Thomas P.M. Barnett :: Weblog

EDITORIAL: "Change Course in Iraq," Washington Post National Weekly Edition, 30 October-5 November 2006, p. 24.

It seems like such a no-brainer that if this region is now the global center of conflict and tension like Europe had been previously, we should have some regional security dialogue for the simple goal of getting better Core-wide consensus on where to go next in the Middle East.

Well, the Post finally said this:

What could be done to foster a political settlement? The best option that has not yet been tried is a peace conference attended by all the Iraqi parties, as well as Iraq's neighbors, the United Nations and other powers, such as the European Union and the Arab League. Similar conferences brokered the end of civil wars in Lebanon, Bosnia and Congo.... At the same time, the Bush Administration should help to create a contact group of all of Iraq's neighbors to discuss common interests in stabilizing the country and preventing the escalation and spread of civil war.

ARTICLE: North Korea Will Resume Nuclear Talks, By JOSEPH KAHN and HELENE COOPER, New York Times, November 1, 2006

Of course, this particular table hasn't worked in past, but at least it joins the four adults (Russia, China, Japan and US) in conversation.

So we shall see.

But I wouldn't expect Kim to view Bush as anything but weaker from here on out, so I'm not optimistic (and I hate that, because I like my side to win).

Two Peter Durand illustrations of Tom's talk at Pop!Tech.

The first one is a combo from Tom's talk and Juan Enriquez (proxy vote).

I'll be sure to post a link to an mp3 or video of the talk as soon as I get it.

(And, if you like Ask A Ninja, or are open to liking it, you can see his answer to What is Pop!Tech? Best part: 'Anybody in this room who's not a robot...')

SPECIAL REPORT ON INTELLIGENCE REFORM: “Hey, Let’s Play Ball: The Insular World of Intelligence Reaches Out For a Few New Ideas,” by David E. Kaplan, U.S. News & World Report, 6 November 2006, p. 52.

The first article in on the National Counter-Terrorism Center, which is so “national” that it naturally competes with the CIA’s own version. Designed as a fusion center, the place is still years from having all the IT systems being able to actually talk to one another. Don’t ask about how long it will take for serious automation to ensue.

This article, the second one, is better and worth reading. It speaks to something I predicted/called for in PNM three years ago (when I wrote it): that the IC in general should behave more like the NIC, or National Intelligence Council, meaning it should seek outside expertise as much as possible and become what the CIA was always purported to be, an actual centralizing intelligence agency instead of the awfully disconnected, hobbled by secrecy workplace that it’s basically been throughout its history.

In sum, a very encouraging story that suggests that the analytical side is making some serious progress.

BOOK: Blood and Thunder: An Epic of the American West, by Hampton Sides (Doubleday).

My question on this book, which everyone seems to like is: Is it truly a history through which a larger understanding of the American West can be found or is it so driven by all these character narratives that the macro is lost in the micro?

ARTICLE: “China’s great haul: 15 billionaires: Worth on ‘Forbes’ list jumps for communist country’s rich,” by Calum MacLeod, USA Today, 2 November 2006, p. 1A.

ARTICLE: “Court could reduce China’s executions: Policy known as ‘kill fewer, kill carefully,’” by Calum MacLeod, USA Today, 2 November 2006, p. 8A.

China had only 3 billionaires in 2004, then ten last year, and now 15 this year. You’ve got paper recyclers, condo builders, TV salesmen and so on. This growing pool drives the magazine’s editor of the story to declare that “Chinese are born with entrepreneurialism in their genes.”

So much for the Confucian-America clash of civilizations. Instead, we see China move closer and closer to American society and economics while we see the Europeans move farther and farther away. That’s why we’ll be natural allies in the future: we’ll simply want the same things.

Sure, you can still call it “communist China,” like this story does, but that’s just a bad habit. China’s more capitalistic than America is today. It just doesn’t have the same free markets or risk tolerance, but as those capacities both grow there, the political pluralism is sure to follow. China’s no Singapore, and it’s no simple nation or state. It is something on par with a United States or an EU. It is a conglomeration of peoples, which right now are creating an economic stimulus of the likes the world has never before seen--or enjoyed.

But there’s a lot of growing up still to do. China had the bulk of the world’s executions last year for criminality, with many death sentences coming on non-violent acts, like corruption. This is an old tradition in China, sort of a “kill one, scare many” philosophy that’s simply not keeping up with the growing complexity of either the economy or the society. It’s got to go eventually, just like the lynch mob mentality of the American West had to go (as did the similar remnants of vigilante “justice” that survived in the South right through the 1930s as a way of scaring African-Americans into political, economic and social submission). It’s just bad for business and politics, reflecting a crudity of mechanisms that a sophisticated society must move beyond, and China is achieving some serious sophistication. You can say that’s only in the cities, but China is only a bit more than a decade away from being majority urban, a milestone it will reach about a century after America did so itself around 1920. And look at how quickly our marginal federal government had to grow up after that!

IDEAS & TRENDS: “Burying Private Ryan,” by David M. Halbfinger, New York Times, 29 October 2006, p. WK14.

For me, WWII colored my entire childhood. I was born just 17 years after the war’s end, so it’s ethos was all around me in my father’s generation. So was the stuff, as “army surplus” basically meant WWII gear, so plentiful that we used it as kids to play army. Now, it’s serious museum stuff.

I saw Clint Eastwood’s movie with my wife and we were both deeply impressed. It really didn’t make any easy calls in any direction. There was plenty of good and bad but no one was really presented as being bad--save the obvious racists who treated the Native American badly at each possible chance. It was more about all the conflicting desires and realities of taking such a large nation through such a huge experience as World War II was. It was a huge military experience, but likewise a huge economic experience (the whole bond drive stuff dominates the logic of this movie), a huge political experience, and a huge social and technological experience. Things simply changed across the dial, and America came out of the whole shebang a very different country on the far side.

It’s interesting to contemplate what an America looks like on the far side of this Long War (whether that particular name survives or not, the era of military activity following 9/11 will be dubbed something by history, unless you’re clinging to the hope that it all stops with a withdrawal from Iraq and a vilification of Bush and Cheney throughout eternity--but I wouldn’t hold my breath on either). We will definitely continue to be tested, not in the way we were tested in great wars of the past, but more so in an evolutionary sense of, Do we get smarter, more resilient and more agile and transparent? (Back to the 5GW arguments of a couple of weeks ago.) Or do we finally fulfill some of those Orwellian fantasies the gloom-and-doom types seems so ardent about?

And who will raise the “bonds” this time around? And in what form do they come?

What does victory look like? And how much better off are we when it comes?

What could constitute a loss? And how permanent would it be? I mean, Vietnam was seen as a loss in the 1970s, but what do you call it now when both China and Vietnam and Russia are all so capitalistic?

But to be sure, time marches on. When I was a kid, December 7th was still a big deal. Everyone talked about it when the date rolled around. It was the last huge shocker to the system, challenged in scope only by Kennedy’s assassination on 22 November 1962.

Neither of those two dates really resonate any more. Then again, neither does Custer’s Last Stand from late June 1876 (the word really hit the media on 4 July, the 100th b-day of the country), or 1929’s Black Friday (can’t recall that date easily). The Challenger “tragedy” was a weak contender, but it’s gone and passed now, so for the bulk of Americans, the one date on the calendar that really still gives pause is 9/11, and we’re still waiting to see exactly what kind of generation that date gives birth to.

CAREER JOURNAL: “Ireland Taps U.S. to Fill Need for Skilled Workers: With an influx of IT firms, Ireland is finding it hard to recruit enough skilled workers,” by Lauren Tara LaCapra, Wall Street Journal, 31 October 2006, p. B4.

Hell, even as recently as when my wife and I lived in the Southie/Quincy area of Boston in the mid-to-late 1980s, the classic image was of the dirt-poor Irish bricklayer, his wife, and their kids all crammed into a small apartment, barely getting by and spending as much time dodging the INS as the IRS. I know, we had a wonderful such couple and their cute-as-a-button daughter living right next door to us in the Wollaston neighborhood. But naturally, they didn’t stay for long. Moving up rather quickly, they were gone in a year, only to be replaced by the next family.

But all that seems so nostalgic now. Ireland’s outward flow of humanity, the social element that defined the nation for roughly two centuries, now falls by the wayside with all this economic development. Immigration into Ireland surpasses that outward flow in the mid 1990s. Now, four times as many come in as leave, and Ireland is forced to lure our IT talent to their shores.

Aye, they’re after me lucky charms, I tell ya!

But a clear sign of the New Core status of long-suffering Ireland. As I wrote in BFA, when young Americans start looking at your land as the land of opportunity, you’re in the club baby!

WORLD STOCK MARKETS: “China Oil Firms Gain Favor: PetroChina Closes Value Gap With Rivals Such as Exxon,” by Shai Oster, Wall Street Journal, 30 October 2006, p. C10.

ARTICLE: “China and Iraq Plan to Resurrect Oil-Field Deal Set in Hussein Era,” by Associated Press, Wall Street Journal, 30 October 2006, p. A9.

“Today, that discount has narrowed to almost nothing.”

Exxon is trading at 9.9 and PetroChina is trading at 9.9.

Sure, there’s the potential for growth factor. China’s oil demand will continue to grow like all those new cars, like 1,000 a day hitting the streets in Beijing. But then there’s China’s big push to reduce its huge dependency on dirty coal for electricity, so Goldman Sachs says ‘we believe the natural-gas business remains the main potential source of upside surprise in our near- and medium-term forecasts.”

With that kind of demand, China needs to be working every possible Gap source of energy. So, not surprisingly, it seeks to resurrect old oil-field deals it had with Saddam in Iraq.

Did I not say this would happen? Our blood, their oil. When I was in Beijing in 2004, I told everyone I met with that China should have 50k peacekeepers in Iraq, because in the end, it would mostly be their oil. No one contested that notion then (the oil part), and no one contests it now.

Instead, I can sit around a table in Beijing with PLA officers and speak with a firm conviction that the U.S. and China will be military and strategic partners within a decade throughout most--if not all--of the Gap, and no one taking notes gasps in shock. Of course, if I tried that in the Pentagon, most would simply freak, but that only shows you that we have a longer road to travel in terms of altering long-held strategic assumptions.

But more to the point of the A-to-Z rule set on processing politically-bankrupt states, remember my point in the brief that the first half is all about allies but that the second half is all about investors. If you scare potential allies about being shut out of second-half investment opportunities, you’re gonna find you have only a coalition of the unwitting.

Sooner we get smart on that, the better we’ll perform--the Core as a whole--from A to Z.

Or we can keep pretending the U.S. military can get beyond C all by its lonesome.

DATELINE: US Airways flight from Philly to Indy, 2 November 2006

Flew to DC yesterday early, met up with Steve and another Enterra senior, and prepped for a strategy meeting with a huge defense contractor. We’ll be participating in a strategic planning session, as consultants, with this “small division” that only does about $3-4 billion of business a year. They’re ripe for our thinking, especially on Development-in-a-Box. Why? They’ve just picked up a smaller firm that focuses on construction and all sorts of other services throughout the Gap, meaning in mucho post-whatever environments.

After that I had lunch with Steve and then drove to Philadelphia in a rental, turned that car in at the airport, and got another to drive to Princeton (don’t ask, it’s a pricing thing).

Arriving in Princeton last night, I have a nice dinner with a bunch of lawyers and their conference speaker guests prior to today’s conference (it’s an association of lawyers who specialize in the global construction field, which, not surprisingly, finds itself in many Development-in-a-Box-type situations more and more in recent years).

I delivered the keynote lunch address to the group of about 100 lawyers today, and it went over well. Jenn Posda was there, collecting business cards, and I think more than a few additional talks will result.

Cool for me: Anne-Marie Slaughter (not sure on when to put the hyphen, if any [Editor's note: it goes there]), Dean of the Woodrow Wilson School, was in the audience, catching the first half of my brief. I’m a big fan of her work, so that was really nice. Despite my travels, I’m still the poli sci grad student at heart who’s super excited to meet big players in my field, like when I met Steve Krasner last year, or getting to present with futurist Juan Enriquez at Pop!Tech (I now have two of his books on my big roll-top desk).

After the luncheon, I get an additional treat: an arranged F2F with Bob Wright, author of Nonzero: The Logic of Human Destiny, which I used in BFA as one of my main inspirations/sources.

Bob’s a very nice guy and was a joy to talk to. Imagine Sam Shepherd as Son #1 and David Byrne as Son #2 and you can easily see Bob as Son #3. Tall and skinny and geeky handsome, he was not at all what I expected. I had this image in my mind of a bald, 60-year-old guy who was full of gravitas (thus heavier) and all leathery. Bob had some of that, but instead surprised me with how closer in style and form he was to me (I won’t claim to be geeky handsome, but more of a small-town bank president sort of good looking). In short, he was much younger than I expected, given his voice in the book. I expected a father-figure and got something more like a slightly older brother.

I enjoyed talking to Bob immensely. We pretty much toured the world, his new book (not sure how close hold that is), and traded a lot of shop talk on being--for lack of a less pompous phrase--thought leaders of sorts (e.g., comparing our experiences at Pop!Tech and TED). He was interested in how I’ve harnessed PowerPoint and public speaking, and I was interested in how he manages such wide-ranging research.

So a lot of fun for just 75 minutes, but as usual, it made my dash to the airport way too hair-raising. Good thing I happen to carry an assortment of zip-lock bags, yet another industry that owes a recent popularity boost to Osama and his minions.

ARTICLE: China Courts Africa, Angling for Strategic Gains, By JOSEPH KAHN, New York Times, November 3, 2006

Well, China is probably the only other country (other than conglomerate EU) that can do this now (Russia, for example, couldn't pull it off).

So it's making that statement.

Question is, can we see the strategic complementarity here, or just--in old-think form--the "asymmetrical threat."

Occupational hazard for Leviathan: everyone and everything seems an asymmetrical threat.

The musician Tom mentioned liking was Reggie Watts.

And I found the following pictures of Tom on Flickr:

PAPER: "Producing Victory: Rethinking Conventional Forces in COIN Operations," by Lieutenant Colonel Douglas A. Ollivant, U.S. Army, and First Lieutenant Eric D. Chewning, U.S. Army Reserve, Military Review, July-August 2006

The opening sequence:

Our thesis is simple: The combined arms maneuver battalion, partnering with indigenous security forces and living among the population it secures, should be the basic tactical unit of counterinsurgency (COIN) warfare. Only such a battalion-a blending of infantry, armor, engineers, and other branches, each retrained and employed as needed-can integrate all arms into full-spectrum operations at the tactical level.1 Smaller conventional forces might develop excellent community relations, but they lack the robust staff and sufficient mass to fully exploit local relationships. Conversely, while brigades and divisions boast expanded analysis and control capabilities, they cannot develop the street-level rapport so critical for an effective COIN campaign. Unconventional forces are likewise no panacea because the expansion of Special Operations Command assets or the creation of stability and reconstruction or system-administration forces will not result in sustainable COIN strategies.2 Recent experience in Iraq affirms previously forgotten lessons: "Winning the Peace" requires simultaneous execution along the full spectrum of kinetic and non-kinetic operations.3 While political developments in Iraq and the United States might have moved past the point at which our suggested COIN solution would be optimal, we argue that the maneuver battalion should be the centerpiece of the Army's future COIN campaigns. This paper examines why the maneuver battalion is the premier organization around which to build COIN doctrine, and it identifies current obstacles and future improvements to such a battalion-centric strategy.

System Administrators (SysAdmin) The "second half" blended force that wages the peace after the Leviathan force has successfully waged war. Therefore, it is a force optimized for such categories of operations as "stability and support operations" (SASO), postconflict stabilization and reconstruction operations, "military operations other than war" (MOOTW), "humanitarian assistance/disaster relief" (HA/DR), and any and all operations associated with low-intensity conflict (LIC), counterinsurgency operations, and small-scale crisis response. Beyond such military-intensive activities, the SysAdmin force likewise provides civil security with its police component, as well as civilian personnel with expertise in rebuilding networks, infrastructure, and social and political institutions. While the core security and logistical capabilities are derived from uniformed military components, the SysAdmin force is fundamentally envisioned as a standing capacity for interagency (i.e., among various U.S. federal agencies) and international collaboration in nation building.

As far as I'm concerned, I have no problem with the authors' real thesis: a battalion-centric approach to COIN. In general, I wouldn't argue that point because it's not my experience base. As somebody who helps the military think about the larger conditions and goals of war and its interplay with peace, politics, economics, demographics, ideology, etc., I argue the when, where, what and why. But I don't argue the how. As I wrote in BFA, "a man's gotta know his limitations," as Dirty Harry famously argued.

So how the US Army organizes for COIN is its own business. I just don't see that argument being the be-all and end-all for the host of conditions and scenarios we'll encounter in shrinking the Gap, because I believe all those other elements I list in my SysAdmin definition also come into play. If we look at COIN as the big enchilada, we'll miss far too often the situations where we can obviate that requirement by winning the peace up front. Plus, if we pretend COIN alone gets you an effective exit strategy, I think we'll be undershooting the mark by a ways.

On this point, see the discussion on economics in this paper. Pretty much the whole section excerpted here:

Economy and reconstruction.

The United Nations Office of Project Services and International Labor Organization recommends the implementation of a local economic development (LED) approach for economic stimulation in conflict areas. This bottom-up method is preferred to centralized, top-down strategies because "the best knowledge regarding local problems, local needs, local resources, local development potential, as well as local motivation for promoting change, exists on the local level [and] it is of fundamental importance that the local community sees its place in the future."17

Also stressing the importance of local economic actors, a World Bank report notes that "support for micro and small businesses is an appropriate early step in a post-conflict situation because these businesses are resilient and nimble, adapting quickly to new circumstances."18

The maneuver battalion plays a central role in LED strategy during COIN operations. Optimally, not only does the battalion have its own reconstruction monies, but it also facilitates international development agency access to small businesses, trade unions, local governments, and entrepreneurs. The counterinsurgent, the community, and aid agencies all benefit from local coordination of the economic, political, and security dimensions of reconstruction.

Even with the support of Army combat engineers and outside construction firms, reconstruction work must still leverage the support of local contractors. Through daily interaction with the population, the battalion is able to gauge the real impact of ongoing reconstruction and better allocate resources. If the campaign has yet to reach this level of sophistication, the battalion remains the only element able to provide sustained security for reconstruction projects. Such development should focus on employing military-age males, enfranchising repressed minorities, stimulating the local economy, and co-opting local leaders. All of these are critical parts of a successful COIN strategy.

I will be blunt here: leaving economic reconstruction and development to the military, or even the military armed with USAID expertise, is doomed to failure. And that failure dooms COIN.

Let's get real: neither USAID nor the military frankly know their asses from their elbows on private-sector market-capacity building. You put that zero and that other zero together and you've still got nothing. If you want to tell me you want a battalion-centric approach to fighting insurgents, then I'm willing to listen, but if you pretend the battalion's gonna cover that 80 percent non-kinetic, then I frankly think you're dreaming.

In today's globalized world, we'll define exit points as when foreign direct investment begins moving into any disconnected economy, and somehow, I just don't think that's a battalion-commander-level ability or call.

But the authors seem to think a bunch of micro-loans plus a usable local political machinery will cover their tracks:

The ultimate goal of COIN warfare is to "build (or rebuild) a political machine from the population upward."20 Initially, the counterinsurgent must empower, through elections or appointment, local provisional leaders.21

But when you get to the back-end discussions on that 80% non-kinetic, you begin to see the defensiveness that animates this piece--as in, we won't let you ruin this military by optimizing it beyond the kinetics-heavy side of COIN, as in, "that's as far as we'll go!"

CMO.

Civil-military operations are green-tab issues. Reconstruction, economic development, and community relations are not phases in war planning; they are principles of COIN. As such, the commander responsible for the security of a specific area must also be able to determine reconstruction priorities and control assets responsible for their implementation. An increased Army-level emphasis on CMO does not necessarily mean (and, in our opinion, should not mean) more civil affairs Soldiers or the creation of special reconstruction and security forces. Instead, we must acknowledge that money is the power behind CMO. Many vital non-kinetic actions-reconstruction, community outreach, information operations, and intelligence collection-are not possible without putting targeted cash into the local economy.

There's too much smarting from Iraq in this piece. Here's the conclusion:

Our Army must plan for the COIN fight. Not only are we currently engaged in such a battle on strategic terrain, but our difficulties have surely not gone unnoticed by potential adversaries. We must expect this kind of fight again.

We have argued that the combined arms maneuver battalion should be the basic unit in COIN operations. Not only do we believe in the battalion's inherent abilities to conduct tactical full-spectrum operations, but we believe that other alternatives are impractical or carry a significant downside. The creation of pure nation-building, stability and reconstruction units, or system-administration forces, would divert Department of Defense dollars to forces that could not fight when (not if) we are again called on to engage in mid- to high-intensity conflict. Beyond this inefficiency, it is difficult to see these forces ever coming into existence. For all the talk of joint interagency task forces, it would be a monumental victory were we even able to embed representatives from the Departments of State, Commerce, and Justice in each divisional headquarters. Were we serious about truly implementing such interagency task forces in 2015, we would have seen platoons of diplomatic, economic, and legal trainees entering the system last year. We did not-and therefore the Department of Defense must plan to have its personnel continue to be the primary implementers of all aspects of reconstruction for the foreseeable future.

As I wrote in BFA:

Because most of the world's militaries are built primarily to remain at home and defend the country from external attack, the disparity between the U.S. military and the rest of the Core's militaries is substantial in power-projection capabilities. In short, there is the force that can actually fight, and then there is the force that is primarily about moving that first force to some distant locale and keeping it replenished with supplies and all other manner of combat support, such as command and control, communications, medical, intelligence, and computing needs. America has both forces, but most countries have only the first force, and even that force is closer--in the vast majority of cases--to a peacemaking force in its firepower and overall combat capabilities than a true warfighting force that's capable of decisively defeating well-armed and well-defended opponents.

The point being, for America's military to marry up well with the rest of the Core's military contributions to a coalition SysAdmin force, our portion needs to concentrate its capabilities in high-end combat and those logistical and specialized support functions I described above. In sum, the U.S. SysAdmin force won't look that different from the one we have today, because if we play our cards right, the bulk of the low-end, boots-on-the-ground peacekeepers should come from other nations, leaving our troops to specialize in high-end counter-insurgency operations and logistical support to both our own troops and those of other nations. A third area where our force capabilities might logically overlap with those of our best and most able allies (e.g., Brits, Aussies, French) is in the training of indigenous security forces, especially in counterinsurgency tactics.

In my argument for a Department of Everything Else, I'm likewise arguing for marrying up those higher-end Army and Marine capabilities with expertise and resources from a wide array of subject matters. I have no belief that the Army or Marines can replicate, in micro, such capabilities within their ranks, and that having military officers "play" at being things they're not, like venture capitalists, is the height of amateurism. I simply want a bigger tent, but in building that bigger tent, whether I call it SysAdmin or DoEE, I believe the Army and Marines should largely still focus on that which they do best: the kinetics and the logistics. When they need economists, they should have economists. When they need anthropologists, they should get anthropologists. This is the age of specialization, not generalization. We should build both our military's components of the SysAdmin with that in mind, as well as our government's components, remembering that most of the bodies and resources must ulitmately come from other nations and the private sector.

Any attempts to do-it-all-from-within are--I argue yet again--doomed to failure. A US Army expecting to have to go-it-alone on future COIN will never sustain itself, nor will it be sustained by the American public, which already--I believe--realize the illogic of both our military-centric and government-centric approach to nation-building in Iraq (a term that sucks, because in conjures images of militaries and government bureaucracies and never quite seems to extend--much like this paper--into economics beyond a sad, sort of mimimalist, dependencia form of market development, which--again--I argue just won't do in this globalized economy in terms of pulling failed states into the Core over time).

Still, despite my bitching and the straw-man treatment from the authors, this is a good piece to read, signaling movement of the pile within the US Army.

ARTICLE: Bush Faces Tough Decisions Ahead, By David Ignatius, November 03, 2006

Say! I feel like I've read these words before, perhaps in a magazine.

But I do fear that Bush might dig in his heels if the Dems win is anything less than decisive (both houses), which is why I wrote my weekend column as I did. Witness Bush's declarations of support for Rumsfeld (simple lightning rod) and Cheney (real issue). Still, if anyone should be fired, it's Rice. We've now suffered through two very weak SECSTATES (Powell, Rice) and two non-coordinating national security advisers (Rice, invisible Hadley), both reflecting reality that Cheney really runs U.S. foreign policy, meaning the next fight will really be between the SECDEF (Cheney) and SECSTATE (Baker) from Bush 41.

Which is why I named Baker back in the Esquire piece. Might as well get the real adults involved.

Thanks to kilngoddess for sending this in.

ARTICLE: Rice Bucks Tradition With Pre-Election Appearances, By Glenn Kessler, Washington Post, November 4, 2006; Page A03

ARTICLE: Cheney Vows 'Full Speed Ahead' on Iraq War, By Michael A. Fletcher, Washington Post, November 4, 2006; Page A08

How many lives can be saved by your vote?

Or does two more years of the same seem warranted?

ARTICLE: For U.S. and Top Iraqi, Animosity Is Mutual, By JOHN F. BURNS, New York Times, November 4, 2006

Guess which path Osama is pulling for?

ARTICLE: Horn of Africa Troops Working to Stem Terror Before It Takes Root, by Donna Miles, American Forces Press Service , Wednesday, October 25, 2006

Thanks to Keith Mitchell for sending this in.

United we stood, but divided we'll stand taller

Whatever your political affiliation, you should be pulling for the Democrats' return to majority power in both houses of Congress. I offer no partisan plea. I'm just convinced that a split government would be better for President Bush, our troops overseas and the world.

A recent Harvard/U.S. News & World Report poll revealed four striking attitudes prevalent among Americans. First, they believe it's incredibly important for the U.S. to remain a strong global leader. Second, they sense America has recently lost a great deal of the world's respect in that role. Third, a super-majority believes we're suffering from a leadership crisis. Finally, more than half lack pride in our nation's leaders.

Read on at KnoxNews

Read on at Scripps Howard

ARTICLE: Hussein Sentenced to Hang for Crimes Against Iraqis: Thousands Take to Street Despite Curfew; Bush Says Verdict Is Major Achievement for Iraq, By John Ward Anderson and Ellen Knickmeyer, Washington Post, November 5, 2006

We either hang together (the Core) or we may hang separately.

ARTICLE: The $200 Billion Lunch: We're switching to IPv6, dontcha know, and it might be worth it, by Robert Cringely

Comparing the IPv6 deadline to Y2K is telling, but the best part here is about how we're diddling while the Chinese act, in response to both burgeoning domestic need and move-on-to-the-next-generation-so-as-to-make-that-market-happen-first-and-pull-everyone-else-in-your-wake-through-sheer-volume.

I've written about this on cars and medicine, and while TM Lutas has argued in past that China couldn't fight IPv6 if it wanted, this analysis gets to my real point: most of the new rules aren't about changing agreed-upon standards (after all, adhering to them is the essence of Core membership), but influencing or driving the timing and execution. The example on cars and medicine is similiar: no argument on what comes next. Question is, who gets there first and why?

Super thanks to reader Christopher Plummer who made this horizontal link.

ARTICLE: "Tech Firms Woo 'Next Billion Users': Intel, Others Bring PCs To Rural India and China, Cultivating New Markets," by Jason Dean and Peter Wonacott, Wall Street Journal, 3 November 2006, p. A2.

Big technology companies, their established markets maturing, increasingly see their future in a huge but seemingly unlikely pool of potential customers: poor, rural residents of the world's developing countries.

Sit on your asses in the Old Core, and not only do you miss out on this pool, but the pool that comes next, because the bulk of the third billion will come from the Gap, or such impoverished areas of the New Core (described here) that are Gap equivalents. So here is where "the initiatives are part philanthropy as well as part corporate strategy": you figure out out how to sell to the bottom of the New Core's pyramid, then you should be able to access the Gap's poor.

So philanthropy this really ain't: it's just far-sighted market-making.

OP-ED: "The Doha Marathon: Why abandon the race in the last mile?" by Pascal Lamy, Wall Street Jounal, 3 November 2006, p. A10.

Today the main problem is agriculture. Representing less than 8% of world trade and less than 5% of employment in industrial countries, agriculture is the Gordian knot that has tied up negotiations in services, in industrial goods and better trading rules.

Even by the most conservative measure, what has already been agreed over the last five years surpasses anything agreed on a trade round before.

This is a lost opportunity worth preventing.

Interesting though, who Pascal fingers for leadership beyond the Old Core trio: Brazil, India, China--three serious Gap champions in this round.

ARTICLE: "Breaking Up Is Easy To Do: In China, the hot new trend is 'flash divorce,' as women loose their cheating husbands," by Hannah Beech, Time, 6 November 2006, p. 51.

Until last year, Chen Hong considered divorce an exotic American concept, as far removed from her life in Shanghai as gastric-bypass surgery or an addiction to reality-TV shows. Then she checked out her husband's cell-phone records...

Then globalization came to town, and divorces rise by 2/3rds since 2000.

Globalization empowers women, pure and simple, and the effects are the same the world over, blowing Huntington's civilizational distinctions right out of the water.

Money comes to China with globalization, so men indulge their inner desire for concubines (so Chinese). Wives get pissed and initiate the overwhelming majority of divorces.

So guess what follows?

China's hottest new legal field: divorce lawyers.

Seems like Shanghai Law isn't that different from "L.A. Law."

ARTICLE: "There's electoral gold in those hills," The Economist, 28 October 2006, p. 35.

COLUMN: "Obamamania," by Lexington, The Economist, 28 October 2006, p. 42.

CHART: "Six Years Down, Two to Go," by Gallup, Time, 6 November 2006, p. 32.

Strange, but Bush 43's main purpose in history, besides presiding over the start of the Long War, may be to serve as ineffectual interregnum between two long chunks of Democratic fiscal conservatism, something the GOP has completely abandoned as an animating principle.

Yes, Bush makes Hillary possible. Her rise is a function of his amazingly steady fall (90% approval after 9/11 to mid-30s today), as he seems to confirm everything people increasingly suspect about the GOP and conservatism is general: no soul, as Andrew Sullivan argues.

Nonetheless, I would agree with Lexington that Obama's time to run is now. He won't age any better (accumulating votes to defend) and the Dems' general upswing may never get better in his lifetime.

Plus, Obama's the first of his generation (and mine) to be considered, and I see our generational shift in leadership as key to mush of the vision I propose for global change.

What is that generation?

The one that came of age in the early 1970s-- tail-enders of the Boomers who never got their own name (technically Boomers but no Gen X-ers). I mean, Clinton's the quintessential Boomer at 60 now, while I'm only 44 and feel like I'm just getting into the game, with no retirement in sight.

Obama as our first to run would be very exciting--a revelation for politics. Why? We ain't Boomers (more conservative) and we ain't X-ers (more passively liberal). We're an underappreciated, potentially highly revolutionary force, because we're hitting our strides at a great time in our lives and at a tipping point in history (our openness to radically transform Sino-American relations is but one of many examples yet to unfold).

I can't wait.

BOOK REVIEW: "Grand vision and petty deceit when Nixon met Mao," (Seize the Hour: When Nixon Met Mao by Margaret MacMillan), The Economist, 28 October 2006, p. 93.

I remember being transfixed by it all, gobbling up all reports and watching all TV coverage offered. I was simply mesmerized.

Even then I had this feeling that while rapprochement with the Sovs was key (and totally natural given the nuke stand-off), opening up China would end up being more important. Russia had opened up to the West on a regular, yo-yoing basis for centuries (thus the Slavophiles-v-Westernizers debate), going all the way back to Peter the Great. But China had been off-line from the world really going all the way back to the last fleet tour of Admiral Zheng roughly a half-millenia ago (no, I don't consider the port colonies to have constituted "opening up"). So, with Russia, it was the same old, same old, whereas with China, you had the feeling that everything might change, especially coming so quickly on the historical heels of the whacked-out Cultural Revolution--also mesmerizing in its insanity).

This week doomed communism in China, much as it did in Russia, but lacking the "capital" status of Moscow in the world socialist movement, and just emerging out of the Cult Rev, China was able to leapfrog outta that whole mess and jump into a market-marketing orbit that Russia is still trying to achieve (India too). In short, Nixon and Kissinger made Deng possible, and Deng--far more than any late-20th century figure, changed world history, begetting the greatest expansion of the global economy the world has ever seen--and setting up the next by extension (what we witness now).

The book's subtitle is no lie: it was the week that changed the world. I remember thinking that when Vonne and I toured the buildings in Beijing where the famous meetings and dinners happened. I had just had this tingly feeling that it all began here.

I will use this book for certain in Vol. III for three reasons: 1) the creation point of our era's globalization, 2) the role of key individual visionaries, and 3) the impact on my emergence as a grand strategist.

Can't wait to read it.

Vonne, please--for my stocking!

ARTICLE: "Turkey's EU Bid Quietly Loses Steam: Report Card on Talks Will Be Poor as Public Support Slides and Islam-West Tensions Mount," by Philip Shishkin and Marc Champion, Wall Street Journal, 2 November 2006, p. A6.

ARTICLE: "Chinese Shippers Seek Port Access in Greece," Wall Street Journal, 2 November 2006, p. A6.

But apparently all talk of the "United States of Europe" is just that--talk and nothing more. The strife that comes from this will be all internal and--to be blunt--politically self-inflicted. We'll be looking at a Europe that is more like the decades running up to our own Civil War than the kind we'll need in this Long War--namely, one like the U.S. after the Civil War (which is where the New Core powers like China [if it can ever get past Taiwan] and India [if it can ever get past Kashmir] come in).

Speaking of China coming in, the EU's coming decades of navel gazing will leave its outskirts ripe for the economic taking, as China is already gearing up to do.

+ Pride of place this week goes to Curzon of Coming Anarchy for Mapping the Gap, Part 6: Youth Bulge.

+ The TrueTalk Blog strongly praised Great signs abound on North Korea.

+ ShrinkWrapped linked War-within-the-context-of-bureaucratic/academic-inertia.

+ Blunt Object linked For Iran, soft-kill authoritarianism.

+ Asia Logistics Wrap linked China, the unprincipled SysAdmin, willing to invest anywhere, actually helps our strategic interests.

+ Flame of Freedom linked American idols and also linked Tom in general while talking about sea basing.

+ ZenPundit referenced some of Peter Durand's Alpha Chimp work on Tom.

+ 1 Raindrop linked All in one must yield to the distributed many.

+ Left Flank linked Mapping the Gap to Core journey: Ian Bremmer's J-curve theory.

+ Garrick Van Buren linked China's maturation in the energy sector proceeds, and reminds us of the need for a non-zero-sum game on the far side of any military intervention.

+ PurpleSlog linked Maybe the last Pop!Tech 2006 stuff.

+ Mistakes by TjM linked Tom's latest column.

+ China Law Blog linked The taming of China proceeds on many fronts....

DATELINE: Annapolis, MD, 7 November 2006

Boy, I got all the Webb-Allen campaigns I could ever ask for last night. I can almost recite Webb's word for word.

In town yesterday for the debut of the Steve and Tom big-time consulting practice, a service of Enterra Solutions.

The client was one of the world's largest corporations and the subject was a growth strategy for overseas. A classic market research firm was brought in for the number crunching and we were brought in for the biz strategy (M&A-ish Steve) and geo-politics (IR-ish Tom).

The main man in the room was actually a woman, which was different.

Our presentation went well. We didn't fight the research, but rather added our own particular twists on long-term logic. Our inside patron had brought in to widen some horizons and we did.

Later next month Steve and I sit down with the stratgic planners in the corporate HQ (this company is that huge), so this interaction should get more compelling for Enterra, both indirectly (consulting) and directly (serious collaboration).

What was cool for me? Really for the first time getting paid with Steve for high-level consulting. Our usual tag team approach worked like a charm, making the 8-hour event fly buy.

More good news yesterday from my amazing in-house speaking agent: I will get to tour Alaska in February, doing three colleges in the three big towns up there (Juneau, Fairbanks, and whatever the third one is).

Yes, I am psyched to head there in the dead of winter! I was born just south of Green Bay!

The first offer from the trio of colleges was just travel, which I couldn't justify biz- or family-wise, and that disappointed me since I've never been and really wanted to go.

Enter Jenn and now a well-worth-the-time-and-effort payday looms (and who doesn't welcome that news as the holiday shopping season looms.

Hiring Jenn remains the smartest biz move I made all this year--after leaving the Leigh Bureau, which was clearly holding me back and depressing my potential revenue stream.

Good lesson: agencies worth the pay cut to get started, but they're simply too expensive once you wise up. Far better to make that function organic to your company. This is just de rigeur stuff for a company like ours: you gotta have thought leaders and you gotta make them a business priority.

On that score, my long-term plan to elevate Steve's profile is just days away from coming to some serious fruition, will be very exciting for him, as never had this sort of coverage before. But the man deserves it--totally. So it'll be great to watch unfold.

DATELINE: local polling place, our slice of Indiana, Election Day 2006

How Red is Indiana?

Democrats fielded no candidates in any local elections and Lugar ran unopposed.

I have abstained or voted Libertarian so much in my life.

So why do we live here?

I married the eldest daughter.

ARTICLE: “Iran Is Offering Bounty to Agents Who Can Entice Western Tourists,” by Nazila Fathi, New York Times, 2 November 2006, p. A12.

Instead it’s just the Iranian Tourism Department paying travel agents extra bucks for bringing bigger spending tourists to Iran.

Most tourists to Iran are Shiite Muslims heading to holy sites, and one imagines they’re not the biggest spenders.

No luck so far. The banning of booze (which Iranians home brew at will) and the covering-up requirements for females are a big turn-off. Plus, there’s just the assumption that you’ll be treated badly, when in actuality, Westerners and especially Americans are much admired by the average citizen, who, like the Russians in the late Sov period, welcome them with open arms for the sheer human connectivity, plus that innate desire to dispel bad impressions.

It would be a good thing for this travel to happen in greater numbers, and the fact that this is openly backed by Ahdadinejad’s government is yet another sign of its rather tired authoritarianism, whose bark is worse than its bite.

ARTICLE: “Auf wiedersehen, Fatherland: For decades, foreigners found work in Germany. Now Germans are going abroad in search of jobs,” The Economist, 28 October 2006, p. 61.

When the Wall came down, there was a lot of movement in the homeland, but overwhelmingly inward. Now, the ambitious Germans are once again leaving for better prospects, and all this political bitching about too many immigrants is dying down, only to be replaced with the Steyn-ian fear of declining civilization.

The bigger point? Highly-skilled labor is very mobile in this global economy, and Germany’s best and brightest are no exception.

ARTICLE: “Free To a Good Country: Castoff Military Gear For America’s Allies,” by Leslie Wayne, New York Times, 31 October 2006, p. C1.

As one State Department guys calls it, “It is a flea market.”

But one with purpose. You get the guy started on his first unit and that’s a great way to talk him into future sales. Give away the razor and sell the blades--anything from M-16s to F-16s.

Does it fuels local arms races? Probably.

Does it keep our industrial base stronger than it otherwise would be? Yes.

Do we often face these weapons down the road? Are you kidding?

Do these “sales” actually increase the security capacity of locals? Usually.

If this a poor man’s SysAdmin? Sort of.

But one thing’s for sure. It’s a bit much when we criticize other great powers for making similar sales for all the same reasons--just to regimes we don’t like.

ARTICLE: “Oil, Cash and Corruption: How Influence Flowed Through Political Pipelines,” by Ron Stodghill, New York Times, 5 November 2006, p. BU1.

Basically, it’s the Old Core of the West and Japan that are the least corrupt, the New Core pillars that are more corrupt, and the Gap that is--on average--the most corrupt.

Bush says kleptocracy is an obstacle to democracy, but it’s a natural aspect to market adolescence, and the reality is that you need to develop your way past that adolescence before you’re likely to head into democracy anyway.

As I’ve noted many times, the states most reliant on the exporting of one or two raw materials, especially energy, tend to be the most corrupt and the most authoritarian. Anything that easy to control gets over-controlled, even though that approach remains the slowest way to grow an economy. So getting out of the Gap is first and foremost a function of getting FDI that diversifies your economic base.

But yeah, corruption scares that money off, which is why the Gap ain’t going away without some real effort.

EDITORIAL: “Wrong model, right continent: China knows what it wants from Africa and will probably get it. The converse isn’t true,” The Economist, 28 October 2006, p. 17.

ARTICLE: “Never too late to scramble: China is rapidly buying up Africa’s oil, metals and farm produce. That fuels China’s surging economic growth, but how good is it for Africa?," The Economist, 28 October 2006, p. 53.

Some factoids: China now consumes 10% of Sub-Saharan Africa’s exports, controls over $1b of FDI and boasts an overseas presence of 80k people.

So out comes the oil and ores and timber and down go the Taiwanese embassies.

Here’s the real point:

Sadly, China’s success is an obstacle, as well as an inspiration. Its rise has bid up the price of Africa’s traditional raw commodities, and depressed the price of its manufactured goods. Thus Africa’s factories and assembly lines, such as they are, are losing out to its mines, quarries and oilfields in the competition for investment. Even if Africa’s labor is cheap enough to compete with China’s, its roads, ports and customs are far from good enough. If they are to provide jobs for their workers, not just rents for their governments, Africa’s economies must find less-exposed niches in the world economy.

For now, China’s share of African total trade with the world is not much more than half America’s (we’re almost 20 percent) and still way below the dropping EU share (currently at just above 30%), but it’s likely to continue growing. For example, Angola recently surpassed Saudi Arabia as China’s chief source of oil. So trade is expected to double by 2010, with high concentrations in places like Sudan, where China absorbs 70% of the country’s exports.

Nigeria is a good example of China’s tactics: low-interest loans to the government allow Chinese companies to come in and rebuild infrastructure destroyed in decades of civil war. The debt is then repaid in oil.

Yes, China’s aid reduces Africa’s dependence on Western aid--and Western demands. And yes, China is more forthcoming with technologies.

But both China and India are still sporting too many tariffs against cheap African manufactures while flooding those same markets with their own cheap goods, thus stifling movement toward diversification away from raw materials.

Eventually, the backlash will grow and expand from complaints to resistance to riots to serious targeting of Chinese firms and people as purveyors of unfair globalization practices.

And this will be a good thing that helps China see it’s purpose in the world as being something beyond just taking what it needs for development back home.

ARTICLE: “Money May Underlie North Korea’s Return to Talks,” by Evan Ramstad, Wall Street Journal, 2 November 2006, p. A4.

NEWS ANALYSIS: “North Korea Talks: Back to the Table, Some Reluctantly,” by Helene Cooper, New York Times , 2 November 2006, p. A8.

ARTICLE: “China May Be Using Oil to Press North Korea: Halting oil sales, even before a nuclear test, hints at a tough line,” by Joseph Kahn, New York Times, 31 October 2006, p. A10.

As these articles indicate, the squeezing from both ends got us at least a restart of the talks. U.S. squeezing was mostly financial, which got very specific complaints and requests from Pyongyang, especially since Chinese banks were seemingly dropping the DPRK”s business lest they get tagged.

The Chinese approach was preemptive: they stopped all oil sales to NK in September, apparently in anticipation of the test. Didn’t stop it, but a clear signal according to foreign policy experts in Beijing.

These are all baby steps, we must admit. Thinking these first acts will bring Kim to his knees on the nukes is a bit dreamy, as most American experts on Pyongyang argue, with one Heritage Foundation guy saying that China’s chief goal right now is to clamp down on all the counterfeit U.S. dollars floating around its economy.

The real purpose of all this activity shouldn’t focus on North Korea per se, but logically on China. Getting China to the confidence level of dropping Pyongyang for good is what’s going to get us what we really want (a denuclearized Korean peninsula) and really need (an East Asian NATO).

Fortunately for us, China wants #1 now and can be made to understand the logic of #2 far faster than most experts on our side realize.

OP-ED: “Stern Review: The dodgy numbers behind the latest warming scare,” by Bjorn Lomborg, Wall Street Journal, 2 November 2006, p. A12.

I won’t go over Lomborg’s usually strong dismemberment of bad analysis. Read it for yourself.

I just like to note that Lomborg’s real argument on almost everything he writes is, Where do you get the biggest bang for today’s buck on all these problems everyone wants to throw money at?

That’s been his essential shtick, besides dismembering fear-meisters, since he ran his Copenhagen Consensus, which replayed the basic wargame exercise I devised for my last “economic security exercise” in the NewRuleSets.Project that I directed in conjunction with Cantor Fitzgerald atop WTC1. In that mini-game, which was fascinating, we played “Survivor” for the planet as a whole. The seminar was on the environment in Asia over the next twenty years, so we put up a number of environmental issues, perused their subjects over a series of quick debates, and after each debate, we’d vote some issue off the island as not being as important as the rest. It was really hard, but just like Lomborg found out, our group of Wall Street execs, big energy execs, and environmental and investment experts voted the global issues off first and prioritized the more local ones, with water finishing out at top.

+ Asian Environmental Solutions Decision Event Read-ahead

+ Asian Energy Solutions Road Show Slides

There’s a certain Maslow’s hierarchy of needs at work in this, but there’s also the question of the biggest return for the effort made, and that’s where global warming tends to lose out time after time: huge up-front investments required with minimal results.

But the better predictor is this: whatever can grab the public’s attention most gets the most effort and what grabs the public’s attention fastest is something we cannot respond to incrementally. By my definition, global warming needs a clear and identifiable System Perturbation attached to it, something that says small changes over many years just won’t do it.

And the reality is, this process of warming the planet is highly unlikely to give us any one fantastic break from the past--now or the “day after tomorrow.”

When and if it ever does, however, then global warming shoots to number one on the list. But even then, don’t expect the efforts at logical prioritizing to go away. People like Lomborg are much needed in the debate environment that is environmentalism. Like any secular religions, we need the usual heretics along for the ride.

BOOK REVIEW: “Living in China’s World,” (China Shakes the World, by James Kynge), by Stephen Kotkin, New York Times, 5 November 2006, p. BU10.

ARTICLE: “Rush for Wealth in China’s Cities Shatters the Ancient Assurance of Care in Old Age: As rural Confucian roots erode, no one is left to do the work,” by Howard W. French, New York Times, 3 November 2006, p. A8.

ARTICLE: “Who wants to be a trillionaire? Not China’s central bank,” The Economist, 28 October 2006, p. 85.

ARTICLE: “U.S. Firms Plan More Expansion In China but See Tighter Margins,” by James T. Areddy, Wall Street Journal, 2 November 2006, p. A7.

ARTICLE: “China Council Approves Plans To Spin Off Its Postal System,” by Andrew Batson, Wall Street Journal, 2 November 2006, p. A7.

ARTICLE: “As Barriers Fall In Auto Business, China Jumps In: Geely Aims to Be World Player, But Quality Woes Linger; Cars a New Commodity?” by Gordon Fairclough, Wall Street Journal, 7 November 2006, p. A1.

ARTICLE: “GM Bets China Will Become Crucial Export Base: CEO Calls Fit ‘a Natural’ As Cost Cutting Intensifies,” by Gordon Fairclough, Wall Street Journal, 7 November 2006, p. A3.

POLITICS & ECONOMICS: “Behind China’s Stance on North Korea: Beijing’s Tack on Nuclear Test May Signal Shift in Long-Held Policy of Non-Interference,” by Gordon Fairclough and Neil King, Jr., Wall Street Journal, 6 November 2006, p. A8.

No argument with that thesis, because today’s Old Core complaints will become tomorrow’s Gap battle cries, and so China’s charm offensive will be necessary for the long haul, as will some essential changes in how it does business abroad.

I actually blog this review because I found Kotkin’s opening paras so good:

America remains a colossus in Asia, for now. But between 1999 and 2004 trade among Asian countries jumped more than 80 percent, to $1.2 trillion, according to the World Trade Organization. Trade within Asia has come to exceed trade between Asia and the United States.

China has become the largest trade partner of almost every country in Asia. Even the exchange between the longtime rivals China and India ballooned over the last decade from about $1 billion a year to more than that each month. Of the $600 billion in foreign direct investment into China since 1978, most has come from within Asia.

Asia is a giant, competitive, interdependent regional economy that affects the world. Long-standing cross-cultural ties are strengthening, too, because of booming intra-Asian tourism and student exchange. “Korean wave” dramas and pop music can now be found in much of Asia, alongside Japanese and Hong Kong fare. And it’s now often hard to distinguish national origins of dubbed television and movies.

Of course, this trend is inevitable and natural. For now, a lot of Asian FDI money is essentially washed through the U.S. financial markets for later investment by our experts back into Asia, meaning that our sense of Asia investing in itself is probably underestimated--i.e., it’s even higher than we realize since Asia recycles a lot of its trade surplus through out debt markets.

Over time, however, this recycling process will lessen dramatically, primarily because China’s financial markets will grow more sophisticated and confident and that money will find better, more direct opportunities for investments at home.

There is that vast interior of China that still needs to be developed. It can’t be allowed to degrade into a vast sea of old people with no one to take care of them and China importing most of its food. That would simply create too many pressures internally and around the world at large. As one company exec puts it in the NYT piece: “In our society, children have become the highest good, and old people have become nothing.”

In a society that will age more rapidly than any in human history, this is not a sustainable mindset. China already has roughly 150 million (half of America’s entire population!) over the age of 60, and four-fifths of them live in the less developed, less connected rural areas. Meanwhile, that huge floating population of migrant workers (another 150 million) has recently abandoned those very rural areas for whatever jobs they can get in the cities.

Stats like these are poorly understood in the West, especially among the China hawks and trade protectionists here who act like China is just going to rip us off, get rich, and then close off their economy to us, which--of course--is a rather ludicrous scenario.

When I’m talking about the “closing” of the Chinese economy, I’m talking only about the first-in ownership of market-making companies. Once matured, China’s economy will still provide the usual opportunities, they just won’t be the bargains and the great potential payoffs any more. Instead, they’ll be opportunities more like you find in Europe--good money, just not the same percentages.

That’s why you’re seeing the major American car companies like Ford (recent announcement) and GM (cited above) declaring they’re “all in” as far as the Chinese production market is concerned. First, you have to have access to the cheap labor and rising share of global R&D (all those engineers). Second, you have to have access to that huge domestic market (25m units per year soon, whereas the U.S. is only about 15m). Third, you have to have access to the product lines that can be exported from China, largely to the rest of the emerging markets and the Gap regions (with the conquering of the American market still several years off).

But, boy oh boy, the infrastructure build-out of the next 10-20 years will be spectacular. China’s investment in itself is running about 40% of GDP, which is stunningly high. With all those reserves, you’d think they could build out even more, even faster, but there are obvious limits to that approach.

As the Economist argues, China will simply have to force down its own amazing savings rate, getting people to spend more and thus bolstering their own internal consumption market. You simply can’t keep all those foreign companies, much less the ambitious rising domestic ones, on the hook for too long regarding all those new consumers. At some point the build-out needs to morph into the buy-up as well, as the settling of China’s interior resembles the boom times associated with the settling of the American West--right down to the extension of transportation and energy and communications networks that makes this integration possible, plus the rapid rise in consumerism among a population mostly skewed to the bottom of the pyramid--so to speak. But hey, that’s how Singer and Sears Roebuck and the rest of them got started: selling to average people.

What China will go through over the next quarter century will be like watching the U.S. from 1865 to 1890. It will be a stunning transformation, with the upshot being, foreign policy-wise, that China needs to adopt the persona of a full-service global superpower.

Chinese foreign policy experts talk about the need to develop this mindset, that of a great power mentality, or daguo xintai.

When I was in Beijing talking to the military think tank last month, I advised the officers and researchers to recognize the historical task before them: there was the “revolutionary” force that was the PLA for the early decades of China’s communist history, but there needs to be a “great power” PLA for this century, one whose ethos and myths are created in a series of positive experiences in global affairs (for the U.S., there was the frivolous Spanish-American War and associated small-country conquerings, and then the key twin-pack of WWI [where the Marines and Army first came of age in a global sense] and WWII [where the Navy came of age and the Air Force was born]). Yes, there were crucial mythical experiences for the Army, Navy, and especially the Marines prior to the 19th century, but all those forces really evolved into their modern incarnations starting with the first World War.

Do you know Teddy Roosevelt was the first sitting American president ever to travel abroad? Stunning, isn’t it? But that’s how insular we were prior to that rising global profile and attendant military capacity (the Great White Fleet he helped build as Assistant Secretary of the Navy under McKinley, whom he later succeeded).

Know where he went? Panama, of course.

You look at that roughly two-decade period from TR through Wilson and you get the modern images of American patriotism, our sense of definition in the world, and our emerging sense of power. That made our great reshaping of the world via WWII and its aftermath possible--those formative years.

China needs to have such a formative experience, but it can’t have one unless we, as the big kid on the block, effectively allow it to happen and shape it in ways that benefit global stability, which is why it’s so crucial that North Korea’s fall go well, and that China come out of it with a lot of global prestige and an important story to tell about how it uses its military force as a force for global good.

China’s trying right now, and there are lots of positive signs, like the 1,000 peacekeepers they’re sending to Lebanon--the biggest overseas contingent Beijing has ever mounted. We need a lot more situations like this, because we need to actively shape China’s emergence to our benefit, like the Brits did cleverly with us.

Why do we do this? More stability. More commerce. More wealth. A better life for us and more of the rest of the world as a result.

We do it because we’re smart and think strategically. And because we’re not trapped by old mind-sets and prejudices and fears.

That’s why I think it’s so important for Obama and others of his age range to run for president in ’08. Frankly, too many of the Boomers are simply too brainwashed by their experiences in the Cold War and the Vietnam Era (along with Nixon’s tumultuous reign) to see the possibilities staring us in the face.

OP-ED: “Will Bush Lose Lebanon, Too?” by Bret Stephens, Wall Street Journal, 7 November 2006, p. A13.

That sort of paranoia, when applied to Iraq and adjacent issues fits the usual charges against Baker--that he’s a brutal realist.

But to me, Baker’s the ultimate smooth operator who’s good to bring in when you’re trying to salvage things, as we are now in the Middle East.

The Bush Neocons led by Cheney have nobody to blame but themselves for this moment, primarily because they’re so G.D. stubborn and lacking in strategic imagination (“Quick, let’s rerun the whole WMD drill with Iran! It sold so well with Iraq!”).

So yeah, we’re going to have to give it up to both Syria and Iran in the short-term, because we were so stupid as to telegraph our punches right off the bat with that whole Axis of Evil stuff (I surf Monday night and see that Kos guy paired with Frum [Mr. Axis-originator] on Larry King and I could stand them collectively for only about 30 seconds, they’re such a pair of cartoons--all sputtering with their extremist rage and so collectively useless in actually transmitting anything approaching a strategic thought to the viewers). Somehow Bush & Co. were smart enough to get us a whole lotta love from both Pakistan and India and just enough from Russia and surrounding Central Asia republics so as to keep our effort in Afghanistan realistic (i.e., not persecuted from all sides), but somehow, with Iraq, we just assumed we could take on the entire region on all once, instead of locking in gains as we went along (and cutting some deals and holding our noses and getting some necessary allies), playing the board with some fluidity instead of this same lock-step approach again and again (Rice’s amazingly ineffective talking-point diplomacy coupled with Cheney’s scary bluster from on-high, amplified now and then by Rumsfeld, who, despite his great skill in running the Pentagon, doesn’t have a clue on foreign relations).

Looking back on it, Afghanistan was bad for us, because it came off as seemingly so easy. It led us to believe that the war-seguing-into-peace would be equally smooth in Iraq, when, in the end, it turned out that the war was--yet again--just the prelude to the battle for the peace (seen last in Lebanon), with Iraq now descending into chaos and the Taliban once again resurgent in Afghanistan. We just let our inner Leviathan, which knows it can win wars all by itself, set up our under-funded, under-trained, under-equipped SysAdmin for tough jobs any reasonable strategist could see we could not possibly win without a lot of outside help.

So now we need the clean-up artists like Baker to salvage what we can for the short term.

As I’ve written many times: all of the long-term trends favor us WRT globalization’s inevitable penetration and “perversion” of the Middle East. Done right, Iraq could have served as a huge accelerant, triggering a 1989-like collapse of several nasty regimes in the region. But our incompetence there on the postwar comes back to haunt us, delaying the inevitable for far longer than it should, given our sacrifices and the boldness of the Saddam takedown.

Bush started this Long War, but he and his only seem to understand it in its temporal length, instead of its strategic breadth. That’s why we’re in the fix we’re in right now in Iraq.

And that’s why we need the Baker touch, as unpleasant as it make seem to some on the Right. We won’t get what we want right now in Beirut, Damascus and Tehran and Tel Aviv. But maybe--just maybe--we’ll get what we need.

Frankly, given that we face two more long years with the same basic hands on the ship of state, this is the best we can hope for right now.

With the Dems running the House and an almost perfectly split Senate, is whether or not the Democratic Party really wants Nancy Pelosi as Speaker, or whether that ends up being a bad set-up for 2008.

As Steve DeAngelis was pointing out to me this morning, the extremists tended to lose and the centrists tended to win, so we've snapped back to the middle again--a form of political resilience, as he likes to call it.

With Bill Clinton still standing tallest as party elder and spouse Hillary lining up nicely for a run, and the centrists and conservative Dems being the new faces in the House, it will be interesting to see if a move is made to come up with somebody more representative of this election's dynamics to be the new Speaker.

That was quick!

This was clearly a White House decision on political distancing vis-a-vis the war, signalling change--hopefully.

Rumsfeld always intended to stay til the end, so a bitter disappointment to him, certainly.

Will Gates make a difference on Iraq? Mebbe, mebbe not.

I would have fired Rice and Hadley myself. Then again, I would never have picked such a pseudo-family member like Rice for a job that important...

ARTICLE: Time Best Inventions 2006: Military: M80 Stiletto

Thanks to Rob Holzer (OFT) for sending this in.

To Matthew Stannard of the San Francisco Chronicle. I always say yes to him because his questions are always reasonable and you get no sense of overriding agenda. Plus, he reads the blog, so he knows when to come to me and on what.

Matthew had just gotten off the phone with Hammes, who offered some optimism on Gates (not for me to relay here). My point on Gates was that much depends on how he views China. Rummy never got off China, and that was the great failure of his SECDEF role as far as I was concerned: he created much change and reform in the institutional military, making the SysAdmin's emergence both possible and setting it somewhat in motion among especially the Army, Marines, and SOCOM, but he never shifted funds or priority enough to those non-Leviathan roles, thus the continuing struggle and material hardship for the ground pounders in Iraq. He held back primarily because he wanted his Leviathan as geared up as possible for his preferred near-peer.

Thus, Gates is unlikely to change much unless he's able to change Pentagon thinking (and planning/budgetary priorities) on China. If he can't, then it will be a caretaker's reign to run out the clock.

UPDATE: The Stannard article is now up.

DATELINE: US Airways flight to Boston, 8 November 2006

Tomorrow I give my first-ever presentation at Harvard, specifically at the JFK School. Prior to this I was asked back only once, by the Graduate School of Arts & Sciences (where I was, not JFK) to speak at a career counseling day. I think I was asked to do that solely on the basis of proximity, so I used the day to take Em and Kev to museums.

I'm able to do this gig while piggy-backing on a corporate event that I'm doing later in the day in New Hampshire for Raytheon (frequent and good client over the years). Harvard's picking up the hotel but nothing else. I'm doing it for free because my core (inviting) audience is the military officers's program at Kennedy. I did them in the past once or twice while at the Naval War College, with them coming down.

So, truth be told, Harvard still hasn't invited me, the officers did.

Still, fun to go back, despite my ambivalence about the place. It was a brutal place for your ego. You go from being the smartest guy around to just one of many (that I could handle--and enjoyed). But what really intimidated was how so many grad students there were already plugged into power networks (powerful parents or patrons was a constant theme, as in, "Oh him, his mom's the editor of The Sunday Times in New Delhi" or "He's going to run [insert major pub], dontcha know? It's all set."). That kind of backstage gossip (all true) was monumentally intimidating, making you feel like such an unconnected, uncredentialed loser in comparison. I mean, imagine how much more confident in their future these people were as a result? And how that delta with your confidence level made them natural stars in class?

So I felt like a peon, and a foreigner at that ("You're from Wisconsin? How long have you been in the country?").

The first year was rough, but I did well, and won the first-year student award in the Soviet program, which made me Adam Ulam's research assistant. His patronage helped me get into the Government PhD program (where I came in with guys like Sullivan, Pei and Zakaria), because there was an informal quota system WRT regional MA programs, as in, only 2 from each got in each year and my class had some big names like Kate Schector (dad wrote about her in his NYT-bestselling memoir of being the NYT Moscow bureau chief), Mark Medish (later an assistant to Rubin in Treasury) and George Perkovich (the nuke/South Asian expert). But apparently, all that scotch and tennis and shared love of the Red Sox paid off, letting me sneak into the program, where I got to learn from the likes of Huntington, Nye, Keohane, Sandel, Putnam, Pipes, Hoffman and Shklar, so damn! I was plenty grateful.

Still, I had so little sense of myself or much confidence in my voice when I left there.

My eight-year residency at the Center for Naval Analyses took care of that, because I enjoyed the tutelage of a number of great mentors there, like Hank Gaffney, Jim Blaker, Jack Mayer, Linton Brooks, Bob Murray, and Gary Federici.

The rest, as they say, is still unfolding.

But no doubt, I head back into The Yard with a sense of confidence and purpose.

Speaking of confidence and purpose, look out hard for the December issue of Esquire--yes, the Best & Brightest one. Some amazing stories in this issue, including one I want everyone to read...

Gotta save my brain power (and voice!) tonight: two talks in one day is awfully tough. Gotta drive in between as well. No fears, though, as I brought the Garmin (another Time tech innovation of the year).

Too bad it can't settle this bumpy commuter flight ...

Consensus growing that Rumsfeld had to go to clear way for Baker's solution set to fly.

No big surprise there. Real clearing is Cheney's, with Rummy as surrogate.

Missing in the analysis so far: with caretaker in Pentagon, Baker now takes over de facto control of the war, as almost his own national security adviser, SECDEF AND SECSTATE.

No big whup for Gates. He knew that coming in. Quiet Hadley will do as told, as will Rice, but in reality, Rice's been replaced without leaving office. Imagine being SECSTATE and kicked off the one foreign policy issue that defines the administration.

Yes, yes, expect many protestations to the contrary and watch Baker go out of his way, using the study group as cover, not to upstage her.

But make no mistake, we now have caretakers (and not the real players) in both the Building and Foggy Bottom.

ARTICLE: CHANGING COURSE: Rumsfeld out Iraq strategy, Pentagon policy will be shaken up, analysts say, By Matthew B. Stannard, San Francisco Chronicle, November 9, 2006

Part of that emphasis came from a concern shared by Rumsfeld and others in the administration about China, which they saw as an emergent military threat and a "near peer" to the United States, said Thomas Barnett, author of "The Pentagon's New Map" and "Blueprint for Action."

"The fixation on China, which was strong with this administration when it came in and certainly remained strong with the China hawks under Rumsfeld and with Rumsfeld himself became the excuse for over-feeding the war force and starving the occupation force," he said. "The Air Force and the Navy probably get happier than they need to be ... and the Army and the Marines are left hanging."

Outta window at resort in Portsmouth NH where I speak today at Raytheon retreat. Can't beat the weather. Wish I was speaking tonight so I could golf today.

DATELINE: US Airways commuter flight from La Guardia to Indy, 10 November 2006

I think we got the same weird-ass pilot who took me from Indy to Boston Wednesday, the guy who likes to do the steepest G.D. banks I’ve ever experienced in a small jet, tipping the plane deeper and doing it faster than any other pilot I’ve flown with…

… and yes, scaring the crap outta me each time.

Good trip.

Wednesday night I got to stroll around the Yahd in the rain, soaking up the nostalgia (“That’s the room where I first taught a class section!” “That’s where I smoked a pack of cigs while freaking out about my comps later that afternoon!” And so on).

Wednesday morning was the brief to the National Security Fellows (a best & brightest tribe of officers from all services, plus some intell types) at the John F. Kennedy School, plus about 20 senior officers from the regional National Guard and Army Reserve commands (been there, did that, going back soon).

Oh, and about 20 grad students and profs and a couple of journalists (one from Die Ziet gave me his card, so I know).

Spoke 90 and did about 20 questions. Then another 30 minutes in F2Fs with audience members. Most of the crowd was still there, debating stuff when I was pulled out for lunch by my host and a trio of senior offices from the reserve component commands who had attended. Over lunch, they proposed contracting with Enterra to bring me back to N.E. to conduct a sort of exercise-ish exploration of the SysAdmin concept with a bunch of officers getting ready to redeploy back in theater.

Their rationale?

I was told that the first tour confirmed my diagnosis and got them deeply intrigued with the proposed solution set, so this time they want their officers' heads in the right frame of mind before heading back, and if that training cannot be arranged within the system as it currently stands, they’re pretty much prepared to go ahead and arrange it on their own without waiting for powers-that-be to catch up.

Naturally, I was immediately intrigued.

But then I thought, What Would Steve Do in a situation like this?

Then it hit me: connect the dots with all the other entities who want the same exploration/training/quasi-gaming. Groups like the International Peace Operations Association and all its members (something we’d discussed with them in the past). Maybe we could get the Naval War College involved (another Enterra client), or Alidade (Jeff Cares’ shop that did The New Map Game). You know, amass some serious talent besides the 30,000-foot-view guy (me).

So I give them the super-card I always carry with me: Jennifer Posda’s (you know you’ve made a serious impression on me when I give you one of those, because it means I’m dead serious about following up).

So maybe the SysAdmin concept isn't exactly sinking as fast as the Titanic (Robb's description) because of our troubles in Iraq. Maybe just the opposite occurs, which is what I've said in briefs before hundreds of audiences dating back to early 2002 (This won't happen because it's cool or visionary. It'll happen because we'll continue to f--k it up over time til the pain gets so bad we simply decide to change.)

Anyway, the same day gets me the following invites:

1) to address a psy ops conference being put on at Special Operations University down in Hurlburt FLA, billed as a unprecedented international gathering of PSYOPs specialists;

2) to participate as the only civilian in a U.S. Army planning conference on the future of military training;

3) and a return invite from the flag in charge of special ops throughout Pacific Command to keynote PASOC’s (Pacific Special Operations Command) annual international gathering of SOF senior commanders from nations throughout Asia (I spoke there last year, with Kevin in tow).

But I gloat when nothing of the sort is called for.

People are needlessly dying--our people in-theater and hundreds of thousands more throughout the Gap.

And those charged with dealing with those issues are looking for better answers to what we got going now.

And I’m honored to be asked to help in that quest, doing what I do best: providing the grand strategic overlay that dissects tomorrow’s inevitabilities so that today’s inconceivables can be addressed--now as opposed to later.

After Harvard I drove to Portsmouth NH to address the Integrated Defense Systems division of Raytheon, an amazing array of international talent in one crowded room (too many patents to count). I was brought in by the division head, who interacted with me and Bradd Hayes at a workshop we ran together at the Naval War College (see, I owe it to the college to bring some business back now).

I did 90 + 30 Q&A and was exhausted.

Up to my room I listen to a voice message from Chris Lydon from “Open Source,” asking me to come on in a couple of hours for a show on the books the Dems should be reading as they prepare to take control of both houses. I was sorely tempted to say yes, but could feel my lack of brainpower slurring my speech already, so discretion became the better part of valor and I gave my regrets.

Two martinis later it was a self-fulfilling prophecy, but that didn’t stop me from talking to a bunch of Raytheon seniors over a group dinner until late in the night.

Up at 0500 this morning, I drive the rental back to Logan and catch the shuttle to NYC for a meeting with Steve and Mark Warren, who we’re bringing on to help me edit Steve’s book (Mark will be the real deal, I’ll mostly just execute his vision of the edit on the margins).

It was great to see Mark again, along with a brief pit stop in David Granger’s office, where I was asked my opinion of a trio of proposed cover shots for the January issue (all of which were so breathtakingly bold I had a hard time articulating why one should be chosen over the others--which now makes me wonder why they should figure some way to put all three on the cover at once! Quick! Get me Granger on line 2!).

Steve and I also got a peek at the December issue just hitting mail boxes right now. There’s a story in there that will change a few lives that I care deeply about, and it was thrilling to see that actually in print.

Now home to wife and kids. Much to be done. So quiet blogging weekend. Feel really solid about my column though, so looking forward to reaction from that one.

ARTICLE: Revising Doctrine on the Korean Peninsula, By Nicholas M. Guariglia, Global Politician, November 7, 2006

The first option is what we will call “China Grows Up.” Thomas P.M. Barnett is a dedicated believer that the level of interdependence between the Chinese and the United States –– along with China embracing capitalistic globalization –– will render Beijing more of a twenty-first century strategic partner with the United States than a Soviet Union-to-be. Indeed, the Chinese (as well as the Indians) may one day attempt to challenge American supremacy in certain domains, but for true believers in the liberal economic interdependence theory, this is not only natural, but also does not necessarily mean pending conflict or tension.

Today brings an important event: the first paper to pick up Tom's column through the Scripps Howard News Service! The honor goes to the Press of Atlantic City. The lead in:

Time for a new generational voice in politics

Barack Obama should run for president in 2008 for all the tactical reasons cited by pundits, but primarily because the baby boomers need serious competition from "below" on the vision thing. It's unhealthy to have so much of our political and strategic discourse dominated by the '60s generation.

Let me tell you why.

Morris Massey, an expert on conflict between generations, pioneered the argument that "what you are is where you were when ...," meaning all of us reach a point in life where we discover a world larger than ourselves. At that point, we become cognizant of the morals we've developed across our early years, and those morals - or worldview - tend to persist across our adult years.

Read on KnoxNews.

Read on Scripps Howard.

ARTICLE: "Dollar Recovers Some Losses After Remarks by China Official," by Isabelle Lindenmeyer, Wall Street Journal, 11-12 November 2006, p. B5.

Think about that for a minute, and then get used to it, because it ain't going away.

+ Links this week to Tom's column:

+ Valley Jew says it's great that Tom's column got picked up by another paper and likes the Obama pick.

+ New Hampshire Presidential Watch

+ The TrueTalk Blog, really agreeing with Tom.

+ ZenPundit

+ Links to Tough for Rummy, just beginning for Rice:

+ Brad DeLong (but thinks the Bolton nomination 'is a powerful argument against Barnett's view')

+ Blogaritaville (but thinks negotiation with Syria and Iran is a bad idea)

+ benismightier

+ China Law Blog linked The China backlash on globalization is coming, and China’s smart enough to try and blunt it.

+ Larry Dunbar also linked this post.

+ Burgh Diaspora linked Gave short interview on Rumsfeld.

+ Garrick Van Buren linked Ireland takes them in, Germany sends them out.

+ I might not normally include one like this, but Tom sent it to me and thought it was funny, so: A new take on Eurobashing.

+ Rich Tucker mentions Tom in passing (as an optimist) in his review of Niall Ferguson's book.

Twenty-five authors selected. Biggies are James Bamford, Elizabeth Drew, James Fallows, Francis Fukuyama, Seymour Hersh, Walter Mosley, Evan Thomas, Sean Wilentz and James Q. Wilson.

I’m the last article in the last section: “Part Six: America in an Uncertain World.”

The others in my section are Fukuyama’s “After Neoconservatism,” Hersh’s “The Iran Plans,” and Scott Stossel’s “North Korea: The War Game.”

My entry is “The Chinese Are Our Friends,” from the November 2005 Esquire issue. There is one other Esquire entry, Joe Conason’s “The Third Term: The Dawning of a Different Sort of Post-Presidency” (about Bill Clinton).

This is what Royce says about me in the Preface:

Finally, the books ends on a more or less optimistic note, as former U.S. Naval War College Professor Thomas P.M. Barnett explains why it’s in the interests of both the United States and China to live happily ever after together, in his essay, “The Chinese Are Our Friends.”

While most essays on international affairs tend toward the academic in style, former U.S. Naval War College Professor Thomas P.M. Barnett has the rare ability to make foreign policy both understandable and entertaining. In this Esquire article--a sequel of sorts to his February 2005 piece advising President Bush on how to use his second term to secure his place in world history (which ran in last year’s anthology)--Barnett focuses on how the president should deal with the world’s largest nation. Along the way, he explains the concept of “fourth generation warfare” and elaborates on why, in his view, many of our military leaders have a vested interest in keeping China as an enemy--to the detriment of our national security.

I am immensely proud of this piece and the March 05 “Mr. President …” piece, both of which look a helluva lot better over time. That the two articles form the crux arguments of Blueprint for Action and were deemed good enough for the 2005 and 2006 anthologies delights me to no end.

Now I just gotta get that Warren to finally give me another assignment!

ELECTION 2006: "Rumsfeld Successor Faces Tests on Many Fronts: Gates Will Decide if Funds Will Shift to Army Forces; Long-Term Vision Uncertain," by Greg Jaffe, Wall Street Journal, 9 November 2006, p. A6.

ARTICLE: "Counterrevolution in Military Affairs Ambushes the U.S. Army," by Carl Osgood, Executive Intelligence Review, 17 November 2006.

Mr. Rumsfeld, replaced yesterday, has led an ambitious effort to remake the U.S. military into a faster, leaner force. His vision was driven by the belief that new communications technology and precision weapons had the capacity to change some of the fundamental rules of war. The rapid toppling of the Taliban in 2001 and the three-week push that displaced Saddam Hussein in 2003 seemed to confirm his belief that speed and precision could substitute for large formations of ground forces.

But Iraq and Afghanistan have since revealed the limits of a relatively small, high-tech force in bringing security and stability to chaotic lands that could become havens for terrorists...

A big issue facing Mr. Gates will be whether to shift money from the Air Force and the Navy to buttress the Army. Some Army generals have begun to call for a dramatic increase in their budget to reflect a future they believe will be dominated by messy guerrilla wars. Earlier this year, Gen. Peter Schoomaker called for increasing the Army's budget in 2008 to about $140 billion, up from a planned budget of about $114 billion. Such a large increase to the Army's budget isn't likely to occur without at least some scaling back of big weapons programs like missile defense, major ships or some of the next-generation fighter-jet programs.

Though killing or delaying big weapons programs is never popular among members of Congress, some Democrats yesterday suggested they would be open to shifting away from the high-tech weapons systems that made up the core of the Rumsfeld vision to a military more oriented to prevailing in messy guerrilla wars like Iraq, where the premium is on large formations of trained soldiers with more basic equipment...

It remains to be seen what kind of long-term vision Mr. Gates will bring to Defense.

Will Gates go for this? All depends on how he interprets China. If we hear the words "hedge" and "contain," then nothing is likely to change.

The second piece mentions my books, so I include it here. I frankly can't make heads nor tails of it. My sense is that Osgood is desperately out of his depth on the subject and can't write coherently. Amazing he sells is as "executive intelligence," because it strikes me as gibberish. He clearly has read neither of my books, he straw-mans my vision so badly (yes, yes, we must wage war on all nations that "resist" globalization!).

Jaffe's smart because he puts in the time. Compared to him, the usual dilettantes just look goofy.

Besides appearing in the Knoxville News Sentinel and Scripps Howard's site, and the Press of Atlantic City site/paper, there are now two more additional sitings:

InsideBayArea.com, which seems to serve the Bay Area's many newspapers, with the appearance here being The Argus, which seems to be Fremont-centric

Huntington News Net

WHITE HOUSE WEEK: "China, Our New Good Friend to the West," edited by Peter Cary, U.S. News & World Report, 13 November 2006, p. 20.

The economy will continue to grow--though threatened by terrorism, energy prices, protectionism, and housing markets--and China will be a big, positive player in trade, the nation's financial executives say in a new poll from the Financial Services Forum...

The CEOs also had high hopes for China, calling that nation less of a threat to U.S. businesses and a significant contributor to economic growth.

It's a great line that always gets a big laugh, signifying as it does that one coast's conventional wisdom is another coast's "inconceivable."

Dave Porter writes in to say that he and Oregon State Representative Dennis Richardson are proposing a new initiative for the Oregon Business Plan, titled Developing the China Connection through Educational Programs.

Tom is quoted briefly on page 5 and his weblog and brief are linked on page 18. The proposal seeks to increase significantly the number of Oregon students studying Mandarin and studying abroad in China. It is probably a long shot for acceptance as an initiative. But we are promoting it.

The whole idea comes from asking if China and the US are to have a “special relationship,” do not a lot more of us need to learn Chinese?

POST: Web 3.0, by Steve DeAngelis

Good example of that is seen in the December "genius issue" of Esquire, which is worth picking up.

Tom got this email from Joe Valente:

Dear Mr. Barnett,

I genuinely enjoyed your article that I read in the November 13th edition of the Daily Southtown. I couldn't agree more. Obama in '08!

Sincerely,

Joe Valente

I guess we're beginning to see Scripps' reach. Another county heard from.

ARTICLE: The Song Of The South, By Michael Hastings and George Wehrfritz, Newsweek, November 20, 2006

Our stuff simply sells.

Thanks to Hans Suter for sending this in.

ARTICLE: Blair Urges Strategy Change in Mideast, Spotlighting Iran, By ALAN COWELL, New York Times, November 14, 2006

The consensus grows...

ARTICLE: “The Alpha Male Departs: Rumsfeld ends his stormy Pentagon tenure on a meek note,” by Thomas E. Ricks and Michael Abramowitz, Washington Post National Weekly Edition, 13-19 November 2006, p. 6.

But by and large you’re either remembered as bad or not remembered at all--outside the Beltway that is.

Rumsfeld’s positive impact was overwhelmingly on the institutional force, or that part of the military back here in the States that generates the operating force that goes overseas and wages operations. Frankly, that’s where his “transformation” was centered, despite all the shock-and-awe and light-and-lethal hype. His main goal was to make the delivery of that power projection overseas more efficient, more logical, and more swift and responsive.

I think Rumsfeld accomplished much in that institutional force, as I argued in my profile of him for Esquire back in July 2005, stipulating, as I did, the downside of his often far too meddling ways with regard to the operating force (the “seven-thousand-mile screwdriver” effect).

In the end, though, Rummy’s not to blame for the poor reconstruction of Iraq and our disastrous occupation there. The main failure there was of the interagency process that was--in my opinion--sabotaged by Cheney and run into the ground unwittingly by the incompetent Rice as national security advisor. And yeah, Bush let that all happen. And yeah, Rummy did his share by outmaneuvering his cabinet rivals.

But seriously, blaming the non-performance of the rest of the U.S. Government on the Pentagon’s ability to bite off more than it could chew in Iraq is a bit like blaming the lead sled dog for going faster than the rest of the crew can keep up. Hell, yes, blame Rummy for being overbearing and often far too confident, but don’t think that taking down the SECDEF’s position a notch or two is going to fix our problem, because it won’t. So getting rid of Rummy is more sacrificial lamb at this point than serious fix, especially since great power realist Scowcroft protégé Bob Gates now takes over at the Pentagon. Between him, Scowcroft protégé Rice in State, and the still all-powerful Cheney, does anyone expect a serious shift in defense resources from the Leviathan to the SysAdmin?

Yes, Baker will now be free to do his thing with Cheney ally Rumsfeld now departing, fixing up our Iraq strategy as is needed by opening up dialogue with both Damascus and Tehran and thus closing down the cross-border fueling of fighting inside Iraq, and that reason alone can justify Rumsfeld’s dismissal.

But if Gates allows backsliding within the Pentagon toward the Leviathan’s dreams of high-tech wars with the Chinese, then much of Rummy’s institutional force legacy can and will be damaged.

Rumsfeld made possible many important shifts in the direction of the SysAdmin force, like the elevation of SOCOM, the DoD Directive 3000 that elevated postwar planning requirements to become the equal of war plans, and all those “monks of war” he elevated into schoolhouse and doctrinal positions within the Army and Marines (to include his picks of Abizaid for CENTCOM and Schoomaker for Army Chief of Staff). That Rummy never followed through on shifting more resources from the high-tech Leviathan to the manpower-intensive SysAdmin (what, with all its rising counter-insurgency requirements in Afghanistan and Iraq) is certainly a bad mark on his time. Still, he opened a lot of doors for change that others have been able to move through, hopefully extending that change for years more to come.

Here’s the best bit from the Post piece that sums up Rumsfeld’s tenure nicely. It comes straight from the horse’s (military’s) mouth:

“There is an upside and a downside to Rumsfeld,” said one retired four-star general who had been close to Rumsfeld and who spoke on the condition of anonymity to speak more candidly [I’m pretty sure I know who this guy is, as he was somebody I interviewed for my article as well.]. “The upside is that he came to the job with a valid vision of the need for, and ideas about how to transform the military and to make it more suitable for the new century. The downside is that he muddled the war so badly that nobody is ever going to remember the upside.”

COVER STORY: “Playing Defense,” by David E. Kaplan and Kevin Whitelaw, U.S. News & World Report, 13 November 2006, p. 44.

This one is even better, really getting inside the transformational changes sought within the IC by DNI Negroponte and CIA boss Michael Hayden. Much like Rumsfeld’s efforts with DoD, the transformation of the institutional force (all those agencies) is just as important--and perhaps more so--than the boosting of the operational force (the tradecraft of spying, those expensive birds in space, etc.).

Enterra’s getting involved with the former effort (naturally), since IT is a huge part of that transformation, so it was really neat to read a top-down story that we’ve pretty much witnessed from within a number of mid-to-senior-level offices (to include people obviously interviewed for this massive series). Steve DeAngelis, for example, spoke on a panel at the "novel" conference that the DNI's CIO held out West a while back.

Best sign of the transformation to date has been in the operational force: DNI killing most of an over-budget spy satellite program and instead relying more on low-flying drones--the many and the cheap winning over the few and the absurdly expensive.

But big and very profound changes are coming to the institutional force back here in the States, and if we’re privileged enough to get in on some of the huge jobs we hope to influence, Enterra can do a lot of good.

MONEY & BUSINESS: “An Oil Rush in (Yes) Iraq: The Kurds may be sitting on buried treasure, and foreign firms want to do business,” by Bay Fang, U.S. News & World Report, 13 November 2006, p. 55.

The story starts with a minister of natural resources from the Kurdistan Regional Government giving a PowerPoint presentation to reps from major oil companies in London. His brief is entitled, “Oil Can Be a Source of Stability.”

The piece goes on to say:

The government of Iraq may be far from ready to welcome foreign investment into its oil sector right now but, like it or not, the Kurds are moving ahead.

All this makes Kurdistan more stable and Iraq-the-pretend-state more unviable.

There’s a reason why the Kurdish region is the only autonomous region in Iraq right now. We started that nation-building effort 15 years ago, when we began our no-fly-zone in the north.

So while Iraq the central government has control over all existing fields, the Kurds are pressing their rights within Iraq’s constitution to control all “future fields.”

I dunno, do you think we’ll find a whole lot more oil in Iraq with this incentive structure?

Our Energy Department says that 90 percent of Iraq’s regions, which already have the third largest known reserves in the world, have never been truly explored (only about 2k wells drilled, compared to about 1 million in Texas, for comparison).

As one Chevron exec put it, Iraq’s serious return to the global energy market, which would require tons of FDI, “will change the entire global oil game.”

But what happens when Kurdistan starts accumulating some wealth? Do all those Kurds living in Iran and Turkey want in?

Hmmm: questions of security, energy, foreign direct investment and demographics. You could build an entire book on global security on those four elements alone!

DATELINE: Shades of Green resort, Walt Disney World, Florida, 14 November 2006

Flew in tonight and am here for one night at this Armed Forces Resort Center (a special resort set aside for U.S. military and DoD. I'm here this one night because I'm speaking at some meeting of some people here tomorrow. Meeting is run by some private contractor, and that's about all I know.

ARTICLE: China sub stalked U.S. fleet, By Bill Gertz, THE WASHINGTON TIMES, November 13, 2006

Does anyone really believe this sort of sub activity is one-way only?

There's nobody worth practicing against except one another, and given the significant redeployment of the U.S. Sub fleet from the Atlantic to the Pacific (not much for subs to pretend they can do in the Atlantic), should anyone expect the Chinese to cease and desist their exercising just because of a few officer exchanges?

Have no doubt: there are submariners in our fleet, in China's fleet, and in Japan's fleet who are eager to get it on. Absent the presumed threat to one another, subs really have no reason for remaining in the fleet. Subs are good for one thing: fighting other subs (attack subs, that is, and as for strategic boomers ... that legacy is waning even faster). The notion of lengthy ship blockades or U-boat-like attrition strategies in any significant scenario with China gets awfully fantastic awfully fast.

But none of this should derail Geertz, who's gotta book declaring the inevitability of war with China. Yes, I have a book that argues the exactly opposite case, so my analytic bias is strong as well

But my argument includes economics, whereas Geertz's basically ignores it, instead relying on outdated ideological arguments. No one in authority in China is under any delusion--a la Japan in 1941--that some mighty blow against America's sea forces would somehow rule the day---even on Taiwan. All China would need to do militarily on any such scenario is make clear to the U.S. the losses potentially involved to basically get the American public to bow out rapidly, killing popular support for any protracted and costly war against what is essentially our biggest trade partner.

Imagine selling that one to the American people--much less American business.

Does a sub stunt like this prove the trick? Somewhat, but certainly nowhere near what a Saddam takedown says about our military's capabilities to a PLA.

Remember which side spent $700b on defense last year and which one allegedly spent as much as $70b. Such scale is important to remember, especially when our military travels the world over en masse, invading countries at will, when China's biggest foray abroad will be its 1,000 peacekeeping ground troops in Africa.

And as for Geertz's hyperbolic cry that Fallon and Roughead have been deeply embarrassed, he should read some U.S.-Soviet naval history: these sorts of sub shenanigans went on for years even after the fall of the Berlin Wall and the USSR's demise.

Instead, this article reflect's Geertz's own fears more than reality. With Rumsfeld and crew exiting the Pentagon, the neocon take on China is losing its punch, even as Gates is likely to keep mouthing "hedge" and "containment," don't expect this administration to pick any fights with China during its remaining months.

Bush 41 didn't bring Baker back to start some tumult with Beijing.

As Dana Carvey used to say: "Nya-uh! Ain't gonna do it!"

But don't expect one-note-Johnny Geertz to give it up anytime soon. He likes his Chinese commies red and baited!

Thanks to Jim Glendenning for sending in the link.

[Update] See also the discussion at Defense Tech, which points back over here.

Steve DeAngelis is presented as "innovator" in the December issue's list of "Best & Brightest," highlighting Enterra's work with Oak Ridge National Laboratory. The four-page piece is a very nice spread, made complete by a fabulous graphic that Esquire had made to describe one scenario Steve envisions for Resilience Net, or what happens when you take ORNL's Sensor Net program and add in Enterra's resilience approach. I spent a lot of time working with the illustrator Kevin Hand on that, so I'm thrilled it turned out so well.

Go here to Esquire's site for the story: "The Age of Resilience, Or, how I learned to stop worry and love global threats. Welcome to the Institute for Advanced Technologies in Global Resilience.".

This recognition is great and much deserved for Steve Also happy to see Oak Ridge National Lab get such nice coverage.

I did some more thorough searching and found a bunch more news sites that did link the column for 24 hours, then it rotated off without a permalink. Here are the sites it rotated through:

+ Tri-City Herald

+ island packet

+ sacbee.com

+ The News and Observer

+ TimesRecordNews.com

+ The Modesto Bee

+ Enquirer-Herald

+ Lake Wylie Pilot

I'm thinking, dump goofy there and run off with me!

[Editor's note: Uh, Tom, that's Dopey... ;-)]

My favorite ride in all of Disney--the one actually inside the big Epcot ball. I suppose because it's a history of human connectivity--i.e., communications technology.

ARTICLE: Baker Ex Machina, By David Ignatius, November 15, 2006

I was called a lot of names by the all-knowing, all-pompous blogosphere back then.

Apparently, I get smarter with time.

Thanks to Kilngoddess for sending this in.

Good day to come to Epcot.

I chose the "orange" training: more intense.

They didn't have categories when I brought Vonne and kids on New Years 2004. Spouse Vonne got sick due to inner-ear congestion. She did, however, manage to buy stuff at the souvenir shop on way outta ride before losing it... Something I always found highly suspicious!

Want to see what Tom looks like as a Martian? First shot I've seen of him with the new glasses. Check out the video postcard he sent us.

(I think it's a little bit scary ;-)

DATELINE: Epcot, 15 November 2006

Xmas shopping!

Japanese.

You've got your Pokemon, your Inuyasha, your Speed Racer, your DragonBall Z, your Full Metal Alchemist, your Naruto ... The list is endless.

ARTICLE: The world is better off thanks to George Bush, By Larry Stirling, San Diego Daily Transcript, Wednesday, November 15, 2006

As much as I disliked Reagan while I spent his entire administration(s) in college, I've come to realize as I've gotten older that it's a terrible thing--as well as a terrible mistake--to bet against optimism, progress or America. Reagan represented all those things well, and that means something historically.

After Deng in China, and Nixon in the U.S., he is arguably the next most important and influential actor on the global stage in the second half of the 20th century.

Thanks to Dan Hare for sending this in.

ARTICLE: "For Evangelicals, Supporting Israel Is 'God's Foreign Policy,'" by David D. Kirkpatrick, New York Times, 14 November 2006, p. A1.

ARTICLE: "Bush and Israeli Prime Minister Maintain Tough Front on Iran," by Jum Rutenberg, New York Times, 14 November 2006, p. A6.

ARTICLE: "Blair Urges Strategy Change In Mideast, Spotlighting Iran," by Alan Cowell, New York Times 14 November 2006, p. A11.

ARTICLE: "Iraqi Premier and U.S. General Discuss Syria and Iran," by Sabrina Tavernise and Qais Mizher, New York Times, 14 November 2006, p. A11.

I mean, when you get James Dobson talking about "covenant land," Sam Harris' stuff starts looking a whole lot more reasonable.

In my opinion, we simply owe it to the people of Iraq and our troops there to salvage what we can of the Bush Big Bang strategy of fostering change in the region, and given where we are today in Iraq, a regionalization of the security agenda makes the most sense. Hell, Iran's reach for the bomb basically mandates it.

But Israel will naturally fight this approach, because it calls into question the zero-deductible strategic security guarantee from the U.S., which basically requires us to keep Israel as the sole nuclear power in the region with fully committed back-up from the United States.

We will have no great movement toward stability in the region with that approach, because it's simply so lop-sided in our favor that it naturally generates balancing against our interests within the region and depresses the desires of other Core powers to come into the region on our side (why bulk up the already dominant hand whose recent behavior and choices makes you more nervous about your nation's ability to access the region's energy in a secure fashion over coming years?). It also naturally incentivizes Iran's reach for the bomb and Iran's and Syria's active support of violence inside Iraq, not to mention both nations' use of proxy war against Israel.

So we're effectively being painted into a corner here: defend Israel at all costs against all comers and--by doing so--resurrect and recast in concrete all the negative regional security dynamics (not to mention the realist strategy of supporting dictators) that got us Al Qaeda and 9/11 in the first place (thus totally negating all sacrifice rendered to date in pursuit of the Big Bang) or secure what we can for now on the Big Bang (Iraq) and build the multilateral security dialogue that puts everything on the table and gets us back to a soft-kill connectivity strategy on Syria and Iran and puts us back in the business of pushing economic connectivity between the region and the outside world.

"Staying the course" or reverting back to old patterns of behavior vis-a-vis Israel will put America squarely in the camp of accepting the region's current lack of economic connectivity with the outside world and encouraging the Salafi jihadist movement to seek to depress that minimal connectivity even further with regime destabilizing terrorism.

Whether Bush recognizes this or not (and I suspect he does not), he himself is becoming the biggest threat to the Big Bang strategy by allowing an irrational defense of Israel's security desires to again resurface (something his father and Baker never did).

When Israel hunkers down and refuses to engage regionally, the terrorism simply comes to it, and the same will happen to a United States that apes this misguided approach.

ARTICLE: "Cuba's Military Puts Business On Front Lines: Under Castro's Brother, Army Built Joint-Venture Empire; From Hotels to Dophins; Required Reading: Tom Peters," by Jose De Cordoba, Wall Street Journal, 15 November 2006, p. A1.

POLITICS & ECONOMICS: "Why One Cuba Blueprint Gets Tough on Subsidies," by Bob Davis, Wall Street Journal, 15 November 2006, p. A9.

Raul "has shown a deep interest in free-market experiments in the past," using his military as a lab many times.

Yes, Raul will try to replicate the Chinese model of economic first, politics last, but China doesn't have an ex-pat population gunning for it like Cuba does:

It's far from clear that a Raul Castro government could accomplish a Chinese-style tranformation. For one thing, China isn't located just 90 miles from the U.S. and a wealthy community of exiles looking to reshape their home country along American lines.

The Cuban collection at the IMF already have their post-Soviet-style-economic-rehab plan ready to roll on Cuba, and it sounds good: no big anti-Castro purge planned and a willingness to work with Raul-as-Cuban-Deng. That sort of strategic patience is called for, because a looting of the place by greedy Miami Cubans would be a Yeltsin-like disaster that just gets you a Cuban Putin down the road. Better to let this thing play out semi-slowly, because with all the close-by pressure exerted by U.S. Cubans, the pace of triggered political change in this "Chinese model" will be blistering compared to the original. Cuba is tiny and presents no serious domestic market of weight to develop, so a rapid globalization of its economy will do the democracy work for us. Simply put, the Chinese model is not a small-state model.

ARTICLE: "Many Nations' Forests Regrow, Study Finds: A ray of hope for the reversal of an ominous trend," by Elisabeth Rosenthal, New York Times, 14 November 2006, p. A3.

A large and growing number of countries are reversing the long-standing trend toward destruction of their forests...

Twenty years ago most scientists believed that deforestation was an inexorable result of industrialization and that the earth would soon be virtually denuded of trees.

The scientists of this new study say "their study suggests that environmental damage can be reversed with a combination of policy and luck."

Yes, that seems like a wise prescription: government regulation and "luck."

Here's the better and less naive reason why forests recover, as the authors of this study admit:

The reversal is partly a result of social changes that occur as countries develop and become wealthier. For example, as rural dwellers move to the cities there are fewer people in the countryside to cut down trees for uses like heating and building.

But ask yourself: do you think any such policies arise in countries where economies are not expanding? So which seems more likely: governments taking advantage of rising tides to better deal with externalities or somehow environmental policies triggering economic growth?

When people are hungry and cold, they do what they want to the environment. When they're not, they begin to care about stuff besides survival, like the quality and length of their lives.

And no, giving these people environmentally-friendly micro-economies that have them making trinkets and souvenirs and lots of other little stuff doesn't answer the mail. You get widespread social changes of this sort with serious development that triggers rural to urban migrations of the sort I wrote about in BFA in describing the journey from the Gap to the Core.

ARTICLE: "A Decline in Foreign Students Is Reversed: More Are Coming to U.S.; More Americans Are Going Abroad," by Karen W. Arenson, New York Times, 13 November 2006, p. A19.

ARTICLE: "A Tongan War Dance Enlivens Football In Euless, Texas: High-School Players' Ritual Jazzes Local Polynesians; Everybody Does the Haka," by J. Lynn Lunsford, Wall Street Journal, 16 November 2006, p. A1.

How can America keep defying the odds and the cultural biases that plague so many countries as they seek to assimilate new cultures? Just keep it a meritocracy, I guess.

You come, you play hard, and if you can teach some old dog a new trick? Then hell, step to the front of the line and lead the cheer yourself!

And don't be telling Muslims don't play football...

ARTICLE: "For Incoming Democrats, Populism Trumps Ideology: New Class Promises End to Partisan Tone," by Robin Toner and Kate Zernike, New York Times, 12 November 2006, p. A1.

COLUMN: "The Economic Perception Gap," by Jane Bryant Quinn, Newsweek, 20 November 2006, p. 59.

POLITICS & ECONOMICS: "China-Bashing Could Flourish Under Pelosi: New Speaker Has Long Fiercely Criticized Beijing's Human-Rights and Trade Practices," by Neil King, Jr., Wall Street Journal, 16 November 2006, p. A4.

ARTICLE: "A Setback For Vietnam Trade Bill," by Steven R. Weisman, New York Times, 14 November 2006, p. C1.

WIRE REPORT: "President Bush seeks to reassure Asian allies," Associated Press, 16 November 2006.

ARTICLE: "Citigroup Is Preferred Bidder for China Bank: As Beijing Curbs Direct Ownership Of Its Firms, Foreigners Are Given More Control in How They Are Run," by Kate Linebaugh and James T. Areddy, Wall Street Journal 16 November 2006, p. C1.

ARTICLE: "Leveling the Indian Playing Field? Some See Positive Societal Benefits in Western-Style Supermarkets," by Anand Giridharadas, New York Times, 14 November 2006, p. C3.

ARTICLE: "Islamic-Bond Market Becomes Global By Attracting Non-Muslim Borrowers," by Karen Lane, Wall Street Journal, 16 November 2006, p. C1.

ARTICLE: "Boy's Death at China Hospital Spurs Riot Over Care and Fees," by Joseph Kahn, New York Times, 13 November 2006, p. A6.

BOOK REVIEW: "Old World Order: This prescription for foreign policy sees advantage in America's cold-war era prudence and realism," by James Traub (Ethical Realism by Anatol Lieven and John Hulsman), New York Times Book Review, 12 November 2006, p. 50.

So when I see the new "non-ideology" of populism trumpeted, I get visions of Lou Dobbs ushering in the next wave of Democrats-as-self-destructive know-nothings on economics and trade, which ends up damaging our nation's political and military connectivity with the rest of the world by emphasizing an America-first mindset that's just socio-economic unilateralism displacing a previous wave of pol-mil unilateralism.

In reality, the former has far greater potential to harm globalization's advance than the latter, because the overzealous Leviathan is a known problem that can be balanced by the rest of the Core, whereas the protectionist America can easily trigger an every-nation-for-itself free-for-all that introduces great uncertainty (not to mention massive inefficiency) in the global economy.

People are simply feeling more exposed on an individual basis, as author Jacob Hacker argues in his The Great Risk Shift, so like anybody who's scared, they want to socialize the problem by pushing it back on the government to solve. On certain issues this makes sense, but when the mindset takes hold, it usually extends itself to illogical extremes, or basically making all this uncertainty and perceived rising risk the fault of "those people" (usually outsiders who've snuck in and "unfair" trade partners who "need to be taught a lesson" of the Smoot-Hawley sort--or is it of the Schumer-Graham sort?).

Pelosi could be a real disaster in this regard. As soon as I see her saying she'll represent the nation and not just her district, I feel like she's spinning me. I don't think she'll change her partisan ways whatsoever. None of the previous other speakers since the Cold War's end have done anything but treat the job as their own personal platform, so why should I suspect a life-long politician (bred from birth) to be any different?

Yes, yes, let's let San Fran's Chinatown run our policy with China. Gotta be better than Taipei, right?

So we get early signs on what the Dems will be like on trade. Vietnam's MFN slam dunk? Why move on that when we can send Bush to Asia looking goofy without this treaty in hand? I mean, score any point you can whenever you can.

Clearly, there's no sense that more economic connectivity is doing God's work for us around the planet, opening up previously disconnected economies and introducing economic efficiencies that present previously economically disenfranchised populations with new opportunities for the sort of social changes that actually get you pluralism in the end, ending the restrictive caste systems of the past.

China lets Western banks drive the process of financial reform in their own economy. Think a 27-percent tarrif on Chinese imports would do a better job?

India's new grocery stores (Western-style) drive profound change in their ag sector. Think keeping U.S. ag subsidies high in the Doha Round will get us the world we want?

Hell, when U.S. businesses find better debt financing abroad with Islamic bonds, do you feel like we're "funding both sides in this terror war" or do you see some larger process of connectivity at work?

And yes, when the domestic political change is triggered overseas, it will often look quite ugly at first: typically a tragedy leading to some new law. But look back over our own history and tell me it was much different.

The necons' push for democracy is now seen as too much too fast for the Gap, but what is proposed in its place? A "great capitalist peace"? You mean we let economic connectivity come first and expect political change to follow?

Good God! Sounds like the Chinese model yielding the American model. What a thought!

So how about a "populism" that's more than just taking care of our own while pretending that's building a better world or crafting a more resilient and capable America down the road. We wouldn't have to call it "globalism" or "realism" or anything really. Maybe we'd just call it Maslow's hierarchy of needs and let it go at that.

POST: MAINSTREAMING THE GOSPEL OF RESILIENCE

ARTICLE: "DOD, State Dept. Eye Joint 'Hub' For Stability Operations, Irregular War", By Sebastian Sprenger, Inside The Pentagon, November 16, 2006

Defense and State department officials are seeking funds for a [Center for Complex Operations] charged with synchronizing military and civilian efforts to rebuild troubled states and fight unconventional wars...

The U.S. Agency for International Development also could commit funds for the center...

The new organization would implement the recommendation of two Pentagon policy documents -- Directive 3000 on stability operations and the classified 2006 Quadrennial Defense Review execution roadmap on irregular warfare -- to stand up centers of excellence for these mission areas.

The Center for Complex Operations would be a “hub” for integrating existing training, education, research and lessons-learned efforts throughout a stability operations and irregular warfare “consortium”...

Last November, [Deputy Defense Secretary Gordon] England, who at the time was acting deputy defense secretary, issued Directive 3000, which says stability operations are just as important as traditional combat missions. The guidance document assigned a wide range of responsibilities across DOD to bolster the military’s ability to establish and maintain order in troubled regions and to support other government agencies in rebuilding war-torn countries (ITP, Dec. 8, 2005, p3; Oct. 27, 2005, p3; and July 7, 2005, p1)...

In particular, “severe shortcomings” persist in DOD’s stability operations “capacity” and its planning, information sharing and intelligence capabilities...

Also, civilian agencies have made little progress in bolstering their capabilities to conduct such operations, leaving a “huge gap in essential skills and resources for years, if not decades, to come”

Encouraging news. Money is small, but fact that all three D's (defense, diplomacy, development) involved is an indicator of future evolution. Also good is notion that home would be neutral party like USIP. I can see buddy Patrick Cronin being its first director.

All in all, a sign of the SysAdmin's bureaucratic emergence, though I assume "false pregnancies" are inevitable.

Still, do you think this place would be interested in exploring Development-in-a-Box?

Thanks to the USTRANSCOM officer who sent this in.

ARTICLE: "Iraq's new blueprint" by Greg Grant, Army Times, October 23rd, 2006, page 26

The solution could leave the services divided into two armies - one with troops trained for high-intensity warfare and another for irregular warfare.

Every breath, every move can be watched

George Orwell had it completely wrong: ubiquitous sensing technology won't be the dictator's tool for enslaving ordinary citizens. Rather, it'll give open societies the capacity for serious resilience in an increasingly connected world where danger knows no boundaries.

We're standing on the edge of a technological revolution that will provide us with everything we need to defeat transnational terrorism in this so-called Long War, and no, it won't be some secret "government project." Instead, this revolution in capabilities will be driven primarily by the private sector's response to the growing desire of average citizens for hyper-connected lives.

Every breath you take, every move you make ... can be watched all right.

George Orwell had it completely wrong: ubiquitous sensing technology won't be the dictator's tool for enslaving ordinary citizens. Rather, it will give open societies the capacity for serious resilience in an increasingly connected world where danger knows no boundaries.

We're standing on the edge of a technological revolution that will provide us with everything we need to defeat transnational terrorism in this so-called Long War, and no, it won't be some secret "government project." Instead, this revolution in capabilities will be driven primarily by the private sector's response to the growing desire of average citizens for hyper-connected lives.

Today it's MySpace and YouTube, where young people share their most intimate details with the world, but tomorrow it will be the real-time sharing of sensor data -- in effect, linking your desires to your movement.

We've gotten early glimpses of this technology all around us, such as Amazon remembering what type of books you like and pushing similar ones in your direction.

Then there's your car navigation system finding you that specialty grocery store just as you get off the interstate near grandmother's house. So not only does Little Red Riding Hood stay on track, she can basically forget about lugging that basket.

But what if you were willing to share more than just your location? What if MySpace becomes AnySpace?

Then it will be that salesperson in store B who walks up to you unprompted with a tie that matches perfectly the shirt you just bought down the street in Store A. He'll also know you prefer gold cuff links in geometric shapes.

How? Your cell phone will announce your arrival and allow the store to pull up all your preferences and recent purchases. So yeah, those cuff links will be on sale, but only for you, and only in that store, and only for the next 15 minutes.

Years off? Hardly. You can get this service right now in the right stores in Singapore.

But it won't just be young people driving this explosion of new sensor-location services. Our aging Boomer population will surely fuel its own revolution in elder care.

Say you have a heart condition. Today you might get it checked out every few weeks in your doctor's office. But why not wear a sensor that pushes your real-time heart rate over the Web to your medical provider? Why can't we all be "under a doctor's care" all the time?

I'm not talking some technological ball-and-chain here. Today's small subcutaneous implants become tomorrow's down-the-hatch pill that you swallow, sending thousands of nanosensors racing through your bloodstream.

Take two of these tonight and the doctor calls you in the morning!

I know, I know, it's scary stuff ... until it's your ticker that's not working right and you'd rather not spend the rest of your days in your living room recliner, afraid to go out. Ever watch a parent go through that? Want something better when your time comes?

Why stop there?

What if you had such biosensors spread throughout your population? Imagine how you could monitor the winter flu season?

Spread them among your agricultural livestock. What outbreaks might you prevent then?

Disperse them throughout your forests and rivers and lakes. Who knows what you could learn about global warming?

Security-wise, America can't possibly track for every low-probability high-impact event that transnational terrorists might toss our way. Similarly, we've got to stop closing barn doors after the cows have gone--as in, a terrorist plants a bomb in his shoe and from then on all passengers' shoes are X-rayed by airport security.

Trust me, Mr. Shoe Bomber could have shoved his explosives somewhere much worse. If he had, we'd all be removing more than just our shoes ....

Fast-forward a few years to when the United States is saturated with sensors and you begin to see the networking/computational possibilities: collect enough real-time data and your capacity to notice and thereby predict "suspicious behavior" grows exponentially. Soon, you're not just tracking for bombs but for bombers.

Want a world without secrets? Such transparency is coming faster than you think.

No, this development won't signal freedom's downfall. Instead, ubiquitous sense-think-and-respond networks will constitute the cornerstone of our society's resilience in this Long War against terrorism, because tomorrow's definition of deterrence will be, "anything the terrorists throw at us, we can counter faster."

Every time I go on C-SPAN, we pick up a cluster of ranters who flock to the site, spouting angry, accusatory and often incomprehensible arguments that the vast bulk of our readers find distracting, dull and demeaning to the site as a whole.

Sean (my webmaster) and I can spot
them a mile away. When they comment, their posts are often openly
criticized or summarily dissed by other commenters (which they
typically thrive upon). But the problem for these types is that, over
time, most people just tune them out as spammish background noise. That
truly pisses them off, typically pushing them to new lows in attempts
to regain attention.

Our challenge is that if we let them go on long enough, they demean the discourse like so much garbage piled up in the streets--in effect people stop wanting to drop by because the ambience has been so degraded. In the past, this is why I killed the comments function completely. When I decided to open them up a while back ago, I asked my webmaster (then Critt, now Sean) to review each comment and when people crossed our sense of the line, first we warn while deleting the offending column and then we ban the person outright if the behavior persists. Do something egregious enough and we just ban you straight off, but that's gotta be some truly weird behavior and frankly, that doesn't come out of the blue, so when it happens, it's typically that last-straw -type thing.

Recently, we've encountered such a problem with the commenter who goes by pseudonym "PenGun," whose comments have gotten weirder and more antagonistic over time.

Well, a couple of days ago he tried to post a comment in which he accused me of sending law enforcement officers with guns drawn to his house in some attempt to silence him (all claimed to be captured on his surveillance cameras, as he wasn't home). It's a weird, rather incoherent post that makes PenGun sound like he's living on some planet different from the rest of us. He ends the post by vaguely threatening retaliation against me/the site.

Sean asked me what to do. As this is about the 100th case I've encountered of truly off-the-deep-end behavior (and yes, they always start with threats of cyber retaliation, sometimes elevating to direct threats against me and/or my family), I told Sean to inform PenGun that his posting days are over.

PenGun sent his proposed comment directly to me. I did not respond. Early on (say, the first 50 or so), I would have responded directly to this guy, but I've found that if you engage, these types simply ratchet up the threats and bizarre language, so it goes nowhere and just drags it out. So now I just endure the threatening emails (sometimes phone calls) and make the necessary calls to police.

Obviously, one needs to take such threats seriously, because you never know which person will try whatever against your site--much less your spouse or kids.

Do I take a lot of precautions in this regard? You bet. And there's no need to make blustery threats beyond that.

But do I give in to such threats by allowing somebody back in the comments because he threatens--as PenGun does in tonight's follow-on email--to send me a photo of my house (apparently to strike fear in my heart that he can access my kids or wife and harm them at some time of his choosing---something he claims he did to one "Den Beste," scaring him immediately into closing his site) if I dare ignore him?

No, I do not.

For now, PenGun's threats are just words. Perhaps he will seek to crash this site. Perhaps he will try to intimidate me as he has threatened to do). If he does, I'll take the appropriate steps and contact the relevant authorities and proceed from that point. For now we document everything and hope it doesn't come to that, but as I noted before, this ain't my first time around the block on such threats and--clearly--once PenGun insinuates a capacity to harm my children, he certainly gets special attention.

What PenGun doesn't get, though, is my website as a venue for whatever paranoid delusions he may suffer--certainly not on the basis of terroristic threats against my loved ones.

PenGun claims to be out in the open, claiming his site to be http://carnagepro.com [copyrighted by C Carson].

Also, if anyone wants to offer any advice on how to handle situations and threats like this, please do the same. Naturally, I'd like to learn more about all of this so I can take any additional steps necessary to protect my family while hopefully defusing the situation as reasonably as possible.

Yes, it's a sad way to spend a Saturday night, but such are the perverted tactics of our latest online bully.

Again, not the first and definitely won't be the last.

ARTICLE: "A novel prescription: A big western company moves into China, but not for the usual reasons," The Economist, 11 November 2006, p. 72.

Novartis sinks a $100m research facility in Shanghai, despite China not being a global center for Big Pharma R&D and a weak environment for IP protection, and Shanghai offering no costs savings as a location.

Why?

China's got a lot of rising healthcare issues, especially cancer given all that pollution and smoking, so "China offers a huge pool of subjects for study and a promising market for any resulting treatments."

The New Core is most incentivized to push newer and riskier technologies because it's facing the most change over the shortest timeframe and thus experiences the most damaging churn--along with all that wealth creation.

Locate labor where the problems are greatest.

+ Let's give pride of place this week to the Web 3.0 discussion. Asia Logistics Wrap linked Steve on Web 3.0.

+ China Law Blog linked The taming of China proceeds on many fronts...

+ PurpleSlog linked North Viet Nam has won the war, and Saigon the peace!

+ field notes linked Tough for Rummy, just beginning for Rice.

+ Shrink Wrapped linked The charges of selling-out already arise with Baker on Iraq.

+ The D-Ring linked Tom as A book and a blog you must read.

EDITORIAL: The Army We Need, New York Times, November 19, 2006

Yes, I know that sounds both esooteric and slow, but in generational terms it's moving at some real speed.

No fun to hear (especially as we all worry about loved ones still over there or getting sent back), but Iraq is getting us the force we need.

The consensus builds. The SysAdmin is coming.

Thanks to Daniel Adkins for sending this to Tom and Clive W for sending it to Sean.

That was just painful to watch in person.

Favre was just old and hurt to play (he stunk up the place, missing receivers by wide margins), then got knocked out for the whole second half.

It felt most definitely like the beginning of the end.

POST: Feingold on the Long War

Thanks to Jim Zellmer (the author) for sending this in.

ARTICLE: The Forgotten Battleground, By Fareed Zakaria, Newsweek, November 27, 2006

Our main challenge isn't war, but spreading peace through economic connectivity leading to sustainable development, applying force judiciously to enable that spread by removing the biggest security roadblocks in the way.

Our resources are far greater than we realize and our enemies far less powerful than credited.

The question isn't, Can we still win if we "lose" Iraq for some period (as we'll lose countries routinely as they descend from fakeness to realness--e.g., pretend Iraq evolves into the three elements that may someday become a real Iraq or end up separating for far longer, coming back together only in some larger, more logically connected Gulf region), because there's never been any question we'll win the Long War. The only question is, How quickly do we recognize this new global correlation of forces, exploiting it for all it's worth while reconnecting our employment of military power to an enunciated grand strategy that the Core as a whole can sign up to?

We need to see the Core as a whole, not just recognizing the old traditional West as our only option. On a global level, all the long-term trends favor us. All we really have to do is not screw things up in the short term and build the logical alliances over the mid-term.

Yes, Bush is wasting precious time and global goodwill, but elements within our government and nation--as well as throughout the Core--actively plan America's rehabilitation following Bush's departure.

The Baker effort is just the tip of the iceberg.

Why will this happen?

Best and most trustworthy reason: simply too much money to be made.

Thanks to Thomas Mull for sending this in.

A good notion and perhaps an apt description by a commenter below.

At least, it matches my feeling...

So what does that tell me?

Time to reinvent. Books to peruse by year's end and then start working the Vol. III proposal over winter.

Today I was describing Vol. III to a Russian Orthodox nun after she took me on a tour of her chapel-in-the-woods. I said PNM was about how the world must change, that BFA was about how nations must change, and that Vol. III will be about how people must change (many fruitful long discussions with brother Jerome on that this weekend).

So I guess I will change in order to write Vol. III, and the blog will change too.

Lately I grow weary of blogging articles, feeling it all gets too repetitious. Instead I find reading history more interesting--especially U.S. history.

And I find myself wandering more in the posts, like they've become one giant pre-writing exercise.

But rather than get the blahs about it (everything else in my life is ab fab, with the core of the core [marriage] feeling more fantastic than ever--so how to complain?), I see for what it is: the great retreat and big think before the next explosion.

And no, I do not assume the next big explosion has to look anything like the last--a bad assumption to make.

The BFA brief still goes over like a bombshell, but I am getting a bit bored with it. No, bored is the wrong word. I'm getting too comfortable with it. At Harvard last week I found myself staring out the windows too much when I spoke--always a bad sign.

This is why I am excited about all these wargaming offers as of late, especially those involving flags. Can we pursue them all while working Enterra's steep trajectory?

Probably not.

And yet Steve and I take all these ideas and concepts and alliances and product offerings so seriously that we want to do our best possible effort in as many directions as possible. (No fear on losing focus, and the profit-motive clarifies the mind just enough by focusing us on results that matter--so no vague appeal to just the "marketplace of ideas," please.

These are the days to make such efforts, and we're at exactly the age to make such a push.

So Steve works his book and now I need to think a bit harder on mine. I need to stop bouncing rubble, heed the inner voice, and dig within.

Or maybe I'm just feeling very nostalgic, given a weekend that combined a trip to both the birthplace (Green Bay is my surrogate birthplace as little Chilton sits close by) and my hometown (Boscobel, where I picked up an old desk from my youth, one where I spent innumerable hours plotting my world-changing career--like that kid in the old Loony Tunes cartoons who constantly daydreams Mitty-like of ruling the world in many guises).

I drive away from Boscobel, as I have so many times before, and I feel that personally historic sense of re-entering my life yet again.

Where will it go this time?

It feels like a very long journey lies ahead, like I'm gone for good this time.

+ Chicago Daily Southtown picked up Tom's column again this week and titled it Big Brother watching you? It wouldn't be all bad.

+ Capitol Hill Blue published it as Learning to love Big Brother...and fight terrorism.

+ Rocklin and Roseville Today (CA) published it as Loving Big Brother.

+ And Huntington News (WV) picked it up also as Loving Big Brother, but they included Tom's original (Police-referencing title) 'Every breath you take, every move you make ... can be watched all right.'

ARTICLE: Army gives Rumsfeld Doctrine a rewrite, By Julian E. Barnes, Los Angeles Times,
November 20, 2006.

Frankly, it was the main pretext for writing The Pentagon's New Map.

So don't let this change pass without notice. Don't let it seem blase or "too little, too late."

For it is a sea change that many have fought against their entire careers--and continue to fight vociferously to this day.

But so many lives depend on this change--some ours but countless more theirs.

And if we want that sort of shrink-the-Gap peace, these must become our new calculations and our renewed sense of love for our fellow humans.

Thanks to James Miller and Ben Meier for sending this in.

ARTICLE: Jihadis and whores, by Spengler, Asia Times Online

I also wholly disagree with Spengler's summary (and logically disconnected) conclusion that Iran's national self-suicide rules out either negotiation or the follow-on soft kill strategy.

Instead, I say cue up Roberta Flack and let's get Iran back to having--and wanting--their babies.

And the song we use is connectivity, just like we killed the USSR softly.

Remember when I wrote about drunkenly crying myself to sleep one darkless summer night in Leningrad in 1985?

Well, this was the great downer vibe I picked up from both old (drinking and smoking themselves quite knowingly to death) and young (that desperate female desire to catch a man who would take them away from all this going-nowhere-ness that I encountered in my depressed and isolated rural hometown growing up was nothing compared to the sad hunger you saw in the eyes of Russian girls who so desperately wanted some American student to fall in love with them tonight so that the fabled dream of escape might come true).

Spengler thus conflates his own fears with Iran's, confusing the Core's vitality and optimism with the Gap's fear and loathing.

We are not the disease but the cure.

Still, one of the most amazingly good columns I've ever read. Seriously, I've never read so much good stuff as I have in the last six months. Out of our fears, new imagination is born (now if we can only get that into the White House).

Compare that to what's coming out of Iran...

Thanks to TM Lutas for sending this in.

ARTICLE: What Makes a Muslim Radical?, by John L. Esposito, Dalia Mogahed, Foreign Policy Web Exclusive

And yet it misleads by focusing so much on foot soldiers and acting as though decoding their enlistment decision reveals all.

I mean, would similar analysis of our soldiers tell you everything you'd need to know about what's right and wrong with America?

Frankly, we learn more about this struggle by how they fight than why they fight--much less who fights.

Still, the anaysis (based on polls) hits it on the head regarding motivation: this is all about fear of losing control and--conversely--the perceived ceding of control to others.

So yeah, as globalization encroaches on these traditional societies and as--in natural, yin-yang response--"globalised Islam" (Olivier Roy's apt term) encroaches upon the Core (especially freaking-out Europe), each side fears--in mirror-image fashion--a loss of control, which at its root constitutes the far more dreaded fear of loss of identity (meaning Fukuyama's "wars of the spirit" still explains far more than Huntington's simplistic "clash").

Thanks to Joseph for sending this in.

ARTICLE: Flaws Cited in Effort To Train Iraqi Forces: U.S. Officers Roundly Criticize Program, By Thomas E. Ricks, Washington Post, November 21, 2006; Page A01

The two Yingling quotes sum up the piece (and the problem) nicely:

Lt. Col. Paul Yingling, a staff officer with the 3rd Armored Cavalry Regiment in Iraq in 2005 and 2006 who worked with Iraqi units, came away thinking that the Army fundamentally is not geared to the task of helping the advisory effort.

"The thing the Army institutionally is still struggling to learn is that the most important thing we do in counterinsurgency is building host-nation institutions," he told the interviewers, "yet all our organizations are designed around the least important line of operations: combat operations."

...

"Don't train on finding the enemy," he said. "Train on finding your friends, and they will help you find your enemy. . . . Once you find your friends, finding the enemy is easy."

The more I listen to XM in the car, the more I tune in "World" music and thus the more I listen to French artists who mash up various styles very nicely with a bent toward techno (a weakness of mine going back to early Kraftwerk--everybody's Daddy, including Madonna's).

Plus, French is hard to beat as a lyric delivery method.

Plus, quite frankly, as my first foreign affair (before Romanian, German and Russian), it reminds me of my youth in a harmless fashion--you know, before I read "mode" and only thought "ice cream."

SPECIAL REPORT: Germany's place in the world: Merkel as a world star, The Economist, November 16th, 2006

Thanks to Maany Peyvan for sending this in.

Enmeshed with family. Everyone feeling good. Life and work have never been better, and one cannot say that every year, but this one has been incredibly special in so many ways.

Thanks so much for all the comments and advice. This blog has become such a super-empowering tool for me, making all of you part of this effort that has come to define my career and--by extension--my fantastic partnership with Steve DeAngelis and Enterra.

When life is this good, you need to give thanks, and you all have mine for all the amazing effort you--the readers--have put into this discussion space.

Enjoy the day and your families.

MEDIA SEGMENT: Peace Corps with guns, Anderson Cooper, 360 tonite, Nov. 22, 06.

Crazy then, more plausible now.

Thanks to Dan Hare for sending this in.

ARTICLE: Indian Schools Help Students Connect With Their Culture: Tradition, Not Assimilation, A Growing Trend Across U.S., By Robert Gutsche Jr., Washington Post, November 23, 2006; Page A03

In the right political mix, which America approximates better than anybody, you always see plenty of both, especially when we're processing a high amount of recent immigrants.

As for this story, obviously tilted for the holidays, I see a lot to be grateful for: coming to America has never meant abandoning tradition. But it's always been a place that's proven the reality that tradition never stands still and is constantly remade by new generations (like the Chinese getting all jacked in China over Halloween and St. Valentine's Day.

Bottom line being: in an increasingly individualistic world, everyone's looking for any excuse for communal experiences.

Does that desire threaten anybody's social fabric?

Not if freedom of religion exists, meaning you go from or stay with religion as you choose. So long as that rule set remains strong, then access to and freedom from tradition--as desired--remains solid and the main social fabric (that social sense that this is a great place to live) remains in tact.

Just enough freedom yielding just enough tradition yielding just enough social cohesion--a rule set worth defending and remembering today.

OPINION: On negotiating with Tehran, by Henry A. Kissinger, International Herald Tribune, November 23, 2006

No, this forum won't magically make our rapid departure from Iraq possible, and no, it won't stop Iran from getting the bomb. Keep those two realities firmly in your head: we won't be leaving Iraq (even though our role and numbers will change) and Iran will be getting the bomb.

The regional forum concept is not designed for magical outcomes, but slowly building the collective will for permanent security regimes to arise in the region that settle the endemic conflicts and allow enough political stability for economic connectivity to ensue, which in turn will fuel social change already underway and political change that seethes just below the surface (the great fears of the despots).

In many ways, the Big Bang strategy continues to work by playing a forcing function: forcing the emergence of negotiations, deals, fora, etc. that are required for any sort of security advance in the region. If Iraq had gone well, dictators quaking in their boots would have moved in this direction out of fear. As Iraq goes badly, dictators quaking in their boots are moving in this direction out of fear. At this minimum, the Big Bang was always going to work: the only question was how much pain was going to be involved and what threat that pain would pose to America's will to continue (which, for now, holds up incredibly well--unless I'm missing the mass demonstrations in the streets and the constitutional crisis in DC).

Realism is just idealism stretched over time. It is a belief in inevitabilities that prefers inaction to action and cynicism to morality. But such delays do not constitute diversions much less defeats.

Remember what Zhou Enlai said about the French Revolution and decide which side of history you want to be on: those who connect to freedom or those who disconnect to achieve tyranny.

To me, the outcome will never be in doubt, just the timing.

Thanks to TurcoPundit for sending this in.

ARTICLE: China Filling Void Left by West in U.N., By Colum Lynch, Washington Post, November 24, 2006; Page A12

My prediction: within a generation China consistently provides more peacekeepers globally than any nation in the world.

Locate labor where the problem is, I say, which is why I prefer to deal in inevitabilities rather than possibilities. Just follow the money, and the energy, and the demographics, and the security, and spotting logical future pathways for the planet isn't all that hard, with the big questions being speed of technology and strength of will.

Will Democrats build bridges or walls?

Globalization is more domestic policy than foreign policy because, when America connects to the world outside, that outside world inevitably penetrates our communities, our workplaces, our homes. This recent election had a lot to do with modulating America's connectivity to the world, whether we're talking immigration, trade or Iraq.

The question for ruling Democrats is: Will they build bridges or will they build walls?

There are really two types of people in this world - those who believe there are two types of people in this world and those who do not. I fall into the former category.

+ China Law Blog linked Novartis to China: simply brilliant.

+ Garrick Van Buren linked Connect to freedom or not?

+ So did Austin Centrist.

+ Outside the Beltway linked Don't let this change pass without notice.

+ Chairman Ku is reading PNM.

+ ZenPundit linked today's column Will Democrats build bridges or walls?

+ Global Cop linked "Find your friends".

Tom got this email and wanted to pass it on to you:

REMINDER ...11 days from today, all cell phone numbers are being released to telemarketing companies and you will start to receive sale calls.

YOU WILL BE CHARGED FOR THESE CALLS

To prevent this, call the following number from your cell phone: 888-382-1222 . It is the National DO NOT CALL list. It will only take a minute of your time. It blocks your number for five (5) years.

You must call from the cell phone number you are wanting to have blocked. You cannot call from a different phone number. HELP OTHERS BY PASSING THIS ON TO ALL YOUR FRIENDS OR GO TO: www.donotcall.gov

Flurry of email and comments (well, 3 so far), that inform me that this is an urban legend. Heck, the linked website itself even debunks it. And an FTC page that quotes the very email we posted.

Thanks to Eric Allison, Keith Mitchell, Al Wilson, and those of you yet to come ;-)

SPECIAL REPORT: "Who Lost Iraq? Success Has Many Fathers. The Mess in Baghdad Has a Lot More," by Chitra Ragavan, U.S. News & World Report, 27 November 2006, p. 38.

OP-ED: "Right Vision, Wrong Policy," by Jim Hoagland, The Washington Post National Weekly Edition, 20-26 November 2006, p. 5.

Rice is said to be too close to Bush. Granted.

Rice is said to have been too much in favor of the war so as to abdicate her "impartial broker" role. Bullshit.

Again, we see the problem of calling everything "the war."

Rice's support for the war wasn't the problem. It just reflected her general inability to think outside her boss' box.

The real problem with Rice is that she came from the Brent Scowcroft school of realism and national security advising. After Iran-Contra, the Brent Scowcroft school of national security advising came into vogue: the national security adviser and the NSC staff became super-apolitical. Instead of being the government-wide advocator of national security policy and an active player in its own right, the NSC and its boss became foreign policy super-clerk to the president, the main job being protecting POTUS's ass from any blame.

This is essentially the Scowcroft model, and it reflected his realist take on things: no advocacy and no idealism from the NSC. It doesn't lead, it merely coordinates.

That became the preferred mode post-Iran-Contra, and it survived the Bush 41 administration nicely, segueing into the emasculated NSC of the Clinton years, when the NEC (national economic council) was actually more powerful because Rubin at Treasury topped any of the unmemorables at Defense.

When Rice came in with George, the NSC embraced the Scowcroft "we're-just-here-on-background" model. The staff I interacted with were all the same. I called them the "Joe Fridays." They'd come, they'd take notes, and that was it. They had no ideology to speak of. They were responsible for nothing. They just coordinated.

We won in Iraq--the war, that is.

What we continue to lose in Iraq in the peace. That loss occurs primarily because we're under-allied and under-coordinated interagency-wise. You place that blame on State and NSC. Rice ran NSC through the disastrous "lost year" following the invasion's successful conclusion (when Saddam's regime fell). Rice has been in charge of State for the last two years, during which our under-allied approach has proven quite isolating for us and quite invigorating for the insurgency and now sectarian warriors.

How so?

A big allied presence says to all, "This thing is happening. It's inevitable. Get used to it."

A narrow, U.S.-heavy presence says, "Just kill enough people and especially American troops to drive off the weak-willed U.S. Government."

Rice was in charge of the interagency process when it could make or break our effort. And it was broken on her watch.

Rice has been in charge (following perhaps the biggest do-nothing SECSTATE we've ever had in Colin Powell) of State and the alliance process during the past two years and all we've got to show for it is this unimaginative strategy of trying to isolate Iran--that's it. We're losing allies, adding no new ones, and picking new fights and bolstering old enemies in the very region we're now--out of desperation and incompetence in our nation-building effort in Iraq--trying to stabilize.

And more than anyone else in this administration we've got Rice and her minimalistic take on her jobs to thank for this mess. Just-the-facts-ma'am at NSC followed by talking-points diplomacy and (gasp!) yet another axis of evil member to isolate and contain (Why not take such a realist tack? Look what the original Realist approach on Iraq has gotten us over the years: build him up vis-a-vis Iran, then kick him out of Kuwait but don't finish the job so we can isolate him with no-flies and sanctions, only to finally go in again and get stuck with a mess that--of course--only the Realists can save us from today!).

I am being serious in this charge. Blaming Rummy for being Rummy or Wolfowitz and Feith for being Neocons is basically a cop-out. Yes, Powell was weak at SECSTATE, but the great balancer then was supposed to be Rice and the great balancer today is supposed to be Rice (her minion runs NSC in her wake). Blaming the strong for the performances of the weak is great commentary if you can get it on TV, but it adds nothing to knowledge.

But in the end, Rice was completely inconsequential. She was perfect for the job at NSC because she wouldn't do anything but coordinate, leaving the Cheney-Rumsfeld axis to dominate, and Bush defers to Cheney on foreign policy.

I know, I know. It's easy to pin it all on Cheney, but it's a good place to start. And it's not that I dislike Cheney's thinking much, because his realism is just realism on speed (he sees the inevitable and wants it done today!). He's the realist who's been mugged and decided that if it takes that long, he'll be an idealist in the short run.

I don't mind Cheney so much. I just wish he hadn't been elected POTUS as far as our foreign policy is concerned.

The Realist school of limited regrets is what got us the Middle East we have today, and their solution will be to simply recreate the same dynamics that worked so well in the past: Sunni dictators + isolate Iran + push for peace between Israel and the Palestinians. Gosh, that's all worked so well in the past that I'm sure it'll do the trick this time.

I love Hoagland's acerbic take on it all:

History's seemingly unlimited store of irony now makes Bush 43 the evident instrument of the resurgence of the "realist" school of foreign policy so beloved of Bush 41 and so regularly scorned by this president--until he turned to it for salvation in Iraq and elsewhere.

Many will revel in this turn, and there is rough familial justice at work: Only the incompetence and discord of the past three years could cause reasonable people to welcome back with applause policymakers who failed to anticipate and then opposed the breakup of the Soviet Union; who were not realistic enough to see, much less prevent, the Balkans from plunging into flames; and who "coddled dictators from Beijing to Baghdad," as the Democrats once accurately described the handiwork of Brent Scowcroft, Bob Gates and Jim Baker under Bush 41.

So hold the champagne and cheers for the return of "realism," a word that has even less meaning than most of the labels that politicians, journalists and academics attach to schools of foreign policy. It is too often a euphemism for cynicism, for playing for time and for passing up big opportunities that carry high risks and potentially great rewards. Bush 43 took such a risk in Iraq and now pays the price for failing to develop anything resembling a Plan B.

Rice is Scowcroft's protegee all right and she's got his lack of strategic imagination down pat.

But the good news is that what Baker and Hamilton will likely offer should fit the bill rather nicely. According to Hoagland:

Baker-Hamilton will certainly recommend that the United States urgently develop the regional and international structures to guide change that Bush has neglected, and the president must act on that advice.

But Bush's going on the defensive does not mean that the radical positive changes he had hoped for cannot come about on their own, even if on a different timetable and with much greater costs than he ever imagined. True realism lies in recognizing that his diagnosis of a crumbling order in the Middle East was sound, even if his prescriptions were not.

And again, for that we have the great protege of the uber-realist most to thank.

Realism is just idealism stretched over time. In the end, Bush will be judged as a very realistic president, just one surrounded by weak talent.

ARTICLE: Why the U.S. Loses ‘Small Wars’, By Larry Kahaner, History News Network, 11-27-06

I especially like the USMC's Small Wars Center of Excellence's calling for simpler weapons and more complex soldiers.

But I think the author's only looking at the post-colonial backside in his summary judgment. Truth is, the West has done plenty well on small wars, so long as the goal is political/economic integration.

Wasn't the American West won by a simple weapon?

Or did that gun just do the killing and was the real victory found in the subsequent integration?

What have we integrated in Iraq? Not much. So what should we expect to win?

Not much.

Thanks to Michael Alatorre for sending this in.

[Editor's note: Mark's linking this article, too.]

ARTICLE: Velvet Revolution in Iran?, by Martin Beck Matuštík, Logos Journal

We only get downside coverage of Iran, much like with the old USSR, which was why its collapse was so surprising.

I like the piece's comparison to late Soviet history. There is the showy totalitarianism of Stalin and then there was the tired authoritarianism of Brezhnev. Iran is clearly on the backside of that trajectory, but we play it like it's on the upside, despite all of the regime's sad failures at both home and abroad.

Thanks to Lexington Green for sending this in.

POST: The 751 No-Go Zones of France, Daniel Pipes' Weblog, November 14, 2006

The unreal part would seem to be France apparently giving up on integrating Muslims--at least in a geographic sense.

One foresees a France of multiple citizenships.

One thing for an abstraction called the "United States." Another thing for the homeland of the French.

Thanks to Dan Hare for sending this in.

BOOK: Can Might Make Rights? Building the Rule of Law after Military Interventions, By Jane Stromseth et al., Cambridge University Press, September 2006.

If this argument doesn't fit the notion that idealism is just impatient realism, then I don't know what does. The authors see long-term inevitabilities and strive to deal with them pro-actively, instead of sitting back and letting history come to them at its own pace--the essence of realism.

Whether you're interested in buying the book, read this interesting (and brutally honest in its depiction of how the book was shaped by recent events) book description.

Thanks to Lexington Green for sending this in.

Got a nice email from guy about "Loving Big Brother" column and he asks what will protect us here in the States from all this surveillance.

I answer innocently enough, "rule of law." You know, that whole Constitution thing.

So he comes back in another email with slavery and asks where we'd be if the South had all these sensors way back when. They would have been able to track slaves ubiquitously, thus preserving the scourge of slavery to this day!

Hmmmmm.

So I replied back, "And what if Hitler had possessed an army of invisible robots? Then where would we be today?"

There is just no pleasing some people.

Comment from irate lady at Capitol Hill Blue posting of last week's column on the Democrats has her accusing me of just "believing" that globalization has lifted hundreds of millions out of poverty in recent decades. Of course, I might cite the World Bank's stats, but everyone knows they--like me--are just a tool of the Cheney-ites who want to strip the world's resources for the gain of the rich few.

She also includes in her tirade that I probably never have even dared to vote Democrat!

I'd like to give her a shhhhmoke and a pancake ....

Just finished this week's column and submitted. It is about the folly of the Iran-centric policy still being pursued by the Bush-Cheney team.

Damn Cheney-ites like me are always turning on their masters!

Call from agency today saying Peking U Press is deciding they won't publish PNM even with the more extensive cuts. Still too hot, they say.

Magically, within hours, news arrives that another publishing house in China wants to publish PNM. New advance, same print run of 5k, not sure yet on whether PUP's original translation can be transferred or what the cuts will be with this new publisher, about which little is known.

I was expecting this outcome based on my past two trips to Beijing, and welcome the development. Once this is finally settled and I've scored the second great CBL edition (character-based language), I expect some movement on Blueprint.

Strangely enough, despite all the interest in my work from the South Korean media, no real offers to do a Korean version, which is sad. I'm getting the "C" and I've already got the "J" of CJK (the three great CBLs), but I don't believe I'll ever get that "K."

ARTICLE: Pope Backs Turkey’s Bid to Join European Union, By IAN FISHER and SABRINA TAVERNISE, New York Times, November 29, 2006

Yes, the position-reversal will be interpreted by some as a means of dampening recent Islamic blowback at his attempts at dialogue, but that's the whole purpose of such strategic conversation: give-and-take designed to move the pile.

Benedict is learning how to be the right man at the right time and place, so this is encouraging.

Expressed desire to publish PNM exactly as is, with no cuts.

Assuming this actually happens, I am spared the compromise.

Obvious next question is, who is this mysterious China mainland publishing house?

WASHINGTON WHISPERS: "Two Onetime Arkansans for '08?" by Dan Gilgoff, U.S. News & World Report, 4 December 2006, p. 16.

This is the part of the entry that caught my eye:

The former NATO commander has been promoting a federal "Department of Failed States" or "Department of Preventive Diplomacy" to head off "impending conflict" around the globe and make friends abroad. "Respect is the starting point for all human interaction."

ARTICLE: "Kremlin Inc. Gobbles Up Industries: Critics say the Russian government uses takeover to do its political business," by Peter Finn, The Washington Post National Weekly Edition, 27 November-3 December 2006, p. 17.

So Morgan bought up, in one example, lots of small railroad companies in order to create a big one. He repeated this pattern many times. This brutal rolling-up process was known in those years as "Morganizing" an industry.

Morgan's justifications remind me of those we hear coming out of Putin's Kremlin. We are told that Russia needs big companies in key industries, otherwise it won't be able to compete globally.

Part of Putin's justifications include, as the story argues, a need to self-correct the sort of goofy-ass privatization process that Russia suffered in the early 1990s. Every Russian I knew felt it was a huge rip-off, enriching the new boyars and doing little to make life better in Russia. The shift to the gangster-style capitalism was also extremely disorienting for a public long used to something far more orderly (the Soviet Union is the only country where I've ever come close to being arrested: once for jaywalking and once for frisbee).

I buy the latter justification to a certain extent, but I really think the Morganizing rationale is closer to the mark. I think Putin and the power guys feel like Russia needs to catch up big-time to a globalization process that favors the largest corporations with the most global reach, and are working to Putinize various prized industries to create just such a roster.

The problem, of course, is the heavy state involvement in these entities, leading to a pol-biz overlap of the sort that eventually collapsed in the U.S. across a series of panics and scandals and other skullduggery that eventually led to the social reform movement that peaked with TR's presidency, only to be revived again and again (always in more muted forms) as the 20th century progressed.

Not a fun trajectory to watch, but one easily predicted. Not a hard call. When faced with the competitive landscape of Globalization IV, Russia decided to come back as fast as possible using methods that have worked for others in history, taking advantage of what was there on the table to get the ball rolling. Beyond that, the Kremlin uses its existing relationships around the world to keep itself relevant diplomatically, but no attempts at a military profile beyond its accepted boundaries (the "near abroad" that no other great power particularly wants to run).

I expect this process to go on for quite some time. A significant period of stability and income growth will be required before the questions get asked, much less the reforms begin.

Meanwhile, do I still include Russia in the Core? Yes. My underlying argument on Core v. Gap is: Can I imagine America intervening within its borders any time soon under any un-fantastic circumstances? And the answer is, No.

Russia may not be everyone's cup of tea, but it's not a geo-strategic or military problem for the U.S. anymore, unlike the long period of the Cold War.

The Borders. Was nice to see so many in the store. It was in the "store best sellers" section.

Clerk (four years in Army) said he really loved it, which was an added treat.

ARTICLE: "Doctor Hopes Spinal Therapy Gets China Trial," by Mei Fong and Nicholas Zamiska, Wall Street Journal, 28 November 2006, p. B1.

ARTICLE: "How China's 3G Telecom Initiative Could Work Against Western Firms," by Li Yuan, Wall Street Journal, 28 November 2006, p. C1.

ARTICLE: "Wal-Mart to Enter India in Venture: Bharti Deal Gives Retailer Access to Consumer Frenzy As U.S. Sales Growth Slows," by Eric Bellman and Kris Hudson, Wall Street Journal, 28 November 2006, p. A3.

That alone is a new rule set, suggesting new possibilities that America can feed and benefit from but cannot exactly control.

Naturally, China sees competitive advantages in this trajectory, so what we see the Chinese trying to do in 3G cellphone technology is something we'll see time and time again. Leapfrogging technology just isn't about speeding things up. It's also a chance to move up dramatically in the race.

But yes, Western corporations will keep entering such New Core markets, because, as the India story's subtitle suggests, there's just too much of a potential profit delta to ignore. I mean, you want some of that "consumer frenzy" or do you want to try to squeeze it all out of America alone?

On one side we've got talking-points Condi keeping to her script and that bold, visionary leader Colin Powell who now says he wouldn't be afraid to call Iraq a "civil war" if he was still SECSTATE (ooh! another classic example of Powell throwing all caution to the wind!). I guess if you give him a big enough speaking fee he gives you his real opinion as opposed to whatever he peddled as SECSTATE.

On the other side we've got Ahmadinejad and his letters (quick, somebody get Bernard Lewis to check the historical calendar!) that are too goofy for Bush to answer (apparently) but somehow end up kicking our ass in the propaganda war.

On one side we've got Steven Hadley leaking bad-mouthing memos on Iraq's PM just as Bush gets ready to summit with him. Nice.

On the other side we've got Sadr pulling his support from the government at just the right movement to scuttle tonight's planned meeting between Bush and Maliki.

Man, has this administration fallen and it can't get up?

And yeah, I'm talking about the Bushies, not Maliki's government.

No wonder Al Gore's getting so pissed off! This is just embarrassing.

Kerry had a great line tonight on Larry King: "I blew a joke, but these guys blew a war."

Seriously, how could a Kerry Administration possibly have done a worse job over the past two years?

+ Scripps Howard

+ Capitol Hill Blue

+ Rocklin and Roselin Today

+ Times Record News

+ Tri-City Herald

+ The Modesto Bee

+ The News and Observer

+ Enquirer Herald

+ The Press of Atlantic City