Contrary to current conventional wisdom, Bush’s Big Bang strategy will be treated very favorably by history

COLUMN: “Keeping the Faith in Democracy: Arab reformers bet on the Islamists,” by David Brooks, New York Times, 26 February 2006, p. WK13.

EDITORIAL: “Democracy Angst: What’s the alternative to promoting freedom in the Middle East?” Wall Street Journal, 27 February 2006, p. A14.

OP-ED: “Are We Playing for Keeps? In Iraq, Iranian practice outsmarts American principle,” by Michael Rubin, Wall Street Journal, 27 February 2006, p. A14.

ARTICLE: “Chaos in Iraq Sends Shocks Waves Across Middle East and Elevates Iran’s Influence: Fear that a conflict between Iraqis could become contagious,” by Michael Slackman, New York Times, 27 February 2006, p. A9.

ANALYSIS: “What a Civil War Could Look Like,” by Steven R. Weisman, New York Times, 26 February 2006, p. WK1.

OP-ED: “We Can Live With a Nuclear Iran: Deterrence and containment can still work,” by Barry R. Posen, New York Times, 27 February 2006, p. A23.

COLUMN: “Nixon to China, Bush to India: Thirty years of lectures on nonproliferation and sanctions have done nothing to stop, slow down or make India’s nuclear program safer,” by Fareed Zakaria, Newsweeks, 27 February 2006, p. 45.

I will admit it: for all my bitching and carping for how badly the Bush team bungled the immediate postwar situation in Iraq (slowing recovering thanks to the generals, not the diplomats or civilian overseers), the strategy of laying a Big Bang on the Middle East is going amazing well.

Well, that is, if you find the notion that Hamas replacing Fatah is good and you like Hizbollah’s rise in Lebanon and the Muslim Brotherhood giving Mubarek electoral fits in Egypt--all of which, quite frankly, I do welcome.

I welcome all these developments because they will either scare the current crop of surviving autocrats and dictators into action or they will be swept away far more rapidly than they anticipate, and I would rather take Islamists in power across the board than stay with the status quo, which I know begets transnational terrorism and social rigidity and poor economic connectivity for the masses throughout the region.

So either we go somewhere or we stay stuck where we are, and I see far more freedom of action in motion than stagnation.

To say that we tread a dangerous path is self-evident, but certainly not one any more dangerous than the one we’ve been stuck on for decades in our support for authoritarian regimes the region over. Bitch all you want about Ahmadinejad and Hamas, but at least they had to get elected, and they’ll have to get re-elected. No, these countries don’t have the wide selection of candidates like we do here in the States, where 98% of the Congress gets reelected each time and we go from administration to administration trying to decide which Bush or which Clinton we’ll select this time.

All superfluous comparisons aside, I think Bush has done history a huge help by setting all this in motion in the Middle East, no matter how opaque the rationales for invading Iraq were or how poorly we prepared ourselves for the second-half effort at waging peace. We’ve got the game board in motion, all right, with the key question now being how to keep things moving in such a way that we ultimately get what we want: a Middle East that opens itself up to the world and globalization.

Will that process be pretty? Sometimes yes, it will be quite thrilling, but many times no, for it will unleash a lot of social anger and age-old disputes. But again, either we speed the killing or we delay it, and I vote for speeding it because it keeps the violence overwhelmingly over there, where it belongs, along with all the social and economic and political change.

9/11 was never about us, and neither was the Big Bang. Both were always all about the Middle East, and say what you will about Bush, he’s made sure the center of gravity in the Global War on Terrorism remains where it should.

Yes, we could wait on the “third path” of enlightened democrats, but all those years of dictatorship across the region has left those ranks depleted. Instead, the most able networkers are those who’ve suffered the most pressure and suppression: the radical Islamists. Unless you want to wait forever for change or are prepared to change regimes the region over, the radical Islamists are the only Option B out there, and evidence suggests that we’ll see plenty such radicals moderate their movements over time if that’s the price of retaining power in a Middle East where free elections aren’t just a dream but a growing reality.

Hell, as Brooks’ piece points out, even the Arab moderates are siding with the Islamists over the autocrats. If they are willing to take that risk, why should we Americans show such little faith in the concepts of democracy?

As the WSJ editorial puts it, what’s the alternative? Waiting on the alleged magical influence of “soft power”? Hoping for more modernizing autocrats in a region where none have previously succeeded (save for those tiny city-states on the Gulf)?

Or do we just pull out a la Friedman by cutting off our alleged dependence on Middle Eastern oil (we consume less than a fifth of the oil produced in the Persian Gulf), thus accepting Osama’s offer of civilizational apartheid?

The WSJ’s point is a valid one: “In five years, [the Bush Administration] has brought four democratic governments to power in the Middle East: by force of arms in Afghanistan and Iraq, and through highly assertive diplomacy in Lebanon and Palestine.” Francis Fukuyama may be ready to give up on democracy, as the WSJ editorial points out, but should we be so quick to give up on the Middle East now that we have such positive change roiling?

Ah, but what about all the deaths? Sad to say, the Iraq war/peace still hasn’t cost us in combat deaths what we once lost on the beaches of Normandy in one June morning. Or what we lost in civilians on 9/11. That sort of sacrifice back in WWII defined a “greatest generation.” Maybe we need to start valuing our loved ones lost with the same sort of historical perspective--even respect--because their sacrifice is tilting world history for the better in no less important a manner.

In the end, then, I think history will judge this to be a very “good” war, one in which personal service and sacrifice resulted in significant positive change in the global security environment.

As for local deaths triggered, there we’re also still in the historical weeds. If you want to locate real death totals, look to Africa. Hell, look to Sudan alone in the last three years. In that country alone we see deaths that make all the tumult in the Middle East seem quite small in comparison.

And the only reason why it makes sense to support the Big Bang in all its messy glory is that it pushes us toward dealing with Africa all the more quickly, because it is to there that the radical jihadists will retreat in coming years and decades to replicate this fight all over again. Let’s just hope we’ve figured out how to enlist China’s help in Africa by then.

Of course, the regional experts will decry all this change, saying we’re in far worse straits now than we were before. We’re “losing” Iraq and al Qaeda, we are told, is “winning” if Iraq is split into pieces. How Iraq-the-pretend-country’s break-up would equate to al Qaeda’s victory is beyond me, but I lack the subtle defeatism of some, and I guess I just don’t swallow Osama’s propaganda like the regionalists do, having watched this idiotic program before with the Sovs in another life.

Clearly, Iran benefits from Iraq’s break-up or weak federalism, but hey! We made that choice a long time ago, and there’s no question that we picked an easier fight with a weakened Saddam than we could have with an Iran with more than triple the population. Plus, why fight with what you could better “corrupt” with the soft kill of connectivity (never a real option with Saddam)?

All Iran’s growing stature says is that the Big Bang will benefit the region’s minorities more than the majorities, which means the Shiites more than the Sunnis. But that only clues us to the reality, long preached here, that co-opting Iran is a strategic imperative.

Instead, the Bushies have tried to play hardball with Iran, quickly realized their current political-military limitations, and now seem content with the slow diplomatic squeeze, which, quite frankly, doesn’t answer the mail as far as extending the Big Bang’s reach goes.

My only hope is that the Big Bang slows down just enough to let the next administration run with this ball more effectively than Bush, in his growing post-presidency, seems able to do.

Of course, the regionalists will despair that Iran is “becoming” the dominant regional power in the meantime, to which I give a hearty “DUHHHH!”

But so long as Iraq doesn’t slip into outright civil war (always a possibility and yet, a muddling-through scenario of not-quite-right-civil-war-but-never-quite-the-dreamed-of-ceasefire won’t be that bad either, so long as U.S. troops get to continue their withdrawal behind the wire and let the Shiite militias increasingly engage in the inevitable squelching of the Sunni-based insurgency that seeks it’s survival through civil war), it’s continuing source of Big Bang pressure on the rest of the region will serve a lot of good purposes. And to the extent that civil war is threatened, again, autocrats are more deeply incentivized toward change, lest their own populations catch similar fevers.

Yes, yes, we must also worry about Iran’s slow-motion reach for the bomb, but as Barry Posen so reasonably argues, even that much-dreaded long-term scenario changes very little in the region, except perhaps to, yet again, freak the Saudis out more, something I think most reasonable people welcome.

In the end, Iran gets the bomb because Iran is logically a great power--the great indigenous power in the Gulf. And we’ll figure out how to accept that “unacceptable” outcome just like we have with India, and Israel, and Pakistan.

And our efforts, along with those of other interested great powers, to achieve regional security will be accelerated--not derailed--by Iran’s inevitable achievement. And in that pathway Israel’s security will finally be achieved.

Again, all more risky than sitting with the status quo. But if you want the Long War to get done as quickly as possible, you accept that risk, and that tumult, and the lost lives, and you commit yourself more and more to the real task at hand: spreading the connectivity of the global economy and shrinking the Gap.

Holding the line on the Sovs was acceptable in its day and age, because containing the threat meant weakening the threat. That situation no longer defines our global security environment. Today we either shrink the Gap or we grow the threat, and that means accepting the logic of speeding the tumult, speeding the killing, and speeding the democratic process in all its destructive glory.

I have criticized Bush plenty in the past for pushing democracy too hard, but I’m beginning to refine my criticism of that focus for those regions of the Gap where dictatorship has proven far too resistant to globalization’s embrace. There, like in the Middle East, I have to admit that Bush’s simplicity in vision may yet prove to be his greatest strength.

We will never push the autocrats to reform on our own, and we will never co-opt the Salafi jihadists. Both of those groups are hunted down by history. But co-opting the nationalist Islamists is a legitimate choice: the least of three evils and the vessel through which the Big Bang reaches its near-term fruition.

The 51st State? Maybe quicker than you expect!

OP-ED: “Stirring Up Trouble in Puerto Rico,” by Jeane J. Kirkpatrick and Kenneth L. Adelman, New York Times, 26 February 2006, p. WK13.

Weird to see Kirkpatrick and Adelman making this argument. They seem unhappy with this quiet plot of the Bush White House to force Puerto Rico to either chose independence or statehood, ending the cushing “commonwealth” deal we gave them a half century ago.

Here’s the trick the Bushies are pushing: a special vote to force Puerto Rico to decide on a “permanent solution” to their status. In this vote, locals will be forced to yes or no, thus encouraging the statehood types and the independence types to vote similarly in the hopes of forcing a second vote that would allow only two choices: independence or statehood.

Apparently Adelman and Kirkpatrick don’t like forcing this issue, because it mimics the long-term complaints of Fidel Castro about P.R’s unresolved status.

Like anybody should give a rat’s ass about anything that tired dictator has to say other than to clutch his chest and yell out, “OMYGOD! This is it!”

Here’s the weirdest part from Adelman and Kirkpatrick: their defense of the status quo in which Puerto Ricans have no vote in Congress or for the presidency yet enjoy no income tax. “Given that deal,” they write, “many of us stateside might seek commonwealth status.”

Criminy! So no-taxation-plus-no-representation is being held up by two conservatives as a better model for America?

I say, either join the club or make your own. Free country, free world.

P.R. should have been the 51st state a long time ago.

Want to scare the crap outta Castro anybody?

Great way to turn the Dubai tempest into some serious good

OP-ED: “A Port in the Storm Over Dubai: Use the fight to put in place a container inspection system,” by Stephen E. Flynn and James M. Loy, New York Times, 28 February 2006, p. A19.

In general, a good counter-argument on the Dubai controversy from former head of the Coast Guard (Loy) and America’s best-known Cassandra on port security (Flynn).

They point out that, “since January 2005, every container entering the truck gates of two of the world’s busiest container terminals, in Hong Kong, has passed through scanning and radiation detection devices” in what I would describe as yet another example of the New Core setting the new rules.

So why not take advantage and mandate that such scrutiny be applied to everything coming to America? By setting this new global standard, and hopefully helping less rich countries around the world achieve it by directing foreign aid to help them make the necessary investments, we make ourselves safer, the world safer, and we help bring Gap states a little bit closer to the Core.

To me, this would be a great example of Development-in-a-Box: we’ll give you the capacity for greater connectivity in exchange for greater transparency that makes us all safer.

And yeah, Enterra Solutions will help you automate all the rule sets attached to this process, which would probably reduce transaction costs to the point where the author’s proposed security tax on all containers wouldn’t be needed.

This is no necessary trade-off between heightened security and increased efficiency, we argue at Enterra, in what I would describe as the military-market nexus in it’s most elegant expression.

Nice prison labor country for rent; see Seoul for rates

ARTICLE: “An Industrial Park in North Korea Nears a Growth Spurt,” by James Brooke, New York Times, 28 February 2006, p. C5.

We are told that South Korean firms are starting to take advantage of the Kaesong Industrial Park in which Kim Jong Il has allowed them access to 26-cents-an-hour labor.

Who needs China? says one company president.

Indeed, when your neighbor to the north is one big prison.

Ah, but the smell of competition is in the air, as South Korean firms worry that Chinese firms in the north of North Korea will tap all that captive labor before they do.

I know, I know. I should be grateful for the connectivity. Better some than none at all and maybe, just maybe, over the longest of hauls this can result in the slow-motion buy-out of North Korea.

But how many millions suffer in the meantime under Kim’s amazingly cruel regime. How many suffer constant malnutrition? How many die prematurely? How many lives lives of cruel neglect and deprivation?

Ah, but you might hope that at least these wages better the lives of those few thousands lucky enough to get these jobs?

Read on:

In the United States, American labor and human rights activists may object to employment conditions at Kaesong. The minimum wage for the 48-hour week is $57.50. But $7.50 is deducted for “social charges” paid to the North Korean government. The remaining $50 is paid to a North Korean government labor broker. None of the South Korean factory managers here would guess how much of the $50 salary ends up in the pockets of workers.

“The exact amount is determined by North Korean authorities,” said Kim Dong Keun, a South Korean who is chairman of the Kaesong Industrial District Management Committee.

Mr. Hwang, of Shiwon [a company active in the district] said: “We pay the broker. So we have no idea.”

Think slave labor still doesn’t exist in this world?

Tom in New York: a photo essay

Here in Reuters studio right on Times Square with NHK host Hidetoshi Fujisawa, Francois Heisbourg of the Paris-based Fondation pour la Recherche Strategique and Fawaz Gerges of Sarah Lawrence College from New York (by way of Lebanon).

We tape 2-3 hours in a studio with Times Square as background for a 100-minute show ("World Current") to be shown in Japan on 12 March (Sunday).

We shall see how it goes.

The pic is of map NHK made up on poster board for my use during the show.

Pretty cool background for the show:

Shot of the studio with host and Heisbourg getting set:

Chinatown near Five Points: Having Peking Duck with speaking agent Jenn Posda. Our first serious F2F, which is nice since she runs so much of my sked.

From Orlando to NYC

Back in Times Square after flight from Orlando

Raytheon speech went well. Got a bit vocal in Q&A over China, but good theater. Hosts seemed happy. I was followed by Dick Armitage.

Now in Manhattan, hitting my favorite ribs place (Virgil's--sorry my Treo couldn't handle the neon better) just off the Square with my brother Jerome.

Tomorrow is the taping of the Japanese public TV show. I am told by my hosts that Francois Heisbourg from France will be a fellow panelist. Should be interesting...

[posted by Sean for Tom]

Tom at Raytheon

In Orlando today to present to big annual Raytheon marketing meeting.

Here's a picture of ballroom/stage set-up. Typical slick set-up for worldwide corporation like Raytheon.

[posted by Sean for Tom]

FRONTLINE: the insurgency reader review

Regular reader and commenter Menno sens in this excellent and extensive analysis of FRONTLINE: the insurgency.

I don't know if you've already heard about this, but PBS FRONTLINE recently aired a program on the Iraq insurgency. I haven't had the chance to see the program yet myself, however their website has several transcripts of interviews with a variety of individuals (Col. McMaster, an Arab journalist, a TIME Magazine bureau chief, etc). Outside of Col. McMaster's interview, of which variations have been reported elsewhere, TIME Baghdad bureau chief Michael Ware went into detail about certain aspects of the insurgency that indirectly mesh with your recommendation to co-opt Iran:

"[There is] an Iranian-backed, Iranian-directed, Iranian-funded and, at the very least, Iranian-inflamed insurgency in the south of Iraq and in parts of Baghdad...So essentially, just as the Americans did in Afghanistan to oust the Taliban and Al Qaeda -- an alliance of native opposition groups were backed, funded and then led by special forces -- that's precisely what Iran did to America here in Iraq. So they seized real and effective control of the south.

...as British military intelligence describes to me, as secret U.S. intelligence documents clearly show, as members of these militias have told me, and as the Iranians' own documents betray -- what they're doing is, it's like an occupation by stealth. In all the things that the American occupation is trying to do on all the levels -- military, political, diplomatic, economic, humanitarian -- the Iranians are mirroring this. They've got military forces here performing certain functions. They're pumping in money using front companies. They're trying to take advantage of and dominate the economy of the south. They're particularly interested in the oil and other forms of commerce. They're just pumping people and money and literature into their madrassas, the mosques, the universities. What has happened to Basra University is mind-boggling -- all this kind of thing.
So in every way, on all the levels of a civil military operation, the Iranians are nearing, and with enormous sums of money. These opposition groups that were formed to oppose Saddam, and some of which have been formed after the arrival of the Americans, are ... answering to and being funded by the Revolutionary Guard just across the border. The main aim of the military aspect of this Iranian-backed campaign is to bog down the coalition forces without actually provoking them. So the idea is to just chip away, say, at the British presence in the south, just unsettle them so much that they never feel stable, so, as a very senior British commander in the south told me, "so that we must remain in force-protection mode.

...Iran has played on some levels what one could describe as a very smart game in Iraq. They've backed every horse in the race, waiting to see which ones will come good. Since 2003, I've had Iraqi Sunni Baathist commanders telling me about the Iranian money they get. It's not funding their operations. It certainly wasn't then. In fact, these Baathist commanders, the biggest complaint to me about these damned Iranians was that they're too smart by half: "Instead of just giving us the money in one big lump sum, they feed it to us in little bits so we've always got to go back to them asking for more." That way they can maintain the contact and keep getting the intelligence."

Obviously grand strategy is beyond the realm of this journalist, but it seems evident that the quickest (and least bloody) method to bottle up the more militant militias of Sadr and the like -- not to mention taking some wind out of the sails of the Sunni insurgency -- is your recommendation to co-opt Iran. At the very least it'll take a great deal of heat off of our British allies.

In one of the interviews with an Army officer, he obliquely makes the case for a SysAdmin force:

"I go out there, … and I'm talking to everybody, and I'm saying, "Well, we're bringing you hope," and they're looking at me like, "Yeah, so?" … What these people want is a job. They want food. They've got all these kids. They want a sense of security. It's all about [Abraham] Maslow's hierarchy of needs. You've got to satisfy this down here if you want them to self-actualize.

So as I approached the fight, I wanted to be able to face the challenges that were inherent in the fact that there wasn't an economic alternative. I'm a soldier; I can't build jobs. So I'm wrestling with that. I'm wrestling with the fear factor. I'm wrestling with all these components, and I'm trying to figure out how to get at the enemy, because to me it wasn't good enough that if I put a couple of tanks and Brads [Bradley fighting vehicles] out there and deter the enemy from attacking, that ain't winning. So how do I win?

The way that I've told you that I think we're winning is this: I'm not still providing an economic alternative really that much, although we do hire some folks to clean canals and do that, but that's not an overall economic alternative. I can't do that; the Iraqi government has to do that. But no one is going to come in here and provide jobs or invest in Iraq until they believe that the environment is stable and secure enough so that they can invest in that.

This is what I try and reinforce to the Iraqis that I talk to all the time, is you've got to take risks to break the cycle, because it's a cycle that will continue. [If] there's not a stable and secure environment, nobody will invest in Iraq. You can't hire folks, so they don't have a job; they don't have a job, so they join the insurgency. Then we kill some of the insurgents or we detain them, and then we grab large numbers of folks, and we add to the insurgency, and the cycle continues."

Going back to Michael Ware's interview, there was a point he made that I wanted to ask you about:

"By these guys' own admission, they do not have any inherent or fundamental grievance with the United States. These were soldiers and security officers and intelligence officers who served Saddam or Saddam's regime. There's many of them, including the guys in this grainy night-vision footage, [who] have made clear to me, "Saddam was my commander in chief, but I served Iraq." They're professionals, some of whom were trained by the Americans in the '80s, some of whom had Ranger training in the '70s. So these guys had no inherent beef with the United States; it was the occupation.

Even after the toppling of Saddam, many of the insurgents I know and some of the men in [my] early film would tell me, "Look, we've got no real problem with you removing Saddam." Some of them are actually grateful [because] they came from tribes that had always been part of the regime. At the slightest hint or moment of paranoid delusion, Saddam would institute a purge against all the officers from their tribe. Some of them had even been jailed by Saddam. ... So in the immediate aftermath of the invasion, most of these guys in the insurgency as a whole ... gave the Americans a chance; they gave them a window. They stood back and watched them [come in]; they went home like they all were told to do. They served either for the Americans, or they left their intelligence headquarters and they went home and they sat and they waited.

And then they started to see what happened, and that's when they started picking up their [guns], and then they started picking up RPKs [Ruchnoi Puleymot Kalashnikova, light machine guns] and then they started picking up RPGs, and then they started picking up surface-to-surface missiles, and then they started making IEDs [improvised explosive devices]. Then they started launching complex ambushes. Then they started coordinating with Zarqawi's nascent Al Qaeda organization. There was a moment in time when all of this could have been avoided in so many ways."

The "limited window" theme (generally a couple of months, though obviously it varies depending on the situation) is one that has been constantly mentioned whenever the US intervenes militarily, whether its Desert Storm or OIF, Afghanistan, the Balkans (I remember reading about plenty of those "missed opportunities" a few years before I was deployed there), Haiti, and even Katrina. Depending upon the dynamics, the results of missing that window varies.

What I wanted to ask is whether or not you've ever considered "wargaming" the SysAdmin force as a follow-up to the "New Map Game" awhile back, in the sense of how quickly and efficiently you can get a country back on its feet economically once this force enters, whereby most civilians see immediate humanitarian and economic benefits. I don't mean that to be used as a bragging argument [I CAN GET YOUR COUNTRY BACK ON ITS FEET AND THEN SOME IN 45 DAYS!], but as a method of determining if such a "limited window" can possibly be met. I ask because NATO's ground intervention in the Balkans got the security element right (for the most part), but was quite slow on the economic front -- despite the presence of plenty of UN/NATO economic experts and other such officials -- and as a result lead to local disillusionment and later political problems; in other words, we missed the window. I'm sure organizing such a wargame would be difficult (let alone finding the right scenario), but in my opinion I think it would add greater support and understanding for the SysAdmin force if you somehow tackled the initial kickstart economic element of the force (before the FDI flows in), as you did already with the force's military and international institution aspects. I know you state that you don't consider it wise to give specifics outside of your area of expertise, which is more than understandable, but maybe a wargame-like event would allow you to bring in such experts.

Keep up the great work and I hope you end up feeling better soon.

Tom's answer to Menno's question:

This is the natural extension to the New Map Game and it's an exercise I want to pursue. Once Enterra Solutions has a deeper relationship with Oak Ridge National Lab (something we're working hard to achieve), I'm hoping we can pursue that sort of thing there with our concept of Development-in-a-Box.

So, great idea. Agree completely. Welcome any further thinking on the subject.

Tom adds later:

Later, after I landed in Newark and read Menno's full email (restricted on my Treo), I realized that I had already explored this question twice: In the Y2K project (see the Scenario Dynamics Grid) and in the Systems Perturbation workshop I ran for Art Cebrowski and his office in the post-9/11 period of the NewRuleSets.Project.

Point? Not only do we have a host of recent experiences to miine, there is plenty of previous thinking to mine. Both realizations make me even more eager to someday be part of such an effort: mapping post-whatever scenario dynamics.

Come to think of it: Barnett Consulting (meaning Bradd Hayes and I) did such an after-action on the Station Nightclub Fire disaster for the United Way of Rhode Island. All these efforts modeled the same "golden hour" phenomenon.

Thanks again, Menno, for pushing my thinking and reminding me to consider past efforts (to include Enterra colleague Bradd Hayes own book "Doing Windows" on postwar ops).

Thank you, Menno, for your good work and for sending in this review.

"Monks of War" quoted in Sacramento Bee

From the newsstands: Notable magazine offerings from February and March issues

Iraq, three years later

Esquire, March

"This is going to be a long war," writes Thomas P.M. Barnett, a strategic consultant for Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld from 2001 to 2003. "In the two dozen interviews conducted with top American military officials for this article, the overwhelming consensus is that the boys are not coming home, that these conflicts will not be ending anytime soon. In fact, the generals have taken to calling Washington's war on terrorism the Long War."

The brass say that means the Army's going to have to keep many of its forces overseas continuously, and they're going to have to learn quickly from their mistakes in Iraq. The front-and-center lesson: Figure out the culture and learn to work with the locals. Intelligence, especially the political kind, is vital.

Marine Lt. Gen. James Mattis, who has commanded U.S. forces in Iraq and Afghanistan, is quoted as saying: "If we go into Pyongyang [North Korea] and we're fighting there six months from now against a mechanized unit, 100,000 Special Forces would be running around doing what they're doing to our rear area now. So guess what? This is the best training ground in the world. For the German troops [before World War II] it was Spain, right? Well, Iraq is ours."

Michael Barone on cartoon riots and the Gap

Here's the Barone blog post from last week, sent to me by a CentCom USAF reader:

February 22, 2006

Mind the gap

Here is a map showing the location of riots protesting the Danish cartoons. And here's a link to Thomas Barnett's "nonintegrated gap." Notice the similarity? Barnett, as faithful readers of this blog will know...

Here's the full post: http://www.usnews.com/usnews/opinion/baroneblog/home.htm.

I just love this sort of stuff, because it proves the strategic concept is eminently "reproducible".

Credit where credit is due: Boscobel Dial

My Mom informs me that the next weekly issue of the Boscobel Dial contained a correction about my profile in the previous week's edition, noting that I no longer work at the Naval War College.

We are now in synch, my hometown and I.

Second column appears in Knoxville News Sentinel

Still novel enough for me to be quite exciting!

The piece, as I said earlier in the blog, focuses on China.

Here's how it starts:

China should not be ignored in global economy

By Thomas P.M. Barnett, tom@thomaspmbarnett.com

February 26, 2006

While it seems like America's foreign policy debates are dominated by current events in Iraq, Iran and North Korea, if you really want to start an argument in Washington right now, "rising China" is your best bet.

Why? That's where you'll find the most divided opinions.

On one side stand congressional protectionists and defense-industrial hawks who are convinced that China's burgeoning trade and military power spell inevitable conflict, if not over Taiwan today then over Persian Gulf oil and African minerals tomorrow.

That's why our Navy is moving ships from the Atlantic to the Pacific: Pentagon hardliners argue that, if we don't show a strong hand today, China will inevitably grow more aggressive in its frantic search for raw materials.

On the other side stands America's high-tech industry, including a slew of multinational corporations coyly hiding just how much of their profits are derived from outsourcing manufacturing or, more to the point, final assembly jobs to China ...

Read the full column here.

Pretty happy with the piece. As I said earlier in blog, I wasn't trying to put my entire China argument into one piece, but rather to start a line of argument that I can continue in future pieces. Funny thing about this column is, I wanted to write the bit about China's present being spread over the last 125 years of America's past, but I never got to that point in the article: once begun, it just never quite fit within the proscribed 720 words. So I guess I will keep that notion for a future column.

My only complaint is the title, which I left to my Knoxville masters. I don't think anybody "ignores" China in the global economy.

But I only have myself to blame on that. The Knoxville people have been very nice to me on editing and giving me serious freedom. The answer is, I need to come up with my own titles. Sure, they will edit those (editors always do), but I have to lay down my own marker or I can't complain about the outcome.

One innovation this time is that I used a different byline. Last time I used the Oak Ridge "distinguished strategist" title, but this time I went with:

Thomas P.M. Barnett is a distinguished scholar at the Howard H. Baker Center of Public Policy at the University of Tennessee and author of "Blueprint for Action: A Future Worth Creating." Contact him at tom@thomaspmbarnett.com.

I feel like I should alternate between the Baker and Oak Ridge titles in my biweekly column, because Oak Ridge arranged for both the column and the affiliation with Baker, so best to serve both masters equally over time.

Next up? Feel an Iran piece coming on.

Time for America to grow up about the global connectivity of foreign direct investment

ARTICLE: “U.S. Lawmakers Receive Global Criticism for Objections to Ports Deal,” by Aaron O. Patrick, Wall Street Journal, 25-26 February 2006, p. A4.

ARTICLE: “A Ship Already Sailed: America Ceded Its Seaport Terminals to Foreigners Years Ago,” by Simon Romero and Heather Timmons, New York Times, 24 February 2006, p. C1.

OP-ED: “Ports in a Storm: Do we believe in free trade, or don’t we?” by Zachary Karabell, Wall Street Journal, 23 February 2006, p. A16.

EDITORIAL: “Ports of Gall: The new protectionists use national security as their cover,” Wall Street Journal, 25-26 February 2006, p. A10.

ARTICLE: “Thwarted Attack At Saudi Facility Stirs Energy Fears: Officials Worry Terrorists Are Targeting Oil System; Crude Futures Jump 4%,” by Bhushan Bahree and Chip Cummins, Wall Street Journal, 25-26 February 2006, p. A1.

ARTICLE: “In Ports Furor, a Clash Over Dubai: Debate Exposes Conflicts Between Security Needs And Foreign Investment; PetroChina Hangs On in Sudan,” by Bernard Wysocki Jr. and Michael M. Phillips, Wall Street Journal, 23 February 2006, p. A1.

ARTICLE: “How Foreign Banks Scaled the Chinese Wall: Titans Acquire Minority Stakes With Little Control of Their Own; Will the Strategy Prove Wise?” by Kate Linebaugh, Wall Street Journal, 23 February 2006, p. C1.

ARTICLE: “Intel to Build Vietnam Chip Plant, Raising Nation’s High-Tech Profile,” by James Hookway and Nguyen Pram Muoi, Wall Street Journal, 24 February 2006, p. A4.

ARTICLE: “U.S. Funds Take On Global Flavor: Foreign Companies’ Equities Increasingly Populate Portfolios As Returns Pick Up Overseas,” by Tom Lauricella, Wall Street Journal, 24 February 2006, p. C1.

America has been the single biggest kingpin in outward-bound foreign direct investment since the Second World War, meaning our cumulative total of investment in other countries is bigger than anybody else on the planet. Sure, when you bundle up Europe’s numbers, they are huge (2X ours), but that’s including all the intra-European investment, which is like counting Florida investing in Michigan. Strip away all the self investment, and America is more than equal to Europe’s overseas investment total.

Have we benefited from all that overseas investing? Sure. We’re sought out cheaper resources and labor over the decades, pushing American firms to become ever more efficient and to move up the production value chain to new heights of technology and productivity. Have such investments forced our economy and society to leave behind industries that once defined our labor pool? Sure, but that’s progress, unless you think it’s better defined by every child performing the same job as their parents once did, and their parents once did, and their parents once did, and so on.

All that investment has built up this magnificent global economy, which is bigger now than it has ever been, and features less violence and danger than it has ever had to withstand before. That’s right. You go back in history and you will find an ever increasing percentage of humanity either actively involved in or preparing for mass violence. Today, that percentage is lower than it has ever been, because the numbers and cumulative size of conflicts around the world are lower than they’ve ever been.

The spread of the global economy is responsible for that, and our immense role in exporting investments around this world has been preeminent in creating that future worth living.

And yet we are so fearful of the mutually-assured dependence we’ve created with all this investment, especially when it comes back at us in the form of other countries investing in the U.S., something that’s been a hallmark of our development for decades and decades stretching back to our infancy. I know, I know, America was a perfect democracy from the start and we built this entire economy on our own, with no help from anybody except the immigrants who showed up. This is the American mythos, and we love it. But the truth is we've had huge inflows of foreign direct investment throughout our history (Number 1? The Dutch.), as lotsa foreigners “exploited our cheap labor” and our natural resources. And we benefited hugely from this.

Truth be told: no country develops without access to foreign money in this global economy. So FDI must flow. In reality, it’s the Dune-like “spice” that drives our global economy—more than oil does.

So we are rightly criticized as hypocrites when our lawmakers object to the UAE ports deal. Not just because it’s anti-trade, but because it flies in the face of current reality: the countries that run the world’s ports, including ours, are those that most heavily depend on trade (Hong Kong, Dubai, Singapore, Denmark, China, Germany, Taiwan and that city-state called Seattle). Seafaring centers rule that trade (can I get a “duh”!).

This is our game, the one we created after World War II to keep great power peace, and it’s worked like a dream. Now, great powers and wannabe regional ones all play by our rules. So when one of them does unto us what we’ve been doing unto them for decades, it’s pretty strange for us to cry foul, and even worse to cry national security.

Did DP World have an advantage in bidding for the British company that currently runs a number of our ports? Sure. And we should we wary of letting states-masquerading-as-companies pretend they are playing on a level field? All things being equal? Yes. But all things are rarely equal. And if we’re seeing connectivity result that otherwise would not be there, then I say we choose investment over fear. Do I want Dubai to become a Hong Kong/Singapore of the Middle East? Sure. Because I want the Middle East to connect up to the world. In fact, that’s the whole purpose behind our Big Bang strategy of toppling Saddam: connecting the Middle East up to the global economy faster than the jihadists can disconnect it.

The Al Qaedaists of the Middle East know damn well what they’re doing: they want to sabotage the regions’ economies, disconnecting them from the world, and reap the whirlwind of social distress. Thus we should expect more attacks on port and energy facilities like the one that targeted the Abqaiq facility recently.

I know that some op-ed strategists want to play that game as well, arguing we should cut the global economy off from the Middle East by denying ourselves its oil as quickly as possible, but I argue for just the opposite approach. I want shared economic and strategic interests, not some rapid-fire economic divorce.

That’s the essential nature of the military-market nexus that we ourselves have forged in this era of globalization. I know we are called a debtor nation, but in reality we are a security exporter, one that overspends our public funds in order to pay for the world’s security, which only our power-projecting military is capable of providing. For that service, the world pays us by buying our debt. But that process can only go so far, as we’ve seen with Japan years ago and China today. After a while, our trade partners can accumulate only so much of our money in reserves. When saturation is reached (beyond the fear of currency speculation), then these countries naturally want to diversify their holdings; they want to own us as much as we own them.

This is natural and good and a furthering of the mutually-assured dependence that defines the Functioning Core of globalization. In fact, to move from the Non-Integrating Gap to the Core, such interdependency must be an avowed goal of the migrating nation (in this case, Dubai). We either welcome that mutual dependence or we renounce the very system of growing global peace that we engineered.

We are too far down this road to change course. Invest in a “U.S.” mutual fund today and you’ll find that much of its money sits abroad, seeking greater opportunity--as it should. Some can call such activity akin to being "economic traitors," a charge so foolishly wrongheaded as to deserve complete condemnation. Instead, such investments do more to secure our national security than all the efforts of our defense establishment.

And yet it is so sad to see American leaders, right at the moment of our emerging historical triumph, becoming so amazingly full of self-doubt and fear. What do we need to continue to succeed in the world we’ve created? A highly educated and ambitious labor pool of entrepreneurs. How hard is that to achieve? You tell me.

Other countries are responding to this challenge of Friedman’s “Flat World,” and they’re doing so with less fear. China lets our banks buy into their banks. Vietnam lets Intel come in and build a big chip factory that, a few years back, would have gone to China. Everyone is striving mightily to move up the production chain and all America does is fret over industries we’ve let go abroad instead of focusing on what we really need to do next: invent the next wave of industries that will define our future.

But I am being too harsh here: those industries are appearing across the dial in America. We just need to revamp a lifelong educational system to make American labor confident enough that we can collectively migrate our skills and labor to what comes next, instead of vainly trying to hold onto what came before.

Yes, yes, easier said than done. But what do these “far-sighted” protectionists offer us instead? Look closely, because upon further examination it comes off as a sort of economic back-to-the-future escapism that comes uncomfortably close to Osama’s arguments for civilizational apartheid: “Don’t deal with this challenging future; instead retreat into a more homogenous imaginary past.”

We need confidence now more than ever because we are closer—now more than ever--to the global future we’ve been crafting for decades and decades. I feel a huge debt to the Greatest Generation, one that requires I keep pushing the pile throughout my career. I have never felt more connected to both past and future as I do today, and it fills me with a sense of great optimism.

But optimism requires confidence. You have to see the world you’ve created. You need to feel a pride of ownership and a sense of parental satisfaction.

And at some time you have to let go of your fears. You have to accept countries for what they’re becoming, not what they’ve been. You need to seize the opportunities to turn enemies into partners and partners into close friends.

We are at that moment in history.

We need that confidence and that optimism that’s defined America’s past and will shape this world’s future even more.

We all live in a world of our making. Some deride that self-awareness as naïve or delusional.

I call it real power and tell all the fear-mongers to f--k off.

Having a weird week...

Went to bed Tuesday night so convinced I was heading to doc on Wednesday (had appointment and all) that I was counting the minutes to the Amoxycilin.

Then woke up Wednesday feeling decent, thus the big post output.

Got even better yesterday, which was lost mostly to house stuff and prepping my taxes and a concert in which my son performed.

Then back to feeling bad today. At first, I thought it was my accountant telling me I needed a lot more cash on 15 April (saw him today, son of a Packer player from the 1950s, no less). I am becoming more Republican each year my income goes up!

But over day I realized this virus is not over. Of course, my usual ear for infections starts to ache just as Friday afternoon comes around (amazing how that works--never appearing until the weekend).

But I remain optimistic. I have heard so much about this flu-ish virus that goes on for two weeks and ebbs and peaks and morphs and so on and so forth. Virtually all my network has had it already. Guess it's just my turn.

Last night during son's concert (Kev has the most beautiful voice), I get two very interesting speaking invites: first is to address 30 or so national military chiefs in Asia next fall in Malaysia (I am reminded of "Zoolander" every time I hear that country's name ...) and second is to address a mega-church in Texas (all four Sat-Sun services). Now there's an interesting pair of invites that I'm guessing not every grand strategist manages to attract!

I may be closer to my Joel Osteen moment than I realized ...

Ah well, at least such interesting asides divert my attention from the fact that I will owe the IRS a frightening amount of money between 15 April and 15 June. My Dad always said it was the killer time for the self-employed.

Neat thing is, of course, I'm trying to finance a new house in the same timeframe. Is that strategic planning or what?

Come to Jesus? Come to the Uncle Sam!

Nice piece on Cebrowski by friends Jim Blaker and Rob Holzer

Jim and I go all the way back to 1990. He was in the Strategic Policy and Analysis Group (SPAG) that I joined just as it was being absorbed into the Center for Naval Analyses. Jim was one of my first mentors--a really great guy. Jim was also the first guy to say to me, "You're going to ruin this military!" I remember it well. I was standing at the Xerox. He said it jokingly, but he also meant it, even as he agreed with the logic behind wanting to "ruin the military."

Jim was also the guy to bring me to speak with Kerry's Pentagon people in the summer of 2004. An interesting, well-connected guy.

Rob Holzer is the co-author. He wrote for Defense News for years, being the first journalist to profile me as director of the NewRuleSets.Project (the one with Cantor Fitzgerald. He later went on to become public affairs guy for the Office of Force Transformation. Very smart, very good guy, who helped me a lot over my time in OFT--and beyond.

They write a nice piece here in C4ISR Journal:

Disruptive voice

Cebrowski understood the value — and inevitability — of revolutionary change

By James Blaker and Robert Holzer

January 09, 2006

Retired U.S. Navy Vice Adm. Arthur Cebrowski, who died Nov. 12, joins George S. Patton, Billy Mitchell, Hyman Rickover and others in that great brotherhood of military innovators who revolutionized national security affairs.

It is a heroic cadre, because changing things and pushing into new frontiers in military affairs inevitably means challenging convention and hierarchy in the most inherently conservative of American institutions.

Like Patton’s insights into the promise of armor, Mitchell’s unerring faith in the potential of aircraft and Rickover’s advocacy of nuclear-powered submarines, Cebrowski’s keen appreciation of the power of information technology opened new passages of military strategy. But he searched for much more than just how to adjust military functions to emerging technology. He drove the debate from the eternal military question of how to use the wisdom of experience to the far more disruptive question of how to change past wisdom to meet the new challenges of the time. And he understood that to do so meant shifting from the military focus on questions of “how” to the more profound questions of “why" ...

Go here for the full article.

Ignatius on connectivity: nice plug for Pentagon's New Map, but my conversation (i.e., Blueprint for Action) has already moved on

[UPDATE: Reposted for those who missed it]

OP-ED: "From 'Connectedness' to Conflict," by David Ignatius, Washington Post, 22 February 2006, p. A15.

Here's the key bit on me and PNM:

Among military strategists, the bible of connectedness is a book called "The Pentagon's New Map," by Thomas P.M. Barnett. He argues that the world today is divided between an "integrating core" of orderly commerce, stretching from America and Europe across to China and India, and a "non-integrating gap," which is his shorthand for the messy rest of the world. The task of U.S. foreign policy is to connect the two. Thomas Friedman's influential book, "The World Is Flat," argues that technology is driving this process of integration, and that it's creating a richer, smarter global community.

So why does the world feel so chaotic? Why is there a growing sense that, as Francis Fukuyama put it in a provocative essay in last Sunday's New York Times Magazine, "More democracy will mean more alienation, radicalization and -- yes, unfortunately -- terrorism"? I have been discussing this conundrum with friends, and I've heard two interesting theories worth sharing.

The first comes from Raja Sidawi, a Syrian businessman who owns Petroleum Intelligence Weekly and is one of the most astute analysts of the Arab world I know. He argues that Barnett misses the fact that as elites around the world become more connected with the global economy, they become more disconnected from their own cultures and political systems. The local elites "lose touch with what's going on around them," opening up a vacuum that is filled by religious parties and sectarian groups, Sidawi contends. The modernizers think they are plugging their nations into the global economy, but what's also happening is that they are unplugging themselves politically at home.

Now, I am tempted to retort here on a variety of levels.

First, the entire notion of PNM is that the spread of the global economy creates tumult and change that ultimately but not instantly leads to connectivity, which in turn leads to stability. If connectivity led instantly to stability then I wouldn't have needed to call it the Pentagon's New Map, because there would have been no role for the military in this process. In truth, I am arguing Huntington's "clash" on many levels, just rendering that concept dynamic in relation to globalization's spread, so my Seam is basically the moving front of globalization that reformats "olive tree" places into "lexus" venues, to borrow from Friedman. PNM's advance was to combine Huntington's sociological determinism with Friedman's economic determinism by adding the third leg of the stool: political-military determinism--as in, where globalization is encroaching, look for conflict.

Second, PNM's entire discussion of the Big Bang as strategy not only admits the greater likelihood of more violence, it welcomes it. This is a notion I continue at great length in BFA, which I know Ignatius has read, yet, for some reason, he chooses not to explore in print. (I know, because he told me in person how much he liked BFA when I saw him at the "Diane Rehm Show.")

Third, my entire notion of "The Train's Engine Cannot Travel Faster Than Its Caboose" is a purposeful exploration of just this point. But again, David, for whatever reason, chooses to curtail his public understanding of my ideas to PNM, when in so many ways I moved beyond that initial expression by publishing Blueprint for Action. So I don't "ignore" the elites question, I just didn't get to it in PNM.

Fourth, I actually do a better job of defending Fukuyama's "End of History" argument in BFA than Fukuyama does in his NYT Mag article of last week (cited by David)! The whole "wars of the spirit" stuff was always part and parcel of Fukuyama's argument. In fact, it was the punch line of the entire book!

Fifth, my exploration of the Middle East ("Winning This War With Connectedness") in BFA argues that our pursuit of the GWOT will not lead to lower levels of violence, but instead--as I so often point out in this blog--speed the killing.

Sixth, in BFA I offer a detailed exploration of the possible sequencing of Gap shrinkage, and in that process I reiterate a point I make in Chapter 2 on "Winning This War": the fight, if done well, heads south into sub-Saharan Africa, meaning not less violence over time, but a geographic shifting of its center of gravity. This is why the term Long War is a good one.

It's hard for me to pick a fight with Ignatius, because I admire his writing so much and because he's been quite generous with me in the past. I will admit to being too damn prolific, and thus forcing a sequel into the marketplace while book #1 is still spreading in its impact. But I mean, it's not like I'm just pointing to my blog, or my new column, or my articles for Esquire in defense here. I'm actually pointing to an entire book already in print!

Still, "bible" and comparison to World is Flat is hard to complain about, and frankly, now that I write a column, I appreciate what it is for someone like Ignatius to work an issue, bit by bit, across columns.

My second column for the Knoxville News Sentinel is sort of an intro piece by me on China. Do I get the Internet stuff in? No. Do I explore Taiwan? Not really. I get what I can get in across 720 words. It's good stuff, starting a conversation, but I easily could have used about 5,000 more words to deal with this or that aspect. But my sense, especially with a biweekly, is that I need to build a case and an understanding over time. So I do a little bit in my first column on China, then a bit more a couple of months later when I revisit, and so on.

Sure, it would be different if I were 2x a week like Ignatius, but if and when I achieve that frequency, my guess is that I'll be singing the same whiney tune on this subject (so much to cover in 720 words!), that I really don't think Ignatius has it any easier. Ignatius' real point in this piece was to introduce the yin-yang-like interplay of connectivity and chaos as globalization spreads, a concept I stake my entire vision on. So he uses me as a bit of a foil here, understandably straw-manning me a bit, but doing so in a very nice way and plugging me just fine in the process.

Would I love to push Ignatius into some treatment of BFA? Damn straight, but I have to accept the fact that I'm a bit too prolific for my own good. The marketplace of ideas will catch up eventually, and BFA is sitting there, waiting to answer so many of the criticisms leveled at PNM like this one. That is a very cool position to be in.

I am also reminded of what Barry McAffrey told me when he saw the original PNM brief: he said that the vast majority of people would need multiple exposures to the material before adequately absorbing it. In fact, he said I would need to brief most people several times before they actually "got it." I know what McAffrey meant by that, because--quite frankly--I needed several dozen "exposures" to get the material myself! So how can I expect anything better from anyone else? In the end, then, Ignatius is carrying my water, so it's hard for me to complain. By giving PNM repeat exposures in his column, he does me a very good turn. Understandably, he will "abuse" the material a bit here and there to make larger points, and you have to accept that. As someone who's written a lot himself, I know I do that to people all the time. Remember, my original text for the "Monks of War" Esquire piece as about 14k, so you're always battling the reality of limited space, meaning you advance the argument as much as you can in any one piece and make your peace with that limitation.

Richness versus reach, my old mentor Art Cebrowski liked to say. So very true.

It's like that (largely) critical review I got from the high school kids in the Indy Star last week. Sure, I would have liked it better if they had actually read either book, but I got what I could across in that brief (highly shortened due to time and my perception of bit rate with the audience--no insult, you simply adjust to the audience from the stage). So you're happy with the exposure and you recognize the richness/reach tradeoff is inescapable. I mean, look at how many people misinterpret Fukuyama simply because of that title (End of History) and the fact that almost no one has actually read his book to the end!

Readers are constantly pushing me to push myself and my ideas into new venues, acting like I should be as impatient as they are. I appreciate that desire and sense of urgency--immensely. But it's been my experience of the last 16 years that the acceptance comes when the marketplace is ready. My job as visionary is to keep the pipeline full, not get all antsy about the timeline. The grand strategist's greatest strength is his sense of patience. Spending a weekend back in my hometown of Boscobel reminds me that I've been dreaming these dreams for a good three decades. I have been patiently working on this trajectory since I became aware of a larger world in the 1972-73 timeframe, so I refuse to get all wrapped around the axle at any one point in the process, which I still see unfolding over decades, not 24-hour news cycles.

I have written about this weird phenomenon before here: PNM was the big hit among the media types but it is BFA that has dramatically elevated my facetime with policy players and military leaders. So here is my conundrum: PNM is taken more seriously by commentators but BFA is taken more seriously by practitioners (meanwhile, the academics largely condemn both for not citing them enough).

I am beginning to think the Schopenhauer bit about truth going through three cycles (ridicule, opposition, "acceptance" as self-evident) is dead on.

But again, no game clock for the grand strategist ...

Know your role in life and stick to it. Do history the favor it needs from you and remain true to your beliefs.

Quietly, PACOM builds a mil-mil bridge

Great story reposted on Real Clear Politics on how Pacific Command is quietly beginning an officer exchange program with the Chinese. This is Fox Fallon's personal decision to exploit his time as head of PACOM to leave the U.S.-Chinese mil-mil relationship stronger than he found it.

Good stuff, done with some risk for Fallon, since it puts him at odds with Rumsfeld and the Pentagon. Word is, he's been called on the carpet, so to speak, for this sort of stuff. But the good thing about ending your career at PACOM is that you really are king-for-many-days. Most guys look at it like that, which is why it's a serious job for those who know how to use it.

Thanks to Bill Millan for alerting me on this story.

First Kaplan, now Boot wants a Department of Everything Else

OP-ED: "Diplomacy for the real world: Without changes, the State Department isn't ready to meet today's challenges," by Max Boot, Los Angeles Times, 22 February 2006.

Hmm, maybe my little column in the Knoxville News Sentinel has more pull than I realized!

Okay, okay, I put away the delusions of grandeur for a moment ...

Neither Kaplan nor Boot actually call for a Department of Everything Else, my amazingly bold term. Instead, both reference the British Colonial Office, bringing up my always fierce aversion to anything Niall Ferguson!

Okay, okay, I regress ...

Both Kaplan and Boot are historians by nature, so they reach for that paradigm, just like Ferguson, and there's a lot of validity in the comparison--except everything has totally changed in the meantime!

Seriously, the fact that all these big brains come to the same conclusion says something about the inevitability of a Department that does the . . . you know . . . everything else connected with nation-building.

Here's how Boot puts it:

And why not set up a new nation-building department built, perhaps, on the foundation of the Agency for International Development? The new Office of Reconstruction and Stabilization is doing good work, but it is unlikely to get sufficient support from Congress or its own department as long as it's subsumed in a larger bureaucracy.

In any case, the skills needed for nation-building are more akin to those of the old British Colonial Office than to those inculcated by the State Department. We should open up our own version of the Colonial Office at USAID. Instead, the trend seems to be toward more closely integrating USAID into the State Department, repeating the mistake that was made with the USIA.

Don't nod off. Diplomacy may not be sexy stuff, but it is vitally important if we are to deal with looming problems before they turn into a crisis requiring tens of thousands of U.S. troops to fix. We actually need to spend more and hire more people to tackle these issues. The entire international affairs budget — which includes funding not only for the State Department and other agencies but also for foreign aid — is just $35 billion, compared with about $500 billion in defense spending. And the State Department has just 13,000 employees, not enough to fill one Army division.

But before making a bigger commitment to diplomacy and related disciplines, we need to make sure we have the right structure in place to address the challenges of the 21st century.

Hmmm. I'm still feeling pretty shitty, but not so beyond the mainstream as many of my critics would have it.

Grand strategists deal in inevitabilities. You can quote me on that.

Boscobel Dial story on PNM

Can't find you an online version. Boscobel's a bit Gappy in that way (as if the title of the piece doesn't tell you that).

Here's the text (I will comment at the end; do not read any of the asides in the text as being mine, as I reprint the article here exactly as it appeared):

Boscobel author breaks new ground with his look at global transformation: Barnett works for the U.S. Naval War College

[no author listed, although it seems to be someone from Lancaster WI, the county seat]

Boscobel Dial, 16 February 2006, Second Section, page 1.

Thomas P.M. Barnett of Boscobel can trace his ancestry to several Grant County Civil War veterans, Barnetts as well as John Callis of the Iron Brigade. His parents were both attorneys and his father practiced many years in Boscobel.

In 2004, Thomas' book, The Pentagon's New Map: War and Peace in the Twenty-First Century (Berkeley Books, NY), was published. The book cites a review by The National Review which is a good summary of the book:

"In many respects, the book is brilliant and innovative. It offers a persuasive analysis of the post-9/11 world as well as policy prescriptions flowing from that analysis ... He is an entertaining writer and offers many interesting insights into the workings of the bureaucracy and the travails of those who would seek to transform its workings ... Despite attempts to caricature Barnett as a warmonger becaause he endorsed the war in Iraq, the fact is that he is optimistic about the blessings of 'connectivity' and globalization--indeed he is extremely close in outlook to [Francis] Fukuyama. He believes that globalization can create prosperity anywhere only if it creates prosperity everywhere."

Barnett works for the U.S. Naval War College, held many positions in the government and think tanks, and has a Ph.D. from Harvard in governmental affairs. The most striking note in the book is that he was on stage during 9/11 and he was scheduled during that month both for a meeting at Cantor Fitzgerald in the World Trade Center [They lost much of their staff that day] and he was scheduled to meet at the exact location where the plane struck the Pentagon.

The book sets a world stage with the terms "the Core" and "the Gap," the Core being the countries that are functioning in the global economy and the Gap being the countries that are not well integrated into the global economy. He believes the answer is to facilitate the Gap becoming participants in the global economy which will reduce/eliminate terrorists. [This is a Grant County overview of a 400-page book.]

He believes that the U.S. should be "the system administrator" to oversee the transformation of the Gap into the Core. While the book "uses an easy conversational language that instructs rather than condescends" [Fort Worth-Star Telegram], its concepts and presentation can be difficult to follow or even agree. There are portions of his ideas that are troubling, such as "much needed regime change" or a new "9/11 trigger to set the end game in motion."

He includes a reference to Boscobel in the book:

"I was both unwittingly and unwillingly introduced to the concept of asymmetrical warfare as a young child growing up in my small hometown of Boscobel, Wisconsin. My dear father was the city attorney, which meant he sometimes had to enforce city ordinances with townsfolk who, for example, saw no reason why raising pigs in their backyard might disturb their neighbors. I sometimes found myself standing up to fairly sizable bullies who were determined to make me pay for the fact that my dad had mad their dad lose the livestock.

"Like anyone smaller facing someone larger, I engaged in asymmetrical warfare to defend myself. In other words, I pulled every dirty trick on them that I could think of, always trying to exploit their weakest points. While I got roughed up now and then, I never really ever got beat up, because I was willing to pull out all the stops to defend myself. I knew I would never survive a straight-up fight, so I would run because they were slower, hit them below the belt because they were taller, or joke my way out of the situation. But I never did try to punch them out, because punching was their strength, and it simply made no sense for me to fight their way."

He mentions Wisconsin in the book:

"Washington, D.C. is a lot different from rural Wisconsin, where I grew up. In Wisconsin, people ask you what you do because they are really interested and--if possible--they would like to help you get ahead in life. But in Washington, people ask you what you do because they want to check your status relative to theirs, and getting down your particulars proves handy if they ever need to bring you down a peg or two."

He also retains his Green Bay Packers season tickets and takes his two oldest children to a game each at Lambeau Field each fall.

He also mentions his brother and, just before acknowledging his wife, he says this about his parents:

"It almost goes without saying that this book is yet another small down payment on the enormous debt I owe my parents, John and Colleen, for everything they have done for me across my lifetime. All the great convictions expressed in this vision began originally with them, my life being an extension of their own."

The president of our high school class served in the White House under Reagan and his aunt expressed concern about him losing his faith. Barnett mentions his religious upbringing several times in the book. One wonders if they looked at 1 Cor. 1:18. Man since ancient times [see Roman Empire] has attempted to control his own fate. Has he ever succeeded? Thomas is optimistic about our future but it still remains frightening.

COMMENTARY: All joking aside about it taking almost two years for news of my book to reach my hometown newspaper, this is actually a pretty good write-up, which naturally favors the local excerpts. The bit about the local kid who works for Reagan is, my Mom told me, probably about some guy from Lancaster. My Mom was told by the local editor of the paper that this piece was written by someone in Lancaster, where the Barnetts originally landed in Grant County in the 19th century. I like the bit about the Bible at the end. It's very Boscobel Dial-ish

The piece is ended with a joke quote from "Senator Soaper" which reads: "Democracy is a form of government in which it is permitted to wonder aloud what the country could do under first-class management."

Works for me.

Good job for State Department: recruiting CEOs as diplomats working the military-market nexus

ARTICLE: "Trying to Turn Its Image Around, U.S. Puts Top CEOs Out Front: State Department's Ms. Hughes Rallies Companies to Play Bigger Role in Diplomacy," by Neil King Jr., Wall Street Journal, 17 February 2006, p. A1.

Ms. Hughes is recruiting for the Department of Everything Else, trying to bolster the State Department's rather thin ranks on the subject with private sector CEOs.

Read this article and you'll see what I mean. Despite the title suggestion, this isn't about diplomacy anywhere but inside the Gap, and we're always talking postconflict/postdisaster/post-whatever situations, as in, serious SysAdmin territory.

This article suggests that our best diplomacy will involve efforts like the notion Steve DeAngelis and I are working on right now--that notion of Development in a Box, the ultimate push-package that recognizes peace as the ultimate aftermarket.

I mean, see my previous post about emerging markets becoming the driver for the global economy and then realize that shrinking the Gap is in everyone's best interests--and profit motives.

The danger here, is, of course, more flash than substance, which is a continuing problem of leaving these sorts of efforts to State, which is in the process of ruining the U.S. Agency for International Development, so why would they be any better with Development in a Box?

State is good to run the Core, and Defense is getting better (despite the continuing recalcitrance of the Big War crowd) at running the security issues of the Gap. In the end, though, we need that department that works the transition from Gap to Core.

So great idea, just wrong DC address.