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Showing posts with label Canadian foreign policy. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Canadian foreign policy. Show all posts
Thursday, March 9, 2023
Monday, April 16, 2018
Better to Jaw than War - If war comes, we need the tools to confront aggression
I often listen to the radio; it seems you get a little more in-depth coverage on a given issue. The topic that prompted this blog post was the ethics associated with Artificial Intelligence (AI) as it is applied to warfare, and by extension, the automation of warfare. The prospect of war is a grim, I dedicate most of my thought on how to prevent it; but if the fight comes, as it has so many times, we should be prepared. Most importantly, however, we need to effect positive relations with world actors through aggressive engagement, the construction of a world narrative and trade.
Precarious Cross Roads & the Unstable World Order
Presently, the USA, primarily and NATO hold world hegemony. NATO, of late, has inducted states that are less sturdy actors than the post WW2 “core group”. So within NATO, there are some fissures forming. NATO’s present organizational structure is sluggish to discipline bad actors. While NATO is clearly intact, and clearly the most successful alliance in history – external political pressures have had it appear to be a paper tiger at times. The fact is, in recent history, most “aggressive” military engagement has taken place under the banner of “a coalition” rather than NATO. While one appreciates the level headiness and prudence of NATO’s leadership, if ever there has been a time for a posture of strength, it is now. Greater effort on the part of NATO members to effect adequate resourcing and cohesion is critical.
While the USA and NATO still hold sway militarily, there are potential configurations that could emerge that would challenge NATO. As was the case pre WW1, where there were four, more or less at par actors with uneasy alliances in play, the world today has a somewhat similar circumstance emerging – or rather, a similar circumstance could emerge if we are tardy in spotting the trend and responding to it.
The Crumbling of the Westphalian Establishment
State sovereignty has been the cornerstone of world order. This order was effective in large measure historically because various modalities of discourse, interpersonal and public, were contained intra-nationally – states populations were to a degree isolated from one another. Even with the emergence of the television mass media era, there was a filter on the data that moved from one population to another. Now, as is widely evident, data moves between individuals nearly seamlessly regardless of jurisdiction.
The tendency is to view the “state” in geophysical terms, a group of people “own” the territory within a set of boundaries and that area is theirs’ to manage. The truth is more abstract than that, the “state” is really determined by the strength of its narrative and the degree to which that narrative effects cohesiveness in the population or a collective identity.
The combination of these two realities is contributing the Balkanisation of the world order, as well as, introducing disruption and volatility to public opinion.
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Mitigation of threat – engagement engagement engagement and more engagement
Engagement is lacking in many ways, the full engagement between state leadership is lacking, deeper administrative engagement into the second and third tiers of respective administrations and finally, and most importantly, engagement of the world population generally. Engagement of the world population offers the largest opportunity to effect peace via a “shared” narrative and is grossly under-addressed worldwide.
A role Canada can play effectively in conjunction with other countries of “like mind” is to begin a concerted, well-financed and sustained effort to inform the world citizens of the value of our system and way of living. The value of personal sovereignty, property rights, the social surplus of markets, secular imperatives and the notion of a progressive thrust in governance. Canada, via the CBC, in a joint venture with the BBC, ABC and others could initiate a worldwide program to aggressively engage populations. This is the quintessential oz. of prevention; $10 billion here would very likely stave off many of hostilities that loom on the horizon and keep my grandsons from the horrors of war. “Better to jaw jaw jaw than war war war” as Mr. Churchill taught us. “We” the “West” have spent trillions upon trillions in preparation for war, I submit, if we had spent 10 cents on every dollar directed to military spending toward evangelising the miracle that is the Canadian way of living, we would have created a functional world narrative and be further away from war now, rather than inching closer.
Militarily Oriented Geo-Political Up and Comers
At the fall of the wall, Russia was open to us and we frittered away the goodwill there. Now, again, rather than engage Mr. Putin, a man of conscience and a strong leader, we’ve alienated him further. We have grown in influence in Eastern Europe, but, at the cost of Russia’s goodwill. There is a growing anti-western sentiment amongst Russia’s young people that is a product of the lamenting of the transformation from the Soviet order to present day Russia and perceived slights from the west.
China has been extremely successful in converting from a fully command and control economy to a partially free market economy. Much of their success has been due to access to western markets. China has an operating model that parallels the operating model that brought the British Empire to prominence, authoritarian government and corporatist socio-economic structure. There may have been an opportunity through the course of China’s evolution for the west to impart its core values in a stronger way, in some instances we’ve failed.
There are a number of other geopolitical areas of concern that threaten world stability, their exploration is outside the scope of this document, it suffice to say for the purpose of this document, that their threat as a causal agent in igniting a large confrontation is recognized – by way of example – the dynamics that emerged between the US and Russia in recent events in the Middle East.
The reason I call attention to Russia and China is that they’ve taken a “competitive stance” with the west. Competition can make us better; the challenge is that the ultimate competition, the unbridled confrontation between two or more global actors is a terrifying prospect.
Resolve – if a fish rots from the head, civilisations rot from the core, or rather, the disintegration and diffusion of core ideals.
The progression of Western civilisation has had, as an ostensible core value FREEDOM and this core value has been shored up in large measure by governance that has, under the adversarial realities of democratic government, hybridized social policy with a fairly well supported “free” market. This uneasy association has generated a standard of living unparalleled in human history. One thing that is most concerning today, however, is the willingness for this core element of western society to be compromised, prostituted or directly attacked within our society and its abuse ignored in jurisdictions outside our ambit.
The freedom from coercion and the freedom to act (complete liberty) as a core value, has advanced all people in the west. It was the dream of the “founders” of the enlightenment to create a state of being whereby people have a choice in belief, to build their lives founded on the discoveries of the critical mind, love and the metaphysical contemplation of their preference. The protection, enhancement and propagation of this core value will make the unparalleled prosperity we’ve enjoyed in the West available to the rest of the world.
Churchill once said “courage is the most important virtue of all, as it guarantees the rest”, the core value of freedom, is the core value that ensures all the advancements the people pursue, and as such, it is the most important core value. It is our obligation to take this inheritance that has come at so much cost, by so many, and care for it. If this is true, and if all means of peaceful resolve are gone then perhaps war will become the only means to protect it.
The Ultimate Competition – What are you prepared to do? - The Hammer
War is an event that occurs when all else has failed, it is the ultimate failure in human relations. When it occurs, our participation should have been motivated by the desire to defend that which we hold dear. Defining what we hold dear is a key element of understanding the various thresholds for taking a war footing, defining what we hold dear is outside the scope of this document as well – people usually know good from evil because they taste it.
The Canadian Military is charged with defending Canada. In the context of world order, we derive most of our security from our association with NATO and our proximity to the US. Defending an area the size of Canada with a population the size of ours is a challenging at best; particularly so if Canada had to “go it alone”.
AI and automation are critical components of any future military development. I would argue that wars of the future will be won on a given participant’s ability to hold a reserve of raw resources and convert those raw resources into actionable assets the fastest. To my mind, the question is how to use AI and automation, rather than whether to use them. The ability to leverage resources and minimize the use and risk exposure of personnel should be pursued with vigour – we need to be the best and the fastest, period.
Perhaps what we are prepared to do in our defence should be determined by what others have done in the past. We know that in history there have been actors willing to breach all international protocols in the unbridled pursuit of power. We know that in the face of that aggression “we”, “the West”, used Nuclear weapons in warfare. The answer is, in the ultimate competition, we have to be prepared to do anything necessary to win. Are there morally dictated gradations of engagement? Yes, however, ultimately, our actions are determined by the zeal of the aggressor.
OTHER THINKING ON THE SUBJECT
Sunday, November 15, 2015
Islam & the West – World Peace - Recent Events Belgium
"All that's necessary for the triumph of evil is for enough good men to do nothing" - Edmund Burke.
It has been the case since the dawn of time that those
with the might make the rules; I have no evidence to the contrary in contemporary
times. So what to do, always make sure that might resides with those who are intent on
good. Good is a somewhat nebulous term, with plenty of opportunity for interpretation.
Here is one definition for good people – people who are seeking to provide
liberty to people, people who seek to influence human behaviour through a
process of enlightening others, people who actually believe love matters,
people who can look at the truths of others and accept them as being as valid
as their own truths, people who hold humanitarian concern as paramount and
people who have the strength to protect these goods by whatever means
necessary.
All faiths, all humanitarians, all people who are
enlightened, have the capacity to pursue these goods and to withstand dogma that
would have them venture into a violent sphere to promote one dogma over another
dogma. The challenge is that the world’s population is made up mostly of the indoctrinated
rather than the enlightened; even personally, I hold a Christian bias due to my
exposure to the Canadian narrative and my family history – even though I make an effort
every day to see the other side. When one is faced with tribalism, dogma and
survival as the life equation, reason is no longer an option – one is faced
with calculations like, conform to the immediate dogma totally or all that one
loves is destroyed – conformity at this point is the only way forward. People who want
to control populations always want conformity to dogma, this is the antithesis to
democracy, secularism or pluralism. The desire for compliance is in no way
peculiar to Islam, it resides in the hearts of many in western democracies, in
the hearts of people who would rather impose belief rather than to let belief
develop as people are exposed to the cultural tapestry there to teach us all.
One needs grounding, mine was Christian and as such, all other thinking is held
juxtaposed to Christian teaching – the difference between being a bigot and enlightened
resides in one’s ability to permit belief to migrate as the facts change. The challenge
with extremists is they are locked into one belief and they will kill to keep
it or forward it; for them, the only solution is to subdue them and the only mechanism
to do so is to be in possession of greater might.
Josip Broz Tito ruled Yugoslavia with an iron hand, an
iron hand that insisted that factions got along – an enforced pluralism if you
will. Under his leadership, the various factions, Muslims to Christians lived in
close quarters, across the street from one another, peacefully. Absent the
presence of Tito’s hegemony, Yugoslavia “balkanized” into several states and
factional war resulted in a massive human tragedy. What is the moral of this
story, having a Hegemon works, even when the hegemon is a benevolent dictator.
Yugoslavia disintegrated before the very eyes of the present-day United
Nations, why, because the United Nations is a place of talking as opposed to a
place of action. One human tragedy of massive proportions after another transpires
while United Nations watches, why, because the United Nations is a place of
talking as opposed to action. Winston Churchill said, there is no use in having
Judges and Magistrates absent a constabulary – passing judgement is a mere
thought, acting on that judgement changes outcomes.
The Hegemony in the world now is NATO, the military might
of a collection of the most progressive and prosperous nations in human
history. Is NATO flawed, certainly, do we need to be able to kick nations out
as easily as they are brought to membership. NATO – or a military force –
that has as its master human choice is the Hegemony we need to support, build
and improve. There are a cross-section of Nations that are members of NATO,
Turkey is one of note given recent events, the organization is clearly dominated
by the secular democratic imperative. The world hegemon now, from a single
nation perspective, is the United States, the United States hegemony commenced
shortly after WW2, please make an objective assessment of our world now and
post WW2, and exercise judgement.
OTHER THINKING ON THE SUBJECT
Wednesday, November 11, 2015
Fixing Africa - Aid People Never Governments
What is the cause of the consternation that
exists in helping Africa find prosperity, the
people are intelligent, the land rich, the climate excellent. It would seem
that a constellation of resources and circumstances has emerged to produce the
wealthiest continent earth, and yet Africa
remains the poorest. Contrast most of Africa
with Canada Canada Canada Africa ’s people, when any objective
assessment of bioclimatic realities would indicate it should be the other way
round. Everybody knows the answer, Canada Africa as the cause of Africa ’s ills, if you witness the flow of Canada Canada Africa find
prosperity, we need to empower and envalue the people and circumvent inept and
corrupt governance. The assertion that it will take time for governance to
evolve in Africa is true, but having traveled that evolutions path, the west
can accelerate the process.
There are many people screaming for FUNDS
as though money poured into Africa is the
solution. The present mode of aiding with money has had as many ill effects as
it has had good. It is apparent that as more and more money flows through
corrupt channels, those channels gain strength with the perverse effect of
enriching the corrupt in a greater proportion than empowering the people
requiring a hand up; exacerbating the negative situation. Additionally, as
people in need are provided aid in the form of goods and services, often local
channels for goods and services are disrupted or made permanently unviable by
the requirement to compete with free goods and services; effecting dependence
on the population. What’s required is that the population is put in situation
where, by possessing resources, the African people attract goods and services
to them. We have Viagra because there is a population able to pay for it; we
are absent a drug for Malaria largely because the people who get Malaria have
no money. If every citizen of Africa was a
millionaire, we would be over there cutting their grass for $125 / hour.
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In business we refer to a business reaching
critical mass, the point at which a business has sufficient resources to fully
capitalise on the opportunities a given environment provides. Poverty is a
state of critical masslessness or depletion, where there are insufficient
resources to respond to the opportunities a given environment provides. Often a
company, when provided with a proportionally small amount of capital leavers that capital to
generate exceptional results. Capital and knowledge combine to generate
results, assuming there isn’t a corrupt official stealing the proceeds. As
western economies evolved, the populace has become envalued, they have garnered
the ability to accumulate sufficient wealth to attract goods and services. As
the populace has become increasingly more prosperous creating goods and services
they’ve attracted provide more goods and services; a virtuous cycle has emerged. There
is strong support, as one views the various information sources related to the Africa situation, for priming the pump of human
endeavour. For support to the population to be successful three things must be
satisfied, resources must be isolated from corruption, the funds must be
supported by information and funds must envalue people directly.
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As is often the case, one lives so close to
the solution it is difficult to see. Wireless technologies offer the
opportunity to direct information and resources directly to people and
circumvent government all together. Electronic currency is ubiquitous in our
world now, as are the electronic means of exchange. Cell-phones can purchase food
from a vending machine, and via the internet I can transfer funds from my to my
daughters account. We take these developments for granted, but these
developments dispersed to Africans, in a manner that tailors technology to the
Africa circumstance, gives us the means to prime the pump of human endeavour in
Africa by empowering the people’s action.
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Imagine and electronic device, provided to
people cast to the riggers of the environment, war and corruption, that would
provide a means to receive a daily stipend directly circumventing corrupt
officials, that would provide them with pertinent information on whereabouts of
food, that would provide them with a secure means of exchange, that would
provide them with means to safely accumulate money, that would provide them
with reputation systems that put societal bullies at the people’s whim as
opposed to the other way round, that would provide information peculiar to
their given endeavour. This device exists now in so many forms, is it only a
matter of consolidating technologies, developing a functional organizational
model to build and deliver them, and garnering the appropriate support for the
venture.
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To appreciate the value of a device of this
nature it is useful to imagine how it could be utilized by people in their
daily lives. Consider an African mother going to a market in which the devices
were utilized, she would interface with the various vendors by purchasing
goods and transferring funds to their “device” electronically; she has no worry
about her money being stolen as it is electronically “held”; her device is
biometrically protected so it is useless in the hands of another person; if a
corrupt office requests a bribe on her way home and compels her to transfer
funds to his device, she can anonymously activate a reputation system that
flags this transaction as a bribe, identifying the official and providing the
contributing organization the ability to track the number of bribes a given official
has taken and or reversing the transactions or engaging is some other
corrective action; given that she is geo located regionally sensitive
information can be directed to her perhaps on the best time and types of crop
to plant; now that she has been envalued by having a secure source of funds
services will travel to her, perhaps a vender with a $.99 aids test or some
other medical service; now with a secure means to accumulate money she can
accumulate the money her actions generate; now that she has a track record of
having funds flowing in she can request a loan. This device then facilitates
her life by; empowering and envaluing her; isolating her resources to her hence
protecting them from others; helping to secure her ongoing existence as the
only way others can access her daily resources is by her being there to
distribute them; gives her the means to police her government by providing the
means to record the actions of its officials. This is a device of empowerment,
as it puts the entire panoply of modern technologies in accessible form, right
in the hands of the world’s most vulnerable.
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Many people yearn to bring change to
populations of Africa who are disadvantaged by
circumstances largely created by dysfunctional institutions. Yet the solutions
they turn to involve either creating more institutions who are hampered by the
existing dysfunctional institutions or somehow trying to access the people
through dysfunctional institutions. Clearly, a better course of action is to
make institutions responsive to the people who need help. By creating a channel
for information and resources to flow to people, regardless of the condition of
the state, people become empowered. Rather than the government being given lump
sums of money from international institutions, moneys are disbursed to their
populations who can choose to support the government or not. Inherent in this
approach is the strengthening of democratising forces and the ability for
populations to pull services and governmental responsiveness to them.
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This proposal of creatively utilising new
technologies needs to be done on a massive enough scale to ensure that no
individual state can influence its function. I envisage these devices
functioning under a continent wide satellite umbrella. The devices themselves
being broadly distributed for free to the populations. Once designed the
manufacture of millions of them will drive their unit cost to very low levels.
The free provision of this devices and the information and resources they will
provide, will ensure immediate penetration of this technology. Now having
considered the benefit and opportunity to democratise that the broad
distribution of these devices would provide, one needs to consider an
organisational model to deliver both the device and the supporting services.
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Presently one of the challenges of the
African aid landscape is the fractured response to societal challenges.
Consider for a moment the millions of religious, NGO, corporate and government
organizations, in good spirit, working to help the impoverished inhabitants of Africa . They are doing some good but, the duplication of
service and effort costs valuable resources. The device based continent wide
system being proposed here would provide a single unifying platform on which
all organizations could facilitate their efforts on a common logistical
substrate.
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Jeffery Sacks suggests that the number for
bringing the African continent on toward the rich worlds living standards is
$125 Billion US annually. The challenge presently is there is an absence of an
effective channel for those funds to be distributed. The device system proposed
here provides such a channel. Given the proper development of the appropriate
organization, the rich world would gain confidence enough to provide its
support as the entire project has the focus of shifting all benefit away from
governments and directly to the people.
The ability to circumvent state barriers has
such great value, consider this proposal in the context of Zimbabwe
There is a broad requirement or aid in Africa , additionally this is thriving industry across the
continent. The device system itself and the supporting satellite network offers
opportunity for a revenue stream very likely sufficient is size to support the
charitable components of the system. Charitable components of the system being
the functional equipment and servicing of the that equipment. The description
of all the possibilities for revenue for a system such of this is outside the
scope to this letter, but when you consider a continent wide telecom linked to
the world, opportunities for revenue are endless. We know that this model is
viable as there are thousands of profitable services of this nature functioning
the world over.
Technology really does hold the answers for
liberating the impoverished of Africa, this simple service in collaboration
NGOs, corporations and governments gives a direct and unencumbered channel to
the people in need. In providing a direct flow of funds in conjunction with
information, corruption is largely circumvented and people of little worth now
will at least be valued at their stipend. Even the spending value of a modest
stipend will cause the emergence of services from local and regional sources by
inciting local entrepreneurs to respond to a new market, existing market
systems will be enhanced rather than diminished. Perhaps most importantly, this
system provides means (monetary, informational and communications) to people
who are in extremely exploitable circumstances, turning the tables on
oppressive or inept and corrupt governments, by truly making them accountable
to people. When you look at the African situation from thirty thousand feet the
present incoherence of the total aid effort is disheartening, as duplication
and uncoordinated action steal valuable resources; the provision of a
widespread device based distribution system provides a vital substrate for
collective action on the part of the aid providers.
Friday, September 4, 2015
Refugee Crisis - How many children have to pay the price.
The recent politicization of the death of two young boys escaping
a civil war has been a low point in Canadian politics; I’m unsure who
introduced these boys misfortune into the mix first; they should be ashamed of
themselves. Given that the Conservatives had nothing to gain from the
assertions that Canada is AWOL on the refugee front, one can deduct then it was
someone else.
Now that refugees are front and center on the campaign
trail the topic is at hand and it presents an opportunity to point out where
refugees come from. We have refugees because we have conflict and disruption,
we have conflict because the world community has failed to manage the region
effectively. Please look at the history of the Middle East and you will make
the following observation, the pain incurred there by these people is a product
of incomplete effort on the part of intervening nations in our contemporary
reality and the fracturing of regional order as a result of European management
post Ottoman Empire.
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Russia attacked Afghanistan so they could have a fossil
fuel transportation corridor to the lucrative Pakistani and Indian markets; the
United States intervened by supporting Afghani warriors “freedom fighters” as
they were called and they drove the Russians out, this gave birth to the
Taliban. The Taliban gave refuge to Osama
bin Laden and a stronghold for al-Qaeda in the Pashtun region of the country. It
then became necessary to bomb the al-Qaeda stronghold and invade the country.
It is important to note that many in the United States governing body wanted to
take a stronger presence in Afghanistan post the Russian occupation, had they
done so the Afghanistan story would be much different – because of passive
foreign policy however, in excess of a decade of war and hardship ensued. Even
now, having been through the cycle before and post a trillion dollar military
adventure, we (the west) are poised to make the same error in Afghanistan. We
need to focus on effectiveness in the Middle East, on outcomes there and stop
letting western election cycles and the whimsy of the populous politics
determine our course.
Having seen this same process unfold several times elsewhere, we had to once again repeat history in Iraq. The Coalition took Iraq handily militarily speaking and then invested trillions of dollars, thousands of lives, millions of civilians killed, injured and displaced to win the peace, to effect a secure living circumstance for the country. This was a herculean undertaking with an unspeakable human toll, only to walk away to let the cycle unfold again, in was popular to take US troops out of Iraq – it was just stupid in the extreme. Granted there are other causal elements at play in the rise of ISIS, the “desert spring” and the collapse of several national orders in quick succession has played a role as well, the point is that had the US maintained military presence, there would be remaining a point where order exists. The two little boys who drowned were Kurds, “Kurdistan” or the Kurdish region of Iraq was beginning to prosper before the war do a degree and then gained momentum as the new order in Iraq took form; most of Kurd’s progress took place with just western air support. Had we (the west) exercised our obligation to protect, had we stayed the course, those two little boys would have opportunity to be living in a stable and prosperous place.
Having seen this same process unfold several times elsewhere, we had to once again repeat history in Iraq. The Coalition took Iraq handily militarily speaking and then invested trillions of dollars, thousands of lives, millions of civilians killed, injured and displaced to win the peace, to effect a secure living circumstance for the country. This was a herculean undertaking with an unspeakable human toll, only to walk away to let the cycle unfold again, in was popular to take US troops out of Iraq – it was just stupid in the extreme. Granted there are other causal elements at play in the rise of ISIS, the “desert spring” and the collapse of several national orders in quick succession has played a role as well, the point is that had the US maintained military presence, there would be remaining a point where order exists. The two little boys who drowned were Kurds, “Kurdistan” or the Kurdish region of Iraq was beginning to prosper before the war do a degree and then gained momentum as the new order in Iraq took form; most of Kurd’s progress took place with just western air support. Had we (the west) exercised our obligation to protect, had we stayed the course, those two little boys would have opportunity to be living in a stable and prosperous place.
The generous country of Canada
never killed those boys; a dismal circumstance and extended western neglect did.
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