In The Prince, published in 1513, Nico Machiavelli wrote:

one has to remark that men ought either to be well treated or crushed, because they can avenge themselves of lighter injuries, of more serious ones they cannot; therefore the injury that is to be done to a man ought to be of such a kind that one does not stand in fear of revenge.

That quote makes me think of Operation Odyssey Dawn, the US-led air war in Libya. Although this is supposed to be a UN sanctioned operation carried out by NATO, it’s actually Barack Obama’s first real war. A bit embarrassing for a guy who just a year or so ago received the Nobel Peace Prize. So, you can’t blame Obama for going in with “limited goals” and much ambivalence. Obama obviously wanted to support the idealism of the “Arab Spring” as it spread from the east, challenging an old-time tyrant like Muammar Ghadaffi. We want to be on the side of what appeared, according to the western press, to be a movement of young Arabs with smartphones who were networking their thirst for democracy and freedom via Facebook and Twitter. Unfortunately we didn’t stop to think this might just be another garden-variety, old-world tribal battle, where the forces challenging the bad guy aren’t all that much different from those supporting him. Suddenly, a nutty strong-man whom we tolerated and even cooperated with (in return for Ghadaffi’s 2005 pledge to give up weapons of mass destruction) became our bitter enemy.

It appears to me that our President has placed our nation in an embarrassing position. This war was supposed to be over in days,  »  continue reading …

I like to get my news while driving in my car. So, I make use of good old fashioned AM radio. I have my pre-set buttons tuned to two different commercial newsradio stations (unfortunately, both CBS affiliates), NPR, Bloomberg radio (focusing on financial and economic topics), and a local New Jersey “oldies” station (need to hear some music now and then). But I have one more pre-set button, and I have been searching for the past few months for a worth station to lock-in on. The other day, I stumbled across something quite interesting – AM 1430, the Voice of Russia. Yes, Russia, Vladimir Putin’s Russia; once our mortal enemy and still not always our friend. Why does Russia run a newsradio station in the New York area (and also one in Washington DC)? I’m not 100% sure, but I’m glad that it does.

Ted Koppel wrote an article last November summing up the current status of American broadcast news media, in contrast to how it was in the time of Walter Cronkite and Huntley-Brinkley. Once upon a time, the big TV and radio networks provided high-quality, mostly unbiased news shows as a public service. They did not expect to make a profit on the news; they ran commercials during newscasts, but generally did not during “live coverage” events like the Apollo moon flights or reports on the Cuban missile crisis.

Nonetheless, the big corporate broadcasters spent a lot of money on news coverage back then, given that the federal government tightly regulated the airwaves and imposed a “public service” requirement and a “fairness doctrine” in return for broadcasting bandwidth. CBS, NBC, Westinghouse radio, etc. largely fulfilled this “service” requirement by providing very high quality news journalism. In return, they could put on whatever junk that would sell as much soap as possible during the remaining 21 to 22 hours each day (e.g., corny sitcoms).

Today, things have changed.  »  continue reading …

If you had to predict the major geopolitical trends for the rest of the 21st Century, the surest bet would be China’s rise to global empire-hood, and America’s decline from it. The major implication from such a view is that the Greek – Roman – Anglican – American heritage of personal freedom, human rights and representative democratic governance has finally run out of steam. Democracy, freedom and constitutions of and by the people were not the “light of humankind” after all; the sun seems to be setting on those ideals after 2,500 years of light (they didn’t call it en-light-tenment for nothing). The Chinese are setting an example for the rest of the developing world: that the better way to growth, prosperity and sustainability rests in a complex mix of personal economic incentive and collective “order-keeping”, combined with deference to authority (and perhaps even a desire for it). It’s all very Confucian, so I’ve read (despite the fact that my own readings of Master Confucians seem rather benign and even edifying).

OK to most of that, but before we write the eulogy for the Anglo-American ideal, we have to ask if there exists a people on the ascent who might pick up the torch presently in America’s faltering hands. I believe there is — India. Despite India’s relatively exotic history and cultural heritage, and despite its vigor to free itself from British domination in the 19th and early 20th centuries, there is evidence that India values the Anglo socio-political philosophies and intends to protect and promote them in the “brown-skin world” of the future. I just read an article in Forbes about India as a growing world power, and there was in incredible quote from an Indian scholar based at UCLA, Deepak Lal. Professor Lal said: “It is in India’s long term interest to recognize that the continuance of its liberal democratic open economy also requires it to support and, if necessary, take over the imperial burden from the U.S.”

India still has a way to go until it truly has the economic and military power to take on an “imperial burden”. It still needs  »  continue reading …