The Big Bang is just beginning to pick up speed

ARTICLE: “Egypt’s Leader Moves to Delay Local Elections,” by Michael Slackman, New York Times, 14 February 2006, p. A1.

ARTICLE: “U.S. And Israelis Are Said To Talk Of Hamas Ouster: Cutoff of Aid and Taxes; Effort to Force New Vote if Group Refuses to Alter Its Current Stances,” by Steven Erlanger, New York Times, 14 February 2006, p. A1.

ARTICLE: “U.S. and Israel Deny Plans to Drive Hamas From Power,” by Steven R. Weisman, New York Times, 15 February 2006, pulled from web.

NEWS ANALYSIS: “Beneath The Rage In The Mideast: In an Egyptian calamity, one clue to the intensity of Arab reaction to European cartoons,” by Michael Slackman, New York Times, 12 February 2006, p. WK1.

ARTICLE: “Israel’s Next Struggle May Be Internal: Rising Support for Pullback From West Bank Presages Power Shift, Societal Strife,” by Karby Leggett, Wall Street Journal, 13 January 2006, p. A6.

ARTICLE: “Iran Plays Growing Role in Iraq, Complicating Bush’s Strategy: Tehran’s Influence on Politics, Daily Life Could Give It Leverage in Nuclear Debate; Help for Shiite TV Stations,” by Jay Solomon, Farnaz Fassihi and Philip Shishkin, Wall Street Journal, 14 February 2006, p. A1.

The Big Bang keeps on rumbling.

Taking his cue from Hamas’ victory in Palestine, Mubarek is scared enough of the prospect of the Muslim Brotherhood doing well in local elections this April that he postpones them for two years. The rationale from supporters? Mubarek wants to strengthen the role of local political governance, which currently has none to speak of, so he will take this time to bolster local government.

Hmmm. How convenient …

Clearly, Mubarek feels the need to do something, but he wants whatever reform unfolds to be disadvantageous to the MB’s growing local clout.

Meanwhile, Israel and the U.S. continue to send strong signals to Hamas: adjust the platform or lose the bucks and . . . try governing without the bucks to fund your social welfare programs. Both Tel Aviv and Washington make the point that this is not a soft kill attempt, just a strong stance: we’ll continue the funding, but don’t expect us to bankroll any government that wants to backtrack on the Arab world’s growing acceptance of the right of Israel to exist as a state.

Hamas is the most successful form of PRT out there, referring to the Provincial Reconstruction Team approach that the U.S. pioneered with NATO countries in Afghanistan and is currently trying to replicate in Iraq. This is bottom-up empowerment and economic development at its most grass roots, and it’s what won Hamas the election. And that would be a cheap deal if Hamas’ elevation to power forced them to change their stance vis-à-vis Israel, which meanwhile continues to show all signs of moving toward the two-state solution no matter what anyone thinks of that wall.

Israel is smart to sit out the Big Bang. The popular rage against incompetent governments across the region is reaching a boiling point: the average Arab is mad as hell--at his or her own government--and they’re not going to take it anymore, at least not quietly.

So the Big Bang continues to roll: we topple the biggest baddest hombre in the region and look what unfolds next. Would it have happened anyway? The youth bulge working its way through the region made much of this rage inevitable, but there is no question that our setting the Iraq takedown in motion sped up this process considerably. Why? Because it said anything was possible in a region where nothing’s been plausible for so long. Not peace. Not stability. Not development. Nothing.

The biggest nut to crack in the region, though, is the one we hardened most profoundly with our dual takedowns of the Taliban and Saddam. Iran is surrounded by U.S. forces, no doubt, but it also occupies the driver’s seat on regional stability right now. While we spoil for a fight, Iran just plain spoils.

For now the Big Bang merely washes up on Iran’s borders. Since we can’t effectively bomb our way in, the question becomes how to lower those firewalls so that Iraq’s Shiites do the real, long-term influencing.

A truly criminal empire

EDITORIAL: “Fission worries: At cross-purposes in the six-party talks,” The Economist, 11 February 2006, p. 14.

ARTICLE: “A frustrating game of carrots and sticks: Tensions persist over how to tackle the North Korean nuclear problem,” The Economist, 11 February 2006, p. 39.

North Korea’s latest excuse, we are told, for boycotting further talks among the Party of Six, is that America has too viciously cracked down on its myriad criminal networks: narcotics, counterfeiting, bogus drugs, bootleg cigarettes, peddling endangered species, money laundering, and the sale of any military technology that Pyongyang gets its hands on. As The Economist says, “North Korea is not a failed state taken over by criminals, it is a regime organized to maximize profits from its illicit activities,” which, thanks to extensive linkage to Chinese “triad” gangs, is amazingly profitable.

North Korea’s “supernotes,” or near-perfect counterfeit hundred-dollar U.S. bills, are legendary in their global reach, so America cracks down. But when are we to convince Beijing that North Korea’s manipulation of its own criminal networks is costing the regime too much?

According to one American expert, as much as 40% of North Korea’s exports are criminal in nature, so if that sort of rule breaking doesn’t get you a warrant for your regime’s arrest, what will? The two million dead from the preventable famine in the mid-1990s? The malnutrition and shrinky-dink nature of childhood in rural North Korea today?

The worse it gets in North Korea, the more Kim squeezes his criminal nets for profit, meanwhile kicking out most of the remaining international relief groups, something he can do only because South Korea and China prop him up with food supplies.

At some point, all this complicity in criminal activity must stop, and the ghetto crackhouse that is the DPRK must go.

Instead of fixating on Iran’s slow-motion pursuit of the Bomb, this is where we should be focusing our attention right now. By ending Kim’s regime, we bring China more into the fold as a rule-abiding member of the Core.

The worst crime comes in dragging this debacle out for years to come, knowing as we do the suffering that continues there.

Japanese bid for U.S. nuclear energy pillar threatens our entire way of life!

ARTICLE: “Launch of a strategic nuclear move: Japanese group’s $5.4b acquisition of Westinghouse has future demand in mind,” by Michiyo Nakamoto, Financial Times, 14 February 2006, p. 19.

The Japanese aren’t stupid. They already rely heavily on nuclear energy, despite their rather bad safety record on the subject, and they know that the role of nukes will only grow in a world where New Core powers like India and China are already stressing global conventional energy markets.

But where is the uproar? Twenty years ago Japan makes such a bid and political leaders would be all upset. Give Japan control of such an American energy icon? OMYGOD! Certainly as frightening a prospect as China gobbling up UNOCAL!

But frankly, this is nothing new. The British company National Grid basically owns most of America’s eastern seaboard electrical grid. Feeling any fear on that basis? Of course not.

Then look at China opening up ownership of its power sector to foreign entities. Why? That’s how you get access to money.

We tend to be rather hypocritical on this subject: always demanding others open up to our money while remaining fancifully suspicious when similar things come our way. But this is the best sort of connectivity. It’s basically cross-marriages between corporate giants and great powers, and yes, the resulting stability enhancement can be profound, so long as political and security connectivity keep pace.

And that’s where we’re faltering with the New Core, especially with Russia and China.

Russia’s two steps backward, one step forward

OP-ED: “Putin’s KGB Instincts Serve Russia Badly,” by George Melloan, Wall Street Journal, 14 February 2006, p. A23.

OP-ED: “Don’t Blame Russia: Moscow moves to market principles. Why cry foul?” by Yuri V. Ushakov (Russian ambassador to U.S.), Wall Street Journal, 13 February 2006, p. A17.

ARTICLE: “Russia Says It Plans to Loosen State Monopoly on Gas Exports: Government allowing private companies to export could spur new capital projects,” by Buy Chazan, Wall Street Journal, 13 February 2006, p. A4.

ARTICLE: “Russia's New Foreign Policy: Moscow's Mideast Challenge to America: Following the collapse of the Soviet Union, Russia seemed to cede much of its influence in the Middle East to the United States. No longer. Now, Moscow appears eager to present itself as a counterbalance to Washington in the region -- with major geopolitical consequences,” by Charles Hawley, SPIEGEL ONLINE, http://www.spiegel.de/international/0,1518,401078,00.html

Melloan’s analysis, as usual, is pretty good, and it basically tracks with my point that Putin and the “power guys” know how to acquire power, but not what to do with it. But there shouldn’t be any surprise about Moscow playing the diplomatic card in the Mideast. Russia, former military superpower, now has zero military power projection capability. Remember back when a Soviet ship could actually show up somewhere and create a bit of drama, almost a standoff? Well, no more.

I wrote a future projection piece on Russia for my old company CAN back in the early 1990s, and in it I basically said the Russians would, in the absence of military power, essentially seek to leverage old ideological relationships wherever possible. No surprise and no great leap of analysis there: you simply go with what you’ve got left at end of the day.

But clearly Putin is at the limit of his imagination, and here Melloan and I are in perfect agreement:

Empires endure when they reward people with trade and commerce and a degree of freedom. Russia has just passed a law curtailing the activities of NGOs and further suppressing development of a genuine civil society. Its empire has little attraction except to dictators in Belarus and Uzbekistan trying to ward off democratic forces. Russia’s president came up through a cruel system and it may be that nothing he learned as a secret policeman taught him how to shape a modern state, let alone restore the Russian empire.

Putin definitely thinks he’s being clever on connectivity: allowing plenty of social and economic stuff but trying to deny the political. As for the military connectivity, that’s as much our fault as his: we’re plenty comfortable breaking heads all over Southwest Asia, but whenever Putin and company do in Chechnya (and no, it’s not that much uglier than our version, as uncomfortable as they may sound to some), we get all squeamish diplomatically.

I mean, you think about how much Russia lost in the last 20 years (a massive retreat from sub-Saharan Africa, through the Middle East, out of Eastern Europe and even out of much of what used to be the Soviet Union) and then you wonder why they might felt paranoid about their grip on “national power,” and the reach for energy resources becomes a whole lot more explainable. Crude, yes, and a step backwards, yes, but hardly unexplainable.

Moscow will say their recent behavior on pricing energy exports is just normal “market principles,” and there’s some truth to that, but there’s also plenty of truth to the charge that Putin seems to think that selling energy equates to pol-mil power, when it doesn’t.

There is a natural limit to this, and that limit is Russia’s continuing and large need for outside capital to upgrade its infrastructure throughout the economy--not just in the energy sphere. Right now, Gazprom’s death grip on the gas market is restricting the ability of independent Russian producers to attract foreign money for this most capital-intensive industry. It’s an old issue: control the pie too much and it won’t grow.

So do I expect Putin or his successors to give up control over the energy sector out of their love for democracy? No. I expect them to loosen their grip out of greed.

I recently had a book sent to me by someone who saw my CSIS talk, and came away with the impression that I favor dictatorships over democracy because I note how often states, especially in Asia, have developed their economies fastest with essentially long-running single-party state systems (Japan did it, so did South Korea and Taiwan, Singapore and China still). The book, The Democracy Advantage: How Democracies Promote Prosperity and Peace, by Morton Halperin et. al., is a great exposition of the reality that, all things being equal, democracies outperform autocracies in development and economic performance. No argument there, just a more realistic sense on my part about the sequencing of development under certain culture conditions. Societies that place heavy emphasis on consensus tend to favor single party systems for the tumultuous period of rapid economic development because it’s their hedge on controlling destabilizing cultural change.

Obviously, a full dictatorship hurts development across the board, because it tries to control politics, society, and economics and growing connectivity with the outside world (usually, restricting that connectivity quite heavily through sheer restrictions or the imposition of heavy taxation, aka corruption). But single-party rule that encourages and directs export-led developmental growth (and yeah, I’m still talking about South Korea and Japan until quite recently, in a historical sense) is a very different bird from you full-service, full-sector dictatorship. Yes, seeing that single-party approach morph into true multiparty democracy is certainly a step forward, but expecting that to come before its time is counterproductive, because democracies with low levels of GDP per capita are inherently unstable.

So while the Halperin et. al book is good, it “destroys” only the strawman myth that dictatorships outperform democracies in economic growth, when all things are equal, but again, thing are rarely equal. China, for example, has centuries of history that have featured disintegrating peace and integrating war. Expecting China to embrace full-bore democracy with everything else going on there is not just unrealistic, its very naïve. Yes, we push them in this direction, but so long as the direction is there, we must remain patient on the degree. Rome wasn’t built in a day and it wasn’t built as a democracy, and, quite frankly, neither was the United States. Check out who actually had the vote when our country began, and then be more cognizant of the fact that our growing markets drove our democratic development more than our democratic institutions drove our markets.

We see this time and time again in America: until your minority gets money and can use it for political clout, it tends to be treated badly. But achieve enough economic success, and pretty soon you’re not just gays or Indians or whomever that can be ignored. No, all of a sudden you’ve got friends in DC that promote your interests and raise your profile politically.

So yes, always nice to push democracy. Just keep it real about how much change we can expect a society and political system to make while it is simultaneously opening itself up to the powerfully reformatting process that is modern globalization. There is a Goldilocks speed here, and the train’s engine can’t travel any faster than the caboose.

Democrats prove they’re just as big assholes as Republicans on Cheney shooting

ARTICLE: “It’s open season on Dick Cheney,” by Ann Oldenburg, USA Today, 14 February 2006, p. 10B.

ARTICLE: “Cheney cleared in hunting accident: Sheriff says there was ‘no alcohol or misconduct,” but vice president did lack a $7 stamp on his permit,” by David Jackson, USA Today, 14 February 2006, p. 4A.

ARTICLE: “No End to Questions on Cheney Hunting Incident: White House Seeks to Explain Delay Over Report,” by Anne E. Kornblut and Ralph Blumenthal, New York Times, 14 February 2006, p. A1.

ARTICLE: “Fellow Hunter Shot by Cheney Suffers Setback,” by Elisabeth Bumiller and Anne E. Kornblut, New York Times, 15 February 2006, pulled from web.

I was always disgusted with Republican friends who, during the Clinton years, would take such lurid, joking delight in the “mystery” of Vince Foster’s suicide. I thought it was sick, as was most of these same individuals’ rather irrational hatred of all things Clinton.

With the Cheney accidental shooting, I’m finally convinced that we’ve come full round on this grotesque tendency of partisan assholes on both sides.

There is no great scandal here. A sad accident, and the usual reticence to reveal, something we almost always see with politicians, but nowhere near anything criminal, much less any great “unanswered questions.”

If it was your dad or husband who suffered the shot, how would you like this horrible situation turned into a joke, right down to the Washington Post printing pretend buckshot holes in its Style section’s coverage, which was just too crass for words.

But worse was the grotesque crowing and jokes from representatives of the Dem Party--again, a level of crudity and insensitivity I haven’t seen since the same was witnessed with GOP operatives over Vince Foster.

Maybe this poor guy’s heart attack will remove some of the glee, but I doubt it.

And please, spare me the righteous emails that agree with this post but then pathetically try to argue that all those GOP jibes on Foster were “really quite legitimate.” I can dish out the BS when required, but I don’t swallow.

The executive function to set up the SysAdmin response

ARTICLE: “G-8 Nations Shape Plan to Fight Diseases: Goal Is Getting Drug Makers to Generate Vaccines Against Illnesses in Developing World,” by Michael M. Phillips, Wall Street Journal 13 February 2006, p. A68.

Just another interesting example of how the G-8 is naturally becoming the Functioning Executive of the Core. It’s where all the key decisions are being made--not the archaic UN Security Council, which is banging-your-shoe-on-the-conference-table antique in comparison.

Why the hell would anyone expect the G-8 to be promoting a Core-wide response to infectious diseases. The G-8 is the “everything else” forum that’s already vastly overshadowed the allegedly central “security” forum of the UNSC. That’s the nature of global stability today: probably 80% everything else, and only about 20% kinetic.

U.S. military seemingly going in two directions at the same time

OP-ED: “Old Remedies for New Evils: The Quadrennial Defense Review is a big let-down,” by Andrew F. Krepinevich, Wall Street Journal, 14 February 2006, p. A22.

ARTICLE: “U.S. role in Iraq security shifting: Handoff of combat duties picks up,” by Rick Jervis, USA Today, 14 February 2006, p. 1A.

ARTICLE: “Virtual Reality Prepares Soldiers for Real War: Young Warriors Say Video Shooter Games Helped Hone Their Skills,” by Jose Antonio Vargas, Washington Post, 14 February 2006, p. A1.

ARTICLE: “Iraq-Bound Marine Leaders Cram on Civics and Economics,” by Eric Schmitt, New York Times, 13 February 2006, p. A8.

Andrew Krepinevich is an awfully respected thinker in my field. Bit myopically hawkish on China (his analysis of our relationship with them is centered on the Taiwan scenario and nothing else) and a bit too gung-ho on transformation at various points in the past, but hard to find a more consistently sensible analyst. He is to the Pentagon what Tony Cordesman is to CENTCOM: a serious go-to “100 pound brain,” as they like to say in the military.

This op-ed of his on the QDR is just devastatingly good. He goes program to program within a larger, Socratic Q&A framework that’s quite accessible.

His grades: good for defining the new GWOT-drive threats, bad for resourcing them and the accompanying SysAdmin function, and bad for overfunding the Leviathan when such spending does not correlate well with emerging long-term threats.

Overall, a great piece, suggesting that the U.S. military is still buying one force, while operating another. And frankly, you just know that logic gap is what’s driving much of the Pentagon’s desire to get out of Iraq ASAP. Among the Big War/Leviathan crowd, there is palpable desire to put Iraq behind us and go back to planning for conflict with China.

Yes, it makes perfect sense to hand off more and more of the counter-insurgency combat duties in Iraq to Iraqis, but we should never delude ourselves into thinking that once behind us, Iraq and all that SysAdmin “crap” will recede into lesser-included status. We need to clear the decks in Iraq so we’re ready for Syria, or the West Bank/Gaza, or Egypt, or Sudan, or Nigeria, or Zimbabwe, or …

Yes, we’ll have plenty of kinetics in all those situations, and we’re raising a Nintendo-fed generation of first-person shooters more than up to the task, but the really important training goes on, as Gen. Jim Mattis likes to say, “between the ears.”

Shoot first and don’t bother with any questions? Hardly. The COIN of the realm (Counter-Insurgency doctrine) is 80% nonkinetic and only 20% kinetic.

So yeah, do the first-person shooter stuff to keep your skills up, but Sim SysAdmin better be included in your game play if you want to win lasting victories in this Global War on Terrorism.

How to handle a New Core power?

ARTICLE: “Steep Increase in Chinese Exports May Add to Trade-Policy Tensions,” by Murray Hiebert, Wall Street Journal, 14 February 2006, p. A4.

ARTICLE: “U.S. to Press China on Trade Laws,” by Greg Hitt, Wall Street Journal, 14 February 2006, p. A4.

NEWS ANALYSIS: “As Congress Blusters About Trade With China, U.S. Companies Play Coy Over Profits,” by Andrew Browne, Wall Street Journal, 13 February 2006, p. A2.

ARTICLE: “Companies in Emerging Markets Spark Deal Wave: Flood of Cash, Loans Power Purchases in Europe, U.S.; ‘The Mindset Has Changed,’” by Jason Singer and Dennis K. Berman, Wall Street Journal, 13 February 2006, p. A1.

ARTICLE: “Bill would keep servers out of China: Move comes after Google agrees to search limits,” by Jim Hopkins, USA Today, 13 February 2006, p. 3B.

ARTICLE: “Chinese Censors Of Internet Face ‘Hacktivists’ Abroad: Programs Like Freegate, Built By an Expatriate in U.S., Keep the Web World-Wide; Teenager Gets His Wikipedia,” by Geoffrey A. Fowler, Wall Street Journal, 13 February 2006, p. A1.

ARTICLE: “Beijing Censors Taken to Task in Party Circles,” by Joseph Kahn, New York Times, 15 February 2006, pulled from web.

There is no question that China is a handful for the U.S., and as I’ve said many times, the biggest danger right now is how few American leaders realize just how intensely intertwined our two countries’ economic fates are already. In short, the political and military connectivity has not kept pace with the economic and network connectivity, and to me, that’s the definition of system instability and a potential downstream crisis.

As readers of PNM know, that was my basic diagnosis of the 1990s: economic rule sets racing ahead of political ones, and technological rule sets racing ahead of security ones.

The recent David Barboza piece in the NYT proved the lie about our “massive” trade deficit with China (i.e., we’re just renting their labor for end-of-global-supply-chain assembly), and yet we’ll see Congress get jacked up enough about such misleading stats to engage in all sorts of restrictions on trade.

Meanwhile, watch so many American companies (e.g., GE, Motorola, Nike, Wal-mart, GM) do their best to hide just how dependent they’ve become on Asia and China in particular for their global profits.

China’s rise in global manufacturing/assembly hasn’t produced global brands as Japan’s did a couple decades earlier, but so flush are some Chinese and Indian and Russian companies that they’ve started hunting for acquisitions in the West.

Lions, tigers and bears, oh my!

Especially in the case of Russian and Chinese companies, is this unfair if government backing is part of the mix? All things being equal, it’s better for such acquiring companies to steer clear of such government ties, because unless they do, the West is right to complain about unfair advantages. Understandable for New Core powers to engage in enough protectionism to let those firms flourish and establish themselves for such overseas projections of power, but once those firms reach that point, it’s either choose the pathway of privatization or face similar protectionism from other states.

Clearly, we want New Core companies to buy Old Core companies. It keeps us healthy to have our deadwood cleared, plus encouraging cross-ownership just jacks up the mutually-assured dependency between Old and New Core economies. But the process can’t proceed without further reform on the part of New Core governments, meaning more privatization, so it’s a delicate balance.

Less delicate, in my mind, is when Congress steps in on things like information technology, which they inevitably screw up with their meddling. Trying to restrict the IT companies from selling to China unless China opens up more democratically on free speech is a heavy-handed approach. In the long-running war between censors and hacktivists, my money’s on the latter. The more the connectivity, the exponentially more the possible workarounds. The soft kill is the best kill and the IT soft kill is the best of all.

Bet on connectivity, I say.

And yet, you have to wonder: a few threats from Congress and a growing sense of moral unrest in the West about Google and MSN and their “collaboration” with Chinese censors, does this push Beijing to rein in the censors? Reading the fine print on the last story, you note that the censors censured were those involved with print media, and that the damning Party “letter did not address Beijing’s pressure on Web portals and search engines.

Still, if we speak softly and only threaten our stick every so often, there may be good things that result on China’s side. My only fear is that those who tend to wield the sticks in Congress also speak the loudest, and most crudely about China.

Two brief items: the blogroll and TomPaine.com

I noticed that, in Tom's interview with Bloggasm, he recommended two weblogs that were not in the sidebar. That has now been remedied. Please welcome Coming Anarchy (gorgeous design!) and Global Guerillas to the blogroll.

In other brief news, Tom's Leviathan and SysAdmin concepts are referenced in the new article Next Steps in Iraq on TomPaine.com.

CSPAN cancels again at last minute

Walked into the George Washington U. conference center just now, expecting to see some camers being set up, but alas, there were none.

The conference organizers got a call late last night saying too many cabinet officials in town and too much Hill stuff going on to spare the film crew.

Disappointing, but I am getting used to it by now.

Still, apparently my webmaster Sean got the link working to the Sandia Lab online video, so that will have to do for now.

More on Tom at GEOPOL (this time with video!)

Pedro Cardoso of GEOPOL sends in this video montage of Tom's visit. Some nice style here. I especially like the CNN-esque 'GEOPOL Analyst' caption. Makes you wish you lived in Indy(anapolis) and could attend regularly... Thanks, Pedro!

[Reference: Tom wrote about attending. Pedro sent in the link to their presentation.]

Quotes from Tom on FCW

Information becomes a weapon: Network-centric warfare lets warfighters win major operations, but its role in fighting insurgencies remains vague, by Frank Tiboni

Who knew there was a Federal Computer Week!?! Here's the part in the middle that quotes Tom:

“Network-centric warfare is here. It’s no longer a banner worth carrying,” said Thomas P.M. Barnett, a former researcher and professor at the Naval War College who worked for Cebrowski. Barnett is author of the books “The Pentagon’s New Map: War and Peace in the Twenty-First Century” and “Blueprint for Action: A Future Worth Creating.”

Information proved to be a valuable weapon during operations in Afghanistan and Iraq, but the military is still battling Taliban, Sunni and al Qaeda fighters. “Network-centric warfare has a half-life that really dissipates after major combat operations,” he said.

The next challenge is determining how information can become a powerful weapon in stability and support operations, the current phase of action in Afghanistan and Iraq. DOD officials must find ways to better use information for collaboration among warfighters, community leaders and citizens to fight insurgencies and promote economic development, Barnett said.

Creating jobs and rebuilding infrastructure in those countries is equally or more important to military victories in Afghanistan and Iraq, Barnett said. By doing so, military efforts could lead to improved Afghani and Iraqi lives, which might help win their hearts — and win the war, he added. “This means building the network that is not yet built.”

Tom writes of this article:

Two great quotes, a great paraphrase, and he mentions both books. Plus, my angle pivots the pieces and gives it the second half of the title.

You read an article like that, and you're happy you said yes to Tiboni and put in the half-hour on the phone.

I gotta get Enterra to trumpet stuff like this.

Reviewing the Reviewers: Steven Martinovich on Enter Stage Right

The optimistic warrior by Steven Martinovich

This is both the best review I've yet read on BFA but also the most thrilling for me personally. Let me tell you why.

First, writing something like this review--so sweeping and yet so descriptive--is incredibly hard with a volume of BFA's scope and ambition, and Martinovich is a beautifully talented writer in that regard. Seriously, I know how hard that is. I can't imagine improving the text (except for one preposition and his slight misrepresentation of the Core as just the 'First World' (when it's more correct to say that the 1st equals Old Core and the 2nd equals New Core)). I mean, it's enjoyable just to read anything that well written.

Second, it's very fair. Guy isn't shy about both strengths and weakness and where to place BFA in relation to other works.

Third, the review comes amazingly close to capturing the scope of BFA, something I gave up hoping to ever see in your average article-length review (the brevity makes Martinovich's feat all the more impressive to me).

Fourth, it's just plain thrilling to feel so understood by a reviewer, especially in terms of my intentions, which he captures exactly. I could write a lot of "better" and more fear-filled stuff, but why crowd that already stuffed field?

Fifth, the prospective reader doesn't get short-changed whatsoever by this review, which is a rare feat. They really are given everything they need to decide if BFA is for them.

Again, really gratifying to read. My hat's off to Martinovich on the effort. Few people ever do it that well.

[posted by Sean, for Tom]

Tom sighting!

Tom will speak at the Society for International Development's conference Pulling Together to End Poverty in the DC area tomorrow. Tom's connection to this group is Asif Shaikh, President and CEO of International Resources Group and current President of the Board of Directors for SID-Washington DC.

Sorry, but the conference is full and no longer accepting registrations. But rumor has it that CSPAN will be there, so let's cross our fingers...

Tom at Sandia Labs

Video online for Tom's appearance at Sandia. From an email:

Thomas Barnett's Sandia lecture
Thomas Barnett, author of The Pentagon's New Map: A Future Worth Creating , (see "Strategist's views for Pentagon" in National & International News Briefs, Wednesday SDN) has spoken about his views at Sandia. In a talk titled "Shrinking the Gap — Globalization and US National Security,". He says that since the end of the Cold War, the biggest threats to America and its allies come from underdeveloped, chaotic regions of the Third World. He calls these regions the "Gap," a zone disconnected from the economic and technological advances of globalization.

A video of the presentation is available.

[Editor's technical note: This is a Windows Media Player file. You neep WMP to watch it, or QuickTime with the new Windows Media plugin, or VLC, or... You get the idea.]

[Editor's technical note: UPDATE: This file streams veeerrrrry sloooooowly over DSL Lite. You may get better results by downloading it first (right click, then 'Download as...' in Windows or use your favorite utility. Mine is Free Download Manager).]

The first column in the Knoxville News Sentinel

Here is the column from editor Jack McElroy introducing me:

McElroy: Take a look at new column, new features

By JACK MCELROY, editor@knews.com

February 12, 2006

Thomas P.M. Barnett is a man with a vision.

In his worldview, the global economy has made the possibility of war between great powers obsolete. Nations that are part of the functioning core of international commerce no longer can afford to fight each other.

They are, after all, business partners.

So the United States shouldn't be preparing for a showdown with China. Indeed, China, he believes, is destined to be America's great strategic ally of the 21st century ...

See his entire column here (and yes, you'll need to run through some registering): http://www.knoxnews.com/kns/opinion_columnists/article/0,1406,KNS_364_4454774,00.html

Here's my column:

Wanted: A department for all else

By THOMAS P. M. BARNETTtom@thomaspmbarnett.com

February 12, 2006

America has spent the post-Cold War era buying one military while operating another. We continue to buy a Big War force that's optimized to defeat other traditional militaries, and yet more and more we find ourselves waging lengthy postwar operations. So when are we going to start buying the Big Peace force?

Let me offer a challenging proposition: America won't adequately fund that manpower-intensive peace-waging force until we build it a bureaucratic home, functionally located between the current departments of war (Defense) and peace (State). I'll call it the Department of Everything Else because I'm not sure about everything it will entail (e.g., nation-building, disaster relief, counter-insurgency). I just know it'll fill the same basic space that our old, pre-World War II Department of Everything Else (Department of Navy) once did and that it'll definitely include the Marines.

Judging by the current Quadrennial Defense Review, which Congress requires from the Pentagon every four years, the Defense Department remains fully committed to funding big platforms (ships, aircraft) best suited for wars with other great powers, particularly China. But as America and China grow increasingly interdependent in both trade and financial flows, that scenario grows less plausible. As for China's rapid military build-up, let's keep that in perspective: the Pentagon spends more each year on research and development of new weapons than China spends on its entire military. That's a pretty solid hedge.

The Defense Department has made some key changes, like ordering that all military commands make the same effort on planning for postwar operations as for combat operations, and the Pentagon now has a deputy assistant secretary for stability operations, which shows it's trying to think more systematically about winning the peace.

As for the Army and Marines, who suffer virtually all of the casualties in this global war on terrorism, they're coming out with a new field manual on counter-insurgency, while the Army's reorganizing itself into a modular force that's able to rotate brigade combat teams overseas more smoothly.

The upshot, however, is the same old, same old: We fully fund the Big War force (Air Force, Navy) while running the Big Peace force (Army, Marines) ragged. Consider this: we started a new nation-building effort about once every decade during the Cold War, but since 1990 we've started six (Somalia, Haiti, Bosnia, Kosovo, Afghanistan and Iraq), almost all of which have dragged on for years.

And when you think about where we'll go next in this long war (e.g., Central Asia, Africa), we seem destined to stay in the nation-building business.

That's the essential rub: Wars have gotten shorter, easier, cheaper and less deadly, while postwar operations have grown longer, harder and costlier in both blood and treasure. Check out Congress' emergency funding bills for military interventions, known as supplementals: Since 1990, well over 80 percent has been spent on postwar stabilization operations while less than one-fifth went for major combat operations. In short, war is a declining market, while postwar is a growing one, and yet service budget shares are essentially unchanged.

Mastering that postwar environment won't be easy, and as we're proving in Afghanistan and Iraq, just throwing money at the problem isn't the answer, especially when we've lost more than 2,000 lives in the meantime.

No, America needs a new set of skills, one that combines the security-building functions offered by our ground forces with the institution capacity-building functions offered by our Agency for International Development.

The military's new counter-insurgency doctrine argues that a successful campaign logically entails 20 percent kinetics, or combat, and 80 percent nonkinetics, or institution building and economic development. Expecting the Defense Department to manage foreign aid seems far-fetched, but so does expecting the State Department to oversee the kinetics of suppressing insurgencies.

Planning on the National Security Council to coordinate everything is equally unrealistic because the national security adviser's main job is to insulate the president from foreign policy failures.

Moving weak states beyond the endemic strife that both defines their failure and invites the parasitic presence of transnational terrorist networks will be America's primary strategic task in this long struggle. Eventually, we'll create that Department of Everything Else for the strategic space that's not quite war and not quite peace.

And the sooner we come to that inescapable conclusion, the better it'll be for our soldiers and Marines.

Find the full column here: http://www.knoxnews.com/kns/perspectives/article/0,1406,KNS_2797_4454809,00.html.

Very exciting stuff for me. I chose something pretty basic from my extensive list of concepts for this intro column and McElroy carried a lot of water with his introduction, so that's a good debut all around.

I will think hard about what I want to pen next, and write it later this week. This was 720 words, which means you have to keep it to a single idea and you can't spend a lot of time on any one bit (thus, for example, using USAID as a placeholder for a lot of other stuff I might have written in as the capacity-building assets of the U.S.). Plus, because you're writing for a general newspaper audience, you have to keep it at a level that's very accessible, burying your tendency for caveats galore. Keeping it very direct like that is a challenge, but a good one.

Suggestions are welcome for the next bit I should introduce, hopefully one that I can tie to something current, like I did with the QDR here. That's the basic goal for most of these columns at first: introduce some tenet from my vision and use a current events example to explore it.

The visionary's work is never done

A lot of readers seem disappointed I don't claim more "victory" in the QDR, noting all the movement in the SysAdmin direction, instead of harping on the lack of change in the acquisition and platform force structure.

First, I believe the visionary never claims victory. He or she just moves on to the next subject/degree/step to push.

Second, my rule is on these things: when speaking of people (like "The Monks of War" piece in the current Esquire), see "half full." But when speaking of bureaucracies, see "half empty."

The rhetorical/operational/doctrinal/training/organization movement toward the SysAdmin's emergence has been stunning in its scope and speed, but unless that change migrates significantly into force structure over time (meaning, the budget), slippage is inevitable and five to ten years from now we're not better off than we were going into Iraq.

Trifecta completed

Dateline: In the Shire, Indy, 11 February 2006

I've done the Air Force new one-star class course for three years now, and the Navy-Marine new flags training series for two years now. The missing link was the Army version. Got that one done last night, at the personal invite of General Peter Schoomaker, Army Chief of Staff.

A great interaction, but a price to be played in sleep.

Hellish pair of flights down to Austin, getting there just before a cold snap kicked in. I arrived at The Mansion on Judges Hill about 6pm. I had an hour to get my stuff together before cocktails began with the new one-star generals at 7pm. Schoomaker entered about 1930. He flew in from DC just like I did.

The generals had an audience with Michael Dell earlier in the day, which they were still buzzing about. After our drinks (I did a pair of Shiner Bocks, local TX beer), we had a very nice dinner. I got a seat next to Schoomaker, which was cool. This was our third interaction. I briefed him on Y2K when he was boss of Special Ops Command back in 1999. I also interviewed him in the spring of 2005 for the Rumsfeld piece in Esquire. So Tampa, the Pentagon, and now Austin.

Long dinner of about an hour of conversation, and then I go on about 2030, talking til almost 10pm. I take 30 minutes of Q&A, and then it's back to a cocktail scene until well past midnight.

All very interesting, since most of these new flags were there for the first few months of Iraq, so nothing like hearing it from the horse's mouth. Also cool to describe the revolution going on inside the Army and be able to point directly at the guy most responsible for it while you're describing it (Schoomaker). All in all, a very cool evening.

But a bit long. Asleep by 1am but up at 4am to catch my 0600 flight. Back to Indy just to catch my eldest daughter post-vocal competition. Back home, I nap a bunch, then catch "Munich" tonight with one of my kids. Really good, I thought. Guess I don't see the rewriting of history or slanting in Spielberg's work that others did. To me, it was right on, but it likewise had no impact on me regarding the utility of killing bad guys.

Nice long talk on the phone late tonight with Steve DeAngelis. Big names joining the firm as we gear up for all the work we're winning and all the talks we're having with an ever expanding mix of companies and gov agencies. Scaling the company upwards is all we talk about now (when we're not in some meeting with some company wanting to establish a relationship), and it's a fascinating process. It's really so cool to be doing this post the dot.com craze, because everything is held to a much higher standard now. It's deliver, deliver, deliver, proving yourself at every step. And Steve's frugality in running the company matches my own upbringing. It just feels so right to be doing something like this now than I'm sure it must have felt during those hazy-crazy days of the beforetime. I mean, no point in doing this unless it's going to be real from top to bottom.

I am beat. Three trips in less than 10 days. And not here for that long this time. But Steve warned me repeatedly that this was going to be a blistering year, and right now we are making hay like the sun will never go down.

Play basketball in Iran? YOU’RE HELPING TO BUILD THE BOMB!

ARTICLE: “For Americans, It Can Pay to Play in Iran’s Court: Imports Pump Up Basketball’s Popularity,” by Karl Vick, Washington Post, 10 February 2006, p. A1.

OP-ED: “Driving Toward Middle East Nukes in Our S.U.V.’s: From the gas pump to Iran’s pockets,” by Thomas L. Friedman, New York Times, 10 February 2006, p. A27.

Friedman's gotta get on this whole basketball thing. I think he's missing something big here.

Seriously, I think he's finally beginning to connect the dots in a cool, Michael Moorish sort of way.

You do the math on the defense budget and the QDR

EDITORIAL: “Still Shortchanging the Troops,” New York Times, 10 February 2006, p. A26.

One of the best editorials the NYT has ever produced, in my opinion. A killer from start to finish.

I will exerpt most and let it speak for itself. It mirrors a lot of my arguments from last Nov in Esquire and ever since in this blog:

It’s amazing how Donald Rumsfeld’s Defense Department can produce a $439 billion spending plan and still skimp on the one thing the American military desperately needs: expanded ground forces so the weakened and cannibalized Army can meet the requirements of Iraq without hurting its ability to respond to other threats.

While the Pentagon intends to increase pay and recruitment bonuses, no part of its nearly 7 percent budget increase is aimed at raising overall troop strength. Instead, a large chunk of this nearly $30 billion bonanza goes to buying more new weapons and postponing overdue cuts in wasteful Air Force and Navy projects unrelated to fighting terrorism …

The budget and the four-year plan released with it read almost as if the current conflict had never happened and could never happen again. [BINGO!]

Instead of reallocating resources toward the real threats America faces, the military services continue to pour their money into fighting fictive suerpowers in the wild blue yonder and on and below the seven seas. Pentagon budgeters showed themselves so pathetically unable to restrain spending on expensive ships and planes that they actually cut back, rather than increased, the overall size of the Army over the next few years to pay for it.

It would cost about $4 billion to $5 billion a year to give the Army 30,000 more troops, the minimum it needs to check its alarming slide. Instead the Pentagon chose to begin the construction of two unneeded new stealth destroyers, which will end up costing $2 billion to $3 billion each.

It also decided to splurge on a new nuclear attack submarine for $2.6 billion and to shell out $5.5 billion for separate Navy and Air Force versions of new stealth fighter jets, plus another $5.5 billion for yet a third version that either can use …

Doesn’t get any more direct than that. Extremely well done.