Gwen hollabacked in Malaysia

ARTS, BRIEFLY: "Muslims in Malaysia Protest Stefani Concert," compiled by Lawrence Van Gelder, New York Times, 3 August 2007, p. B4.

I like Gwen a lot. Liked her plenty in No Doubt, like her even better now (although I find her swears to be awfully contrived and not something she's going to want to be performing in Vegas 20 years from now).

Her story in Malaysia reminds me of the one I cited in PNM on Britney Spears in China: pre-negotiated compliance with local "coverage" ordinances (how much skin can be showing).

Stefani promises up front she'll wear nothing too revealing.

I'd get a promise on the swears too if I was Malaysia.

Jason rebourne

Got the first two movies ("Bourne Identity" and "Bourne Supremacy") and we watched them in the home theater Saturday night (where--quite frankly--the picture, the sound, the lighting, the seating, the bathroom and snacks all vastly outperform any local movie theater). Then we saw the latest installment last night in our favorite local theater.

All I can say is, What a great series! My son Kev wants the books now and if I weren't so busy reading, I would scan them too.

Ludlum was an interesting guy: actor and theater-promoter who quits all that at 40 and starts writing books (25 in all, all NYT bestsellers). After heart-bypass in the early 1990s, he planned an afterlife in which his characters and series would live in sequels written by others, meaning Bourne's character, if done well, becomes a Bond-like franchise (which I would welcome). Frankly, I've never seen a threequel end with me wanting more like this one.

Tom around the web

Links to the USN&WR article, Managing China's Ascent:
+ McLean County Pundit
+ Greg R. Lawson's Blog
+ TurcoPundit
+ et alli.
+ DM Hallowell
+ Hot soup in my eye

+ et alli. linked Successful surge is small stuff.
+ So did baldilocks.
+ So did Exurban League.

+ gmgDesign linked last week's column.
+ So did Dan's Blog.

+ Kicking Over My Traces embedded the TED video.
+ And mentioned the Leviathan/SysAdmin split.
+ New Yorker in DC linked Co-opt the inevitable.

+ Far East Cynic linked Hopefully Mullen learns fast.
+ So did MountainRunner.

+ Opposed Systems Design linked Mr. President, Here's How to Make Sense of Your Second Term...
+ And linked Two whiffs for Krauthammer.
+ So did Subadei.

+ Hot soup in my eye linked On the bridge collapse in Minnesota ....

+ Russia Blog linked Risk, danger, and fear mongering.

+ Hogan's Alley linked Bush's Big Bang strategy continues to provide opportunities for radical change.

I love Amory Lovins' optimism on energy

INTERVIEW: "A Cure for Oil Addicts," by Fareed Zakaria with Amory Lovins, Newsweek, 6 August 2007, p. 34.

I like Amory a lot. I've had the pleasure of spending serious time with him three times over the past half decade or so, and he is a really great person, a very smart guy, and a persistently well-armed optimist.

I think of Amory every time I wheel my luggage through an airport because he once took the time to show me--based on his work with primates--why just about everyone pulls their bags the wrong way and strains their wrists and elbows in the process (hint: you thumb should always be closer to your hip than your pinky--try it some time!).

Great interview. Amory's a lot like Bjorn Lomborg on energy and other resources: if we simply killed the waste and made things more efficient, all this nonsense about energy shortages disappear. The technology is not distant; we're staring virtually all of it in the face.

The best bit:

Q: You're an optimist.

A: I think we will look back in a few decades and wonder what all the oil fuss was about because, just like whale oil, we will have made this product obsolete. Oil is going to become, and has already become, uncompetitive, even at low prices, before it become unavailable even at high prices. So we will leave it in the ground. It's very good for holding up the ground, but it won't be worth extracting.

Read anything Amory's written with his Rocky Mountain Institute. Great stuff.

New Core, strongest faith

HOUSES OF WORSHIP: "Further Fervor: Missionaries Go From East to West," by Leslie Hook, Wall Street Journal, 3 August 2007, p. W11.

Nice bit on the South Korean missionaries recently kidnapped in Afghanistan.

The buried lead in most coverage, Hook says, is that "Asian missionaries are everywhere, and today they're often found in some of the world's most dangerous hotspots."

Here's the lead Hook buries: "South Korea's fervor is unique in that it's a relatively new Christian nation."

I would disagree in this sense: relatively new Christian nations are exactly who we should expect to be today's missionaries, just like we should expect those economies that most recently joined globalization to be its biggest advocates, most ardent capitalists, and its most religiously fervent (when do countries tend to "get religion" more than when they're industrializing and "emerging" (look back to the religious fervor that infused our own progressive era)?) and therefore most likely to want to spread it elsewhere.

My point is this: when you join, you become a chief spreader of this process we call globalization. It's the gift that keeps on giving. Happens in commerce, happens in technology (both good and bad) and it happens in religion.

Not unique at all, Asia's just the next one up at bat--historically.

Backdating, busy-work for the Bush Admin.

ARTICLE: 'House Approves Wiretap Measure: White House Bill Boosts Warrantless Surveillance,' By Ellen Nakashima and Joby Warrick, Washington Post, August 5, 2007; Page A01

Interesting bit of back-dating by the Bush Administration, IMHO.

Before the intell community report highlighting resurgent al-Qaida in NW Pakistan, the White House focus is clearly on Iran, with lots of supporting columnist chatter building to strikes.

Then the IC shifts attention and now the White House is backdating strategic initiatives. Fine and dandy.

The IC messes with the Cheney timetable on Iran, and Obama's jumping on it in the campaign.

In the end, all good stuff that hopefully preoccupies these guys til they're out of power.

Consider the Indian Navy

ARTICLE: India's quiet sea power, By Sudha Ramachandran, Asia Times, Aug 2, 2007

For more on this topic, read Tom's India's 12 Steps to a World-Class Navy. In brief:

1. Admit they are powerless over the Army and Air Force in determining national security priorities.

2. Believe that a greater power—globalization—can elevate their force to strategic vision.

3. Make a decision to turn their Navy’s operational focus toward influencing events ashore.

4. Make a searching and fearless inventory of their lack of involvement in recent international coalitions.

5. Admit their mistakes in force structure planning.

6. Understand they are a relatively young navy, with the shortcomings that come from a lack of international experience.

7. Expand their nation’s security paradigm beyond the “sacred soil syndrome.”

8. Improve their relationships with all small littoral neighbors.

9. Make some amends to regional rivals.

10. Make an inventory of the global maritime insecurities they need to play a more prominent role in reducing.

11. Seek an expanded navy-to-navy relationship with the world’s sole military superpower.

12. Having achieved this awakening from the strategic isolation of the Cold War, carry their new message of internationalism to the world.

Thanks to Lexington Green for sending this.

This week's column

Fast-forwarding to a better storyline in the Middle East

My preteen son raves about DC Comics' recent plot-twist whereby a time-warping disaster instantly advanced the storylines of all its superheroes by one "lost year." As a strategic planner, I couldn't help but wonder what a similar narrative leap in the Middle East could yield.

So let's fast-forward to Labor Day 2008 and - click! - imagine what's happened.

Read on at KnoxNews.
Read on at Scripps Howard.

Tom's comment:

Less predictions than a positive thought exercise. It's hard to move forward with only the avoidance of worst-case scenarios as a goal, so I try to fill a neglected market niche.

Gotta "be the ball" if you ever hope to sink those long putts, and I've provided a long list here ...

Taking August to read ...

Back home now after travel stretching back to last Sunday (RI, then TN), and as usual, much to catch up on.

Was fun to travel through so many airports and see Warren Buffet's smiling face, reminding me of the column in USN&WR. There's nothing quite like knowing you're in each of those magazine stores. This year has been nice in that regard: the May issue of Esquire, then the July, then this, and next the October issue of Esquire (fact-checking complete and now we're just working pages and illustrations on both pieces). Have no plans right now for anything else with Esquire through end of year, but possibly one more before I settle into the business of writing Vol. III in January and February.

For now, I am working my way down the big pile of books I have.

The pile completed and teed up for use:

1) Chanda's "Bound Together"
2) Friedman's "Moral Consequences of Economic Growth"
3) Prahalad's "Fortune at the Bottom of the Pyramid"
4) Walsh's "The American West"
5) McMillan's "Nixon and Mao"
6) Yenne's "Indian Wars"
7) Kagan's "Dangerous Nation"
8) Kurlantzick's "Charm Offensive"
9) Gallula's "Counterinsurgency Warfare"
10) Pelton's "Licensed to Kill"
11) Nagl's "Learning to Eat Soup with a Knife"
12) other Friedman's "World is Flat"
13) Robb's "Brave New War"
14) Coram's "Boyd"
15) Heath and Heath's "Made to Stick"
16) Tapscott and Williams' "Wikinomics"
17) Enriquez's "The Untied States of America"
18) Sachs's "End of Poverty"
19) Kaplan's "Imperial Grunts"
20) Lodge and Wilson's "Corporate Solution to Global Poverty"
21) Ayittey's "Africa Unchained"
22) Collier's "Bottom Billion"
23) Bremmer's "The J Curve" (which I just finished and loved for everything but the J curve itself, which got awful mechanistic: one thing to explain everything through connectivity/his "openness" but quite another to describe one pathway for all to follow)
24) deep into Easterly's "White Man's Burden" (which I'm loving).

Another couple-dozen I have for consideration, which I've read long before.

Another 25 or so teed up for probable reading down the road.

Of course, there's about 2500 blog posts to explore, attached to maybe 5-8,000 articles (too many piles in the office ... I move there here and there every so often to feel more organized).

This is what I've teed up for August and September (to include a very long airplane ride to and from Australia's NE coast [off Queensland, near the Great Barrier Reef] sometime soon for a World Economic Forum-sponsored meeting of the Australian Davos Club that should include virtually all of the nation's top political and military leadership--you know I'll be jacked for that brief):

1) Surowiecki's "Wisdom of Crowds"
2) Nasr's "Shiia Revival"
3) Kynge's "China Shakes the World"
4) Prothero's "Religious Literacy"
5) Johannson's "Medici Effect"
6) Taleb's "Black Swan"
7) Goodwin's "Team of Rivals"
8) Marcus' "The Shape of Things to Come"
9) H.G. Wells' "The Shape of Things to Come"
10) Reynolds' "Army of Davids"
11) Chernow's "Alexander Hamilton"
12) Kuklick's "Blind Oracles"
13) Keynes' "The Economic Consequences of Peace"
14) Preston's "War Council"
15) Skidelsky's "Keynes"
16) Morris' "Rise and Fall of Theodore Roosevelt"
17) Blanning's "The Pursuit of Glory: Europe 1648-1815" (next up).

Want that list done by Labor Day. We shall see.

Will Thompson ever declare?

Back in East Tennessee today to spend some time at Oak Ridge National Lab, and I must say that the buzz I was feeling locally on Fred Thompson just ain't there this time around. There is this sense that he's just not catching on particularly well, with the slim money draw recently announced being just the clearest indicator.

The feeling of deflation is strong enough for some to suggest that Thompson may never announce, but pull a Mario Cuomo instead (tease, tease, tease and then pass).

With McCain all but gone and Romney stuck in very low numbers, I'm back to wondering how anyone can stop Rudy from getting the nomination.

Despite the highly unindicative numbers generated by Kos' site (where Edwards is a giant and Hllary sports single-digit numbers), Clinton's path also looks hard to dislodge, leaving us with the strange specter of an all-New York cast of HIllary, Rudy and Mike, each of which has their own strange spouse issue (and yes, I do think Clinton's camp underestimates the weird, ick! feeling that will enuse the closer Bill gets to returning to the White House).

Are we done with the dark horses? The only ones now that seem to interest on the left is Gore and on the right it's Hagel. But what happens to reveal profound weakness in either Hillary or Rudy? I guess that would have to be a big enough showing by either Obama or Mitt respectively to signal a profound underlying unease.

On the bridge collapse in Minnesota ...

Is it enough to trigger a significant, federally-led ruleset reset on infrastructure? I remain disappointed that Katrina didn't do more in that respect, but then again, the informed consensus on that is to blame Louisiana and New Orleans in particular for the long-standing neglect and to indict the fed merely on the sloppy and slow response. Both came off as "same old, same old" charges, and that hardly ignites change--unfortunately.

If a similar consensus emerges on the bridge (What did they know and when did they know about it and what did they do once they knew about it?) indicting locals more than the fed, then I don't see this triggering much of a reset. But it does highlight a long and comprehensively neglected aspect of our infrastructure, so you naturally hope for some useful, upgrading response, despite the unsexiness of the topic.

Once you need our trust to make your money, we own your future far more than you realize

POST: Probing the Edges of Globalization

Cool post by Steve that offers a definition of Seam State dynamics that I like a lot. Too often the concept gets interpreted as a strategic firewall of sorts ("insert Roman legions here!"), when in reality Seam States represent the most dynamic change agents within globalization's spread--effectively, its spreading frontier or, in security terms, its bleeding edge (nod to Huntington without buying into his static definition of clashing civilizations).

But as I wrote in BFA, there is a contiguous-centric nature to globalization's spread. It does not typically leapfrog except in very narrow ways (e.g., "We'll extend deep into that area, but just to get the oil/diamonds/etc."). Instead, there is an agglomeration effect, or a critical massing of infrastructure that gives foreign investors the confidence to start moving production or integrating new sources in their supply chains.

The Development-in-a-Box(tm) work Enterra's pursing in Kurdistan is an avowed attempt to jump-start such connectivity: creating just enough critical mass to prime the pump and then expanding that as rapidly as possible, all the time with an eye to elevating standards and protocols and security to minimum global standards--as in, "You've got to be at this level to secure our trust."

Why make that effort? Once you need our trust to make your money, we own your future far more than you realize.

Don't believe? Then continue watching China's response to the tainted products scandals. China's response to that will do more to reform its system than probably every diplomatic initiative our government's collectively launched with Beijing over the past 20 years.

There is this constant bias within the national security community that we're the dog that wags the government tail and the government is the dog that wags the private-sector's tail when reality is exactly the opposite: the private-sector sets rules far more than the government (which works mostly the areas where conflicting rules bump into one another and harm society's collective goods as a result) and the national security community (whose rule sets take precedence in even fewer scenarios than the gover) is more a response to the government's response to private-sector initiatives than anything approaching a "driver." My community's megalomaniacal assumptions in this regard continue to stun me this deep into my career.

More leverage on China

ARTICLE: Markets Gyrate, Detroit Declines, by Harold Maass

Excerpt:

Protecting Brand China

China has "its brand name on the line," so expect it to beef up product safety, says Andrew C. Schneider in Kiplinger.com. China knows that "concerns about its faulty exports" threaten "its status as a leading supplier of food and other goods" to the U.S. and other countries. "Corruption, pollution, and product piracy problems are deeply entrenched" in China, but there are strong incentives for China to crack down, and even "reach out to Uncle Sam for help." There might even be a "silver lining" in China's recent quality problems. If China moves quickly, like it did with the SARS epidemic, they "could lead to legal reforms, including long-sought intellectual property protections."

A very straightforward presentation--from a business brand-protecting basis--of the dynamic I described in my "scandals" column a while back.

Thanks to John Weitzer for sending this.

A drill-down on COIN worth reading

POST: Organizing for Counterinsurgency at the Company and Platoon Level

Another one to remember re: next Sunday's column

ARTICLE: "Rice: Seize chance for Mideast progress: Agrees to 'keep Hamas out of game,'" by wire reports, USA Today, 2 August 2007, p. 9A.

Israel says it will negotiate with Abbas. Its foreign minister says, "Israel is not going to miss this opportunity."

Rice has got to act. This might well be her last at-bat in a stint that's yet to yield any lasting accomplishments.

Tom's a hit

Just got the word from James Pethokoukis at USN&WR that Tom's column, Managing China's Ascent, is the most viewed portion of their China package on the web.

Global warming upside rule-set reset

ARTICLE: Russia claims North Pole with Arctic flag stunt, By Adrian Blomfield, Telegraph, August 2, 2007

Expect more and more of this. Huge ruleset struggle on the horizon WRT this pronounced upside to global warming. Experts are estimating that 25 percent of the world's total hydrocarbon reserves will eventually be found there once the ice recedes and our technology steps up in yet another blow to oil-peak doomsayers everywhere (again, see the recent big report on the future of energy I recently blogged)..

Then there's Russia's logical ambition to become an intermodal powerhouse between Asia and North America.

Thanks to Jamie Ruehl for sending this.

Tomorrow's news today

ARTICLE: 'Children's Health Bill Approved By House: Insurance Expansion Near Senate Passage But Faces Veto Threat,' By Jonathan Weisman, Washington Post, Thursday, August 2, 2007; Page A01

ARTICLE: Obama Says He Would Take Fight To Pakistan, By Dan Balz, Washington Post, Thursday, August 2, 2007; Page A01

Remember the Hillary-healthcare and Obama-Pakistan stories when you read my speculative column this weekend. It was a fun effort to construct.

Hopefully Mullen learns fast

POST: If the surge is working, why are we still losing?

Interesting and realistic critique from Mullen gives me hope this guy learns fast.

You go back a bit on both Mullen and Fallon and they were easily described as Old School dinosaurs, but both have evolved dramatically since 9/11 and see the big picture far better than most.

The question for now, I guess, is, does the Petraeus-Fallon-Mullen trio overcome the neocon camp still resident under Cheney? If not, can they at least temporize things until Bush is out of power?

I would go farther than MountainRunner--and cynically so--to say Bush's surge (not Petraeus') was always about buying just enough internal security to facilitate drawdown and redirection on Iran.

Complicating that is the Intell Community's push to raise awareness on al-Qaida's rising stronghold in NW Pakistan. That development might just save Iran's mullahs from a regime-strengthening American military attack, which is ironic to both al-Qaida and the Shiite theocracy.

The rise of US-Indian political stars

ARTICLE: This ‘Harry’ Stands Out From the Crowd, By Paul Vitello, New York Times, August 1, 2007

A completely natural development that leverages the high trust factor and big wealth associated with Indian enclaves inside the U.S. Both combine to make Indian political stars far more feasible than straightforward ward-by-ward analysis would suggest.

In short, we attract the best Indians because we give them the best opportunities. Their rising political status reflects their economic success first and foremost.

As they rise, watch the potential for U.S.-Indian strategic alliance to skyrocket far beyond the baby steps we now pursue.