Dateline: SWA Flight from San Diego to Providence, 21 September 2004
I get a lot of emails on a daily basis, and it seems that I've settled into a sort of permanent groove of a hundred or so each day from people who want to talk about the book. About a third at any one time are repeat offenders/complimenters, with two-thirds newbies. It's a big time commitment on my part to answer all those emails in one way or another (I don't pretend to give them all my all, nor should anyone expect me to unless I want to visit my kids every other weekend), but I learn so much in the process, that a continuous stream of thank-you's (with the occasional "dial down the meds/caffeine/sheer hatred" offered without regret) only makes sense.
What I get more and more from a certain select bunch of people, typically within the defense community, is that, while they love PNM and agree overall with its vision, I am guilty of underestimating the tremendous amount of reform progress that's occurred on their watch within their respective office/command/agency/service. In short, it's "I'm-changing-as-fast-as-I-can-here-so-when-we-you-declare-me-certified?"
Here's the answer I offer everyone: I'd love to bless every bit of reform, but I choseófor now and for the foreseeable futureóto rely extensively on specific encouragement to individual entities combined with a heaping dose of damning criticism of the system as a whole. By declaring partial victories all over the dial, all I would end up doing is reassuring a lot of reformers that they've done enough on their watch, when in reality the Defense Department as a whole has a very long way to go. So I prefer to remain the firebrand with an exceedingly high standard for acceptable change rather than lower my sights and declare the victory already won. Why? To me, whenever that happens, and I've seen it plenty of times in large government bureaucracies, all the stubborn status-quo types whose main strategy has been to wait out the agents of change ("They get tired/bored/depressed/self-satisfied and quit!") simply resurface in a vengeance and it's back to the same-old, same-old quicker than you can say "SECDEF cried uncle."
Does that mean I don't like hearing these stories of reform and change?
Absolutely not, I love to hear about them. I just keep my eyes on serious tipping points across the system as a whole. I live naturally at 30,000 feet (actually, 34,000 feet right now), so I prefer that perspective. Plus, as a strategist versus a warfighter, I prefer to focus on what I know and leave the ground floor experts to argue what they know.
But yes, eventually we all must land in the real world. I make a point of visiting it regularly. I know my critics love to describe me as trapped inside the old stone buildings of detached Newport, but the real problem I have with my bosses is that I never seem to be in my office! Instead, I seem to traipse non-stop around the planet, visiting various military commands and luxury hotelsóand yes, you have to do both if you want both sides of the military market nexus. That's what limits both Tom Friedman (he, of many nice hotels) and Robert Kaplan (he, or many smelly, sandbagged HQs) in the way they try to describe both globalization and the global war on terrorism, respectively (see more below).
Here a bunch of stories from Times and and Journal:
■Kaplan on how the Gap will never be won
■IMF warns on U.S. debt, World Bank sympathizes with Putin's moves
■ The best plans are revised plans
■Kerry drives deep into Bush's territory on Iraq, but settles for field goal
■The "cautious reformer" wins in Indonesia
■Doomsayers correct on end of oil like Marx was right on end of capitalism