discussing many decades from now.

Pakistan's Predicted HVT - Coincidence?

As a pps in Paul Krugman's July 30th editorial in the New York Times, he mentions that the New Republic's report from earlier that month that Pakistani officials where being pressured by the Bush Administration to produce a High Value Target (HVT) in the war on Terrorism during the Democratic Convention, had actually come true.

This is a really interesting story, so I've posted the various component pieces for anyone to read and comment on. First, here's the original report from the New Republic.

Perhaps more interesting in light of the fact that it ACTUALLY HAPPENED JUST AS PREDICTED, is some of the comentary following the original report. For example, read this response from The National Review's Andrew McCarthy. In the article, McCarthy wastes no time slamming the New Republic's report as utterly laughable.

"So, for TNR, there must be a catch, which those paragons of rectitude down at the ISI are only too happy to provide. Thus, the "latest pressures from the U.S. administration" are driven by the "[upcoming] U.S. elections" (brackets in original), and have led to the unprecedented introduction of "target dates" into the equation. An official attached to the ISI directorate darkly recounts that "[t]he last ten days of July deadline has been given repeatedly by visitors to Islamabad" — in fact, the message has been conveyed, "it would be best if the arrest or killing" of high-value al Qaeda players could be accomplished by the Pakistanis in time to be "announced on twenty-six, twenty-seven, or twenty-eight July" — which, TNR is quick to add lest we miss the hint, are "the first three days of the Democratic National Convention in Boston." Judis and company do not tell us whether Powell or Tenet or Fox News have told the Pakistanis what time the arrest or killing should take place."

Unfortunately, it actually happened ("it" being the uncanny timing, not the actual capture). A HVT that had been apprehended "a number of days before" was announced just hours before the Kerry acceptance speech (here's the CNN announcement of the capture). It seems really hard to believe that the Bush Administration would be doing this, which leads me to believe that the timing of the announcement was pure coincidence....but it is pretty amazingly coincidental.

How Are We Doing?

Two days after the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, I found myself terrified at what I saw as the fundamental conflict between a 'free society' and a 'safe society', and the potential ramifications of a blind focus on building the latter. With this in mind, and worried that I could already see the signs that we were heading down the wrong path, I wrote and submitted the following letter to the op-ed section of the New York Times:

Let’s Not Let Today’s Emotions Determine Tomorrow’s World

Make no mistake; I’m as furious as any American about what happened on Tuesday morning. From a porch 30 blocks north of the World Trade Center, I watched in stomach twisting horror as an unknown enemy laid siege to lower Manhattan. In less than two hours, I had seen through teary eyes the so-called center of the world learn that along with a global economy, comes a globalism of terror. Now, as America digs its way out of the rubble and Americans try to clear their mental ruins, our county is faced with perhaps its most important decision since the second World War. What is the right course of action?

This is a tricky question because, like so many others in life, it has multiple components. What is the right course of action to punish the organization(s) responsible for this act? What is the right course of action to assuage the families of the victims? What is the right course of action to ensure that this never happens again? And most importantly, what is the right course of action to help create the best possible world for the future?

As a country, we seem to be dangerously hung up on the first of these questions. While this is understandable because this is the one most fueled by emotion and we are still only beginning to realize the horrific specter of our losses, we need to be extremely careful not to let rage take the place of rational thought in determining our personal and national actions.

Over the last two days, I have seen and heard a number of frightening instances that lead me to believe that many of us are choosing the wrong path. After Friday’s Hour Of Prayer at the National Cathedral, Frederick Graham (who’s father Billy Graham, led one of the prayers) told a CNN reporter that until the day when Jesus Christ returned to walk on Earth again, we needed to be prepared to be in a long war, and that rather than place American soldiers in danger, we should not hesitate to use weapons of mass destruction to “eliminate our enemies”. Aside from the idiocy of using weapons of mass destruction against so scattered an enemy, this confusion of religion and warfare can only help to cloud the issues at hand and hinder the construction of an intelligent, calculated response.

On a personal level, many people seem to have now resorted to extreme nationalism as a way to deal with our “quiet anger”. I watched on Thursday as an SUV filled with four men and decorated with multiple American flags, drove up next to a cab driver of supposedly Arabic descent. Before the light turned green, all four men had screamed at this innocent man, called him a terrorist and yelled for him to go home. Is this American behavior or is this using patriotism as a mask for hatred?

America is undoubtedly a strong nation with an unparalleled military. However, what makes our country unique is our strength of mind. It always has been, and I pray it will continue to be. Beginning with the development of a system of government that stands as a model for countries worldwide nearly 200 years later, to leading the industrial revolution, to being the only nation to put a man on the moon, ours has always been a conquest of thought. Let’s make sure that we think before we set the tone of the new millennium.

Now, more than two years later, we can look back and judge whether those initial concerns were well founded, and more importantly, what is the best foreign policy to ensure the safest possible America without sacrificing 'America' the idea.

Let's establish something first: There will be other terrorist strikes in the US. As long as we live in a free country, it will be impossible to prevent all future attacks and naive to assume that we could. Considering the reaction to the first set of attacks on American soil, and the reverberations that are still being felt, how do we expect to react to the next set of attacks?

This is a very important question because without considering it ahead of time, we run the risk of losing control of our own destiny. Peter Senge wrote extensively on the idea of "scenario planning" in his book, Synchronicity: The Inner Path of Leadership. In the book, he describes how the Dutch Royal Shell company employs scenario planning to determine all likely courses for the global economy, and then prepares for each.

If we apply this concept of scenario planning to possible reactions to future attacks on the US, what do we come up with? How would we (the American people) 'ideally' react? Are there things that can be done in the present to influence these future reactions and thereby nudge us towards the right path? How do we prepare, knowing full well that a 'free society' and a perfectly 'safe society' don't necessarily support each other.