I heard this author on The Daily Show yesterday. His ideas are very interesting. Putting this book on my "To Read" list.

He writes here: http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/author/ian_bremmer/

And his book is promoted here: http://www.jcurvebook.com/

American policymakers have long sought to meet international challenges and manage threats to U.S. national interests with a simple formula: engage your friends and isolate your enemies. Weighing their options, those states still debating whether to adopt the role of friend or foe will choose profitable cooperation over damaging confrontation.

So the theory goes.

The J curve reveals why this approach has never yielded positive results. It is a tool designed to help us understand how the world's political decision-makers make choices - and why nations rise and fall. It demonstrates why and how the U.S. can re-imagine its foreign policy.

Some states remain stable only because their governments isolate their citizens, both from the outside world and from one another. Others states are stable because their political, economic, and social institutions are fueled by globalization and thrive on change. The J curve reveals that for a nation that is "stable because it is closed" to become "stable because it is open," it must survive a period of dangerous instability. In an age of global terrorism, weapons proliferation, religious conflict, and other transnational threats, these countries' transitions toward openness are everyone's business.

Why does North Korea invite international isolation? Which internal pressures erode stability in Saudi Arabia? How might shifting demographics fundamentally change Iran and Israel? Why is Indian democracy so durable, and how is it changing? How long can China resist domestic pressure for fundamental political reform? To what extent can U.S. policymakers influence change within these states? The J curve offers counterintuitive insights into all these questions.

Pretty good:

Every week we see headlines about President Bush, Condi Rice, and various European leaders expressing a policy toward rogue states that amounts to a variation of "If these guys don't behave we'll isolate them." Well, that makes sense if you're an adult talking to a child. But what they don't understand is that's precisely what the leaders of authoritarian countries need to stay in power. I'm not saying that the U.S. is wrong in what it's trying to do, or that the goals of the Bush administration (or the Clinton administration before it) are malevolent or wrong-headed. America has long stood for individual rights and freedoms, liberty, openness, and economic prosperity. Those are all great goals. But we're being increasingly challenged all around the globe and it's vitally important we get things right. Unfortunately the policies and incentives that we and the international community have been using to deal with these crises are not working; they're not resolving the conflicts because they're based on a fundamental misunderstanding of what motivates the leaders of countries in the developing world with which we have the greatest problems. And these problems will only get bigger as the energy crisis deepens and as the proliferation of nuclear weapons and weapons technology increases. We ignore this misunderstanding at our peril.

Excellent quotes.

y only issue is with:
engage your friends and isolate your enemies.

As long as one remembers that 'friends' may be just less threatening enemies(at the time), all is cool.

For example.
America is country A.
Friend is country F.
Enemy is country E.

Though not necessarily country, it may be a force, or group.

A might not even like F, but will engage(or support it), if F opposes E.
Or F might be a friend merely because it is less of a threat to A than E is.
Supporting F to oppose E, does not necessarily make A and F real allies. It does not even make them friends.

When E is deposed, F will have to be an enemy to be dealt with.
At that time critics with no real understanding of the dynamics will cut A to the quick, because F now appears as a bigger enemy. It IS is a bigger enemy now because you can compare it to E, which is no longer a threat(or less of one).

E may be in the habit of murder, rape, and theft. 3 bad things.
F may be in the habit of only rape and theft. Only 2 bad things.

Because A supports F to depose E, does not make A in the habit of rape and theft. We should make F stop that when E is deposed, of course.

For example, we might engage Muamar Quadafi, to arm up and kill all the Jangaweed in Sudan. He would be our so called friend for that time. But he is not really our friend.

And here I figured F stood for France...not Libya.

He's saying the idea of "engage your friends and isolate your enemies" doesn't work. In fact, it actually usually works in favor of the dictator/oppressive regime, to be isolated. Because being isolated with no news coming in, no comparison to how the rest of the world operates, makes a dictatorship much more stable. That's one side of the curve. On the other side is the open society. The thing that destabilizes us would be closing society and taking away liberties.

For instance in Saudi Arabia. If the current monarchy were overthrown I'm sure we ALL know what would replace it, an extreme theocracy, probably one that would make Iran look downright progressive. Destabilizing that country would be disasterous. The real challenge is to find a way to slowly bring it closer democracy without throwing it into chaos.

I agree that merely isolating enemies is worthless.

Just look at North Korea.
Look at Iraq.
Look at Iran.

Sanctions don't work. You will need to go in and remove the problem.

Isolation was only necessary when we had to fear the Soviets nuking us.

Now China and Russia are going to get a radioactive cloud plume floating over their countries because of NK testing their nuke. Maybe the risk of 500 thousand Di George babies might convince them to step in and stop the whacko.

Sanctions worked for South Africa. It would be good to know what made them work in that case when they've failed in others.

Other than apartheid, S. Africa is a fairly open society. So, being on the opposite side of the J curve, sanctions would work. At least, having not yet read the book, that's what I'm thinking.

I think, from what little I heard of the author, isolating the soviet union only worked because people were getting information realatively freely.

I was hoping to find the book today at Costco. But they only had State of Denial, which is darned near sold out! So I grabbed a copy of that. I really do want to read this book too.

He's saying the idea of "engage your friends and isolate your enemies" doesn't work. In fact, it actually usually works in favor of the dictator/oppressive regime, to be isolated. Because being isolated with no news coming in, no comparison to how the rest of the world operates, makes a dictatorship much more stable. That's one side of the curve. On the other side is the open society. The thing that destabilizes us would be closing society and taking away liberties.

For instance in Saudi Arabia. If the current monarchy were overthrown I'm sure we ALL know what would replace it, an extreme theocracy, probably one that would make Iran look downright progressive. Destabilizing that country would be disasterous. The real challenge is to find a way to slowly bring it closer democracy without throwing it into chaos.


I would concur. Isolating your enemy does nothing but ensure that they will remain your undaunted enemy.

Relations with foreign powers must be conducted with a carrot and stick approach. If we want Syria and Iran and N. Korea to abide by our desires...we have to offer them real benefits...and harsh consequences.

If we want Iran to stop their nuclear asperations, we need to offer them trade, normalized relations, gestures of friendship...(conditioned on a cessation of hostile policy against Israel). We also, however, have to make it well known that not taking us up on these offers and continuing down their current path will not bring empty words of condemnation and hollow sanctions, but the very real threat of military annihiliation and the destruction of their government by force.

Sanctions worked for South Africa. It would be good to know what made them work in that case when they've failed in others.

The sanctions for South Africa did not work alone. There were also widespread and often violent resistance movements rising up against the government.

Sanctions aren't used in isolation anywhere.

Sanctions are used pretty much in isolation, relatively speaking.

And hell, we currently can't even get the world to agree on sanctions for some of these rogue states.

Well, I think the book goes into why this doesn't work:
Relations with foreign powers must be conducted with a carrot and stick approach. If we want Syria and Iran and N. Korea to abide by our desires...we have to offer them real benefits...and harsh consequences.
Harsh consequences, as we saw in Iraq, just leads to instability. Out of that, who knows what will come.

I really gotta get that book.

Another excerpt:
Look at Iran today. The U.S. and Europe need to recognize that they have two goals with Iran. One is to prevent them from developing nukes and the other is to change the Iranian regime. The first goal may be impossible to attain. And to the extent that it is possible, limited international inspections as well as constraints--with Russian cooperation--on selling the Iranians nuclear relevant goods and technologies may potentially be effective. As to the second goal, the best way to do that is to globalize the country. Wire it. Invest more in it. Allow more travel to Tehran and more Iranians to travel to other places. Encourage more foreign direct investment into the country. Do everything you can to increase the capacity for the average Iranian to be aware of how the developed world functions. The reason North Korea continues to be run by a ruthless dictator is that he has hermetically sealed his country off. There's essentially no way into that country, no defectors, no information getting in or out. The average North Korean doesn't have a clue as to what things are like in the out side world. Similarly, there's a reason why the world's longest serving head of state (at least until the recent transfer of power) is in Cuba. And a large part of the reason is U.S. sanctions. I want to emphasize, once again, it's not because the U.S. is being malevolent or because our goals are somehow impure. The point is not that the U.S. wants to do the wrong thing with Cuba, but rather that the mechanism we're using to implement our goals is not actually punishing Castro but rather helping him maintain his grip on power.

Iraq could have been a success if it wasnt for the bumbling of the administration, and/or if we waited until after success was acheived in afghanistan.

How do you figure it could be a success with 3 groups of people that don't really like one another, and it least one country actively trying to ensure it fails and a number of other miscellaneous external groups using it to fuel their recruiting efforts for jihadists?

I think a plan that involved more troops and had a post saddam regime plan that didn't think that

"I really do believe that we will be greeted as liberators. I’ve talked with a lot of Iraqis in the last several months myself, had them to the White House....The read we get on the people of Iraq is there is no question but what they want to get rid of Saddam Hussein and they will welcome as liberators the United States when we come to do that."

Would have fair a lot more successfully.

Hmmm... well more troops would have been a start. But I'm becoming more convinced that unless we planned to occupy that country with half a million troops for 5 years or more, which I don't think is realistic, it simply was impossible from the outset.

I'm becoming more convinced that unless we planned to occupy that country with half a million troops for 5 years or more, which I don't think is realistic, it simply was impossible from the outset.

A proper moral foundation for the war (or a better diplomatic case for war, if you prefer to see it that way) would have eased many of the current problems. Throwing more troops at an insurgency may well be effective but it doesn't resolve the wider and less tangible problems.

Iraq is perfectly justifiable, however I hold no illusions that we went in for those reasons.

The world as a whole is way to complacent in the actions of countries like Iraq, North Korea, Sudan, Rwanda etc.

Sovereignity is not a right to do whatever you please internally.

Iraq is perfectly justifiable...
Oh what grounds?

Hmmm... well more troops would have been a start. But I'm becoming more convinced that unless we planned to occupy that country with half a million troops for 5 years or more, which I don't think is realistic, it simply was impossible from the outset.

A better plan would have been to dispose of Saddam, then offer our protection to the Kurds with the understanding that any conflict between Kurdistan and Turkey would bring the big hammer down on the Kurds, while offering a compensatory arms deal. After that, let the damn Arabs kill each other or make their own nation, as they can.