■"The Fight For Iraq: U.S. Sets New Mission For Keeping the Peace; Pentagon Seeks Better Ways to Foster Postwar Stability and Reconstruction," by Neil King Jr. and Greg Jaffe, Wall Street Journal, 3 January 2005, p. A4.
A stellar piece from King (whom I grow to admire more and more) and Jaffe (enough said) that really helps to put the new Pentagon directive on postwar ops planning in some perspective.
The difficulties of rebuilding Iraq after toppling Saddam Hussein have taught President Bush a painful lesson: Aftermaths can be tougher than wars. Now the administration is trying to recalibrate the military and foreign service to better handle postwar developments in future conflicts.
For the first time, the Pentagon has declared that, along with battling foes, the ability to foster stability and reconstruction is one of its core missions.
The administration also planted the seed for a corps of trained nation builders in 2004 when it created an Office of the Coordinator for Reconstruction and Stabilization in the State Department. The 55-person shop is staffed largely by officials on loan from the Defense Department, the Central Intelligence Agency and other agencies. It tries to anticipate the next global hot spot -– be it Sudan or North Korea –- and prepares to deploy as the main U.S. postwar coordinator wherever a need might arise.
There is some debate about whether –- and how quickly –- to turn the operation into something bigger, including a large reserve corps that would work alongside a U.S. military that is emphasizing nation-building more and more in the way it trains troops and plans for battles.
With finances tight, Congress isn't rushing to budget the money. One senior Pentagon official says he has heard objections from both Democrats and Republicans on Capitol Hill. Their worry: elevating the importance of nation-building will, over time, divert funds from the nation's ability to wage all-out war and leave the military less prepared to counter an unexpected major threat from a country such as China. And legislators in both parties are wary of more Iraq-style adventures.
"There is wide recognition of the need to professionalize our response to postwar challenges," says James Dobbins, who oversaw a host of U.S. rebuilding efforts during the 1990s, mainly at the State Department, and who is now at the Rand Corp. think tank. "But there is also a whole range of criticism that says, 'If we get better at this, we might start doing it more often'"
Oh my! We do it so often, that we fear if we actually got smart on it, instead of doing it ad hoc each time, we'd be tempted to do it more often –- like it was useful or something!
Supporters point out that after the Cold War –- and well before the recent conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan –- the U.S. plunged into more than 15 different stabilization and reconstruction operations, from Haiti and Bosnia to East Timor and Kosovo. Each effort was undertaken essentially from scratch, by mustering whatever personnel and money the government could.
And that didn't get us any waste, or suboptimal outcomes, or wasted opportunities, or embittered allies, or needlessly dead soldiers ...
The postwar operation in Iraq exposed the defects of that approach. They include sketchy advance planning, a deficit of qualified personnel and tensions between the military and diplomats. Even today, Pentagon officials complain that the State Department and other civilian agencies, such as the Justice, Commerce and Agriculture departments, are slow to provide reconstruction experts to help soldiers in the field. That leaves the military doing jobs it says are better suited to civilian experts.
This is the plainest truth of the matter, and why I argue that the Department of Everything Else naturally begins in the Defense Department, because that's where the bucks and the (available) bodies are.
The Bush administration opened the State Department office on a shoestring –- and with little fanfare –- 17 months ago. In 2005, the White House asked Congress to chip in $17 million of start-up funds, but ultimately it got only $7.7 million.
The administration then asked for $124 million for the fiscal year ending in September –- $24 million for staffing and the beginning of a first-response team, with the rest to establish a special crisis fund. Instead of funding the crisis fund, lawmakers have given the Pentagon the authority to transfer as much as $100 million from its budget to the State Department office in the event of a crisis.
And this is how it's likely to go: spending only after the fact and beggaring the up-front preparations in the mean time. This is unlikely to work and everyone knows this, but while it's dangerous to be soft on "defense," no one is ever voted out of Congress for being soft on the postwar stuff.
But what if the postwar stuff has the power to make the war meaningless?
Ah, that's too complex. Easier to fixate on China.
But some in the Building are getting a whole lot smarter and a whole lot more aggressive in arguing their case (hence the 3000 directive):
The Pentagon has pushed hard to persuade lawmakers to fund the State Department office, arguing that many critical nation-building tasks are best performed by civilians. Without strong civilian support, senior military leaders worry they will be left holding the bag.
"In the future, there is always going to be a need for a lot of deployable civilian capacity," said Jeb Nadaner, deputy assistant secretary of defense for stability operations. "Think of all capabilities you need in stability missions." He envisions the new State Department office coordinating contributions from departments as diverse as Treasury, Commerce, Justice and Agriculture.
Almost like a virtual department? Hmm, my dream for the DoEE.
Think it will happen in DoS? Don't hold your breath.
So it will grow inside DoD for the meantime:
Whether or not Congress acts, the Pentagon is raising the profile of nation-building operations.
In late November, Deputy Defense Secretary Gordon England signed a Pentagon directive singling out postwar stability and reconstruction operations as a "core U.S. mission" with a priority "comparable to combat operations." More than a year in the making, the directive marked the first time the Pentagon has elevated stability operations to such a level, and it reflects the post-9/11 realization that failed states, such as Afghanistan, pose just as great a threat to U.S. security as industrialized powers.
"This is a revolutionary notion. It is a huge change," said Hans Binnendijk, who teaches at the Pentagon's National Defense University.
Binnendijk's office just contacted me about a book project he is overseeing on the most influential strategy books in the post-Cold War era. Seems PNM will make the cut.
The directive orders the military to develop skills such as "foreign language capabilities and regional area expertise." It also mandates for the first time that the services devote part of an officer's education to working with foreign governments as well as foreign aid groups, both of which play key roles in postwar reconstruction operations.
This is the key: mandating the interagency and intergovernmental experience. In ten years, all flag officers will know this stuff by heart.
But much remains to be filled in:
But the Pentagon directive is a bit short on specifics, and it is unclear how much it will change the way the military operates. "Responsibilities are spread a bit thin," Mr. Binnendijk said. "There is no one person in charge of implementation." For the directive to be successful it will need "very strong advocates on the military and civilian side," he said.
Few know the difference between elbows and assholes on this question than Hans. He and Stu Johnson wrote a definitive exploration of SysAdmin troop structure for National Defense U. I used it as a guide in BFA.
There are other signs of change. For the first time since the 1960s, the Army has written a new counterinsurgency doctrine. Its major training centers, through which all units pass on their way to Iraq and Afghanistan, have undergone a massive overhaul.
Instead of leading big, simulated tank battles, officers must fend off insurgent attacks, calm angry crowds and make headway with Iraqi and Afghan role players who play the parts of local mayors. Each month, the military flies in dozens of Iraqi- and Afghan-born U.S. citizens to populate villages made to look like those in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Some officers who have succeeded at stability operations in Iraq are being promoted to positions where they can better shape the future of the Army. For example, Lt. Gen. David Petraeus ... has been promoted to run the Army's Combined Arms Center at Fort Leavenworth, Kan. There, he is responsible for educating officers and shaping Army thinking on warfare.
Describing that larger evolution in a strategic sense is what I'm working on now with Mark Warren and Esquire. Nice to see I'm in synch with guys as savvy and smart as Jaffe & King. This is much like the NYT piece that did a quick profile on Rumsfeld in the weeks running up to the publication of my profile of him in Esquire. When you first see something like this, you can get a bit panicky, but then you remember your venue's strength: length and leisure of being able to go beyond the facts.
I turned in way too much to Warren, indicating I still have a lot to learn about how to shape the story. But located within are the support beams upon which we'll build this story, Mark and I. It will be an amazingly collaborative process.
In the books, Mark's main goal is to make sure I say what I want to say – as well as possible. In the magazine, Mark's main goal is to make the story as strong as possible.
Mark is amazingly patient with me. It's easy for me to write stuff like the China piece, because it just flows. But telling other people's stories is harder, because there we both struggle (I, obviously, far less than the mucho experienced Warren) with what the reader needs to know (this is something Warren knows, in broad outline, from the start –- hence his desire to have the piece done in the first place).
Too often in my first draft I leave too much logic unexposed. I assert because I know, but that doesn't do enough to help the reader know what he or she must know for the story to work, and so getting me to make the logic transparent in the storytelling is Mark's main job. And again, he is very patient with me on that.
Viral in-coring: Seoul to Beijing
■"A Rising Korean Wave: If Seoul Sells It, China Craves It," by Norimitsu Onishi, New York Times, 3 January 2005, pulled from the web.
A fascinating piece.
Americans always think we need to be the country doing the teaching, the mentoring, the integrating. Reality is that the best teachers are the ones closest to the subject, and the ones best situated to mentor the newest of the New Core are the elders of the New Core, like South Korea mentoring China on content, media, fads, and how to behave as a New Core society in general.
As for the Gap, there we're talking the newest New Core (like India and China) and Seam States (like Turkey, Malaysia, Indonesia).
So it's not about making the Gap like the U.S., but making it like Indonesia's version of China's version of South Korea's version of Japan's version of America.
And you know what? Nothing is lost in that translation. In fact, much is gained.
The opening paras:
At Korea City [in Beijing], on the top floor of the Xidan Shopping Center, a warren of tiny shops sells hip-hop clothes, movies, music, cosmetics and other offerings in the South Korean style.To young Chinese shoppers, it seemed not to matter that some of the products, like New York Yankees caps or Japan's Astro Boy dolls, clearly have little to do with South Korea. Or that most items originated, in fact, in Chinese factories.
"We know that the products at Korea City are made in China," said Wang Ying, 28, who works in sales for the local branch of a U.S. company. "But to many young people, 'Korea' stands for fashionable or stylish. So they copy the Korean style."
From clothes to hairstyles, music to television dramas, South Korea has been defining the tastes of many Chinese and other Asians for the past half decade. As part of what the Chinese call the Korean Wave of pop culture, a television drama about a royal cook, "The Jewel in the Palace," is garnering record ratings throughout Asia, and Rain, a 23-year-old singer from Seoul, drew more than 40,000 fans to a sold-out concert at a sports stadium in Beijing in October.
But South Korea's "soft power" also extends to the material and spiritual spheres. Samsung's cellphones and television sets have grown into symbols of a coveted consumerism for many Chinese.
Christianity, in the evangelical form championed by South Korean missionaries deployed throughout China, is finding Chinese converts despite Beijing's efforts to rein in its spread.
For a country that traditionally received culture, especially from China but also from Japan and the United States, South Korea finds itself at a turning point in its new role as exporter.
The transformation began with South Korea's democratization in the late 1980s, which unleashed sweeping domestic changes. As its democracy and economy have matured, its influence on the rest of Asia, negligible until a decade ago, has grown accordingly. Its cultural exports have even caused complaints about cultural invasion in China and Vietnam.
South Korea is also acting as a filter for Western values, experts say, making them more palatable to Chinese and other Asians ...
Again, a great piece. One that points out what a powerhouse South Korea could and would be on a global stage once past the issue of reunification with North Korea.
Seriously. You get Seoul past that, and we're talking a global power of the first rank within a generation –- especially on religion. South Korean Christian missionaries are a leading force for change in the world today (second only to U.S., with that relatively tiny population!). You wanna talk about walking into the lion's den, these people do it like you wouldn't believe. I would guess their presence in Iraq far outweighs the influence of the government's military presence there. No kidding.
Today, in China, South Korean missionaries are bringing Christianity with an Asian face. South Korean movies and dramas about urban professionals in Seoul, though not overtly political, present images of modern lives centering on individual happiness and sophisticated consumerism.They also show enduring Confucian-rooted values in their emphasis on family relations, offering Chinese both a reminder of what was lost during the Cultural Revolution and an example of an Asian country that has modernized and retained its traditions.
Note also the behavior mod begun in Hollywood:
"Three Guys and Three Girls" and "Three Friends" are South Korea's homegrown version of the American television show "Friends." As for "Sex and the City," its South Korean twin, "The Marrying Type," a sitcom about three single professional women in their 30s looking for love in Seoul, was so popular in China that episodes were illegally downloaded or sold on pirated DVDs."We feel that we can see a modern lifestyle in those shows," said Qu Yuan, 23, a student at Tsinghua University in Beijing. "We know that South Korea and America have similar political systems and economies. But it's easier to accept that lifestyle from South Koreans because they are culturally closer to us. We feel we can live like them in a few years."
You laugh, but when you're moving as fast as China, you're bringing up a whole lot more than incomes; you're raising an entire society, in effect schooling it on how to behave with its new-found wealth.
I stick with my prediction in the "Blogging the Future" afterward in BFA: we will be amazed at how religious China is within a generation. And we'll have South Korea to thank for it.
Jin Yaxi, 25, a graduate student at Peking University, said, "We like American culture, but we can't accept it directly."
So long as globalization doesn't feel like overt Americanization, it's the sugar that helps the medicine go down, yes?
BTW, Peking U. just asked me for high-res graphics of map for the Chinese edition of PNM. They will translate the map just like the Japanese did.
Yes, some filtering on my book too (snips cut here and there), but the key thing is helping them see the world for all that it can be for them (the Chinese) and for all that world needs from them.
Politics also seem to underlie the Chinese preference for South Korean-filtered American hip-hop culture. Messages about rebelliousness, teenage angst and freedom appear more palatable to Chinese in their Koreanized versions.
I wasn't kidding in BFA when I wrote that hip-hop will win more hearts and minds thus prevent more terrorism than our military efforts. People gotta express.
Ki Joon, 22, a South Korean who attends Peking University and graduated from a Chinese high school in Beijing, said his male Chinese friends were fans of South Korean hip-hop bands, like HOT, and its song "We Are the Future."
"It's about wanting a more open world, about rebelliousness," he said. "Korean hip-hop is basically trying to adapt American hip-hop."
In sum, a way cool article. The kind that makes me glad for every limb I climbed out on in BFA.
And yes, I often bump into articles that make me regret such limb-stretching exercises.
And no, I don't just "hear" the reaffirming ones while discounting the discounting ones. I just bet on human nature, which -– quite frankly today –- is better captured on MTV than the History Channel. Remember, youth tends to drive culture and the New Core and Gap, the two more dynamic parts of the world, tend to be far more skewed toward the young (at least for now in the New Core ...)
But this story also teaches me something that I've been learning day-in and day-out for years: to be a good futurist you need to stay aggressive in your forecasting (always pushing the vision just a bit beyond the plausible) and you need to think young (something my mother-in-law, who teaches college still, constantly reminds me about).
Friday, January 6, 2006 at 6:28AM 
