Tuesday, October 25, 2011 at 12:01AM This section of the brief focuses on the rise of the global middle class, the evolution of national economies, why China won't "rule the world" for all that long, and what the future evolution of East Asia holds.
Friday, October 21, 2011 at 12:01AM Part two of the Sept 2011 briefing to international military audience in Washington DC area. This section focused on the flow of people as captured in Wikistrat's GLOMOD (online, wiki-based "global model" of globalization), then moves on to the inevitabilities surrounding demographic aging, then explores how demography drives the Arab Spring, and then offers a regional evolution projection for the Middle East.
Thursday, October 20, 2011 at 12:01AM Delivered in Washington to an international military audience, September 2011.
We'll roll out the rest of the brief over the next couple of weeks. This section covers the introduction and my concepts regarding globalization's Core and Gap.
Thursday, September 22, 2011 at 8:58AM A while back I gave a long interview to Mindy Audlin on her radio show. That interview, along with twenty others, is bundled up into her new book, "Let it begin with me: 21 voices of the new peace movement."
Yes, I realize that it's not my typical venue, but Mindy is a bigger thinker than most.
Find the book at Amazon.
Tuesday, July 26, 2011 at 12:01AM With Wikistrat’s International Grand Strategy Competition now complete, I wanted to take this opportunity to sum up what I think unfolded over the month-long contest. As head judge, I am uniquely suited for the task, because I’m fairly certain that I’m the one person who perused every line of every entry of every team every week. To give you some sense of that effort: roughly 30 teams cranked, on average, 7,500-8,000 words per week. That’s close to a million words in all!
We're not going to pretend that every word entered was golden. The purpose of the competition was to elicit ideas in aggregate - not to collectively produce the one "perfect" document (i.e., the bureaucratic approach). In mass harvesting exercises such as these - no matter the level of expertise involved - there is a certain amount of chaff. By design, participants are put through a variety of methodological paces that force them to winnow their ideas down to their essentials. So while the journey matters plenty, it's the destination that we collectively seek: those nuggets of strategic insight that arise from the focused and repetitive interplay of so many minds tackling the same subjects from a variety of angles. For it is amidst that maelstrom of intellectual activity that a variety of competing perspectives are collaboratively blended into foreign policy visions worthy of the label "grand strategy."
We achieved that goal in spades, meaning there was than enough “wheat” to be found throughout the entries, which got better and better with each passing week. Besides telling us that collaborative competition works, the continuous uptick in performance also proved the validity of the “massively multiplayer consultancy” model, which is what we believe Wikistrat can offer as a result of its ongoing efforts to build an online community of strategists from across the globe – the Facebook-meets-Wikipedia dynamic.
If, for example, you’re a client interested in having dozens/hundreds/thousands of strategic thinkers chase down a problem, query or brainstorm for you, then Wikistrat can mobilize them en masse for a X-week-long collaborative competition not all that unlike what we just did in this contest. We’d simply tailor the parameters and the participants. But the key thing is, your desired effort would now involve a true “wisdom of the crowd” dynamic, with the crowd in this instance being a vetted group of strategic thinkers collaboratively competing to come up with the best answer.
Why we think that’s a better route: In today’s complex world, we’re certain that companies and governments will benefit deeply from such intellectual exposure. No, we don’t think this completely replaces in-house studies or working with contractors, because they’ll always be those needed deep dives on specific issues. Plus you simply can’t outsource your strategic thought processes in every instance. But there will also increasingly be the need to tap into far wider pools of thinking, or ones that explore issues more “horizontally” (i.e., plumbing the cross-domain connections) than “vertically” – especially when you’re talking strategic planning on an international scale. In a black-swan world, you can never ask too many “what if” questions, or have too many bright minds coming up with possible answers.
We also think the competition proved itself as a useful method for attracting and identifying talent within our burgeoning online community of strategists. There are literally thousands upon thousands of professional, apprentice (like our grad students) and avocational strategists out there on the Web generating useful analysis, and, in a disconnected sense, you could say they’re all collaboratively competing for our attention with their blogs, sites, etc.
But when Wikistrat pulls them into an online venue explicitly designed to foster that collaborative competition – directly, then we turbo-charge the dynamic by concentrating it to an unprecedented degree. The International Grand Strategy Competition was a brilliant demonstration of that potential: no established “stars” among the 200-plus individual team members, and yet collectively they pushed each other to generate a constant flow of innovative strategic ideas. And the longer the competition went on, the higher the flow and quality of those ideas – innovation feeding off innovation.
Frankly, it got hard to grade it all, because on an individual basis, everything started trending up toward “A’s.” But just as designed and encouraged in this competition, the collective grading came down to a rank ordering, meaning there could be only one #1, one #2, etc. with regard to every assigned task. And no, the same few teams didn’t win each ranking, as ten different teams each scored one of the sixteen #1 rankings – with only three teams scoring multiple wins.
But the best part was this: whenever the top effort was so identified, you could readily see its impact on the next week’s play, as other teams started copying the techniques, reach of vision, etc., that earned that one team such high recognition previously. That meant the “bar” rose rapidly throughout the competition, with the most ambitious teams clearly seeking to out-innovate the established leaders, which is why there was so much movement in the overall rankings week by week. You can see the proof on the team entries: the longer the competition went on, the more the most innovative teams had their ideas cited by others, because to not do so risked being left behind in the expanding dialogue.
To say that it was exciting to witness is an understatement, and let me tell you why: I taught an experimental course at the Naval War College in 2003, while I was writing The Pentagon’s New Map. In the elective, which attracted an unusual percentage of that class’s top students, I taught the officers how to generate competing scenarios using an X-Y axis approach (two questions yielding four boxes). To be honest, going into the class I had no idea if you could develop the skill, even as I knew it was easy to teach the procedure. But we kept at it, week after week, just repeating the effort on new subjects, levels of analysis and regions. At first, the generated scenarios were just awful, and I spent a lot of time offering constructive criticism, but over time they got better and once they did, the confidence level of the students rose and – sure enough – in the last few weeks of class they performed most of the critiques themselves in a peer-to-peer fashion, while I merely pushed them toward more elaborately scaled efforts.
Well, I witnessed the same dynamic unfolding in the competition, and it was a thing of beauty: the more teams and analysts became aware of each other’s work, the more they effectively critiqued it – in a peer-to-peer fashion – by co-opting some aspect and expanding it further in their own efforts. And with the expanding complexity built into the competition’s design, I – the head judge – found myself “stealing” what I could for Time Battleland posts and my World Politics Review column.
As they say, talent imitates but genius steals! ;<)
The teams themselves can track their own progress by the numbers of eye-popping interjections I left in my grading notes (later distributed to the competitors). Simply put, the “wow’s” began piling up exponentially with each passing week, and – just like in my experimental War College class – my initial feelings of despair (“Maybe you just can’t teach this stuff?”) invariably gave way to serious respect for what the next generation has to offer.
It is my sincere hope that those competitors who were energized by the competition will seek to maintain an affiliation with Wikistrat, because as we move forward with our massively multiplayer consultancy, we think we’ll be able to offer them the kick-ass combination of an online community where they can “sharpen the blade” while simultaneously selling their best ideas – collaboratively and competitively – to a host of global corporations and government agencies eager to explore globalization, in all its current and future complexity, for strategic planning purposes.
Looking forward,
Thomas P.M. Barnett
Friday, July 22, 2011 at 12:01AM 
The 30+ teams in Wikistrat's Grand Strategy Competition were divided so they represent a total of 13 countries: The United States, China, India, Brazil, Russia, South Africa, the European Union, Pakistan, Iran, Israel, Japan, Turkey and North Korea.
In this format, each team competed both against the teams representing the same country (US Team 1 vs. US Team 2 and 3), and then in a crossways comparison against teams from other countries (determining, for example, how well does the Chinese strategy match the country's objectives compared to the way the Indian strategy matched the Indian objectives).
3 countries stood out as the best played countries:
Of the five regions played, Wikistrat judges determined that South-Asia region was the best played region in the competition.
South Asia region was composed of the following teams:
Congratulations to all participants!
Thursday, July 21, 2011 at 12:01AM 
In this post we wish to recognize some of the best teams which participated at Wikistrat's Grand Strategy Competition that took place throughout June. In a very close race with winning-team Claremont Graduate University was the Oxford Team, which finished in the 2nd and highly respected place.
In addition to finishing at the second place, Oxford students won the "Most Resilient Grand Strategy Award" for their impressive Grand Strategy, playing the European Union. Their work was noted by Thomas PM Barnett is his WPR Column, and by the Atlantic Sentinel here and here.
With 4 overall #1 ranking (across 16 tasks), Oxford team has made a tremendous effort and deserve every recognition. Well done!
The third most prestigious prize - Creative Strategic Thinkers Team - was awarded to the School of Oriental and African Studies (CISD), playing China.
The full top 5 finalists are:
In the competition we have witnessed dozens of proactive strategic thinkers, eager to collaborate, research and contribute. If we could, we would mention many of them here as they truly are promising emerging strategic thinkers.
We would like to pay special recognition to the winners of the Most Active Participants awards. These individuals were the most active, collaborative and wiki-savvy participants:
Congratulations to all winning teams and individuals!
Wednesday, July 20, 2011 at 12:01AM 
With the Grand Strategy Competition coming to an end, it is time to announce the Winning Team. Of the 30+ participating teams from all around the world, we are happy to announce the Claremont Graduate University Team as the winner of Wikistrat's 2011 Grand Strategy Competition!
CGU's PhD-students demonstrated impressive analytic capabilities and continued to propose creative and provocative ideas throughout the competition, making a collaborative effort and effective use of the wiki. Using unique methodologies, CGU members constantly fed other competitors with new ways to look at geopolitical challenges, and instigated further discussions.
Playing the role of Pakistan, CGU's PhD-students were able to beat some of the world's best institutions, and won special recognition in a Time Battland post by Dr. Thomas P.M. Barnett. To get a glimpse of their work, check out their assessment of Pakistan's National Trajectory.
In addition to winning the $10,000 prize and the prestige that comes with it, the CGU team has gained important hands-on experience in strategic planning and collaborative analysis. We hope these skills, knowledge and relationships created during the competition will continue to benefit all participants in the future, as the Wikistrat community of strategic thinkers grows.
Congratulations Claremont Team!
Tuesday, July 19, 2011 at 12:01AM Well, the Wikistrat International Grand Strategy Competition finished July 3rd, and in that last week our roughly 30 teams had their grand strategies (crafted in Week 3) subjected to a quartet of global shocks (crippling terror strike in Saudi Arabia, an Arab Spring 2.0 in Central Asia, a massive tsunami disaster along China’s coast, and a worldwide downing of the Internet during a technology upgrade). The teams’ assignments were to analyze the impact of the crises on their countries’ strategic interests and then evaluate their national grand strategies’ resilience in the face of these upheavals. Continuing in my role as head judge, I wanted to cite the most provocative takeaways from this last week in the competition.
1) What a game-changer the Great Game could become (Brazil 1/Institute of World Politics 2 & South Africa 1/The Interdisciplinary Center )
Think about it: the radical Salafist impulse currently struggles to remain relevant amidst the Arab Spring and the demographics in the Middle East don’t favor it over the long haul, meaning it logically migrates either southwest into Africa or northeast into Central Asia – two regions full of colonial-era fake states ripe for the sort of disintegrating civil strife that the movement feeds on. With Africa booming economically while Central Asia lags behind, odds favor the latter scenario. If and when such a wave of political instability happens (either positively or negatively), three of the five BRICS (Russia, India, China) will inevitably be sucked into the maelstrom, diverting their strategic attention and sucking up resources. So who looks stable and even more attractive (e.g., energy, minerals, agriculture) by comparison? Brazil and South Africa.
2) Does the War on Terror invariably get replaced by a War on iTerror? (China 3/School of Oriental and African Studies-U of London & United States 2/Georgetown University)
With the growth of all things Web/digital/geolocational, the world is clearly headed toward a long string of escalating crises as we work our way through all the weaknesses/vulnerabilities/dangers of the attendant networks. Likewise, as nations gear up their governmental cyber warfare capabilities, it’s natural for the long war against violent extremism to migrate more to that realm. Whatever the trigger, it’s not hard to imagine the next big conflict paradigm being a “war on iTerror,” where all the usual non-state actor and government interests/activities become as blurred as they’ve long been in the more kinetic realm. Even more so than in traditional terrorism, any efforts made to bolster a nation’s cyber security can be justified by all manner of traditional economic competitiveness reasons (not to mention the usual authoritarian desires regarding control over the domestic political landscape). Plus, it’s cheaper than nation-building in failed states and fits the West’s growing impulse to pull back and heal itself while acknowledging that some parts of the world are just destined to “burn.”
3) And when the right worldwide cyber crisis comes, does it make everybody want to work together (Y2K-after-next) or does it accelerate the balkanization of the Web? (India 3/Ohio State University, European Union 2/Oxford & United States 3/Johns Hopkins University)
When that long predicted “cyber Pearl Harbor” or “digital 9/11” finally hits (or something close enough simply earns the label), it could be a great turning point in modern globalization’s history. Do we get the big multilateral cooperation response (OSU’s WEBretton Woods System)? Or just enough great-power cooperation to set in motion similar efforts in other “global commons” (Oxford)? Or do we witness a worldwide competition among states to see which can lock down their “national Internets” more securely (Johns Hopkins)? As with the many predictive models created in anticipation of the Y2K event, much would seem to depend on how homogenous and widespread the suffering: Are we drawn together as nations or does the differential send each scrambling down its own, beggar-their-neighbor’s-network path?
4) In a world of persistent and pervasive revolutions, Iran’s stagnant version actually has a reasonably bright future, assuming the regime can keep a grip on its own people (Iran 1 / JHU @ Bologna & Iran 2/University of Cambridge)
Both Iran teams’ grand strategies were rather unabashedly aggressive regarding the nation’s quest for regional hegemony, and when subjected to the various shocks, both of them came through rather swimmingly. Yes, there is a lot wrong with Iran, and there’s plenty of reason to expect China to pick Riyadh over Tehran, leaving the latter to quasi-alliance with India over the long run. But with India seeming the safer “rising” bet – again, over the long haul, and key China-Saudi conduit Pakistan looking so fragile right now (and don’t forget the Arab Spring lapping up on Saudi peninsula), there’s plenty of reason to expect the Iranians to constitute a powerful force in all directions (e.g., Persian Gulf, Caspian, Central Asia) in the decades ahead – especially when their nuclear capability is finally locked in and recognized internationally as such.
5) Why a similarly stubborn – but far more withdrawn – North Korea might similarly hold on, despite many predictions regarding its demise. (North Korea 1/UK Defence Forum & North Korea 2/University of Sussex)
Think about it, say our two NorKo teams: so long as Pyongyang doesn’t cross Beijing’s red line, the more powerful China becomes, the less likely it feels compelled to “fix” the DPRK on the West’s timetable. Conversely, if China suffers some big, back-tracking disaster (like the one posited in Week 4), then it’s even less likely to want to acquiesce to the West’s desires – for fear of looking weak. Either way, North Korea and its $6T of mineral reserves is sitting . . . ugly all right – but stable when it comes to its primary patron.
6) An “Arab Spring 2.0” for Central Asia isn’t all that bold a prediction. After all, Central Asia is the last remaining region that’s uniformly authoritarian, so of course the next great wave of democratization happens there – eventually (Pakistan 1/Claremont Graduate University)
And oddly enough, for the Claremont team, if it comes suitably far enough down the road for Pakistan’s own stabilization process to have unfolded (i.e., a decade or more from now), then it represents a serious opportunity for the nation – especially if a joint Chinese-Pakistani effort to stabilize Afghanistan in the wake of the Western pullout succeeds. Under such scenarios, Pakistan would be well positioned to become China’s preferred model of development for the region (i.e., moderate and sustainable Islamic identity, strong military role, just democratic enough to avoid brittleness, and a deep appreciation of China’s benevolent patronage).
7) With Russia’s long southern exposure, it makes sense for Moscow to strengthen its connections to the West – er, North! (Russia 2/New York University)
It was interesting to note that all four of the vertical shocks seemed to re-emphasize the utility of Moscow’s recent – and renewed – westward turn under Dmitry Medvedev. Whether or not this shift survives the return of Vladimir Putin, over the long haul, it simply makes sense for a Russia with so many rising powers along its southern rim. If its long-time effort to recast NATO or expand it with a Eurasia-wide replacement doesn’t work, then the opening of the Arctic is probably Moscow’s best opportunity to forge a new and positive identity – the northern brand.
8) With the demography-equals-destiny dynamics well underway, and China unlikely to forever avoid an economic crisis, will that crisis’s primary historical purpose be to declare the onset of the “rising India” era? (Turkey 3/Institute of World Politics 1 & India 1/ Indian Institute of Technology)
It’s not just a parlor game notion, for that moment will eventually arrive. The better question is, How ready for it will India be? And if it’s uncomfortable with going it alone, how far should it pursue strategic alliance with fellow democracies Brazil and South Africa in anticipation of that opportunity? As a follow on, one could likewise wonder how China handles that moment – i.e., when it realizes that the Chinese Century isn’t as long as promised?
9) If the future is all about resilience and handling black-swan events, then reports of a post-American world may be greatly exaggerated. (United States 1/American Military University, United States 2/Georgetown University & United States 3/Johns Hopkins University)
There is the persistent myth that democracies respond weakly to crises while authoritarian regimes handle them with strength. Yes, more horizontal polities tend to obsess over vertical shocks (witness America’s stubborn search for the next “Pearl Harbor”), but the truth is, they handle better well as truly distributed systems. Simply put, there is no head to cut off. While vertical polities (authoritarian systems) are well equipped to run to ground the low-and-slow horizontal scenarios (e.g., hunting down every prominent member of political movement X), it’s the vertical shocks that often expose their brittleness, because how can a bunch of guys sitting around a table possibly prepare for every contingency? It’s a familiar point: democracies love to advertize their weaknesses while authoritarian regimes are great at hiding theirs – until the right crisis comes along and reveals that – yet again – the vaunted emperor has no clothes. As globalization spreads and consolidates, it still pays to bet on the distributed systems.
Friday, July 1, 2011 at 10:45AM
Wednesday, June 22, 2011 at 12:59PM As head judge of Wikistrat’s International Grand Strategy Competition, I wanted to update everybody on what’s emerged across the second week of the contest. As you may already know, the competition brings together approximately 30 teams comprised of PhD and masters students from elite international schools and world-renowned think tanks. Those teams, evenly distributed over a dozen or so countries (so as to encourage intra-country as well as inter-country competition), were challenged in Week 2 to come up with national and regional trajectories in relation to their country-team assignments (Brazil, China, EU, India, Iran, Israel, Japan, North Korea, Pakistan, Russia, South Africa, Turkey & US).
As head judge, I assign points to teams based on their activity throughout the week. In this second week, each team generated those two trajectories to the tune of about 10,000 words each, or close to 300,000 words across all the teams. Naturally, a ton of interesting nuggets emerged, so here’s my hit list of provocative ideas.
1) US turns back toward Western Hemisphere as part of reduced global footprint, need to deal with drug/crime nexus, and desire to balance growing Chinese influence across region (BRAZIL1/Institute of World Politics 2)
Every new US president hits the ground running with the promise to pay more attention to the Western Hemisphere – and then promptly forgets the entire idea. So far, Barack Obama has held to form, and yet the dynamics cited here make for a compelling argument. A US that pulls back from the world and gets it own house in order must certainly look southward for some of its solutions – particularly on the disastrous drug war. Brazil, as the IWP2 team points out, is the key dynamo of the region, so either the US recognizes that and accommodates Brazil’s ambitions, or it may find itself the odd man out throughout South America.
2) The European Union’s primary contribution going forward could be to show the advanced/advancing world how to live within its resource means (EUROPEAN UNION1/NATO’s Atlantic Treaty Association)
The EU1 team established as its primary “national” trajectory goal Europe’s energy independence by 2030. While we can argue about the feasibility, there’s no question that the EU can and should be a leader on the subject. All projections show the region experiencing basically flat energy consumption growth in coming decades, while improving its public transportation infrastructure in a big way. Uncomfortable with relying on energy flows from restive North Africa, the tense Persian Gulf, and bullying Russia – and now freaked out about nuclear power thanks to Japan, the world should see a lot of ambitious brainpower put to this useful task.
3) The EU encouraging immigration from fellow Roman Catholic states/regions (EUROPEAN UNION2/Oxford)
This one elicited a “wow!” from me simply because I’ve never heard the option stated so boldly. If you worry about the Islamic influx and the diminution of Christianity, why not get yourself some truly old-school Catholics from New Core and Gap regions, where the religious flame still burns hot? Afraid of too much religion? Then add a whole lot more. Team Oxford is full of provocative notions like that, which is why they’re in second place after Week 2.
4) The future is all about who’s got the most global cities (EU2/Oxford)
I’m a big believer in this, because if you add up the coastal megacities of the world, you’ve got half the planet’s population and the vast majority of its connectivity and traffic. Get the coastal megacities wired up right, and globalization can’t fail. Team Oxford brought this out in their critique of Europe’s lack of global cities, saying that, besides London, none of the capitals really qualify on the scale of such behemoths as New York, Los Angeles, Shanghai, Hong Kong, Mumbai, Istanbul, etc. EU2’s point: make the investment if you want to stay relevant in the rule setting.
5) India changes when the last generation of “ruled Indians” leaves the political scene (INDIA1/Indian Institute of Technology)
I love passing-of-generations arguments, especially with the supermajors like China and the US, and this is the best one I’ve ever heard on emerging supermajor India. It makes perfect sense: India’s not much more than half-a-century old, so it’s long been ruled by people who remember the before time of British rule. So long as they’re setting agendas, it’s a departure from the past versus a deep embrace of the future. Bottom line: expect a lot more diplomatic innovation out of India, and a much more proactive role in shaping the world and setting rules.
6) India’s sell is “German quality at Chinese prices!” (INDIA2/Institute of Peace and Conflict Studies)
Of course, most everybody cites the democracy thing as India’s differentiating model, and it most certainly is in the political realm, but globalization is driven by economic models – or competing “consensuses,” if you will. Washington had its in the 1990s and China’s captured a lot of imagination in the 2000s, but India is well-poised to capture that ideological flag in the 2010s – the decade of the emergence of the global middle class. That middle class, like any that emerged before on national scales, cares about quality for its money spent. China seeks to meet that expectation, but lacks the political system – for now – to regulate it well. Can India do better? We’re all better off if it does and ups the competition globally. And no, it’s not a fantastic goal. Remember: China loses labor over the next several decades, while India adds a fantastic sum (300 million or so).
7) Iran pins its hopes on China, but China will ultimate choose Saudi Arabia (PAKISTAN1/Claremont Graduate University)
Lots of chatter among the Iranian teams on future economic alliance with China, but Claremont’s Pakistan team made a compelling argument for China picking Saudi Arabia:
In the coming years, Pakistan foresees China making a decision as to whether or not to source its energy from the Saudis or the Iranians. China will side with the Saudi bloc for three reasons. First, given Iran's commitment to its nuclear program, the Iranian-Saudi rivalry favors Pakistan due to Pakistan's nuclear expertise and its close links with the Saudis. China, therefore, will not risk alienating both Pakistan and Saudi Arabia to appease Iran and India. Second, the Saudis have larger reserves than the Iranians. As the global leader in proven reserves, the Saudis are able to remain the chief energy provider into the next 80 years, making them a better long-term bet for the Chinese (the Chinese have also transferred strategic missiles to the Saudis – a level of cooperation not seen with the Saudis and Indians). Third, geographical considerations come into play in that Afghanistan's continuing instability closes off its options to act as a reliable pipeline from Iran to China. In that sense, the Saudis offer a more natural supply source to the Chinese in terms of volume and the security of transported oil. If push comes to shove, the Saudis will eschew their energy exports to India if it means obtaining a nuclear deterrent to answer Iran; China also is in a better position to offer more favorable terms owing to its more advanced level of development than India. The redundancy is that their petrol will still have a stable and sizeable market in China. India will initially be reticent to harm its security relationship with Israel, but will do so in the longer term if it has to placate Iran and gain access to its energy. Geographically Pakistan offers a conduit between Saudi energy from the Arabian Peninsula through the Indian Ocean to China.
That is some beautifully argued logic; that PPT slide writes itself.
8) Pakistan goes from globalization “separator” to connector (PAKISTAN2/Yale)
Matching Claremont’s visionary national projection, Yale takes this point even farther in emphasizing how Pakistan must be the global connectivity “answer” before Afghanistan can be stabilized. Both teams emphasized how connecting China to the Persian Gulf will help break Pakistan of its current north-south security paradigm. Yale took the point a bit further to emphasize how stabilizing the security relationship with India could set Pakistan up as the ultimate all-direction energy conduit for South Asia – just like Turkey positions itself in Southwest Asia. The Claremont-Yale duel on this subject pushed me to pen a Time Battleland blog post on the subject. It’s my highest compliment: this stuff is good enough to steal!
9) By sticking with the dream of playing external Leviathan, Russia continues to eschew the much-needed internal System Administrator force, and with its borders so indefensible – and “expanding” with climate change, Moscow is looking at a future of outsourcing its boundary security (RUSSIA2/New York University)
I don’t want to steal my own thunder here. Check out my Time Battleland blog post Thursday morning.
10) Russia as the future waterpower of Eurasia (RUSSIA2/NYU)
This is a staple of my current brief: I show you who’s got more water than people (global percentage share) and then show you who’s able to export grain (water turned into human energy). Naturally, Russia and the other Black Sea powers (Kazakhstan, Ukraine) are big players in this regard. Factor in climate change and the northward movement of agriculture, and Russia becomes a major waterpower of the 21st century. I’m talking Canada BIG!
11) For Turkey to create a regional bandwagoning effect as part of its pursuit of regional leadership, it must pick one of three rivals (Egypt, Iran or Saudi Arabia) and its immediate partner (TURKEY3/Institute of World Politics 1)
It’s so obvious when you’re presented with the logic, and yet to date I haven’t heard anybody put it so well until I came across IWP1 entry this week. All sorts of pundits are wailing about Turkey’s alleged strategic alliance with Iran, as if it means Istanbul has gone crazy Islamist when it has really gone crazy like a fox. I spot a clever Turkey working all three possibilities with substantial vigor, actually providing a far superior US foreign policy than Washington is today.
12) A realistic US plays System Administrator locally (Western Hemisphere) while satisfying itself as Leviathan balancer around the world (UNITED STATES2/Georgetown)
A nicely stated point that wraps up sensibly back around to Brazil1’s opening bid.
In sum, good stuff all around and a totally engaging week for myself as Head Judge. My thanks to all the teams for their fine efforts and best of luck in the final week!
Thursday, June 16, 2011 at 5:45AM As head judge of Wikistrat’s International Grand Strategy Competition, I wanted to highlight some of the takeaways that we’ve already gathered in the first week of the contest. As you may already know, the competition brings together more than 30 teams comprised of PhD and masters students from elite international schools and world-renowned think tanks. Those teams, evenly distributed over a dozen or so countries (so as to encourage intra-country as well as inter-country competition), are being challenged to come up with long-term grand strategies in relation to five issues: global energy security, global economic “rebalancing,” Jihadist terrorism, the Sino-American relationship and nuclear proliferation in the Middle East.
By conducting this strategic planning exercise, Wikistrat seeks to create an instant-but-lasting community of several hundred young strategists from around the world in a sort of Facebook-meets-Wikipedia online environment populated with our unique wiki-based model of globalization. Part of that effort involves creating expectations among participation that their future work will be both collaborative in execution and subject to intense – and peer-based – competitive pressures, but it also includes exposing participants to practical skill sets that they will use as future analysts/authors. To further their avowed career goals, we’re also making the participants’ work available to government agencies and corporate firms interested in recruiting them as new hires.
Across the four-week competition, each team of 5-10 graduate political science students and interns will collaborate on the Wikistrat model to:
As head judge, I assign points to teams based on their activity throughout the week. In this first week, teams were tasked with enunciating their country’s national interests across the five international issues cited above. The teams generated roughly 150 wiki pages, whose combined “weight” of almost 200,000 words approximates the size of your average “weighty” policy tome.
Since this is a first-of-a-kind experiment that competitively harnesses the collaborative analytic power of the “millennial” generation, we at Wikistrat are eager to share these initial observations:
I know what you’re thinking: Of course Wikistrat’s grand strategy competition “proves” collaborative competition. But we were genuinely surprised at how easy it was to track the following: the country-team groups that were the most competitive – and interactive – with each another clearly outperformed those country groups where it was apparent that each team went its own way (meaning their entries were far more idiosyncratic). After all, doesn’t it make sense to hold off revealing your positions until the very last minute – i.e., maintaining secrecy? Because if you don’t, then your best ideas can be copied by your competition, right?
Well, by seeing up-front what your immediate competition is putting out there, you’re challenged to cover that bet and raise the bar even higher – or at least put your countering spin on the issue raised. Point being, you’re forced to defend your ideas more fully and that effort only adds analytic muscle to the product. Yes, the resulting works were more similar in terms of the ground they covered, but that only made the comparative analysis (my grading) all the easier. The same would hold in the real world for a decision-maker. Yes, the truly competing visions emerged in the end; their advocates were just forced to explain their strategies more fully by referencing common touch points. And because the teams were in immediate competition with one another, the usual groupthink dynamics were avoided.
In general, the best predictor of any team’s overall finish was the level of its “internal” competition (e.g., the two other India teams competing with it to be the “best India”). The tougher the in-house opposition, the more comprehensively any team’s ideas were tested before being released into the international “wild.” In the end, a country-team’s success depended less on the “real” competition of other states than its willingness to slug it out preemptively in a collaborative fashion – even if all any team did was “cheat” by looking at the “next student’s test paper.”
Then again, real life doesn’t unfold with all desks turned toward teacher.
Our grad student teams were all so chomping at the bit that we had to remind them constantly that this was not a war-game, but rather a strategic planning competition. The first entries by, and earliest conversations among, participants got to punch lines too quickly – in effect, “Shouldn’t we bomb Country X now?” The whole point of spending this first week thinking through and debating each nation’s interests – before any moves were made – was to encourage everybody to consider what really matters to their country-team. Before you can accurately judge which risks to run and what is to be gained by running them, you need a clear sense of what can be lost in turn. The most sophisticated consequence management involves avoiding negative outcomes in the first place.
The most impressive team entries explored all sorts of consequences (“If X happens, then the up/downside is . . . “), and in doing so they revealed the oft-unmentionable truth that national interests aren’t always as “fixed” as they’re made out to be. That was a lesson we hoped participants might discover on their own during this first week: in this fast-paced and complex world we call globalization, virtually nothing is carved in stone any more. “Survival” comes in many forms, and genuine strategic thinking often begins with the impertinent question, “Well, why should we assume that . . . ?”
Something we noticed: the longer the list of national interests presented, the less creative the strategic thinking. Why? Every declared interest pre-programs the foreign policy response, so the more interests your country accumulates, the more fenced-in you are as a policymaker. One of the pleasant surprises of the first week grading process was how creative the North Korean teams were on certain issues, primarily because they kept things very simple regarding acceptable regime survival.
Now, that can sound counter-productive when you consider the “thinking through” goal cited above, but thinking through what matters most to your country doesn’t necessarily translate into a long list of core interests. More to the point, just citing those core interests doesn’t end the conversation (as in, “China simply doesn’t go there”). In this ever more connected world, trouble comes looking for you – not the other way around. Core interests certainly preface all subsequent policy arguments, but they don’t obviate any.
Here we saw some teams play their countries too well: the Japanese teams tended to be a bit too careful, the European teams a bit too focused on defining the best rules, the Israeli teams a bit too dug in, the American teams a bit too self-confident, etc. Where the subject matter touched upon more geographically immediate interests, teams naturally tended to be more creative. But when the subjects seemed more distant (“What does North Korea care about Middle East extremism?”), creativity decidedly suffered.
In many ways, though, the exact opposite should be true. When it comes to diplomacy, that first and final tool of grand strategy, ambitious nations should indulge their creativity most where interests are thinnest, because that’s where they have the most wiggle room. Not having a “dog in the fight” can be a good thing, strategy-wise, so long as you don’t overstep your limited interests. Plus, if you always wait until the problem reaches your shores, you may be out of attractive options at that point.
Here we might say, “Know your own history – but not too well.” The more teams used past history to explain their national interests, the less strategizing they applied to the subject – the “grievance list” quickly overwhelming any instinct for creative thought. Conversely, the more teams cited issues adjacent to the subject at hand – or what we call “interdependencies,” the better able they were to think through possible scenarios toward desired outcomes.
In a networked world, such interdependencies become the source material for policy workarounds – or the rewiring of strategies. After all, one man’s cul-de-sac is another man’s turnaround. A favorite example: one North Korean team, surveying the course of Asia’s economic integration with the world, decided that its impoverished population actually advantages the country as the last great untapped cheap-labor pool in East Asia!
Point being, orienting oneself is not just a linear historical exercise (what’s behind us and what’s up ahead?). Rather, it’s a networking function of the highest order. “Shallow thinking,” as some might diagnose, isn’t necessarily the great bane of the upcoming generation. You can’t disaggregate complexity until you can aggregate enough touch points to achieve sufficient situational awareness.
When everything connects to everything else (one definition of globalization), the ability to process information laterally becomes increasingly valuable. Indeed, Wikistrat’s raison d’etre is to develop that magnificent skill-set in the next generation of grand strategists.
Thursday, May 26, 2011 at 2:00PM 
Wikistrat has released edition 11.13 of the CoreGap Bulletin.
This CoreGap edition features, among others:
And much more...
The entire bulletin is available for subscribers. Over the upcoming week we will release analysis from the bulletin to our free Geopolitical Analysis section of the Wikistrat website, first being "Terra Incognita: Arab Spring Forcing US to Choose Between Longtime Allies"
US policy in the Middle East has long been based on a troika of bilateral relationships with Israel, Egypt and Saudi Arabia. The relationship with Saudi Arabia was based on the economics of energy, hence Riyadh’s ideological excesses were tolerated – even after 9/11. With Israel, security has always come first, and with Egypt, stability was prized above all else. Now, as Egypt evolves tumultuously and Saudi Arabia deploys its own military muscle in defense of fellow monarchies, it’s clear that Washington will no longer enjoy the same relationship with either, leaving the question of how the Washington-Tel Aviv bond will hold up in the months and years ahead.
President Barack Obama’s 19 May speech appeared – at first blush – to throw a giant monkey wrench into those works: by citing the pre-1967 war borders as the framework for a land swap deal leading to a two-state solution, the president seemed to be putting Benjamin Netanyahu’s government on notice. But subsequent backtracking by Obama in a speech to the powerful pro-Israeli lobby group AIPAC two days later indicated just how unprepared he is to significantly revise this alliance.
Read the full piece here
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Thursday, May 12, 2011 at 12:00PM
Wikistrat has released edition 11.12 of the CoreGap Bulletin.
This CoreGap edition features, among others:
And much more...
The entire bulletin is available for subscribers. Over the upcoming week we will release analysis from the bulletin to our free Geopolitical Analysis section of the Wikistrat website, first being "Terra Incognita - At the Time of his Demise, OBL was OBE"
It would seem that reports of Osama Bin Laden’s leadership of al-Qaeda these past few years were greatly exaggerated. By the time the equally shadowy SEAL Team 6 put that bullet through his brain, the great man was living in a million-dollar “cave” whose primary purpose was to keep him decidedly off grid – out of reach and out of touch. But Osama Bin Laden was overtaken by events a long time ago.
Globalization was more concept than reality a decade ago. “Rising” China? The muffled sound of a train gaining speed in the distance. One could imagine globalization’s easy reversal thanks to the right bomb exploded in the right place at the right time. Vladimir Lenin, the most pragmatic of revolutionaries, referred to such wishful thinking as “left-wing deviationism – an infantile disorder.” Bin Laden had it bad.
Pulling off one of the greatest lucky shots in history (both barrels, mind you), Bin Laden sent the West spinning into an orgy of new rules, wild spending, and poorly thought-out postwars (the initial takedowns were works of real artistry). Proving beyond all doubt that we live in a world in which super-empowered individuals can engineer vertical shocks of the highest order, he nonetheless succumbed to the most prosaic of horizontal scenarios – the methodical manhunt that only a vast national security bureaucracy can mount. “Operation Geronimo” was aptly named: the mythical warrior reduced to a legend’s lonely death.
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Long War, terrorism | in CoreGap Bulletin, Tom video, Wikistrat | Email Article | Permalink | Print Article Thursday, May 5, 2011 at 10:56AM 
A nice archive of a "Blueprint for Action" era version of the brief, delivered in Alexandria Va as part of the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory's "Rethinking the Future International Security Environment" series of speakers 2005-2006. A lot of great talks from great thinkers found on the page here.
Video of my talk found here.
Audio only here.
Download notes version.
Download copy of unanimated slides.
Thursday, April 28, 2011 at 5:01PM 
Wikistrat has released edition 11.11 of the CoreGap Bulletin.
This CoreGap edition features, among others:
And much more...
The entire bulletin is available for subscribers. Over the upcoming week we will release analysis from the bulletin to our free Geopolitical Analysis section of the Wikistrat website, first being "Terra Incognita - What to Do With Despots Who Fight to the Bitter End?"
Whether or not the planet’s ongoing wave of political revolt ultimately earns the moniker, the “fourth great wave of democratization,” intervening great powers ponder the question of what to do with leaders who are deposed or in extreme jeopardy. The realist is more willing to cut a deal for immunity, so long as a quick departure is achieved and bloodshed subsequently ended. The idealist tends to be uncompromising, demanding a trial suitable for the “many crimes” committed by the despot over the years – or perhaps just the preceding few weeks. In truth, there are no easy answers – just historical precedents that rarely translate across political border.
One thing seems clear: if the leader and his family are not hurried out of the country, eventually the rebels or revolutionaries get around to levying their charges. On this score, one has to wonder if it would not have been better for the US and Saudi Arabia to have whisked the Mubarak family from Egypt. Now facing charges that conceivably result in death penalties, the fate of father Hosni and son Gamal has to weigh heavily elsewhere in the region, where historically most leaders are either killed or die in office. Already we see similar dynamics at work.
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Thursday, April 14, 2011 at 1:00PM Wikistrat has released edition 11.10 of the CoreGap Bulletin.
This CoreGap edition features, among others:
And much more...
The entire bulletin is available for subscribers. Over the upcoming week we will release analysis from the bulletin to our Geopolitical Analysis section of the Wikistrat website, first being "Terra Incognita: How the Frugal Superpower Navigates Democracy’s Latest Wave"
In the rush to define President Barack Obama’s “doctrine” following his decision to lead NATO’s initial no-fly-zone operations in Libya, experts have latched onto every detail’s possible meaning. But in the end, it’s easier to say what his strategy is not than what it is. While frustrating, such ambiguity makes sense for a cost-conscious superpower navigating what is arguably democracy’s emerging 4th great wave (see Samuel Huntington re: 1-3).
The Obama rule set clearly lacks rigidity. It does not promise responses everywhere, but more like anywhere it can get away with them. In application it is opportunistic: Obama sees a chance to finally put the US on the right side of history across the Arab world, and he intends on picking his targets carefully – and in logical sequence. So old friend Hosni Mubarak is just that – until he isn’t. And now the same switcheroo occurs with Ali Abdullah Saleh in Yemen. Expect similar small talk about closet “reformer” Bashar al-Assad to disappear the instant conditions appear ripe in Syria.
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Thursday, March 17, 2011 at 11:20AM Wikistrat has released edition 11.08 of the CoreGap Bulletin.
This CoreGap edition features, among others:
The entire bulletin is available for subscribers. Over the upcoming week we will release analysis from the bulletin to our Geopolitical Analysis section of the Wikistrat website, first being "Terra Incognita: Obama’s “Chinese menu” of Past Presidential Doctrines"
To say that President Barack Obama’s foreign policy plate is full right now is a vast understatement, and it couldn’t come at a worse time for a leader who needs to revive his own economy before trying to resuscitate others (e.g., Tunisia, Egypt, South Sudan, Ivory Coast – eventually Libya?). Faced with the reality that America’s huge debt overhang condemns it to sub-par growth for many years, Washington enters a lengthy period of “intervention fatigue” that – like everything else, according to the Democrats – can still be blamed on George W. Bush.
It is estimated that 30 percent of the current US federal deficit was set in motion by the Bush administration and another 30 percent by Obama trying to correct those mistakes. But the biggest problem remains the 40 percent triggered by entitlements growth – the simple aging of America. With China now applying the brakes, Japan suddenly and sensationally damaged by mega-disaster, Europe still processing sovereign bankruptcies, and Arab unrest pushing up the price of oil, there appears no obvious “cavalry” riding to the global economy’s rescue. It would seem that America’s “circle the wagons” mentality has gone global, as every beleaguered leadership now looks out for itself.
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