London Review of Books on Perry Anderson's treatment of my work

Thomas Meaney review's Anderson's book (American Foreign Policy and Its Thinkers by Perry Anderson
Verso, 244 pp, £14.99, March 2014, ISBN 978 1 78168 667 6), which I excerpted here.

He overstates my trust in the market (Anderson noted my call for a lengthy progressive era [21st century edition], but so be it.

Meaney also postions me (allegedly per Anderson) as the polar opposite of Kagan, when Anderson noted our similarities (essentially calling Kagan a political determinist to my economic determinist). 

At the opposite end of the strategy spectrum from Kagan, Anderson has found a curious specimen. Thomas Barnett is a former Naval Academy instructor, and a self-declared economic determinist who delivers TED talks to the military top brass about the limits of American power. His work, Anderson writes, is ‘not unlike a materialist variant, from the other side of the barricades, of the vision of America in Hardt and Negri’s Empire’. ‘America needs to ask itself,’ Barnett writes in Great Powers (2009), ‘is it more important to make globalisation truly global, while retaining great-power peace and defeating whatever anti-globalisation insurgencies may appear in the decades ahead? Or do we tether our support for globalisation’s advance to the upfront demand that the world first resembles us politically?’ For Barnett, the answer is clear: America must trust in the market, which will solve all strategic problems. Russia? It is experiencing its Gilded Age, and will come around in fifty years. China? Already capitalist anyway, and Xi is just China’s version of Teddy Roosevelt trying to root out corruption and make markets more functional. Iran? Proceed with every deal possible, let the market penetrate, and stop threatening it with military strikes. Tell Israel to back off: Iran will take the position in the Middle East to which its culture and educated population entitle it. North Korea? First let Beijing extract from it all the minerals it needs. Then, when it reaches rock bottom, the Chinese will invite the South Koreans in to clean up the mess. In a world so tilted in the US’s favour, Barnett calls for drastically reducing the military to a small force with only a handful of bases that will be used to handle terrorist pin-pricks. In every other respect the time has come for stay-at-home capitalist husbandry.

Hat tip to my old mentor Hank Gaffney for alerting me to this.

Most Perceptive Presentation of My Thinking - Ever

Christopher Hitchens once called Perry Anderson, the British Marxian historian who presently teaches at UCLA, both "the West’s most influential Marxist" and "the most profound essayist wielding a pen.” I've always viewed him as D'Artagnan to the three musketeers of English school of Marxism – namely, E.P. Thompson, Christopher Hill, and Eric Hobsbawn (now all deceased).

In 2013, the New Left Review, for only the third time in its history, devoted an entire issue to one author's take on a subject. It was Perry Anderson on "American Foreign Policy And Its Thinkers," divided into two long essays: "Imperium" – a history of U.S. foreign policy, and "Consilium" – an examination of the current state of grand strategy in the U.S. On the latter, Anderson avoided treating intellectuals who were primarily creatures of the media, so no Friedmans or Zakarias.

While I naturally don't agree with everything in his short history, I really admire the attempt, as I tried something similar in Great Powers. I also love Anderson's writing style. He is rare in that you often need to read a sentence more than once to understand it, but, when you do, you realize that the construction is so beautiful that it was worth the effort. You can say that about . . . really no one I've ever read before.

I am even more interested in his "Consilium" essay because it contains the single most intelligent and accurate analysis of my vision - better than anything I've ever found. Frankly, I don't think I summarize my strategy better than he does here. It's very nuanced and comprehensive, adds all the right grace notes (as far as I'm concerned) and captures me to the core (Marxian in outlook but not a Marxist).

I excerpt all the relevants bits in this post, offering no commentary because none is needed.  Where so many have gotten me wrong, Anderson gets me totally correct, and, quite frankly, I never thought I'd live to see this day.

[On that last point, I waited until Verso published the two essays as a book last spring (which I recommend to everyone) to generate this post. I like the formality of a book treating other books. But yes, it took me a long stretch to get around to this task.]

The other great joy for me here is that Anderson completely ignores my first two books (Pentagon's New Map, Blueprint for Action) and focuses solely on Great Powers (2009). Obviously, I will always be best known for PNM, but I consider Great Powers to be the culminating summation of the trilogy, which "descended" in scope from system (PNM) to state (BPFA) to leadership/strategy (GP) – purposefully Waltzian. I also think I was a much better author by the publication of GP. Plus, it's the least known and least appreciated of the three, when I feel it should be the best known and best appreciated (oh well, such is the trajectory of trilogies ...).

Now to book:

CONSILIUM

In the American intellectual landscape, the literature of grand strategy forms a domain of its own, distinct from diplomatic history or political science, though it may occasionally draw on these. Its sources lie in the country's security elite, which extends across the bureaucracy and the academy to foundations, think tanks, and the media. In this milieu, with its emplacements in the Council on Foreign Relations, the Kennedy School at Harvard, the Woodrow Wilson Center in Princeton, the Nitze School at Johns Hopkins, the Naval War College, Georgetown University, the Brookings and Carnegie Foundations, the Departments of State and of Defense, not to speak of the National Security Council and the CIA, positions are readily interchangeable, individuals moving seamlessly back and forth between university chairs or think tanks and government offices, in general regardless of the party in control of the administration ...

(10) CRUSADERS

[the Wilsonian liberal idealism with its focus on democracy, with treatment of Walter Russell Mead, Michael Mandelbaum, John Ikenberry, and Charles Kupchan]

(11) REALIST IDEALS

[the opposing school of American strategic thought known as idealism, with its focus on "hard" power, permanent interests, and no permanent friends, with treatment of Robert Kagan, Zbigniew Brzezinski, and Robert Art]

(12) ECONOMY FIRST

Are there any significant constructions in the discourse of American foreign policy that escape its mandatory dyad? Perhaps, in its way, one. In background and aim Thomas P.M. Barnett belongs in the company of grand strategests, but in outlook is at an angle to them. Trained as a Sovietologist at Harvard, he taught at the Naval War College, worked in the Office of Force Transformation set up by Rumsfeld at the Pentagon, voted for Kerry and now directs a consultancy offering technical and financial connexions to the outside world in regions like Iraqi Kurdistan. Great Powers: America and the World After Bush, the product of this trajectory, is unlike anything else in the literature, in manner and in substance. In the breezy style of a salesman with an inexhaustible store of snappy slogans, it lays out a eupeptic, yet far from conventional, vision of globalization as the master narrative for grasping the nature and future of US planetary power – one calculated to disconcert equally the bien-pensant platitudes of Clintonism, and their condemnation by critics like Brzezinski, in a triumphalism so confident it dispenses with a good many of its customary accoutrements.

America, Barnett's argument runs, has no cause for doubt or despondency in the aftermath of a war in Iraq that was well-intentioned, but hopelessly mismanaged. Its position is not slipping: "This is still America's world." For as the earth's first and most successful free-market economy and multiethnic political union, whose evolution prefigures that of humanity at large, "we are modern globalization's source code – its DNA." The implication? "The United States isn't coming to a bad end but a good beginning – our American system successfully projected upon the world."[GP, 1-2. 4] That projection, properly understood, neither involves nor requires US promotion of democracy at large. For Barnett, who declares himself without inhibition an economic determinist, it is capitalism that is the real revolutionary force spawned by America, whose expansion renders unnecessary attempts to introduce parliaments and elections around the world. The Cold War was won by using US military strength to buy time for Western economic superiority over the Soviet Union to do its work. So too in the post-Cold War era, peace comes before justice: if the US is willing to go slow in its political demands on regions that neither know nor accept liberal democracy, while getting its way on economic demands of them, it will see the realization of its ideals within them in due course. "America needs to ask itself: is it more important to make globalization truly global, while retaining great-power peace and defeating whatever anti-globalization insurgencies may appear in the decades ahead? Or do we tether our support for globalization's advance to the upfront demand that the world first resembles us politically?" [GP, 30]

So today it is not a league of democracies that is called for, but a league of capitalist powers, committed to making the order of capital workable on a world stage, rebranded along Lincoln lines as a "team of rivals" comprising China and Russia along with Japan, Europe, India, Brazil. Americans have no reason to baulk at the inclusion of either of their former adversaries in the Cold War. It took the United States half a century after its revolution to develop a popular multi-party democracy, even then excluding women and slaves, and it protected its industries for another century beyond that. China is closing the distance between it and America with the methods of Hamilton and Clay, though it now needs regulatory reforms like those of the Progressive Era (as does contemporary Wall Street). Its nationalist foreign policy already resembles that of the first Roosevelt. As for Russia, with its economic brutalism and crude materialism, it is in its Gilded Age – and there will be plenty of other versions of its younger self America is going to bump up against, who may not take it at its own estimation: "Moscow pragmatically sees America for what it truly is right now: militarily overextended, financially overdrawn and ideologically overwrought." But its anti-Americanism is largely for show. In view of Russia's past, the US could scarcely ask for a better partner than Putin, whose regime is nationalist, like that of China, but not expansionist. "Neither represents a systemic threat, because each supports globalization's advance, and so regards the world's dangers much as we do," with no desire to challenge the dominant liberal trade order, merely to extract maximum selfish benefit from it.[GP, 184-5, 227-31] The varieties of capitalism these and other rising contenders represent are one of its assets as a system, allowing experiments and offsets in its forms that can only strengthen it.

Between the advanced core and the more backward zones of the world, a historic gap remains to be overcome. But a capitalist domino effect is already at work. In that sense, "Africa will be a knock-off of India, which is a knock-off of China, which is a knock-off of South Korea, which is a knock-off of Japan, which half a century ago was developed by us as a knock-off of the United States. Call it globalization's 'six degrees of replication.'"[GP, 248] But if economically speaking, "history really has 'ended,'" transition along the gap is going to generate unprecedented social turmoil, as traditional populations are uprooted and customary ways of life destroyed before middle-class prosperity arrives. Religion will always be a way of coping with that tumult, and as globalization spreads, it is logical that there should be the greatest single religious awakening in history, because it is bringing the most sweeping changes in economic conditions ever known. In this churning, the more mixed and multicultural societies become, the more individuals, in the absence of a common culture, cling to their religious identity. There too, America in its multi-cultural patterns of faith is the leading edge of a universal process.

What of the war zone where Barnett himself has been involved? For all the spurious pretexts advanced for it, the decision to invade Iraq was not irrational: however mismanaged, it has shaken up the stagnation of the Middle East, and begun to reconnect the region with the pull of globalization. By contrast, the war in Afghanistan is a dead-end, only threatening fruther trouble with Pakistan. Bush's greatest failure was that he got nothing from Iran for toppling its two Sunni enemies, Sadam and the Taliban, and persisted – in deference to Saudi and Israeli pressure – in trying to contain rather than co-opt it. So it is no surprise that the mullahs have concluded nuclear weapons would keep them safe from US attempts to topple them too. In that they are absolutely right. Iran should be admitted to the nuclear club, since the only way to stop it from acquiring a capability would be to use nuclear weapons against it – conventional bombing would not do the trick. Needed in the Middle East is not a futile attack on Iran by Israel or America, but a regional security system which the big Asian powers, China and India, both more dependent on Gulf oil than America, cooperate with the US to enforce, and Iran – the only country in the region where governments can be voted out of office – plays the part to which its size and culture entitle it.[GP, 10-11, 26-7]

For the rest, by raising the bar so high against great power wars, US military force has been a huge gift to humanity. But the latter-day Pentagon needs to cut its overseas troop strength by at least a quarter and possibly a third. For Barnett, who lectured to Petraeus and Schoomaker, the future of counter-insurgency lies in the novel model of AFRICOM, which unlike the Pentagon's other area commands – Central, Pacific, European, Northern, Southern – maintains a light-footprint network of "contingency operating locations" in Africa, combining military vigilance with civilian assistance: "imperialism to some, but nothing more than a pistol-packing Peace Corps to me."[GP, 286-9] Chinese investment will do more to help close the gap in the Dark Continent, but AFRICOM is playing its part too.

In the larger scene, American obsessions with terrorism, democracy and nuclear weapons are all irrelevances. What matters is the vast unfolding of a globalization that resembles the internet as defined by one of its founders: "Noboy owns it, everybody uses it, and anybody can add services to it." The two now form a single process. Just as globalization becomes "a virtual Helsinki Accords for everyone who logs on," so WikiLeaks is – this from a planner fresh from the Defense Department - "the Radio Free Europe of the surveillance age."[GP, 301, 318] To join up, there is no requirement that a society be an electoral democracy, reduce its carbon emissions or desist from sensible protection of its industries. The rules for membership are simply: "come as you are and come when you can." As the middle class swells to half the world's population by 2020, America need have no fear of losing its preeminence. So long as it remains the global economy's leading risk-taker, "there will never be a post-American world. Just a post-Caucasian one."[GP, 413, 251]

Topped and tailed with a poem by Lermontov as epigraph and a tribute to H.G. Wells for envoi, as an exercise in grand strategy Great Powers is, in its way, no less exotic than [Mead's] God and Gold. The two can be taken as bookends to the field. Where Mead's construction marries realism and idealism a l'americaine in a paroxysmic union, Barnett sidesteps their embrace, without arriving – at least formally – at very different conclusions. In his conception of American power in the new century, though he tips his hat to the president, the Wilsonian strain is close to zero. Even the "liberal international order" is more a token than a touchstone, since in his usage it makes no case of economic protection. If, in their local meanings, idealism is all but absent, elements of realism are more visible. Theodore Roosevelt – not only the youngest, but "the most broadly accomplished and experienced individual ever to serve as president" – is singled out as the great transformer of American politics, both at home and abroad, and Kagan's Dangerous Nation saluted as the work that set Barnett thinking of ways in which he could connect Americans to globalization through their own history. But the cheerful welcome Great Powers extends to the autocracies of China and Russia as younger versions of the United States itself is at antipodes of Kagan. Treatment of Putin is enough to make Brzezinski's hair stand on end. Ready acceptance of Iranian nuclear weapons crosses a red line for Art.

Such iconoclasm is not simple a matter of temperament, though it is clearly also that – it is no surprise the Naval War College felt it could do without Barnett's services. It is because the underlying problematic has so little to do with the role of military force, where the realist tradition has principally focused, or even economic expansion, as a nationalist drive.The twist that takes it out of conventional accounts of American exceptionalism, while delivering a maximized version of it, is its reduction of the country's importance in the world to the pure principle of capitalism – supplier of the genetic code of a globalization that does not depend on, nor require, the Fourteen Points or the Atlantic Charter, but simply the power of the market and of mass consumption, with a modicum of force to put down such opponents as it may arouse. In its unfazed economic determinism, the result is not unlike a materialist variant, from the other side of the barricades, of the vision of America in Hardt and Negri's Empire. That empire in its more traditional sense, which they repudiate, has not entirely fled the scene in Great Powers, its paean to the Africa Command makes plain. There, the footprints are ever more frequent. Created only in 2007, AFRICOM now deploys US military effectives in 49 out of 55 countries of the continent. Not America rules the world – the world becomes America. Such is the message, taken straight, of Great Powers. In the interim, there is less distinction between the two than the prospectus suggests.

[then two paragraphs on Richard Rosecrance in a three-paragraph sub-chapter that ends with this paragraph:]

With a low view of European economic and demographic health, the vision of any kind of TAFTA as an open sesame to restoration of American fortunes is an object for derision in Great Powers: "Whenever I hear an American politician proclaim the need to strengthen the Western alliance, I know that leader promises to steer by our historical wake instead of crafting a forward-looking strategy. Recapturing past glory is not recapturing our youth but denying our parentage of this world we inhabit so uneasily today."[GP, 369] Europeans are pensioners in it. It would be wrong to reject them, but pointless to look to them. After all, Barnett remarks kindly, on the freeway of globalization grandad can come along for the ride, whoever is sitting in the front seat next to the driver.

(13) OUTSIDE THE CASTLE

[final chapter that compares the various grand strategists and strategies]

[at the bottom of a paragraph on the need to "fix" America with a centrist agenda being common to all thinkers] The menu may be ignored – it largely is by Kagan and Barnett – but rarely, if ever, is it outright rejected.

Remedies for external setbacks or oncoming hazards are more divisive. The Republican administration of 2000-2008, more controversial than its predecessor, enjoyed the support of Kagan throughout, Mead and Barnett at first, while incurring criticism, much of it vehement, from Ikenberry and Kupchan, Art and Brzezinski ...

Democracy, on the other hand, its spread till yesterday an irrenounceable goal of any self-respecting diplomacy, is now on the back burner. Openly discarded as a guideline by Kupchan, Barnett and Brzezinski, downgraded by Art, matter of horticulture rather than engineering for Mandelbaum, only Ikenberry and Kagan look wistfully for a league of democracies ...

If Iran refuses to obey Western instructions to halt its nuclear programme, it will – no one, of course welcomes the prospect – in extremis have to be attacked, hopefully with a helping hand or a friendly wink from Moscow and Beijing. Only Barnett breaks the taboo that protects the Israeli nuclear monopoly in the name of nonproliferation.

How is American domination to be presevered in the arena of Weltpolitik proper – the domain of the great powers and their conflicts, actual or potential? 

... 

For Mandelbaum and Ikenberry, on the contrary, China is the great prize whose adhesion to the liberal international order is increasingly plausible, and will render it irreversible, while for Barnett, with his more relaxed conception of such an order, the PRC is to all intents and purposes already in the bag.

 Again, what I like best is that Anderson doesn't distort what so many distort in my work (endless wars! globalization at the barrel of a gun!) and captures the essence of my vision, which is – indeed - "economy first."

TPPA a ‘New World Order’ conspiracy to regulate trade, Dr M warns

Maylay Mail Online by Zurairi AR, 9 March 2015

PUTRPUTRAJAYA, March 9 — Tun Dr Mahathir Mohamad claimed today that the controversial Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement (TPPA) is a “New World Order” (NWO) ploy that would lead to the world’s most powerful countries dominating the global economy.

The former prime minister also claimed that the TPPA, like many other free trade agreements, is a way for the NWO to establish a “one world government” through globalisation, as no other approach appears to be viable any longer.

“It’s not a partnership. All the countries which participate will be subjected to more rules than they ever had before,” Dr Mahathir told the International Conference on NWO organised by the Perdana Global Peace Foundation (PGPF).

“The TPPA is not about free trade, it’s about trade subjected to all kinds of laws and regulations, exposing countries to be sued by the international courts.”

The staunch TPPA critic also claimed that the countries that remain “recalcitrant” or refuse to conform to the trade agreement will be threatened by economic sanctions under this NWO.

Among others, Dr Mahathir listed down Iran and Russia as examples.

The conference accused today the existence of an NWO, where an allegedly secret group of elites are conspiring to rule the world via globalisation and a world government, replacing sovereign nation-states.

Dr Mahathir’s argument was however countered by Washington-based security consultant Thomas PM Barnett, who claimed that the US has put in place measures that seem to penalise itself more than other economies.

“Globalisation comes with rules. US pioneered the creation of the International Monetary Fund, the World Bank, the general agreement on trade and tariffs that became the WTO,” Barnett said, referring to the World Trade Organisation.

“Well, the country most sued, since the WTO court was created, was the US. The country that has lost more suits than anybody else in the world in the WTO court, has been the US,” he added.

Barnett, who is also an author and public speaker, also claimed that the US has even allowed the emergence of rival trading blocs such as the BRICs -- comprising Brazil, Russia, India and China – and MINT – made up of Mexico, Indonesia, Nigeria, and Turkey, instead of stifling them.

- See more at: http://www.themalaymailonline.com/malaysia/article/tppa-a-new-world-order-conspiracy-to-regulate-trade-dr-m-warns#sthash.8DQIZlCg.dpuf

Full article at http://www.themalaymailonline.com/malaysia/article/tppa-a-new-world-order-conspiracy-to-regulate-trade-dr-m-warns

Radio appearance on Missoula MT "Talk Back" Show

FULL INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE THE "NEW WORLD ORDER" A RECIPE FOR WAR or PEACE!

Interview with Radio Free Russia on Wikistrat's projections for 2013 (surprises)

Did the interview Thursday morning and it ran Friday morning.  I didn't write this one up, so it was good to see a sim run within the community and resulting in a solid product by a senior analyst (Wikistrat is maturing as a start-up in good order).

From the page:

WASHINGTON -- Wikistrat runs simulations on future events by crowdsourcing hundreds of online analysts, and hopes to be the next big thing in prediction.

Kim Brown interviews Managing Editor Chrisella Sagers Herzog, ofDiplomatic Courier Magazine, and Dr. Thomas P.M. Barnett, chief analyst of Wikistrat: 

Download

Wikistrat bills itself as "the world’s first Massively Multiplayer Online Consultancy (MMOC)". It is made up of hundreds of analysts, connected globally through the internet, who run simulations on possible future events.

Large companies and even the federal government have expressed interest in using Wikistrat, who runs simulations for a consulting fee. Right now, they're working on predicting the future of Syria and Assad's regime.

Find the page here.

Wikistrat report on "democratic peace theory" simulation

This report, compiled by Dr. Thomas P.M. Barnett, Wikistrat's Chief Analyst, presents the top insights from Wikistrat's latest simulation. The simulation featured over 90 experts from around the world.

Immanuel Kant’s theory of a democratic peace imagines a world without war and—as a precondition—without dictators. In contrast to the Hobbesian requirement of a dominant, system-taming Leviathan, Kant’s vision relied on the self-restraint of societies that rule themselves. In humanity’s historical journey from Thomas Hobbes’ realism to Kant’s idealism, historians have noted that mature democracies fight with one another far less frequently than authoritarian governments fight with other states but that immature democracies tend to be the most warlike of all.

Stipulating that historical record, the massively multiplayer online consultancy Wikistrat recently conducted a week long crowd-sourced brainstorming exercise to plot out a plausible range of caveats to the conventional wisdom that is the democratic peace theory. In this summary, we propose six categories of conflict dynamics that can elicit democracy-on-democracy war—to include pluralistic systems both mature and immature/transitional . . .

Go here for this de facto executive summary.

Old radio/podcast interview (Vantage Point) from February 2012

Just forgot to post this.  Was starting two new lines of business at the time, so it was hectic back then.

Runs about 55 mins.  Holds up fairly well over time.

Spoke a lot about Iran.  The WPR column that I referenced is found here.

Also spoke about Wikistrat.

Find the podcast interview here at Stratrisks.com.

Interview on global economy at Gold Forum in Denver last week

Interesting take on my use of "connectivity"

From Arvada Press in Colorado, where, oddly enough, I just spoke last week.

Column is entitled, Get the spirit of connectivity with your community.

Clearly self-aggrandizing exerpt, but you'd be surprised how many such converations I've had over the years.

One of the more important books I’ve read in the last 10 years is a geopolitical-strategy book called “The Pentagon’s New Map” by Thomas P.M. Barnett.

Barnett, who regularly consults for the Pentagon, goes into an intricate explication of his central thesis, which is “disconnectedness defines danger.”

What that means is that states, regions or tribes that are cut off from regular contact with the highly developed portions of the world are the states and regions that pose the greatest threat to the world around them.

Consider that al-Qaida grew and thrived in the largely abandoned and desolate regions of tribal Afghanistan, and you’ll understand.

It’s a fascinating thesis, and one worth understanding for anybody who has a lot of brain-space free to devote to geopolitics.

But I think it also has profound implications on a small scale. Consider what we know about the people behind the rash of mass shootings lately: These are not people engaged in the society around them.

People who disconnect like that miss sensing the common chords that bind us together as a society, and that is sad.

And in some extreme cases, that isolation causes people to lose their sense of compassion, their awareness of the motivations and contributions of the people they run across every day.

In this state, it becomes easy to twist small offenses into overarching problems that demand dramatic and violent action.

Next week, walking through the doors of every single school will be some child who is in the process of disconnecting.

For whatever reason, they are not plugged in to the social life of their school, nor do they have even the handful of companions that psychologists tell us provide safe haven for young people.

I’m not just talking about being unpopular; I’m talking about is something that goes a little beyond the not-so-trivial trivialities that make up a normal adolescence.

I’m talking about profound isolation.

But that isolation at school isn’t always definitive.

Many people plug in to community with their family, or with church groups, club sports or even performing groups.

All of that is great because people who belong to something tend to thrive.

Even if that “something” is as simple a unit as a mentor and a mentee, that human connection is often what launches the average into the realm of extraordinary.

So give a little thought to how you are going to “plug in” this year, even if your year is not defined by the school calendar.

I can’t tell you how to find your community, where you will feel valued — only you can do that.

But I can tell you, whether you’re a student, a teacher, a parent or a community member, the webs we forge between us have a way of reinforcing themselves over time.

Our connectedness becomes one of our most valuable assets.

If I were to define my sense of love, community - even my religious code, it would sound a lot like this author's musings.  My further delineation of the golden rule:  I don't want to be alone, and I don't want anybody else to suffer that fate against their will or better efforts.  

All we have is time - and each other.

For the Record: Excerpt from "Lone Wolf Terror and the Rise of the Leaderless Resistance"

Book is by George Michael of Air War College.  I wrote the following blurb for the backcover:

As globalization continues to process a lot of populist anger over injustices - both perceived and real - stemming from its rapid expansion into traditional cultures, the world is going to suffer a lot more of the 'leaderless' terrorism that Michael explores in this wonderfully evenhanded book.  Those hunting for solutions - in addition to the 'bad guys' - would do well to add this to their reading list.

--Thomas P.M. Barnett, Chief Analyst, Wikistrat

In the conclusion, after a section on PLA Colonels Qiao Lian's and Wang Xiangsui's book, Unrestricted Warfare, Michael offers a summary of my thinking:

Global Integration

In a sense, Qiao and Wang's advocacy of unrestricted warfare on multiple dimensions is similar to Thomas P.M. Barnett's notion of "war within the context of everything else." A former Pentagon defense analyst, Barnett argues that in the contemporary world security must encompass several different dimensions, including economics, politics, trade, international law, and, most important, connectivity. His major study, The Pentagon's New Map, advanced a grand strategy for the United States. In Barnett's scheme, the world is divided into two broad regions.  Countries in the "Functioning Core" are integrated into a world system and operate under "rule sets." They arbitrate their differences through international bodies, such as the United Nations and the World Trade Organization, and are less likely to go to war against other countries in the core.[PNM] In contrast, countries in the "Non-Integrating Gap" do not follow these rule sets and are the setting for most of the problems that bedevil the world today.

The real enemy, according to Barnett, is disconnectedness, the separation of people - especially globally. Life in the Gap is, to paraphrase Thomas Hobbes, poor, nasty, short, and brutal, he says.[PNM] An unabashed economic determinist, he believes that people integrated into the global economy are far less likely to succumb to radicalism. As he puts it, the only viable exit strategy for the US military in countries such as Iraq and Afghanistan is to leave those countries with more jobs than when the operations began.[GP & Zakaria's Post-American World]  With no resevoir of discontent, extremist and terrorist groups will find few recruits and pose no existential challenge to the system. Although Muslim rage may be fueled by issues such as the status of the Palestinians and US foreign policy, Barnett argues that it really stems from the Middle East being one of the most disconnected parts of the world. In short, Barnett's long-term strategic goal is the integration of all into the global economy, to drain the resevoir for international terrorism. Multilateral efforts could eliminate the Gap altogether, making globalization truly global.[PNM] Barnett sees globalization as inevitable, because it is the ultimate "non-zero-sum game" - meaning that all sides win.  The entire world will benefit from greater connectedness, he believes, through economic growth and higher standards of living.[BFA]

Lending credence to Barnett's thesis, researchers at the Center for International Development and Conflict Management at the University of Maryland have discovered that countries that are more tightly integrated into the global economy experience less instability.[Ted Gurr edited volume Peace and Conflict 2008]  Nearly 80 percent of all international crises in the post-Cold War era have involved at least one unstable or failing state.[Peace and Conflict 2008] The physical security of the United States is now threatned not so much by the strenth of other states, but by their weakness, since weak and failed states often serve as sanctuaries for transnational terrorist groups.[PNM & Takeyh/Gvosdev cite]  Despite current global problems, Barnett is optimistic about the future and believes that the terrorist threat can be managed effectively:

I don't see the Salafist threat as particularly profound. It has not done well, particularly in the last several years by my calculations . . . I see them more as a friction. I expect to see more of its as globalization more extensively penetrates the Middle East ast a much faster pace. The Salafists are a response to globalization, a reflection . . .

If we pursue the strategy [of expanding "the core" and shrinking "the Gap"], I don't see how it could fail. If we pursue the strategy, then we can participate in it more and we can shape the process and shape the regimes and the global pillars that arise from the process [May 2008 interview by Michael]

According to Barnett, economics got ahead of politics during the 1990s, and technology got ahead of security, causing the world to become too connected too quickly.[PNM] New technology had led to the emergence of "superempowered individuals," who Barnett believes have the potential to wreak unprecedented damage or "system perturbation."[Friedman's Lexus & Olive Tree, GP] Although the United States cannot be defeated at the nation-state level, Barnett points out that it can still be humbled and even defeated at a system level if the US government is induced to disengage from the Middle East, through acts of terrorism in the style of 9/11.[PNM] Another terrorist attack on that scale could further destabilize financial markets and have a negative ripple effect throughout the economy. Nevertheless, he believes that modern societies have advanced precisely because they have mastered network complexity, usually in response to disasters and scandals that have periodically perturbed their systems and exposed vulnerabilities.[GP]

The encroaching process of globalization, Barnett avers, will undoubtedly engender opposition from those who feel threatened with a loss of identity and culture. The goal of such actors is a "civilizational apartheid" - removal of their areas from the process of globalization. In some ways, though, greater connectivity could increase the number of terrorists. For instance, inasmuch as the "virtual umma" is built on the Internet, increasing access to the medium would increase the potential to radicalize a large number of disaffected Muslims.[irregular warfare book cite]

Despite disruptions along the way, Barnett believes that globalization, if managed effectivey, is a force for good that improves the life conditions of many people. In order for his grand strategy to become a reality, the United States must take a leading role, with other "great powers" pitching in.[GP] Some observers, through, presage an end to US hegemony. What is more, some fear that centrifugal forces could actually tear the United States apart.[pages 158-60]

Michael follows that segue with a section on Sam Huntington, Pat Buchanan, William Lind, Martin van Creveld and Robert Kaplan entitled "Fragmentation."

The next section is called "The Viability of Leaderless Resistance," and here's the last bit referencing my stuff:

Societal fragmentation could increase the frequency of small-scale violence and the prevalence of lone wolf terrorism. But some observers believe the threat of leaderless resistance is overstated. Thomas Barnett finds the discussion about fourth-generation and fifth-generation warfare to be overwrought, depicting, as they sometimes do, a future in which Mad Max-like warriors roam a wasteland. Far from seeing al Qaeda as winning, Barnett sees a movement in retreat, as time and time again it has shifted its center of graveity from one locale to another in response to evictions and military reprisals. Likewise, he see little future for terrorism in "the core." As he points out, terrorism in core countries tends to be sporadic and unsupported by the populace. Perpetrators are often disaffected loners, such as Timothy McVeigh and Ted Kaczynski, who "we see shuffling in orange jump suits and chains . . .  on their way to a court appearance." Rather than representing a "political storm," they become a social nuisance. This is in contrast to terrorists in the Gap who often thrive in a "wild frontier" environment.[BFA] [pages 165-66]

A pretty fair capture of what I wrote, although I always get this thing where my writings on connectivity leading to peace are countered with the notion (cited from others) that initial connectivity can actually lead to a rise in instability, which is, of course, a point I made ad naseum in my three books. After all, I called it The Pentagon's New Map, indicating that I argued globalization's spread would map out where conflict is going to occur.

Michael did a fair job of laying out my grand strategic vision while making clear that globalization's spread is inevitable all on its own at this point ["unabashed economic determinist . . . Barnett sees globalization as inevitable ..."], whether or not the US leads.  Too often my emphasis on what the US should do gets translated as "defeat the US and defeat globalization," which, as I note often in my writings, I don't believe is possible at this point in history, in large part because it's Asia that now leads in globalization's expansion. Where I argue the US role is crucial comes in how that inevitable globalization of globalization unfolds - i.e., how much violence is attached to that process and what are the pol-mil outcomes.

Naturally, opponents to President Obama's "strategic pivot" to East Asia are going to complain that the US is "abandoning" the Middle East, thus securing the radical Islamist "win" on some level (per my description above), but, as I have written time and again, I don't buy that one bit.  I see the "pivot" as an ass-covering drill by the Democrat Obama intent on closing down Bush's wars (along with a certain indulgence of US populism that blames a lot of America's current woes on "dastardly" China's rise), as well as a budget-floor-locating drill by the Pentagon eager to cut back on the Green (Army, Marines) and favor the big-war Blue (Air Force, Navy) that was "unfairly" penalized by the Long War and Bush's far-too-delayed embrace of COIN. True to form, globalization keeps pulling America's attention back to the Middle East in the form of the Arab Spring.

In short, our attention is pulled to wherever globalization's continued expansion hits traditional cultures not quite ready for it. East Asia gets a certain amount of our attention due to the deficit of regional integration schemes there, but these are not issues to be settled by great-power war - as much as plenty inside the Pentagon dream of such nasty business there.  But growing pains are growing pains, so East Asia gives us enough "crisis" to attract our attention even as other developing parts of the world are where the sub- and transnational action are at.

Having said all that, I did mean what I said in the blurb: I do think globalization's continued expansion gets you more leaderless terrorist activity, not so much because they're superempowered (because we all are), but because that's all that's left as globalization penetrates and absorbs the remaining traditional cultures (on view right now with the Arab Spring and in Africa's widespread economic boom and the socio-economic churn created by that). 

Of course, so long as the US offers the mentally ill easy access to military-grade automatic weaponry and ammunition, we'll have things like the Aurora shooting, which is plenty scary. The ease of doing that in our society eventually has to attract the attention of more organized foreign terror groups along the lines of the Mumbai incident.  I expect that to happen at some point, forcing the US and the West in general down some of the same domestic security paths that Israel long ago adopted (as did the UK in response to the IRA). This adjustment will be uncomfortable, but not life changing.  And it will have no impact whatsoever on globalization's continued advance. It will simply be the price of America's grand strategic success in spreading globalization these past seven decades - along with a sad reflection of our societal love of guns and violence.

Go here for audio of my segment on NPR's Weekend Edition

This be the place.

A Case For Military Intervention In Syria

June 2, 2012

Host Scott Simon talks with former Pentagon analyst Thomas P.M. Barnett about the pros and cons of a military intervention in Syria. Barnett has written in support of military intervention in Syria on Time Magazine's Battleland blog.

On NPR's Weekend Edition with Scott Simon tomorrow

Just taped via my iPhone and NPR's funky IT-Report Enterprise Edition app, where my end of the interview is taped on my iPhone and then uploaded to their site so I sound like I'm in the studio. 

I love that app.  Alternative in the past was to drive all the way into Indy to tape at the local PBS.  Usually ended up being about two-hour affair. 

This way I took boys for annual check-ups, got home about five minutes before taping and will have the whole file uploaded by 30 mins past when they called me (they actually don't call me; I log-in via wi-fi to their site via the app).

Subject is Syria and my recents posts at the Battleland blog (see below for links).

I was my usual intervention-mongering self.

Go here for details on tomorrow's show or to listen:  http://www.npr.org/programs/weekend-edition-saturday/

I'm told:  "It’s set to air tomorrow (Sat, 6/2) around 8:06am, after an interview with spokesman for the UN peacekeeping department."

That would be EDT, I am assuming.

Interview about Wikistrat in Rod Beckstrom's Starfish Report

Rod Beckstrom is a friend I first met at the TED conference in 2005, just after I spoke.  He came up to me in the hallways outside and we struck up a conversation. It led to me giving him my speaking agent, Jennifer Gates, for he and Ori Branfman to get their Starfish and Spider book published.  Rod later went on to be the CIO of the Department of Homeland Security and then president of ICANN.

His monthly Starfish Report is worth signing up for.

The full interview:

Thomas Barnett on Wikistrat

Thomas Barnett, the Chief Analyst of Wikistrat shares this story about how his company applies starfish principles to strategic thinking and planning. Tom answered the following questions to explain what they do at Wikistrat:

Q: As Chief Analyst, can you provide a brief overview for our Starfish Report readers of what Wikistrat is, and how it works?

A: Wikistrat is the world’s first crowd-sourced consultancy. We leverage a global community of several hundred strategic thinkers to tackle simulations of likely international events and unfolding global trends, the war-gaming of future conflict or crisis scenarios, and strategic planning exercises – all for private- and public-sector clients. To make such an offering possible, Wikistrat has put in the time and effort to not only create and nurture our global community that welcomes talent from all regions and a diverse range of subject domains, we’ve built – and continue to expand with each simulation – an online model of globalization itself in a wiki-based, scenario-driven format. So we’re basically three things at once:

1) Facebook for strategists from around the world who are looking for a place to improve their skills, run with others of their own kind in a 21st-century guild environment, and come together for paying consulting engagements;

2) Wikipedia-like global intelligence exchange (our globalization model, or GLOMOD); and

3) Massively multiplayer online consultancy (MMOC) that offers clients a crowdsourcing alternative to the usual “butts-in-seats” consulting firms that can’t possibly match our price points when it comes to massed brainpower because our overhead costs are so minimal.

We’re convinced that this is the future of consulting in the globalization era because our approach allows clients a far more interactive engagement (e.g., they can participate in our simulations on a real-time basis), combined with a wisdom-of-the-crowd dynamic that effectively addresses today’s complexity and constantly morphing international landscape. Our simulations can run for hours, days or weeks – even months. They can be mounted at very short notice and generate actionable insights for clients from the minute we turn them on.

Q:  To what degree does Wikistrat embrace a decentralized “starfish” style of leadership? Is there a centralized leadership system that oversees and directs Wikistrat’s network of analysts?

A: Wikistrat is starfish-like on a number of levels. 

First, we assemble temporary teams for client engagements, just like a production company that is formed to make a movie and is then disbanded. So there’s no set pattern of who gets pulled into any one engagement. 

Once we establish the core group of senior experts needed for the task, we send out invitations across the community to fill out the remainder of the participant pool, aiming for the highest diversity possible by subject domain, region, and experience level, and then we see who takes up the offer and runs with that opportunity.

I can’t tell you what a typical Wikistrat team looks like, because we don’t know until it comes together in response to the client’s request. Our job is simply to keep the global “bench” deep and wide and accessible in a real-time fashion, understanding – of course – that we vet everybody before letting him or her into the community. We aim for a very particular “crowd.”

Second, our guild-like community self-organizes itself to an unusual degree. We’ve set up subject-matter and regional desks and assign analysts to those based on the interests they express in their applications and intake interviews.  But once inside the community, they’re pretty much free to pick and choose the bulk of their activities, which leads to a lot of pleasant surprises as people develop talents and display skills you wouldn’t expect, based on reading their resumes.

Over time, that’ll lead to new desks being formed in response to the self-initiated clustering of minds. We’ve also “gamified” the community for the younger, less-experienced analysts, which means we offer them a variety of pathways to earn points that elevate their network standing and consulting opportunities over time, while “sharpening the blade” – as it were.

So far, these younger analysts have gobbled up those activities and constantly push us to generate more (like the world’s first crowd-sourced strategy book), which is an awesome responsibility for Wikistrat, because we’re filling a gap in their professional training and thus empowering the next generation of grand strategists that this world desperately needs.

Third, the GLOMOD itself is self-organizing.  We like to say at Wikistrat that, “analysts don’t compete, they collaborate by making scenarios compete.” When analysts work on client engagements, or in one of our internal training simulations, or even just when they working the GLOMOD on their own – for their professional gratification, if they disagree with or can’t bear the analysis on some scenario page, they’re free to “take their fight outside,” as I like to say, by creating an alternative scenario page on the wiki.

That means the GLOMOD grows from the inside out, but in directions no one can predict. Ideas cluster on their own, creating new centers of analytic gravity within the GLOMOD.  My job as de facto chief architect is to make sure no branch grows so long that it’s unsustainable or unduly isolated in its reasoning, meaning we want other portions of the GLOMOD to reach out and establish analytic linkages – in both a figurative and literal (i.e., HTML) sense. Thus the GLOMOD is really a collective-but-distributed “brain” that grows according to the dictates of the community working in response to client requests.

Fourth, we have no set sales staff. Our analysts themselves are our primary sales force. Wherever they go and whatever they encounter in their various other professional endeavors, they’re empowered to market Wikistrat’s services – that crowd-sourced alternative they can’t deliver themselves. That means they can propose new offerings and solicit new clients on their own, which, once we accommodate them, lead to Wikistrat’s growth as a consultancy and company.

The same is true on recruiting, as our analysts are our primary recruiters. 

With offices in New York, Tel Aviv and Sidney, Wikistrat is effectively headquartered in the “cloud.” To date, our central staff remains quite small – as in, single digits. We’re going to try and keep it as small as possible going forward, but we’re facing a significant challenge in that regard, due to the growing demand for our services and the sheer fact that analysts are signing themselves into the community from around the world every day.  But these are good problems.

Q:  What happens during live multi-player simulations?

Typically analysts will spend about half of a simulation working out – meaning populating with rich detail – alternate scenario pathways, exploring them across what we call a Scenario Dynamics Grid, or a generic multi-stage breakdown of a scenario’s lifespan, however long that may be (i.e., anywhere from hours to decades, depending on the client’s time focus).

Then the analysts will vote on the most plausible and/or revealing – to the client, that is – master narratives, which are the sequencing of individual scenarios at various stages in however many combinations make the most sense. Once we have those in hand, participants will often analyze how these various master narratives impact the interests of the most relevant real-world actors – in effect assuming their personas. At that point, our crowd will start brainstorming and then competing various policy options for those same actors.

That’s a fairly generic client engagement that involves simulating some possible future event. But we can vary the structure of simulations by any number of variables, and clients can always follow up with requests for additional modules (e.g., inserting a “shock” into an unfolding scenario to test some policy option).

In this regard, one of our favorite schemes is having multiple groups of analysts play the same real-world actor – say a nation-state government (in truth, analysts often spontaneously organize themselves along these lines in simulations whether we tell them to or not). Another is to have actual citizens (analysts) play their own countries. Too many American exercises simply have Americans playing everybody, when what you really want is Chinese playing Chinese, Indians playing Indians, etc. That’s where our global community comes into play. That’s how you obtain truly new sets of eyes.

And that’s really the underlying principle we follow in all design – “collaborative competition” of descriptions, concepts, options, etc.  So we like to compare the work dynamic to additive manufacturing – aka, 3-D printing.  We’re not aiming for the destructive, subtractive dynamics of the blogosphere, where everyone spends way too much time tearing down each other’s ideas.  We want our analysis to be built, layer by layer, with as many hands shaping the intellectual product as possible but with everyone getting credit for every single keystroke – all of which is instantly archived for the client’s access. Wikistrat is completely transparent in that way, which we think is hugely important in terms of making the client smarter – not just the analysts working inside traditional consulting’s “black box.”

One final thing to note from the analysts’ perspective: the “crowd” we source on any simulation works – on an individual basis – according to their own schedules. Our simulations have to go 24-7 because we’re global from day one. So we don’t ask our crowd to assemble in one room somewhere on the planet, thus allowing us to tap their wisdom in whatever natural context they currently reside – wherever they reside.

That means we get analysts’ best work because they offer their time at their greatest convenience. That’s why we prefer longer-run simulations for maximum flexibility, but if the client wants things faster, we accommodate that desire simply by increasing the size of the “crowd” to ensure a critical mass is achieved in a tighter time space.

Q: The Wikistrat site states that, “Wikistrat uses its patent-pending, digitalized, war-gaming methodology for engaging clients…” Can you explain how war-gaming methodology is used to provide geopolitical strategic analysis?

A:  Besides the description I’ve already offered above, the key thing that differentiates Wikistrat is our simulations/war-games/etc. aren’t pre-scripted affairs that force analysts into either “fighting the scenario” (i.e., disputing its plausibility or fidelity to real life) or chaffing within its artificial confines. Because our whole methodology revolves around the wiki, our motto is, “Don’t fight the scenario, fracture it.”

Here’s what I mean: Wikipedia has one entry for me, and it’s so conflicted that the organization labels it “not up to standards.” The simple truth is, my thinking is controversial enough in several realms so that there’s no one set worldwide opinion as to its validity – go figure! In Wikipedia, that leads to a sub-optimal or less-informing outcome.

But in a Wikistrat simulation, we don’t try to contain analysts and their ideas within a single scenario. Again, if there’s a fight, we instruct the aggressor to “take it out” . . . on a new wiki page that thereupon competes with the “low fidelity” page that he or she cannot abide. So long as analysts are willing to put their money where their mouths are, and stand by the alternative scenarios they generate by providing accompanying policy options, then all we’ve done with that conflict is exploit it to the client’s benefit.

We can do all this because our exercises never commit themselves to paper or the responsibility – and cost – of massing several dozen experts in some resort hotel for X days, all of which creates massive organizational pressures on the game convener to go as scripted as possible so as to avoid wasting already sunken costs. Since we’re in the “cloud” from start to finish, the costs involved with accommodating out-of-the-box thinking is virtually zero. To me, that’s “starfish” because circumstances and creativity dictate form and function – not the other way around.

As for the “patent-pending” part, that’s our using the wiki in “competitive collaboration.”  Wikipedia doesn’t compete its entries but Wikistrat competes everything. Throughout our war-games, analysts will vote on darn near everything. Clients can too. So our sims are intellectually invasive (i.e., “engaging”), but tremendously cost- effective due to digitalization.

Great example: L ast June we held an International Grand Strategy Competition with three-dozen teams of grad students from top universities from all over the world.  We gamified it with a prize and had various teams assume the personas of various great powers.  But to make it truly competitive and collaborative at the same time, in most instances we were able to get three different schools playing the same country. What that meant was that the three teams playing Pakistan competed fiercely with each other to be the best Pakistan, but they also fed off each other’s creativity. So the harder they competed, the more they collaborated. And you know what? This collection of teams truly turned my head around on Pakistan, taking me places strategically that I hadn’t considered.

Frankly, that’s why we use next-generation strategists in every sim we run. They simply don’t know what questions they’re not supposed to ask, and that makes them dangerously creative in everything they do – again, to the client’s benefit. If you fear “black swans,” nobody hunts them down better than those fresh minds that haven’t already been “made up.”  Put some “young Turks” on a wiki burdened by too much conventional wisdom, and they’re like bulls in a china shop.

Q: As the author of three books based on your background as an analyst for the US military, you advocate for a new direction the military can take towards the globalization of peace. Do you think this can be accomplished within the military’s current top-down hierarchical leadership style? Do you think the military could/should engage civilian peace-oriented networks to achieve the goal of global peace?

My System Administrator “force,” or one focused on everything but big wars, was always based on the notion that it’s essentially a military-civilian interface function that tilts decidedly to the latter over the course of its operations. In effect, my SysAdmin force is a way for the military to transition – as quickly and as comprehensively as possible – the low-end policing, nation-building, frontier integrating, etc., to non-military actors (NGOs, PVOs, international bodies, private sector enterprises, local governmental entities, and so on).

It was designed to be “starfish” from the get-go; I just didn’t have that particular vernacular in my tool-kit at the time. Now, of course, thanks to Rod and Ori’s book, plus those various insurgencies since encountered, it all seems so obvious.

My SysAdmin concept is definitely about the multiplication or franchising of authority centers within on-the-ground operations (post-conflict, post-war, counter-insurgency) that the military historically prefers to run in a highly hierarchical manner.  But as we know, that can infantilize local capacity – destroy it, actually.

So, absolutely, the military has to embrace a certain “starfish” mentality for the hand-off dynamics to unfold successfully. That doesn’t mean I want the entire US military to go down that route, but the skill set must be developed among those particular forces that get stuck with these ops time and again, and that’s why I originally advocated a certain splitting of the force, between warriors who focus on big wars and those who manage the small conflicts, so the latter would develop and – more important – never discard those skills, which is what we did after Vietnam and are threatening to do again with this new obsession on China and the AirSea Battle Concept.

We’re living through an age of globalization’s globalization – if you will. For decades, the global economy was just the West, but now it’s north, south, east and west – truly global, meaning frontiers are being integrating all over the planet simultaneously. That’s a lot of political-military churn to go along with all that socio-economic change.

So if you want to continue exploiting globalization’s ultimate pacifying effect, you need to aggressively process these many frontiers, settling them down. That’s a huge international project where the US military can only succeed if it enlists as many new allies as possible, and that means going as “starfish” as possible across its relevant organizational edge. To me, that’s the Army, Marines and Special Forces – the core elements of my SysAdmin concept.

To learn more visit wikistrat.com.

Wikistrat's chief analyst quoted in Reuters piece on cyber struggle landscape

Disagreements on cyber risk East-West "Cold War"

By Peter Apps, Political Risk Correspondent

Fri Feb 3, 2012 11:32pm IST

LONDON - With worries growing over computer hacking, data theft and the risk of digital attacks destroying essential systems, western states and their allies are co-operating closer than ever on cyber security . . . 

But many Western security specialists say the evidence against both nations -- particularly China -- has become increasingly compelling.

"China is currently engaged in a maximal industrial espionage effort that it justifies internally in terms of a catch up strategy (with the West)," says Thomas Barnett, chief analyst at political risk consultancy Wikistrat and a former strategist for the U.S. Navy. "The key question here is: can China assume the mantle of intellectual property rights respect fast enough to avoid triggering economic warfare of the West... If it can't, then this is likely to get ugly."

Read the entire column at Reuters.

Wikistrat's chief analyst quoted in Reuters piece on great-power rivalries in the Mideast

 

Here's the intro and my section:

Global "great power politics" returns to Mideast

By Peter Apps, Political Risk Correspondent

LONDON | Tue Jan 31, 2012 7:28am EST

(Reuters) - With Russia sending warships to discourage foreign intervention in Syria, and China drawn more deeply into Iran's confrontation with the West, "great power" politics is swiftly returning to the Middle East . . .

Chinese officials might be willing to use sanctions to negotiate better oil prices from Iran, but there seems relatively little prospect that they will stop buying even if Tehran's rival Saudi Arabia makes up the difference in output.

"Each time the West tightens the leash, Beijing quietly avails itself of the slack," says Thomas Barnett, a former strategist for the U.S. Navy and now chief analyst at political risk consultancy Wikistrat. "The more explicitly Washington bases its global strategic military posture on the perceived Chinese threat, the more Beijing will welcome - and even overtly encourage - these diversions" . . . 

Read the entire article at Reuters.

The Hunt Big Sales interview processed into two blog posts.

First one is entitled, Think Bigger: Ideas That Sell, and came out Monday.

Second one entitled, Are You Selling to the Right People? came out Tuesday.

There are encapsulations of the audio interview I posted on Tuesday.

Interview on selling big ideas

 

Gave it to Tom Searcy, who writes at both Inc.com and Hunt Big Sales.com.

You can find the download here.

I likewise embed download in this post.  Runs about 20 minutes.

Click here to play.

Appearance on "The Alyona Show" regarding Obama's strategic "pivot" to Asia

Driven by my WPR column.  Did it Tuesday night.

Worrisome to me in the new house: the upload speed on my cable connection was problematic here, as you'll see in the resulting video via Skype.

I would greatly welcome any ideas on how to improve.

Talking to my AV guy, he said make sure everybody in the house (2 other laptops and 2 desktops) were off the web.  That I didn't do.  He said also to shut down everything on my MacBook Pro, go wired to the modem and turn off my wifi.

Speed testing the wifi just now, I'm 24 mps down and 4 up, so there shouldn't have been a problem. But honestly, there could have been 30 web windows open among the 4 other machines, and I didn't exactly clean up my laptop prior.

NEXT TIME: I'll go wired in the living room that doubles as my video production center and I'll have a Wikistrat pattern behind me and I'll be lit from both sides (with screen forming third point). I'll also take all the steps Greg, my AV guy, outlined.

But again, any other ideas welcomed.

Quoted in Reuters piece on 2012 predictions

Find it here.

Opening:

Analysis: 2012 could prove even wilder ride than 2011

 

By Peter Apps, Political Risk Correspondent

LONDON | Thu Dec 15, 2011 11:01am EST

(Reuters) - The ancient Mayans attached special significance to 2012, possibly the end of time. That has spawned a rush of apocalyptic literature for the holiday season.

My bit:

   CONFLICT, UNREST 

   After the fall of several veteran Western-backed Arab rulers, the withdrawal of U.S. forces from Iraq is seen as the latest sign of the diminishing influence of Western powers in a region they dominated for some 200 years.  

   In the resulting vacuum, regional powers such as Turkey, Saudi Arabia and an isolated and perhaps more erratic Iran appear in increasingly open confrontation. 

   Western intelligence estimates that Iran is moving closer to a viable nuclear weapon have a shorter timeline, and some analysts say 2012 could be the year when Tehran's enemies decide to go beyond covert sabotage with a military strike that could spark retaliation against oil supplies in the Gulf. 

   "The bigger wild card out there is an Israeli attack on Iran's nuclear facilities and elements of regime control," says Thomas Barnett, chief strategist of political risk consultancy Wikistrat, saying neither the Israeli nor the Iranian leadership looks inclined to back down. "The setting here is scary... something has got to give in this strategic equation." 

   Even if the world avoids a devastating shock such as a Middle East war or a European breakdown, many analysts fear the business of politics and policy-making could become increasingly difficult around the world.