Krypton Discovered?

Science News reports the discovery of a second mega earth. This is an apparently rocky planet many times more massive than our own. Could this then be a Krypton-type planet with greater gravity where if two-legged folk evolved, and they could somehow get to earth, they could jump further than mere earth people and travel faster than a speeding bullet?

Sixteen times as heavy as earth, massive BD+20594b should be a gas giant like Neptune or Uranus. But instead it's 100% rock. The planet orbits its star in 42 days. A little online research indicates the star itself is very slightly smaller and cooler than the sun and also about one billion years younger. This makes it a yellow star as is our sun, i.e., not red.

Judging from the planet's orbital period, it is even closer to its sun than is Mercury to ours. This probably means it's too hot for life as we know it. It also seems too massive for plate tectonics to exist. Scientists suggest that plate tectonics is key to the circulation of carbon which is the basis for life on earth. Without moving continents and circulation between core, mantle and crust, everything remains locked in place.

Now, if the planet might be tidally locked to its star – one side always facing toward and the other away – there might be a transitional zone between -- in perpetual twilight -- where the temperature might be more conducive to life. And in twilight, at sunset, that sun might appear red. Tidal forces might also create enough internal tension to stimulate circulation within the rocky layers. So, perhaps the possibility of finding Superman's home planet cannot be completely discounted.

What is clear is that recent discoveries of exoplanets make a strong case for the existence of a wide range of planet types including ones that might support life. We also should not limit our consideration to forms of life based on carbon or water such as ours.  Might someone be sailing methane seas on Titan?  Is anyone out there?

Return DC to Maryland: A Case for Retrocession

Every week or so I get an email from folks supporting statehood for Washington, DC. As a long-time resident and taxpayer of the District, I understand why they do. As it says on our license plates, it's “taxation without representation.” DC is smaller than any of the 50 states but has a larger population than two of them. Yet we get no vote in the US Senate or House of Representatives. Instead, we get a voteless Delegate to the House like some overseas territory.

The Constitution allowed for the establishment of a federal capital through the “cession” of territory from willing states. Washington, DC was formally established in 1790 on swampy land, straddling the Potomac River, taken from Maryland and Virginia to be a neutral place between North and South. The District of Columbia was a square 10 miles on each side. In 1846, the Congress passed a law allowing for the retrocession of the part of the District in Virginia back to that state if approved by the people affected in a referendum and if accepted by the State of Virginia. This was accomplished in 1847. Through this action, the District shrunk from 100 sq. miles to the present 68.

While one may argue that DC should be a state, politically it remains very unlikely. Given that most would expect statehood to mean two more Democratic senators and one Democratic congressperson, this would never pass muster in any Congress without an overwhelming Democratic majority. Maybe not then either.

So, how about carving out the part of the District outside the federal government core – the White House, Congress and the office buildings around the Mall – and giving the rest back to Maryland? The various wards of the city might become a new Maryland city – Washington City? – or perhaps the various wards might each become their own local jurisdiction. The Congress might agree with this as it would not do anything beyond making Maryland a bit more Democratic without adding actual new seats to the Senate. Maryland would have to agree too but why not?

Washington City, Maryland. Maryland is a nice state, I wouldn't mind living there. And no more “taxation without representation.

Post-Iowa: No Real Winners Yet

Lots of ink being split and voices braying on what the Iowa primary results mean. My simple take is that Trump needs to win New Hampshire (NH) big or his patina of invincibility – remember he can shoot someone in the middle of NYC and not lose support? – will wash away. Without that, people will begin to consider more carefully what he actually says. Now, Trump is very smart. He might yet rise to the occasion but he will become a longer shot.

Rubio – billed by some as the “real winner” – is now target #1 of the remaining “moderate” candidates. (Rand Paul – the one Republican of principle – sadly dropped out today.) The “moderates” will try to tear Marco a new one to drag him back down. Rubio seems a lightweight but if he manages to hang on and do well in NH, he may suck the rest of the air from the not-so-crazy-as-Cruz side of the spectrum.

Cruz may think he can survive a loss in NH and go on into the South. Hillary may hope so because if Cruz can win votes there, she'll win more in November from the non-white-extremist majority down that way.

Hillary lost in Iowa despite her technical tenths of a percentage point “win.” She has issues, including apparently the fact that she earns few points for transparency. Once, when I worked in the White House, she served me tea as I was accompanying the visit of the First Lady of Argentina upstairs in the private quarters. Mrs. Clinton was very gracious to include me as if I was also a guest.

I admit to liking Bernie because of his razor-sharp focus on inequality, our number one problem (globally as well as in America). Some say that since Bernie – a “socialist” – cannot possibly win in America, a vote for him is wasted. But if he wins in NH, he just may get enough wind in his sails – and votes from the under-45 – to make it a long race.

Now Jeb, and I won't say poor Jeb. I personally believe he was the Bush – if we had to have one – we should have gotten in 2000. But that is a low bar. He apparently has received too much money to simply bow out just because it's clear he has bombed out. If you walk away from the $150 million plus he's been given, the investors will not be pleased. Bush may hope that Rubio stumbles in NH and he gets a second look. So he may actually have to crash and burn before dropping out. Better for all if this happens in New Hampshire.

Time for the US to take the bull by the hand in Kosovo

Today I posted on TransConflict a piece on the detention of Kosovo Serb political activist Oliver Ivanovic.  I know and respect Oliver through the three 1/2 years I served with the UN in north Kosovo.  It appears that the European Union prosecuted him with the agreement -- if not encouragement -- of the Serbian government in Belgrade.  Seems no one wants a strong, independent leader for the Kosovo Serbs no matter how moderate and pragmatic he may be.  Or maybe I might say, almost no one.  The United States, long the motive force behind carving out of Serbia a majority Albanian state, might see the utility in helping the Serb community in the country become a positive element in a truly democratic, multi-ethnic state. 

For a long time, I was critical of the unilateral move to Kosovo independence outside the ambit of the UN Security Council resolution (1244) which entered into force after the NATO bombing of Milosevic' Serbia.  But the fact is there is nothing wrong with Kosovo independence and given the treatment of Kosovo Albanians by Milosevic, it certainly is understandable why they would not want to risk that again.  Perhaps more to the point, there is nothing about current day Serbia that suggests it would be better for Kosovo to have remained part of it.  Both Kosovo and Serbia have problems -- corruption, low growth, tardy economic reform and dysfunctional politics.  Nothing could possibly be gained by bringing the two together in one failed state.   Indeed, much would be gained for both if Serbia recognized Kosovo independence.  Serbia could move ahead on EU membership before the door is nailed shut and Kosova could start to face its real problems.

The US had hoped that the Europeans would handle Kosovo, move it steadily to something the internationals could declare a success and leave behind.  That hasn't happened.  The US Embassy in Pristina must still play an out-sized role in keeping the lid on political conflict among the Albanians and the US still has troops in Kosovo.  Bringing a unified, pragmatic Serb community into the mix would not change things fundamentally in Kosovo.  But it could be an important step in bringing some light into a smoke-filled room.

The US should do whatever is necessary to end the political persecution of Oliver Ivanovic.  And along the way, end its affair with Hashim Thaci and bow to reality by finding a way to bring Ramush Haradinaj into the mix.  The future of Kosovo should not be left in the hands of EU mandarins or ghosts of the past.

The Killer Species: Us vs Them

The human species has a long record of Us vs Them conflict. Indeed, our species of Homo sapiens is the only surviving one from a long period in which various other kinds of humans shared the evolutionary record. For whatever reason, we emerged the sole survivor. We had various advantages. Deprived of in-built weapons such as claws and saber teeth, we evolved as especially inventive and effective tool-using killers. Our social organization – depending very much on our ability to use symbols and language to reaffirm in-group bonds and work effectively in coordinated activities – plus our advancing toolset made us formidable hunters and gatherers. While some of these advantages may have characterized the other members of the Homo genus, we did them better. Even our closest relative, Homo sapiens neanderthalensis, may not have had our full capacity for the advanced suite. After coexisting with us for some 160,000 years, the Neanderthals joined the long list of the extinct other humans.

Since our arriving on the scene some 200 thousand years ago, we have succeeded in eliminating, replacing and enslaving Them. Recent discoveries have pushed back the known origins of warfare within our own species to 10,000 years ago. The University of Cambridge anthropologist who discovered the evidence suggested that “lethal raids by competing groups were part of life for hunter-gatherer communities at the time.” A recent excavation in France of 6000 year old remains provides signs of violence including against women and children and perhaps ritual dismemberment. But it would be surprising if we were not already – and since the beginning – omni-predators of anything not Us.

We have come up with various reasons and motives for using violence against others. We want their food, water, land, gold, women, men. But these have often been overlaid or supplemented by the simple desire to rid ourselves of Them. We tend, all too frequently, to establish who we are by defining who we are not. Attacking Them reaffirms our identity. In the Hobbesian state of nature, nothing prevents the war of all against all. Within a society, a stable governing order – the Leviathan – can regularize this war. (Regularize, not end. Witness the current political conflict between Red and Blue in America or the current wave of xenophobia sweeping through the EU.) Between societies in conflict, or when internal order breaks down, the simplest way to distinguish the enemy is to focus on Them.

The conflicts of the last 100 years have been mainly of this Us vs Them kind, primarily over identity: ethnic, tribal or religious. They have spun from control when the regimes that ruled over multi-ethnic states have fallen or been seized or overthrown. Once identity conflicts begin, they quickly turn zero-sum. Violence begets violence and the possibility of achieving a political solution recedes beyond the horizon. In the globalized and technologically complex 21st Century, these conflicts tend to produce regional and global insecurity.

It should seem obvious that international relations requires a version of the Leviathan, an internationally acceptable way to manage conflict between and within states and address the tensions that allow conflict to emerge along identity lines. The UN provides a mechanism to do both. Seems that our choice may be to use it better and act more multi-laterally or perhaps see that we have all become the universal Them on the way to our own demise.

The US and Russia

In 1991, the USSR dissolved into a collection of independent states leaving the Russian Federation as its internationally recognized successor. (As the legal successor state, Russia inherited the Soviet Union's seat on the UN Security Council.) The states of the former Eastern Bloc had already broken free of Soviet control. German unification was a fact. It might have seemed that the Cold War was over with NATO's mission of protecting the West from Soviet aggression no longer needed. But NATO did not disappear. Instead it began moving east into the former Warsaw Pact countries. In Washington, the judgement was that the US had “won” the Cold War, the USSR had “lost” and Russia was now just a second class power of little consequence. The Czech Republic, Hungary and Poland joined in 1999. By 2004, NATO took in Bulgaria, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Slovakia, Slovenia and Romania thereby moving well beyond the former boundaries of the USSR. Albania and Croatia were admitted in 2009. Montenegro, Macedonia, and Bosnia are on on the doorstep. Reaching deeper into the former USSR, NATO unilaterally decided to eventually bring in the Ukraine and Georgia.

It demands great credulity to believe that Russia would not have seen this expansion east as a form of aggression. Russia has a long history and a deep culture. It also possess a formidable military, nuclear weapons, and that seat on the Security Council. Moscow essentially swallowed the first waves of NATO expansion but balked at Georgia (where Stalin was born) and in 2014 drew the line in Ukraine. None of this should have been surprising. That President Putin, for partly political reasons, played to Russian nationalism in his reaction to NATO's pretensions should not hide the fact that Russia and the Russian people had good reason to feel brazenly provoked.

During the Yeltsin years, the US made efforts to support Russian “reform.” But we Americans have little appreciation of the particularities of other countries – historical, social, cultural, political – and expected too much and gave too little. With Putin the trajectory has been mostly down. But the events in Ukraine, Russian resilience to sanctions, and Moscow's reclaimed role in the Mideast suggest that it was always foolish to see Russia as simply a second class power of no consequence. The US and Europe – as at least the Germans understand – need Russia.

Russia and the US have a deep shared interest in their own and global security. They form, in effect, the Western and Eastern flanks of the Atlantic community. Conflict between the two helps neither. We face a common threat from Islamic fundamentalism and the regional chaos in Syria and Iraq. We both must contend with the “rise” of China. That the two countries have different political systems is not unusual and reflects our very different histories. It should not take Donald Trump to note that the Russian people have chosen their president and still support him. Sanctions have not weakened Putin because the Russian people need little help in seeing in them another example of US aggression.

What should be done? Washington's political class should make up its collective mind to deal with the Russia that is rather then the one it might wish. NATO expansion into Ukraine is not required by US national interests and should be dropped. EU membership for Ukraine should be left to the EU to process (or not). Sanctions should be rolled back. The US played a large part in Syria and Iraq's descent into chaos. There, Washington should accept that Russia has interests and that Assad's fate needs to be negotiated. More generally, the US should commit itself to working multilaterally and with it's partners on the UN Security Council, especially Russia. Achieving compromise approaches may not be easy. Trust has frayed. But as our work together on Iran nuclear shows, things can get done. And the US needs partners that don't always simply say “yes.” Those “coalitions of the willing” are not adequate protection from making mistakes. 

Note:  An earlier version of this appeared in TransConflict.

Branching Out

I have been blogging here at Everything Rum since 2007.  My first posting was a Consciousness Riff.  I used to blog at Outside Walls, mostly on Kosovo, but closed that down a while ago.  In the Everything Rum space I've blogged on quantum physics, cosmology & space/time, biking, the state of the world, capitalism, the Articles of Confederation and sometimes on politics.   State Department cables (cleared through FOIA) and other related material from my time serving as a US diplomat can be found at Real Diplomacy.  Since 2009, I was writing on international issues at TransConflict. 

Now I am branching out.  I've tried Twitter and Facebook in the past but didn't stay with them.  I'm now returning to Twitter to connect and to accompany my expanded blogging here.  I'll be commenting as I see useful and perhaps will find others who if not in agreement at least have some reason to stop and reflect.  My first effort will follow shortly on the US and Russia.