Thomas P.M. Barnett :: Weblog

Rice's offer to start F2F talks with Iran once they suspend nuclear activities was purposely designed for automatic rejection, telling me that this administration has no intention of negotiating seriously with Tehran. Whole dynamic of needing talks is driven by Iran's drive for nukes, so expecting them to fork over their biggest chip before even sitting down to the poker table is either supremely naive or just plain cynical.

With the Iraq tie-down and the Bush post-presidency in full swing, Bush simply abdicates global leadership on this one.

The only interesting question left is, Who picks up the ball between now and Jan 09?

...oddly enough in Ohio.

First, they strap you into the ball...

Then the hydraulics pull the bank of coiled springs taut...

Then they sling shot the pair of you to a spot just left of the sun.

Nation-Building or Gene-Splicing?

Great piece which has Max chasing his tail a bit, but in a good, transparent way in which he lets you inside his unfolding logic--like a Chet Richards book.

I love that sort of writing, and work hard to achieve it myself when I can (of course, write books like that and people call you self-absorbed and long-winded, when neither is the case to hungry readers--though, alas, not all hunger for the same food for thought).

Just one assumption blithely offered: nation-building requires central planning. Key to doing it well is pushing just the minimal rule sets, best practices and nets to make the situation seem "exploitable" to foreign investors. Markets build nations (or more to the point, states), not the other way around. That's Martin Wolf's main point in "On Globalization," and I emphasize it plenty in the back half of BFA: good markets need/make good governments.

We need to get at market-making, not state-building. That's why Steve DeAngelis and I call it Development-in-a-Box, not Government-in-a-Box.

Again, overall a great piece of thinking by Max. Worth reading.

Here's what's so illogical about our offer to Iran:

Big guy with very big automatic rifle rapidly approaches front door of house, where owner, a much smaller guy, is assembling a pistol.

Big guy says to little guy, "Put down those gun parts or I'll shoot to kill."

Little guy says, "No way. I do and you'll kill me anyway."

Big guy says, "But here's a nice meal I'm willing to give you if you do. Think of your family inside."

Little guy says, "Promise me first that you won't shoot and we can talk about my gun parts."

Big guy says, "No way. You put down the parts and then we talk. But I won't promise I won't shoot."

Little guy says, "Then I'll skip lunch for now."

And the big guy cocks his weapon, seeing no alternative now...

Now, if you find the big guy's approach a bit too confrontational, rethink the scene where he's a U.S. cop and the little guy is a known criminal with a substantial rap sheet. In that scenario, you understand the cop's non-negotiable stance on the potential weapon. Hell, he's just enforcing the law. Can't expect him to orphan his kids for this slime-ball.

But then re-scenario-ize the scene: The cop just went through this drill one house to the right, and killed the guy right off the bat--no negotiation. Granted, a very bad guy, but a very dead bad guy. Not exactly the "due process" this PD keeps bragging about upholding.

Right after, the cop calls on the house to left, saying, "Put down your weapon or I shoot." That bad guy waves his arms and rants back, so cops shoot him full of holes. Later, the cops find no weapons on the guy. Bad guy, yes, but nasty, rather final take-down.

So now consider this little guy's perspective. As far as he's concerned, this is a bad cop. He sure doesn't want to die, but believes one thing for sure: as long as he's working those gun parts, he's still got the cop thinking. Once he stops, the little guy's pretty sure he's a dead man.

What the U.S. continues to say to Iran is: "Give up the bomb or we will invade." Sanctions for now, yes, but Iran's pretty sure Bush and company are hell bent on regime change.

So Iran keeps saying, in so many words, "Promise you won't invade if we give up the bomb effort."

And the Bush administration says, "No way. You give up your big ace-in-the-hole first, but then we still reserve the right to invade, so no defense guarantees."

And weirdly enough, Iran doesn't feel incentivized enough to give up its gun parts.

And the Bush administration continues to reject any linkage between the two issues: WMD and regime change. And Iran's leadership continues to clearly work those issues in tandem.

Dontcha wish Denzel Washington's hostage negotiator character would show up, flash his badge, and chill out both sides?

The Out of Office Countdown calendar with laughing W. on cover.

"Two Years and Counting!"

Lexington Green sent Tom a link to William Lind's The Perils of Threat Inflation. Tom's comment:

An amazingly sensible piece by William Lind. I give him his due on this subject. We cannot have too many respected voices trashing this hugely counterproductive threat inflation with China. It continues to cost us lives in real-world battlefields by hoarding resources better spent on people than platforms.

Tom will be on Larry Kudlow's radio show tomorrow at 11am (EST). Listen in outside of New York on WABC's website.

ARTICLE: “Banks create Muslim ‘windors’ as Islamic banking expands its niche,” by Gillian Tett, Financial Times, 2 June 2006, p. 6.

ARTICLE: “London gains greater role in expanding sharia market,” by Gillian Tett, Financial Times, 2 June 2006, p. 6.

Couple of good stories on how sharia-compliant banking is taking off as a global phenomenon, with the best news being that classic, Old Core banks are now joining the movement in the Middle East.

This is seriously good connectivity developing. I wrote about this in BFA, and didn’t hope to see the trend take off this much by now. Great stuff.

ARTICLE: “U.S. Should Close Prison in Cuba, U.N. Panel Says: Guards Attacked In Riot; Worst Violence at Base--Torture Committee Criticizes Treatment,” by Tim Golden, New York Times, 20 May 2006, p. A1.

ARTICLE: “Tale of 5 Muslims Out of Guantanamo And Into Limbo: Cleared by U.S. of Terror Ties, They Won’t Return Home Due to Fear of Punishment; China Demands Repatriation,” by Andrew Higgins, Wall Street Journal, 2 June 2006, p. A1.

The evidence continues to pile up: we need to generate some new rule set on how we handle terror suspects and those that ultimately must be found guilty of such activities or intentions and put behind bars for the rest of their days. Out continuing ad hoc-ery is self-defeating and self-destructive. We’re blowing relationships we desperately need to keep intact for larger purposes.

To me, the ultimate solution set is simply described. We have the International Criminal Court set up to deal essentially with the Gap’s bad actors and those actors alone. American has cut its bilateral immunity treaties with close to all of the Gap’s nations, essentially putting us in the clear of its perceived purview.

So, on the one hand, we have the ICC, which is internationally credentialed to ajudicate and imprison such bad actors, but lacks a serious capacity for identifying and capturing them.

On the other hand, we have the U.S. military, which has a serious capacity for identifying and capturing such bad actors, but lacks an internationally-acceptable process for processing, adjudicating and imprisoning them.

This peanut butter and chocolate combination seems inevitable and quite logical to me. The question is, how long and how painful the path that forces such an inescapable outcome?

ARTICLE: “Paulson’s China Resume Could Be an Asset for Bush,” by Deborah Solomon and Andrew Browne, Wall Street Journal, 2 June 2006, [ripped low on page so can't tell exact number].

ARTICLE: “US and China stoke fears of first nuclear tension since 1964,” by Mure Dickie and Demetri Sevastopol, Financial Times, 2 June 2006, p. 5.

COLUMN: “U.S. Investment Debate Takes Global Stage: Tighter Limits on Other Nations Could Spark Retaliation Abroad,” by Greg Hitt, Wall Street Street, 30 May 2006, p. A4.

ARTICLE: “Battle of the bourses: Behind the mergers of financial exchanges lies not just a quest for size and scope, but also a fight for survival,” The Economist, 27 May 2006, p. 65.

ARTICLE: “Long City-Centric, Financial Exchanges Are Going Global: Mergers Are in the Air as Goal Is to Offer One-Stop Shops To Sophisticated Investors; Appeal to ‘Black Box’ Traders,” by Alistair MacDonald, Aaron Lucchetti and Edward Taylor, Wall Street Journal, 27 May 2006, p. A1.

ARTICLE: “China IPOs Shun Wall Street to Call Hong Kong Home,” by Kate Linebaugh, Wall Street Journal, 30 May 2006, p. C1.

ARTICLE: “Bank of China Rises 15% on First Day,” by James T. Areddy and Keri Geiger, Wall Street Journal, 2 June 2006, p. C12.

The choice of Goldman Sachs heavyweight Henry Paulson for Secretary of Treasury is the best news out of this administration in far too long a time. The best parts? The assurances Paulson got from Bush (apparently through Jim Baker) that he’ll rank up with Rummy, Rice and Cheney on policy, plus Paulson’s obviously sophisticated understanding of China.

That doesn’t make him a softie on China, just not an unblinking (and unthinking) hardliner.

Paulson couldn’t have arrived at a better time.

First, the hawks in the Pentagon need to be counterbalanced somehow. Left to their own devices, they’ll continue to spend bijillions on weapons systems and platforms of dubious relevance to the GWOT, continuing to divert much-needed resources into dead-end strategic scenarios.

Second, the U.S. is becoming so inhospitable to foreign capital, that we’re setting a very bad tone for the Core as a whole, which, if left to its natural market devices, will witness a rapid networking of global financial hubs, which can either be a great thing or a very bad thing, depending on the developed rule sets--something Paulson should help shape as much as possible.

China’s natural rise as a financial hub of its own (it already has Hong Kong, Taiwan and Singapore as feeder streams) is something to be managed, not sped up out of some perceived sense that Americans markets are no longer worth the hassle.

I’ve been asked many times, “What is the global insecurity scenario/wild card you fear most?” And my answer is always, “A financial meltdown or panic in China.”

Keep your strengths close, keep your vulnerabilities even closer. To me, strategic alliance with China is a defensive acquisition. If Paulson moves that pile whatsoever, he’s a huge improvement over the completely forgettable secretaries that preceded him.

With Clinton, it was the SECDEFs that were forgettable, and Treasury secretaries that were unforgettable. Other way around with Bush--hopefully until Paulson takes the reins.

ARTICLE: “Six Powers Reach Accord On Iran Plan: U.S. Supports Combination Of Incentives, ‘Disincentives,’” by Glenn Kessler, Washington Post, 2 June 2006, p. A1.

ARTICLE: “U.S., Major Powers Agree on Incentives for Iran: Bush Says U.N. Is Next Step If Tehran Fails to Suspend Nuclear-Technology Pursuit,” by Jay Solomon and Bill Spindle, Wall Street Journal, 2 June 2006, p. A3.

ARTICLE: “Package of Terms (No Sanctions Included) for Iran,” by Thom Shanker and Elaine Sciolino, New York Times, 2 June 2006, p. A12.

ARTICLE: “Iranians Dismiss U.S. Terms For Beginning Direct Talks,” by Michael Slackman, New York Times, 2 June 2006, p. A12.

ARTICLE: “Pressure mounts on Iran to accept US offer of talks,” by Roula Khalef, Financial Times, 2 June 2006, p. 4.

OP-ED: “Over a Barrel: Trade sanctions could prompt regime change in Iran,” by William P. Kucewicz, Wall Street Journal, 2 June 2006, p. A18.

ARTICLE: “US policy shift draws on past tactics,” by Guy Dinmore, Financial Times, 2 June 2006, p. 4.

ARTICLE: “U.S. Rejects An Invitation For Talks In North Korea,” by Norimitsu Onishi, New York Times, 2 June 2006, p. A13.

ANALYSIS: “Hostage to history: how visceral mistrust is bedeviling the search for a settlement,” by David Gardner, Financial Times, 2 June 2006, p. 9.

ANALYSIS: “Rice changes the game but all options remain open: If Tehran spurns Bush’s preconditions, it will be much harder to argue against tougher action, including sanctions and even air strikes,” by Edward Luce, Financial Times, 2 June 2006, p. 9.

OP-ED: “Reaching Out to Iran: Research on Gas Victims May Offer a Bridge,” by David Ignatius, Washington Post, 2 June 2006, p. A19.

As I said in an earlier post (which is so creepily similar to a quote from Strobe Talbot in an FT piece--details to come), I don’t think this exercise in diplomacy was a serious one from this administration. I think the real value here is getting Russia and China further down the pike in participating in this sort of effort in the Middle East with Old Core Europe and America.

But seriously, if our next big threat is taking this whole shebang to the UN Security Council, then I’d say Iran’s closer to a real bomb than the Core powers are to a united stance with any credibility.

The Iraq tie-down continues, so, far more than that situation, the Iranian one is already basically punted to the next administration.

The simplest answer is offered in the lead NYT piece:

The Americans are still resisting formulas giving Iran security guarantees that it would not be the target of a military attack. The Europeans say that without such assurances, Iran will proceed with the pursuit of a nuclear weapons program despite its longstanding denials that it has that intention.

I personally think we overestimate Iran’s susceptibility to both international diplomatic pressure and economic sanctions. Oil is simply too fungible and has been for a long time.

I also think we hope too hard for a repeat of Qaddafi’s turnaround. He’s just such a weird duck, far more comfortable being completely hypocritical at a moment’s notice than the far more rigid mullahs in Iran. Plus, Qaddafi never based his regime legitimacy on this issue, so it really represented no great sacrifice on his part, especially since Libya basically got nowhere on its quest.

The comparisons to North Korea are more apt only in the sense that we picked the wrong thing to focus on: with the DPRK, we should have focused on making the situation work for China; with Iran, we should have focused on making the situation work for Iraq.

Either way, though, I think this administration has basically come to the decision of making no serious effort on diplomatic solutions, and since the military options are illusory, that means the game’s essentially over for this president. Again, Bush says the decision to leave Iraq will be the next president’s and he’s wrong. The two decisions already punted to the next president are North Korea and Iran.

We’re going to need a clean start with Iran, the kind that comes with a new president. The best this crew will do is improve the relationship with China in the meantime (the new Secretary of the Treasury) and hope that lays enough ground work on both subjects for the next administration. This crew has simply worked itself into too many corners to overcome the profound levels of distrust still there between Washington and Tehran, and that’s too bad. Bush really is quite Nixonian, and if Ahmadinejad is closer to that practicality than we realize, we may be missing a truly strong opportunity to get Iran back into the fold and--by doing so--neutralizing the remaining weak attraction of the Shiite revolutionary ideology.

Here’s Talbot quote from the Luce piece: “Up to now the Bush administration’s stance has been: ‘Please hand over your gun, and then I’m going to shoot you. It is obviously a self-defeating strategy. What we're seeing is a necessary course-correction in US diplomacy.”

I get the first part. I just don’t see the self-correction occurring in this term.

Rather, the best we can hope for is the sort of small, confidence-building measures that Ignatius talks about. We simply need to change the subject with Tehran, because we’re getting nowhere in this non-dialogue.

ARTICLE: “Iraqi Accuses U.S. Of ‘Daily’ Attacks Against Civilians: Premier Assails Troops; New Government Vows Its Own Inquiry in Deaths of 24 in Haditha,” by Richard A. Oppel Jr., New York Times, 2 June 2006, p. A1.

ARTICLE: “Investigators of Haditha Shootings Look to Exhume Bodies,” by Josh White and Thomas E. Ricks, Washington Post, 2 June 2006, p. A16.

ARTICLE: “Troops will get ‘values’ training: Iraqi deaths lead to ethics review,” by Tom Vanden Brook, USA Today, 2 June 2006, p. 1A.

OP-ED: “The Indictment Of U.S. Troops Was Inevitable,” by Daniel Henninger, Wall Street Journal, 2 June 2006, p. A18.

ARTICLE: “Military to Charge 8 in Iraqi Civilian’s Death,” by David S. Cloud, New York Times, 2 June 2006, p. A8.

ARTICLE: “In Final Trial, G.I. Is Acquitted of Abusing Afghan Detainee,” by Tim Golden, New York Times, 2 June 2006, p. A8.

ARTICLE: “Troops Land in Restive East Timor: Foreign Intervention Requested as Rebel Soldiers Attack Police,” by Alan Sipress and Colum Lynch, Washington Post, 26 May 2006, p. A14.

ARTICLE: “In E. Timor, an Optimistic Enterprise Turns to Ashes,” by Alan Sipress, Washington Post, 2 June 2006, p. A13.

ARTICLE: “Welcome to no-go land: A nasty outbreak of violence in eastern Germany,” The Economist, 27 May 2006, p. 48.

ARTICLE: “Trouble on Welfare Island: Overbearing government and the welfare state are hurting the United States’ poorest citizens,” The Economist, 27 May 2006, p. 25.

COLUMN: “The hopeful interventionist: The essential characteristic of Tony Blair’s foreign policy is optimism,” by Bagehot, The Economist, 27 May 2006, p. 56.

We have put the new Iraqi government in a very bad place with Haditha and the now associated similar “mistakes” (most of which are likely to prove unfounded, I believe, in the brewing Crucible-like hysteria). This subject will naturally be overworked, despite the stern protestations to any such accusations by the media, which will discuss endlessly how they’re not hyping this situation!

What can’t be hyped is how much harder such events make it for the new Iraqi government to resist a natural rising nationalism that refocuses a lot of social anger on U.S. forces, holding them responsible for all manner of disappointment in our postwar efforts.

With our failure to generate enough initial security in Iraq, there followed no economic development. Now, three-plus years past, when something like Haditha breaks, we have no resevoir of good will to call upon with the Iraqis.

Still, the comparisons to My Lai are awfully premature at this point. It takes someone of John McCain’s blind ambition and apparent cynicism to use this event to boost his profile in his bid for the ’08 election. I hope no one else on either side follows him down a similar path. It will be amazingly destructive if they do, not just to our morale, but to the tens or even hundreds of thousands who will die needlessly in some future civil strife distant from our shores, to whom no relief will come from America too obsessed with self-flagellating itself over our “crimes.”

Already, fear of such an outcome has the U.S. military jumping through its rear-ends to show just how responsive it will be, thus the “values” training.

Hopefully, as Michael O’Hanlon argues well, this event will serve a forcing function in the much-needed debate between those in the U.S. military who argue we need to be less squeamish about using overwhelming force in crushing an insurgency (the bankrupt Israeli model now abandoned by Israel itself) and those, like the current commander of U.S. ground forces, LGen Pete Chiarelli, who argue for minimal use of force (the British model from Northern Ireland).

To me, the choice is an obvious one. Israel found no relief until it pulled back and out, seeking it’s one-state solution. Britain handled the “troubles” much better, keeping both military and civilian death totals low, but obviously trading some military lives to keep that civilian rate as low as possible.

We need to move along this learning curve with seriousness. “No more Iraqs” is not a serious option. Postconflict efforts and peacekeeping in general will be an inescapable Core skill set in dealing with the Gap in coming decades. Insurgencies are like warts: treatment will be long and repetitive, like the Aussies going back to East Timor, where they once before brought peace but no resulting development--just overwhelming aid dependency.

But look around: the Core’s nation-building efforts have been pretty bad quite closer to home, for precisely that reason: the tendency to “aid” the target society far too much. West Germany made this mistake with East Germany and, by doing so, not only scared off the FDI, which went to places like Poland instead, but created a nasty ghetto mentality that’s permeated far too much of the former East Germany.

Look even closer to home with Puerto Rico, the poorest non-state in our union. Why? It has--by far--the smallest private sector in the U.S., with government jobs dominating the local economy like nowhere else, save perhaps the chronic basket case DC.

Like Tony Blair, I remain optimistic that we will learn to learn from these experiences. Not because it’s cool, or right, or visionary. We will learn because we will find these situations inescapable in an ever smaller world knitted together by globalization’s sweeping connectivity--and because we’ll get tired of screwing up.

ARTICLE: “The Simultaneity Problem in Stabilization/Reconstruction,” by Jack Goldstone, IPOA (International Peace Operations Association) Quarterly, January 2006, p. 1.

ARTICLE: “Who dares profits: Why Britain is good at producing private military companies,” The Economist, 20 May 2006, p. 60.

Last Friday I spent a good hour with representatives from the International Peace Operations Association (to which Blackwater belongs) and the Fund for Peace. They’re holding an “Ethical Security Conference” in the fall and we spoke about both I and Steve DeAngelis participating in some manner.

Both groups are leading efforts to gain adherence to a code of conduct among private-sector firms (for IPOA, their members, and for FFP, a consortium of extractive industries (basically oil & gas and mining) in their Gap operations. In both instances, you’re really talking about the private sector coming together on its own to try and establish best ethical practices, which is a better outcome than punitive actions from governments or international organizations like the UN because, if done right, the original sins are hopefully obviated.

I’m impressed that such a thing as IPOA already exists. It tells me that postconflict and postdisaster services have matured to the point where the industry is more than self-aware, it’s self-organizing and self-policing.

As the Economist piece points out, there’s already a British version of this organization (British Association of Private Security Companies), which works closely with IPOA on many issues. Plus, there’s a specific one for companies that are currently working in Iraq (Private Security Company Association of Iraq).

The Economist piece reinforces the notion that Private Military Companies are exclusively about providing high-quality bodies on the ground, when, if you read the list of companies in IPOA, you realize, as I did with Blackwater today, that there’s a huge capacity-building angle to most of these companies (i.e., they train their own and others).

What the article does point out well: how all those years of working Northern Ireland created this huge pool of former Brit soldiers who are incredibly experienced in peacekeeping ops.

Iraq is going to be a huge industry capacity boosting process for the U.S. in a similar manner. This is another reason why the Vietnam comparison rings hollow. Iraq won’t be souring the U.S. on future interventions. It will simply reshape their conduct dramatically, changing both the public sector leadership and the private sector’s many and growing roles.

DATELINE: Headquarters of Blackwater USA, Moyock NC, 2 June 2006

Facinating day, but tiring.

Got home from Paramount King’s Island with Em’s class around midnight, which gave me only 4 hours to sleep before rising and catching 0600 flight to Dulles. There Steve DeAngelis swings by and we go to Piedmont Aviation terminal, to fly down to Blackwater USA’s HQ in Moyock NC with CEO Erik Prince in the small company plane (hoping for some slick G-3, but got some very practical prop, which was indicative of their whole facility--very utilitarian but nothing that said “we spend money freely”).

Landing on their own little runway amidst their great number of firing ranges, it was a bit weird to debark plane with so much gunfire all around, but the place is definitely busy.

Blackwater, as you might know, is a top-flight private military company that got it’s start with former Navy SEAL Prince about ten years ago. First big contract was to train sailors on ship security in port after USS Cole bombing, and that’s basically what they do most--train military, police, and security personnel from all levels of U.S. government, plus some foreign. After 9/11, according to Prince, their direct work of supplying high-quality personnel on the ground expanded a lot, but the roots and the ethos of the company remain in training, whether its their own people or those of others.

To that end, they have one big facility down in Moyock, as in tens of thousands of acres. Prince and his head of training drove us around for “windshield tour” that included several short tours of various facilities--like their very innovative shooting gallery houses that are reconfigurable. Blackwater also sells a lot of their training equipment and gear to other companies and government agencies, because it’s stuff they developed on their own, being unsatisfied with what they could buy commercially. Since it’s good stuff, people want to buy it direct, in addition to the training services, so apparently they sell a lot of gear on-line through their site.

Overall, a very impressive facility--again, nothing gold-plated, just very utilitarian and efficient and often quite elegant in design. A lot of thought went into building this place, and this company, so you can’t come away from the tour not feeling impressed.

And, I confess, I came away a bit surprised. Like most people, I tended to view Blackwater primarily in terms of the high-quality bodies they put on the ground. For many people, the first time they heard about the company was when four of their guys died in Falluja in April 2004 (the former SOF guys whose bodies were torn up by the locals). But touring the place, you really get a sense that the company is more about training than anything else--in effect, a serious capacity-building multiplier, much like Pinkerton was in the Civil War and the subsequent settling of the West.

Prince gave us a fascinating brief about the company over lunch, with lotsa historical details on the evolution of private military contractors through history (favorite point being about how many of our Revolutionary War heroes were actually foreign military contractors, like Lafayette; but frankly, they’ve appeared in every war we’ve fought).

My point was that it’s only natural for PMCs (private military companies) to be thriving in an era when the global economy is expanding, because markets are moving into previously untapped and often more dangerous environments. When that sort of expansion is happening, PMCs end up filling a substantial niche in the military-market nexus.

Steve’s point was that this also happens when government structures and market conditions get out of whack, so there is a backfilling function. In effect, he noted, Blackwater and Enterra approach Fourth Generation Warfare very similarly in terms of building capacity to defeat asymmetrical threat actors. Blackwater’s just very real and very on the ground, while Enterra’s based in the cyber universe.

In combination then, Blackwater’s future couldn’t be brighter.

Rest of afternoon given over to discussion between the two of us and a cluster of Blackwater senior execs. That was truly interesting, simply in terms of realizing how similar our approaches are to similar markets, so clearly we talked a lot about Development-in-a-Box and the market-making templates of how to connect up previously disconnected economies and societies. Blackwater’s contention is basically that, all things being equal, private firms will jump-start both local security and markets better than government or international agencies, simply because they take on the risk with more equanimity and can respond with greater agility. Plus, there’s just the more direct profit motive. Frankly, as I’ve noted elsewhere, it’s a bit weird to think that the combo of the military and aid groups/agencies will succeed in postwar reconstruction, because between them there isn’t really any entrepreneurial spirit or experience. It’s just not in their genes.

A great example of this is how Blackwater got quickly pulled into the Katrina effort in New Orleans (the subsequent subject of many conspiracy tales). Prior to the hurricane, Prince said, the company has no intention of ever getting involved with domestic crisis response, but the reality was, when push came to shove, Blackwater could put together an effort so much faster than government entities that, once on the scene and proving themselves, the offers just poured in. Now, they have a standing capacity ready to go at a moment’s notice, which shows you how quickly they adapt to new market conditions.

So all in all it was a fascinating day, with good discussion of future collaborative possibilities between Enterra and Blackwater. Steve and I both know that Development-in-a-Box lives and dies as a strategic concept on the basis of the talent and professionalism of the people on the ground who do the initial implementation--but even more so the training. Getting my head turned a bit on what Blackwater’s all about was useful (and very instructive), but getting a sense of how systematically they approach training was truly encouraging--yet another example of how we overthink the complexity of the problem, overestimate the cost of the problem, and underestimate the private-sector’s ability to get things started and moving in a rapid, on-the-ground, market-driven sort of way. No surprise, Blackwater looks at it in much the same way, noting that the simplest and most direct solutions tend to be the most empowering to the locals, and that’s what really matters at the end of the day.

What should really die with Iraq are a lot of assumptions about governments building nations--much less militaries building nations. What we need most for the future is a robust industry sector that’s competently arrayed and properly incentivized to get us out of that post-conflict/disaster “quagmire” mentality and into the “virgin markets” mindset.



And no, that’s not a new realization for me. I’ve always said SysAdmin needs to be more civilian than uniform, more rest-of-USG than DoD, more international than American, and definitely more private-sector than public.

Globalization remains in an expansive phase, so understanding how the Blackwaters of the world replicate many of the same functions played so famously by Pinkerton back after the Civil War helps orient a lot of people’s minds to the more correct historical analogies.

In short, this ain’t a rerun of Vietnam, cause this ain’t an extension of the Cold War. Adjusting to that environmental and strategic reality is crucial for understanding both the Fourth Generation Warfare characteristics of this struggle, plus its Long War timeframe.

Apparently I had the wrong information. I just tuned in to Larry and caught the end of his interview with Tom. Sorry for the miscue.

Oow. Forgot about posting. They called at 9 and moved me up. I had just awakened after getting home at 0100, so blanked on that. Apologies to anyone I messed up on that.

Only a decent performance: big point to me was that most deals cut with hard-liners, not reformists--thus the maxim that "only Nixon can go to China." Any deal with former president Khatami would have been shot down by mulllahs. Given Ahmadinejad's push to create a non-mullah-based dominant party, he needs foreign policy successes to cover up and/or alleviate his domestic economic failures. I know everyone wants Tom Jefferson to follow the Grand Ayatollah, but far more likely and realistic is that next "progressive" iteration will be Ahmadinejad or someone very like him. Think about it: only a staunchly pious, America-baiting, Jew-taunting, hard-liner can pull off the move to a new party elite that's not mullah-based. That's the domestic Nixon scenario. The foreign one involves getting America diplomatically tied down on the military regime-change threat.

In reality, that tie-down already self-inflicted with Iraq postwar mess, meaning we can generate smoking holes with the military option and little else but a huge regime-reinforcing surge of Iranian nationalism. Our problem now is that it's not just Rummy but the whole administration that "don't do diplomacy"--our recent "major initiative" notwithstanding.

The "grand bargain" with Iran gives us something the region has long desperately needed: a regional security regime (starts as a CSCE-like affair and slowly migrates into something more tangible) that puts Iran in a comfortable-enough place that external security "threats" are no longer enough to hold off popular domestic impulses for reform. CSCE got you Walesa and the rest in East Europe (again, thank Nixon and Henry and just pat Ronnie and Maggie and JP II on the backs), because it created a regional forum to push individual economic/human rights and that got you the asssertive, impatient public that ultimately took Reagan's rhetoric and made it real.

We need that sort of large-scale security advance to further the Big Bang, capitalize on Israel's realistic one-state solution, and tap the natural ambition of that youth bulge currently hitting job age across the region.

Iran remains the lynch pin--not Israel, not Iraq, and not the House of Saud. Ahmadinejad represents a far better strategic opportunity than the neocons (and anybody else who thinks that military options are the sine qua non of serious strategizing) realize. You give them credit for effectively and none-too-cynically using 9/11 to lay down the Bang. So the man and the moment met. But now the man and the moment diverge--and so the waiting begins and the pressure for the Great Correction mounts.

You hear it all the time in the Pentagon: Less Clausewitz, more Sun Tzu. Abizaid gets this, Petraeus gets this, Mattis gets this. Nagl and Hammes get this.

But this administration does not.

DATELINE: Indy, 3 June 2006

Tried to spend special day with son Kevin prior to his Monday surgery (to correct a structural birth defect that would otherwise grow worse as he got into puberty). It involved much money spent at a comic book store (4 days in hospital post-surgery, then a very quiet month in bed), whacking two big buckets of balls at the local golf driving range, and it was supposed to end with an Indy Indians AAA baseball game.

Instead, I decided to total the Pilot by smashing into a late model Ford that had slammed on the brakes in front of me when the car in front of him decided to make a U turn--apparently without giving the driver in front of me enough warning. His car was badly damaged too.

The Pilot crumpled quite nicely. The windshield collapsed a bit and the air bags went off, protecting me and Kevin in the front seats (Kevin recently got tall enough to sit in the front), and Jerry, second son, faired just fine in his second row seat. My watch snapped off from the air bag, and my left wrist seemed to get a slight burn from it, but that was it. No fire or anything, but lots of smoke initially, I think mostly from air bags.

So we faired well enough. Other driver okay, but he suffered from being unable to produce a driver's licence. Unable to speak English, his account, when relayed to the Spanish-speaking accident cop, corresponded to mine (U turn seemingly out of nowhere, setting off the chain reaction). I think what baffled me and initially slowed my reaction was that there was no left turn to be made, as it was a T intersection. So no left turn lane and hence the difficulty of pulling off that maneuver safely on a road with cars traveling with some speed through a solid green light. My guess is that this guy decided he was heading the wrong way and tried to double back to the stadium (I was heading farther away to park).

So we miss the game, and probably never see that nice black Pilot ever again, given the damage. Sort of an abrupt finish to a beautiful relationship. I'm insured against accidents involving uninsured drivers, which I'm guessing this guy was. Since his ID consisted of a credit card, I'm wondering if he'll pretty much disappear. But I let the cops handle all that, meaning the other driver got a summons for not being able to produce a driver's license.

Still, the big thing is, no one got hurt. Cars can be replaced, but lives cannot. I was quite impressed with how well the Pilot took the crash, but it will be missed. If I had it to do over again, I would have crashed the bit older Odyssey with over 100k. The Pilot had only 79k. My wife, picking us up, said the same thing after making sure we were all okay.

I can't be sure, but I think this late model Ford's brake lights weren't working on top (the rear window one), because as I initially braked, I had the distinct feeling I was just approaching a slower car, not a braking or stopped one. Then, as we kept getting so much closer so much faster, I realized too late that I needed to be slamming, not just braking. That red light that goes on in your brain thanks to the rear window brake light hadn't gone off in mind--at least not in a way that I felt it should have. Or maybe it did, and the time provided by events simply wasn't enough for me to process it.

That's one possibility. The other is that the glare from the low sun directly into my windshield made it hard for me to interpret the Ford's rear lighting. One thing I am sure of, as I started to brake, I had every intention of slowing, not slamming. It was only deep into the braking that I realized that wouldn't do the trick, meaning I realized I was screwed.

The final possibility (most likely) is that everything worked just fine but that the chain reaction simply couldn't be avoided. Maybe it was all just too fast and my brain is still trying to make it work out. Afterwards I thought about all the times I've narrowly missed bad things like that. Perhaps, after 28 years of drving without an accident, your luck just runs out.

It's probably to avoid that feeling that I keep trying to come up with extenuating circumstances to explain why, despite having both hands on the wheel, not being impaired in any way, and seemingly reacting in time to have handled the event, I still couldn't. If that's the ultimate sense you get from an event like this, it can be a lot more scary than than that one, extenuating circumstance that seems to explain it all. In the end, the randomness is more frightening.

It's that inherent need for a seemingly safer explanation that gives rise to conspiracy thinking: a single guy can't just kill a president, a bunch of guys can't just take down the World Trade Center, and so on. There must be some simplifying conspiracy that explains it all, making the reality melt away, reducing its fear factor.

Vonne warned me about this on the ride home. She was in an accident with Jerry a couple of years back, and it really shook her for a couple of weeks. Then, she just realized she had to get over it, because driving was just something she had to do in her life. You can basically do all the right things, as fast as you can under the circumstances, and you can still simply get smashed by circumstances.

About the only thing I take away from this that I like is the usual realization that all the flying I do is so much safer.

But the real bitch of the whole thing is that the driver who sets this all in motion is sitting at the game right now, probably enjoying a beer. Me? I'm wondering about having to get a new car fast.

Still, gotta feel good to walk away from anything that profoundly kinetic with no one getting hurt.

Now, on to the surgery.

Is security coming to a border far from you?

Recently, the U.S. Senate confirmed Ralph Basham as new commissioner of U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) in a little-noticed vote that is nonetheless of enormous importance for the future conduct of the global war on terrorism.

Winning this long war is all about spreading our networks, legal rule sets and transparency. By extending America's trade connectivity, we shrink those areas of the developing world that are effectively disconnected from the global economy, and by doing that, we reduce the operating domain of transnational terrorists who thrive best in poorly governed regions. [read more]

+ The June issue of Wired had a piece called Baghdad, USA on the training of soldiers at Fort Polk that dovetails nicely with Tom's Monks of War and recent trip to Blackwater.

+ Stillest Words refers to Tom 'the self aware liberal' as a counterpoint to true conservatism relative to the Big Bang in the Middle East.

+ The Show featured Tom prominently. Strange. When I emailed it to Tom he wrote:

Zefrank is politically-minded performance artist who caught me at TED or Pop!Tech a while back.

Thanks to Eric Anderson of Stillest Words (above) for originally commenting this link.

+ Sun Bin picked up on the Gapminder post and ran with it, interacting some with what I said about Malthus.

+ Mark Safranski had a major post called Creating a culture of "Mediciexity". He picks up some of what Steve DeAngelis has been writing about over at the The Enterprise Resilience Management Blog. Tom is one example of horizontal thinker par excellence.

+ Matt McIntosh sends in this 'Fred Kaplan piece skewering the overinflation of China's military potentialities': The China Syndrome: Why the Pentagon keeps overestimating Beijing's military strength.

Other three kids gone, so just Vonne and I home with pre-surgical Kev last night. Special treats, plus a fun online purchase thanks to his Aunt Maggie (Batgirl #1 signed by artist), and then "Matrix Reloaded" in the home theater.

Up and to Riley Children's Hospital this morn. Long pre-surgical consults with peds ortho surgeon (much liked by nurses for his good technique), anesthesiologist, floor nurse, surgical nurse, and peds pain management specialist. Big decision was to go epidural, which is not without risk. Then again, neither is trying to control that much pain with opiates in an IV.

The cause for sugery is a concave chest, or depressed sternum. A congenital issue, we've been anticipating this event since 1995, when Kev was kind enough to show up between two of big sister Em's chemo rounds.

Surgery consists of implanting a bar behind the sternum to pop it out into a normal position. That bar remains embedded for 3 years, like an internal scoliosis rack. Eventually, Kev's now pliable sternum and rib cartilege will harden, so when bar comes out in 2009, his changed form will be both robust and permanent.

Nice thing about this route is the instant gratification of a fixed chest. Downside is having the bar so long.

Other route, and still gold standard, is to cut all cartilege from ribs and force 6-month knitting process (akin to breaking a bone to reset it). But this bar route (Nuss procedure) is used for younger kids as emerging preferred alternative, because less cutting, so less a burned-bridges approach. We could still go that route if this fails, except the success rate with Nuss is very high.

Kev came through the 2.5 hr event just fine. We see him in recovery in a few minutes. Now he has a chest to match his ambition for FBI medals down the road--at least one big enough to some day pin one on ...

Kev will stay here 4 nights, because the pain management from manipulating his sternum and rib cage that much is profound, meaning the epidural and other tubes remain in at least 72 hours.

So I will spend nights and my spouse will spend days, and thus we finally complete the cycle predetermined over a decade ago.

DATELINE: James Whitcomb Riley Hospital for Children, Indy, 5 June 2006

Kevin's transformation is unreal. Putting aside all the tubes and monitors and the epi, his physical change is eye-popping. Previously sunken-chest, shoulder-blades stuck out and shoulders slumped inward to emphasize his great skinniness, he's now this broad shouldered, straight-backed and full-chested kid. Hard to believe he won't breathe more easily and eat far more (his sunken sternum meant his stomach was almost naturally stapled). Even more surprising, the bar isn't apparent. Except for future girlfriends (don't expect too many thru 8th grade, but Kev's been a natural pick-up artist since he was about 5), I don't know who will ever notice--save maybe TSA.

Gonna be a very long night though for poor Kev, although he does get to press his own regulated epi doses.

Me, I can't wait to sleep again in those glorious recliners!

As linked by Enterprise Resilience Management Blog and Coming Anarchy, quoting stories from the Post and the Times, the Islamic Courts Union, a group with alleged ties to al-Qaeda, has taken control in Mogadishu, Somalia.

First connection to Tom's work: this is what happens when we refuse to do nation building, especially places where we already had a foot in the door. An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure...

Second connection: Tom has been saying for a long time that Islamist/terrorist networks will spread to Africa, looking for vacuums they can fill, like the Taliban did in Afghanistan. Unfortunately, in this situation, he was right.

Spent last night with Kev in his room. He and I got two one-hour naps for all our combined efforts. Mom stayed the day, while I cleaned the house (weird to spend day alone with cat, cranking Furs, Heads and Police--yes, I am carbon dated).

I 'm back for night.

Kev's got rather impossible task of staying very immobile but also not clotting or catching pneumonia, so breathing ex's just like post-cardiac. We continue to fine-tune the meds, with Valium and trusted (by me) Toradol.

Poor Kev has never been in such profound pain, much less for such a stretch. We don't expect him to sit up for another 24.

Nice bit: DVD player and flat screen. Finishing LOTR and heading to Star Wars 6 next.

Car wreck was humiliating (younger Tom probably misses by a foot or two--let's be honest) and this surgery is way too much drama.

I am seriously looking for some boredom, much as I handle that badly.

Good analogy on Kev's pain: imagine all the orthodonture of your youth pulled off in one afternoon. Nice to have that perfect smile so fast, but imagine trying to eat. That's Kev and breathing deep enough to hold off pneumonia right now.

Kev has left the Inevitable and entered the Inconceivable.

Hmmm. Sounds like a career path description for the successful futurologist: start with the inevitable, jump quickly past the inconceivable, and keep going til you hit incredible.

Inevitable is pain. Inconceivable is exercising your way beyond it. Incredible is his new body, as hard won as any weightlifter.

He'll be baaaack.

WSJ story today ("Midterm Tea Leaves Signal Hot Water For Republicans," by Jackie Calmes, p. A1.) speaks to Dems likely to catch House, with Senate within potential reach. Either or both would seal Bush post-presidency.

The fascinating bit, reminding us of the importance of demographics (tending to dwarf even foreign policy and the all-mighty GWOT):

In all these areas [Congressional districts where Dems likely to steal seats], seniors are disgruntled about the new Medicare prescription-drug benefit and the administration's now-dead proposal to remake Social Security. In midterm elections, with their low turnouts, seniors account for roughly 40 percent of the vote.

Seniors be served, and I don't think a constitutional ban on gay marriages will do it.

Both Kev and I catch up on sleep last night. He seems over the pain hump. A bunch of tubes come out tomorrow if progress proceeds apace. Pneumonia threat dissipating. Nonstop Simpsons episodes seem to work best.

That the Iranians haven't dismissed Bush's package offer yet is indeed a hopeful sign, as Bush himself noted. So the undisclosed package of economic and diplomatic connectivity, in combination with the offer to start direct talks for the first time since 79, must be substantial. If Tehran says yes by suspending (but not terminating) its uranium enrichment program, then the potential for direct talks to spill over to other security issues (something the stay-in-our-lanes crowd with this administration usually loathes to do in a weird definition of non-linkaging) is at least raised--and that alone would be cause for real optimism that the soft-kill option can work itself out over time (and administrations).

Good news that Zarqawi is gone. I am not a believer in the notion that Al Qaeda will get smarter each time we kill or capture one of their leaders. I believe that is a cherished myth among their ranks, one perpetuated by some--but surely not all--Fourth Generation Warfare theorists. I think every time we kill one of their best and brightest, we achieve some incoherence within their ranks. Yes, tactical victories are always there for their taking, but strategic ones require strategic coordination, and killing top leaders makes such coordination much harder.

That doesn't mean less terrorism from their ranks, just less strategically effective terrorism. And the less effective their strategy becomes, the more the terrorists move into the same pool as the narcos and others who live off grid and regularly abuse the nets for their particular purposes. In short, they become less the vaunted enemy and more the chronic problem to manage.

On the other hand, Zarqawi's elevation to "master terrorist" was useful to our purposes. Here's what I wrote in Blueprint for Action (pp. 114-18) on this notion. In lieu of further comment, I offer it here to mark the occasion for what I believe it's truly worth:

We don’t really fight regimes anymore, and we can’t find armies willing to take on the might of our Leviathan force. What we engage in today is primarily warfare against individuals: either killing them or rounding them up for prosecution in onesies and twosies. In fact, the U.S. military has progressively specialized in warfare against individuals across the entirety of the post–Cold War period. Consider this trajectory of our major interventions: We went into Panama in 1989 looking for one guy (Manuel Noriega); after entering Somalia in 1992, we subsequently became fixated on toppling a single warlord (Mohamed Farrah Aidid) and his top leadership; in the Balkans across the 1990s, we settled on a strategy of targeting the leadership clique of Slobodan Milosevic with very specific sanctions and a bombing campaign that ultimately put him in the docket of the International Criminal Court in The Hague; in Afghanistan we entered with specific goals of killing or capturing al Qaeda’s senior leaders; and in Iraq we went in looking for a “deck of cards.” Think of the big successes of this war so far: assassinations of individual al Qaeda leaders, arrests of small terrorist cells, capturing Saddam. Think of our most gnawing failure to date: our inability to capture or kill Osama bin Laden. Think about our likely targets in years to come—individuals all.

We have left the era of mass war and entered the era of customized warfare. There are no interstate wars of note in the global security system today, but there are a host of bad actors inside the Gap that the Core would prefer to see disappear—violently, if necessary. The questions are how, and under what circumstances. If the Core can’t come to some explicit consensus on the rule set needed to dispatch these bad actors, then not only are the Core’s powers likely to work at cross-purposes but ultimately their shared perception that this is a zero-sum process will foster a dangerous sense of competition. When that happens, the Core risks dividing itself into conflicting rule sets, where the United States is viewed by other Core pillars of having a “hit list” that advances our security interests inside the Gap while damaging their own.

The question of the “most wanted” or “hit list” is not a trivial one, because it says to the world that these are the essential rule breakers in the system, meaning the transnational terrorist networks, such as al Qaeda, who’ve declared war on globalization’s creeping advance and all the integrating dynamics that historical process triggers. Identified as such, we send strong signals to both Core and Gap about the implied rules we seek to uphold: transparency, free markets and trade, collective security, and individual freedom. Moreover, the identification of such a list is a rallying point for domestic support for the global war on terrorism. It says, this is the face of the enemy and this is what he represents. America has always personalized its wars, whether it was King George or Adolf Hitler, and we have and will continue to personalize this war in much the same way. For the retribution of 9/11, the face of the enemy is Osama bin Laden, and for the next generation of Iraq-fueled terrorists, that face is now Abu Musab al-Zarqawi—a Kaiser Soze–like figure if ever there was one.

Okay, that Dennis Miller–like reference requires some explanation.

The character Kaiser Soze appeared in the 1995 crime film The Usual Suspects. More myth than reality, Soze was described to police by a captured criminal as everyone’s worst nightmare, or an almost fairy-tale figure of grotesquely evil proportions. His feats of barbarity were legendary and were clearly passed along by his subordinates in an attempt to buttress his unchallenged standing within the criminal organization atop which he allegedly reigned as kingpin. At the end of the movie, the audience discovers that Kaiser Soze is a complete fiction, created by the captured criminal to convince the police holding him that he could be released as a trivial underling in the crime syndicate they were seeking to dismantle, when in reality this self-professed snitch was the very character that he successfully mythologized with his diversionary tale of the make-believe Soze.

Throughout this global war on terrorism, you will witness time and time again this tendency for our side to elevate individual representatives of our enemy to similarly legendary status. We will create many Kaiser Sozes along the way, in part to give our enemy a defined face and in part because such figures focus our attention on the evil of our foes. Is either bin Laden or al-Zarqawi the all-powerful figure that we consistently make him out to be in our popular imagination? In the end, it doesn’t matter, for if they did not exist, we would have to create them, and indeed, we will have to replace them whenever they are caught or killed. Because, as with any war, we need to provide the larger pool of real and potential enemies with an escape route toward peace, so personalizing this war allows us discretion not only in whom we choose to kill but in whom we offer the option of peace as well. As we have shown repeatedly in our post–Cold War interventions, as well as in this war on terrorism, our conflict is never with the affected nations themselves but merely with the bad actors found within. We are not at war with the Middle East or with Islam, but with a particular strain of religious totalitarianism that we seek to extinguish so that Muslims worldwide and the region itself can migrate toward peaceful integration with the Core. So these bogeymen are not only useful in this struggle, they define it.

The Kaiser Sozes define this war in the same way that grotesquely exaggerating depictions of globalization as a “Jewish-American plot to rule the world” serve to embody the fears of many inside the Gap that the global economy’s advance is both overwhelming and inescapable. Anything powerful enough to elicit the response of suicide bombers and willing martyrs must—by definition—be a transformational experience of stunning proportions, otherwise why the mindless sacrifice? Again, international terrorism associated with the Salafi jihadist movement is fundamentally a function of globalization’s progressive unfolding as a historical process. Yes, the grievances of this movement are local, as are the actual wars to be waged, but the millenarian-tinged, willingly apocalyptic vision that it offers demonstrates the profound sense of fatalism with which these quixotic adherents wage their struggle. They have no hope of victory but merely the chance to deny us the future we know is ours.

And so, as that future unfolds in our favor, the efforts of our enemies to thwart it will become all the more desperate, all the more fantastic, and all the more pointless. In return, our descriptions of their motivations will grow commensurately more absolute in our sense of moral purpose. We will exhibit this growing certitude because it will be many years before the threat posed by transnational terrorism will be reduced to the status of simple criminality or social nuisance, even though this is obviously our long-term goal in shrinking the Gap and extending the Core’s legal rule sets around the planet. What we need to remember in this struggle, however, is that we do not offer any truces to the determined forces of disconnectedness, for they have no future in our shared world, our global community. These individuals are indeed slated for extinction, and so we must expect them to fight to the bitter end, triggering more and not less violence as globalization effectively penetrates their relatively isolated worlds.

The strategy of the Big Bang in the Middle East was never about instant peace or democracies-in-a-box, but about speeding the killing to its logical conclusion. The integration of globalization’s frontier areas will always engender violent resistance by young males who feel disenfranchised, disempowered, or emasculated by the resulting new order, which inevitably involves more universal freedom unencumbered by restrictive culture or tradition. Denied the promise of their presumed authority in social hierarchies defined by brute force and gender, these angry young men will unleash their fury in mindless violence that’s only too easily organized and packaged by cynical elites who will likewise lose power and authority if their preferred definition of the status quo crumbles. So let us be clear and realistic in our purpose: to actualize our definition of a future worth creating, one defined by universal freedoms enabled by connectivity and the rule sets that engenders, we are effectively killing our foes’ definition of a future worth preserving. For every dream of individual freedom we enable, competing dreams of collective oppression are destroyed.

Mark Safranski (ZenPundit) has a major post on the resiliency of networks and how it can be both a good and bad thing. Partisan political networks, for example, need to be less resilient if they are going to be open to outside information. The resiliency of networks can work for godd when we can form connections across typical (party, in the example) lines. Mark closes his post with Tom's mantra 'Disconnectedness defines danger'.

Steve DeAngelis picks up on Marks post with his Network Resiliency -- Good or Bad?. Steve's not as 'sanguine' as Mark. But he's in the business of making connections and wants to find the 'straddlers' and support them.

Larry Kudlow linked Tom's Hoping on the Iran offer. Larry's post relays his attempts to convince his friends on the right that connectivity can kill Kh(o/a)meinism (had to stick with the 'c/k's ;-).

Tom got an email from a man who 'reveres life'. Hopefully, all civilized people do. This person went on to write that he is offended by the Bush Administration's celebration of the death of Zaquari. Tom's reply:

Actually, we can begin life and will get a lot closer to preventing its end in coming decades--and that's all great stuff.

This is warfare against individuals, not states. We self-flagellate over our mistakes committed against individuals--and this is right. So is celebrating our victories over individuals.

Don't confuse that with the cult of death perpetuated by our enemies in this war. This is not the celebration of death in and of itself, but the victory of those who choose life.

And yeah, that is a very good thing.

Two stories ("Atomised: Beijing no longer commands instant obedience from China's local authorities," p. 37, and "Iran (2): Uppity minorities: Unrest in the provinces is rattling the government at the centre," p. 42) in the 3 June Economist points to a favorite theme of mine: globalization, when coming into traditional societies, tends to disintegrate first, then re-integrate the constituent parts in new networks that favor economic freedom first, followed ultimately by political freedom. This devolution-leading-to-new-evolutions is a dangerous but positive path. It's dangerous because of the political passion it can unleash in the breakdown phase (old hatreds die hard, especially when differentials emerge in economic advance--and they always do, just ask the former Yugoslavia). These passions can overwhelm the process, creating such profound insecurity and violence as to prevent the logic of the subsequent economic integration process from emerging, much less taking root.

China is clearly atomising, to use the Economist's term, and the Party's devil's bargain with globalization is clearly to blame.

With Iran, the process was given a rough push by Bush's bold Big Bang strategy, which both empowered Tehran by encouraging Shiite minorities the region over to test the limits of central authority AND threatened Tehran by doing the same with minorities within the nation's own borders (not everyone in Persia is a Persian).

In such states, central authority plays the Leviathan role to a microcosmic global community (the sacred "nation" as universe unto itself), so guess what? That national Leviathan, while rhetorically standing up to globalization's military Leviathan in the form of the U.S., doesn't really stand a chance of standing up to globalization's economic and social "Leviathans," which don't come so neatly packaged as to be opposable (though don't tell that to the anti-gobalization protesters who think the IMF and WB run the world, along with Starbucks and McDonalds and Walmart and Hollywood, of course).

And that is where the military-market nexus achieves its most profound connectivity: we find a way to strategically ally ourselves with China, and we tame that state comprehensively through economic and social connectivity. Same is true for Iran: we create a larger security regime for the Middle East, one that puts Iran at ease about our military power (i.e., we won't invade), and we can tame that nation in a heartbeat, tapping the 75% of Iranians who want better ties with America.

If we want the disintegrating effects of globalization to do their desired thing on such unitary states, we have to provide those regimes with just enough security (achieved in a variety of ways) to feel they can enter into that process without self-destruction.

Yes, these regimes will be self-deluded in their dreams of retaining single-party statehood ad infinitum, but this approach is the most logical form of nation-building: relying on economic connectivity and marketization to drive the political pluralification of the society first and the political regime second. Sure, there will always be times and arguments for hard-kills (like Afghanistan, Iraq, and--I believe--North Korea), but by and large America's military role in shrinking the Gap will be one of providing overarching security rather than state-by-state regime change. As I said in the original Esquire PNM article: foreign direct investment will drive this process, not the relatively puny public-sector elements--to include the military.

Opening up your traditional society and its unitary state to globalization's disintegrating effects is no mean feat. By understanding our nation's role--often latent--in triggering that pathway journey, we get to a truer understanding of how reasonably priced can be our military burden in shrinking the Gap.

Kev scares us a bit with a heart-racing incident today, cutting short my day back home to return and be with my spouse in the hospital.

EKG and chest X-ray later, we have some additional but familiar worries regarding Kev's heart. Kev's had PVCs (premature ventricular contractions) since birth--basially an irregular heartbeat. We had it checked when he was still a toddler, and it went away with exertion, so it was considered benign.

Since then, Kev hasn't spent any time on heart monitors, so naturally the issue is resurrected by this surgery to correct his chest, especially when his heart takes off racing this afternoon (probably just a pain-induced trigger as his epidural was dialed down and out).

As with all such things, this results in an education. The peds cardiologist notes that PVCs are very common with kids suffering sunken sternums (the heart gets a bit beat up by the space restrictions, and this helps trigger the misfirings).

Now, of course, Kev's heart has some new space (not a lot, but some, as his case wasn't that bad), so it's possible the PVCs wll go away more rapidly with time (we've sped up his "growth," so to speak), eliminating the other peculiarity he also now exhibits: a slight mitral valve prolapsing (bit of backwashing with blood). None of this is clinical yet (meaning, of enough variance to constitute something worth treating), and yet all bears watching because--after all--we're talking the heart.

For me, the parent, additional baggage accumulates--none of which is impressed upon young Kev (thank God). First, there's the weird similarities of recovery from this surgery with that of heart surgery, which bring to mind my experiences with my own father before his passing. Add in the deja vu from Em's cancer battle, and I'm begining to understand why my Mom was a hospital basket-case by the time Eight-of-Nine (moi) showed up with his five surgeries by college graduation (I'm up to 11 now)--and I haven't lost any kids along the way (praise the Lord).

All of this just states the obvious: few things strike fear like danger to a child. And since your kids are always your kids, that sense of profound vulnerability extends into adulthood.

This is why, among other things, questions of war and peace are so crucial. Somebody's kids are always involved--whether we go or not. It's rarely a question of whether some will die; it's typically a question of whose will die and when--and do we feel connected to that on some level (call it what you will) or not?

You can't but help bump into similar soul-searching questions amidst all the technology of American medicine. Put me in a deprived situation (like most of the Gap) and I never would have gotten anywhere near 44 (all the ENT infections would have done me in a long time ago). So my kid survives an advanced metastasized cancer, or has a chest repaired (hopefully enabling a heart to work better), or who knows what else we'll encounter over the years.

That's a fairly charmed existence that the vast majority of us enjoy in this country, and when you enjoy on that level, what does that entail in terms of responsibility to aid others?

I honestly believe this enduring (going back to early 1990s) spate of superhero movies, along with disaster ones, is America's way of working out some questions in its mass media head (like Godzilla flix for post-nuke Japan). Once the Sovs go away, we're the uncontested power, and that kind of disparity creates unease, in terms of both perceived responsibility (superhero movies) and perceived hubris (all those comeuppance disaster movies).

Our bogeymen are vast, but so are our powers. 9/11 and the GWOT gave us an excuse to marry the two to some larger purpose, which I shorthand as shrinking the Gap (but you can call it what you want): either we learn to care about the Gap, or the evil that grows there will make us learn to care.

Something to consider on the day we celebrate Zarqawi's demise. He was somebody's kid too, and our world twisted him into the monster of pure evil that he became. Good that he's gone, but the conditions that gave rise to him remain.

So we get busy connecting or we stay busy just killing.

Just so we remember they're all somebody's kids.

Meanwhile, we earn an extra day in the hospital, which advances our review of the Simpsons, seasons 1 through 7.

Eeeeeex-cellent!

Trio of stories triggers this logic.

First is one in Economist ("Think global, act local: Asia seeks a new home for its hard-currency reserves," p. 73) speaks to inevitability that Asia will eventually stop using the U.S. as intermediary for self-investing (taking trade surpluses and reinvesting them into U.S. financial markets, and then having those markets plow much of that money back into Asia in the form of FDI). When that happens, the transaction by which Asia pays for external security provision by the U.S. breaks down.

That means Asia must--inconceivably--begin to self-supply on its own SysAdmin work. Right now, the only contender/aspirant to that role in the region is Australia (second story in 3 June issue is "Policing the Pacific: Australia has done well, but Asia needs a posse, not just a lonely sheriff").

So when a China moves in that direction, however slowly (its serious blue-water navy is a long ways away, despite the hype-sters in the Pentagon), we can either interpret that as zero-sum to our efforts to run the world (the third article is a WSJ op-ed by Dan Blumenthal and Phillip Swagel, "Chinese Oil Drill,' 8 June, p. A18, that is great except for its stunning lack of self-awarenes on how fearful it makes America sound in response to China's emergence and natural reach for military power--as if Beijing should outsource it to a Pentagon that routinely plans for war against it!!!), or we can welcome that natural instinct for defending its interests (shared by us in terms of global economic security) and put that instinct to good use.

In short, China will ultimately play the largest military SysAdmin role in Asia. The sooner we co-opt that ambition and put it to use, the better we steer any residual fantasies within China's military that it can play Leviathan anywhere--even In its neighborhood.

But denying that natural ambition and casting it as dangerous at every turn, and pretending it must always be subsumed under American strategic direction, is simply fighting the inevitable by not being brave enough and clever enough, and strategic enough to see the logic of what today seems inconceivable: our strategic alliance with China in both Asia and around the Gap as a key asset in the Long War.

Sensible Greenspan speech is turned into usual mainstream media fearmongering (as usual, the threat is ignored, huge, and inescapably bad!). Column by Frederick Kempe (usually better and more even) is the culprit ("Population Shift Is Ignored Threat: Expense of Aging May Bust Budgets in Larger Nations; A Warning from Greenspan," 8 June, p. A9).

I will skip the usual sturm und drang, because it's been covered so well so many earlier times in so many venues as to secure its status as an "ignored threat." (Then again, if all such obvious threats weren't consistently ignored, how would any newspapers or magazines get sold?).

Instead, just check out the cool chart that displays percent of population 60 or older in years 2005 and 2050.

Japan (26 to 42) and Germany (25 to 35) show the most age. Russia, UK and France all go from about 20 to 30. India rockets from 8 to 21, and China jumps dramaticaly from 11 to 30.

The youngest in the crowd after India? Why the U.S., of course, thanks to immigration and high birth rates, which are linked, BTW. We go from 17 to only 26.

Here is the killer quote from always sharp Nick Eberstadt, which nonetheless misses the point entirely: "The U.S. will have less and less affinity with other developed countries. It will be harder and not easier to find common ground with allies."

Or we just shift to a different set of allies, huh? You heard it here before: India (21 in 2050) over UK (29), China (31) over Japan (42), Russia (31) over Germany (35), and damn near anybody over France (33).

New Core sets the new rules, and the new alliances.

ARTICLE: "Battle Over Foreign-Aid Spending Heats Up: Bush's Plan to Centralize Efforts Runs Counter to Long-Held Congressional Oversight," by Michael M. Phillips and David Rogers, Wall Street Journal, 7June 2006, p. A4.

Good story on how Bush admin is trying to think more strategicaly about how to use foreign aid, which I know offends many in the business but which, quite frankly, can't be worse than what we've done in the past, which is to let Congress earmark the vast majority of the budget.

I say give Randall Tobias a chance in the new State Department position (director of foreign assistance) that--BTW--basically ends what residual USAID independence that remained from the pre-9/11 days.

Let the rest of the Core's official developmental aid do the usual hospice care for the Gap, and let's not be shy about using our foreign aid to advance our efforts in the GWOT. Prioritized and focused aid always beats unfocused distributions delivered in an aggregate ad hoc fashion by 535 self-perceived directors of foreign aid.

Yes, yes, I have heard from plenty in the aid community that Randall Tobias is asking all the wrong questions. Then again, maybe too many in that rather closed community are offering the wrong answers.

ARTICLE: "Ahmadinejad says Iran is ready for nuclear talks," by Ali Akbar Dareini, USA Today, 9 June 2006, p. 12A.

Getting Iran to the table would be a nice lessening-of-tension step for the Bush Administration, and the extent of the package of incentives apparently offered signals that the White House is: 1) realistic about military options; 2) realistic about the tie-down in Iraq and how much help we need there; and 3) realistic about not trying to go it alone on Iran like we did far too much with Iraq (thus the move to the European approach of connectivity incentives for a mere suspension of enrichment).

A Bush Administration that realizes time and diplomatic/political capital is running out and already low for this second term can be an administration that still does great things. Nixon did great things in foreign affairs despite Watergate, the immense Vietnam tie-down, and a looming post-presidency that started almost with his second election. The big question is whether or not Bush understands those possibilities, or whether he keeps up with that "this will have to be decided by the next administration" talk. I'm hoping, as I said before, that Laura is doing a Nancy on George, pushing him to consider his legacy. That was huge in pushing Reagan to his second-term rapprochment with the "evil empire"--her fear that Ronnie would go down in history as only the warmonger. Bush needs somebody to be pushing similar thoughts now. He can still turn Iraq-the-bloody-mess into Iraq-the-Big-Bang-trigger for all sorts of security progress in the region, but only if he starts (or hopefully continues, if the Iran overture proves real for both sides) to play this game far differently than the first term.

Getting Iran to the table is clearly a temporizing effort: everything gets slowed down and we talk carrots versus sticks (the result of the the brief leaked flirtation with the hard-kill a while back not getting the White House what it hoped for--i.e., Ahmadinejad just got more inflammatory and resistant). Accepting this glidepath of diminished and diminishing foreign policy capital can be a great thing for Bush, liberating him from certain domestic struggles (a likely outcome of the Dems taking the House in the fall), and allowing him to concentrate on foreign policy achievements and legacy (does Bush really want to set the Middle East down some serious path toward peace in the time remaining--in effect, trying to capitalize on the play offered by his Big Bang?).

If Bush, with Rice, begin to sense the clock and the possibilities and are realistic about their limitations, we might see some great diplomatic advances between now and January 2009, but only if that pragmatism shown in the Iran offer finds expression elsewhere. Otherwise, we'll see the waiting-out strategy begin to emerge more openly around the world. Indeed, that may be the reason why Ahmadinejad is playing nice for now. He gets this process into the summer of 07 and he's basically accessed the 08 election.

Still, I am one to hope, and the fact that the hard-kill talk has been supressed is a very hopeful sign that this administration can still adjust to the global and domestic realitites that it has imposed on itself--along with the political calendar.

Getting Iran to accept a package of economic connectivity is a worthwhile goal, as is getting Russia and China on-board for future, long-term talks on what needs to be done, security-wise, in the Middle East. If that's all Bush accomplishes with Iran in the time remaining, that alone will be judged by history as moving the pile forward nicely.

Remember, the only-Nixon-can-go-to-China argument works both ways: hardliner Ahmadinejad is a trusted agent of the right in Iran and hardliner Bush is a trusted agent of the right in the U.S., so getting some breakthrough grand bargain between these two guys is actually far easier than realized, because both can come to the table with the dangers of in-fighting and backstabbing back home pretty much settled.

But the big question of who runs with the ball in the next administration will remain.

You have nothing to lose but those dang question marks! ;-)

We need some technical assistance from the hive mind. Tom noticed Thursday that many of the older posts contain characters (usually dashes and curled apostrophes) that are rendering as '?'s.

I talked with Tom's original webmaster, Critt, about the problem and he seemed to locate the trouble. It seems to have something to do with whether or not your browser is translating in Western or Unicode. So, for example, if you load one of those pages and change the character encoding (under the view menu in your browser), the '?'s render as they were intended.

Is 'charset' supposed to tell the browser how to read it, or is it just data? The latest version of Movable Type tells has 'charset' as Unicode in the metadata. Our old static pages have Western as the 'charset'.

Two example pages:

Static: The original Pentagon's New Map article. Note the '?'s for apostrophes and dashes.

Movable Type: Post 19. Same problem

I wonder if the W3C standard has changed from Western to Unicode, or finally been enacted...

What do I want?

1. I sort of want to know why this is happening, why our browsers went from rendering these pages right in 2004 to this.

2. What I really want is a way to fix this easily without going through each and every post and page.

Any help? Comment here instead of emailing me so we can share the knowledge.

Thank you in advance.

[And if I've evoked for you the Smiths song 'Shoplifters of the world' with my silly parrot of Marx, so much the better! ;-)]

+ Scott Broadway reprinted Tom's analogy on Iran calling it 'the most succinct summary of the Iran situation I've ever seen' and got 33 comments out of it.

+ The Gold Standard picks up Tom's Paulson as SecTreas post.

+ Draconian Observations links Tom's vision for War Operations and Peace Operations to the EU's recent Barnier Report.

+ GroupIntel links over here saying:

I don't pretend to understand all the heavy thinking that goes on in the heads of guys like [Tom], but as best as I can figure this idea of reducing the number of places that can become 'the next Afghanistan' is an important way to ensure long term safety and stability.

+ LegalPolitics wants to take a page from Tom in the conduct of his own weblog:

I rather like Thomas Barnett's weblog that way. Not only does he have a great vision, but has made it his mission to convince others on the merits of that grand strategy. At the same time he his unabashed in discussing that vision on his weblog, while mixing it up with very personal observations on his personal life.

Liberals can be interventionists, too, for the sake of justice abroad and a more secure life back home.

+ Russia Blog: Driving from the 21st to the 15th Century

The U.S. strategist Thomas P.M. Barnett see Russia as part of a "New Core" of nations gradually being integrated into the global economy, this movie is a reminder that the vast majority of Russia is still stuck in Barnett's "non-integrating Gap".

+ This post from kottke made me think of the dynamics of the spread of glaobalization. His post links through to The Economist:

Big Mac index, meet the Coca-Cola index. The more wealthy, democratic, and the higher the quality of life, the more likely a country's inhabitants are to drink Coke. See also Starbucks as economic indicator.

DATELINE: Ruby Tuesday's (where I have a signed affadavit on flle attesting that I never purchase alcoholic beverages on a USG per diem), Knoxville Airport, Knoxville TN, 12 June 2006

Finally got Kevin out of the hospital Saturday night. Now if I can just get him out of my bed, all will return to near normal. His pain is fairly moderate now, and the bar's holding fine in his chest (really can't see it), so we knock on wood and he simpy chills for the rest of the month at home.

Weekend was mostly for sleeping, getting to know my wife again, gettng to know my other three kids, and finally getting my home office almost completely set up.

Got the word from USAA on the Pilot today: not totalled but three weeks to fix. Add that to USAA taking 9 days to just get someone to look at the vehicle and I think we're looking for a new car insurance company. My sense: USAA works well when you live in a green state (heavy military), but it's pokey everywhere else. Pretty much decided to turn the car in for a new model. If the accident leaves me feeling anything, it's that I want to surround myself with the latest in crash technology.

Bitch is we really need to swap out the Odyssey too. Bought both at the same time last time, and looks like we'll get rid of them both at the same time this time. But I like to buy late in the model year cause dealers give you a better deal.

Got up at 0400 and flew two commuters to Knoxville, rented a car, drove to the lab, and held a short (for me) 3-hour workshop on Development in a Box with senior people. It looks like we'll start small and microcosmic, proving the Old Core resiliency case first before tackling the tougher Gap nut. Likely target? Southeastern states and their resliency vis-a-vis hurricanes. It's a good tie-in for attracting federal funding, and anyway, if America can't demonstrate a capacity to "put a man on the moon"--so to speak--in New Orleans, then how can we expect to succeed in a Baghdad?

Plus it's logical to start a lot of the DiB discussion and understanding with DHS, which, over time, is more logically the future home of my Department of Everything Else (the notion John Kerry proposed to me) than either Defense or State. I mean, we have to master this resiliency thing first at home before we can master it away.

Another good output from the discussion is the conceptual connectivity between post-whatever recovery and the modeling of scenario dynamics I led back at the Naval War College on Y2K and at the United Way of Rhode Island on the Station Night Club Fire. It always feels good to sense that intellectual connectivity across your career: you either build up over time or tear down.

Still another good concept: in many ways, the Millennium Challenge Account concept was an attempt to rethink foreign aid--in effect, cherry-picking Gap states that look to be approaching emerging market status and targeting them for aid that puts them over the top and into the status of "low cost countries" that attract FDI. So recognizing that, we come to understand that DiB is really designed for non-MCA credentialed Gap states that, by virtue of disaster or strife or regime change or whatever, have fallen on hard times to the point where recovery through traditional ODA (official developmental aid) is unlikely, so they need a special connectivity package-as it were--to jumpstart them back up into the realm where MCA-status becomes conceivable. In short, MCA gives us a sense of a closer, more achievable goal line, proving that the development community is trying to define--and on that basis shorten--the distance between A and Z.

So overall, a very interesting day that gets me excited thinkng about future conferences at Oak Ridge that essentially resurrect the "economic security exercises" I once designed and ran at the NWC, except this time around they'll be "economic resiliency exercises."

Rest of the day will be a rerun of the first part of the day: fly back to DC, rent another car, crash at yet another hotel.

Still, it beats sleeping five to a hospital room...

ARTICLE: "Russia Bargains For Bigger Stake In West's Energy," by Steven R. Weisman, New York Times, 12 June 2006, p. A1.

House of Saud this is not. What has always stunned me about the oil-rich Middle East is what a non-player these states are in the realm of foreign direct investments.

Yes, the oil barons will invest in your stock markets and park money in your bonds, but they don't really own much of anything abroad, nor do they traditionally let in much FDI from abroad. So wealthy elites, yes, but not really connected to a shared financial future with the Core.

Putin is apparently uninterested in replicating that level of financial disconnectedness. He wants in--a downstream piece of the action.

His trade, as evidenced from a draft declaration up for G8 approval at the summit: "endorsement of market principles and greater access for foreign investment in the energy industry of Russia."

Fill 'er up, Vlad!

This is why I consider Russia to be New Core--and Saudi Arabia truly Gap.

Follow the serious money. Follow the FDI.

Used up my daily allotment of brilliance at the Oak Ridge workshop, proven by my subsequent car "accident" with my Kia Sorrento rental in the lot following the meet.

I put my briefcase in the back and promptly pull the hatch down on my head, giving myself a couple of inches long bloody gash on my skull (not nearly hidden enough by my thinning hair even after washing the blood out of my hair at the airport).

The mistake? Assuming the Sorrento's hatch was shaped like my two Hondas. Instead, the side of the hatch juts out a fair bit to wrap over the tail lights, making a niftily sharp corner that now fits the new groove in the top of my skull--exactly.

Here's the best part: I cracked my skull hard enough that my nose started running uncontrollably (okay, the allergies here, which are nationally ranked above DC, had something to do with it). How's that for a Big Brain accomplishment? I literally knocked the snot outta myself!

Bob Spitz's "The Beatles" (see, I really am over Bloody Sunday).

The best part so far: both the McCartney's (duh!) and the Lennons (the clan formerly known as the Leannain) came to Liverpool from the Emerald Isle during the great migration triggered by the potato famine in the mid-1800s.

That's like finding out both Kirk and Spock are nice Jewish boys from Canada--the first true "Jeeeeeeeews in spaaaaaaaaaaaaace" (to quote Mel).

ARTICLE: "Smoke of Iraq War 'Drifting Over Lebanon: In Political and Social Life, Returned Fighters Inspire Climate of Militancy," by Anthony Shadid, Washington Post, 12 June 2006, p. A1.

Not the best way to spread the Big Bang's effects elsewhere in the region, but one that reminds us that--once begun--there's no turning back the turning point that was the toppling of Saddam.

Does the war create jihadists that otherwise would not rise up? I honestly don't think so. When you're disconnected from any economic future worth pursuing, you resort to fighting over that which is still left to fight over: identity. The jihad mentality vis-a-vis the U.S. is just a macrocosmic escape from much feared and much misunderstood change. For individuals with either no stomach or taste for change (the truly ambitious leave for the Core), the pursuit of "righteousness' sure as hell beats working for a living.

In my relatively benign college years it was called New Wave and pot. But eventually I got over it and decided to have a real life. That real life forced me to leave the homeland (Wisconsin), but no problem there. I prefer the Lexus to the Olive Tree.

But when all you've got is that Olive Tree, you learn to shape your personal struggles to fit the perceived, larger ones. And if you can dress that up with a host of ancient hatreds, racial biases, perceived insults and a debilitating sense of civilizational inferiority complex ("we're f--ked up because you made us that way!"), it's a gloriously heady mix.

Don't get me wrong. I'm not from some other planet on the subject. I grew up in a household that hated all Brits on principle. I didn't learn about Bloody Sunday from some U2 album. And my Mom basically ordered me to pick Harvard's offer over Yale's just to stick it to all those New England Protestants who kept the "dirty Irish" outta the Yahd all those decades.

So yeah, she turned me into a newt!

But I got better, grew up, moved on, married a nice German girl whose father was a Congregational minister, and left that conflict where it belonged: in the 20th century (like Niall Ferguson's new book!).

Still, a sad story to see. Economic connectedness can obviate the killing, but if that fails, the Big Bang will certainly speed it up.

ARTICLE; "G-8 Warns Loans By Rising Nations May Swamp Poor," by Michael M. Phillips, Wall Street Journal, 12 June 2006, p. A3.

What goes around comes around. For decades, the Old Core kept Gap states impoverished by offering developing states there loans they could never hope to repay.

Now the Old Core (and largely reformed) pot calls the New Core kettle black:

At a meeting here over the weekend, finance ministers from the Group of Eight leading nations warned China, India, Brazil and South Korea against promoting exports to poor countries with trade credits the borrowers can ill-afford.

Lower your G-damn ag subsidies Old Core and then get back to me on the aggressive market-making strategies of the New Core.

Still, the article reaffirms a pet projection of mine: the Old Core will make most of its money off the New Core in coming years (selling them all that high-tech stuff and services that we're already saturated with) while the New Core will make most of its money selling to the Gap (the bottom of the pyramid that we typically eschew as markets of meaning.

Still, a good thing to worry about and only right for the Old Core to propose new rule sets to modulate the Gap's exposure--truly, a bit of Phase 0 thinking in the financial realm.

Less Clausewitz, more Sun Tzu.

Less Snow, more Rubin.

ARTICLE: "Blogger Hits Home By Urging Boycott Of Chinese Property: Campaign Against High Prices Garners Mr. Zou Support From Middle-Class Buyers; A Grilling by Security Agents," by Andrew Browne, Wall Street Journal, 12 June 2006, p. A1.

Man, the headline on that one is so good, it almost blogs itself!

Blogger, "daring grass-roots campaign," "the backing of people across the country"--what's not to like?

I know, I know, the bit about being grilled.

But still, the connectivity, the BROADBAND-anybody-with-a-dial-up connectivity, and a protest not against the concept of property but rather its cost, and one that excites a disgruntled "middle class.'

Remember that fairy tale about the guy who falls asleep all those years and then, waking up, can't believe the world he's found himself in? I say, give it up, you Cold War Rip Van Winkles!

Point raised by a friend: if I prefer new cars and drive them many miles, I should consider three-year leases. Frankly, I don't pay off cars. By the time the loan gets low, I just lump-sum it and buy a new one. Cars are just transportation to me, not a symbol or investment or a possession.

If I like the newest safety technology and would prefer a new model every three years, am I smarter to lease?

OP-ED: "Think Outside the Border: Canada and the U.S. can learn from Europe on security," by Stephen Handelman, New York Times, 12 June 2006, p. A21.

EDITORIAL: "In Foreign Territory," New York Times, 12 June 2006, p. A20.

When Joe Nye and Bob Keohane wrote "Power and Interdependence," they changed the field of international relations. The book was a bombshell to me: describing a new sort of state-to-state relationship where security no longer held the top spot and across which governmental ties were both broad and deep. It heralded a new era of globaization. That book described the U.S. and Canada. Dull as the day is long in content, but about as exciting as it gets for a grand strategist and wannabe visionary trying to figure out the future of the world.

Point of op-ed: we haven't moved the security ball forward with Canada much in the post-Cold War era, where the danger shifts from missiles over the North Pole to bad actors sneaking in across our borders. We've long had the shared airspace security regime with Canada, but for some reason we still act like our border with Canada is our border with the world, when the shared border mentality should be extant there too.

Now, as this piece points out, the EU is ahead of us. You enter the 13-member Schengen zone and you're in the system, free to roam. Point being, the EU focuses its manpower and attenton on the real border, not their internal ones.

We should be doing the same with Canada, not loading up our border with agents.

Extend the net. So basic and simple.

Correspondingly, the NYT is wrong on the notion of giving DoD money to train foreign militaries (instead of the usual disburser of such funds--State). Training other militaries around the world is exactly the business our SysAdmin forces should be in. The complaint that many of the countries we train feature authoritarian governments elicits a duh! from me. No kidding! They are all in the Gap (noted were Algeria, Cameroon, Chad, Eq Guinea, Gabon and Tunisia). This is called prepping the battlefield for the next stand in the GWOT, aka Africa.

Shortsighted and painfully moralistic for the NYT.

Bo wrote in to suggest we define 'Big Bang' and add it to the glossary. Tom agreed, and here's his def:

Big Bang: refers to the implied (and sometimes openly voiced) strategy of the Bush Administration to trigger widespread political, social, economic and ultimately security change in the Middle East through the initial spark caused by the toppling of Saddam Hussein's regime in Iraq and the hoped-for emergence of a truly market-based, democratic Arab state. Thus, the Big Bang primarily aims for a demonstration effect, but likewise is also a direct, in-your-face attempt by the Bush Administration to shake things up in the stagnant Middle East, where decades of diplomacy and military crisis response by outside forces (primarily the U.S.) had accomplished basically nothing. The implied threat of the Big Bang is, "We're not leaving the region until the region truly joins the global economy in a broadband fashion, leading to political pluralism domestically." The Big Bang was and still is a bold strategy by Bush, one that I support. All terrorism is local, so either deal with that or resort to firewalling America off from the outside world.

Coming soon to the (static) Glossary! ;-)

ARTICLE: “U.S. Muslims Confront Taboo on Nursing Homes: Desire to Honor Koran Clashes With Reality of Modern Life,” by Lynette Clemetson, New York Times, 13 June 2006, p. A1.

I approach this piece from a variety of angles.

First, I get a lot of email lately expressing concern that “Gap leakage” (a cool term I like) into the Core via immigration is a threat unto itself.

Second, my wife has a MA and career background in elder affairs urban planning.

Third, I remember all these discussions about how Asians in general, and Japanese in particular, are so amazingly different than Westerners, especially WRT to care of the elderly.

Fourth, I am a card-carrying member of the sandwich generation (caring for kids and parents at the same time--and yes, I would give almost anything to have my “burdensome” Dad back).

What this article says to me is that the confrontations and challenges of modern life are the same for all, no matter where they come from. In fact, the past of each immigrant group is far more similar than different. What American Muslims learn now is nothing more or less than what previous generations of immigrants learned about family, life, and the realities of a fast-paced, urbanized existence.

Whenever I see such articles, my usual sanguine nature asserts itself: Yes, we will be told constantly how different the Muslims are, how they value things like family so much “differently” than us cold European-Americans, etc., but frankly, that’s all bullshit just waiting to be exposed and destroyed by circumstances. Once you accept the lifestyle, you face the choices, and your past and your homeland and your religious beliefs mean little.

Check out Japan-the-unique culture today. You will find more and more youth that share all the “faults” of our own, and you’ll see Japanese families dealing with inter-generational issues will all the same trade-offs that we face. When Japan modernized, it “Westernized,” and the very same country that served as a hotbed of Occidentalism and hatred for the West is now easily its more post-modern expression, defining “cool” as much or more than the U.S. in a host of sectors.

My wife has always said, “Never say ‘never’ about nursing homes or other realities associated with old age. Everybody says it’ll never happen to them, and then it does, and all their previous assertions to the contrary don’t erase the inevitable trade-offs they face.”

That’s not to say that either I or my wife don’t consider all these things with all the same seriousness or assertive idealism we can muster. After all, it’s little accident that I moved my family to within an hour’s drive of my wife’s mother (my wife being the only daughter). Also no accident that there’s a full bath, bedroom, and full kitchen in the basement of our new house.

But we don’t pretend that proximity and facilities alone can overcome all scenarios, and our faith and customs on these questions are as strong as anybody you can name on this planet. We’ve just made certain choices. We’ve just acquired competing obligations. It’s just not as easy a choice as when generations all lived in simpler times and simpler economies.

Will Muslims in America come up with new answers that somehow obviate their choices? If they do, I hope we all learn from them, and thus add to the rich mix that is this hybrid, mongrelized society we call home. And I’m reasonably optimistic on this, because the return of grandparents to homes is a rising trend, to include strong secondary parenting roles, something I think I would personally relish in my old age (though I will draw a line on roller coasters at some point).

I know, I know. For every bit of evidence I can cite like this, plenty of you can toss all sorts of negative bits of evidence about continuing racism, biases, segregation, fundamentalism-leading-to-disconnectedness, etc. And I won’t blow those examples off. I just find, in my own life and in my analysis of global events, that things tend to get worst just before the solution sets emerge, so when I encounter such evidence, I don’t see the world going to hell in a handbasket (or the Muslim “fifth column” rearing its ugly head), instead I see the solution set coming closer--faster.

To me, this story describes yet another Inevitable moving toward an Inconceivable. My column for Sunday, written over last weekend, speaks to just these issues with Islam worldwide. It’s my usual 100,000-foot take on Zarqawi’s death and where we stand in the Long War. I’m very proud of the piece. It started as a series of observations in my research run-up to writing BFA, but it didn’t make it into the book, in the same way that the A-to-Z rule set on processing politically bankrupt states was almost in PNM but just didn’t mature fast enough to get in. Eventually, I got comfortable enough in describing these notions of various “reformations” within globalized Islam during post-brief Q&As that I had Bradd Hayes do up a slide for me. Now I use that slide in the brief, and once comfortable with that, it made sense to write an op-ed on it--a good example of the complex interplay of the blog/brief/columns/vision.

ARTICLE: “As China’s Auto Market Booms, Leaders Clash Over Heavy Toll: Vehicles Foul Air, Jam Streets But Plump Local Coffers; Restrictions Remain Few,” by Gordon Fairclough and Shai Oster, Wall Street Journal, 13 June 2006, p. A1.

Great article that I’ve been waiting since the summer of 2001 to read. It was in June 2001 that I led the last NewRuleSets.Project atop the World Trade Center at the Windows on the World Restaurant (floor 107, I believe) in partnership with Cantor Fitzgerald. The subject was the environmental costs associated with the inevitable global dynamics triggered by: 1) Asia’s doubling of energy demand (our first NRSP workshop subject in May 2000) and 2) all that foreign direct investment boosting infrastructure and transportation development throughout Asia (our second workshop in the fall of 2000).

Our basic Inevitable (we always framed each workshop with one) for this event was: Asia’s pollution will skyrocket over the next generation, meaning they’ll have to come up with a host of new policies, regs, technologies, etc. to mitigate all that damage, because it simply will not be sustainable. In that process, we surmised, Asia will teach the West a thing or two and vice versa (based on our historical experience--to wit, any major urban area in the Old Core is today far less polluted than it was, say, 40 years ago).

This is a great framing article that says China is near a tipping point on a car culture that threatens to do all sorts of good and bad things to its society/polity/environment/economy. None of this is unfamiliar to us. We just need to look inside ourselves and remember our past (indeed, smelling the “dirty” gas fumes in Beijing was hugely nostalgic to me, reminding me why I got car-sick so easily as a child).

As the piece notes, more than 1k new cars hit Beijing’s streets every day, meaning the NOx levels there exceed the WHO’s standards for clean air by almost double (78%). Think about running an Olympic marathon in 2008 and it gets kinda scary!

The mayor is already considering something I predicted back in June 2001: Beijing will ban all non-public transportation during the Olympics (and probably for a stretch of time before). Not a clever prediction, just recognizing how the Inevitable translates into the Inconceivable (but do-able in authoritarian China; not possible in NYC, but then again, NYC past those levels of pollution).

Right now Beijing has no limits on car usage. You need an expensive license for a dog, but cars are relatively unregulated. Of course, that will change, but that change will be tricky for a China that’s pushing to both export cars like crazy in the future and to encourage their purchases by a rising middle class at home.

As always, those “unique” Asian values will melt away and we’ll be looking at a car-crazy culture very much like our own. The bigger questions are, of course, do the Chinese follow our pathways on gas combustion or leap ahead to something else? And if they choose a new path, how does that new rule set spread around the rest of the Core--not to mention the Gap?

China’s car market is already second only to the United States--just like that! But that car penetration is roughly equivalent to where we were in 1915 (seven cars per 1,000).

So voila! China’s enviro minister says that “If we follow the current track of consumption patterns to develop the automobile in China, the world will not be able to support it.”

Bingo! Thus the new rule set, the new markets created, the new strategic relationships forged, and so on and so on. Inconceivables all, yet just as inevitable as demographics, I would argue.

Beijing’s pollution levels are six times that of New York. So China’s clearly hitting the top of that curve we’ve seen elsewhere throughout history: after a while people will trade that extra buck per capita GDP for such things as clean air, clean water, etc.

China started adopting car emission rules in 2000, but compliance is weak. And here we see the Party’s tradeoffs, because--hard to believe I know--China’s government labor pool is not unlimited. So over time, the Party will inevitably shift resources from political control efforts to economic and environmental control efforts. As one World Resources Institute expert puts it, “The rapid rate of growth is more than government institutions are prepared to deal with.”

Inconceivable, yet inevitable.

ARTICLE: “Japan Wary Of Plan for Sanctions Against Iran: U.S. Ally Feels Tug of Financial, Energy Ties,” by Anthony Faiola and Dafna Linzer, Washington Post, 13 June 2006, p. A14.

The Japanese will have a very hard time choosing the U.S. over Iran--believe it or not. The reality is that Japan is so dependent on foreign energy that is basically accepts the notion that Iran is basically off-limits to either punitive or preemptive wars.

So add Japan to the “coalition of the unwilling” on Iran:

Japan consumes 22 percent of Iranian oil exports and is slated to begin development this year of the largest and most modern on-shore petroleum fields built in Iran since the 1979 Islamic revolution.

Sure, we’ll squeeze Japan at the G-8 to agree rhetorically to this and that, but expect the same foot dragging that we get from New Core Russia, India and China:

Privately, Japanese officials have said they intend to set a high bar for any action. “We would not do anything without the full support of the international community.”

That’s code for getting buy-in from India, Russia and China, “otherwise,” says a Japanese official on background, “Japan might end up moving out of Iran only to see someone else’s companies rush in.”

Bingo!

Japanese officials have said that while they have deep concerns about Iran’s nuclear program, they worry that aggressive sanctions could create a foothold for China. Viewed by Japan as its prime competitor in the global energy market, China ranks just behind Japan in consumption of Iranian oil.

And guess what Tehran told Tokyo it would do if Japan sided with the U.S. on such sanctions?

Meanwhile, “Japan is smarting about largely being left out of negotiations with Iran even while it is being asked to make the largest potential sacrifice.”

Still think we’ve got Japan in our pocket on Iran? Think again.

As side note, I’ve gotta start getting the Post by mail. Reading it on the web just doesn’t work for me (I get way too many emails and am looking for less web time, not more), whereas I have plenty of pockets across my day for reading paper, and I’m not that time sensitive on the news, since my blog is about analysis more than speed-of-URL-pointing.

ARTICLE: “In Africa, China Trade Brings Growth, Unease: Asian Giant’s Appetite for Raw Materials, Markets Has Some Questioning Its Impact on Continent,” by Craig Timburg, Washington Post, 13 June 2006, p. A14.

Good piece, reasonably self-aware (i.e., noting that all China is really doing is replicating a Western-style colonial-era exchange transaction with Africa--as in, give us your raw materials and we’ll sell you cheap finished goods but not really develop your economies besides building just enough infrastructure to facilitate our raw materials acquisition).

The opening paras are very evocative:

Every time newspaper publisher Trevor Ncube visits his native Zimbabwe, he said, there seem to be more Chinese. He sees them shopping at boutiques, driving fancy cars, picking up their children from elite private schools.

And as in much of Africa, Ncube said, China’s reach into Zimbabwe’s economy is equally pervasive: The roads are filled with Chinese buses, the markets with Chinese goods, and Chinese-made planes are in the skies. Chinese companies are major investors in mining and telecommunications. The government in Beijing, meanwhile, is a crucial backer of Zimbabwe’s authoritarian president, Robert Mugabe.

“They are all over the place,” said Ncube, 43, who owns newspapers in Zimbabwe and South Africa. “If the British were our masters yesterday, the Chinese have come and taken their place.”

And yet the economic practices China employs are right out of the playbook of most Western mining and energy companies: “Infrastructure improvements often are explicitly traded for raw material contracts.” We call them “off-sets,” but--of course--when we do that, it’s got nothing to do with economic and political hegemony in the same way as when those “devious” Chinese engage in it.

Sure, you can counter that our NGOs and PVOs like the Fund For Peace push our corps toward more ethical practices, whereas the Chinese lack such conscience. Absolutely right. But that just tells me that the FFP needs to widen its discussion pool, as does the U.S. Government in general. I mean, do you think Bush mentioned Africa to Hu during his measly, less-than-an-hour talk with the man when he recently visited the White House.

That realization that China’s growing “influence” is spreading, not just in Africa but across the Old Core and especially within the Pentagon, which sees yet another opportunity to hype a Chinese threat, when what it should see is a natural strategic partner in settling down Africa and progressively integrating it into the Core.

But, I guarantee you, left to its own devices, the Chinese will do the Brits one worse, not one better.

Just seeing that comparison to the colonial Brits should set off alarm bells of opportunity in our strategic brains, yes? The challenge of SysAdmin across Africa will be huge, requiring large numbers of bodies. When you have a body challenge, you turn to body shops, and China has the biggest in a ground force of more than 2 million men.

China’s growing interest in Africa reflects the immense opportunity and challenge represented by Asia’s rapid economic rise. We either harness that Inevitablility and turn it into the Inconceivability of strategic alliance with the Chinese there, or we miss out on the obvious chance to locate the labor (Chinese) where the problem is (SysAdmin en masse across Africa).

We should be conducting a deep and comprehensive strategic dialogue with China on Africa right now. That’s not just nutty Barnett spouting his usual nonsense. The Council on Foreign Relations basically called for the same in a recent report on the future of Africa.

DATELINE: BAE’s Reston office, Virginia, 14 June 2006

I can tell it’s the usual whirl for me, for here I sit on late afternoon Wednesday and I can’t recall when I started this trip on Monday and what I did then. Part of it is I just gave a 2.5-hour performance to a bunch of execs from BAE Systems. But part is that time just expands when you’re on the road: days stretch into something much longer, or so it would seem.

Thinking, thinking.

I got up at 0400 on Monday, caught a cab, got to Knoxville and drove to Oak Ridge for 3 hour workshop, then drove back to airport and flew to DC, returning to Reagan, through which I had passed earlier that day.

Now it’s coming back to me: swim and work-out at the Mandarin, dinner with Steve, late-night strategizing, then bed.

Tuesday was up with Steve and drive to NVA to meet with people from Intell Community. Their interest in the arguments relating to Development in a Box were very encouraging, in the sense that the IC realizes where it’s weak in its coverage and wants to get a whole lot better. So integrating the Gap is networking the Gap and networking the Gap is generating transparency that serves the IC, so win-win-win.

Then we race downtown to the Mayflower for a great discussion of DiB with a major USAID contractor. Also very reinforcing. So many trillions in infrastructure development sitting out there in the New Core and Gap, just waiting for the right type of 21st century companies to make it happen, and Steve and I know that Enterra has a lot to contribute to defining that next generation resilient corporate architecture and the architectures that a corporation naturally begets in its products, alliances, and work--and that these developments are crucial parts of an emerging definition of victory in the Long War.

Then we cab it to the Capitol, a building I haven’t visited (methinks) since 1975 (yes, on a family vacation at age 13). We go in the south/House entrance, check in with the guards, get our badges for Room 405 (House Intelligence Committee), walk through all the tourists to the “crypt” (a spacious but tomb-like, deep-in-the-bowels area where there are a bunch of funky statues intermixed with weird, shlocky tourist stuff and some educational kiosks). We make a right and take an elevator only available for authorized guests and head up to the… actually, we’re not sure what floor cause the elevator buttons are marked A, F, G and D (perhaps to confuse the terrorists).

Upstairs in the House Intell Committee spaces, it’s frighteningly run down, a total disappointment for anyone who reads Tom Clancy or watches Jerry Bruckheimer movies, but hey, it’s the drab norm. Inside we spend 90 minutes with two senior aides to Rep. Jane Harman (CA), ranking Democrat and potentially the next committee chairman come November. Our host, Frank Rose, is a really interesting and smart interlocutor, and Steve and I spin out our usual greatest hits and stories in a successful attempt at synching up our outlooks with Frank, so a good contact made. What comes of it? Who knows? I find things like this can stretch over the years and then pop up in the most unusual and surprising circumstances. But Steve and I justify the time simply because it’s right to do our part on national security whenever asked. You never know how small or large your contribution may end up being, so you never say no.

After that, in the mid-afternoon, Steve cabs out to NVA to give a speech at an Oracle conference, while I stop by the office of Rep. Geoff Davis from Kentucky. The meet is attended by his good friend and colleage Rep. Bustamante (hoped I spelled that right) from Louisiana. Two sharps guys with solid staffers. Great discussion where both sides catch up on latest ideas and latest challenges. I am fairly warm, despite the usual allergies, so I fire on almost all cylinders, which is good, because I don’t like to waste any opportunities with guys like that.

I catch a cab from Longworth to the Mandarin, get my rental out of hock and realize I left my luggage in Steve’s rental, so I backtrack to the Mayflower where Steve is doing a recruitment meet with somebody considering life after his latest OSD appointment times out (lots of senior people are on various schedules where they turn into pumpkins after X months). A really solid guy I hope that Enterra can attract to its ranks, but since our record in that regard is rather stellar, I’m optimistic. And yeah, it’s always reinforcing when such talented people decide to throw their lots in with ours.

Bidding Steve good bye, I drive to a country club in Reston for a cocktail hour with senior execs from BAE (the American version of British Aerospace Engineering, if I remember that acronym correctly). Connecting strongly with one guy (nice Irish boy from L.A., who goes to Israel on a job assignment, falls in love, converts, and then becomes an Israeli citizen--how’s that for a life journey!), we head out for dinner afterwards with three others at a great Thai place in Reston town center, the day ending at 2300.

Today I’m up, and head over to the Reston office of BAE Systems, sitting through a morning of technology briefs that are really amazing. I can barely keep up with them, but it instinctively feels like a privileged education (with a non-disclosure agreement ironed out and signed just that morning between BAE and Enterra). Then I keynote the first half of the afternoon.

Hadn’t briefed in a while, so felt a bit rusty, and going after lunch is always hard. But good sound system, nice projector and screen, and nice auditorium. I worried about being too strategic and pol-mil for such a technical crowd, but it was a great audience, and the Q&A was as good as I ever get, pushing me to some statements I just know I want to get into Book III, except I’ve already lost them brain-wise.

Ah well, if you set them free and they don’t come back, they were never yours in the first place…

Lots of great offlines with individuals afterwards, signing lots of PNMs (all hard), and a strong sense that this is the start of a beautiful relationship. Based on what I saw here today, Enterra and BAE could do a lot of cool things together. Steve, I know, would have felt like a kid in a candy shop (not hard to achieve with Steve, whose enthusiasm button is easily set off on more subjects than I can count--yet another reason why we’re well-matched).

Still, an exhausting performance for me, given the allergies. Could barely stand up afterwards. So I chill the rest of the afternoon, watching still more good briefs (a couple were quite ingenious), getting primed for private dinner with a dozen or so senior execs tonight prior to catching late flight outta DC (thankfully, first class, even though we’re talking just an Embraer). I’ll get home about 0100 Thursday, making my 0400 Monday to 0100 Thursday stint fairly tiring (69 hours, 15 hours sleeping [extremely solid for me on the road], 4 flights, two hotels, two rentals, one workshop, three dinners, one lunch, one long presentation, nice swim, good workout, couple dozen books signed, four meetings, bunch of posts, ten briefs, several hundred emails, three cabs--blur, blur, blur).

Meanwhile, back at home, word is that Kevin’s recovery proceeds apace. Can’t wait to sleep somewhere familiar tonight.

Brain stop … ping. Must … keep … intelligible … words … dinner tonight.

I am reminded of the response from Zhou Enlai, foreign minister to Mao, who, when asked his opinion of the French Revolution, replied, "It's too early to tell."

A lot of judgments were levied against our effort in the Balkans in the 1990s. At the time, it felt like a Korea sort of kissing-your-sister outcome. Now, ten years later, Dayton looks awfully good, as do the resulting states that emerged from the pretend nation that used to be called Yugoslavia.

How will we judge Iraq, or what emerges from that pretend state that may or may not have become a nation over its 80 years (the USSR certainly didn't, as we discovered), it's frankly far too early to tell.

Same with the Big Bang. The good histories on this strategy will be written decades from now.

DATELINE: Riley Hospital ER, Indy, 15 June 2006

Kev's recovery takes detour with a post-surgical complication. Our surgeon's here but stuck in an emergency op (that "somebody's kid" again), so we're trapped here watching an AMC movie marathon that gives us the opportunity to compare Dalton, Connery and Moore.

My problem is that I'm running on no sleep and Kev's running on morphine. Ah, the cruelties of fatherhood...

Is what it felt like to win an all-expenses-paid night in Riley hospital with Kev on Thursday night.

Slight infection at one incision site meant IV antibiotics for 24. Plus we switch from one pain med to another to see if it will work better.

About the only thing that worked (after my cell gave out) was catching Game 4 of the NBA Finals.

We got out late Friday and I will admit that I was pretty depressed about life.

Then we got home, got Kev set, had a neighbor come over with two kids the same ages roughly as Jerry and Vonne Mei, played on the playset a bunch. Around talking with the neighbor, I manage to water the plants with some Miracle-Grow. Ditto the new trees out back.

Then a nice meal with my Mom (she's here watching the younger kids because my wife, mother-in-law and eldest daughter are on a mini-vacation), and we end by watching "Cast Away" in the home theater, which never fails to make me feel good (the theater, that is).

Actually, "Cast Away" is a great flick--tremendously underrated.

Anyway... felt like I was at home, I guess, and Kev's pleasant resurrection from all pain just tops it off.

Home 24 now and caught Kev playing some piano (he heard me playing for the first time in over a year this afternoon prior to mass). A very good sign we've gotten his pain under better control.

Steve's blog is really starting to take off. Two great examples here where he: 1) blogs the ideas/speeches of others (Brooks, Rice) and 2) blogs his own stuff (State Dept speech).

Steve is a vision hamster (always running his wheel, spinning off new ideas) like me, just a lot more biz grounded and better with smaller audiences.

Now we have my old speaking agent, Jenn Posda, working both my and Steve's thought leadership speaking and consulting, plus Bradd Hayes, sherpa for most of my intellectual mountaineering these many years, editing his blog and helping Steve move toward his own book, which I know will be important.

Steve is such a dynamo, but his schedule is beyond hellacious, so surrounding him with the right people is crucial. These blog entries and his State speech tell me we're succeeding as a whole to showcase Steve at his potential--again no mean feat given what the man packs into every single day.

So I am as much relieved as impressed. Wasting Steve's unique trajectory would be a shame, as hard as it is to capture it.

There's a scene in "Lawrence" where the Colonel has just made it across an impossibly large swath of deadly desert. He had been accompanied by two "wogs" (the "raghead" term of the British colonial era), one of whom died in the journey. Lawrence enters the officers' club with the other, and is told that the wog can't possibly be served alongside the Brits. Lawrence gets mad, and eventually gets his way out of respect for what he's achieving with indigenous forces.

When I was down in Maxwell speaking over the spring to the Joint Warfighters Officers Course of 3-stars, I got to spend a couple of beers talking to buddy Greg Jaffe of the Wall Street Journal, who was on the base to speak the next day to the same crowd. While we chatted, he told me of a similar divide in Iraq, right down to the colonel who couldn't bring his Iraqi counterpart to the US-only mess. I told Greg it reminded me off that scene in "Lawrence" and that he someday needed to write that sort of thing down in a piece.

Yesterday he sent me an email with this story attached. It appeared in the weekend edition of the WSJ: "A Camp Divided: As U.S. tries to give Iraqi troops more responsibility, clash of two American colonels shows tough road ahead," by Greg Jaffe, 17 June 2006, p. A1.

A very good piece showing that SysAdmin is a huge cultural shift from Leviathan.

Then again, if you want to win bad enough, you make the shift. Otherwise the casualties will begin to add up.

Time is on our side in the Long War

The conventional wisdom on Abu Musab al-Zarqawi's timely death says it's a significant step forward in the global war on terrorism but that sectarian violence will continue unabated in Iraq.

Depressed? Don't be.

Progress in the Long War against radical Islamic jihadists isn't about less violence. Rather, it's about speeding the killing to its logical conclusion in any one battlefield to shift the fight to its next logical stand. After the Middle East, the next theater of combat lies to the south, meaning the war's geography shifts to Sub-Saharan Africa in coming decades. [read more]

DATELINE: kitchen island, Indy, 19 June 2006

I'm not clinical or anything. When I was young, I simply achieved the depressive through depressants, like alcohol. I always had a hard time learning to slow down and relax, so I forced the issue. Worked hard, played harder.

Then you shift into middle age and the depressive, or down times, are far easier to achieve. Hell, they simply catch you!

Now I have almost the perfect work-home lifestyle to achieve ups and downs. By definition, the road must be all ups, so the home becomes most of the downs. You go manic on the road, you stagger around in the daze once home.

The mitigating, of course, are the kids and the love of my life. Neither of them exist on the road, so that counters the manic pace somewhat. Despite appearances, I am the slight introvert, meaning I need downtime after encounters with people, and the road provides that.

When home, the kids won't let you get very depressed: they are always demanding, asking, pushing, proposing, etc. They animate your existence, remind you why you live etc. Your spouse, if you're lucky, does the same.

But I will admit: I am finding this schedule challenging in its own way. Unlike in Rhode Island, where I had the day job and the discipline of going to that M-F, here I'm either gone (admittedly a lot more than in RI) or I'm home, recovering from being gone.

And I guess it's the constanty shifting from one paradigm to the other that drains the most: you get your head completely around the work life, and then you're back home, and vice versa. I am not a bits and pieces sort of guy, as good as I am at multitasking. Truth be told, I like to immerse in big chunks of time. I like to storm--in the Soviet sense of making up the bulk of your quote at the end of the month. That's why I write my books in such a concentrated storm.

Playing the piano yesterday reminded me of that: once back into it, I could do it for hours, just losing myself in the search for chords and fingering. It becomes it's own little world.

But I am pre-writing, as it were. I have a full plate of stuff that I can and must get to this week once Vonne and Emily arrive today from the East Coast. I need to get my office in final shape. I need to catch up on the banking and make some decisions about whether and under what conditions we swap out the old cars for new (we drive too much, I am told, for leasing), I need to possibly put together a trip for NYC on Friday to see Mark Warren, I need to write something for him, I probably should nail my next KNS column before flying out to China (yes, China!), and so on and so forth. There are maybe ten calls to be made on the house, to roust certain contractors into action. I should probably clean the house before flying away to Asia, to reduce the sense of shock when I return.

I need to go, go, go!

So why the lethargy?

Some of it is the strain of the past couple of weeks with Kev, who is settling down nicely. Some of it is the looming sense of traveling overseas (my Chinese visa firmly pasted in my passport). Some of it is simply the disorientation of wanting something (this house) for so long and finally getting it. Some of it is the constant blur of the workload with Enterra, whose fortunes are constantly in flux primarily because its upward trajectory is so steep, thus presenting so many glidepaths at once.

Then I say to myself: you wanted the slower summer and whenever you get a couple of slow days, you get depressed, thinking you've haven't accomplished anything, when hell! You had a nice column come out. Last week you made a big contact with BAE. You spoke with House Intell Committee. Steve did his thing at State, wowing Fred Thompson and Chuck Robb on WMD. How much does one expect for one June week, replete with emergency hospital stay and wife gone from the roost?

I always prepare myself for the summer depression, which I think is more a matter of fretting about work than anything chemical or emotional in me. My wife is right: I do like the blitzkrieg pace, which is why Steve and I feed into each other so much on the road. The summer is just so slow that I start fearing I'll never land more clients, write anything of value, get any more speeches, etc. I mean, I know things always get slow now and then pick up dramatically over the end of the summer and into the fall, and yet I find myself both dreading this low spot while trying desperately to take advantage of it (the great catch-up time).

And so I whine. The only weird part, I guess, is that I do it here, my only justification being that I think I'm pre-writing something of use on managing creativity (you know, the usual yin-yang argument that says for every height of clear vision there must be a corresponding depth of opaqueness). If you want the analytical chops, you work them, like any muscle. But you can't work them all the time, otherwise you burn out, so there must be a balancing up and down.

My Mom asked me this weekend: what do you do to stay on top of all these things in order to play the wannabe wise man with various clients? What does that take exactly?

So you answer the usuals: I read widely, I keep myself aware of this or that, I stay on top of the news and emerging trends.

But hell, a lot of people do that. So what's the value added?

The value added is hidden in the writing and the speaking and thinking: I analyze stuff several hours a day. The pianist plays his piano several hours a day. The professional runner runs several hours a day. I analyze several hours a day.

So what really happens (I knew it would come to me if I just started pre-writing until I bumped into it!) when I'm home and down is that I talk less, read less, and write less. So there's a build up of analysis in my head. It gets overwhelming. You feel like you have to get it out or it'll get lost or wasted.

And that is where the blog is so useful. It's the 3-miler that serves no purpose but to get your ass outside and moving. It's the absent-minded noodling on the piano, fiddling with sharps. It's analytical foreplay at its finest.

You organize your thoughts. You define the universe of your day. You stretch a bit. You bump into concepts worth developing.

I am who I am because I put in monster hours cogitating. I do that simply because it's the most natural use of my skills. Pianists play because they HAVE to. Artists draw (like my daughter Em) because they HAVE to. I analyze and play visioneer because I HAVE to.

If I don't, I really risk my mental health.

I'm 44, and I'm just beginning to get a good grip on this self-awareness. This is why I tell my kids not to worry so much about not knowing what it is they want to be when they grow up. Getting there is most of the fun, and once you're there, it's finally understanding yourself in all your glory and limitations.

Best of all, you know when you're depressed and why and why it's both natural and self-limiting in scope (assuming you are mentally healthy, of course), and that is a powerful weapon in one's life--an asset worth celebrating. Thinking across my life, I can spot so many times I was never anywhere near this level of self-awareness, and how scary that was.

And I guess that is why you locate the midlife crisis in these years. What happens if you get here and find nothing?

Then I guess you return to what you found more palatable: you change out the forty-year-old wife for a couple of 20s. You cancel the current family and start over. You reboot.

And I compare that level of profound fear with what I feel today (mostly a sinus headache, I believe), and I realize how lucky I am. Some native skills, yes, but a lot of people who clued me in along the way, including the elderly woman now patiently putting shoes on my Chinese daughter.

The rest of it? It's just money. And there's plenty more to get where that came from. So my ass gets off the chair. I move toward the phone. I reengage, the pep talk complete.

ARTICLE: "At a U.S. Mosque, Path of Tolerance Leads to Tumult: Firing of San Francisco Imam Brings Lawsuit and Trial; Radical or Whistle-blower?; 'A Divergence of Agendas,'" by Peter Waldman, Wall Street Journal, 19 June 2006, p. A1.

Just a quickie before running to airport.

Great piece in the WSJ today reminding me of the argument I laid out in the column yesterday: the religious reformation of Islam is proceeding apace here in North America (yes, not just here but in Canada).

Story of usual fiery young rebel in the making: Palestinian, Sunni, refugee from Lebanon, always hated Christians and especially Jews.

Then he wants to start mosque in San Fran, and gets his big break from Jewish landlord who slashes 80% off rent because he believes Muslims need tolerant space within which to explore their faith in America. This American Jew sees his role in global peace, and that alone turns this young guy's head.

So this visionary-in-the-making becomes a lightning rod and thought leader "at the forefront of a controversial movement to shape an 'American Muslim identity' of tolerance and respect for other faiths."

But our guy, Souleiman Ghali, ends up firing one of his imams for preaching hatred and death to the infidels and so forth, and this guy turns around and sues him and the mosque for wrongful dismissal, I guess claiming the usual freedom of expression/religion (which here, I imagine, preaches death to any turncoat who even imagines such an American-based identity).

And yet, such an identity is inevitable. Happened within Catholicism, which is about as centralized and hierarchical as any religion on the planet. So far easier to imagine with Islam, which is far more decentralized and adaptive to local conditions.

These guys like Ghali will rise, as will the women (my point yesterday), and they will be mercilessly attacked and harmed and even assassinated for this interpretations of Islam as a peaceful, tolerant religion (which it certainly can be as much as any religion). We need to support these guys, for they are just as much on the front lines as our loved ones.

The NYT today reminds us that we pick the wrong fight with Iran on regime change threats over WMD (instead, better to seek the changed regime) when bigger and badder threat sits in DPRK, where Kim has already both the nukes and ICBMs capable of reaching U.S. ("North Koreans Reported Closer to a Missile Test," by Helene Cooper and Michael R. Gordon, 19 June, p. A1).

Meanwhile, we court Vietnam lest it fall into the hands of rapaciously capitalistic China--perhaps triggering a domino effect of spreading markets? ("U.S. Competes With China for Vietnam's Allegiance," by Jane Perlez, NYT, 19 June, p. A3).

Instead of pitting ourselves against China over a hard-kill option in Iran (something they'd never tolerate, thus our emerging moderation with Tehran), we should be doing whatever is necessary to get China to the point of wanting Kim's liquidation.

But trying to get Japan jacked up on China, plus courting India and Vietnam for similar purposes, simply won't work over the long haul. For economic reasons, none will be forced into choosing us over Beijing and its aggressive capitalism, which we should be leveraging to shrink the Gap instead of partitioning the Core in some pointless recreation of great power spheres of influences.

We need to stop applying 19th century "realist" logic to a 21st century strategic environment. We appear cartoonishly out of date when we do so.

Heard back from my agent Jennifer Gates about our latest entreaties to the Beijing U Press to reopen negotiations on Pentagon's New Map in Chinese, and the news was not good.

To recap the saga: Beijing U Press agrees to translate and publish PNM back in the summer of 2004 (after the Japanese and Turks have already purchased rights).

They spend a long time translating the book. Then BUP proposed cuts in the range of several thousand words--basically removing all mention of China, Taiwan, Iran, and North Korea from the book. I countered with a very small number of cuts (dozens of words) relating only to the Chinese Communist Party and Taiwan.

To our delight, the Chinese accepted this proposal in December of 2004, but only if I included a disclaimer up front that these were my opinions and not that of Beijing U Press. I agreed.

Everything was set for the Chinese edition to appear in early 2006. We gave the Chinese permission to translate and use the original map.

Then when the crackdown on the press occurs at the beginning of this year, the BUP people get scared, and say they want the original long list of cuts or they'll abandon the project. I refuse, and the project is abandoned by BUP, despite paying me the modest advance and the time and effort put into the translation.

Anticipating my upcoming trip to China and the fact that I'll be speaking to a senior group of BU profs and researchers, plus research centers affiliated with the Ministry of State Security and the Chinese military (in addition to the time I'll spend with senior execs of Royal Dutch/Shell, my client for the trip, so four talks over 48 hours), I had Jennifer check back with BUP, seeing if they'd budge at all, but to no avail.

Good news is, I can now basically make a new deal with anyone gutsy enough on China's side to proceed with publication... of either book or both. It'll be weird, because I know the talks will go over well, just like they did in 2004, and I'll get lotsa questions about publication in Chinese, and I'll have to tell them that their premier university felt it needed to renege on its translation deal with me, lest it get in too much hot water with the government, which this time hosts two of my talks--in addition to Beijing U.

I am growing used to the notion that neither book will be published in China (a nice sort of symmetry really, as the books collectively forced my departure from the Naval War College/DoD and now they're equally unacceptable to that other great centrally-planned political system called the PRC--the two last great "socialist" models left on the planet agree on something!). They both just push the envelope too much for that system to handle. One thing for me to give talks to elites, another for the vision to escape into print--uncensored. I understand that limitation of their politics right now and certainly lament it, but the work continues, and eventually China matures to the point where it can handle the information both informally and formally.

For now, I have to make myself happy with this Net translation of the original Esquire PNM article.

A reader writes in with the following quote from Tom's post On judging the Big Bang...

A lot of judgments were levied against our effort in the Balkans in the 1990s. At the time, it felt like a Korea sort of kissing-your-sister outcome. Now, ten years later, Dayton looks awfully good, as do the resulting states that emerged from the pretend nation that used to be called Yugoslavia.

While Holbrook takes all the credit, the brains behind the deal was Chris Hill. If the six party talks look as good ten years from now, Chris might go down as one of the best diplomats the foreign service has ever produced.

A good point that appeals to the optimist in me. I had dinner with Hill a while back and he does impress F2F. When my favorite DEPSECSTATE leaves soon, maybe Hill becomes the hope in the time remaining. I believe he pretty much runs the Asia portfolio.

Thanks to Klingongoddess for sending Tom 'The Race for Iran' by Flynt Leverett in today's NYT. Tom says:

Great piece from a smart guy who's written in the past cogently on the subject. Former NSC staffer with detailed knowledge. His main point is essentially sound, and points to the pol-mil equivalent of a "flat world": isolation does not work in the highly connected world in which we live. Workarounds abound, and you only cut off your own nose to spite your face. We can work China and Russia and India all we want, but they've all already made their choices: Iran is in.

The only question now is, Under what conditions?

ARTICLE: "U.S. Falls Behind In Tracking Cattle To Control Disease: USDA Plans Voluntary System After Cattlemen Divide On Making One Mandatory; Mad-Cow Mysteries," by Steve Stecklow, Wall Street Journal, 21 June 2006, p. A1.

Right after 9/11, Art Cebrowski said to me over the phone that security would now become a key determinant of market success for all companies in all industries, not just for countries and their militaries.

For most of us, security is very individual ("Do you know where your kids are?") and very abstract (enduring fears of the end of the world), when in reality, it's all around us all the time. It's just been so successfully codified and systematized in our little globalization-in-a-nation experiment called these states united. We've made so many things, procedures, transactions and systems eminently transparent and thus far more easily subject to regulation and monitoring and enforcement, that we forget our native skills in rule-set creation. We forget we're the source code for this unprecedented expansion of the global economy, which features a world more at per-capita peace than at any point in past history.

Our problem is that our rule sets tend to be born of tragedy. Go look up any reg or law and you'll find some tragedy behind it--something that triggered the new restriction on behavior. New Core pillars like China and India are just reaching that sort of nation-building phase, the type we went through from 1920 to 1940 (which was huge--thus our surplus of nation-building expertise and talent with which to tackle the postwar world).

A key threshold in that journey was that America went majority urban around 1920, something China is rapidly approaching and something the world as a while has basically reached the tipping point on (as in the next couple of years). With that huge shift, the requirements for transparency and rule enforcement skyrocket, meaning both more and better government (more reach, but more self-regulated use of power).

If we come to remember our skills in rule-set creation (plus our innate ability to spread our rules through the attractiveness of our culture, which remains as vibrant as ever despite the temporary dislike for our current president), we'll see opportunity instead of obligation in such things as food safety, the topic of this article.

When we discovered our first mad-cow disease here in the States two years ago, USDA pledged to come up with a national ID system for our animals.

Two years later--nothing.

Our private industry hasn't come to agreement on what it should look like. Our companies naturally want the least regulation and will resist anything beyond the miminal effort--until the tragedy strikes.

This is self-defeating in a world of great economic competiton. Already, other nations' livestock industries are touting their own security systems as a market advantage. Good example is Australia:

The lack of a national tracking system may already be hurting U.S. beef exports, which suffered after the discovery here of mad cow. Japan, South Korea and China still don't allow U.S. beef--a ban that has cost domestic producers more than $5 billion in exports over the past two-and-a-half years, according to industry estimates.

Agriculture Secretary Mike Johanns recently told a meeting of the National Cattlemen's Beef Association that beef exporters like Australia are "aggressively marketing traceability to gain an advantage," according to the groups newspaper. "Competitors are out there saying, 'We've got I.D. They don't.'"

The plaintive counter of the cattlemen is to whine "This is supposed to be the land of the free, and pretty soon we'll be able to do nothing on our own property without permission from the government."

Damn straight! Free to let in mad-cow or respond poorly to avian flu. Free to run our agricultural industry into the ground. Our beef and veal exports today are about 40 percent of what they were as recently as 2003, when mad-cow came to America. If that isn't enough of a scare to convince the industry we need a dramatic rule-set reset, then it's doomed.

Somehow Australia, land of the free (and certainly as surly a cattlemen's industry), manages to track its cattle and does so in such a way as to remain competitive--hell, become more competitive. Somehow they manage this without de-evolving into dictatorship.

Somehow, we better start paying better attention.

Look at the countries discussed here: China, South Korea, Brazil, Australia. New Core sets the new rules. Get used to it.

Or cling to your 19th century definitions of freedom and security and competition.

OP-ED: "Right Where He Wants Us: The method in Kim Jong Il's madness," by Chuck Downs, Wall Street Journal, 21 June 2006, p. A12.

A great rundown of how Kim has used missile tests in the past and how he's likely to use this planned threat of one now to get what he wants amidst the Japanese-Chinese-American-South Koreans relations.

A wonderfully systematic analysis that shows how Kim can't abide the status quo, thus his greater danger to us--I would argue--than Iran, whose own feeble attempts at revolution in the Middle East have gone absolutely nowhere since 1979.

Kim is the true Stalinist, and the true Stalinist has no interest in treaties or rule except to exploit them for full maneuvering advantage, because the status quo never does enough to guarantee continued rule. Only regular purges do, plus keeping your enemies in disarray lest they come together logically to eradicate your rule.

The only bad thing about this current go-around is watching the WSJ editorial board argue for renewed effort on missile defense. That dog has never hunted and never will. It's a boondoogle of immense proportions with no appreciable spin-off technologies to even justify the massive sunk costs. But there is the myth that somehow SDI sank the Soviets, which is so laughably goofy an analysis as to warrant anything other than handing its proponents a good book on global economics, or maybe just a subscription to Wired. But it disturbs me to see the WSJ push that sort of tired and bankrupt logic as the answer to Kim, when the real answer is staring us in the face: serious advance of alliance with China, while the price remains low.

ARTICLE: "U.S. Warms to Hague Tribunal: New Stance Reflects Desire to Use Court to Prosecute Darfur Crimes," by Jess Bravin, Wall Street Journal, 14 June 2006, p. A4.

A hopeful sign that we'll start realizing that the ICC is not our enemy, but a useful tool for linking the UN's legitimacy to our muscular approach to a global war on terror.

We've got our roughly 100 bilateral immunity treaties with the vast majority of the Gap, and those who hold out are being punished through the denial of military assistance (roughly two dozen states that include New Core Brazil, Mexico and South Africa and twenty Gap states)--a policy that many defense officials are beginning to view as a cure that's worse than the potential disease.

To me, our goal here is obvious: co-opt the ICC as much as possible to our needs in a Long War. The ICC has the credentialed system for adjudicating and imprisoning, and we have the muscle it lacks for going after bad guys. Meanwhile, we lack a credentialed system for adjudicating and imprisoning.

You don't have to be a grand strategist on that one to see the obvious complimentarity.

And for all the anti-UN whiners who piss and moan about this or that reg, the answer is equally simple: when you don't like the law, you rewrite it or you work around it. That's what we've done with the bilats.

We just need an administration that's willing to go the next steps. No rocket science. You want to win the Long War bad enough, you make the change.

OP-ED: "A Tale of Two Oil Patches: What Alberta knows that Mexico doesn't," by Mary Anastasia O'Grady, Wall Street Journal, 16 June 2006, p. A15.

ARTICLE: "In Oil's New Era, Power Shifts To Countries With Reserves: Middle East Consumes Morre As U.S. Seeks Security; 'Higher Prices for Years,'" by Bhushan Bahree and Chip Cummins, Wall Street Journal, 14 June 2006, p. A1.

I admit to an intellectual crush on Ms. O'Grady. Conservative yes, but awfully damn smart. To me, she's what Ann Coulter would be if she had a soul and an IQ to match her naked ambition (emphasis on naked).

Another great piece from her, subtly underlining the myth of the looming oil produciton peak. When outside money is let in, we continue to find more and more oil. Yes, less conventional, but there it is. And thanks to the continuing pressure of India and China and their rising demand, plus OPEC's hedging on a post-oil future (they won't re-invest themselves back down to low price levels again because--duh!--there's no money in it for them!), what was once untenable is now quite profitable--if you let in the money.

Alberta does this, including Chinese money. Mexico, with its tried and true nationalist approach, does not, and it's industry is falling apart. Chavez and Morales will do similarly great things for their countries, rest assured. Oh yeah, they all know how to "stick it to the man" alright!.

Meanwhile, Alberta retains state control at a level that Mexico would readily recognize, and it flourishes immensely as a result of its FDI-friendly approach.

So Alberta attracts new citizens, while Mexico is bleeding economic refugees into America and Pemex is rife with corruption, bad environmental practices, and a declining asset base.

The right way and the wrong way. Not rocket science. Just common sense.

ARTICLE: "In Somalia, Islamic Militias Are Fighting Culture Wars: With Warlords Out, a Scramble for Power," by Marc Lacey, New York Times, 19 June 2006, p. A11.

I know, I know. We'll never go back to Black Hawk Down territory.

But Al Qaeda certainly will.

Yes, the current new rulers of Mogadishu are emphasizing that they are different from the murderous Al Qaeda, except they're giving all indications that the same goals are being pursued.

The new ruling militias will win the population over primarily by establishing security. The cost will be a harsh Islamisation of society, which will drive out the non-believers and homogenize the society. That society, by definition, will be unable to interact with the outside world except in the most restrictive fashion. That will lead nowhere economically. The rulers will need to explain those failures on outside evil, and the ratcheting up of disconnecting ideology will begin.

All this favors the Al Qaeda ascendancy, when the time requires. Eventually, we drive the movement out of the Middle East, and sub-Saharan Africa will become its next preferred sanctuary. Somalia's current evolution will be most welcome to our enemies in this Long War, and yes, we will return.

ARTICLE: "China, Taiwan to Boost Direct Flights: Deal for Limited Passenger, Cargo Service Could Lead To Deeper Economic Ties," by Shai Oster and Chiu Piling, Wall Street Journal, 15 June 2006, p. A6.

Chen Shui-bian has lost his bid to play the nationalist card to shore up his flagging presidency, so now he turns to a more laudable motive--the profitable expansion of economic ties with China.

Despite continuing political difference, China and Taiwan have grown dependent on one another. Taiwan, which split from mainland China in 1949, has become one of China's top trading partners. The island's manufacturers have invested $100 billion in China. Many companies, particularly in Taiwan's technology sector, have relocated much of their manufacturing to the mainland to take advantage of cheaper labor costs. China, in turn, needs Taiwan's investment and expertise to keep its economy expanding.

The natural resulting rise in human connectivity on this one works to China's advantage, so easy call for them. Easy call for Taiwan's business community, because it reduces costs and makes oversight of investments easier. Tougher call for Chen, but he faces a recall vote in the parliament over corruption accusations against family members.

All in all, not a great looking long-term package to justify a lot of high-tech weapons platforms in the DoD budget.

Not that any such logic would slow down the China hawks' rationales for pet projects...

ARTICLE: "In Military-Spending Boom, Expensive Pet Projects Prevail: Defense Firms Reap Rewards As Pentagon's Priorities Run Into Resistance; Rumsfeld Wins Few Battles," by Jonathan Karp, Wall Street Journal, 16 June 2006, p. A1.

The Pentagon has more than $1 trillion locked up in programs of record that won't find much good application in a Long War where only 20 percent of the victory will be "kinetic," according to the Army's and Marines' new counter-insurgency doctrine, but no matter. With an administration that feels no compulsion to limit spending on anything (those cut-taxes-and-spend-like-crazy Republicans), no hard choices are forced. Rummy will have his Long War and eat his cake too, and the big defense contractors will be lulled into thinking that their future can remain a pale imitation of their past.

Stunning, really, this huge arms build-up (acquisitions are up 43% since 2001) while the Army and Marines experience such an operational/body crunch and most of our casualties are from roadside bombs.

Ah, but the China threat is being reshaped by the Pentagon as it's last-ditch rationale for every system still in the pipeline, a process that was resurrected in the QDR last year primarily by the Navy and Air Force, neither of which was faring well in the bureaucratic battles at that point, but both of which have done nicely since.

Of course, missile defense is the pork barrel of all pork barrels in this bunch, a particular pet project of Rumsfeld and Bush. Like the rest of the mega-projects, we've seen original cost estimates skyrocket with each passing year, with everything costing more and the resulting capabilites adding up to less.

But Bush and Company are far from alone in the blame naturally assessed. Pick any project and you'll find a righteous Congressional delegation backing it. Maine might like its politics at home fairly liberal, but scratch their shipyard and you'll find yourself battling a bevy of mindless defense hawks, sputtering all sorts of straTegic nonsense.

But that's how you justify those skyrocketing costs. The top five prorams are now projected to cost roughly 90% more than they were expected to cost back in 2001. Meanwhile, we wage a Long War with not insignificant casualty rates and the defense feeding frenzy continues as if none of this happening all around them. And the China hawk propagandists work their magic to assure us that the Long War is largely a myth, that we'll never do another nation-building effort like Iraq, and that the Middle East is but a blip compared to the rising threat from China (the main threat being, of course, to the pocket books of those associated with these high-cost, low-value projects).

How many Seawolfs did it take to recapture Falluja?

Not enough, my friends. Not nearly enough.

But again, no matter so long as Bush is in power. The next president can deal with Iran, China, North Korea, Iraq, and all that debt. And if the plan works, the tough choices that president will inevitably be forced to make will clear the path for the next Bush administration.

Bush is not the "chief decider," he's the chief evader.

Lives will be lost in this Long War thanks to this lack of priorities in spending. That is strategically unsound and morally unforgivable. Despite forging some much-needed new rules on global security, Bush will be judged very harshly by history for evading these responsibilities.

ARTICLE: "Iran Lobbies China, Russia to Help Curb U.S.: At Summit in ShAnnghai, Tehran Plays Its Oil Card In Push to Forge Alliance," by Gordon Fairclough, Wall Street Journal, 16 June 2006, p. A4.

Iran works the latest meeting of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization to push its agenda of countering U.S. influence in the region. Given our recent handling of Russia and the mounting re-hawkification of our China policy, I'd say this is a pretty sharp move. I mean, when your enemy gives you the rope by which to hang him, start making knots.

A quasi-isolated Iran is a perfect customer for Russia's nuclear industry, which--quite frankly--wouldn't do well in an Iran open to competition and serious external investment. So Putin contemplates a U.S.-led hard-kill option where it's likely to get shut out of the postwar economic connectivity and guess what? He thinks there's a better deal to be had in keeping things as they are.

Ditto for China, which faces the additional opportunity of squeezing out the Japanese if economic sanctions are pursued, so Beijing should clean up no matter which way Washington jumps.

To some, all this signals the return of the great power "game" in Central Asia, which to me is akin to blaming one's own failure on "God's will." Nice excuse, if you can peddle it.



But all this signals is that our "realist" mindset has us playing the wrong damn game. We're so fixated on WMD and nukes and abstract "national interest" that we seem completely oblivious to the global economic dynamics in play all around us.

The SCO members aren't interested in seeing the radical (Sunni) Salafi jihadist movement spread north from the Middle East, including Shiite Iran. They see the mess we've made in Iraq and quelle surprise! They don't seem to trust either our strategic vision or our execution of same.

Naturally, our hawks will see a world ganging up on us in anything the SCO does, when it's our incompetence that drives these dynamics more than anything else (Where was the SCO prior to 9/11? Nowhere.).

But the SCO will go places in the future. It will shepherd the creation of an "energy road" where the Silk Road once laid, and it will do so because this is a logical answer to Asia's skyrocketing energy needs. Yes, our hawks will see anti-Westernism in this, because they live in a zero-sum world where economics is an afterthought to strategic calculations.

What I see is simply the price of everything going up over time. Russia's price. China's price. Iran's price.

Already, all these prices are beyond the ability of this administration to pay, our unilateralism yielding nothing more than our own strategic isolation.

The good news, as I've argued elsewhere, is that prices will be dropped for the next administration, if it's able to see the transactions for what they are: America's re-integration into a global power structure that naturally has arisen from the rapid expansion of the global economy (or what I dub the Core).

And yes, there will be some rules we'll need to adapt ourselves to if such re-integration is to take place.

Is my wedding anniversay each year.

A defensible statement, especially now that Indiana sits permanently in the Eastern time zone (our days truly are later leaving here).

Today marks the 20th time we've celebrated getting married on that sweltering day in Madison WI in 1986.

Best strategic call I ever made.

Kev took his first bath today. We may even let him stick some limbs in the pool at Nona's later today, his recovery is proceeding so nicely now. On that score, thanks for all the kind thoughts and prayers.

(... and a half... or so)

+ Tom often calls for Mugabe's head (or at least his retirement). Steve's latest post on land reform quotes extensively from a report on the failure of Mugabe's land reforms.

+ Defense Tech's extensive (skeptical) coverage of the missile defense test today gives 'big ups' to Tom.

+ Shawn of Asia Logistics Wrap is back at it with China, India Revisit Silk Road Connectivity.

And if I missed any, feel free to leave them in the comments, or email me.

[updated with Doug's info]

Tom got an email from Doug Clark [DClark@irgltd.com], AID Foreign Service Retired:

Hi Tom,

I confess to not understanding what Steve says about embedded rule sets except that they seem to be embedded somewhere in the IT world. The example he gave during your visit used the banking system example and the new and expanded rules to open a bank account post 9/11. That example I got. So how does this work in the box and in the gap countries as they connect to the rest of the world?

Once in these countries where the development in the box will be opened up and operate, rule sets will be found to be quite complicated because politics will come into play. In these countries - as well as our own - crafty politicians and their supporters use the management and control of rule sets to keep power, expand power and certainly keep most of the fruits of the economy going there way. This dynamic can really work against change in these countries. There will probably be very strong resistance to changing the rules set IF it looks like they will

undermine the current holders of power or regimes. How do we do this then?

In thinking about this, a first guess would be that any connectivity is good and maybe we can tolerate a less than complete rule set change because the right direction is being followed and maybe that lessens the chance of bad things happening in that country. A completely hard ass view would be that if we can get the gap countries fairly close to the core, and if some nasty conditions continue to exist in those places, but don't really represent any national security risk to us, then we would tolerate that. This is probably where the pure development folks (mostly in the NGOs) would part ways as they don't see the world this way.

I think you're overthinking this a bit. Any system or process has basic rules. If you, the country, want to connect your version to that of others, you'll want access to these rules, trading conformity for connectivity. If you prefer local control yielding idiosyncratic nets, then there's little to be done.

So you pick your spots for demonstration effects, such as countries after wars or disasters, because they're more desperate and hence more flexible.

Embedded rule sets are found in any sector with any layer of complexity, but especially utilities, comms and finance.

I am looking at this from the getting it done in a country basis perspective and from work on policy reform (policy reform is rule setting and changing of the rules) in the Philippines, Thailand and Egypt. All of these efforts were aimed at overcoming the local control yielding idiosyncratic nets you mention and setting the conditions to connect. The record is pretty good in Thailand and far less so in Egypt. The Philippines is always the special case because of its U.S. colonial history.

I am thinking we want to push connectivity and not lay back and wait for gap countries to start moving toward the core on their own. Yes, any system or process has basic rules, the problem is that gap countries are probably the worst at enforcing or following them (in fact even nicely developing countries drawing real close to the core have this dynamic - not always following the rules, even when they set them!). So do we push from the core or do we wait until they are ready on their own the accept the rule sets?

I'm for pushing, using the pretext of post-whatever recoveries to trigger an envy/demonstration factor regionally. Thinks of the immense effect Lee Kuan Yew has on the world, with lead geese elsewhere all bragging they want to become the Singapore of...

Ultimately, once demonstrated as a go-to-the-head-of-the-connectivity-line effect, you start aggressively marketing it as a Phase 0 or pre-canned bankruptcy of sorts, complete with Bono's debt relief, Gates's med package for kids, Sachs' demo villages, and so on. Make it a reverse lottery: by losing you get to win. My goal is to get the Gap happy to see the Marines land, because they know they're now at the head of line. Politically, I think it's win-win--save the local elites who get disintermediated.

Tom writes:

Got this from friend Banning Garrett. Yet another good stab at making more portable a good set of best practices and creating leave-behind connectivity assets.

Doc-in-a-Box. Start with pictures of the prototype that was in front of the CFR in New York last week. 'It will blow you away when you consider the implications...'

More, including links to other coverage:

For several months the Global Health Program has been working on schemes for creating greater efficiency, financial sustainability, and efficacy in global health efforts. We are deeply concerned that despite billions of dollars committed by the wealthy world to aid health developments in poorer countries, as well as dramatic improvements in fiscal and material support for health by many of the poor countries themselves, the danger of overall failure remains high. In particular, the severe shortage of trained health care workers worldwide - estimated to be a global deficit of 4.3 million doctors, nurses, technicians, and allied support - is already pitting health programs against one another in competition for skilled personnel. Vertical programs that have strong support in the wealthy world (such as roll out of anti-HIV drugs in Africa or provision of lab support for H5N1

influenza surveillance in Asia) are far better funded, and therefore in a position to lure scarce health care workers away from less chic, poorly funded basic primary health programs, child and maternal health efforts, or water purification schemes.

While we strongly believe the emphasis on HIV, tuberculosis, pandemic influenza, and malaria are appropriate, we feel it would constitute a gross tragedy to allow emphasis in one set of health arenas to strip other medical and public health programs of vital financial and human resources.

We are especially concerned that failures to achieve various benchmarks for health achievements, such as the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) and other UN or Congressionally-sanctioned targets, will result in a decline in donor interest and support. Donor fatigue always looms over global health programs. It can only be staved off by proof of genuine and lasting achievements. Further, achievements in one health arena (e.g. HIV treatment or malaria bed-net distribution) cannot come at the expense of another, less glamorous health target (such as maternal survival or child dysentery

programs).

The Global Health Program has convened more than 100 hours of closed-door meetings and interviews all over the world in an effort to determine what is working and what is not. Last week these efforts culminated in the public display of what the Program calls "Doc-in-a-Box." We invite you to view some of the news coverage of last week's events:

UPI

Nature Magazine

New York 1 Television

TA Frank of The Washington Monthly sends in this story on Michael Pillsbury, 'the China hawk':

Panda Slugger, The dubious scholarship of Michael Pillsbury, the China hawk with Rumsfeld's ear, by Soyoung Ho

Tom writes:

Awesome piece that tracks with everything I know and have heard about the man over the years. A dangerous character, according to many. I've never met him or crossed paths, to my knowledge. Most who know him well but who have tangled with him consider Pillsbury an Anakin Skywalker-type: could have been great, but went to the dark side. I push for a Dem in 2008 just to get him out of the Pentagon. That's how much I think he damages strategic thinking WRT the Long War.

Tom got an email alerting him to this post over on the Foreign Policy Blog:

Department of Development?

Some of the authors of a joint project between the Brookings Institution and the Center for Strategic and International Studies presented their recommendations for transforming U.S. foreign assistance this morning.

The full report, in book form, is available here in a preliminary version. One key recommendation is creating a cabinet level Department for Global Development. In effect, this reorganization would "elevate development as a third pillar alongside diplomacy and defense" and adopt a British model for development policy.

Tom's comment:

A development like this, with Brookings and CSIS basically coming out for a Department of Everything Else (I would pass on both "global" and "development" because "aid to the world" is a tough sale, but I'm being petty, because it has to be named something), is very encouraging. Makes me feel good that I got the marker down in BFA.

Actually, when I first proposed such a department in 2000 ("Life after DoDth") , I called it the Department of Network Security--not "homeland" limited (the Net knows no homeland) nor "development"-centric (we connect, they develop) but really about maintaining the resiliency of the system of globalization itself.

But again, very gratifying, showing that BFA wasn't as naive or fantastic as my realist critics would have you believe.

... no development without security. ;-)

Steve has a post today entitled Applying Maslow to Development-in-a-Box. Tom's comment:

Applying Maslow is always interesting, in my mind, because it reminds us that security starts it all off, so no military-market nexus, no development.

A substantial speech from Bush, much on Iran, at King's Point. Honestly, wouldn't cite just for that, except Enterra just signed a deal with the academy that sets up Steve as a visiting prof [press release] and has us team-teaching a grad course on global resiliency, which should offer us a great take-off point for deeper collaboration, plus far better understanding on how we turn this joint vision into a series of portable strategic concepts that can spread on their own.

The academy is a great place to start, almost the epitome of the military-market nexus, which naturally grew historically from global maritime trade.

Busy day.

Had a migraine.

Long calls with Warren. Prepping one thing.

Long calls with Jennifer Posda. She's scored both Steve and I interviews in upcoming docoumentary film on "radical thinkers."

But that's not all!

Traded in the old Odyssey for a new one (Wow! Is all I will say for the 06 upgrades compared to our 02).

Prepped for the Indy-to-Chicago-to-Bejing-to-LA-to-Washington-to-New York-to-Indy trip that begins tomorrow. 6 briefs over 6 days. One of the biggest energy companies in the world. One of the biggest universities in the world. One of the biggest militaries in the world. The world's largest navy. The world's largest internal security service. The coolest guy mag in the world.

Locked and loaded with Ambien, Cipro, the lower GI stuff.

Sad to say, we carried out Chinese to celebrate the new car!

But most interesting... my lit agents got surprise email early this morn: Beijing U Press suddenly decides to reconsider publishing PNM. Nye sluchaino, say the Russians.

My migraine seems almost beautiful.

Would be ambassador to China. A stretch, I know, and yet I dream.

I know I would say yes because it's about the only USG job my wife would say yes to.

Still, I'd probably have to have my sinuses surgically removed to survive a couple of years in Beijing.

Then there's my dream of installing Steve DeAngelis as the first Secretary of the Department of Everything Else.

Hmm... the Zomig is kicking in...

DATELINE: China World Hotel, Beijing China, 25 June 2006

Delayed getting out of Indy Saturday morning, so got to O'Hare just in time to step on United flight to Beijing. I had business class, which means a sleep about as good as the nights I put in at the Riley's Children Hospital with Kev.

I wrote my op-ed for the Knoxville News Sentinel on these combined flights, caught a little "King Kong," and avoided booze and caffeine. Scary enough to head into Beijing just coming off a migraine. The city is as smoggy as I have ever seen it, like a pretty heavy fog.

Hotel is nice enough. I had someone waiting for me at gate, who guided me through the airport and into a waiting Audi, which ran me direct to the hotel. Waiting for me there was old friend Zhang Yu, aka Daisy, who presented me with an armful of beautiful flowers. She was accompanied by a grad student (Danny), and I've got a few minutes now to clean up before dinner with a host of PKU (Beijing U; for some reason they still call it Peking U here) profs, after which I will give a presentation. Should be a long night with lots of cigarette smoke. I will gear up on meds before I head out.

Amazingly, my Verizon phone works here, so I'll call my spouse late tonight, catching her early on Sunday morning.

I am feeling great despite the shift. Maybe got a solid 4 hours on plane, but the illusion is sufficient.

Unbelievably exciting to be back in Beijing. This should be a very interesting 48 hours, given the four audiences (Beijing U, a defense-related think tank, Royal Dutch Shell, and a Min of State Security-related think tank).

Meanwhile, Zhang Yu is already plotting our trip to Ru Pei Pei to get those pearls for my spouse...

Back in the hotel, 2300 local.

After blogging that last bit, I realized I was running late, took a quick shower, tried to steam my suit but found my steamer seemed to go bizerk on the local voltage (yes, I had adaptor plus converter, but it did so anyway). Then the iron cord proved too hard to uncoil and it was like my IQ was suddenly dropping; I felt kind of weird and panicky.

But then downstairs for long drive with Danny and Zhang Yu to Beijing U, when I had very nice dinner in VIP room with a host of academics, plus two genuine stars, Shi Yinhong, considered a top America watcher and Qian Chengdan, famous for being the first professor ever brought in to lecture the Politburo on foreign political developments. Rian held back some, but Shi and I went at it big time over dinner, in a serious soul-mate sort of discussion of global politics and where China and the U.S. must go in the future. Everyone around the table was smart as whips, but these two guys, both senior, were a cut above, so conversing with them brought me out of any jet-lagged lethargy I was feeling. Nice meal to boot.

That was one rapid hour meal, then short drive to very old and beautiful building on campus, where I am led into your basic oblong conference roomed crammed to hilt with grad students and profs my age. I went two hours over 52 slides, not really changing anything but explaining myself more carefully. The command of English in the room was very impressive and made self-evident by the great questions I got later, which took us another hour to 2200.

Niu Ke, my host, and I share a couple of Chinese cigs in the sultry night air afterwards, catching up. It was my one time with Niu on this trip. Some of you will remember him from the adoption trip, his later trip to our house in Portsmouth with Zhange Yu and others, and then playing "cultural ambassador" to the Chinese team in the New Map Game.

Best news of the night probably that some key people with ability to influence Beijing U Press were in the room. Niu advised against any full-frontal. Like my agents back home, he felt that planting these seeds was the best way to free PNM. But, in talking with profs afterwards, I realize I am not the only one in this boat on censorship, so you try take it in stride since you're the guest.

One neat surprise was that Beijing U (for some reason, it still goes by Peking U, or PKU) gave me an honorarium in Chinese currency for my talk tonight. A small amount, but the highest honorarium they offer, according to all. I was really touched by it, and Niu's obvious effort in getting it--a kind sign of respect (plus I now have no need to exchange money). Niu kept saying that I had no idea how famous I had become in academic circles in China over the past two years, which is also cool. Not something I can check per se, although one academic gave me a copy of the American Studies Quarterly to show me the review of PNM from last year. The issue likewise had a major treatment of Joe Nye's work, who is nice company.

Gotta check some email and get off to bed. Lu Dehong, Deputy Director, Dept of Research at the China Foundation For International and Strategic Studies, expects me downstairs at 0800. After that it's Royal Dutch/Shell all afternoon. Then shopping with Zhang Yu and Danny and the promised treat of those Beijing basic noodles that I loved so much last time. Everyone around the table seemed amused that that was my definition of good eats in China. To them, it's like saying "give me McDonald's French fries" like it's a delicacy or something, when it's closer to plain old mashed potatoes.

Still, I like what I like.

So feel good to get through first of 6 briefs on this trip so well. Very little jet lag to deal with; more my throat from the local air conditions.

Driving through Beijing tonight, I am reminded of "Blade Runner," but not in a bad way. Beijing is just the city that most resembles that image that I've come across so far in my travels. I'm sure there are some that evoke those images more, but for now Beijing is it for me. I would really love to show this city to my kids. Zhang Yu is already demanding something sooner than early 2008, which is our current target for a full-force return on a second adoption trip.

Looks like another fairly smoggy, rainy day here--thus the "Blade Runner"-ish feel to the urban landscape.

Ambien worked well. Could tell I wouldn't have been able to fall asleep without it, much less stay down for such a solid five and wake up feeling so alert. Throat feels good too. Should be able to power through this day.

OP-ED: "Multinationals have been superseded," by Samuel Palmisano, Financial Times, 12 June 2006, p. 15.

Wanted to blog this one for a while, so carried it around.

Met a fascinating thinker a while back who noted that it took building architecture quite some time to adjust to the new capabilities forged by the advances in internal skeleton design that kicked off the era of skyscrapers. For centuries (thousands of years, really), architecture was limited by the reality of stacking blocks on top of one another, buttressing here and there, adding the arch, but overall, pretty limited, so buildings all looked basically the same.

Then came the capacity for internal skeletons made of metal, and yet, quite a few years pass before any new movement arises in architecture to account for this new capacity. Buildings were being built in largely the same way, just taller.

But eventually, architects break that mold and new buildings arise with the new building forms. But naturally, there was a lag, or a lack of imagination that had to be overcome.

This guy's point was that the same was true for the rise of information technology: we had all this new capacity but kept using it in all the same old corporate structures. This was basically Art Cebrowski's point about the military: "you're still thinking largely in terms of platforms instead of the possible net."

Steve DeAngelis has maintained this perspective for years, making his own personal business explorations of new forms through the various companies he's run, to include Enterra, whose own structure starts to become quite federated in terms of its personnel spread across the country (not unlike the rather extreme version of this model pursued globally by Accenture, which basically has no HQ, just the global net of execs and work sites).

[editor's note: Steve linked to this same piece recently]

Steve's point has been for a while that the new architecture allows news forms of enterprises, but that execs can't imagine that new form unless they rethink the nexus of compliance, security, systems integration and performance management/process reengineering, four venues that have historically been tackled separately within organizations, with each venue requiring its own dedicated suite of outside contractors (accountants & lawyers, security firms, SI firms, consultants). In Enterra's mindset, only when you see the organic overlap, even coincidence, of all those approaches, do you begin to see how your enterprise can be redefined.

Not surprisingly, one company probably furthest along in this evolution is IBM, and the writer here is chairman and CEO. In the IT world, IBM is the only true world-class, business-spanning package out there than combines high-end consulting, naked technology, and system integration. Other players have pieces, and are now seeking to roll themselves up and others in new and bigger packages to challenge IBM (hence, all the suitors for Enterra), but IBM remains the gold standard, as it were.

Palmisano's explanation of how IBM views this new reality is worth quoting. It's not a great explanation, but it definitely moves the pile a good bit, and it helps us think about better ones:

The emerging business model of the 21st century is not, in fact, "multinational." This new kind of organisation--at IBM we call it "the globally integrated enterprise"--is very different in its structure and operations. Many parties to the globalisation debate mistakenly project the twentieth-century multinational onto 21st century global reality. This happens as often among free-market advocates as among those opposed to globalisation.

Let me describe this new creature. In a multinational model, companies built local production capacity within key markets, while performing other tasks on a global basis. They did this in response to the rise of protectionism and nationalism that began with the first world war and carried on late into the twentieth century. As an example, American multinationals such as General Motors, Ford and IBM built plants and established local workforce policies in Europe and Asia, but kept research and development and product design principally in the "home country."

The globally integrated enterprise, in contrast, fashions its strategy, management and operations to integrate production--and deliver value to clients--worldwide. This has been made possible by shared technologies and shared business standards, built on top of a global information technology and communications infrastructure. Because new technology and business models are allowing companies to treat their functions and operations as component pieces, companies can pull those pieces apart and put them back together again in new combinations, based on judgments about which operations the company wants to excel at and which are best suited to its partners.

These decisions are not simply a matter of offloading non-core activities, nor are they mere labour arbitrage--that is, shifting work to low-wage regions. Rather, they are about actively managing different operations, expertise and capabilities to open the enterprise up in multiple ways, allowing it to connect more intimately with partners, suppliers and customers and, most importantly, enabling it to engage in multifaceted, collaborative innovation.

This kind of innovation is much more than the creation of new products. It is also how services are delivered: three-quarters of most employment is in services. This kind of innovation changes how business processes are integrated, how companies and institutions are managed, how knowledge is transferred, how public policies are formulated--and how enterprises, communities and societies participate in and benefit from it all. Leaders in public and private sectors recognise that innovation is key to our future. Today, innovation is inherently global.

Like that Don Rippert (CTO, Accenture) piece a while back on Service Oriented Architecture, reading this op-ed really helps me understand what a comperehensively radical re-thinker Steve is, and why it's so perfect that I joined Enterra.

Like I complained in PNM, I grew up feeling like I'd never be "present at the creation" like Kennan and others were at the dawn of the Cold War, but in reality, I've been fortunately enough placed by history and good contacts like Art Cebrowski and Steve DeAngelis, to be present at the creation of what I like to call a new Military-Market Nexus that signifies the new strengths, new resiliency, and new forms of security that arise in response to the IT revolution--not just in the national security realm, but first and foremost in the business realm.

So my response is to say, "Of course we rethink alliances! Of course, we rethink official developmental aid! Of course, we rethink multinationals!"

All this flows naturally from the dialectics of the new, emerging synthesis represented by globalization. Politics and military needs to catch up to economics and technology, because the models we're offering in the former just don't sync up well with the capacities of the latter.

When Steve and I come together in Enterra, we pursue the insanely ambitious goal of trying to redefine that military-market nexus from both sides, with our first cut at new synthesis being Development-in-a-Box.

The answer? Of course not. It's just the best question for now.

Real answers are yet to be found...

God I love congee with pork for breakfast!

DATELINE: ChinaWorld Hotel, Beijing China, 27 June 2006

Yesterday was really amazing.

Got picked up and driven to the Center For International Strategic Studies, a tank tied to the Ministry of Defense. On the way over, my host said that of the 100 or so officers at the talk, most would have read PNM, so I could summarize that one and concentrate on BFA. I was kind of stunned to hear that and asked him again to be sure, but he assured me that even just in the English version, that PNM was read by many staff officers and a subject of much debate. That made me feel a bit better about the difficulties in getting the Chinese version published.

I spoke two hours, alternating with the translator. That's a bit frustrating, but I've gotten a lot better. Key is just to relax during his bits and think up your next summarizing line. I actually went through 45 slides, so it zipped along pretty well considering every word I said was repeated in Chinese. Nice modern room with big flat screens. You could tell the room could pretty much read the English on the slides, and that most got my original English. Still, it was a nice safety net to have the translation. Certainly it saves on your energy and voice. Really solid questions afterwards, that frankly were not really any different from those I'd get from a U.S. military audience, just inverted. Biggest points I made was about how China's pol-mil stature would soon need to match their econ-network stature in the Gap. My host, BTW, had done two years in the Congo as a Chinese PLA peacekeeper. That was an interesting side discussion.

The center director gave me an assortment of Beijing Olympics 2008 mascot stuffed dolls (5), saying I'd need to have another kid.

Then in a car and off to hotel. Then picked up by Royal Dutch/Shell. Went to conference center, got set up, had some lunch with Duke Educational Corp people and my usual RDS hosts, then went 90, took questions, break 15, went 20 on Development-in-a-Box, then discussion on that for 20, then another 60 and some more Q&A. Easily my best performance ever with Shell. Lotsa contacts made/renewed. Only downside: head of scenario planning had gotten sick and wasn't there.

Then car back to hotel, then picked up by Denny and Zhang Yu for shopping. The shopping consisted of much negotiation over pearls with the famous Ru Pei Pei, who remembered my wife and cut me some nice deals. Then some other knicknacks, then three of us do dinner with the Vice Chairman of the China Reform Forum, Ding Kuisong. This felt like a major contact. He quizzed me endlessly about my career and what I do now, clearly trying to figure out the possibilities of future collaboration. Lotsa questions about consulting with foreign governments in Asia, especially Singapore. All in all, I felt like I was being groomed, which is always nice.

Then the grooming turned real. We spent the rest of the night getting massages, Ding's treat. It was the full works of saunas, scrub down, deep massages--absolutely amazing. We got done around midnight. After talking on my feet about 8 hours over the day, I was a new man afterwards.

Then back to the hotel, pack, and asleep by 0100. Up at 0700 and readying now for last talk, at famous CICIR (China Institute for Contemporary International Relations). Then lunch with senior guy. Then hop on the plane and the whirlwind ends...

I am in amazingly good shape, given the pace. The massages were the difference.

Klingongoddess sent Tom What the Democrats Could Say About Iraq by Joe Klein. Tom's comment:

Great piece by Klein (his book on Clinton, generated my favorite politic movie, "Primary Colors") that shows Hillary is on track but Kerry is disastrously off track on Iraq.

DATELINE: Hotel, NYC, 28 June 2006

Just too much and too many miles and too many time zones to process in real time.

Sometimes you just have to live it and honor all the attendant responsibilities/performances/opportunities.

Did I mention how good Bob Spitz's history of the Beatles is?

In NYC after briefing Navy senior civilians in personnel in DC yesterday following my last brief in Beijing on Tuesday to the Chinese Institute for Contemporary International Relations (plus great lunch with VP Wang Zaibang and several of his directors).

Today I brief Esquire's senior leadership. Last night Steve DeAngelis and I have great dinner with Mark Warren and Peter Griffin (no relation to Stewie).

ARTICLE: “Tech start-ups don’t grow on trees outside USA: Success similar to Silicon Valley’s is elusive abroad,” by Kevin Maney, USA Today, 28 June 2006, p. 1B.

Pretty good article, buttressed with some quasi-data, on why the U.S. is so successful at business over time, despite all our real and alleged weaknesses.

All sorts of emerging markets, or what I call New Core states, are trying to create their own versions of Silicon Valley these past few years, but outside of Down Under (Australia, NZ) and to a slightly lesser extent East Asia, it’s a tough feat to pull off.

According to the data from industry monitor, the U.S. has the highest percentage of adults “involved in start-ups that expect to have 20 or more employees within five years" (Enterra, BTW, passed 20 with the absorption of the New Rule Sets LLC and is on pace to have as many as 100 employees within a year--one way or the other) at 1.5 percent. Oz and the Kiwis rank second at 1.1, with East Asia at 1.0 (there, I’d say the huge population holds the ranking back a bit).

An odd measure perhaps, but the article is pretty good at pointing out that the hardest thing is simply creating the culture where failure is not just tolerated, but admired for its expressed audacity and ambition. And you know what? I can’t help but think when I read this article that our youth’s gaming culture really plays into that mindset, by creating competitive environments (you against the machines, typically) where frequent failure is a given but beating the system and the odds is likewise a given--just one extended a bit by time, frustration and experimentation.

Just my way of saying that I don’t think video games rot brains. On the contrary, watching my six-year-old Jerry, I’d say they rewire his brain in some very interesting and positive ways, especially WRT to his tolerance for failure (he hates it, but that hatred is quite fleeting in terms of disappointment).

According to one European industry player, “It’s not easy to re-create” Silicon Valley, because our start-up culture “is like generations of people where the gene pool gets better and better. The magic is in the DNA.”

Working with Steve DeAngelis and Enterra has taught me that in spades. Management challenges, in the form of structural imbalance (contracts versus resources) as we grow so rapidly, are never too far away because of this incredible ambition with which the company is imbued, largely thanks to Steve. But there is such an equally incredible expectation of success that personnel willfully power through tough spots and continue to deliver win after win after win through both the technology and the consulting--but most importantly in the careful management of the company itself (something I take absolutely no credit for). Dancing on the edge of the knife, sure, but some people are just bred to pull that off consistently, and it’s very invigorating to hang with them--hell, it’s instructive.

And BTW, that culture is closer to that of the military than most people realize. There is a lot of controlled risk taking in each (for the military, it’s just plain doing very dangerous things), but what seems most similar to me is that willful sort of powering-through under tough conditions, something I’ve always admired greatly about military people--their summoned confidence when things get hard.

That’s how Steve and I feel about Development-in-a-Box: bound to fail, fail, fail but then somebody’s gonna prove this out and when they/we do, some great, proud-for-the-rest-of-your-lives things are going to happen. Why take on the challenge? Why the hell not? Enterra will pile up plenty of success stories on the technology of rule-set automation alone, but being satisfied is a sliver away from being stagnant--especially for those who fancy themselves thought leaders.

I mean, what’s the point of building new things unless you’re going to use them to tackle the toughest subjects? A lot of things get me up in the morning, but this one especially.

So take the risk, we say. Risk much, win more.

The story suggests China has a way to go on its own culture, and that fits with my personal observations:

At first glance, China seems to be on the right track, churning out a couple of dozen tech companies… But for a whirlwind economy of 1.2 billion people, it has created relatively few successful start-ups.

A big culprit? The lack of venture capital is cited, so Chinese companies raise money the old-fashioned way: friends and families.

But the real problem is the “losing face” fear that permeates this still fairly traditional society.

Then there’s the larger issue of the rote learning style. Churning INTJs with scientific degrees doesn’t give you a culture of risk. Hell, what I like best about Steve is how he so routinely steps around convention, his usual excuse being, “No harm in asking!”

So what are the key ingredients?

Here the article, in a call-out box, gets more interesting.

First, you need good legal structure to protect property (especially intellectual) and you need a work environment where it’s very easy to hire and fire (you see this on our trajectory, as Steve/Enterra expect performance from day one, as you either learn or you leave).

Second, the culture can’t punish individualism. Here, the ability to handle egos and tough workers is key. Steve, for example, spends a huge amount of time recruiting top talent, all of them stars. Stars expect a certain level of treatment, and yet Enterra has to be a hugely team effort because we’re still relatively small. That balance is hard, but Steve will tell you he works it every single day of the week, the burdens of the start-up CEO being unlimited (and his patience in dealing with all that is what I admire probably most about him).

Finally, finding that talent is everything. Enough said.

Overall, a good article that got me thinking--and appreciating what I’ve now got in Enterra.

DATELINE: Above the garage in Indy, 29 June 2006

Seven flights over six days, and more hours in the air than I care to remember. Six briefs, ending with the last one today at Esquire, which was loads of fun (my one and only previous was back in November 2002, so it’s been a while). Lotsa new people met, including what I know will be a slew of important contacts in China.

I will confess: I have no desire to reengage the world of clearances and the impositions such classifications present. Thinking about that China trip and the usual crap one must endure, especially with the rising hostility of the climate on our side, makes me want to avoid it as much as possible.

The mutual dislike on this subject, I believe, is real. I was set to deliver a big talk in Malaysia this fall to a bunch of Asian military leaders, only to have the invitation apparently pulled--I am told by those who would know in Hawaii--at the request of the Pentagon and China hawks there who don’t want my message of strategic alliance with China spread unduly. This, among other things, has me counting the days…

But on the brightest note--I am home.

Got a bunch of posts teed up. Hoping to roll them all out over this weekend.

A very good op-ed (I believe) comes out Sunday in the Knoxville News Sentinel. Meanwhile, I will recoup some from the travels…

DATELINE: Above the garage, Indy, 30 June 2006

Just didn't get to the planned posts today, and I've decided not to bring the laptop on the family mini-vacation to Wisconsin. Just gotta spend some time with my people.

I will move toward some form of podcasting eventually, to reduce the effort at writing so much. The schedule will demand, my ego will enjoy it, and the inquisitive side of my nature will naturally gravitate toward it.

See you on the far side of the 4th. Happy holiday to all.