Julian Assange's Nonlinear Thinking

Julian Assange's cloudy, self-satisfied prose reminds me of the Unibomber's:

The more secretive or unjust an organization is, the more leaks induce fear and paranoia in its leadership and planning coterie. This must result in minimization of efficient internal communications mechanisms (an increase in cognitive "secrecy tax") and consequent system-wide cognitive decline resulting in decreased ability to hold onto power as the environment demands adaption.

Hence in a world where leaking is easy, secretive or unjust systems are nonlinearly hit relative to open, just systems. Since unjust systems, by their nature induce opponents, and in many places barely have the upper hand, mass leaking leaves them exquisitely vulnerable to those who seek to replace them with more open forms of governance.

In opposing the decisions of a self-appointed know-it-all about what secrets should remain as such, I'm not expressing fear and paranoia. I'm worried about the rational conduct of the government's business and the safety of those who live under tyrannical governments and yet are willing to provide U.S. contacts with valuable information.

In view of Assange's implied desire to nonlinearly hit less open or unjust systems, I'll be looking forward to reading more news from Beijing and the Kremlin. But does Wikileaks even have sources in those governments who are willing to take the risk of nonlinearly hitting their bosses? That's why Assange's whole argument is bogus. Logic as well as Wikileaks' pattern make clear that the governments of free nations are far more likely to be the victims of leaks, which means that it's those regimes, and not authoritarian or totalitarian ones, that will experience "minimization of efficient internal communications mechanisms."

Besides, if Assange got the secret Moscow and Beijing papers, would he have the guts to publish them? Palin and Huckabee talked about hunting him down. Putin and Hu might actually do it, and once they caught him, extradition probably wouldn't be an issue.

Obumbershoot

Two times I've felt really old this week: Telling musically sophisticated young people about Levon Helm's Midnight Ramble and realizing that they've never heard of him or the Band, and seeing a smiling, unconcerned President Obama get off Air Force One today in Shanghai carrying an umbrella.

I wasn't alive in 1938 (I promise) when British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain signed the infamous Munich treaty with Adolf Hitler, conceding the Sudetenland to the Nazis and creating the modern paradigm for appeasement of an implacably aggressive dictator. But since Chamberlain was famous for carrying an umbrella, especially at the airport ceremony where he announced his deal with the devil, for as long as I can remember Western diplomats would rather get wet than carry one.

Careful research (Googling various Presidents and "umbrella") reveals that there's a dispensation for Presidents who have aides hold umbrellas for them. George W. Bush also had this mishap in Russia, where President Putin was at least displaying umbrella parity (although you notice he's not actually using his, which speaks well of his prudence in front of the cameras).

Perhaps it's seeing a bumbershoot-bearing Obama at an airport in China that touches an aging nerve. I'm not saying that he is an appeaser or the communist Chinese are comparable to the Nazis. Still, if he was going to do his bit to end this old superstition, he might have chosen a moment other than his arrival in an authoritarian country whose leaders control $1 trillion in Treasury bonds, want to jettison the dollar as the world's benchmark currency, and no doubt plan to use their economic leverage to pressure him on Taiwan and other issues.

Hey, Where're You Putin Those Bombs?

Creepy news about a publisher suppressing its own expose of Russian PM Vladimir Putin -- and, if it's true, creepy news about Putin:

The article, "Vladimir Putin's Dark Rise to Power" by veteran war correspondent Scott Anderson, quotes a former KGB official on the record and at length implicating Russia's shadow leader in a string of Moscow apartment bombings that killed hundreds in 1999 and were officially blamed on Chechen terrorists. The wave of fear created by the attacks played a critical role in launching Putin to power.

Sometimes A Wide Stance Makes Good Sense

If I were the President
I'd work on my body language
Putin's a smaller man
But the way he sits
He owns the room

Good Sense Will Hunting

I read George Will's column about Russia three times and couldn't figure out what it means. Then I realized that he doesn't know what it means, either. He accuses President Obama of being nostalgic for the Nixonian era of U.S.-Soviet detente by making the blunder of proposing arms control negotiations with Moscow. Without meaning to do so, he then shows why Obama is right.

Reprising arguments he made two generations ago from the Scoop Jackson wing of the Democratic Party, Will says that arms control wasn't the ticket for combating rampant Soviet militarism. Ronald Reagan's tough policies were. Will's setup prepares the reader for the argument that Obama is overlooking the threat that Putin's Russia still poses to U.S. interests. Instead, marshaling his usual flurry of statistics, Will argues that Russia, drowning in vodka and stunted by declining fertility rates, is dying as a great power. He enumerates no threats posed by Russia to U.S. interests except one: The nukes that Obama's policy is aimed at reducing:

Today, in a world bristling with new threats, the president suggests addressing an old one -- Russia's nuclear arsenal. It remains potentially dangerous, particularly if a portion of it falls into nonstate hands.

But if it's dangerous to have several thousand thermonuclear devices aimed at us by a crumbling nation (which I would think Will would accept as an axiom), and if Obama can achieve reductions in their number at no risk whatsoever to our interests, why is it a bad idea to have arms control negotiations?

It's not Obama who's nostalgic for the Nixon era (which he barely remembers, of course). It's Will, who embarks on the same anti-arms control column he would've written back then, even though he ends up proving (in spite of himself) that U.S.-Russian arms control today makes abundant good sense. If things are really so bad for Russia, perhaps we'd even be doing it, and the stability of the Asia-Pacific region, a favor by helping relieve it of the cost of maintaining its arsenal.