The right way to reset China's rules

ARTICLE: "Piracy Move On China Seen as NearPiracy Move On China Seen as Near," by Edmund L. Andrews, New York Times, 7 April 2007, p. B1.

Unlike the previous threat of tariffs, this time the administration speaks of lodging a formal complaint with the WTO on China's continued piracy of stuff like DVDs.

Fair and fine and it should be pursued vigorously.

Gave my last of three talks in Alaska last night

It was at Fairbanks, at the university.

After flying up Friday morning from Anchorage on Alaska, I spent rest of day having great lunch with senior academics (former Vietnam SOF and former Naval submariner), then working out, then going two hours with host Mike Sfraga's geography seminar class, which read PNM and had a lot of good questions. Talking it through with the students, I realized--yet again--how crucial it was for me to finish and complete PNM with BFA. Everything that was missing in PNM gets explained in Blueprint.

Talk last night was to about 250 in a big, beautiful auditorium. I went about 110 on the brief and then did a lengthy Q&A that I enjoyed a lot.

Then I signed books outside the hall. Then a cocktail with a small group of university leaders and two of their kids. Then to bed at 0030 to get up at 0430 and begin the long march home.

People are very nice up here and very appreciative of your making the trip, so I was very glad I came.

I look forward to further dialogue with locals on what Enterra can do on port security in places like Anchorage. I think Alaska has a huge amount of future economic potential in this globalizing world, and I'd love to be part of making that happen.

Another positive review

Tom got this nice email from a recent attender:

Dr. Barnett-
Read the blog on the Anchorage lecture. Very accurate - I did want more and
totally "got it". Amazing PowerPoint. As a teacher, I can appreciate the
tiring aspect of public speaking but you did well (I'm feeling it myself
today). Well done in handling the lone off-topic question. I learned quite
a bit and truly appreciate you coming up here. The war college never should
have fired you :) All the best to you and your family.

Vol III subtitle

In many ways, Volume III should be subtitled "The Pentagon's New Man," because that's the aim of creating the next generation of grand strategists.

Got that idea from reader Brian Hertzer.

We can learn from Dutch SysAdmin

ARTICLE: Dutch Soldiers Stress Restraint in Afghanistan, By C. J. CHIVERS, New York Times, April 6, 2007

Good piece by Chivers, who's former military-gone-journalism and who occasionally writes for Esquire (Warren thinks he's a water-walker). Restraint is everything in peace-keeping for two reasons: 1) to want to create local capacity, not do it for them, and 2) your real goal is the overall reduction of violence, even at the costs of increased risks to your own guys and maybe not going kinetic on every bad guy out there (remember, they will grow them faster than you can kill them).

Dutch, like the Brits are super solid on this. I got a chance to chat some up just exiting Afghanistan while in Crete (they go there for R&R). Like the Brits and Canadians and Aussies, these guys are very impressive, very smart, very talented officers.

They can teach us much.

Thanks to motoole125 for sending this.

In the Navy: 1 Leviathan, rest SysAdmin

POST: Not, Decidedly, a 20th Century Arms Race

Good blog post by Wiggins on rising small-ship, littoral capacity development in Asia.

Like my PNM story on the Indian Fleet Review, any serious survey of global naval developments comes to the same conclusion: no one is building a Leviathan) blue-water navy and everyone (including us, in secondary sense) is building a SysAdmin-style close-in littoral capacity.

Our ability to steer and influence this trend is huge (we stay hub, they work spokes), if we pursue mil-mil training as much as we can.

Q&A

Tom got these questions by email and answers them here (in bold):

Hello Dr. Barnett,

I heard you for the first time on the Hugh Hewitt show. I listened to the series of interviews you did and I am currently reading The Pentagon?s New Map. I am really taken by your positive view of the future. I am also currently looking at getting my masters degree and making a career change. I am particularly interested in grand strategy and working to shrink the gap. I was wondering if you could answer a few questions?

What makes a good grand strategist?

You have to find almost anything interesting and worthy of study. You need to be a horizontal thinker by nature.

What kind of educational credentials are most useful?

Study languages. Do a small amount in a number of languages as opposed to a long time in any one. Most grand strategy involves arbitraging concepts between domains, so translation skills are essential. You want to be able to master new languages at high speeds.

Where do you think the most exciting jobs expanding the core will be in the next few years?

Translating between technology and policy.

What is the most important piece of advice you have to give?

If you're not someone who loves anticipating events as opposed to experiencing them first-hand, don't go into this business. Also, get married and have kids.

And never turn down a chance at public speaking.

Thanks for your time,
AE
Champlin, MN

Good interactions with local experts on climate change

Lunch yesterday with senior players from the Insititute of the North and the Denali Commission. Fascinating problems (the relocation of tens of thousands of indigenous people who live on the coast up north) and fascinating possibilities (the opening up of the artic circle will make Anchorage an amazingly well-placed hub in the global economy [like that mythical town where the guys got stuck in "O Brother Where Are Thou?" Anchorage is a geographical oddity that seems to be 9 hours by air from every major city in the world]). To that end, done right, Alaska can become a model for adjustment to climate change. People up here sense that possibility and want to make it happen.

Me? Definitely a column, maybe more.

Great time last night in Anchorage

Spoke at the University of Alaska-Anchorage in a really nice auditorium-style classroom. AV was solid, and great crowd of over 100. A bookseller was moving both books (paper) out front, so I signed a bunch before heading in and setting up.

I was a little tired and a little out of sorts (I'm speaking at 2300 my time, remember), but you can always feel an audience's desire for the material, and this one had it (far more than the laid-back Juneau crowd the night before), so they just pull the energy out of you and whenever you feel your effort flagging, you lock you eyes on somebody you can tell is really into your delivery and they just keep you strong. Simply put, if you want it good, you get it good, no matter how I'm feeling. You just cannot disrespect an audience that's making that effort to remain focused and engaged.

The only trick was that I really needed to project in this room, so the throat got a good workout, but unlike in Juneau the day earlier, I didn't speak that much earlier in the day, so my voice didn't falter.

Went long on slides (almost 60), because I just had that inkling beforehand that these guys would desire more, so I talked a solid 1:45.

Then the questions flowed and we went another solid hour, which was a bit surprising given the lateness of the hour (after 9pm). But, save for one protest statement that was a bit off-topic (autism), they were really thoughtful and well-delivered and pushed me quite a bit.

I notice two burly guys in work clothes that break in on the place about 20 minutes in. You could just sense these two had driven a long way to get there and had rushed the entire way.

As soon as they sat down on my far left, I was immediately drawn to them. You just sense the intensity of the listening.

Well, they had driven for hours at high speeds to make the talk, one of them being a 31-year special operations naval vet who had participated in Desert One with Pete Schoomaker. This guy also recently just lost a son in Iraq.

Following the talk, which included two very solid questions from these guys that indicated they've read me intensely and get on a truly high plane, we end up talking for a while outside (they're threatening to drive to Fairbanks today to see the show all over again tonight), I was carrying a signed map poster (thanks to old friend Steff, I have about 280 of them now in my bedroom closet, so I've been bringing them to talks and giving them away like it's my command coin or something) and because the expected retired flag big-name didn't show up, I gave it to this vet who was really thrilled to get it.

It was a nice ending to one of my best nights of talking ever.

Tom's take on the ADN article [updated]

Goofy title that misses the entire thrust of my work.

Journalist never bothered to talk to me, despite my several attempts to set up a phonecall. One thing I learned early in my career: never underestimate the laziness of journalists. But frankly, it was like pulling teeth with this guy.

As for the content of the piece, hmmmm. How about I read the review on Amazon and maybe yesterday's post and call it a day?

Seriously, I don't rethink the war, I rethink the postwar. If I predicted several months before the war (remember, I write PNM the article in December 2002) that the postwar in Iraq is a going to be a doozy, and far harder than mega-jobs in Japan and Germany, how does this guy interpret that I "rethink the war"?

Such precision in language only matters if you want to further understandings instead of just agendas.

No one inside the defense community calls me a "hawk"--just the opposite in fact. Typically, I find such casual misidentifications with a certain whimsy, but you have to get off your ass and actually talk to me to gain such a pass. Yes, this guy's "attempts" were unsuccessful, but it wasn't because I was hard to reach, it's because he just didn't make the effort. If he had offered parenthically, "I just didn't put in the effort to actually talk to this guy, so I'm stitching bits and pieces that fit my predisposed opinion of him from his site," then I would have said, honesty in advertising.

Update: Editor's note: But, hey, they've got that article at the top of their Life page today, with a link here to the weblog, so that's a good thing. Welcome Alaskans!

In sharp contrast, let me cite two interviews I gave yesterday that were just great. One was with a Fairbanks radio host whose questions were in the top twenty of the maybe 500 interviews I've given since writing PNM. Excellent 8-minute segment that's running now in Fairbanks.

Other interview was some Juneau teenager (junior) who had used my work in her school project and just wanted to chat on the phone. Since she put in a bit more effort than our professional journalist from Anchorage, she got 50 minutes (good warm-up for me last night), because that's how seriously I treat such inquiries.

CA is even more maritime in the Gap

ARTICLE: NECC Establishes Maritime Civil Affairs Group, By Kieshia Savage, Fleet Public Affairs Center Atlantic, 4/3/2007

A nice sign. One thing I learned in Africa, to my amazement, is how much of civil affairs stuff is naturally maritime in developing countries.

Thanks to Bill MIllan for sending this.

Those who protest Nixon's trip to China...

OP-ED: Mahmoud's 'Gift': The right way to exploit any fissures in the Tehran regime, Wall Street Journal, April 5, 2007

This is an ahistorical argument.

Countries we talk to and open up with trade have been changed--even radically transformed--by that process (USSR, China), while countries that we sanction and isolate and do not talk to remain strong in their authoritarianism (Cuba, North Korea).

Connectedness works. Just ask Vietnam.

But hardliners, despite such evidence, love to argue otherwise.

When Iran has a moderate president, the WSJ says, "don't negotiate anything." Ditto for when it has a hardliner president.

But Nixon did go to China, over the WSJ's harshest protests, and look what it did for our side.

If engagement worked with the most significant sponsor of international terrorism ever (the Sovs), then why is it so amazingly uncalled for with the Iranians?

Ah yes, I forget, now we remember the Sovs as all reasonable thugs, even cuddly, rather bumbling bears.

China's an even better case in point at the time when Nixon decides to go: complete nuthouse (Cultural Revolution just wrapping up) and a whacked-out leader (Mao) who said nuclear war would be cleansing, so bring it on you paper tiger!

Funny how history works like that.
We remember none of the positive changes when it comes to hyping the current threat.

I see people's lips moving here but hear Tel Aviv and Riyadh doing the talking.

I believe in wars of choice. I just like to make the decisions for myself.

Like Dave Petraeus heading into Iraq in 2003, I have to ask, "Tell me how this ends?"

Because if it does not end in jaw-jaw, then it ends in war-war.

The view from Anchorage

Looks like Tom will be speaking in Anchorage tonight.

The preview article headline annoys me: Hawk rethinks the war in Iraq: BARNETT: Former U.S. military strategist to speak at UAA.

After that, the article's actually pretty good, with some good usage of the weblog (which I always like).

The author says he tried to interview Tom by phone this week (Tom?) and that Tom teaches at the University of Tennessee (not precisely), but otherwise, it's pretty good. I'll copy it for you below.

Four years ago, former Defense Department strategist Thomas P.M. Barnett -- who'll lecture on global affairs tonight at UAA -- heartily endorsed Bush administration plans to invade Iraq and oust Saddam Hussein.

His reasons for doing so had less in common with Bush's originally stated purpose for the invasion -- to seize Iraq's alleged weapons of mass destruction and disrupt its purported ties with the terrorist group al-Qaida -- than with the president's later rationale of spreading democracy in the Middle East.

As Barnett argued in an influential March 2003 Esquire magazine article ("Let me tell you why military engagement with Saddam Hussein's regime in Baghdad is not only necessary and inevitable but good"), it wasn't the most powerful nations in the world that America had to fear; it was some of the most dispossessed. It wasn't Russia or China; it was the "disconnected" Third World nations that weren't part of the global economy and refused to play by global rules.

And if they had leaders, such as Hussein in Iraq or Kim Jong-il in North Korea, who were preventing their citizens from joining the "functioning core" majority of nations in the

West, those leaders needed to be removed -- by us if by no one else. He warned that it wouldn't be easy.

"As baby-sitting jobs go, this one will be a doozy, making our lengthy efforts in postwar Germany and Japan look simple in retrospect," Barnett wrote in his article, which he later expanded into a book, "The Pentagon's New Map" (2004), that became popular with military leaders. "But it is the right thing to do, and now is the right time to do it."

Four years and $600 billion in U.S. war spending later, with more than 3,200 dead American soldiers, even former supporters of the Bush doctrine of waging "pre-emptive wars" are beginning to wonder: Is the U.S. Treasury really such a bottomless well? Aren't their limits to America's all-volunteer Army?

In his subsequent book, "Blueprint for Action: A Future Worth Creating," published in fall 2005 -- 2 1/2 years into the war -- Barnett criticized the Bush administration for bungling the peace in Iraq (by cutting expenses and failing to send in more troops, among other things), though he still saw other opportunities around the world for "core" nation-building, ideally this time with more multilateral support.

A review of that second book in Publishers Weekly, however, described it as "an unconvincing brief" for more U.S. interventionism, wherein "American and allied troops -- a 'pistol-packing Peace Corps' -- could, he contends, undertake an ambitious schedule of regime change, stabilization and reconstruction in Islamic countries and as far afield as North Korea and Venezuela."

Responding in his blog, Barnett dismissed the critique as "a truly pinheaded review" that missed his central point -- that we now live in a post-9/11 world that forces us to cope with new exigencies.

"I have to get used to this sort of review, which is essentially the anti-Bush doctrine/anti-neocon/anti-Iraq review," he wrote then. (Efforts to interview Barnett by telephone this week weren't successful.)

But in his most recent blog postings, Barnett -- who now teaches at the University of Tennessee and writes a nationally syndicated column -- seems to have evolved as well.

"On second thought," he wrote Monday, writing in support of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi's scheduled trip to Syria, "why shouldn't Congress have a foreign policy of its own? Hell, Bush doesn't have any. ... So I say to Nancy on her road to Damascus: 'You go, girl!' Hilarious to hear Cheney decry the 'self-described strategists on the Hill.' If we had any real ones in this administration, he'd never hear a peep out of any of those guys and gals.

"I think back to the depths of Clinton's administration, and I was never this embarrassed over our standing in the world."

Daily News reporter George Bryson can be reached at gbryson@adn.com.

LECTURE: Thomas P.M. Barnett will speak at 7 tonight in Room 101 of Rasmuson Hall at UAA. It's free and open to the public.

Plant the flag and give 'em the vector

ARTICLE: Iraq's economy: The Kurdish region seeks more foreign investment, the Economist, Apr 4th 2007

No need to add to Keir's analysis:

Excellent article from the economist of Kurdistan. Highlights while things are still not great they are getting better. Reads like the analysis of many developing countries: booming construction, weak infrastructure, underdeveloped financial markets. Good sign about the good in Iraq. Westerners can travel unaccompanied, compare that to Baghdad!

Keir Lauritzen

Except to note that one of our biggest challenges in this Long War will be learning to accept that almost all of our victories will be partial ones. If we weren't so damn binary as a society in our approach to strategic issues, life would be a lot easier.

Suffice to say, the grand strategist learns to love ambiguity. It's written into the DNA code of any real visionary. As Art Cebrowski liked to say: "Plant the flag downrange and then turn your forces loose. Don't tell them how, just give them the vector."

The "Irish prince of Alaska"

... was my Mom's cousin, once-removed (or my cousin, twice removed), Michael J. Heney.

He built the first trans-Alaskan railroad, and his feat inspired several books and one Hollywood movie, according to his Wikipedia entry.

Here's the bio from the White Pass & Yukon Route historical cite (which cites his birthplace incorrectly).

Cool beans is the fact that both a glacier (Heney Glacier) and a mountain range (Heney Mountains) are named for him in Alaska. I flew over the mountain range this morning, going from Anchorage to Juneau.

Inside the family he was known simply as "M.J."

Not to be outdone, his cousin and my grandfather, Green Bay Packer Hall of Fame inductee Gerald Clifford, now also has his own Wikipedia entry.

Just to finish the trifecta, here's the one for my other famous cousin, twice-removed (paternal grandfather's cousin), Maj. Gen. George Barnett, Commandant of the U.S. Marine Corps. We've got a beautifully framed, color copy of his official USMC portrait in our formal living room, along with a sketch of his famous DC socialite wife in our dining room. His cermonial rifle, a Winchester 03, given to him by the Corps upon retirement, hangs in our kitchen in a glass box.

I'm all bragged out.

Immigration is good for you

OP-ED: Jobs and Immigrants, April 4, 2007; Page A14

More solid evidence of how immigration serves our economic development.

Thanks to Tyler Durden for sending this.

Juneau pix

Juneau, on a beautiful day. If you like mountains and shoreline, this place is Maine on steroids.

Juneau, capital of Alaska, accessible only by air.

Ad in Juneau paper.

My favorite lead goose in Islam

ARTICLE: BORROWED IDEAS: Malaysia Transforms Rules For Finance Under Islam: In a Lesson to Arabs, Asian Bankers Mix Religion, Modernity, By YAROSLAV TROFIMOV, Wall Street Journal, April 4, 2007; Page A1

I wrote about this in BFA (or maybe it was PNM). Malaysia's pioneering Islamic finance in a very cool way.

Thanks to Ian Rhodes for sending this.

If you're in Juneau Alaska tonight ...

I'm giving the brief at U Alaska. Believe it is open to the public.

Economic freedom trumps political freedom

OP-ED: In Fear Of Chinese Democracy, By Harold Meyerson, Washington Post, April 4, 2007; Page A13

A wonderfully pinheaded piece by Meyerson, who hasn't written anything good in years. In it, he displays the typical American manner of defining freedom purely in political terms while ignoring its economic roots. Plus, like most Americans, he wants his revolution now, despite the 750-million or so still living in poverty.

Pick up the pace China! Rich Americans don't see enough chop-chop!

Ask your average American their definition of freedom and they'll pick Starbucks over political pundits any day.

Thanks to Roland Dobbins for sending this.