On Iraq and Iran

The Iraq Study Group report:
The two principal recommendations entail diplomatic efforts within Iraq and in the region, then a pullback of American soldiers to minimal force protection mode over the next 18 months. The Group is correct in assuming that a renewed attempt to end violent political discord within Iraq should be a high priority; without success on this front the civil war will continue and probably intensify. However, it does not appear that either side of the civil war is yet exhausted, and our presence in itself may be preventing an actual stand-up civil war between the two primary adversaries, Sunnis and Shias. These two parties are fighting a sort of war by proxy, one in which neither takes responsibility for the violence committed by associated groups, networks, and individuals. It's not even clear at this point whether leaders on either side can effectually call their loose network of associates and sympathizers to stand down. In short, on this front both the weak political will of the Iraqi leaders and the limits of their effective power may prevent success. The way to start, though, is to recognize the difficult and ambiguous realities on the ground and go from there.
The current campaigns of ethnic cleansing in Iraq may be the prelude to a much more intense civil war. Once the Sunnis and Shias are well separated from each other each side will have a strong incentive to form decisive centralized authority to ensure that they are not crushed in the event total war erupts. The main advantage of the centralization of authority is that it will permit real negotiations to take place--but this will only happen at some unknowable future point once the parties realize, experientially, the pointlessness of continued warfare (unless one side wins, of course, an outcome which stands well within the realm of plausibility).
The study’s call for regional diplomacy is doomed to failure. Though Syria may capitulate given sufficient pressure, Iran will not. Moreover, Iran has considerable leverage to influence internal Iraqi developments and undermine our strategy. They also have clear incentives to do so—the report is flat wrong in assuming that Iraq’s neighbors have an interest in its stabilization. What harm would come to Iran if Iraq were to descend into anarchy? The price of oil might rise slightly; the Shias might achieve majority control over Iraqi oil infrastructure; some Shias will go sooner rather than later to Allah. These “interests in stabilization” will not suffice to interest the Iranians in helping us to solve our problems. As we increase our demands relative to their nuclear program and move against their interests through the UN, we can expect them to resist us in the ways most likely to impose a heavy cost on us. This means assistance to anti-American elements in Iraq, to Hizbollah in Lebanon, to Hamas in Palestine, possibly even to Taliban/al-Qaeda in Pakistan and Afghanistan.
With Iran war will necessarily come, for there is no other way to deprive them of nuclear weapons. The largest remaining question is the timing, which matters on two points particularly. First, will this thing be done while Bush still reigns? If so, that means preemptive war. Otherwise, with Presidents to come we risk a retaliatory war—one that may occur only after a second holocaust. On its death, Israel would end Iran and largely wipe out the Shiite religion. Second, and less important, is what will be the situation in Iraq at the time war commences? If the Shiites attack our soldiers en masse, we will suffer significant casualties. If the Iranians have any foresight, they are presently training and arming units in Iraq for just such a contingency. In brief, the Iranian problem is a factor that largely created and will persistently nourish Shia intransigence in Iraq, limiting the prospects for a settlement within Iraq prior to our war with Iran.
It is notable that Iraq has not had a government, in any meaningful sense of the term, since Hussein was turned out. The Iraqi “government” is utterly corrupt, wholly incompetent, disunited, riven with spies and traitors, considered illegitimate both on the count of being an American puppet and because it cannot accomplish anything, being unable even to secure its people or provide them with basic services. Consider the security situation. The police are essentially useless against the terrorists and militias and death squads—even where the police have not been bought off or co-opted by these elements. As to the army, it suffers from low morale, high absenteeism and desertion rates, inadequate equipment and training, divided loyalties, moderate corruption (by Iraqi standards), extreme incompetence in its bureaucratic functions (resulting in poor logistics, irregular pay, etc.), and insufficient numbers. With 160,000 Iraqi soldiers and 160,000 coalition soldiers the situation deteriorates. Assuming current political conditions, how many more Iraqi soldiers would be necessary to replace the coalition soldiers and prevent the situation from worsening? Given that only 100,000 or so Iraqi soldiers actually punch the clock on an average day and that they are grossly inferior in quality to coalition soldiers on almost every point (except cultural understanding)—surely another 400,000 at the minimum. Training and equipping this massive new wave of recruits will take years, not to speak of retraining and re-equiping current forces. A U.S. pullout over 18 months, as proposed by the Study Group, would form the prelude to a brutish civil war, one which would be the more intense as it would probably also evolve into a proxy war between Iran and the Sunni powers.
A gradual process of ethnic cleansing is underway in Iraq. It proceeds by force: force determines its pace and the lines of demarcation between opposed groups. This development is self-reinforcing, breeding in the various Iraqi factions ever-increasing hatred and mistrust toward other groups and encouraging preemptive actions by combatants to stake out territory before the other side claims it. At the current pace (about 1-1.5 million displaced per year), the cleansing will be essentially complete in most areas within two years. The character of the civil war will then alter--it could become more organized and intense or a negotiated settlement between the main parties might become possible. Given the momentum of events, the only way to prevent this conclusion to the civil war would be a massive application of ground forces sufficient to halt the cleansing. Failing that, the best option may well be to facilitate negotiations to divide the country between the Sunnis, the Kurds, and the Shias. If a settlement of this kind could be reached before the logic of the cleansing plays itself out (and the division of oil proceeds would obviously be a key point of contention), several hundred thousand mostly civilian lives might be saved and the level of ill will between the three groups would be mitigated--it might be mitigated to such a degree as to prevent a full-scale civil war from erupting. Either way, whether this cleansing happens spontaneously or through negotiations, how can a national government function in such an environment? The endgame could be similar to the one negotiated at Dayton to pacify and stabilize Bosnia. Unfortunately, there are two major distinctions. Bosnia has no oil. The Iraqi economy is entirely dependent upon oil revenues and the geographical distribution of oil is not equally divided between the three contending groups; the Sunnis have virtually no oil production in the territory they occupy. This means the Sunnis are likely to fight on until they receive at least a proportionate cut of the oil money. Probably the more significant distinction, though, is the relative stability of the neighborhoods in which these two countries find themselves. Bosnia had the advantage of no meddling neighbors outside of ex-Yugoslavian provinces (and these provinces were participants in the Dayton accords). Iraq has been meddled already, especially by the Iranians and the Syrians. As I noted above, the Iranians in particular have a clear interest in promoting instability in Iraq. Other local powers will be inclined to support Sunni elements in Iraq. It certainly wouldn't hurt to have these local states sign any Dayton-like peace accord to end the Iraqi civil war, but, even if all the important actors did sign, in practice they would probably ignore any inconvenient terms.
Everything that happens in Iraq is only a distraction from the largest threat to our national security in that region--Iran. Our strategies and commitments in Iraq must be viewed with this central reality in mind. I fear that Bush has so far staked his reputation on success in Iraq that the administration may allow the tail to wag the dog. Iraq policy should not influence Iran policy, though Iran policy could, under the right circumstances, justifiably influence Iraq policy. Our first order of business in the Middle East is to prevent the nuclearisation of Iran--not to crush al Qaeda, not to stabilize Iraq or Afghanistan, not to protect our oil supplies, though all these are important. Iran is a terrorist state with the capability of developing and deploying nuclear weapons; al Qaeda is amateur hour in turbans--it cannot develop anything more than ignorant suiciders. Iran, once nuclearised, will be capable of holocausting Israel and killing millions of people in America and elsewhere; al Qaeda can only kill thousands. And, though it may be argued that Iran can be deterred because it can be found and destroyed, this is not necessarily so. Its nukes might be delivered by Hizbollah or Hamas (or possibly even al Qaeda) and might not be traceable to Iran (or, what amounts to much the same thing, Iran's leaders might not believe their nukes to be traceable). Whether or not we publicly express this order of priority in our Middle East policy, it should at least be understood internally by our leaders who should formulate our strategy accordingly.

Alternative Energy Reality Check

Mr. Smil’s energy world:
http://www.oecd.org/dataoecd/52/25/36760950.pdf#search=%22worldwide%20consumption%20of%20energy%2013%20TW%20smil%22
He takes an aggressive, almost cynical tone in confronting some of the over-enthusiastic claims of alternative energy promoters. Then he proceeds to triturate them with a hammering rain of stone-hard facts. Personally, I think he too quickly dismisses the potential of wind power as a contributor to the energy transition—his dismissive tone conflicts with his own numbers: he admits wind can provide about 40% of the world’s current primary energy requirements. This is certainly a significant part of the solution, especially given that wind is the only alternative energy demonstrably capable of generating affordable power. Also, I believe his estimate on geothermal’s potential (what he calls “generous estimates of technically feasible maxima”) is instead quite conservative at less than 8% of current requirements. New technology may be developed in this area and alter the calculus completely—there is no meaningful limit to potential geothermal energy.
Other than those two areas of disagreement, I was generally pleased by the substance and the tone. He puts nuclear power in its proper place as a coddled and utterly dependent 60 year old child of governments and their continued largesse. Nuclear power does not exist without government subsidies. It never will exist without subsidies. This should understood. Whether it may be needful as an element of the strategy to reduce carbon dioxide emissions is a separate, though related, question. I happen to think it could function as a good hedge in the event that solar and wind are not scaled up as fast as necessary. New plant designs are much safer than past practice—and, remember, the Western world has never experienced a significant nuclear event even with the old designs. To my sense, a terrorist attack on a nuclear plant represents by far the gravest threat to our nuclear plants. The new designs ought to be fortified against such a contingency.
He also delivers himself of a goodly thwacking in countering the advocates of phyto-based energy. We already use too much of the biosphere’s total production, about 40% of it, severely diminishing biodiversity as well as imbalancing ecosystems and the biosphere itself. Most of the supporters of this sort of thing (ethanol, biodiesel and such) do not appear to understand that expanding such sources will not and cannot supply a large percentage of our energy demand. Additionally, it has direct negative environmental consequences. Growing our fuel in this way, even assuming significant efficiency improvements, would require too much of our arable land to be devoted to it at a time when world population and food demand continue to grow. One shocking figure indicates that all of the photosynthesis which occurs each year in the U.S. equals, in terms of energy production, only half the amount of U.S. fossil fuel consumption.
Smil puts forward solar as the only realistic long-term alternative to fossil fuels (barring a nuclear fusion breakthrough). He points out the insane disparity in government R&D expenditures between nuclear, which got 96% of them in the 47-98’ period, and all other sources of power, which received 4% combined. Though I fully understand the focus on nuclear as the energy of the future (especially in the early decades of this period), the government has been far too slow to recognize the necessity of diversifying its energy options, that is, of hedging its bets—any successful financier could have informed the decisionmakers that a diversified portfolio is the safest, smartest option for those without inside information—and nobody has inside information on technological developments several decades out. Despite our idiocratic government, the numbers support Smil’s contentions about the solar future and point up the gross misallocation of the Energy Department’s priorities. It should focus mainly on solar, hedging itself round with nuclear, wind, geothermal and anything else that looks promising. Several questions remain, however. First, what is the most efficient means of arriving at that endgame (ie, which other alternatives will contribute along the way, how much conservation can be achieved)? Second, how cheap will alternative energy actually be at that point and, given conservation advances, how much of it will we actually need? The characteristics of the path (esp, how well GHGs are controlled over the next few decades) will determine the magnitude of global warming and ecological destruction just as much as the length of the path (ie, how long it takes to shift to a mostly alternative energy system).

A Challenge for Renewables

In order for renewable energy to be scaled up with optimal efficiency its daily variability of power output must be compensated for by using some form of energy storage to even out the supply to users. One of the blogs I occasionally look through estimated that this 'energy arbitrage' would deliver a payback over 37 years (bad investment). Still, this is based on current technology, which has the potential to be greatly improved; also, mass production savings have yet to be realized in this area. For the American energy market at least 15 to 20 years remain to find cheaper solutions--but, some European countries may, because of this issue, have to halt expansion of their alternative energy infrastructure quite soon and Denmark, which derives about 20% of its electricity from wind power, may already have done so a couple years back. With current technologies it is difficult to pass the 20% mark on renewables' contribution to the grid without finding oneself in the position of producing much more peak energy than necessary--and then, having nowhere to send it and no economical way to store it, being forced, essentially, to waste it.

The Hydrogen Hoax

Why the "hydrogen economy" is unlikely ever to happen: http://www.planetforlife.com/h2/h2swiss.html
http://www.planetforlife.com/pdffiles/h2report.pdf

In the second, more in depth source above the authors summarize the basic problems with hydrogen as a mass-utilized fuel. They first note that hydrogen is not an energy source itself (eg, coal and oil and windmills are energy sources, they produce energy; electricity and hydrogen merely transmit the energy already produced from an energy source). They then explain that producing hydrogen requires an industrial process that wastes a great deal of energy:
"A hydrogen economy would be based on two electrolytic processes both associated with heavy energy losses: electrolysis and fuel cells. Furthermore, between the conversion of electriciy into hydrogen by electrolysis and the reconversion of hydrogen to electricity by fuel cells, the energy carrier gas has to be packaged by compression or liquefaction. It has to be distributed by surface transport or pipeline, stored and transferred. No matter how hydrogen is ultimately used, in stationary, mobile, or portable applications, the efficiency of the hydrogen chain between power plant and fuel cell output is hardly better than 30%." In contrast "the efficiency of electric power transmission is as high as 90%." Another comparison is to the energy lost by oil and gas in the course of extracting, processing, and distributing them: it is 12% for oil and 5% for gas. Yet, hydrogen is estimated at over 65%! Moreover, most of the hydrogen loss is governed by laws of nature--not technological shortcomings--which means the efficiency of the hydrogen economy would always be poor. The authors estimate that "even in the best attainable case, the well-to-tank efficiency...cannot be much above 50%." That implies a vast wastage of energy compared to other options, and probably more pollution and higher costs. Hydrogen, as the authors note, cannot compete with its own fuel source. In looking specifically at transportation applications for hydrogen they conclude that it is hopelessly impractical for long drives for any type of vehicle (hydrogen tanks would be too large), whereas for intracity driving it would cost four times as much in fuel costs to operate a hydrogen powered vehicle as it would to operate an electric vehicle.
I have encountered similar analyses in other articles written after this one and they reinforce each other--especially on the most important point, which is that immutable scientific laws forever preclude the advent of an efficient hydrogen economy. Unfortunately, most energy and transport companies continue to disseminate misleading information on the realities of hydrogen and its future prospects; the government colludes in this misinformation campaign. I suppose it would be bad business practice to aggressively insist that hydrogen is infeasible. The company would appear to the public as retrograde in its thinking and incompetent in its engineering efforts. Also, the sheer power of the negative vibe would harm the corporate image and its brands. (I read today of a study that found people respond favorably to advertising that expresses positive emotions, but show a neutral reaction to more rational, informative advertising.) Politicians are also worried about their own brand image and do not wish to appear on the "it can't be done" side of an important issue--practically speaking it is more advantageous for them to be wrong and insistent that "it can be done." The result is a massive squandrance of resources on developing hydrogen-related technologies, instead of efficiently allocating these scarce resources to effective alternative energy and energy conservation projects.
I have noticed, however, an incipient revolt against the conventional thinking by various scientific and engineering organizations, especially in Europe. Their perspective is that these hydrogen-promoters are diverting research funds from more legitimate projects and hindering the career achievements of those professionals operating in other energy-related fields. Apparently, the principal European fuel cell conference has dropped hydrogen fuel cells from the agenda as too theoretical a pursuit for a field that faces pressures to deliver practical results in the near term (http://entropyproduction.blogspot.com/, July 23, 2006).
Viewed from a conspiratorial perspective (and I do believe there are some quiet little conspiracies floating around out there), the very inefficiency of hydrogen could benefit the power companies by creating unnecessary and excessive demand for new fossil fuel power plants. I'm still a bit baffled by the auto companies' absurd exuberance. It may just be pure PR and image-polishing, advertising dreams of an ideal auto-future. People tend to like that sort of thing, and if all the other auto companies are at it, competitive pressure may force even the more ethical execs to enter this vicious circle.