The Long War naturally generates generational change, speeding it up

ARTICLE: "Critiques of Iraq War Reveal Rifts Among Army Officers: Colonel's Essay Draws Rebuttal From General; Captains Losing Faith," by Greg Jaffe, Wall Street Journal, 29 June 2007, p. A1.

Another great piece from Jaffe, who is by far the best reporter out there on institutional change in response to the Long War.

Yingling's article was unremarkable to me in content. To me, its importance was all timing (my initial posted reaction). Like I wrote up front in BFA, the Iraq War creates an air-versus-ground debate over who's losing and what needs to happen for victory in the future.

This article captures that debate nicely: air wants to stick with precision from above and avoid lotsa boots on the ground in c-insurgencies; ground says the latter are inevitable.

The middle ground from Nagl sounds very SysAdmin: use the new troops promised to create a large (20k) mil advisory corps.

That's middle because Nagl's right in saying our success will come more in training others more than fighting ourselves, and because those forces plus our Leviathan's air power are the best treasure-to-blood ratio we can employ (very Balkans-like).

Nagl's right on training because Petraeus is right on calculating boots required (20-35 troops per local 1k population).

And that's where I come in with my arguments on tapping New Core pillars like India and China for bodies.

The logic is emerging, the answers becoming clearer to more and more younger officers.

I am finally beginning to understand the importance of my books to certain military audiences.

To that end, I speak again at Leavenworth on 9/11. I plan on using Aug to retool the brief some in anticipation.

I address West Point next spring.

Tom in Canton

Favre in HOF for starts record.

Preview of coming attractions.

Honestly, the Packer HOF is still cooler. Better exhibits, better kids zone, better films.

Fewer Bears.

Already with the Hispanics!

ARTICLE: "Hispanic Voters Gain New Clout With Democrats: Early Primaries Fueling Outreach Campaigns," by Raymond Hernandez, New York Times, 10 June 2007, p. A1.

Whew! That didn't take long, did it?

Bush lures Hispanics in surprising numbers and wins two squeakers.

Now, possibly the biggest shift in 08 is that Hispanics are going blue over immigration--go figure.

At almost one out of five voters, Hispanics are already a huge potential swing vote: alienate them and pass the election to the other party.

One-on-One Language Connectivity

ARTICLE: "Mandarin 2.0: How Skype, podcasts and broadband are transforming language teaching," The Economist, 9 June 2007, p. 73.

I just love this one.

You've all seen the stories on Indian tutors going live with students here in the States, so this iteration should surprise no one: why not learn Chinese by direct conversation daily with a Chinese over the Web?

Connectivity immersion, you can call it.

Get your own language skills the way God intended: F2F--however virtual.

Remember when language training was one of those "non-tradables"?

Remember what I wrote in "State of the World": if it involves lotsa memorization (and what is language but that?), then it can be outsourced, because if you can commit it to memory, then so can anyone else--whether it's medicine, or the law, or ...

Foreign Policy's failed state index

Foreign Policy's failed state index

The first 50 are all Gap, to no surprise. You have to go to 51 (Belarus) to find a gappish state engulfed by Core territory.

Best article yet on sullen Iranian majority right out of late Brezhnevian USSR

ARTICLE: "Dispatch From Iran: Iranians may have lost faith in the mullahs, but they're not about to overthrow them," by Michael Hirsh, Newsweek, 2-9 July 2007, p. 32.

This article aptly captures what I saw similarly in the USSR in the summer of 1985: most people simply opt out. They've figured out how to make their private lives decent through a thriving black market and off-line alternative lifestyle and in their public lives they pretend to obey so the mullahs can pretend to rule.

This is the dropped-out mentality Gorby ran into in the USSR with his perestroika: basically everyone told him to go shove it cause they weren't in the mood and there was nothing he could offer them. Thus, the Sovs' sad decline pushed that train right off the tracks.

Watch Ahmadinejad's hard-liner-approved reformist successor try to revitalize the masses through such tactics after Ahmadinejad's crackdown tactics achieve nothing but more opting out in the face of the accelerating economic collapse.

Then watch the real change begin.

The New Core is hard core on smoking

MAP: "Who Smokes?," sourced from "The Tobacco Atlas," Newsweek, 2-9 July 2007, p. 57.

General impression of map is Bell curve of smoking as you go from Gap (mostly at 20-30 percent) to New Core (BRIC plus East Europe all in the 30-40 percent range) to Old Core (mostly 10-20 percent).

Pretty close to developmental fit: all the New Core (and some rising Gap) hit the highest rates of smoking.

What does that tell us?

You get some money and you smoke. Then the development and resulting aging kicks in, and you move to a healthier lifestyle.

End of active Bush presidency

ANALYSIS: Bush May Be Out of Chances For a Lasting Domestic Victory, By Peter Baker, Washington Post, June 29, 2007; Page A01

The Bush defeat on the immigration bill, which I supported, most likely marks the effective end of his active presidency.

Save for the expected strikes on Iran, this administration is pretty much wound down, to the point of outsourcing Rice's job to Tony Blair WRT Mideast.

Don't waste the love

ARTICLE: America Still Cherished Around Africa, By EDWARD HARRIS, Associated Press, June 28, 2007

A very true assessment of our greatest advantage in Africa: we're simply not hated there. This is a huge asset not to be dissipated by AFRICOM.

Thanks to Rob Johnson for sending this.

Oh, no! Someone's upset!

COLUMN: Inside the Ring, By Bill Gertz, The Washington Times, June 29, 2007

Remember Tom's last trip to Hawaii, meeting with SOCOM folks, including observers from China? You won't believe this, but someone in the DOD didn't like it!

A Defense Department official is upset that the U.S. Pacific Command recently hosted a meeting in Hawaii of representatives of U.S. and foreign special operations forces that included commands from China's special operations forces.

"We shouldn't be inviting the Chinese to these meetings," said a special forces operator opposed to the meeting.

A former special operations officer was also upset that the Pentagon's Special Operations and Low-Intensity Conflict office is promoting Chinese participation in such meetings since the Chinese military continues to view the United States as its main enemy and is using such forums to gain information that could be used against the United States in a future conflict.

Put it this way: Tom doesn't really agree.

The SysAdmin in Western Africa

ARTICLE: 'West Africa Gets U.S. Military Help: Washington Steps Up Efforts to Curb Piracy In Oil-Rich Region,' By Spencer Swartz, Wall Street Journal (Europe), June 29, 2007, Pg. 8

Great companion piece to my "Americans Have Landed" article. This stuff is the work of Adm. Harry Ulrich, head of U.S./NATO naval forces in Europe (EUCOM has owned West Africa).

I visited Ulrich in March, as you may remember, to give two speeches to his staff and participate in a planning ex. I also interviewed him on this story and wrote him into a first draft, but it ended up getting cut due to length (just too much story). I hope to follow up on this story myself in the future. Til then, a good overview of our efforts, which will also definitely inform AFRICOM.

Esquire has landed . . . in the Wall Street Journal!

THE INFORMED READER: INSIGHTS AND ITEMS OF INTEREST FROM OTHER SOURCES: "U.S. Diplomacy and Defense at Odds in Africa," Esquire, July.

Nice summary. Because the WSJ poaches at will, I return the favor by posting their entire summary:

The U.S. is building a new Africa strategy around both fighting and diplomacy, but Esquire's Thomas P.M. Barnett reports that the military has struggled to unify those elements on the ground.

The aims of the special operations forces that have long been the main U.S. military presence in Africa sometimes clash with civil-affairs-oriented units charged with building long-term local alliances. In 2003, the U.S. military set up a base in Djibouti that has become an experiment in combining what are known as the three Ds: defense, diplomacy and development. Next summer, the Pentagon plans to launch an Africa Command that will probably model its strategy in the continent along the lines laid down in Djibouti.

The difficulty in synchronizing the two components became apparent when U.S. forces aided the Ethiopian invasion of Somalia earlier this year. Capt. Bob Wright, who heads strategic communications for the Combined Joint Task Force-Horn of Africa in Djibouti, complains to Mr. Barnett that the U.S. soldiers' involvement in the Somali mission undermined the military's diplomatic and development efforts in the region. It "makes everyone think that what we're trying to do here [in the Horn of Africa] really doesn't count, but it does. You can't make the Horn a better place simply by killing bad guys," said Capt. Wright.

Capt. Wright says he has hardly any contact with the special-ops soldiers housed separately at the Djibouti base. When Mr. Barnett sees men in black scrambling down a building in the north side of the base he asks the public-affairs officer what's happening. "Over where?" comes the reply. "I don't see anything."

In a separate base in Kenya, however, Mr. Barnett praises the sort of work the civil-affairs unit is doing in the Muslim community. The troops recently learned that girls were being pulled from a village school because of a prohibition against girls and boys sharing a bathroom. The army built a new school. "Girls stayed in school, parents were happy, mullahs were satisfied, local leaders immensely gratified," writes Mr. Barnett.

My only complaint? On that last bit, the Army built a separate head, not an entirely new school.

Actually, I complain that they used one of their own, old pictures (recently used in story on the Philippines) instead of reprinting one of mine! Foiled again in my quest to be recognized as a photojournalist (although the web show Esquire set up is very nice).

Still, very cool to make the "Informed Reader." I was just catching up on my mound of papers tonight and saw the headline, wondering who else had written on the subject this month. Then I saw "Esquire" and got excited!

Nice timing with the story making the Early Bird today.

The Gap will map itself

ARTICLE: Google Maps Is Changing the Way We See the World, By Evan Ratliff, June 26, 2007

Way cool article on a way cool phenomenon: mob mapping of our world. Fun and convenient stuff for the already highly demarcated Old Core, but essential growth for the loosey-goosey New Core and a serious breakthrough in ground-level connectivity in the Gap.

In its way, it's an amazing bottom-up form of advertising. One thing I remembered from my summer in the USSR in 1985: no advertising meant no one knew where anything was or how to buy it, so you wasted so much time ferreting out such info--just wandering around.

Imagine a Gap that self-maps! Imagine the individual empowerment from that, on a level and scope that DeSoto would have to love!

This is something I want to explore in Vol. III: most of shrinking-the-Gap will be done by individuals, corporations, and groupings below the level of the nation-state.

Thanks to Jason Wright for sending this in.

Old and new school

ARTICLE: Beyond the Cloister, By David H. Petraeus, American Interest

ARTICLE: Learning to Lose, By Ralph Peters, American Interest

This is a typical Old School/New School split. Peters wants his kinetics, pure and simple, and he wants uncomplicated officers to wage such war. Petraeus sees a more complex world, where war and peace aren't separable. He wants officers capable of navigating that seam.

So Petraeus wants officers who understand the everything else, while Peters, the former intell guy, protects his turf.

Petraeus is a good example of the danger of "too much" education: he doesn't protect his rice bowls like he should, thus he's obviously a "careerist."

This is why I don't think grand strategists can arise from within military ranks: because those who try are inevitably branded as traitors to their particular tribe. That's what happened to Cebrowski. That's what happens to them all: once they get out of the box, they're out of the club.

Thanks to Nathan Machula for sending this.

[Editor's note: Petraeus' title matches up pretty well with Tom's Esquire article that featured him (among others): The Monks of War]

Too bad this isn't a payoff

POST: At least three Iranians killed in petrol rationing riots underlining the oil-rich country’s fuel vulnerability

To the extent that Bush and Cheney engineer war jitters in Iran, this is a nifty payoff that works toward destabilizing the regime.

If the Bush team had real capacity to capitalize on those fears at the top, this could be a very clever gambit, but I don't think any such plan exists because I think Cheney remains committed to going all the way.

Thanks to Rob Johnson for sending this.

China's coming around, but it takes time

ARTICLE: Describing Vision for China, Hu Defends Reforms, Rejects Calls for Democracy, By Edward Cody, Washington Post, June 27, 2007; Page A13

Politically, this is where China stands: facing huge social and economic and environmental and technological challenges, there's little appetite at the top to open up the system politically. Left to its own devices, the party would rule unopposed forever, but with so many "devices" out there, that's going to change--not from above but from below. Not a decades-and-decades thing. I just don't see the party able to run China in 2025 like it does today. Just too many people wanting to translate wealth into more political say. A beach head for now, but add those billion new consumers and watch the push grow into a shove. Freedom begins when you get used to doing what you want with your own money. Once you get that under your skin, you start becoming less reasonable about your lack of political freedom.

We forget that the average Chinese just obtained that basic economic freedom in the past decade or so with the opening of the economy: real money combined with real choices.

So yeah, it takes time.

China's connections are growing

ARTICLE: 'Text Messages Giving Voice to Chinese: Opponents of Chemical Factory Found Way Around Censors,' By Edward Cody, Washington Post, June 28, 2007; Page A01

ARTICLE: Meeting With U.S. Campaign Aides Shows China's Interest in the Race, By Michael Abramowitz, Washington PostJune 28, 2007; Page A04

China's connections, both high and low, are growing.

At the top, a more proactive stance on engaging presidential camps. At the bottom, yet another largely uncontrollable venue for political expression.

Good stuff all around.

Grow more lawn

ARTICLE: U.S. forces turning to ‘indirect’ war tactics, AP, June 27, 2007

More evolution toward SysAdmin thinking: grow more lawn and stop obsessing on killing weeds.

We see the limits of the SOF direct action. We see why CJTF-HOA is the real future.

Nice quote from Doug MacGregor, a very smart guy I mixed with briefly under Cebrowski in the Pentagon.

Thanks to Jeff Jennings for sending this.

Islam's not the problem

PRESS RELEASE: S&P Launches Pan Asia Shariah Index, June 26, 2007

Yet another sign that Islam per se is not the problem--at least not in Asia. That leads one to believe it's Middle Eastern/Arab culture that's the problem.

Much like the Boomers, they see politics as absolute zero-sum.

Jointness in the IC

ARTICLE: Broader Experience for Higher Intelligence, By Stephen Barr, Washington Post, June 28, 2007; Page D04

Good move by McConnell. There's no joint doctrine in the IC because there's no jointness to speak of. This starts moving things in the right direction.