The failed diplomacy

I would like to comment on the most important news Colombia has produced lately: the agreement between Colombia and the US whereby American troops and planes can use seven military bases in Colombian soil.

This has caused an enormous controversy in south america, for a number of reasons. It is convenient to begin with the motivations that the Colombian government had to sign the agreement. It is claimed that the American support is essential to fight FARC, the guerilla that has become the biggest terrorist organization with incomes based on kidnapping, as well on drug production and trafficking. Military cooperation agreements between Colombia and the US are not new (they date back to 1952, in fact), and they include assistance against drug cartels and, after 9/11, they include direct participation and support of US troops (in Colombian soil) in war operations against FARC. The new agreement follows this "tradition" but to a much larger scale: seven of the most strategic military bases in Colombia are to involve American cooperation. The government says that this new agreement is simply an "update" of the old ones, so there is no need for such a big controversy. For the same reasons, very little is know about the actual agreement, its specific terms and conditions. The "update" theory has also been useful to avoid the control of the Colombian congress, which is supposed to approve any such agreements.

South american countries are very suspicious of this secret agreement. Last friday, an extraordinary meeting of the union of south american countries (Unasur) was held to discuss the Colombian agreement. There was a huge pressure against Colombia, organized by Venezuela's Hugo Chavez, who considers the agreement as an "act of war" against him and his country; he has officially cut diplomatic ties with Colombia so many times in the last year that one doesn't remember whether the two countries have official ties or not. Because of oil money, Venezuela has a notable influence in the subcontinent, so countries such as Bolivia, Ecuador, Paraguay, Uruguay, and Argentina pretty much follow what Chavez says. Other more reasonable countries (Brasil, Chile, Peru) have a more objective perspective on the matter, and while they respect the Colombian decision to ask to the US for support to fight FARC, they are very concerned about the military influence in the region. They surely haven't forgotten that in the early 90s, the de facto president of Panama was removed from power by means of an attack initiated in one of the US military bases in the subcontinent.

In all of this, the Colombian diplomacy has been slow and clumsy. It failed to predict the effect the agreement would have on the south american countries in Unasur. Nowadays, any US presence in the continent is not well received. The stubborn attitude of keeping the agreement hidden for debate (both in Colombia and abroad) is perceived negatively, as if Colombia had something to hide regarding US military presence. (Well, perhaps we have.) Hiding the exact terms of the agreement leads to more (unnecessary) controversy. For instance, Brasil has suggested that some of the planes involved in the agreement are clearly inconvenient for the war against drugs ---to fight against FARC, planes can't flight too fast or too high in order to be effective, and apparently the agreement stipulates planes with very different characteristics.

Also, in this controversy Colombia has been mistreated in several diplomatic forums. A good diplomatic staff would have not allowed that to happen. In my view, Colombian diplomacy has failed to strike back Chavez, telling the world about his open support to FARC. In fact, it is a proven fact that highly ranked officials in the Venezuelan government are providing FARC with missiles to attack Colombian aviation. This is a proven fact. A number of weapons that Venezuela bought from Sweden in the late 80s, have been confiscated to FARC early this year. With the serial numbers in the weapons it was easy to trace their origin. While both Colombia and Sweden have officially asked Venezuela for about this, the clumsy way in which Colombian diplomacy works has allowed Chavez to turn things around, and to change the main subject of the debate. While he's constantly demanding for explanations (and posing as a victim), he owes both Venezuelan and Colombian citizens a great deal of convincing explanations about his financial and military support to FARC.

You may be shocked

Robin Milner is probably the most influential researcher in concurrency theory, the research area in which I work. He has won the Turing award (the Nobel prize for computer science), and made decisive contributions in several areas of computing; in all of them his ideas have had both theoretical and practical impact.

Milner is 75 years-old now. He continues to work, more actively than what one could imagine. He has recently finished a book on his latest group of theories, one that attempts to provide a general formulation for a number of complicated phenomena. My impression is that such theories have had much less impact than his previous work. I personally do not like the theories; I find them very hard to understand. I guess I am not alone in that perception. One gets the impression that Milner knows that, and that he is most interested in making his theories more accessible.

The other day, by mistake, Milner sent a private email to a public mailing list. The email was intended to one of the chairs of a forthcoming conference: in his email Milner was sending very well in advance his slides for his keynote talk. In his very refined English (which we all have come to appreciate by reading his books and papers), Milner expressed his concern about the lack of a projector in the conference, also pointing out that he should be very busy over the coming weeks. Referring to the slides, Milner wrote: "You may be shocked to receive them so early." Pure Milner style.

That email from Milner got me thinking. I was indeed shocked, but not because of the slides. I was shocked to realize that Milner in 75 years was still concerned about some of the annoying issues related to research, such as writing slides and doing arrangements for conferences. Then I realized: I do not want to be 75 and be worried about research! Granted, I am not a genius-like researcher as Milner is, and most likely when I get old I won't feel the urgency of making a last, extraordinary contribution to science (as Milner probably feels). Even if one feels like doing research till the end (literally), that would certainly be disastrous way of ending your life. I mean, there are so many wonderful things in life so as to be concerned till the end about research. At that age, I certainly expect to be worried about hobbies, family, and health (in that order).

We still have one year to make things right.

Today Colombia celebrates the 199th anniversary of its Independence Day. Last week, the Colombian government raised to this unique celebration by announcing that the US military presence in Colombian bases will expand significantly in the short/mid term. I cannot imagine what surprises the government will have for us for next year, in occasion of the 200th anniversary of the Independence day.

I have a humble proposal for such an important anniversary. It is unquestionable now that Colombia is a failed country, regardless of what you understand by "failure". That said, the best thing we can possibly do for 2010 is to formally accept the reality of our failure as a country. More precisely, by 2010 Colombian leaders should start with all the necessary procedures so as to ensure that Colombia ceases to be an independent country, and becomes part of one of the current empires around.

No, I am not joking. I think we could talk to the UN, and make our case. It should be fairly simple to convince them of our failure. Perhaps they can help us in setting up a bid mechanism, so as to become part of the best developed country around. The country offering the best conditions to govern us would be the winner of the bid. Sensible options would be the US and Spain. In both cases, becoming part of them would be a mere formality; we have been behaving like one of their colonies for a very long time now. They treat us accordingly, too. So it would be like one of these couples that have been living together for a long time, and that one day discover that for some bureaucratic reason (say, cheaper taxes) making things formal is convenient.

The main advantage I see is that nothing would really change: our leaders are already used to report to someone in Spain and the US, and both countries already exploit our resources and talent accordingly. There would be many benefits of making our failure formal. Apart from the immediate order, development, and civility that a foreign empire could enforce in Colombia, there would be other small benefits. For instance, we Colombians would get a decent passport to travel around. The developed country that wins the right to rule Colombia would get access to our natural resources (most notably, water) and to our two oceans. This is not to be underestimated. For the US, I suppose having a fixed colony in South America should be very attractive: they would be close to Venezuela's oil and would neutralize the growing influence China and Iran have in the continent.

I am confident all the Colombian leaders that follow this blog will take my proposal into account. They have one year to make things right.

An intellectual bully

I follow Michael Mitzenmacher's blog My Biased Coin. Mitzenmacher is a professor of Computer Science at Harvard, and does research on a field completely unrelated to mine (he works on potentially useful stuff: data structures, network algorithms, probabilities/randomness, information theory). In his blog, MM writes about his research results and other general topics related to life as a professor and researcher. As such, he has recently written about the serious financial situation at Harvard: the huge debt they have now, the cut-offs they should do, etc.

By reading this post (and the comments therein), it seems a huge deal of the responsability for the current crisis at Harvard is due to former president Larry Summers. It seems that Summers invested too frenetically on buildings and new faculty, and the effects of that careless debt are only seen now. Apart from that, it seems that Summers is a rather controversial character (described by some as "an arrogant, intellectual bully") who during his administration brought division at different levels in Harvard. Summers resigned to Harvard presidency in 2006, and took a professorship there afterwards.

While I could not care less about Harvard's financial situation, and I am sure universities and corporations in the US are full of crazy spenders such as Summers, there's a detail that concerns us all: early this year, our beloved Barack Husein appointed Summers as Director of the White House's National Economic Council.

The idea of having a guy like Summers in charge of the US financial recovery initiatives then sounds a bit disturbing. Granted: it could be that the guy is indeed an asshole, but a very competent one for economic matters. (After all, Barack Husein appointed him, so he should be good by definition, right?) However, there's compelling evidence that indicates that Summers is an idiot (or, that thinks that everyone else is an idiot). Indeed, Summers recently claimed that US economy is indeed improving because the number of people searching for the term “economic depression” on Google is down to normal levels!

How about that?

The fantastic four

I had ready a post on the absurd circumstances of the death of Pepe the hippo, and a sort of reflection on the stupidity some "noble" causes inadvertently convey. Yes, the post was boring. But then I found something funnier to write about. Consider the University of Bologna, a respectable institution, founded in 1088, or as WikiPedia would say, "the oldest continually operating degree-granting university in the world." Now consider the picture below, part of the latest publicity campaign the University released so as to attract students to the campuses of Rimini, Cesena, Ravenna, and Forli:

I always liked Ravenna and Rimini :-)

I really don't know what was the purpose of this publicity, entitled "the fantastic four." And it's not difficult to imagine the controversy (and embarrassment) it caused in Bologna and in Italy at large. Naturally, the ads didn't last long, but the damage was already done. I could write many posts on how critical the situation in Italy is, at every level. I choose not to do it. When one of the most respected Universities in the world chooses to attract students in this way, a picture is worth a thousand words.

If you want to read more about this, click here (in Italian).