World Economic Forum: gap between rich and poor...biggest risk to global stability

See also Oxfam Report on wealth disptribution, January 21, 2014, acorncentreblog.com
Davos 2014: Widening wealth gap 'biggest risk' in 2014

From BBC website, January 16, 2014

The increasing gap between rich and poor is seen as the biggest risk to global stability, according to a survey by the World Economic Forum (WEF).

In its annual report it warned that income disparity is seen as the risk "most likely to to cause serious damage globally in the coming decade".

The increased risk of a cyber attack was also highlighted.

Firms were told they needed to do more to deal with that risk as well as regain public trust in the internet.
'Lost generation'
The report warned that worsening levels of income disparity could lead to more social unrest - such as that seen in the Arab Spring.

"Disgruntlement can lead to the dissolution of the fabric of society, especially if young people feel they don't have a future," said Jennifer Blanke, WEF chief economist.

"This is something that affects everybody."

David Cole, group chief risk officer at Swiss Re and contributor to the report, said: "I'm a big supporter of capitalism but there are moments in time when capitalism can go into overdrive and it is important to have measures in place - whether regulatory, government or tax measures - that ensure we avoid excesses in terms of income and wealth distribution."

The WEF also warned about the "lost generation" - young people coming of age in the 2010s who face either unemployment or underemployment.

"The younger generation in the mature markets struggle with ever fewer job opportunities and the need to support an ageing population", said Mr Cole.

"While in the emerging markets there are more jobs to be had, the workforce does not yet possess the broad based skill-sets necessary to satisfy demand," he added.

As a result, he said it was important to think in the long term, and that countries should not simply support jobs at home but that they also facilitated migration and invested in skills.

Are we experiencing a collective, unconscious "existential moment"?

Vermont Governor Peter Shumlin dedicated his entire State of the State address recently to the problem of drug addiction, particularly the heroine addiction of too many of Vermont residents, linked both to the legalization of opiates that initiate the problem for many and the criminal approach to those who are addicted, commonly known as the 'war on drugs' that is simply not working.
While pointing to the difference between drug-dependent people for whom the society does not have, and does not need to have any fear, and those whose actions required a frightened response (the legal system) the governor is hoping and planning to present legislation that directs, trains and implements social policies that can be administered to accomplish two fundamental goals: the reduction of costs for incarceration, and the rehabilitation of those who have become addicted.
So far, "highly enlightened" is the way we would characterize the Vermont Governor's thinking. He has a problem, and a proposed solution. He has also courageously brought the problem out of the closet.
We would like to speculate, not so much on the public processes, as on the root causes, which, although highly complex and multilayered, can nevertheless be teased out of the culture that has evolved in the United States, and also in many other countries around the world.
Underlying too many of our social and political problems is the language that frames too many debates, and the attitudes that gestate that kind of perception. We have aborted time, by magnifying the nano-second and attempting to grab all of the extrinsic, extreme and orgasmic rewards from that instant, at the expense of a longer, less needy, less neurotic and less narcissistic motive. And of course, that "clutching and grabbing" is little more than a desperate feeling of scarcity:

• of too little hope,
• of expectations being dashed,
• of things falling apart that used to work,
• of institutions failing in their tradition, assigned roles and expectations,
• of corporate, political and traditional "public leaders" demonstrating the same attitudes, and inevitably stumbling on the same shoals of instant gratification, personal aggrandizement in the pursuit of phoney and merely extrinsic prizes
• of too many parents out of work
• of too many cupboards empty of food
• of too many deaths and too much denial of its meaning and purpose 
• of too many super-bugs and too little acknowledgement of how too many antibiotics produced them
• of too many texts and twitters devoid of both content and connection
• of too many guns in too many hands and too little promise of restraint
• of too many wars and too many refugees and too little hope of truce
• of too many digital devices and too much distraction
• of too much activity and too little meaning
• of too much frenetic competition and too few, if any intrinsic rewards
• of too much globalization and too little fairness in its application
• of too much insouciance and too little truth telling
• of too much power and wealth at the top and too little "trickling down"
• of too much heat and too little water in too many places
• of too much incontrovertible and indisputable evidence of human complicity in global warming and too much denial and avoidance of prevention
• of too many fires and too little prevention
• of too many broken lives and no comprehension of shared responsibility for those lives
• of too many examples of runaway "trains" carrying too much danger without public and applied brakes or the promise of brakes
• of the pursuit of too many 'hits' and too few hugs
• of too much preaching and no listening, for the obvious reason that it has worn out its usefulness, its relevance and its caring
• of the quantifying of one's reputation through the acquisition of things, cars, houses, degrees, office space, and digital devices and the concomitant dependence on money, too much for some and too little for too many

Of course, this list is reminiscent of the existentialist moment, on a grande scale, leaving us all having to confront, without a culture of adequate support, training, skill-development and perspective, that moment when we all become painfully conscious of our own meaninglessness. And the corollary to that moment is that each individual is responsible for finding and executing meaning in that individual life. How does the corollary of taking responsibility become activated if and when  the moment is collective, unconscious, and denied?
 And when that moment, on a collective, unconscious level is paired with all the readily available placebos and more penetrating pain-killers (of the psychic and the physical and emotional variety)and when that moment is also paired with the denial of the reality in which we are living, a denial so profound that only micro-glimpses emerge from the occasional academic study without a framework or a public lens to evaluate its validity....then we have a rush into a kind of oblivion merely to survive, at least for the moment.
Really that rush into oblivion and painlessness is a loud and primal scream both to stop the madness and to find others who feel and are prepared to confront the same emptiness.
Like Leningen's ants merely following their own kind to oblivion, we are all in a vehicle that is careening over a very steep cliff to our own self-immolation, with no responsible driver and no safety net, yet with an engine so powerful and so unleashed that it cannot be stopped.

Falling through the rails....if you will pardon the metaphor

It is not often, but there are times when the United States looks as if it is still living the frontier life, back at least two or three decades from the rest of the world. This is especially ironic, puzzling and can even be tragic, given how forward-leaning it is in many spheres of contemporary life.
Backwardness and lagging  behind is particularly evident in the question of the technology the U.S. deploys on credit and debit cards.
While the world is equipped with micro-chips containing encrypted information, and thereby providing a level of security above the magnetic stripe, the U.S. and one other country in Africa, continue to use cards with a magnetic stripe.
It is those magnetic stipe credit and debit cards that have compromised in the hacking debacle that faces some 110 million Target customers.
But the real story lies behind the failure to keep up with the technology.
Who is going to pay for the leap into the chip cards?
In most countries, there is a separation between merchant banks and retail or consumer banks, while in the U.S. that distinction does not exist. And although the credit card companies continue to charge exorbitant interest rates of high teen percentages, or higher depending on the credit worthiness of the card holder, and VISA and MasterCard provide a level of protection that does not accompany the debit cards, no single entity is willing to "purchase" the new technology, even though we all know that whatever the new system would cost, the consumer would eventually pay the freight since the cost would be passed along to him/her buy whichever institution made the initial investment.
Preserving the "freedom" of the business and bank owners/operators is now costing 110 million, (and this kind of hacking incident could be replicated many times before the system is changed) loyal and credit-worthy, and honourable consumers who bought at Target in the month before Christmas, considerable inconvenience as well as lost cash in many cases.
So it is the consumer who suffers, (not to mention the loss in business to Target) while the "big players" fiddle, and while Congress which has not even entered the credit card business in any significant way for several years, while the technology has galloped into the future, sits idling its million-dollar engines, smoking cigars and drinking martinis. (Over 50% of the members of Congress now qualify as millionaires, according to the latest reports on their personal wealth!!)
A similar "falling through the cracks on a serious public issue in both Canada and the United States exists over who is going to purchase new rolling stock for the purpose of transporting dangerous materials on the railroads that criss-cross both countries, especially with the advent of the new and more dangerous crude that is coming from both North Dakota and the Alberta tar sands in search of new markets.
The current edition of tanker rail cars (DOT 111) carries the number of the U.S. piece of legislation that brought them into service, with their relatively thin metal skins, and their relatively insecure connections that have proven to break easily in the event of a crash, of which there have been two in the recent weeks in Canada, first in Lac Magantic in Quebec  and then in Plaster Rock in New Brunswick.
While the Canadian government has proposed tougher standards, thicker walls and safer connections, the cost to convert the hundreds of thousands of DOT 111 cars currently in operation on both sides of the 49th parallel is estimated to be $1 billion. Currently the existing cars are owned by several principals, including the leasing companies, the oil companies the rail companies and some transport companies. None of those principals is prepared to bear the cost alone, even though, once again, whoever is consider to be the "consumer" will ultimately bear the cost in additional price hikes.
And the legislation that has been outstripped by the advances in the acquiring of crude, more flammable and therefore more dangerous in the event of a derailment, the legislation and the regulations lag behind the public protection of ordinary people living in small towns and villages through which the national rail lines are built.
So on both credit/debit cards in the U.S. and on rail cars designed to transport dangerous materials on both sides of the 49th parallel, governments are failing the ordinary people, in areas that are proving dangerous to their bank accounts and, although less frequently, to the safety of their communities and their lives.

Reflections on retribution, or as we say in Canada, "revenge"...

Retribution, the word that is becoming attached to the Chris Christie "bridgegate" debacle, is often called "revenge" on the north side of the 49th parallel. Apparently, it is 'stock-in-trade' for politicians. Just this week, it has been reported that Hillary Clinton's presidential campaign staff prepared a list of those who had not supported her 2008 bid for the White House, using a ranking from 1-7 with the highest number being assigned to those who were especially guilty of betraying her ambition. Bill Richardson, former Secretary of Energy in the Clinton administration is at the top of her list of offenders. John Kerry warrants inclusion, as does the deceased Ted Kennedy.
And, it is a piece of business for which the human species cannot and must not be proud.
And, while there might be some legal curbs to spikes in retribution (an annoyed retired police office shot a theatre-going father who had just texted his daughter from his seat in the theater just yesterday in a Tampa Florida movie theater and has been charged with second-degree manslaughter), the behaviour is so endemic that it seems more like a plague for which we have no antidote.
Feeling "offended," insulted, put down, challenged or even contested will far too often bring out the "get-back" motive in too many of us. There is a deep and embedded feature to our culture that says that difficulties, including scraps while growing up, comprise a most useful and relevant part of that upbringing, as if to face conflict is to grow into maturity. However, there are too many examples of that conflict emerging from an act of retribution or revenge. And such acts are too often resulting from feelings of inadequacy, jealousy, or feeling disrespected.
Shakespeare's Othello is a classic framing of the jealousy that seeks revenge, from Iago, for his having been passed over for an appointment. It demonstrates the ultimate tragedy of such motives becoming the consuming passion of the offended. Nothing good comes from the scheming of Iago's histrionics, and only wife Emilia finally exposes his truth, too late for both Othello and Desdemona. Fabricating a phantom affair between Cassio and Desdemona, as revenge on Othello for having passed over Iago, and continuing the fabrication, comprises the core narrative of the drama.
It is such "fabricating" out of the imagination of the "offended" who themselves are too often unwilling to accept responsibility for their own situation, including being passed over for promotion, that entraps others who themselves can be said to be too "innocent" too "gullible" and thereby victims.
Refusing to appoint aspiring candidates for positions of responsibility, because they simply did not merit consideration, given the options available, has proven to provoke retribution, revenge, even in the hallowed halls of the Anglican/Episcopal church. Entitlements are baked into the expectations of those whose family "funded" the new building; it is also baked into the expectations of those who have a history of "being friends with the bishop" in another life; it is also baked into the expectations of those who have contributed significantly to the management of the affairs of the parish or mission.
One woman, whose family constituted the "royalty" of a small hamlet, considered herself the next warden, while I served as clergy, responsible for filling the post. Her offense at not being given the post included her active, yet secret, participation in my removal. Another woman, whose history of serving as a leader needed a break, actively sought my removal from a different church. She was simply unable to accept not being included in the inner circle. Another woman, this time a clergy, was so offended by reviews that dubbed her "assistant" a leader when compared with her, that she formally sought his termination from further assignments. The bishop called that "chemistry" when asked why those assignments were terminated.
Another, this time, male whose claim to power rested in his "friendship" with the bishop, proudly declared his role in the removal of a clergy "because he was not spiritual enough"....and implied that the bishop concurred with the removal. Another male, desperate to become warden, pleaded his case on the history of another and different relationship with a previous bishop, as his "reason" for consideration.
None of these people, as it turns out, including the clergy, were the least bit interested in pursuing their own spiritual lives, through reflection, prayer, reading and private soul-searching, but were rather committed to a public expression of their "role" of leadership, or pursuit of power for its own sake. And, for exposing that, a price had to be paid.
Would I do it differently, if back in the same situation? Not on your life!
Nor would I be interested in putting my name forward for any public office, requiring as it does, the vulnerability to the most base motives of some of the most insecure people whose capacity to argue and confront, without seeking retribution, revenge, payback...call it what you will....is zero.
The pursuit of power seems to include the power to hurt those who do not conform with your perceptions of how they must perform. It is especially endemic in the workplace, where the power to hire and to fire, as well as to supervise and evaluate is included in many job descriptions.
Unless and until we eradicate the motive of retribution, of revenge...we will continue to witness more debacles like the traffic jam that last for four days, on the George Washington bridge, because some mayor of one political party did not endorse the candidate for governor of a competing political party.
That kind of unseemly politics not only discourages honourable people from offering their names as candidates; it besmirches the whole culture, reducing as it does relationships to functions of power or, more accurately, of powerlessness.

Noam Chomsky: TPP sets working people in competition with one another..to lower wages and increase insecurity

Noam Chomsky: Obama Trade Deal A 'Neoliberal Assault' To Further Corporate 'Domination'
By Zach Carter and Ryan Grim, Huffington Post Live, January 13, 2014

The Obama administration's Trans-Pacific Partnership trade deal is an "assault," on working people intended to further corporate "domination," according to author and activist Noam Chomsky.
“It’s designed to carry forward the neoliberal project to maximize profit and domination, and to set the working people in the world in competition with one another so as to lower wages to increase insecurity,” Chomsky said during an interview with HuffPost Live.
The Obama administration has been negotiating the TPP pact with 11 other Pacific nations for years. While the deal has not been finalized and much of it has been classified, American corporate interest groups, including the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, have already voiced strong support for the TPP, describing it as a free trade deal that will encourage economic growth. The Office of U.S. Trade Representative has also defended the talks, saying the TPP will include robust regulatory protections. But labor unions and a host of traditionally liberal interest groups, including environmentalists and public health advocates, have sharply criticized the deal.
Chomsky argues that much of the negotiations concern issues outside of what many consider trade, and are focused instead on limiting the activities governments can regulate, imposing new intellectual property standards abroad and boosting corporate political power.
“It’s called free trade, but that’s just a joke," Chomsky said. "These are extreme, highly protectionist measures designed to undermine freedom of trade. In fact, much of what's leaked about the TPP indicates that it's not about trade at all, it’s about investor rights.”
The Obama administration is treating the precise terms of the deal as classified information, blocking many Congressional staffers from viewing the negotiation texts and limiting the information available to members of Congress themselves. The deal's only publicly available negotiation documents have come to light through document leaks. Recent documents have been published by WikiLeaks and HuffPost.
According to these leaked documents, the TPP would empower corporations to directly challenge laws and regulations set by foreign nations before an international tribunal. The tribunal would be given the authority to not only overrule that nation's legal standards but also impose economic penalties on it. Under World Trade Organization treaties, corporations must convince a sovereign nation to bring trade cases before an international court. Chomsky said the deal is an escalation of neoliberal political goals previously advanced by the WTO and the North American Free Trade Agreement.
"It's very hard to make anything of the TPP because it's been kept very secret," Chomsky told HuffPost Live. "A half-secret, I should say. It's not secret from the hundreds of corporate lawyers and lobbyists who are writing the legislation. To them, it's perfectly public. They're, in fact, writing it. It's being kept secret from the population. Which of course raises obvious questions."

Another step in the Iranian nuclear enrichment reduction agreement takes effect Jan. 20

There are reports from many quarters that a "pause button" (Kerry's words) has been agreed upon between the Group of 5+1 and Iran to start the process of reducing Iran's nuclear fission capacity and reducing some of the sanctions on Iran. The agreement requires the IAEA to monitor Iran's progress toward their public commitments, and some 59 U.S. Senators have signed a petition calling for increased sanctions, which if it were to be passed as a bill, the president has indicated he would veto.
In the more fine print, of the deal the New York Times reports the following yesterday:

Under the interim deal, Iran agreed to stop enriching uranium beyond 5 percent, a level that is sufficient for energy production but not for a bomb. The country’s stockpile of uranium enriched to 20 percent, a step toward weapons-grade fuel, will be diluted or converted to oxide so that it cannot be readily prepared for military purposes.

Iran also agreed not to install any new centrifuges, start up any that were not already operating, or build new enrichment facilities. The agreement does not, however, require Iran to stop enriching uranium to a low level of 3.5 percent, or to dismantle any existing centrifuges.

American officials said they would stop the promised sanctions relief — worth between $6 billion and $7 billion, according to the White House — if Iran did not fulfill the terms of the interim accord. (Negotiators Put Final Touches on Iran Accord, By Michael  R. Gordon and Eric Schmitt, New York Times, January 12, 2014)

Canada has remained "sceptical" of any commitments made by the Iranian regime, and several months ago emptied our embassy in Tehran, removing all options of playing any role in the process of information gathering on the process of these enrichment reductions.

The world also has considerable anxiety as to whether or not Iran, a Shia-dominated country openly moving to establish greater influence in the Middle East, currently backing along with Hezbollah the Syrian dictator, Assad, as well as fomenting violence in Iraq, will have much interest in keeping its commitments. One of its prime motivations is to poke its finger in the eye of the  "evil" United States.

Some writers in the west also urge the United States negotiators to refrain from attempting to expand the nuclear deal, if a final agreement is ever reached, into a process of "normalizing" relations with Iran, as the U.S. attempted to do with the former Soviet Union following arms reduction treaties.

One obvious concern about the current interim agreement is the question of whether or not the IAEA will be able to establish adequate monitoring resources inside Iran, including the establishment of a second office, with a second team of inspectors, and whether or not Iran will "come clean" on the fine print of its full capacity to enrich uranium.

If this conflict were a sports competition, one can rest assured that  those operating the betting games in Las Vegas would not give many odds to those betting on Iran's full compliance with any treaty, even one that begins to restore some of her capacity to export oil and to recoup some of her frozen assets.

Although once an ally of the United States, in a former life, Iran remains a dangerous and wily and cunning negotiating partner for the west, especially given her current multiple and conflicted engagements in the region.

The United States is actively pursuing the elimination of chemical weapons from Syria, with some hiccupped success, without playing a significant role in bringing the conflict to a negotiated settlement, and in Iran, attempting to cap nuclear enrichment, without restraining Iranian efforts to destabilize the Middle East. Clearly, U.S. influence in the region is waning and there is little evidence that other western countries are stepping into the void that results.

 

Obama struggles to regain public confidence in his foreign policy

There continue to be rumblings about the clash of both emotions and policy preferences in the Obama administration coming out of the public debate over former Secretary of Defence, Robert Gates' memoir, published last week.

• Whether Obama himself was ever really committed to the "surge" in troops in Afghanistan 
• Whether the strength of the individuals then conducting American foreign and military strategy overshadowed the accomplishments
• Whether a war-weary president reflected the best national interests of the country, also suffering from battle fatigue
• Whether the current cast of characters, Hegel, (Susan) Rice, Kerry are up to the quality of the previous case of Gates, Donilon and Clinton
• Whether or not American foreign policy is unravelling in the second term of the Obama presidency, especially since domestic policy has fallen ship-wrecked on the shoals of Tea Party conservatism
• Whether political considerations too often have trumped national interests under both sets of heading actors
• Whether or not Obama can recoup both the policy and the public debate over the policy in the remaining months and years of his second term....

These are just some of the questions that are swirling around the book in the media and the questions are being posed not only by political opponents of the president but also by serious and relatively objective observers and commentators. There is an undertone of "same as president Carter" (code words for too weak, too placating, too wishy-washy, and too easily manipulated) to the criticism in a country whose political rhetoric is itself based primarily on war metaphors and images. The biggest and most devastating military, supported by the largest military budget in the world as compared to all other countries taken together, operates much of its political culture on a "war basis"....not that they are always formally engaged in battle on the ground, in the air, or on the seas, but that strategic thinking and public debate on foreign policy issues, including national security issues, comes out of this "war mind-set." There is always a strong voice from the Republican side for more weapons, and more engagement in all troubling conflicts around the world, as part of their culture to preserve the "standing and reputation" of the American myth as the world's superpower. That culture and point of view has resulted in both Iraq and Afghanistan wars over the last decade, started by Republican operatives in both the State and Defence departments.
And while the national budget, including the national debt, suffers severe pain and nearly succumbed to bankruptcy, there is very little public debate that points to the costs, in both dollars and lives, of those wars. It seems that the Republican party wishes, as if living in a Technicolor dream, that their hands are not covered with blood and responsibility for those decisions, made under George W. Bush. Certainly there were Democrats who voted for both military engagements, and Obama, while opposing the Iraq debacle, has to claim ownership for his support of the Afghan engagement. Hillary Clinton, it now appears, supported the Iraq invasion, "because she was involved in a political campaign against Obama" and less for the purpose of national interest....at least according to the revelations of the Gates tome.
There has been severe and telling criticism of Obama's "leading from behind" as former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice put it, while campaigning for Romney in the 2012 presidential race. And the American people, historically, are never comfortable in a "secondary role" in foreign affairs. It is only when, once again, they witness the tremendous costs and the extremely limited "gains" from both the Iraq and Afghanistan theatres that they become dis-enchanted with their war efforts. Nevertheless, they are loath to question seriously their dependence on the military, and the national security apparatus, another quasi-military establishment that now includes the gargantuan Homeland Security department and the National Security Agency in addition to the Pentagon, the CIA and the FBI all of them largely spared from substantial budget cuts even through the sequestration. It is not just that there are these monstrous agencies, but that the American psyche considers all them as a gestalt necessary to "protect" the people of their nation.
Building a bunker, and pouring the national bank account into that bunker, is little more than buying the largest insurance policy available, only to have it filled with holes that were not plugged if and when the country is attacked.
 Of course, there are serious enemies of the United States around the world, both in rogue states and in guerilla and terrorist camps, yet the "defensive posture" far outweighs the size and the danger of the threat. It is as if the Washington fear of "attack" the most hateful and demonic thing that can happen to a superpower is underpinning the national security mind-set, and so, in spite of all the talk about progress and hope, and making a more perfect union, the country remains steadfastly mired in the swamp of its own fears.
And of course, that collective, unconscious, national fear is projected onto the White House and its current occupant, as the only person in the country with the power to reverse any sign of action or policy consideration that is not demonstrating the "super-power" capability to intervene and "make things right"...as if the U.S. is responsible for the elimination of all forms of enemy threat.
Super-powers must, according to the archetype...

• never fail,
• never lose,
• never appear to be confused,
• never appear to be unknowing,
• never appear to be undecided or in a quandary,
• never lead from behind
• never resist an opportunity to engage in a fight
• never moderate the application of its hard power assets in support of a collaborative initiative
• never resist the call to arms that will always come from the right as the strategic metaphor for all political, ideological, including all foreign conflicts

And it is not only in the policy but also in the characters of its leaders, that a superpower must demonstrate its continuing prowess, superiority and capacity to rule. And so, with the debate over the "strength" of the former administration "cast" as compared with the current cast, the public is sensing more strength, control and domination from the former than from the current cadre. And, of course, in that debate, the public "fear of loss of control" expresses criticism because it appears that American is less "dominant" and less "in control" of situations that are not congruent with previous periods of history, at least in the recent past, and, in a country dominated by a "narcissistic" instant-gratification motive, such a situation is unacceptable, even contemptible, and those who are in charge have lost their bearings.
In fact, however, it is not only the U.S. but also the whole world that does not know what to do about the current civil strife in the Middle East, in Syria, in Libya, in Iraq, in Yemen, in Egypt, and even in Afghanistan, as well as in the Central African Republic, in Somalia, in Mali, in Nigeria, and in who knows what other hot spots that will inevitably emerge over the coming months. In fact, demonstrating moderation, restraint, collaboration and even a level of maturity and balance, while at the same time resisting "jumping into the arms of the military strategists"* is a balancing act worthy of a tight-rope walker, without a net while the world watches and fires at you...and yet that is what Obama has been attempting to do. And if and when he errs on the side of the political, as compared with the strategic, as he most certainly will do, then there will be those, worthy of being considered, who will try to bring his focus back onto the strategic.
Soft power, and moderated, collaborated and restrained hard power, it would seem, are both necessary and at odds with the American national character. Clearly, confusion and uncertainty and ambiguity are words that do not belong in the American lexicon, especially on foreign affairs and potential threats to U.S. national interests around the world. Obama, while schooled in international relations as well as 'the law' and bringing, as he does, a generous heart and spirit to the Oval Office, may now face the greatest challenge of his presidency...attempting to navigate a course through wild and unpredictable (political, economic, religious, ethnic as well as climate) upheavals, hurricanes, storms and threats, while attempting to keep the political dogs suffering from distemper at bay on the home front.
And as he valiantly tries to preserve his own equanimity, he would do well to read, reflect upon and even discuss with the author, the prescription offered in a recent column by the respected Washington Post columnist, David Ignatius:
The reality is that Obama needs to own his foreign policy. He needs to be more strategic and less political. He needs to set a vision and articulate it to allies and adversaries. His national security adviser needs to help him focus and communicate policy decisions.
(David Ignatius, Only Obama can fix his broken foreign policy, in Washington Post, January 10, 2014)
*Remember Kennedy's mistake in trusting the military in the Bay of Pigs. It still hangs like a cloud over the relationship between the White House and the Pentagon.