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“If you are reading this, then you are the movement”

10.11.2009

“Words from the Several States” The Movement part 017

I just got done watching C-span and looking through some information at the CIA's world's fact book web page. It is 8pm Saturday evening and I know what you're thinking, “Hey this guy Chris really knows how to spend a Saturday night.”

I realize now that there absolutely must be a companion piece to that last column on foreign policy. The subject is to big and far to complex to just let it go where I did.

I want to concentrate on the very small and very nuanced components of foreign policy. This “sub-text” if you will matters more than I believe the president understands.

I parallel that thought by reminding all of you that I firmly believe President Obama is a very smart man. Not just well educated at two of America's IVY league universities, but at his core, an exceptionally brilliant man, who just happens to be a Liberal elitist. More on Obama's brilliance later.

Now to the very small. Foreign policy broken down, is about problem solving. I am a life-long fan of engineering and how things work. I spent five years studying engineering in high school and community college. My only regret is that I didn't take more classes.

Anything in this world, can be broken down into parts, components and pieces so that the engineer better understands them. Be it cars, houses, rockets, dams, nations, political parties or social theories. Everything has parts and pieces. Everything can be broken down, explained and put back together.

Afghanistan:. I certainly will not cover all of that nation here, but as an engineer let me take you through one very small part of the infrastructure, that lends itself to understanding the back-drop, if you will, of foreign policy.

Briefly, The Pashtun tribes were united in 1747 and Afghanistan was founded. Winning independence from Great Britain in 1919, with a stab at democracy until 1973. Since 1973 the nation's political structure has been brutal communist-dictator and the nation has been mostly at war, invaded or both since then,

Afghanistan is poor, very poor. The economy of West Virginia was $31 billion in 1992. Afghanistan's GDP was $22 billion in 2009. The nation is land-locked and sits between an incredibly complex area of neighbors. It would be quite common to hear Afghans in the north, speaking dialects of Tajik or even Uzbek. Very complex area.

But lets talk about the state of their central banking system, circa 2001 when our troops arrived.

Every nation has some form of a central banking system these days. I came across the story of Afghanistan's central bank merely by accident. It was housed inside one shabby building in the capitol, and had four computers inside. That was 2001.

This is where the “understanding” of foreign policy begins, by absorbing and digesting details like that.

By way of comparison, this is a breakdown of the computer hardware in my house. I have four computers in my computer room/office. All of them are old, out-dated and two are refurbished units I bought at the Gibraltar trade center. All four are newer than what was inside the Afghan central bank in 2001. I also have three computers in the basement, at different levels of “cannibalization” and four spare monitors. Plus a couple of boxes of parts, cables, power cords, about four spare keyboards and maybe 10 mouses.

I would've inherited a fourth computer to part out, but my friend tossed in the trash instead. Can you believe he did that to me?

Well you get my point, my computer room in my small 1200 sq/ft ranch has more computing power than the entire central banking system of Afghanistan did in 2001.

How does a new government coming in, build a new central banking system? That is a problem in need of a solution.

First you need a comparison to understand the context of the task at hand. The United States has 316 million Internet hosts, with the largest domain hosts being .com, .us, .mil, .net, .edu and .org.

Afghanistan has 31 Internet hosts. Thankfully their communications are rapidly growing with the new tele-kiosks in Kabul.

So, for a central banking system to work you need basic infrastructure:

• secure Internet hosts to carry your data to the rest of the world and receive their data.

• Internal secure hosts to carry the central banking data to your nation's system of banks, brokerage houses, finance houses and to tie in with other government agencies.

• You need satellite dishes, hard lines, cellular back-up and interface.

• You need a reliable source of power to make sure all this happens and a back-up power system that is also reliable.

• You need computers, routers, main-frames and back-up for all of this.

• You need a secure central location, so that Taliban or Al-Qaida insurgents don't come along and blow up your central bank, cut your power supply or communication's network.

• You need I.T. People to make sure all of this stays up and running. People to staff the central bank.

• You need hard currency to pay everyone.

• Then you also need things like banks around the world that will accept your currency, a bench-mark to monetize it against.

• You need commodities both tangible and intellectual for trading, so that capital will flow into your central banking system.

• Last but most important, you need a stable government structure that undersatands the need for reliable central banking. Not to mention allies in other treasury ministries that will go to bat for you, when economic times are tough.

Those are the bare-bone basics of what you need to rebuild a central banking system in a nation so poor, their GDP is 2/3 of that what West Virginia was 16 years ago.

I know the new government that took over in Afghanistan had many other problems to solve along with the U.S. Military based there.

This is where I come back around to understanding and President Obama being personally a brilliant man.

The very smartest of people will always defer to the experts in their own field, and allow them the resources and freedom to solve problems that they know how to solve.

Our top commander in Afghanistan is a general who came up through special forces. This is good, special forces are very adaptive to problem solving. It is one of their main functions when out in a situation.

General McChrystal has asked for more troops. The debate continues state-side as to whether he will get those troops and the resources that come with it.

Problem solving breaks down like this inside government: You have a team or staff of experts in any field, this being how the U.S. Military can facilitate breaking the Taliban's hold on nearly 1/3 of Afghanistan.

Those experts put together a plan for McChrystal to review, and then he puts together a briefing, plan and back-up research for the President and Secretary Gates to decide policy from.

A smart President will “understand” that McChrystal and his staff are trying to solve a problem, they do not have any political ax to grind, no horse-trading to do in the halls of congress. McChrystal was given the assignment to secure Afghanistan and transfer the internal and national security of that nation to a properly;y trained police force and military.

A smart president would understand all of this and give the general what he needs to solve the problem at hand.

The last thing any President wants to do is micro-manage the situation. Presidents don't have time to do that, which is why a president has secretaries, advisors, generals, admirals and staff, to carry out all these operations.

My greatest fear is that President Obama considers himself so brilliant that he knows the Afghan situation better than the people on the ground.

Recipe for disaster, as it has been many times in the past, with many presidents who thought they knew/understood the entire world of foreign policy.

I used half this column just to spit out a few basic points on infrastructure needed, to revamp the central banking system of Afghanistan.

It is the small details, the sub-text that matters. Truly smart Presidents understand the value of these details and sub-text and give their staff and advisors tools, people and support to problem solve.

Leadership, McChrystal is hoping for good leadership from the president he serves.

As I entyer the final editing if this column, news reports are not good. President Obama is consiodering letting Taliban leaders have a role in the Afghan government and giving McChrystal part of what he needs. Sounds like a nice middle-of-the road “non-decision.” Kind of what I said in last week's column. I pray the President has a change of heart and mind.

If you are reading this, then you are the movement.