Grand strategy ill-defined: if weíre not bad, they must be

ìWar of Ideology,î by David Brooks, New York Times, 24 July, p. A27.

David Brooks, usually very astute by my standards, buys into the 9/11 Commission bit on this being a war of ideas first and foremost, and I must say I find that fairly disappointing. The fight-fire-with-fire crowd comes into two sorts: they kill us so we kill them, and they defame us so we defame them.

Yes, weíll kill them when we get the chance and yes weíll argue our case to the best of our ability, but making the war symmetrical is a false hope, because it never will be. On our side is globalizationóthis huge, nearly unstoppable historical force that will remake the Middle East in an image far more recognizable and acceptable to us than to them. On their side is simply the fear of that process and a desire to stop it first and foremost by blaming us, demonizing us, and driving us and our unholy ways out of their neighborhood.

Telling them that their fear-threat reaction is wrong will get us nowhere, because their fear is real and well-founded. Simply telling them that resistance is futile will only get their backs up more in terms of resistance.

What we need to offer is not ideology but connectivity. We should not be in the business of telling them how to repackage themselves to adjust to integration into the global economy, but simply offer them the tools as much as possible and signal our patience in their efforts to shape that connectivity and those content flows in such a way as they can find acceptable.

Even radical Islam is wrong only in degree: their desire to stop globalizationís encroachment is too much, but their innate sense that they must do whatever it takes to slow down its destructive social onslaught is essentially correct. They need the sense of our permission to manage the content flows as they see fit so long as they allow broadband connectivity to emerge for the masses.

Their fear isnít wrong, nor in many ways is their hatred of the change they see coming. Choosing violence to stop that historical process is wrong and we should say so, but that does not constitute our ideology waging war against theirs. We cannot make Islam, even radical Islam, the problem. We can only make connectivity the answer and let this civil war within Islam work itself out.

The big GWOT troop shift: too bad Asia isnít more like Europe

ìIn Agreement With South Korea, U.S. to Move Troops From Seoul,î by Thom Shanker, New York Times, 24 July, p. A4.

This is the real conundrum of the current Defense Department effort to scour the Core for extra troops needed for the Gap: if only Asia were as far along historically as Europe, we could reduce our presence there as quickly as weíre going to in Europe. But the essential difference is that Europe is essentially Old Core whereas Asia is essentially New Core, and so treating both as the same does not work.

There is no NATO counterpart in Asia, and until there is, any efforts to reduce our troop presence there will come at a real costóand at a real risk to the Coreís possible fracturing. We will never shrink the Gap by fracturing the Core, so we need to be very careful here.

The obvious solution is that we need to put a NATO-like entity in place in Asia ASAP. But that will not happen under any circumstances, I will argue, except in the successful takedown of the Kim Jong Il regime in North Korea. Doesnít have to be a military invasion, but there must be military unity of purpose on our sideóa side that is defined as the U.S., China, Japan, Russia and South Korea.

We can dick around with Kim Jong Il like we did with Saddam for another decade or so, but we will inevitably bite this bullet. Doing so with a clear sense of what we want to get out of it will make our chance of success all the more probable, not just in terms of ridding the world of Kim, but in cementing Asia to the Core in a very permanent sort of way.

NRI's: you can go home to India again!

ìIndians Go Home, but Donít Leave U.S. Behind,î by Amy Waldman, New York Times, 24 July, p. A1.

The Non-Resident Indians are coming home finally in numbers to India. And what they bring back with them is a lot of American ways. This is yet another example of the silent but profound social bonds being built between India and the U.S.

If Pakistan possesses any strategic thinkers, then surely they can see the writing on the wall. Indians are becoming a social and political force in the U.S. after years of becoming an economic one. Nothing like that is happening with a Pakistani community inside the U.S., nor are we seeing any great flow back to Pakistan like the one this article details going into India.

India and the U.S. will be strategic allies in the years and decades ahead, and that bodes very poorly for a Pakistan that cannot clean up its act.

Philippinesí Arroyo: looking out for the OFW's

ìU.S. Rips Philippines for pulling out of Iraq,î by Associated Press, found in Newport Daily News, 24 July, p. A3.

A simple excerpt here says it all:

President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo denied any break with the United States during a foreign policy speech today, making clear that she felt she had to put the welfare of its 8 million citizens working overseas at the top of her priorities. Their remittances power the Philippine economy.î

The Overseas Filipino Workers embody that nationís economic connectivity to the Core, meaning they define the national security asset most worth protecting in any role that country assumes in a GWOT. Understanding war within the context of everything means we understand this reality.

Waging GWOT solely within the context of war means we just get pissed off when the Philippines appears to have abandoned our Iraq coalition.

The 9/11 Commission Report: a national security self-help guide

(LANG=en)>

Closer to an actionable grand strategy? No.

Dateline: above the garage in Portsmouth RI, 23 July 2004

After all the previews and leaks, to actually get the report is naturally a bit anti-climatic. But it's more disappointing than that, in my mind, because it's basically a self-help guide that seems to suggest that what's really broken in this global war on terrorism is the United States itselfóor specifically the national intelligence community. I have to admit, this judgment is so easy to make, so pat in content, and so unimportant over the long haul that I cannot consider the commission to be anything less than irrelevant to the real tasks at hand:

1. Understanding the world for what it is in this era of globalization

2. Understanding the threat of terror as a function of that world and the spread of the global economy and all the influences it inflicts upon traditional societies

3. Enunciating a genuinely coherent U.S. grand strategy to deal with that world in a way that terror is reduced as a threat over timeói.e., making globalization truly global in a fair and just manner

4. Reshaping our national defense establishment to meet that challengeói.e., the bifurcation of the force into a warfighting Leviathan force and a peacewaging Sys Admin force

5. And then letting the Intelligence Community, as well as the Congressional oversight community, reshape themselves in order to both serve and communicate with that increasingly bifurcated military force structure.

In their infinite wisdom, the Commission jumps right to #5 and pretty much ignores the restósave for a facile swipe at a "grand strategy" of winning hearts and minds among terrorists and would-be terroristsóyou know, the usual vague stuff about getting at the "root of the problem."

But guess what? Altering the Intelligence Community's organizational charts won't do that. At best we may understand the world a bit better only to find the IC at greater odds with the Pentagon regarding what needs to be done about it. We are not going to generate a new grand strategy from the IC up (if you want to see how bad such strategies can be, read Anonymous or Richard Clarke), and it sure as hell won't be centered on winning the hearts and minds of would-be terroristsómuch less killing them in increasingly clever ways. This is symptom-treating at its worst, but we reach for it becauseófranklyóitís the easiest approach for Congress to take: write a bill forcing a certain amount of organizational change and then designate some counter-terrorist center (or better yet, designate a whole slew of them and spread them around numerous congressional districts) and be done with it.

This is America as self-help obsessed: in the end, we decide it was really all our fault, or "a failure of imagination."

Geez! That's a line going all the way back (at least) to the investigations over the Apollo 1 launch-pad fire. Couldn't the Commission at least come up with a new line? Or was thatóin itselfóa failure of imagination (or more prosaically, a failure of composition).

For now, this whole Commission process reads like a bad Allen Drury novel. I'm just waiting for some blackmailed homosexual to step forward and admit 9/11 happened simply because he mistakenly got into bed with an al Qaeda operative and then gave him all the key-codes lest he be forced out of his closet.

Meanwhile, the process of reorganizing the Intelligence Community will consume gajillions of congressional committee hours and kill millions of trees, but none of it will move us closer to an actionable grand strategy (nor an appropriate national defense establishment to carry it out) that really deals with the world for what it is and not America for what we fear it isn'tómeaning safe and secure from the next 9/11.

We will never be safe and secure from the next 9/11, because we will never be safe from "them" until all of "they" are brought inside the "us." When there is no more Non-Integrating Gap, there will only be a stable Functioning Core that is universal, and war as we know it will essentially end for all time.

Yes, there will always be individuals and groups railing against the system, but they will be forced to wage their individual-level wars within a system that is truly all-encompassing, giving up their eternal dream of hijacking some chunk of humanity and taking it permanently off-line from the corrupt, capitalist world system (and here we will really locate Fukuyama's "end of history" and the beginning of the joy that only a Gene Roddenberry might have imagined).

Our increased ability to track incoming terrorists strikes is pretty meaningless against the larger strategic backdrop of the real task at hand: truly connecting the Middle East to the global economy in a broadband fashion faster than the bin Ladens and Zarqawis of that world can disconnect it, or keep it all limited to just oil.

But that is not the easy or even acceptable solution in this self-help obsessed society that is America, so we will focus on what we know and love bestóourselves. We'll rearrange deck chairs on the Titanic that is the Intelligence Community, whose main problem isn't its org chart but its obsessive secrecy. We'll try to make ourselves more attractive to others, hoping that if we send them happy thoughts, their hearts and minds will be won. We'll pretend that somehow fixing the U.S. Government alone will alter the overarching reality of globalization's aggressive onslaught on traditional cultures all over the Gap ("No no no! It's really all about how you perceive us and our policies! Love me! Love me! Love me!").

I've been watching Ken Burns' "Civil War" on DVD as I exercise on the treadmill late at night, after the kids go to bed. Whenever I watch anything on the Civil War, it reminds me that, in many ways, it marked the beginning of the world we now live in. The first great wave of Globalization began soon after its conclusion, and the nature of that war presaged the two world wars that would later be fought around the planet, but primarily within Europe as civil wars themselves.

When I watch the documentary series, I see a Core-North imposing its will and integration upon a Gap-South that prefers to continue with its exclusionary rule sets by which some rule and others are ruled. I see a Core-North with all its frightening mixing of the races and cultures and industries and ideologies bearing down on the bucolic South that seems so pristine in its onenessóalbeit bought at the price of slavery. I see southern insurgents fighting. Why? As Shelby Foote puts it (I paraphrase here), "Because you Northerners insist on coming down here and changing our ways." I see the Gap-South's romanticism of the land and its rejection of modernity and change and industrialization. I see the Core-North's ruthlessness as an invading force decried and yet embraced as the necessary "remedy." I see a war that begins as one to save the Union swiftly becoming one to rid the Union of the terrible scourge of slaveryóthe ultimate in disconnectedness.

And I see many things that resonate in this current struggle: the references to good and evil, the references to "our God" versus "their god," the messianic spirit, the anti-war sentiments, the civil wars that rage on "quietly" inside the Gap/Islam itself, the charges of imperialism and "outsiders" forcing change against "our will," a president who cannot possibly win reelection because he's so badly mishandled this war, and a military suffering "unacceptable losses" and yet still attracting idealistic recruits without any great effort.

Oh, and I see Colin Powell as George McClellan.

I have said many times before that we can see the road ahead simply by looking within ourselves and remembering our past. The vibe I pick up from the Commission's report is that typical sort of can-do Americanism that focuses on "fixing the problem" by rejiggering the systemóour system. In reality, the system we must seek to fix is not our own, but the world's.

The real task ahead, if we hope to win a global war on terrorism, is to generate the understanding across the Core as a whole of how we shrink the Gap. That is a huge, multifaceted problem that requires a variety of approaches. Within the security realm, it requires first and foremost a Core-wide A-to-Z rule set on processing politically-bankrupt regimes within the Gap. If we don't deal with that problem set, progress will not be had in the GWOT. We will never generate progress until the Pentagon transforms transformation from its past focus on the front-half, warfighting Leviathan force to the back-half, peacewaging Sys Admin force. That progress will be had first and foremost inside two relatively obscure U.S. military commands: Joint Forces Command in Norfolk VA and Special Operations Command in Tampa FL. As this force is imagined and set in motion in these two laboratories of transformation, it must be put to test by Central Command, also located in Tampa FL. As the success of that restructured force points to new understanding of warfare and the need for new weapons, platforms, and organizational structures, the process of change will permeate the Pentagon itself. As that happens, the Intelligence Community and the Hill will be force to remake themselves in order to support and interact with that changing military. And as that entire process evolves, we will see the White House, the State Department, and the rest of the U.S. Government begin to imagine what it will take to generate the global A-to-Z rule set on processing politically-bankrupt states within the Gap.

The 9/11 Commission is a complete sidelight to this entire process. You will not read anything of importance there regarding this primary task of U.S. national security in the 21st Century. But, as Charles Hill writes in today's Wall Street Journal ("Commissionism," 23 July, p. A12), "the demand for near-perfect certainty is a deeply entrenched delusion," so expect much sturm und drang about this report in coming months. It will, just as the creation of the Department of Homeland Security itself, constitute great sound and fury that in the end will signify almost nothing.

What we are witnessing in this process is one giant, preemptive ass-covering exercise by politicians on both sides of the aisle. All these officials really want you to know is that "next time" it won't be "my fault" because "I told you so."

At this point, if you're read PNM, you gotta be tempted to accuse me of talking out of both sides of my mouth. After all, my three-pronged strategy begins with making the Core resilient in the face of, and resistance to the effects of, 9/11-like System Perturbations. Isn't that all the 9/11 Commission trying to do?

Perfectly reasonable comeback, say I.

No, I don't think it's wrong in and of itself to recommend what the Commission is recommending. I don't think it will harm anything, but neither do I think it will fix much of anything. My real fear is that this grand commission's vision becomes a substitute for further thinking, as in, "Oh yeah, we have a commission and they fixed all that! You know, something about some 'czar' and then winning hearts and minds, or something like that."

Because the Commission stuck its nose into the Iraq War question (links between Saddam and al Qaeda?), and because they've waxed vaguely about a "grand strategy" in the GWOT, I'm afraid that too many people will come to view what should be our real grand strategy through the soda-straw of these awfully narrow recommendations. A GWOT does not come anywhere near a grand strategy, because a grand strategy cannot revolve around some definition of the enemy, but must revolve around some definition of a global future worth creating. Substituting al Qaeda for the near-peer competitor or the old Soviet threat isnít the answer; understanding the world in all its complexity is. Al Qaeda and the current situation in the Middle East simply defines the current expression of resistance to the spread of globalization. Fixating on that resistance will make us guilty of waging war solely within the context of war and not within the context of everything else. That sort of soda-straw perspective gets you the fantastically narrow answers of a Richard Clarke, an Anonymous, and this Commission, which I might sum up as kill them better, abandon our bad policies in the Middle East, and give me a g.d. intell czar!

None of those approaches will move us in the direction of the strategic goals we seek in the mid- (connecting the Middle East to the world) and long-terms (making globalization truly global). In fact, they are more than likely to be counterproductive to those ends if they constitute the bulk of our approach. In short, these are Gap-containment strategies, not Gap-shrinkage strategies.

They all disappoint me as failures not only of imagination but of empathy. At their roots, they are all America-first strategies that speak to our needs and fears while ignoring those of the Gap'sówhich I sure as hell don't define in terms of the terrorists and dictators there but the everybody else, or the masses there.

What the Commission does is primarily play to our fears and our natural desires to recoil from the outside world. They want us to be afraid, very afraid of the big bad world outside, over there. And they want to make us safer by increasing our ability to see bad things coming at us earlier, when what our grand strategy really needs to be about is making good things go on over there sooner as opposed to later.

You may say that the Commission is only doing what they were supposed to do, so why am I picking on them so much? Again, if the Commission had stayed in their lane and hadn't taken on Iraq and the entire GWOT as their alleged purview, I would fear the negative impact of this report far less. But because their ambition has outpaced their vision, the capacity for this report to do more harm than good is real. It's real primarily because it speaks more to bad futures to be prevented rather than good ones to be created, and because its targeted audience is the American public when it should be the entire world.

9/11 wasnít about America, so "fixing" 9/11 has to be about so much more than just America.

The 9/11 Commission Report: a national security self-help guide

(LANG=en)>

A Failure of Imagination

Dateline: above the garage in Portsmouth RI, 23 July 2004

After all the previews and leaks, to actually get the report is naturally a bit anti-climatic. But it's more disappointing than that, in my mind, because it's basically a self-help guide that seems to suggest that what's really broken in this global war on terrorism is the United States itselfóor specifically the national intelligence community. I have to admit, this judgment is so easy to make, so pat in content, and so unimportant over the long haul that I cannot consider the commission to be anything less than irrelevant to the real tasks at hand:

1. Understanding the world for what it is in this era of globalization

2. Understanding the threat of terror as a function of that world and the spread of the global economy and all the influences it inflicts upon traditional societies

3. Enunciating a genuinely coherent U.S. grand strategy to deal with that world in a way that terror is reduced as a threat over timeói.e., making globalization truly global in a fair and just manner

4. Reshaping our national defense establishment to meet that challengeói.e., the bifurcation of the force into a warfighting Leviathan force and a peacewaging Sys Admin force

5. And then letting the Intelligence Community, as well as the Congressional oversight community, reshape themselves in order to both serve and communicate with that increasingly bifurcated military force structure.

In their infinite wisdom, the Commission jumps right to #5 and pretty much ignores the restósave for a facile swipe at a "grand strategy" of winning hearts and minds among terrorists and would-be terroristsóyou know, the usual vague stuff about getting at the "root of the problem."

But guess what? Altering the Intelligence Community's organizational charts won't do that. At best we may understand the world a bit better only to find the IC at greater odds with the Pentagon regarding what needs to be done about it. We are not going to generate a new grand strategy from the IC up (if you want to see how bad such strategies can be, read Anonymous or Richard Clarke), and it sure as hell won't be centered on winning the hearts and minds of would-be terroristsómuch less killing them in increasingly clever ways. This is symptom-treating at its worst, but we reach for it becauseófranklyóitís the easiest approach for Congress to take: write a bill forcing a certain amount of organizational change and then designate some counter-terrorist center (or better yet, designate a whole slew of them and spread them around numerous congressional districts) and be done with it.

This is America as self-help obsessed: in the end, we decide it was really all our fault, or "a failure of imagination."

Geez! That's a line going all the way back (at least) to the investigations over the Apollo 1 launch-pad fire. Couldn't the Commission at least come up with a new line? Or was thatóin itselfóa failure of imagination (or more prosaically, a failure of composition).

For now, this whole Commission process reads like a bad Allen Drury novel. I'm just waiting for some blackmailed homosexual to step forward and admit 9/11 happened simply because he mistakenly got into bed with an al Qaeda operative and then gave him all the key-codes lest he be forced out of his closet.

Meanwhile, the process of reorganizing the Intelligence Community will consume gajillions of congressional committee hours and kill millions of trees, but none of it will move us closer to an actionable grand strategy (nor an appropriate national defense establishment to carry it out) that really deals with the world for what it is and not America for what we fear it isn'tómeaning safe and secure from the next 9/11.

We will never be safe and secure from the next 9/11, because we will never be safe from "them" until all of "they" are brought inside the "us." When there is no more Non-Integrating Gap, there will only be a stable Functioning Core that is universal, and war as we know it will essentially end for all time.

Yes, there will always be individuals and groups railing against the system, but they will be forced to wage their individual-level wars within a system that is truly all-encompassing, giving up their eternal dream of hijacking some chunk of humanity and taking it permanently off-line from the corrupt, capitalist world system (and here we will really locate Fukuyama's "end of history" and the beginning of the joy that only a Gene Roddenberry might have imagined).

Our increased ability to track incoming terrorists strikes is pretty meaningless against the larger strategic backdrop of the real task at hand: truly connecting the Middle East to the global economy in a broadband fashion faster than the bin Ladens and Zarqawis of that world can disconnect it, or keep it all limited to just oil.

But that is not the easy or even acceptable solution in this self-help obsessed society that is America, so we will focus on what we know and love bestóourselves. We'll rearrange deck chairs on the Titanic that is the Intelligence Community, whose main problem isn't its org chart but its obsessive secrecy. We'll try to make ourselves more attractive to others, hoping that if we send them happy thoughts, their hearts and minds will be won. We'll pretend that somehow fixing the U.S. Government alone will alter the overarching reality of globalization's aggressive onslaught on traditional cultures all over the Gap ("No no no! It's really all about how you perceive us and our policies! Love me! Love me! Love me!").

I've been watching Ken Burns' "Civil War" on DVD as I exercise on the treadmill late at night, after the kids go to bed. Whenever I watch anything on the Civil War, it reminds me that, in many ways, it marked the beginning of the world we now live in. The first great wave of Globalization began soon after its conclusion, and the nature of that war presaged the two world wars that would later be fought around the planet, but primarily within Europe as civil wars themselves.

When I watch the documentary series, I see a Core-North imposing its will and integration upon a Gap-South that prefers to continue with its exclusionary rule sets by which some rule and others are ruled. I see a Core-North with all its frightening mixing of the races and cultures and industries and ideologies bearing down on the bucolic South that seems so pristine in its onenessóalbeit bought at the price of slavery. I see southern insurgents fighting. Why? As Shelby Foote puts it (I paraphrase here), "Because you Northerners insist on coming down here and changing our ways." I see the Gap-South's romanticism of the land and its rejection of modernity and change and industrialization. I see the Core-North's ruthlessness as an invading force decried and yet embraced as the necessary "remedy." I see a war that begins as one to save the Union swiftly becoming one to rid the Union of the terrible scourge of slaveryóthe ultimate in disconnectedness.

And I see many things that resonate in this current struggle: the references to good and evil, the references to "our God" versus "their god," the messianic spirit, the anti-war sentiments, the civil wars that rage on "quietly" inside the Gap/Islam itself, the charges of imperialism and "outsiders" forcing change against "our will," a president who cannot possibly win reelection because he's so badly mishandled this war, and a military suffering "unacceptable losses" and yet still attracting idealistic recruits without any great effort.

Oh, and I see Colin Powell as George McClellan.

I have said many times before that we can see the road ahead simply by looking within ourselves and remembering our past. The vibe I pick up from the Commission's report is that typical sort of can-do Americanism that focuses on "fixing the problem" by rejiggering the systemóour system. In reality, the system we must seek to fix is not our own, but the world's.

The real task ahead, if we hope to win a global war on terrorism, is to generate the understanding across the Core as a whole of how we shrink the Gap. That is a huge, multifaceted problem that requires a variety of approaches. Within the security realm, it requires first and foremost a Core-wide A-to-Z rule set on processing politically-bankrupt regimes within the Gap. If we don't deal with that problem set, progress will not be had in the GWOT. We will never generate progress until the Pentagon transforms transformation from its past focus on the front-half, warfighting Leviathan force to the back-half, peacewaging Sys Admin force. That progress will be had first and foremost inside two relatively obscure U.S. military commands: Joint Forces Command in Norfolk VA and Special Operations Command in Tampa FL. As this force is imagined and set in motion in these two laboratories of transformation, it must be put to test by Central Command, also located in Tampa FL. As the success of that restructured force points to new understanding of warfare and the need for new weapons, platforms, and organizational structures, the process of change will permeate the Pentagon itself. As that happens, the Intelligence Community and the Hill will be force to remake themselves in order to support and interact with that changing military. And as that entire process evolves, we will see the White House, the State Department, and the rest of the U.S. Government begin to imagine what it will take to generate the global A-to-Z rule set on processing politically-bankrupt states within the Gap.

The 9/11 Commission is a complete sidelight to this entire process. You will not read anything of importance there regarding this primary task of U.S. national security in the 21st Century. But, as Charles Hill writes in today's Wall Street Journal ("Commissionism," 23 July, p. A12), "the demand for near-perfect certainty is a deeply entrenched delusion," so expect much sturm und drang about this report in coming months. It will, just as the creation of the Department of Homeland Security itself, constitute great sound and fury that in the end will signify almost nothing.

What we are witnessing in this process is one giant, preemptive ass-covering exercise by politicians on both sides of the aisle. All these officials really want you to know is that "next time" it won't be "my fault" because "I told you so."

At this point, if you're read PNM, you gotta be tempted to accuse me of talking out of both sides of my mouth. After all, my three-pronged strategy begins with making the Core resilient in the face of, and resistance to the effects of, 9/11-like System Perturbations. Isn't that all the 9/11 Commission trying to do?

Perfectly reasonable comeback, say I.

No, I don't think it's wrong in and of itself to recommend what the Commission is recommending. I don't think it will harm anything, but neither do I think it will fix much of anything. My real fear is that this grand commission's vision becomes a substitute for further thinking, as in, "Oh yeah, we have a commission and they fixed all that! You know, something about some 'czar' and then winning hearts and minds, or something like that."

Because the Commission stuck its nose into the Iraq War question (links between Saddam and al Qaeda?), and because they've waxed vaguely about a "grand strategy" in the GWOT, I'm afraid that too many people will come to view what should be our real grand strategy through the soda-straw of these awfully narrow recommendations. A GWOT does not come anywhere near a grand strategy, because a grand strategy cannot revolve around some definition of the enemy, but must revolve around some definition of a global future worth creating. Substituting al Qaeda for the near-peer competitor or the old Soviet threat isnít the answer; understanding the world in all its complexity is. Al Qaeda and the current situation in the Middle East simply defines the current expression of resistance to the spread of globalization. Fixating on that resistance will make us guilty of waging war solely within the context of war and not within the context of everything else. That sort of soda-straw perspective gets you the fantastically narrow answers of a Richard Clarke, an Anonymous, and this Commission, which I might sum up as kill them better, abandon our bad policies in the Middle East, and give me a g.d. intell czar!

None of those approaches will move us in the direction of the strategic goals we seek in the mid- (connecting the Middle East to the world) and long-terms (making globalization truly global). In fact, they are more than likely to be counterproductive to those ends if they constitute the bulk of our approach. In short, these are Gap-containment strategies, not Gap-shrinkage strategies.

They all disappoint me as failures not only of imagination but of empathy. At their roots, they are all America-first strategies that speak to our needs and fears while ignoring those of the Gap'sówhich I sure as hell don't define in terms of the terrorists and dictators there but the everybody else, or the masses there.

What the Commission does is primarily play to our fears and our natural desires to recoil from the outside world. They want us to be afraid, very afraid of the big bad world outside, over there. And they want to make us safer by increasing our ability to see bad things coming at us earlier, when what our grand strategy really needs to be about is making good things go on over there sooner as opposed to later.

You may say that the Commission is only doing what they were supposed to do, so why am I picking on them so much? Again, if the Commission had stayed in their lane and hadn't taken on Iraq and the entire GWOT as their alleged purview, I would fear the negative impact of this report far less. But because their ambition has outpaced their vision, the capacity for this report to do more harm than good is real. It's real primarily because it speaks more to bad futures to be prevented rather than good ones to be created, and because its targeted audience is the American public when it should be the entire world.

9/11 wasnít about America, so "fixing" 9/11 has to be about so much more than just America.

PNM's multiple horizontal scenarios continue to unfold

Dateline: above the garage in Portsmouth RI, 22 July 2004

I wrote PNM last August and September. In January I got the final proofs on the dust jacket cover and noticed that Putnam wanted to use my old geocities site as my web address. A long-time fan from the IT sector, Critt Jarvis, says I gotta get a better site and helps me set up this one, cleverly blackmailing me into making him my webmaster. He convinces me I need to write a weblog to accompany the site. So I start one, with Critt's help, in late March. The blog becomes its own presence, and that gets me the last 24 hours:

∑ Journalist Mark Thompson of Time calls and asks for a quick interview regarding the findings of the 9/11 Commission. He knows I am not in favor of a cabinet-level intell czar. How did he know that? He reads the blog, after he read the book, which he really liked.

∑ Last night I get an email from Li Haidong, associate professor in the Institute of International Studies in China Foreign Affairs University in Beijing. He's just finished the book and has been utilizing my "excellent" website for an article he's writing about my ideas for his institute's journal. So we go back and forth about Wilsonism and how that differs from what I'm talking about.

∑ This morning I spend an hour on the phone with Hiroyuki Akita, Chief Correspondent of Nikkei Newspaper in Washington DC. Nikkei is the Dow Jones of Tokyo, and the paper is known in Japan as Japan Economic Journal, or Nihon Keizai Shimbun. It is the Wall Street Journal of Japan. Akita says he has become my "student" via the book and the blog, and would like to establish a long-term relationship with me for stories about how defense and national security issues in the U.S. are being transformed. His big interest is the current negotiations between the U.S. and Japan over proposed troop withdrawals there. He is amazed I am willing to go on the record. I say, it's all in the blog anyway, so what's to hide?

∑ Later in the afternoon I send an email to Yu Keping, Director of both the China Center for Comparative Politics & Economics (CCCPE) and Beijing University's Center for Chinese Government Innovations. Beijing University Press is publishing PNM in China. As my wife and I got our firm travel dates today regarding our adoption trip, I now know on which days Prof. Yu can schedule me at BU for a series of meetings and discussions with Chinese scholars and other officials regarding the ideas in the book and the blog. My posts are available in Mandarin via a Taiwanese website that translates all my posts involving Asia.

A year ago today I was wandering around my house, unable to sleep, eat or speak after a substantial throat surgery. In a daze from the pain killers, I knew only that my agent had just successfully landed me a book deal with G.P. Putnam's Sons. As I contemplated the year ahead, I knew that the Putnam deal was a vertical scenario that would alter my life and generate a host of horizontal scenarios whose myriad of pathways I could only dimly imagine from that vantage point.

As my wife Vonne said at the time: "See, I told you it would be a good idea to finally write a book. A year from now, who knows where this could all lead?"

Indeed.

Time to book some airline tickets!

Today's catch:

Kidnappings: a tool of choice in the Middle East

"Iraqi Insurgents Report Grabbing 6 More Hostages: Beheadings Threatened; Kidnappings Come After Philippines Yielded to an Earlier Seizure," by Ian Fisher, New York Times, 22 July, p. A1.

"For Many Iraqis, A New Daily Fear: Wave of Kidnapping; As Wealthy Pay for Guards, Gangs Target Middle Class; 'It's Only About Money,'" by Yochi J. Dreazen, Wall Street Journal, 22 July, p. A1.

"Head of Gaza Police Kidnapped By Gunmen and Paraded in Streets: Chief Accused of Corruption as Palestinian Fissure Grows," by John Ward Anderson, Washington Post, 17 July, p. A12.

Osama's worse nightmare: American Muslim women with attitude

"Muslim Women Seeking a Place in the Mosque: More Are Challenging Segregated Roles in American Services," by Laurie Goodstein, NYT, 22 July, p. A1.

"Woman's Mosque Protest Brings Furor in the U.S.: Challenging rules and traditions, and paying a price," by Laurie Goodstein, NYT, 22 July, p. A16.

Henry Ford, meet Deng Xiaoping

"Carmakers Profiting From Loans Not Cars: The Action Is In Asia," by Danny Hakim, NYT, 22 July, p. C1.

"China's Buick Infatuation: The Stodgy American Auto Is a Prerevolutionary Icon For Booming Middle Class," by Peter Wonacott, WSJ, 22 July, p. B1.

The life of the party in China: how wealth gets spread

"China's 'It Couple' Builds Sleek Towers And a High Profile: Yuppie Pair Becomes Darling Of the Changing Media; Who Wore What at Party," by Kathy Chen, WSJ, 22 July, p. A1.

"Japan Almost Doubles Forecast for Economic Growth," by Todd Zaun, NYT, 22 July, p. W1.

Kidnappings: a tool of choice in the Middle East

"Iraqi Insurgents Report Grabbing 6 More Hostages: Beheadings Threatened; Kidnappings Come After Philippines Yielded to an Earlier Seizure," by Ian Fisher, New York Times, 22 July, p. A1.

"For Many Iraqis, A New Daily Fear: Wave of Kidnapping; As Wealthy Pay for Guards, Gangs Target Middle Class; 'It's Only About Money,'" by Yochi J. Dreazen, Wall Street Journal, 22 July, p. A1.

"Head of Gaza Police Kidnapped By Gunmen and Paraded in Streets: Chief Accused of Corruption as Palestinian Fissure Grows," by John Ward Anderson, Washington Post, 17 July, p. A12.

No surprise what happens after Philippines so readily gives in to terrorists' demands regarding their one Filipino driver held hostage: six new truck drivers are immediately kidnapped. President Arroyo of the Philippines said she did what she did because every life is sacred. What she meant to say was, "My political career is sacred, to hell with the lives of anybody else who's not Filipino and dies as a result of my act."

The six drivers include 3 Indians, 2 Kenyans and an Egyptian. None of these three countries have troops in Iraq, so the terrorists are demanding that the companies that employ these six all leave Iraq:

"We have warned all the countries, companies, businessmen and truck drivers that those who deal with American cowboy occupiers will be targeted by the fires of the mujahedeen," read a statement given to The Associated Press. "Here you are once again transporting good, weapons and military equipment that backs the United States Army."

Our military and the Pentagon can dress this thing up as much as they want using the buzz phrase "asymmetrical warfare," but the real point of the matter is that we have failed to date in making the peacekeeping or nation-building phase work. The military calls that period following conflict "phase IV," but after the occupations of the past decade it's more like "Phase 0-for . . . " as our batting average in the back half of our recent military interventions is basically .000.

Right now too many lunatics are running the asylum called Iraq, so many in fact that it's not just Westerners who are becoming regular victims of kidnappings, but ordinary Iraqis themselves. After the looting subsided last summer because there was nothing left to steal, criminal gangs inside Iraq simply turned to an age-old form of making money in the region: kidnapping rich people for ransom. After the rich caught on and starting defending themselves, the gangs started targeting the middle class. Pretty soon the whole place starts resembling Colombia it's so bad.

When kidnapping and ransom become a national growth industry, you're probably looking at a completely lawless Gap country or a Seam State where disparities of wealth are great as development kicks in unevenly.

Then again, sometimes you get a real man-bites-dog story like when pissed-off gunmen in the Gaza strip kidnapped the head of the Palestinian Authority's police force as a protest of his alleged embezzlement of $22 million from the PA. He was paraded in the streets strictly for show and then let go:

"We gave three years to the Palestinian Authority to carry out reforms. We waited a long time. But they didn't do anything. We are doing this in our way," Abu Iyad, who was identified as a spokesman for the Jenin Martyrs Brigades, said on al-Jazeera satellite television. "Ghazi Jabali [the police chief] was kidnapped to hold him accountable for his mistakes against our people."

It's enough to almost make you happy we have Senate investigations instead, but that's life in too much of the Gap.

Osama's worse nightmare: American Muslim women with attitude

"Muslim Women Seeking a Place in the Mosque: More Are Challenging Segregated Roles in American Services," by Laurie Goodstein, New York Times, 22 July, p. A1.

"Woman's Mosque Protest Brings Furor in the U.S.: Challenging rules and traditions, and paying a price," by Laurie Goodstein, New York Times, 22 July, p. A16.

Interesting pair of stories about Muslim women inside American mosques chaffing at the traditional restrictions that require them to worship alone and too often play spectators to an all-male show of faith:

Another group of women led by a social worker in Winnipeg, Manitoba, is about to introduce a guide to making mosques more "sister friendly," proposing such measures as creating prayer space that does not exclude women, allowing women access to lectures, bulletin boards and donation boxes, and providing child care during mosque events.

Though they include college students and grandmothers, they represent a new generation of Muslim women raised and educated in North America. They include immigrants from the Middle East, South Asia and elsewhere, as well as African-American and Anglo converts to the faith. Some of the younger women in their 20's and 30's, and their male supporters, identify themselves as "progressive Muslims"óa loose but growing network of activists and writers linked by books, Web sites and listservs.

As one lady put it: "This is part of the war within Islam for how it's defined in the world. Since 9/11, I've seen that if we don't assert ourselves, we're relinquishing our religion to be defined by those who speak the loudest and act the toughest."

Osama bin Laden wanted purposely to lay a system perturbation on the West with 9/11, one that would throw all our rule sets into flux. He got his wish alright, and in the end, he will regret it in more ways than he can count.

Henry Ford, meet Deng Xiaoping

"Carmakers Profiting From Loans Not Cars: The Action Is In Asia," by Danny Hakim, New York Times, 22 July, p. C1.

"China's Buick Infatuation: The Stodgy American Auto Is a Prerevolutionary Icon For Booming Middle Class," by Peter Wonacott, Wall Street Journal, 22 July, p. B1.

U.S. carmakers make more money off loans than actually selling cars, a trick they taught the Japanese automakers. Not surprisingly, where Detroit is making the most money on loans right now in terms of annual percentage growth is in Asia, where lo and behold, their products seem to appeal just fine to the rising middle class in China.

So add Detroit automakers to the list of multinational corporations whose boats are being lifted by the rising tide that is China.

But don't tell Michael Moore there might be more jobs for autoworkers in Michigan if only China is able to keep accessing Persian Gulf oil at reasonable rates because it would spoil his conspiratorial view of world history.

The life of the party in China: how wealth gets spread

"China's 'It Couple' Builds Sleek Towers And a High Profile: Yuppie Pair Becomes Darling Of the Changing Media; Who Wore What at Party," by Kathy Chen, Wall Street Journal, 22 July, p. A1.

"Japan Almost Doubles Forecast for Economic Growth," by Todd Zaun, New York Times, 22 July, p. W1.

China's "It Couple" are a pair of construction tycoons (she in her late 30's and he is his early 40's) who seem to enjoy the limelight like nobody since Donald and Ivana Trump were a pair. That's not as surprising as the fact that they've become real favorites of the masses. As one fan put it: "China has so many people with money. Why do we want to follow them? They don't just have money; they have taste."

Well, that immediately pushes Ms Zhang Xin and Mr. Pan Shiyi beyond the realm of the Donald and Ivana. In some ways, what this couple have become is more like a Martha Stewart of the middle class. As Ms. Zhang declares: "We sort of started the middle-class consciousness of lifestyle. We pay a lot of attention to decorating details."

You may laugh at such things, as though the poor, formerly socialist Chinese are pathetically aping American consumer values, but the growth of consumerism in China is more than an economic and social phenomenon, it signals a much greater potential for long-term stability both within China and around the world. A stable middle class in China bodes well for political reforms there over time, and a huge consumer class in China generates an extra pillar of stability for the global economy that hasófor far too longórelied almost solely on the American consumer during hard times.

Already, China's growing consumer society is lifting Japan out of its decade-long recession. As the Times notes, most economists "expect Japan's expansion to decelerate as corporate investment slows and China's torrid economic growth continues to cool. Japan's economy is closely tied to China's, and therefore vulnerable to any slowdown there."

Some kids escape the Gap, others do not

"Close Encounters With a Home Barely Known: Children adopted abroad ask, Which land is my land? Both, the furnishings say," by Jill Brooke, New York Times, 22 July, p. D1.

"Bush Speech On Human Trafficking Target Castro: Remarks at Official Event Are Tailored for Cuban Exiles in Florida and Religious Conservatives," by Dana Milbank, Washington Post 17 July, p. A2.

The Times article is a charmer, suggesting a subtle but profound influence in America from all those kids adopted from overseas in recent years, the biggest number coming fromóof courseóChina. The article appears in the "House & Home" section, not one I usually blog, and details how home furnishings inside households featuring children adopted from abroad are naturally tilted in the direction of the culture from which that child emerged as parents seek to respect those cultural bonds, not sever them whole.

Already, I could walk you past a host of Asian or specifically Chinese items in our house that have appeared in the months since we started the adoption processóa lamp here, a painting there. I just hung some painted tiles last night in my daughter's room, where our Vonne Mei Ling will eventually sleep once she graduates out of mom and dad's room.

I have described our adoption of Vonne Mei Ling as part of my strategy of shrinking the Gap "one child at a time." Vonne Mei hails from one of China's poorer rural areas, which constitute China's internal Non-Integrating Gap, and thanks to the amazing system that is China's orphanages and international adoption agency, Vonne Mei will escape that Gap in a rule-structured process that respects her needs and interests.

Contrast this fate to those suffered by numerous kids throughout the Gap: that of virtual slavery to sex traffickers. Who are the biggest offenders in this regard according to the U.S. State Department? Cuba, North Korea, Burma, Sudan, Venezeulaóall Gap states with bad, "Big Man" leaders.

Add that crying need to the very long list of reasons of why the Core needs an A-to-Z rule set on how to process politically-bankrupt states.

The real sons of PNM

A Neat Trio of Posts

Dateline: above the garage in Portsmouth RI, 21 July 2004

The universe seems to be collapsing in on our family schedule as the departure date looms ever larger for our trip to China. I feel like I should be taking the kids to the beach every night between now and early August, because once we are wheels up, we won't see Second Beach until Labor Dayówhen actually the water is at its warmest up here.

Struggling with my allergies through this long dry spell in Rhode Island (my Monday in Manhattan was a nice respite), I glance foggily toward Beijing and then at my rapidly-filling fall calendar. If I'm not careful, I'm going to be booked for speeches every day from Labor Day through Christmas. I'm going to have to make myself a giant wall calendar so I can keep the dates straight. Staring into my Blackberry just isn't doing it any more.

As I glance over the rest of 2004's calendar, I'm more and more glad I didn't commit myself to quickly dashing off a sequel to PNM, or what I have dubbed in past posts as the "Son of PNM." Between all the speeches (meaning travel) and my editor Mark Warren's growing enthusiasm for turning my decade-old diary of our family's struggle with our firstborn's cancer (The Emily Updates), plus a few other irons in the fire, PLUS a growing advisory relationship with both CENTCOM and SOCOM . . . and I'm feeling ready to pass out simply in anticipation.

What a minute! That would be the allergies talking again. Time to hit the waves and wash off the pollen!

But the real reason why I'm glad I'm not rushing into "Son of PNM" is that I feel like there are plenty of follow-on analysts with their own analysis of PNM that are worthy, ready and engaging. In short, I myself am still learning how to read PNM for all that it's worth.

That may seem like an odd statement for an author to make, but it's been a common theme of my work throughout my career: I am always being told that I'm writing about so much more than I realize. Now, either that makes me a true visionary, or I've been sadly miscast in my own narrative (Don't you wish sometimes they got somebody more talented to play your role in the movie? You know, somebody who really "gets" the role better than you do?).

That reminds me of when my wife said that if they ever made an audio version of my book, we'd have to find somebody really good to read it. I said, "What about me?" And she replied, "I really don't think you could pull off the character."

I almost asked her about a potential porn film based on the book, but then I decided to let that one slide . . ..

Anyway, my foggy brain doesn't really have much to say today, so I've decided to turn today's blogging over to a trio of bloggers who've spent a lot of time and thought on PNM, extending the analysis further.

My short comments follow each post:

Dean Barnett (SoxBlog)

Mark, the ZenPundit

T.M. Lutas, who goes by Flit(tm)

Flit(tm): Barnett's Implicit Villains

3rd of 3 blogs which may be The real sons of PNM: A neat trio of posts

T.M. Lutas - Flit(tm) @ http://www.snappingturtle.net/jmc/tmblog/archives/004646.html

July 21, 2004

Barnett's Implicit Villains

In The Pentagon's New Map something always bothered me about the disconnection of the Gap states. They are so weak that unanimous efforts by Core states could never be resisted. The Gap leadership that thrives on disconnection could never maintain that state alone. They had to have something helping them out. The Iraq sanctions regime and subsequent Coalition of the Willing invasion brings the dark secret out into the open. The disconnectors in the Gap have allies in the Core, allies that command power and respect in the highest diplomatic and economic councils.

No Gap country is entirely disconnected. After all, the Great Leader must have access to first class health care, toys and gee gaws that his own society cannot produce, and above all weapons to maintain his security against his own people and his neighbors. That requires trade and with it, connectivity.

But the connectivity threads must be kept spider web thin and must not be a path that just anyone can walk down. No, trade is done in barter, with huge bribes and outlandish commissions, or in unsavory items such as addictive drugs, banned weapons, and human flesh. The people who provide the connectivity must, as much as possible, be unsavory types that will show the worst of the outside world to those who they come in contact with, providing a justification for their country's isolation.

The power brokers who do the major deals and pocket so much money from these spider web connections also know that they are on an impressive gravy train that will continue as long as general connectivity does not come to that society. They must maintain their position in the Core and never actually admit that they are in favor of maintaining disconnectedness but they do and they are.

In Eastern Europe, when the wall came down, whoever had invested in the east bloc countries as the only western presence in their field were largely swept aside. The popular western cigarettes, the popular drinks, all of that market share swiftly disappeared in an avalanche of new competition offering better quality, lower prices, or even just variety.

The same dynamic will happen in every country that is pulled into the Core from the Gap. A certain class of politicians and traders will have their economic interests in the place devastated and they will be tempted to lobby against intervention, against reform, because they only see their short term interests and don't really care about the pathologies that spill out of the Gap.

Update: Iraq now points out how business interests that were highly invested in the old system are still causing mischief where they can.

COMMENTARY: That is a neat extension of the material that I had always wondered about how best to express, but never got around to in PNM. Hard to believe, but even at 150k, I was constantly fretting about how to get out of this G.D. paragraph without triggering another 2k in text! So the PNM's absurd ambition in trying to explain just about everything meant that even at this serious length, the book remains an outline of sorts. The "implicit villains" argument here is one I did not get to in the book, perhaps because I feared sounding too neo-Marxist and once you go down that road you can find yourself turning into Immanuel Wallerstein or worse. But I think T.M. nails the description on the head.

Now I'm waiting for the subsequent nails on the anti-globalization movement within the Core and those Gap-like ghettos that still exist within the Core. The former is what drives a lot of outright rejection of my arguments ("Barnett acts like making globalization safe for corporations to ruin the world is a good thing!"), but the latter is what gets me a lot of interesting emails from mayors, governors, and anyone who deals with inner cities, like one I just got from an academic who said PNM gave him a whole new perspective on the role of historic black colleges in "connecting" the African-American community to economic opportunity in this country.

All in all, a neat trio of posts.

ZenPundit: The Globalization Bull in the China Shop

2nd of 3 blogs which may be The real sons of PNM: A neat trio of posts

Mark - ZenPundit @ http://zenpundit.blogspot.com/2004/07/globalization-bull-in-china-shop.html

Tuesday, July 20, 2004

THE GLOBALIZATION BULL IN THE CHINA SHOP: PROMISE AND PERIL IN THE PNM STRATEGY

Even before Deng Xiaoping defeated his hard-line Maoist opponents in the late 1970ís to set Beijing on " the capitalist road," Chinaís potentially bright future has been the topic of investors and statesmen. Richard Nixon foresaw China as the superpower of the 21st century. So did Brooks Adams more than a century ago. So when academics and economists are awed this year by Chinaís stunning, near 9% GDP growth rate, it appears the long-predicted arrival of China may be finally coming to pass.

Since we are discussing The Pentagonís New Map itís of no surprise that China is a critical country in Dr. Barnettís strategy (which I discussed earlier). Rivaled only by India, China would be the most important part of the "New Core" of states that decided to join the "Old Core" by adopting their rules and engaging with the world instead of isolating themselves from it. Barnett however, quickly identifies the crux of the problem with China's progress ( p. 241):

"Of that New Core group, China is the most worrisome, while India is the most promising Ö China is most worrisome because the hardest rule-set still needs to be changedóthe authoritarian rule of the Chinese Communist Party."

This is an aspect that clearly worries the United States government as well. Dr. Barnett has ample descriptions in his book of Pentagon war planners and defense intellectuals envisioning China in a worst-case scenario war for dominance of East Asia. To focus on military might aloneówhere the increasingly professional PLA is really still not all that impressive next to, say, the IDF much less the U.S. Navyóis a mistake that Dr. Barnett does not make. He's looking at the global parameters of power that an economic surplus is givingóand demanding ofóChina for the first time since the fall of the Q'ing dynasty:

"Paul Krugman likes to point out that China's central bank is one of the main purchasers of Treasury bills in the world, soóin effectóthey finance our trade deficit." (p. 311)

and:

"China has to double its energy consumption in a generation if all that growth it is planning is going to occur. we know where the Chinese have to go for the energy: Russia, Central Asia and the Gulf. That's a lot of new friends to make and one significant past enemy to romance."(p.230)

Overall, Dr. Barnett is betting that the growing complexity of connectivity's interactions as China rewrites its rule sets to accept "the four flows" of globalization is the ultimate hedge against conflict with China, or China lapsing into the disorder that plagues the Gap states.

[ZenPundit] MY COMMENTS:

First, I am not a Sinologist by training and my knowledge of Chinese history lags considerably behind my understanding of say American diplomatic history, Soviet history and a few other topics. On the other hand, the last part of what I'm going to state about China here applies analytically to most societies that would have to make the transition to the "New Core."

While China's current growth rates are amazing we have to keep a few things in mind and try to see some of this PNM scenario through Chinese rather than western eyes.

First, China's cultural values formed during the warring states period and that China was twice unified and given stable government only by the most ruthless application of totalitarian rule. First by the Emperor Shih Huang-ti who followed the tenets of Han Fei-tzu 's Legalist-Realist school and secondly by the equally indomitable Mao Zedong, with his own particular version of Marxism-Leninism. In between the two despots dynasties rose and fell and generally tried to tie together a continent-sized nation with a natural centrifugal tendency to split into unrelated regional economies and eventually warlordism, civil war and dynastic collapse. In short, China's rulers do not take the unity of their country for granted the way the French or the British or post-bellum Americans do. Chinese leaders are crazed about Taiwan because in their minds if Taiwan is ever recognized by the world as an independent state than so can Tibet. . .and XinjiangÖand perhaps the rich coastal provinces might feel better off without their inland cousins. An authoritarian leadership of already shaky political legitimacy may choose the economically suicidal course if they believe that Taiwan's independence will bring their regime down regardless.

Secondly, in assessing China's might keep in mind the reality of per capita facts. As Brad DeLong conveniently noted the other day hundreds of millions of Chinese remain extremely poor, living on less than a dollar a day. Hundreds of millions more are better off than a generation ago but they still hover not terribly far above subsistence. These people are not, as most suppose, a danger to the regime. Peasants have starved for a millennia without ill political effect and these people are, fortunately, at least eating. What they represent instead is an enormous claim on the economic surplus that China is currently generatingóa claim on roads, schools, hospitals, infrastructure, basic comfortsóbefore providing "rich" urban Chinese with internet cafes, dance clubs, imported cars or more missile frigates for the Chinese Navy. These people need exceptionally robust economic growth for decades to see real improvement in living standards.

Thirdly, the inner circle of China's leadership have undergone an important transformation during the end of Deng Xiaoping's tenure as paramount leader. Unlike in the USSR where the Red Army was strictly subordinate to the CPSU, Mao's guerilla war left far greater cohesion between the PLA and the CCP. Mao Zedong and Deng Xiaoping were bona fide military leaders. Zhu De and Lin Biao were also political leaders. PLA generals routinely sat in the Central Committee and higher party cadres did military work. Today, China's generals and politicians are distinct leadership classes with factional interests. The generals have become much more the military professionals and no one mistakes Jiang Zemin for a field marshal. To a certain extent, the politicians are appeasing the military elite while the latter are developing a far more narrow outlook.

Lastly, globalization brings with it to all societies a danger of raising up a countervailing power. For example, in one sense al Qaida's radicalism is merely the culmination of an ideological debate that has been going on within Islam since the Turks retreated from the gates of Vienna in 1689. But in a general sense bin Laden's violent answers only have traction among Muslims because globalization has created enough new "connections" to create economic and social upheaval in very traditional, formerly disconnected, Arab and Central Asian nations.

China's previous experience with opening up to the outside world is not a heartwarming tale. The Ming and Q'ing dynasties, like the Tokugawa Shogunate in Japan, had "disconnected" from the world even as the European nations began explosive advances in science, wealth and technology. The world intruded anyway. Japan opted to reconnect via the Meiji Restoration and catch up to the West. China resisted and suffered not only external humiliation at the hands of the West, Russia and Japan but also two internal rebellionsóthe Taiping Rebellion and the Boxers. The former revolt, fired by half-understood western religious ideas, was warfare of a magnitude not exceeded in scale until the western front in 1914.

China's current rulers have chosen connection but the threat of countervailing power comes not from the still disconnected but from the already connected but discontented. Al Qaida and Hizb ut-Tahrir are not filled with illiterate fanatics but lawyers, engineers, doctors and businessmen who have chosen a radical political program for the goal of Islamist religious reaction. The Nazis appealed most to the lower middle class and unemployed intellectuals who had risen but feared to sink back into the ranks of the workers during the Depression. The Russian peasant who was most helped by Petr Stolypin's land reforms flocked not to support the Tsar but the Socialist-Revolutionaries in 1917. In our own history the Populists and Alliancemen who agitated for cooperative economics and against banks and monopolies in the 1880s were not workers but ex-yeomen turned tenant farmers, commercial farmers with mortgages and deflating prices.

If China's growth sags trouble will come not from the rural areas but from the tens of millions of educated, new middle-class Chinese who have had their expectations raised by cell phones, scooter bikes, refrigerators, internet access and discman players. They will not return to the countryside and nor will they abide a loss of status that Richard Hofstadter once identified as the root of paranoid politics.

That is the tightrope China will be walking for a long time to come.

COMMENTARY: Mark offers a nice rundown of several of the big pressures that China and its leadership are operating under as they seek to modernize and rejoin the world. You can say that China is experiencing several revolutions right nowóall at once:

∑ Shift from rural to urban

∑ Shift from centrally-planned to market

∑ Shift from central power to regionalism and localism

∑ Shift from young society to old

∑ Shift from fairly immobile society to one that travels

∑ Shift from isolated nation to one that connects up with world at large

∑ Shift from overwhelming poor but egalitarian society to one that is far more developed and wealthy but also stratified

∑ And so on and so on.

You can't have a country undergo so many changes all at once (this is the real "great leap forward" for China) without a lot of tensions being revealed. I see the role of the U.S. and the rest of the Old Core (Japan, EU) in guiding China toward its mature expression of "great power" as the overriding task of the eraófar more important than a global war on terrorism, which, quite frankly, is nothing more than dealing with the resistance to globalization's spread on the margins. That's why I keep saying, China's not the problem, it's the prize.

Last up is T.M. Lutas, or Flit(tm).

SoxBlog: AL QAEDA VS. PARIS HILTON

1st of 3 blogs which may be The real sons of PNM: A neat trio of posts

Dean Barnett - SoxBlog @ http://dbsoxblog.blogspot.com/#109037279081302892

21 July 2004

AL QAEDA VS. PARIS HILTON

A couple of weeks ago, I wrote a review of Thomas Barnettís brilliant ìThe Pentagonís New Map.î As you might recall, PNM splits the world into two different parts. One is the Core which consists of all the countries that you might purchase a good from or take a vacation in. The other is the Gap which consists of countries that produce pretty much no goods for purchasing and that you wouldnít visit unless you were a contestant on ìFear Factor.î PNM is all about the need, the urgent need, to integrate gap countries into the core and offers itself as something of a how-to manual for the task.

While it's highly unlikely that anyone at Al Qaeda has read PNM (although we're making progress, Kabul has yet to land a Borders), I do think that on some level Al Qaeda senses the Core/Gap dichotomy. And I think theyíre aware that even though PNM has yet to officially or publicly become the governmentís playbook, America is steadily and inexorably entering the Gap both with our military (Iraq, Afghanistan) and with our soft power (just about everywhere). For Al Qaeda, Americaís shrinking of the Gap is a huge problem. Indeed, Americaís growing prominence in the Gap threatens to move Al Qaedaís goals completely out of reach.

To put it simply, Al Qaeda needs the Gap to remain the Gap. Itís not much of an overstatement to say that Wahabbism wants to take the Islamic world back to the 8th century and have the literal dictates of Islam be the law of the land. Obviously if the Arab world becomes economically and culturally westernized, that will be impossible. If a free market of ideas develops in that part of the world, the Fundamentalists donít have a chance.

To be culturally balanced, Islam isnít the only religion that has problems with some adherents that desperately want to turn back the clock. The experience of Israel is instructive in this regard. Since its birth, Israel has struggled with an Orthodox population that thinks strict adherence to all aspects of ancient Jewish law should be a defining characteristic of the Jewish state.

The Israeli Orthodox know that the modern western style world is inimical to the goal of practicing religion with 3rd Century B.C. style rigor. They understand that if free to choose, most people will opt for 21st century accoutrements over non-stop prayer and devotion. To take one example from the countryís early days, they knew that if driving on the Sabbath was permitted, eventually driving on the Sabbath would be common. They confronted one of the oldest problems known to man: How do you keep the boy on the farm after heís seen Paris?

In spite of a half century of concessions to its Orthodox population, Israel today is and always has been a relatively normal Western style state. Thereís been a free market of ideas and most Israelis follow an American type model. In other words, in spite of the occasional symbolic victories, the Israeli Orthodox have lost.

Perhaps ironically, the Wahabbis face a similar set of problems. Whether our government follows the dictates of PNM or not, America is coming into the Gap in a big way. Even if our military doesnít set foot on Arab sand, Coca-Cola will and Microsoft will and a score of others will as well. Iím pretty sure thatís what the whole ìsoft powerî concept is about. In spite of our governmentís absence of any formal plan, America is helping develop a free market of ideas in that part of the world. What a disaster for the Wahabbis the internet promises to be! The internet will make keeping the boy on the farm after heís seen Paris look easy compared to keeping the potential Jihadi in the madras after heís seen Paris Hilton.

Thatís why Al Qaeda feels it has to destroy the United States. Even if our government cowers as a Kerry led government might, our culture will be unstoppable. If thereís a buck to be made in that part of the world, American companies will make the trip. And even if they donít, how will Al Qaeda prevent Western culture from entering via the internet?

To do that, theyíll have to somehow stop the dissemination of American culture. Thatís not going to happen if America is still standing. And thatís why, from Al Qaedaís perspective, war is their only choice.

As long as weíre going to be free, there will be no negotiated peace with this foe. They sense us coming into the gap. Even if to date weíre not doing it by deliberate design, our advancement is accelerating. Freedom, as ever, is on the march. In a free market of ideas, Wahabbism doesnít have a chance. This they know.

So hereís the struggleóweíre racing to fill the Gap, theyíre racing to destroy us before we do.

COMMENTARY: This is good stuff, by my measure, and it is pointing in the same direction events have been leading me in recent weeks (i.e., recent interactions with Special Operations Command and Central Command). By that I mean I've been instinctively peddling a series of competing timelines whenever I'm sitting down with decision-makers and talking about the Middle East. They are summed up as follows:

1. Globalization timeline in terms of penetrating the Middle East

2. Al Qaeda timeline in terms of hijacking the Middle East

3. U.S. timeline on transforming the Middle East, which speeds up #1

4. Al Qaeda timeline in terms of "waiting out" the oil economy

5. Israel timeline on wall versus Palestinian demographics

6. Iran timeline on WMD versus the bottom-up counterrevolution

7. Saudi timeline on reform versus birds coming home to roost

8. Iraq settling-down timeline versus rising Shiite unrest across region

9. Developing Asia oil and gas demand timeline

10. Global peaking-of-oil-demand timeline

11. Timeline on next generation cars

12. Timeline on where the fundamentalists make their next stand (post-Middle East)

13. Russia timeline on growing role in Middle East

14. India timeline on growing role in Middle East

15. China timeline on growing role in Middle East

16. And so on and so on

Not all of these are as important as others, but you get a sense of the potential scenario dynamics for what we loosely call this Global War on Terrorism. In PNM, I tried to bundle up the whole mess based on two questions (Whither Iraq? Whither Big Bang?) to get the four regional scenarios I laid out there (Black Hawk Downóthe Series, Arab Yugoslavia, New Berlin Wall, Persia Engulfed). What Dean does here nicely is highlight one of the key scenario dynamics at work across the entire process.

Next up is Mark the ZenPundit with his take on the PNM's take on China.

Over the limit

Todayís catch from July 21, 2004

After youíve read the neat trio of posts from Dean Barnett (SoxBlog), Mark (ZenPundit), and T.M. Lutas (Flit(tm)), here's today's catch:

Martin Wolf defines globalization as connectedness

"Too many countries? Let a splendid new book on globalization be the last for a while: it will not be bettered soon," The Economist, 20-26 July, p. 75.

Greece the Seam State, looking for a little U.S. "glue"

"Pressured by U.S., Greece Will Allow Troops at Olympics," by Raymond Bonner and Anthee Carassava, New York Times, 21 July, p. A1.

Germany's choice on rule-set reset: play down or play up

"East Germany Swallows Billions, and Still Stagnates," by Mark Landler, NYT, 21 July, p. A11.

Philippines to U.S.: "We only do windows!"

"Hostage Is Freed After Philippine Troops Are Withdrawn From Iraq," by James Glanz, NYT, 21 July, p. A12.

UN not ready to shut up or put up regarding Israel's wall

"Remove Wall, Israel Is Told By the U.N.," by Warren Hoge, NYT, 21 July, p. A10.

China backs off on SARS whistle-blower

"China Releases the SARS Whistle-Blower," by Joseph Kahn, NYT, 21 July, p. A6.

Iraq: the healing process ain't even begun on Saddam

"Iraqis Begin Confronting The Burdens of the Past: Millions Persecuted by Hussein May Seek Redress," by Doug Struck, Washington Post, 13 July, p. A11.

Africa: the inevitable final frontier in the GWOT

"Al Qaeda's Growing Sanctuary," by Douglas Farah and Richard Shultz, WP, 14 July, p. A19.

More evidence of advanced Brezhnevism in Iran

"Iranians Get the Last Laugh After Clerics Ban a Comedy," by Karl Vick, WP, 14 July, p. A12.

Another feather in the cap of Colin Powell's amazing career

"Powell Flies In the Face Of Tradition: Secretary Is Least Traveled In Years of State Records," by Glenn Kessler, WP, 14 July, p. A1.

Martin Wolf defines globalization as connectedness

"Too many countries? Let a splendid new book on globalization be the last for a while: it will not be bettered soon," The Economist, 20-26 July, p. 75.

Nice review of Wolf's well-received book, "Why Globalisation Works." Sent to me by my old mentor at the Center for Naval Analysis, stating that the following line was "pure Barnett":

The Sudans and Somalias, he argues, do bear witness to the limits to globalizationóbut only in the sense that globalization needs to go further. The poorest countries in the world stand mostly outside the global economic system. The challenge for development policy is to connect these countries to the rest of the world.

That does sound like my book, does it not?

Wolf's answeróunfortunatelyóis heavy on humanitarian aid with no serious treatment of security issues. While his book is a good one, no doubt, the idea that you can comprehensively define globalization in strictly economic terms is ignoring the "everything else" that is security.

In my mind, then, Wolf writes a great book on economic globalization but a very incomplete one on globalization as a whole.

Greece the Seam State, looking for a little U.S. "glue"

"Pressured by U.S., Greece Will Allow Troops at Olympics," by Raymond Bonner and Anthee Carassava, New York Times, 21 July, p. A1.

I know the U.S. flag in charge of overseeing U.S. military support to the Greek games, and I know how persuasive he can be. I'm very glad to see that Greece is willing to let the U.S. help out on security for the Games. To me, this is a smart example of the U.S. defining its interests beyond "homeland security" (that asinine phrase) to encompass Core-wide security as a whole.

Germany's choice on rule-set reset: play down or play up

"East Germany Swallows Billions, and Still Stagnates," by Mark Landler, New York Times, 21 July, p. A11.

Former West Germany has spent a trillion and a half on former East Germany and the latter has little development to show for it. What's the problem? Frankly, the West has asked the East to play down to its own restrictive economic rule set instead of asking the country as a whole to play up to the far more open Core economic rule-set.

Here's the key excerpt:

George Milbradt, the prime minister of Saxony, said that Bavaria was able to reverse an exodus of people during the depressed 1950's by turning Munich into a center for the automotive and computer industries. Mr. Milbradt said the east can prosper only if it shakes off Germany's stifling labor regulations. That would drive down wages here and make the region competitive with its eastern neighbors. The trouble, he concedes, is that this would require the government to overhaul not just its policy toward the east, but its entire economic program.

Milbradt goes on to say that Germany is a "sick man" who knows what the cure must be, but who fears it more than the disease.