Davos Newbies

Max Hastings:

Yet in significant respects Vietnam comparisons have become unavoidable. First, it is hard to believe that Washington’s objective – the creation of a viable local government and institutions to run Iraq as a unitary state – is achievable within an acceptable time-frame.

Second, intelligence is proving a critical weakness. Recently, I heard an American commander deplore the extraordinary paucity of information on the ground: “We spend all these billions of dollars on the CIA and your SIS, and we know next to nothing about what the other side is doing. We need less technology and more spies.”

Third, and most important, whatever military successes American forces achieve against the insurgents, there is no sign that they are winning the critical battle, for hearts and minds. The experience of ordinary Iraqis with the US military is at best alienating, at worst terrifying. There is no hint of shared purpose, mutual sympathy and respect between the armoured columns rolling along the roads, intermittently belching fire, and the hapless mass of local people, caring only for survival.

Hastings is a former newspaper editor, military historian and notedly conservative in his politics.

One of the world’s most frightening demographic stories is occuring in Russia. Its population is diminishing so rapidly that by mid-century it could have one-third fewer people than today.

I can hardly believe this sentence from the BBC story: “Statistically, a baby boy born in Russia today is unlikely to see his 60th birthday.” [I originally had "16th", not 60th. I don't think it was my typo -- I think the mistake was in the original BBC article, since changed.] The problem isn’t just poverty; in fact, poverty levels have diminished in Russia in recent years. It’s the continuation of a long-term, terrible trend that results from poor environment, poor diet and poor lifestyle.

Murray Feshbach spoke eloquently about these issues in Davos in the early ’90s. Then, hardly anyone listened to Murray’s explanations of what he called ecocide in Russia. We should have listened harder.

Given that I haven’t been on holiday, I think I may have set a record for Davos Newbies inaction over the last few weeks. I’ll try to get back on track in the coming weeks.

I’m back in Berkeley for 10 days or so, for the last time without family. My next trip back here, on July 11, will be with family in tow. That’s a huge relief. I haven’t particularly enjoyed the schizophrenic existence of living in London, working in Berkeley, and spending an inordinate amount of time on airplanes flying between the two.