A Dialogue on Political Analysis -- George Friedman & Robert D. Kaplan

Gentleman: this decade is about the web-enabled appearance and development of a democratized global intelligentsia patched together by affinities in interests and outlooks and, probably, soon to become bonded as that aggregating influence feeds back through events, outputs in media, including e-publications -- the emerging pamphlets of our age -- and, ultimately, policy-informing consensus responding to this still emerging online smorgasbord.  View the video -->

YouTube:  http://youtu.be/vzZ9Bt_j2NI Origin: Stratfor

My father who held degrees in economics, political science, and law would have enjoyed the table talk in his day; I, the art lover in the family,  had not expected that I would enjoy it, but from the indirect comments about President Colonel Putin's New Russia to what might be bothering Prime Minister Netanyahu in relation to Iran, I have enjoyed it quite.

Then too, when the politically minded reach back to the literary tool kit for a useful widget, well, for me, that's just magical.  George Friedman, 9:54 -  10:24 :

"And what I will argue is that in an administration, within this matrix, various people will have strong personalities and they will be the ones we rememeber and will think they caused it to happen whereas in my mind they're the agents of underlying causes . . . .  The real debate we're having is Shakespeare versus the Greeks.  Shakespeare writes as if men have choices.  Greek tragedy is about the limits of choices."

In relation to the Middle East Conflict, Robert Kaplan notes (12:02 - 12:30), "In 1993, I published an article in The Atlantic saying that Syria was just the web work of sectarian tensions and that the reason the Syrian regime was so anti-Israeli was precisely to hide the sectarian tensions within it.   It had to appeal to a pan-Arab sensibility to justify itself as a state.  So you can get that basic assumption right, if given enough time."

On Israel, Friedman seems to perceive Netanyahu as a Prime Minister tangled in a web of interocking issues and positions woven around the threat posed by a bellicose Iran engaged in developing a nuclear weapons system.

The conversation winds around to spelling the difference between journalism and intelligence, the one concerned with "what just happened," the other with "what happens next," and on that one might appreciate Kaplan's closing observation about journalism (22:42 - : "Journalism could be better if it was more analytical, more unsentimental."

Such plays on a recent comment on Backchannels about the self-defeating behavior in "advocacy journalism" that, most unfortunately, strives to makes its points by displacing and perverting factual data.   I doubt Kaplan had that in mind, and I would disagree about the dismissal of sentiment in journalism -- every writer needs his humanity and the best sensibility from it that he can muster -- but I do believe that without great credibility in reportage founded in great integrity, neither a state nor its constituents can or will achieve anything of any lasting worth. 

Reference

Kaplan, Robert D.  "Syria: Identity Crisis."  The Atlantic, February 1993.

Zanotti, Jim and Kenneth Katzman, Jeremiah Gertler, Steven A. Hildreth.  "Israel: Possible Military Strike Against Iran's Nuclear Facilities.  Congressional Research Service,  March 28, 2012.