Caldwell's assessment of, and efforts on, improving the training of the Afghan police forces

Readers will remember Army Lt. Gen. William B. Caldwell IV for his hosting of one of my visits to Leavenworth to address the student body of the Command and General Staff College (Petraeus hosted me the first time). Caldwell then asked to make a direct post to my site, which I was honored to accept and publish.

So when you're talking WAPO's Greg Jaffe covering Caldwell's recent review of police training, I'm all ears for any glass-half-full news.

The best bits culled:

A U.S. military review in Afghanistan has concluded that the addition of more than 1,000 new U.S. military and NATO troops focused on training has helped stabilize what had been a failing effort to build Afghanistan's security forces, but that persistent attrition problems could still hinder long-term success.

"We are finally getting the resources, the people and money," said Army Lt. Gen. William B. Caldwell IV, who heads the NATO training effort in Afghanistan and oversaw the review of his command's past 180 days. "We are moving in the right direction."

U.S. war plans depend on Afghan forces maintaining security in areas of southern and eastern Afghanistan, where the U.S. military is adding 30,000 troops this summer. More broadly, the Obama administration's counterinsurgency strategy places a heavy emphasis on an expansion of the Afghan security forces before the United States begins to withdraw troops in July 2011.

Caldwell's report card on the training effort, which The Washington Post obtained in advance and is expected to be released within the next couple of days, paints a mixed picture.

On the plus side, new money for pay raises has helped boost a recruiting situation that was so dire last fall the Afghan army was shrinking . . .

For the first time in years, the Afghan forces are "currently on path" to meet the ambitious growth targets, the assessment states. It isn't yet clear how well those forces will perform once they are in the field, which is the most important measure of success, Caldwell said . . . 

"In some areas last fall, we had one trainer for every 466 recruits," Caldwell said. "When you have that kind of ratio, it means that people aren't receiving any training."

The additional trainers have helped double the number of new Afghan soldiers who meet the minimum marksmanship standards by the end of basic training, the report states, although it is still lower than U.S. commanders would like . . . The number of police recruits enrolled in basic literacy programs has also more than doubled, to 28,000 from about 13,000 last fall.

Despite those improvements, police and army units are still struggling to retain personnel, especially in critical areas where fighting is heavy and the demand for forces the greatest . . .

The assessment found that the attrition rate in the Civil Order Police is about 70 percent. That's lower than it was at the end of 2009, the report states, but still "unacceptable and unsustainable" . . .

To fix the problem, U.S. and Afghan officials are weighing the possibility of increasing combat pay and giving soldiers a break from battle. "We are working real hard to set up a system to rotate units" out of areas where combat is heaviest, Caldwell said.

U.S. commanders have said the performance of Afghan police and army forces in Kandahar, the country's second-largest city, is essential to the military campaign planned for the area this summer. There are concerns that, as fighting with the Taliban increases, recruitment and retention could suffer . . .

"We're going to start seeing a more professional Afghan force in the field over the next eight to 12 months," Caldwell said.

Or else, I guess.

The ultimate in disconnectedness

Excellent reportage by Elisabeth Bumiller in the NYT.

Some Afghan women are so conditioned to fear outside males that it limits the ability of the US military to provide to their medical needs.

The killer (literally) quote:

Corporal Gardner, a helicopter mechanic who was working with the female Marines from Pendleton but had not trained with them, found herself as the lone woman dealing with five ailing Afghan women. There was no female interpreter or medical officer — there are chronic shortages of both — and the Afghans refused to leave their compound or let the male interpreter and medical officer come to them. Corporal Gardner devised a cumbersome solution. “Some of these women would rather die than be touched by a male,” she said. “So we’ll diagnose by proxy.”

The quote misleads a bit:  the women have been conditioned into accepting this restriction.  The people who would rather see them die before being touched by a male doctor are their husbands and fathers and brothers and sons.

Such is the level of gender control:  their health is sacrificed to the honor of their males.

It does get any more backward than this:  my pride before your pain.

How goes the International Criminal Court?

Economist editorial and article.

As usual, the mag argues that the court, despite low expectations for effectiveness and high expectations for useless meddling in the superpower affairs of America, "has not done too badly."

The ICC has laid bare important facts about forgotten wars (all Gap).  It has issued 13 indictments (all Gap). No, it hasn't nabbed Sudan's Omar al-Bashir, but it has put him on notice, and yeah, that counts when you're trying to build up new rules.  111 countries have signed up, and most have signed some sort of immunity agreement with the U.S., in effect acknowledging our sheriff role and the credibility of US military justice.

America signed the treaty but did not ratify--a rare achievement.  Most non-members, like India, Indonesia and China, simply never signed.

The Economist laments an upcoming review of the ICC being held in Uganda, because on the agenda sits some promised exploration of the notion of punishing state-on-state aggression (the old League of Nations dream) instead of just remaining focused on the crimes against humanity.  If the notion should be explicitly expanded in any direction, it should be about terrorism, which is on the rise, instead of state-on-state wars, which are going the way of the dinosaur.

Pinning down a definition of all war as crime was denounced most elegantly, says the editorial, by Sir Austen Chamberlain in 1928 (Brit Foreign Secretary) when he said that such an effort would end up creating a "trap for the innocent and a signpost for the guilty."

In other words, by circumscribing the limits of criminal aggression, the world would seem to be permitting all that lay outside those limits.

In other words, the ICC would effectively undo everything it's done, which is highlight government crimes against their own peoples.

We live in a world of transnational terrorism and civil strife; the ICC should focus on both and not the past.

The V versus U versus W recoveries: the verdicts are in?

Economist editorial.

Remember the now dated analysis that predicted a V-shaped recovery for the New Core and more of a U for the Old Core?

With China in the lead, and risky a bursting of its real estate bubble, the New Core still seems to spell V for victory.

Now the latter diagnosis is broken down further to say the sovereign debt crisis triggers a W (double-dip) for the EU while the US doesn't seem--for now--to be in that danger zone.

Still, our U feels like a U--hence the temptation to consider more stimulus. 

But hard to complain about the global recovery:  a bit more than 5% growth currently.

Concluding thoughts:

The world is nervous for good reason. Although the fundamentals are reasonably good, the judgment of politicians is often unreasonably bad. Right now that is what poses the biggest risk to the world economy.

Same old, same old.

Taiwan: conquering the world--and China. They call it "Chaiwan"

Economist story.

Starts by saying the most important tech show in the world is arguably Computex in Taipei.

The numbers:

Taiwan is now the home of many of the world’s largest makers of computers and associated hardware. Its firms produce more than 50% of all chips, nearly 70% of computer displays and more than 90% of all portable computers. The most successful are no longer huge but little-known contract manufacturers, such as Quanta or Hon Hai, in the news this week because of workers’ suicides (see article). Acer, for example, surpassed Dell last year to become the world’s second-biggest maker of personal computers. HTC, which started out making smart-phones for big Western brands, is now launching prominent products of its own.

The weakness of this model:  Taiwan improves parts over time and manufactures them with great skill and speed, but it does not innovate on the leading edge, and increasingly, all that manufacturing moves to China.   In the info age, this is almost the equivalent of the "commodity trap":  your margin is always so razor thin that you cannot invest sufficiently in branding and R&D, argues one expert.

With China aspiring mightily to move up the chain, Taiwan's fate is ever-more intertwinned:  China recruits Taiwanese firms to help it set higher tech standards, and Taipei loosens restrictions on FDI and tech transfer into China.

Killer ending:

It is hard to see China dethroning Taiwan as manager of the world’s electronics factories soon, says Peter Sher of the National Chi Nan University. But the IT industry in the two countries will increasingly become intertwined, predicts Mr Ernst. “Especially in IT, Taiwan is becoming more and more part of the Chinese economy,” he says. Indeed, some tech types already fuse the pair into “Chaiwan”.

Say good-bye to this great power-war scenario.  The game has moved on.

Naxalism: killing it softly

Photo: PTI

Raghu Raman in a LiveMint opinion piece.

The realization sinks in:

The recent series of Naxal attacks highlight the paradox of the internal security in India. Unlike virtually any other country in the world, we face daunting security challenges while being presented with extraordinary economic development opportunities. Our globally acknowledged growth story is marred by a very real and present danger in the form of Naxal militancy and fundamentalist terrorism, which are two distinct show-stoppers if not dealt with a sense of determined and sustained urgency. The sheer scale of the challenge, however, poses the fundamental question of whether we should be thinking of incorporating new stakeholders into the campaign.

Taking a page from the US operations in Iraq—where an overwhelmingly powerful army crushed the existing regime, only to find itself struggling to manage the ensuing peace process—brings a realization that perhaps a transition phase is imperative between phases of conflict and prosperity. But managing a conflict and facilitating prosperity require very different skill sets.

Then almost a recitation of my slide that highlights the differences between the Leviathan and SysAdmin sides of the house:

As Thomas Barnett, adviser to the Pentagon, points out, the strategic purpose of security forces hinges on menacing and punitive response to events threatening national security. By their very nature, such a response is focused on rapid, and, if necessary, violent degradation of opposing forces. In our case, these would be operations against the Naxal militants. The emphasis is on speed of operations, often unilateral in nature, using a young force whose core training is in destructive operations.

Building prosperity, however, requires different mind and skill sets. This calls for non-threatening, long-term, continuous and economically self-sustaining operations. It focuses on capacity-building rather than capturing power centres. This has to be a deliberate, multilateral and inclusive set of activities carried out by a mature body of people. People who can spot growth opportunities and empower the affected districts to create an environment that is preventive to militancy, rather than punitive towards it.

Piece then explores the native skills that India already has with regard to entrepreneurship.

Then an argument that India's Core MUST integrate its Gap areas, for its own economic reasons:

The question for companies is not whether there is a return on investment in such projects. It is about whether they can afford not to get involved. There is clearly a limit to the growth potential in “secure” zones.  When one-third of India’s land mass is in the grip of some form of disturbance, it is only a matter of time before economic growth of the private sector starts hitting a ceiling. Moreover, it is also only a matter of time before militancy from the hinterland spills over into urban “secure” areas.

The challenge for the private sector is to reorganize its business paradigm to specifically target disturbed areas. The numbers work in its favour. Almost all such areas have only a fractional militant composition. Eventually majority of the local population will rally around income generating opportunities. Because militancy by itself cannot generate sustained income. Income brings access to communication facilities such as mobile phones and television, resulting in knowledge and aspiration. Militants focus on disrupting communication networks precisely for this reason.

Almost a perfect microcosm of my global arguments on a national basis.

Pakistan: pre-approved for retaliatory strikes.

Mohammad al-Corey Haim makes an appearance in court.  Add just a touch of success to his efforts and the plans currently being put together inside the Pentagon (would you expect anything less?) would have instantly morphed into operations that involve more than sending our incredibly flying machines to pick them off in onesies-twosies.

The gist:

The U.S. military is reviewing options for a unilateral strike in Pakistan in the event that a successful attack on American soil is traced to the country's tribal areas, according to senior military officials.

Ties between the alleged Times Square bomber, Faisal Shahzad, and elements of the Pakistani Taliban have sharpened the Obama administration's need for retaliatory options, the officials said. They stressed that a U.S. reprisal would be contemplated only under extreme circumstances, such as a catastrophic attack that leaves President Obama convinced that the ongoing campaign of CIA drone strikes is insufficient.

"Planning has been reinvigorated in the wake of Times Square," one of the officials said.

At the same time, the administration is trying to deepen ties to Pakistan's intelligence officials in a bid to head off any attack by militant groups. The United States and Pakistan have recently established a joint military intelligence center on the outskirts of the northwestern city of Peshawar, and are in negotiations to set up another one near Quetta, the Pakistani city where the Afghan Taliban is based, according to the U.S. military officials. They and other officials spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity surrounding U.S. military and intelligence activities in Pakistan.

The "fusion centers" are meant to bolster Pakistani military operations by providing direct access to U.S. intelligence, including real-time video surveillance from drones controlled by the U.S. Special Operations Command, the officials said. But in an acknowledgment of the continuing mistrust between the two governments, the officials added that both sides also see the centers as a way to keep a closer eye on one another, as well as to monitor military operations and intelligence activities in insurgent areas.

Obama said during his campaign for the presidency that he would be willing to order strikes in Pakistan, and Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton said in a television interview after the Times Square attempt that "if, heaven forbid, an attack like this that we can trace back to Pakistan were to have been successful, there would be very severe consequences."

I do love the way that woman speaks the truth without apology.

Honestly though, this possible dynamic makes me question the entire lets-choose-Pakistan-over-India logic of this administration.

We are letting others drive our strategy, others who have our worst outcomes in mind.

Chart of the day: BP's market capitalization drop

Economist story.

BP's share price plummets 13% by 1 June for a total decline of roughly one-quarter since the Deepwater Horizon disaster.

Concluding judgment:

Robert Reich, a former secretary of labour, has suggested that BP’s American operations should be put under temporary receivership to allow the government to take control of plugging the leak. This seems unlikely. But the idea that the company as a whole might be taken over has become significantly more likely as its share price has plummeted. BP’s market capitalisation is now less than that of its rival, Royal Dutch Shell (see chart), which has discussed a merger before and may now be contemplating one again. The scale of the stock’s fall makes it possible that the foreseeable losses, huge as they are, have not only been priced in, but even overpriced.

Reputational loss, and the possibility of losing further access to the gulf, where BP is a large player, are harder to calculate while the spill and its attendant inquiries continue. When the waters finally clear, though, there could be some interesting sharks swimming in them.

Don't cry for BP, Gulf of Mexico.  The truth is, she did not love you enough.

Private-public entrepreneurship in the digital age

Look councilman, a pothole that needs fixing!

Or graffiti to be cleaned up . . .

Or a dead animal to be picked up off the road .  . ..

You get the picture.

Bloomberg BusinessWeek article about how a lot of these new connectivity technologies have instant and neat uses for governments that aim to be more responsive to their citizenry.

"Gov 2.0" movement, as it is described: "An emerging field that some entrepreneurs call Government 2.0."  

The purpose goes in both directions:  encouraging the public to flow data to the government and encouraging citizens to take advantage of all the new data being made available by governments and participate more actively in public-sector actions.  That way, government innovation isn't left to the government alone.  Already, the Army has some "apps for the Army" effort that tries to enlist the brainpower of its troops, just like citizens crank apps for the iPhone or Google's Android system.

And the pothole app is called SeeClickFix.

Very heartening.

Education follows the flag

Bloomberg BusinessWeek profile of John Sexton, president of NY University, who, with the help of Abu Dhabi's Crown Prince Al Nahyan, is trying to franchise his institution in the Persian Gulf.

Sexton's dream:  a circulating experience for students that connects them to six world-class universities spread around the world, with NYU as the anchor.

Sexton's use of foreign money to fuel global expansion is considered a model.  NYU has only a $2.2B endowment, or $50k a student.  Harvard's numbers are more like $26B and $1.3m per student.

My takeaway:  A lot of US universities going into countries that are friendly with us militarily.  It's a huge investment for both sides, so you want to go with people whom you have long and strong relationships, and with whom you're pushing connectivity.

Deep Reads: The Moral Consequences of Economic Growth

Won’t offer a ton of commentary here.  The idea is pretty simple:  When America has seen rising per capita incomes, it’s a more generous and open and happy and thus inventive place.  But when incomes have stagnated or declined, America’s gets awfully nasty, awfully fast—especially toward immigrants.

A timely reminder for today.

Friedman writes well, but he’s an economist, so it can feel like a bit of a wading.  When he goes off to other countries, I got bored, but when he kept to American history, it was an eye-opening romp that made sense to me instinctively.

I advise people to read it simply to get that core thought deeply embedded in their thinking, because it reminds us all that we have a great democracy here because we have a great economy—less so the other way around.  Our democratic “civilization” is just a few years of stagnating income thick, meaning it does not take that much to strip it away.

Buy the book at Amazon.

Movie of My Week: The Doors (1991)

Oliver Stone movies are definitely an acquired taste, and many don’t age well, but this one does.  To me, it is the closest you can come to feeling stoned without smoking pot; Stone just does that good of a job of making it trippy throughout, increasingly hallucinatory, and totally intertwined with the music.

As a rule, Stone’s use of existing music is pretty weak, but here he’s masterful—almost like he’s putting on a masters class (he appears in a cameo as a UCLA film school prof, with pretty fake-looking beard).  Then again, The Doors’ music is unusually well-suited for sampling and segues, because they often start out with such strong and percussion and bass (which always got me, because they never show anyone playing bass for the Doors and I guess I always assumed it was Manzarek on the recordings).

Stone’s penchant for weird film effects fits here too.  In short, the guy’s in his element.

I love the performances throughout, and especially admire Val Kilmer’s actual singing everything that’s done on-screen.  I’ve always like Meg Ryan (before the face change), and like her here in a role she made her own.  Lots of strong supporting people throughout, like Michael Madsen and Crispin Glover.

Yes, Stone goes in big on the Indian spirit story, and probably gives Morrison’s “witch wife” too much play, and the fun Jim known to so many intimates rarely appears, but these are the choices one makes in a two-hour retelling of even this short life.

Watch the featurettes because they really do capture the tension between the various survivors, estates, and Stone himself.  He admits that what’s up on screen is his version, and his voiced doubts about certain aspects being fair or not are really engrossing. 

I hadn’t watched it for years, and was pissed when I did recently with my elder son, because my Blu-Ray took the DVD and spit out that shrunken letterbox that sometimes happens with older-style DVDs of a certain age.  The music really deserves the Blu-Ray quality capture too, because it’s so good.

But these bitches only heighten my realization of how much I love the film; a lesser film wouldn’t have elicited the same dated DVD dissatisfactions. 

The promos call The Doors America’s greatest-ever rock band and it’s a defensible claim in my mind.  So while admitting my clear bias, this is still my favorite music-based biopic.  If anybody suggest we should watch something like that, this is the one I instinctively reach for.  The only thing I like more is the Beatle’s Anthology, just because they’re all so entertaining when they discuss their careers.

Globalization’s most important politicians will be mayors—not presidents

pic here

Increasingly, I view the globalized world as a network of interconnected coastal megacities.  Get that network right in all its complexity and security, and you’ve covered much of the flows that define globalization (energy, people, money, security, food, etc.).  Doing that in a sustainable environmental fashion and you’ve conquered so much more of the enduring challenges associated with globalization’s continued—and rapid—ramp up.

Here’s a Bloomberg BusinessWeek piece (and yes, the mag is a lot better with Bloomberg attached, I will say) that says major metros increasingly lead the way in the global fights against carbon emissions.  As Toronto’s mayor puts it, “We’re not going to wait for national politicians.”

I think this is true the world over—and a good sign.  Cities share new ideas more easily and faster than nation-states.  Mayors, as a rule, are far more pragmatic than national pols.

Why this especially makes sense on the environment:  major cities, over the past century, have already experienced temperature rises equivalent to what’s predicted for this century due to global warming.  This has happened because of the heat-sink effect created by all those buildings, infrastructure, operations, etc.  Cities are just unnaturally warmer than rural areas.

The variations here globally are profound:  70% of Tokyo residents make their way other than by car; in Houston it’s 95% the other way.

Let the experiments begin!

As usual, the radical solutions arise just as the underlying problems begin to abate

Newsweek piece.

The call-out text tells you everything you need to know:  “The fertility rate in Mexico has undergone one of the steepest declines in history.”

Leveraging Michael Barone, I made this point in “Blueprint for Action”: There is a combination of decreasing birthrate and increasing per capita income that usually turns off the emigrant flow out of any developing economy.

With Mexico, these developments are tied to the progressive economic integration of the northern Mexican states with the US economy.

No, that doesn’t mean the flow of illegals from the South goes away completely just because Mexico is leveling off.  Over time, I think it simply means people are both traveling farther to get to the US and, in some measure, stopping when they hit the improving conditions in Mexico.

Per the piece:

A little-known, but enormously significant, demographic development has been unfolding south of the our border.  The fertility rate in Mexico—whose emigrants account for a majority of the United States’ undocumented population—has undergone one of the steepest declines in history, from about 6.7 children per woman in 1970 to about 2.1 today, according to World Bank figures.  That makes it roughly equal to the U.S. rate . . ..

It will go even lower than that replacement rate in coming years.  Point is, Mexico will have less and less trouble absorbing its new workers as they age into employment.

The same is happening, to a lesser degree, throughout the rest of Latin America.

Bottom line:  immigration won’t remain a problem/advantage forever, so opening the brand back up for expansion will ultimately make sense to enough Americans.  Why?  That great demographic input will diminish just as the Boomers begin retiring in bulk, meaning our labor force could start shrinking in some parts of the country as early as 2015, according to experts cited in the piece.

One academic:  “I wouldn’t be surprised if Arizona starts pleading for Mexican workers who can help them in their retirement homes.”

Israel sinks into its siege mentality, meanwhile, Turkey got what it wanted

Couple of FT articles.

Per my post in Esquire’s The Politics Blog, Turkey seems to be moving with all premeditated speed to neck down its ties with Israel—all the better for the nuclear moves down the road.  This is classic “chosen trauma,” in that it’s a BIG DEAL because it suits Ankara’s strategy to make it so.

Meanwhile, Israelis seem, as usual, to be of many minds on the subject.  Few like the blockade but most see it as defensible, given Hamas’ behavior since taking power.  Everybody seems to think the raid was poorly conducted, but likewise that Turkey set them up, so botched or not, Ankara wanted its bloody shirt.

As for the actual events, everybody sees what they want to remember, says the FT piece.  Israelis see their forces under clear attack (please, no professional soldiers kill 9 people in such an operation unless they feel like they’ve got no choice regarding survival) and don’t much care about the cost borne by the instigators of the provocation.   The West only sees its martyrs, thus a natural feeling of solidarity with ordinary Palestinians that most definitely benefits the criminally cynical—and by my measure inept—Hamas government.

To date, outside great powers have done nothing to alter this dynamic, meaning the upshot of the blood events is that Turkey executed—pun intended—the concluding act in their comprehensive de-alignment with Tel Aviv—nothing more and nothing less.

Forget that offending billboard in Cairo. Take it online, kids!

Photo here.

Bloomberg BusinessWeek article pointing out how online advertizing is beginning to take off in the Middle East, thanks to more Arabs going online and getting mobiles.  Broadband penetration remains low (12% compared to 64% in North America and we’re no great shakes either).  Another trick:  5% of web users/consumers are Arab, but only 1% of the content is Arabic.

Still, there is a leap-frog quality to this development: maybe traditional advertising never makes it in the region like it has in the West, but maybe the online version fills the gap and obviates the old models, which, for a lot of reasons, are trickier to navigate in that part of the world.

Brief Reminder: Triangulating "The Pentagon's New Map"

This was my set-up slide in the old “Blueprint”-era brief.  In it, I provided a triangulating argument to orient the audience to other, more famous books.  I’d start with Friedman’s book, saying it was economic determinism, then I’d draw a line over to Huntington’s “Clash,” dubbing it social Darwinism.  Then I’d add the triangle and say I sought to add the third, pol-mil leg to that implied stool by splitting the difference between them:  yes, I believed in Friedman’s determinism, but yes, I also believed that globalization’s spread would trigger conflict along the “border”—so to speak, or along the Seam between Core and Gap.  My book’s “conceit,” I would say, was that it predicted where conflict would occur in the world on the basis of globalization’s expansion—hence it was the “Pentagon’s” new map and not Google’s or Goldman Sachs’ map (even though, in truth, their maps aren’t all that different looking).

Blast From My Past: First time on national TV

Aired February 26, 2003 - 12:50 ET

BARNETT: Thank you.

WOLF BLITZER, CNN ANCHOR: The U.S. military is constantly transforming military capabilities to meet future global threats. A senior strategic researcher at the U.S. Naval War College, Thomas Barnett, is a big help in that regard. His latest article appears in the March issue of "Esquire" magazine, titled “The Pentagon’s New Map.” Mr. Barnett is currently working at the Office of the Secretary of Defense. He's joining us now live from San Diego, California.

Mr. Barnett, a very interesting article. Thanks very much for joining us.

You see this current struggle with Iraq within the broader issues of the gaps resulting from globalization. Give us the gist of your thesis.

THOMAS BARNETT, PENTAGON ADVISER: Well, this new way of looking at the world begins with a simple series of observations. First, you look at where this country has sent its military forces around the world over the past 12 years, or basically since the end of the Cold War, a total of 132 cases. You draw a line around the majority of these cases, the regions where these situations have been concentrated, and you're really talking about the Caribbean rim, you're talking about most of Africa, you're talking about the Balkans, the Caucuses, central Asia, the Middle East, southeast Asia.

You draw a line around those regions of the world and you ask yourself, what's the common characteristic here that defines why we seem to be sending military troops into these regions time and time again in this era of globalization? And the basic argument I make is, these are the countries or regions that are having a hard time with globalization. In effect they can't integrate their national economies with a global economy because of repressive political regimes, endemic conflict, abject poverty, perhaps they just don't have the robust legal systems to attract foreign direct investment.

BLITZER: And so I was going to say, that's why you think a war with Iraq right now is not only inevitable and desirable, but clearly imperative for the United States and indeed for Iraq. That's also your argument?

BARNETT: Yes, because when you talk about the parts of the world that aren't integrating in this larger process we describe as globalization, it's very instructive to note that these are the places we're sending our troops again and again.

So you've come up with this new security paradigm that says, it's disconnectedness that tends to define danger in this era of globalization. And when you're talking about the Middle East, you're talking about a region of the world that has very little connectivity with the rest of the planet. Basically, they offer oil, and what we're trying to do is prevent terrorism from coming out of there.

BLITZER: But do you really believe, Mr. Barnett, that the U.S., with this military engagement, can transform that region, beginning with Iraq, into vital democratic robust nations?

BARNETT: Well, my argument is basically, we've got to shrink these parts of the world that are not integrating with the global economy, and the way you integrate a Middle East in a broadband fashion with the rest of the global economy is to remove the security impediments that create such a security deficit in that part of the world. And the biggest security impediment right now, I would argue, is the regime of Saddam Hussein. You move that out of the area, you eliminate that source of conflict, and hopefully, you can talk about integrating part of the world that over the past several decades has woefully underperformed economically. Basically the Muslim population represents something like 20 percent of the global population—only engages in about 4 percent of the trade.

So we've got to expand this dialogue, this interaction between the West and the Middle East beyond just oil. My argument is it's not the oil trade that we have with the Middle East that accounts for the enmity those regions feel for us; it's the fact that we don't have anything BUT the oil trade.

BLITZER: A provocative article in the new issue of "Esquire" magazine.

Thomas Barnett, thank you very much. We gave our viewers just a little bit—an appetizer, if you will—of what's in the thrust of your article.

Thanks for joining us.

What I remember:  I was in San Diego doing an intra-governmental consulting gig (as War College profs, Bradd Hayes and I were there leading a visioneering exercise with a naval systems command, using the same process we had developed within Barnett Consulting LLC in our previous commercial work with the United Way of Southeastern New England—now known as the United Way of Rhode Island, thanks to our advice).  The appearance on Blitzer’s show was arranged by Esquire’s PR firm, Dan Klores Communications.  So I engineered a suitable break in the proceedings, stepped outside the naval facility and into a limo that took me to a ratty little local remote facility (dingy storefront in strip mall), where the tech threw up a pretty San Diego backdrop on a screen that even featured, if I remembered, the occasional commercial jetliner on final approach over the city skyline—on a loop).  It was my first remote and it was hard.  The tech said I wouldn’t want to watch the feed because the time delay meant both Blitzer’s and my own lips wouldn’t match up to what I was hearing—faster—over my ear bud.  He warned that I would start trying to slow down my words to match my lips, making me sound drunk.  So I went without any visual aid and simply stared into camera.

In the car ride on the way home, I called my parents to see if they caught my first-ever appearance on national TV, and the first thing my mom said upon answering was, “Your father and I both agree:  TV adds 15 lbs.”

Without missing a beat, I turned to the invisible camera in my mind and quipped, “Folks—my mother!”

I saw the tape finally days later when I got home.

When I read the text today, my logic remains unchanged:  You go after bad actors when you can muster the international will, but what you focus on in the aftermath ain't democracy but economic connectivity.

Why BP should go down

For the record, this is not a great photo op realized.

Bloomberg BusinessWeek pair.

In the lead editorial, Paul Barrett goes after Obama with some cause, saying he knows the president can’t do a whole lot about the spill but that he could make something larger out of it instead of bragging on TV that he talks to experts so he knows who’s ass to kick (when Obama talks tough, he summons his inner Mike Dukakis, spicing his language in oh-so-calculated a fashion).

The bit that caught my eye:  the characterization that the USG was basically unprepared for any deep-water blowout, expecting that the private sector would have such assets in the ready.  BP’s true guilt (as accidents and operational stupidity will happen) is not having those assets in its toolkit—CEO Tony Heyward’s explicit admission. 

That to me is enough for BP to be demolished—not by the government but by shareholders.  This is basic insurance thinking:  low-probability all right but stunning high impact, so you HAVE to carry the requisite insurance, especially when we’re talking the money involved, both upside and downside.  For BP to have taken a flyer on this is just inexcusably dumb.

And dumb companies should die.

But even more annoying than that, and here you have to think Obama could be doing more than just holding Oval Office confabs, is the way BP has hogged control of the response effort while exhibiting a “we’ll-get-back-to-you” mindset on all the ideas flooding their way.

The numbers, say BBW, run like this:  35k ideas submitted, with 800 making the first cut, and 4 ideas tried to date.  You’ve got 200 words to describe your approach to the 70 workers fielding call.  Close to four dozen engineers evaluate the incoming.  They come from BP, the US Coast Guard, and various USG agencies. 

The complaint of serious companies with seriously proven technologies for capturing oil in water?  Everybody comes out of the woodwork when disaster strikes, so the kooky drown out the credible.

But again, my point is, BP shouldn’t be fielding ideas for God’s sake.  That stuff should have all been filed over the past years, leading to action—not some sophomoric all-nighter effort (“Oh my God!  Get me ideas for soaking up oil—stat!”).

When you operate on that level of strategic brittleness, you, Mr. Dinosaur, deserve to die when the big meteor hits.

Remember when I said we shouldn’t throw Russia out of bed for eating crackers?

Bloomberg BusinessWeek piece.

Russia may supplant the US as top wheat exporter in less than a decade, we are told.

First thing to remember:  Russia exports wheat like it exports oil, meaning not so much use at home so more to send overseas.  It also focuses on wheat in a way that we don’t.  Our overall dominance in ag exports isn’t, therefore, in question.

Still, the uptick in production over the past decade inside Russia is definitely impressive.  At the turn of the century, we’re producing more than twice as much as Russia is, but now they’ve basically pulled even (understanding that we’re a bit less into wheat as other crops have increased their shares). 

But this is why I said, among other reasons, why I saw no reason to boot Russia into rogue regime status over just Georgia:  when you look at the four major export regions for grains, there’s King Kong North America, the ABCs of South America (Argentina, Brazil, Chile), Australia-NZ, and the Slavic heartland region that encompasses European Russia, Ukraine and the Kazakh steppe.  Here we’re talking about the only prime arable land in the world that’s not being used to its potential, either in total acreage under plow or per acre yields.  So when you speak of feeding the future, these guys are definitely part of the mix, especially when you consider that this region lies above the 35^th parallel—or above the latitudes where global warming’s impact (in terms of long droughts) will make growing crops that much harder in coming decades.