Not sure exactly why The Future of American Military Strategy: a Conference Report is on moldova.org. Undoubtedly one of Tom's knowledgable readers will be able to enlighten us.

At any rate, Tom gets endorsed about 75% of the way through the report by former colleague Colonel Mackubin Thomas Owens, USMCR (ret.), the Associate Dean of Academics for Electives and Directed Research and Professor of National Security Affairs at the US Naval War College. The brief quote directly about Tom reads:

Endorsing the views of Thomas Barnett, Owens’ [sic] said that we must “export security from the core . . . on the one hand, to try to make that part of the world more secure, and at the same time, take whatever steps are necessary to try to accommodate the rise of China.” Problems arise, however, if China does not want to be accommodated.

Tom comments:

An interesting capture of debate between ground forces types who want to deal with the world as we find it and those "realists" who believe it's still a giant pool table with billiard ball great powers bouncing off each other.

Guess which side notices globalization-the-economic-phenom?

That's the basic question right now: is Fourth Generation Warfare a "fad" or ascendant? I say the latter, not because states decline, but because nukes killed great power war and interstate war goes the way of the dinosaur, meaning that's all that's left.

Owens is a surprise fan for me: pretty conservative but a classic former Marine--so nuf said.