A System That Needs to Be Administered

Dateline: Arlington VA, the Crowne Plaza, 6 April.

Nice long chat with my buddy Mark Warren of Esquire last night: he is close to being done editing my article for him for the June issue (appearing in early May) thatóin effectórevisits the Pentagonís New Map a year later from the perspective of how things are going in Iraq. To my surprise but immediate approval, he titles it ìThe Leviathan.î An illustration will accompany the article. Now I just have to make sure he mentions the book title somewhere prominent Ö.

In DC area today between talks, yesterday being first-ever short-course on Network-Centric Operations to a slew of NATO defense planners and tomorrow being a conference of Association For Electronic Integration (defense contractors). So I do breakfast with mentor and fellow-futurist John Petersen of The Arlington Institute (a rare positive thinker about the future) and lunch with mentor and former boss at Center for Naval Analyses, Hank Gaffney, skeptic among skeptics.

What struck me most about briefing all those Europeans yesterday is how they naturally grabbed onto my notion that the Defense Department is bifurcating and will continue to bifurcate into what we had pre-WWII: a Department of War and a Department of Everything Else. The first is how you wage wars (what I call the Leviathan force) and the second is how you wage peace (what I call the System Admin force). I have an entire section of Chapter Six in the book that explores this ìback to the futureî outcome (remember, pre-WWII we had a Department of War and a Department of Navy).

Anyway, what attracted the Europeans most to this notion was that most of their ability to conduct military operations exists in that Sys Admin mode, or what the Pentagon derisively calls Military Operations Other Than War. Where the huge gap exists between their forces and ours is in their ability to wage high-end war, so simply hearing someone from DoD speak about the possibility of allies being able to offer specialized niche capabilities to either or both forces struck many of these officials as a serious breakthrough in mental models regarding the future of war. I canít believe Iím the only way in DoD talking this stuff, yet somehow this message resonates better than others, I think, because it is systematic in its approach to linking security and economics.

I have heard this notion of ìBoy, are we glad to finally hear the U.S. say something like this!î from a number of foreign military establishments in the past, in response to other things Iíve published, but these forces tended to be New Core powers like Australia or Brazil, who are eager and willing to see globalization as a system that needs to be administered toósecurity-wiseóin order to thrive. Thus they are moving toward national security paradigms that say, ìWhat threatens our country in terms of security is that which threatens our national economyís ability to maintain its connectivity to the global economy.î Nice, huh?

What amazed me about this interaction yesterday with the NATO people was how open the Europeans were to marrying up their capabilities for what I call the ìback-halfî force, or the one that would have/could have/should have done a better job of planning for and executing the occupation of Iraqóa situation that seems to grow worse with each day this week. That tells me that there are plenty of European officialsóat least in the security realmóthat understand the need for a new sort of military superpower, or the collective Sys Admin force that will only come about if the Pentagon begins seeding it today within its own ranks and creating the critical mass that tells potential allies: ìThis will be a winning hand if you join us.î

Now before the ìblack helicopter/one world governmentî crowd starts sending me emails again, let me remind you that if such a global force for peace emerges, it will still be the back-half in many crucial instances to the Leviathan force thatófranklyóonly America can and will maintain. So letís not surrender to the ìall-powerful UN just yetîódespite all those lovely references in the ìLeft Behindî apocalyptic religious thrillers series.

Besides telling me my book should appeal to European audiences, I came away from the workshop yesterday with an even stronger sense that if the U.S. would open itself up to new definitions of allies and coalitions (not just ìcome as you areî to war but ìcome when you canî to peacekeeping), we wouldnít find ourselves in the sort of mess we and a few of our closest military allies currently suffer in Iraq. Again, like the point I make in the Sunday Outlook piece for the Post (now firmly scheduled to appear, according to my editor there), there is no reason why we couldnít have internationalized the occupation effort from the start, if only we had more flexible definitions of coalitions (i.e., difference mixes needed for front-half [war waging] and back-half [peace making] portions), and less vindictiveness on the part of the Bush White House regarding who did or did not support us in the run-up to the war.

Since I am in DC today, I read the Post real-time, versus the week-late version I get mailed to me up in Newport, so todayís grab of news stories comes from yesterdayís and todayís Washington Post:

ìTransition Date Still Firm, President Says: Bush Is Calm in Reaction to Violenceî

by Dana Milbank and Mike Allen

ìProtests Unleashed by Cleric Mark a New Front in Warî

by Anthony Shadid and Sewell Chan

ì1,500-Mile Oil Pipeline Fading Fast For China: Japan Offers Russia An Alternative Routeî

by Peter S. Goodman

ìLuxury Electronics Power Japanís Recovery: New Factories Reflect High-End Focusî

by Anthony Faiola

ìFor Some Immigrants, a Balancing Act: Funds Sent to Needy Families Back Home Exact a Priceî

by Michelle Garcia

ìRussian Researcher Convicted of Spying: Defense Says Information Was Publicî

by Peter Baker