US Assistance to Devastated Japan Impressive, Timely

Japan's government has come under intense criticism for its slow and paltry response to the devastating earthquake and tsunami in the Northeast. The US Navy, on the other hand, has been "Johnny on the spot" with water, food, clothing, bedding, and other emergency first-response relief efforts.

When United States Navy helicopters swept down on the school in a ruined Japanese village, survivors first looked hesitantly from the windows. Then they rushed out, helping unload food, water and clothes. They clasped hands with the Americans. Some embraced them.

...Soon after the devastating earthquake and tsunami struck Japan, the United States military began what it calls Operation Tomodachi (Friend), one of its largest relief efforts in recent years. At present, about 20 American ships have massed off Japan’s northeastern coast, including the Ronald Reagan, a nuclear-powered carrier whose helicopters are busily ferrying supplies to survivors.

That relief is getting through to sometimes difficult-to-reach coastal areas devastated by the March 11 double disaster. They are also the latest showcase in the Pentagon’s efforts to use its forces to win good will for the United States abroad, a strategy that it used successfully in Indonesia after the 2004 tsunami there.

...Much of what the Americans have handed out are goods taken from their own ships: extra food and blankets, and even the sailors’ own clothes.

There were stuffed toys for children, too.

To alleviate food shortages in the shelters, the Ronald Reagan sent 77,000 frozen hot dogs to a Japanese warship, which boiled them and gave them out. _NYTimes

Across the US, civilian efforts to help the victims of Japan's natural disasters have also been significant. Donations of medicines, foods, cash, and other needed goods have been flowing out from a typically generous American populace.

China's relief efforts have been rather limited in comparison, and funneled through government channels. Given China's history of poisoned food exports, the Japanese should be cautious about testing all aid from China before consuming it.

The competence and capability of the US military to assist a distressed civilian populace is considerable. The US military spends a great deal of time and money training its personnel, and providing them with quality tools to do their jobs.

Most American servicemen would far prefer to go on humanitarian missions than on wartime missions -- particularly in situations such as Japan's recent disasters.

Of course, Japan received significant aid from the UK, Australia, New Zealand, Canada, and several European countries. The impulse to assist the suffering and make the world a better place is widespread among European peoples, and has been so for centuries -- since the industrial revolution and the coming of affluence. It is just that almost all of the outside aid sent to Japan had to be funneled through the Japanese government bureaucracy -- which can be unwieldy, like most civilian government bureaucracies.

The US military, on the other hand, was able to provide the necessities on a large scale at the point of need, in a timely manner. That should receive far more comment than it has gotten.

An Expansive China: Good Witch or Bad Witch?

Image Credit: Bruce Hall

Blogger Bruce Hall has looked at the China phenomenon for some time, and has arrived at some parallel conclusions to my own. China clearly aims to become the single dominant political power on Earth by the end of the 21st century, if not before.

Which raises an interesting question: Is China a "good witch" or is she a "bad witch?"--to borrow a line from The Wizard of Oz. Is China a good hegemon, or a bad hegemon? It should be easy to tell the difference.

Consider a bipolar world, as it existed under the US and the USSR. Two hegemons, two hegemonies. Communist China formerly lay under the protection of the USSR hegemony, as did North Korea and East Germany. But Taiwan, West Germany, and South Korea lay under the US hegemony. Which nations prospered, and which nations languished?

One could easily conclude that the US was a good witch, and the USSR was a bad witch.

So, what kind of witch is China, under the CCP? Economic output is high among nations, and growing. Scientific and technological discovery and output are growing, with strong cooperation between western companies and nations and China. Military strength is growing extremely rapidly, with strong help from Russia, the EU, and Israel--even the US, at least through the 1990s.

China is growing in strength, economic power, and global reach.

What is China doing with this growing power and reach, to help us determine if she is a good witch or a bad witch? When Indonesia, Thailand, Sri Lanka, etc. suffered a catastrophic tsunami, was China's military the first to arrive and the last to leave, providing life-saving and normalizing help? In Sudan, where China operates large oil concessions, is China helping to resolve the massive human rights disaster in Darfur, and the equally massive crisis between north and south Sudan? When working with its partner Iran, does China attempt to influence its partner to reduce the dangers of nuclear proliferation or to influence Iran's state sponsored terror outreaches inside Lebanon, Israel, Saudi Arabia, and Iraq?

Imagine an internet, where China controls the routers. How would it differ from the internet you know now? No need to imagine, simply look at the internet inside China. Is this the internet of the future that you desire? Where bloggers who attempt to cover protests are beaten to death by government enforcers?

Imagine a world system of justice, where China controls law enforcement, and the courts and the prisons. No need to imagine, just look at Chinese justice, and prisons--particularly the political prisons, suppliers of much needed human organs for high CCP officials.

Imagine a political system controlled by China. No need to imagine. Just look at the CCP, with power over the entire world. No messy and expensive campaigns or elections. Everything is stable, reliable. The proper connections will get you anywhere you need to go, accompanied by the proper bribe. What? You have no connections, no bribes? No worries. Go get a job--get out.

Imagine a world ecosystem under the command of China. No need to imagine. Just look at the rivers of China, at the air of China. Watch China's soil blow away for lack of proper care, watch unchecked development cover the land and pollute the water and air. Watch the soot and dust of China cover the ice and snow of the world, melting, melting, melting....

Imagine a world economic system under China. No need to imagine. No patents, no copyrights, no music or literature royalties. Everything is cheap--and counterfeit! Want to start a company? Bribe the right official--and don't worry about product or process licenses. Just make what you want how you want it, as long as you grease the official's palm. What's that? You are concerned that innovation and invention would drop? No problem. The party will take care of any intransigence on the part of scientists, engineers, inventors, etc. They will know their duty.

Imagine literature, the arts, music under China. No need to imagine. Only the best for party officials and those on good terms with the party. But original composition, art, literature--particularly that which pushes the limits of what is politically correct--sorry, no. Do you like your human organs? Well, then.

Ultralight Pilots Needed: Quicker, More Economic Disaster Relief

The seeds of Mr. Lishman's invention were sown in 1998, when he watched news coverage of the relief efforts that followed Hurricane Mitch, a sluggish storm that stalled over Central America, killing nearly 11,000 people and leaving more than 8,000 missing. Mr. Lishman noted that it took weeks to get supplies to some areas that were accessible only by air. GlobeandMail

Disaster rescue and relief is expensive work. Remote areas often lack landing strips for large supply craft, and helicopters are incredibly expensive to own, operate, and maintain.

Mr. Lishman is on to a new project - a tiny, skeletal aircraft he hopes will revolutionize the business of disaster relief. Mr. Lishman wants to pack more than a dozen of the little planes into a container that can be flown to areas such as Sudan's Darfur region, where they could be deployed like mechanized hornets, buzzing to hard-hit sites with loads of food and medical supplies.

...Mr. Lishman quickly saw that the helicopter had some key drawbacks when it came to disaster relief. Getting them to the scene was a problem; helicopters are too slow to fly over very long distances, and are too large and complex to break down and pack inside an airplane. They are also extremely costly. The least expensive helicopter on the market (the two-seat Robinson R22) goes for more than $225,000. Most helicopters cost far more.

Helicopters also demand constant, expensive maintenance and a highly skilled pilot. In Canada, a Robinson R22 rents for about $400 an hour, including the pilot, while a larger helicopter, such as the popular Bell JetRanger, costs about $1,000 an hour.

...The rescue trike's key feature is its simplicity: It can be built for little more than the price of a mid-size car, maintained by a shade-tree mechanic, and packed into a box for easy transport. Mr. Lishman said at least 15 of the machines can be loaded into a transport plane, packed inside a steel container.

The transport plane would serve as a delivery system for the Air First Aid team. After landing at the nearest available airstrip, the rescue trikes would be unloaded and assembled. If necessary, the container they arrived in could serve as a shelter for the pilots. The fleet of the ultralights would be loaded with supplies and then head for the disaster scene, guided by an inexpensive GPS unit.

Source

I like the idea. It makes sense on many levels, and In fact, I wouldn't mind flying one of these "trikes" in a relief situation. The biggest drawback is the weather limitations that ultralight aircraft must necessarily respect.

Although these rescue trikes are not supposed to be thought of as "toys," I am putting this post in the "Adventure Toys" category just for the fun of it.

Training in Hell, for Hell--and High Water

The appalling costs of war can be measured in the dead, the maimed, the homeless, and the good things that could not be accomplished because the resources were expended making war. War is an evil thing, and spawns other evils such as famine, disease, and pillage.

Is it possible that war spawns good as well as evil, at least in some cases? Certainly ridding the world of Hitler's Nazi machine could be considered good. Mad dictators are always threats to their own countries and their neighbors.

But on a smaller scale, is it possible that war may spin off other goods besides relieving a population from tyranny and oppression? Robert Kaplan suggests that a nation can be enriched by the proficiency of warriors--can reap large benefits from the competencies that fighters gain in overcoming the immediate challenges of war.

What I'm talking about is a kind of "warrior working class:" high-school graduates, but who can speak foreign languages, often exotic languages; know their way around capital cities from Brazaville to Mombasa, to all kinds of places; can deal with NGOs and others better and better; and, obviously, know how to fight.

But most of what they do, ironically, falls into the realm of disaster relief. Now I'm starting to warm to my theme. In any given week, U.S. Special Forces Command is involved in about sixty-eight countries around the world. This was a typical summer for me with the U.S. military. I spent the first half of it in Algeria, the second half in Nepal, where we are also active. In these sixty-eight countries—Colombia, the Philippines, Djibouti, Somalia, all these training missions to Thailand, Singapore, training at the Jungle Warfare School in Brunei, other things—what I have found is that the fewer American troops we have on the ground, the lower beneath the media radar screen it is, the more it attempts to nip a problem in the bud when it is still on page 11—before it gets to page 5, even—the more bang for the buck the taxpayer gets out of it.

....The distinction between disaster relief and combat is much less than you think. It is only the training for expeditionary combat that enabled the marines and sailors to perform so well in Indonesia. Combat and relief is about quick insertion. It's about access. It's about establishing security perimeters the moment you're on the ground, because after you have a natural disaster, be it an earthquake, a flood,or a hurricane, normal security systems get swept away along with everything else, and if there wasn't lawlessness before, there is now.

....What we have seen in Indonesia and New Orleans, and what we'll see more of, is the militarization of relief assistance, because of the lawlessness that erupts after a natural disaster, because the military, precisely by training for combat, is best equipped to provide relief fast, because it has the assets, air and sea assets. What's the first thing you need after a disaster, normally? Fresh water. The USS ABRAHAM LINCOLN can pump—pumped, in fact—hundreds of millions of gallons of fresh water onshore in Indonesia. They ramped that up, because the sailors did not take showers for two weeks in order to get more water available for the civilian people onshore.

....Another issue here is that we are going to see more and more of these disasters, for the simple reason that you have vast urban populations living on environmentally, seismically, and climatically fragile places for the first time in human history. Two-thirds of China lives in a flood zone.

I did a cover piece in The Atlantic last June about how the U.S. military sees China, in terms of rising to China's "shop till you drop" policy on building nuclear submarines and acquiring them. But there's an irony in all of this. While the U.S. military Pacific Command is now formulating how to contain a rising Chinese military power, they also know that the first time U.S. troops go onshore in China may be for disaster relief, ten or twenty years from now. How they perform may have a great impact on stabilizing U.S.-Chinese relations. In an era of global mass media, whatever the politics are between two countries, if there is a massive disaster, that country simply, politically, cannot say no to any foreign element that has the assets and is able to provide relief on the spot.

....But the military on the ground, these NCOs, these noncoms, are getting really good at things.

Source.

The military does not pay people to sit around and do nothing, unlike most civil service jobs and university jobs. The military trains its members in skills, and puts them in situations where those skills will be used. Whether a wartime disaster or a peacetime disaster--the military trains for disaster. As bad as war is, being unprepared for war and disaster in a world such as this one is worse.

The media focuses on the returning caskets, and the returning amputees, post traumatic syndromes, and brain damaged service members. For every casualty, there are hundreds returning with more skills and more insights on the world. War is surely hell, but surviving war with your learned competencies intact can be good for everyone you deal with in the future.

As Kaplan noted above, the military tries to extinguish a fire before it becomes noticeable. The military is sometimes given a mission that does not allow that type of preventive warfare to be carried out. The military has to train for all sorts of missions that political leaders might assign.

The military focuses on "getting things done." That means a focus on the competencies of a task. Given that government schools, universities, and popular media focus on anything but competencies for real life, the military acts as a useful counter-point to most of the rest of an affluent--and corrupt--society. As long as the military remains firmly under civilian leadership, that "can do" focus on practical competencies can be channeled into constructive uses for the society.

Descent into the Inferno

Last week in the US city of New Orleans, a large number of people descended into hell on earth. Following the breach of a flood levee, the partially evacuated city lapsed into total lawlessness, as the city police joined the looters, or simply deserted their posts and left the city. As the city government collapsed into uselessness, the Louisiana state government apparently failed to fill the gap, even lacking an individual to place in charge of the logistics of relief efforts. This failure of local government to attempt to meet the needs of a devastating emergency boggles the mind.

The entire world was treated to stories of massive lootings, arson, rape, pillage, and murder. A small group of mostly European and Australian tourists, racially white, were threatened with death repeatedly by the black co-refugees inside the major evacuation centers inside New Orleans. These tourists were very afraid that the police could not protect them, and the police admitted as much. In the midst of an incredible human disaster, they were threatened because they were white. Not in Haiti, not in Cote d'Ivoire. In the United States of America, the richest nation in the world.

Thank goodness for the US military and its ability to get to disasters quickly. Despite the failure of local and state government, the US Navy, Coast Guard, and other elements of the US military were able to ultimately bring relief and order back into the chaos and impromptu human violence -- and make the place safe again for civilian forces. But what if there was no US military -- or if the US military were as incompetent and corrupt as most other militaries of the world? Things would have turned out much differently.

In order for the progress toward the singularity, toward the next level, to take place, civilisation has to maintain its hold on at least the developed world. The rule of law must be maintained, law and order must provide the stability for progress.

Various subcultures naturally develop in the freedom of the western world, where multiculturalism is celebrated, and some of these subcultures will inevitably become dysfunctional at some point. This dysfunctionality must be pointed out, and corrected both by the leaders of society at large, by the media in the society, and by respected people within the subculture itself. If the subculture has devolved too far to produce respected people from within, who will oppose its dysfunctionality, then other means of protecting society will have to be worked out, preferably while still respecting everyone's freedoms and rights.

This problem is something that will have to be dealt with eventually. I suspect that it will be contained well enough to allow the transitions I have been describing to occur among much of the population. At that point, better ideas for turning the negative devolution into a positive evolution will be produced.

It would be nice if a developed society of modern between-levels humans could come up with solutions for this problem that they themselves are responsible for, but between-levels humans are not far evolved above primitive level humans themselves. The dominance of the shit-throwing monkeys (post-modernist dogmatists and the political correctness police) in academia, government, and much of the corporate world is testimony to that.

No, it seems clear to me that the appearance of a significant number of next level humans will be necessary, before any meaningful solution to this "devolution in the middle of evolution" can be found.