Tom report (including golf)

Looking at some foreign travel soon, so need to get some passport photos.

Rest of my day spent revamping the Vol. III book proposal based on inputs from my agency. I found their suggestions easy to swallow, in that they all make the book more sellable. So I put the analysis aside (my ongoing bug problems continue, so I get my quotient there) and I work that proposal to conclusion today.

Saw the July Esquire in DC yesterday, so not surprised to get the PR agency call on the story coming out. Gotta call that lady back.

Oh, and I shot a 92 last night on my par 3 course. Started the year with 85 and 89. Last year it took me many times to come down from the 120s (where Kev now resides) into the low nineties. Starting to get some real control on the shots, so consistency and fatigue are the big issues, plus my cranky knee.

Thanks to whoever sent the nice golf towel.

Just asking ...

You have the low savings/high spending argument to explain this. But there are strong counters to that argument (Gregory Mankiw is someone to check on that) that say we're measuring all wrong and we're actually a creditor nation (I remember blogging a WSJ edit on his research a while back that said if you measure the gains on our investments versus the costs of our debt, we're actually cleaning up).

My question is, What are other great causal arguments on this rise? Clearly, there's a demand function here: foreigners want our currency. Is this a huge banking up following the currency crises of the 1990s and do they disappear because of all these states now being fortified appropriately with this era's natural global reserve currency?

Just asking ...

Thanks to Renato for sending this.

I am definitely a Hamiltonian

OP-ED: Reviving the Hamilton Agenda, By DAVID BROOKS, New York Times, June 8, 2007

Excerpt:

These days there seem to be four schools of political economic thought.

First, there are the limited government conservatives, who think taxes should be low and the state should be as small as possible.

Second, there are the Hamiltonians, who believe in free market capitalism but think government should help people get the tools they need to compete in it.

Third, there are the mainstream liberals, who think government should intervene in small ways throughout the economy to soften the effects of creative destruction.

Fourth, there are the populists, who believe the benefits of the global economy are going to the rich and we need to fundamentally rewrite the rules.

Brilliant piece by Brooks. I have a hard time finding any fault in it.

I am definitely a Hamiltonian, but I'm willing to listen to the "softening effects" arguments from liberals. I have no interest in the extremes.

Thanks to Dan Hare for sending this.

Rerun trip

Just back from two days in DC.

Flew in late Tuesday and spent some time discussing the future of the company with Steve at our hotel.

Next morning we're up early for another Enterra meeting, then back to the same large defense contractor/systems integrator that we visited last weekend for more detailed talks about how we can cooperate on work that's coming in right now and unfolding.

Then back to the NSA for more detailed discussions of what Enterra is doing, talking to exactly the right sort of people (my job accomplished from the initial visit).

Then I was back to my hotel to finish the column, swim, work out on the elliptical, and soak in the tub.

Then to the annual gala dinner last night of the Society for International Development, Washington chapter. Steve and I spent much of the night working on a key recruit.

Then up very early this am to fly back home.

Stationary for a while.

I’ll take money over altruism any day as a motivator for change

ARTICLE: “Class-Action Firms Extend Reach to Global Rights Cases,” by Adam Liptak, New York Times, 3 June 2007, p. A27.

Thousands of young boys from Asia and Africa abducted and forced to ride camels in races for rich audiences in the Persian Gulf--right out of some bad Hollywood movie that unfairly slights Arabs.

Except it’s true.

Now the camels are ridden by robots (yes, that’s even weirder), but the kids want restitution for “stolen childhoods.”

So a class-action firm out of South Carolina that’s worked asbestos and tobacco in the past takes on the case. Critics say the firm’s in it only for the money, especially as the class-action work dries up over time in the U.S.

Me? I say, let’s export the capacity and with it the rule-making function: you screw with people and they can sue you en masse for damages.

The professors of international law don’t like it, saying these lawyers are just sharks, but a lawyer group puts it better:

The large-scale entry of class-action lawyers into this field is an indication that this has gone beyond the hopes of a few human rights groups to create publicity for their causes and into an area where there is money to be made.

Whine all you want about lawyers, but this is great stuff. Our most important and historic export is rules, and liability drives that process more than anything else, and liability gets measured in money.

Focus on the ends, not the means, but don’t condemn the means either. If you want profound change, trust greed over do-goodism.

Kristof revisits the pathetic plight of the North Koreans

OP-ED: “Escape From North Korea: Brave conductors on an Underground Railroad,” by Nicholas D. Kristof, New York Times, 4 June 2007, p. A23.

Everything you’d expect in a story like this: people so desperate they’ll do anything to escape.

In terms of body counts and overall suffering, North Korea is a far worse story than Darfur and has been for years. It’s also a story where Beijing could truly make a solution happen largely on its own, something it cannot do in Sudan. Plus, solving the DPRK appeals to Beijing’s self-interest in ways that Sudan clearly contradicts.

So why aren’t we highlighting the “Underground Railroad Olympics”? (Actually, I see a lot of cruel potential there …).

Simple answer? No celebrities visit North Korea. No celebrities, no attention.

That’s a key sign that signals priority: the most disconnected suffer the most ignored fates.

The Coming Business Heaven? Take that Bob Kaplan!

ADVERTISEMENT: “Invest in Macedonia: New Business Heaven in Europe,” by Invest Macedonia, New York Times, 4 June 2007, p. A9.

My favorites bullets are “free connection to piped natural gas, electricity, water and sewage” and “immediate access to main international airport, railroad and vital road corridors.”

Macedonia has free trade agreements with 27 EU and 13 other Euro countries.

I guess this Balkan “ghost” didn’t get the memo about the coming anarchy.

Bush plan on global warming gets the direction right

NEWS ANALYSIS: “Bush Climate Plan: Amid Nays, Some Maybes: A bottom-up approach on emissions might help the Kyoto pact,” by Andrew C. Revkin, New York Times, 4 June 2007, p. A9.

When I explored global warming with Cantor Fitzgerald back in 2001 at our World Trade Center 1 “economic security exercise,” the consensus I picked up from Wall Street was that Kyoto was doomed, and that this thing would be tackled first sub-nationally, then nationally, then regionally, then globally, building cap-and-trade regimes from the bottom up.

Bush’s plan “calls for rounding up the world’s biggest emitters of greenhouse gases and, in 18 months, settling on nation-by-nation programs for slowing emissions and on a long-term common goal for reducing them.”

Most interesting is the qualified support for Bush’s approach coming out of Europe, king of top-down approaches. Europe’s been struggling somewhat with the unintended consequences of its program to date.

But the big point of this approach is realizing that different players and different regions come with different problems, so a global cap-and-trade needs to evolve from individual solutions pioneered and worked out initially from below. China and Brazil, for example, have very different paths to take. Why not let both experiment and let the world learn from that process, much like we in the States let individual states pioneer new public policies.

Even America, in its great success on cap-and-trade with SOx and NOx, worked the subject regionally for similar reasons.

So give Bush credit on this one.

The economic angle on the Big Bang

INTERNATIONAL EDITION of WSJ: “OPEC Leader Looks for Foreign Investment: Cartel Needs Help To Meet Demand,” by Guy Chazan, Washington Post, 6 June 2007, p. D4.

One reason why I liked Bush’s timing on Iraq was that it corresponded with the inflection point on rising Asia’s demand for Middle Eastern energy. I know Friedman goes the other way on that, but my reading of economies in the region said that none of them were really so flush that they’d be stockpiling money and thus have more than enough to manage the required investment in raised output.

Simply put, the region--with the exceptions of the tiny Gulf states--tends to spend the money as fast as it gets it (here, rising populations and expectations work in our favor), meaning they’re as addicted (or even more so, given their lack of options) to selling energy than the Core is to buying energy (we’re just not motivated enough financially to move off the current profile).

You place this consistently high demand on the system and the logic of markets will force the Core to have to step into the Middle East with investment dollars to tap the cartel’s “vast reserves.”

The problem, of course, is that that OPEC countries are famous for keeping out foreign investment (their zero-sum mentality knows no bounds).

But already this nut gets ready to crack. OPEC’s GenSec says his members “need to invest as much as $500 billion by 2020 to satisfy demand” and that OPEC’s NOCs (national oil companies) can’t do it all by themselves (as PEMEX has proved and Chavez is proving).

Even in the cases where outside money is less needed, like the richest Gulf states, there is the need for outside technology and expertise.

Not surprisingly, Iran is failing on both counts, and thus stands as one of the neediest. As it’s production continues to fall due to under-investment, the soft-kill possibilities grow.

Globalization IV remains the main conduit of Big Bang-like changes in the Middle East and throughout the Gap. Decisions like taking down Saddam can speed the inevitable killing, but they aren’t the overwhelming drivers of either success or failure that so many make them out to be. They simply give the U.S. a chance to paddle faster than the current now and then.

Ancient professions always suffer when globalization embraces a nation

ARTICLE: “An Ancient Indian Craft Left in Tatters: Sari Weavers Struggle Amid Economic Boom,” by Emily Wax, Washington Post, 6 June 2007, p. A1.

When exposed to globalization’s competitive schemes, the mythical small farms always disappear in great numbers, and the “noble” professions like coal mining give way to less damaging careers (actually, if you grew up in a farming community like I did, you knew just how amazingly dangerous farming really is--especially for child laborers, and all farm kids are child laborers). We tend to romanticize these professions (at least, those of us who’ve never engaged in them, but me personally, I found working on a farm to be one VERY bone-wearying job), going on about “how green was my valley” and vilifying Maggie Thatcher for reducing the UK’s opportunities in the black lung-creation industry.

But there’s a reason why life expectancies rise with development, and it’s mostly about the population moving away from tough jobs, making more money, and thus getting better healthcare. It a very virtuous cycle.

Yes, some crafts get decimated in the process, but they don’t go away completely anywhere. They just stop being a main source of employment (making saris is number 2 in India, after farming).

Here’s a misguided statement:

“This is the ugly, painful side of globalization. It’s a real crisis. If India is booming, you don’t see it among weavers or farmers or other rural laborers, which is to say most of the country,” said Lenin Raghusvanshi, head of the People’s Vigilance Committee for Human Rights.

I love that quote for what it implies: globalization should create conditions under which high-labor-intensity professions flourish in the countryside. And this from a guy named Lenin!

Yes, it’s the ugly side, but it’s meant to be so. Globalization is a main trigger of rural-to-urban movement. The goal here isn’t to keep the vast bulk of Indians working the farm or weaving, anymore than America was shooting across the 20th century to have a huge chunk of its population stay on the farm. The foot-powered loom doesn’t belong in India’s future. It belongs in a museum, because it’s that level of technology and productivity that keeps 70 percent of India living on less than $2 a day with almost half of the kids malnourished.

We’ve got to stop romanticizing poverty-enablers, no matter their lengthy pedigree or even their stylistic beauty.

You know what’s beautiful about Wal-Mart? People can afford shopping there.

Bi-lingual America?

OP-ED: “The Great Assimilation Machine,” by Linda Chavez, Wall Street Journal, 5 June 2007, p. A23.

The killer stat: “96% of third-generation Mexican Americans prefer to speak English at home.”

So to the extent we're bilingual, it's simply a processing function that sequentially solves itself--cohort by cohort.

Another: one out of four Hispanic immigrants intermarry with whites, but one out of three U.S.-born Hispanics do the same, suggesting an absorption trend.

Chavez ends by noting that the oft-cited prediction about Hispanics making up one-third of the U.S. population by 2050 ignores the profound trend, because it really speaks to one-third of Americans having a partial Hispanic heritage--not all of them being “pure” Hispanics (much less isolated and ghettoized).

The reality is that:

… increasing numbers of these so-called Hispanics will have only one grandparent or great-grandparent of Hispanic heritage. At which point Hispanic ethnicity will mean little more than German, Italian or Irish ethnicity does today.”

That, my friends, is an observation--based on decades and decades of American history--that’s worth remembering. You string together bits like that and you’ve got a systematic understanding of the future, one in which “black swans” possess no more capacity to disturb your thinking than the obvious “shocks” associated with personal aging (which really stun me!).

Or you can wander around being shocked and awed all the time, feeding on the fear mongering that passes for strategic thought.

Who are we? Come on! We’re the same package we’ve always been. We just alter the ingredients over time.

Let Europe freak out, but let’s remember how we got here and how we’ll get there.

Enterra's open for interns

If you check out the site and the career opportunities ring true (lower left sidebar), then pass me a resume and I'll pass along--for real.

I cannot promise when we'll be accepting interns and putting them to work. I just know there is interest in doing so, thus little harm in letting us know.

You just need to stay patient and realistic on responses. We're a small company of less than 50 and we're hiring somewhere north of an additional 100 in the near term, so everyone's very stressed sked-wise.

Tom thumbed the keys off his phone! [updated]

Occupational hazard of so much email and posting. Here's the unedited email I got from him tonight:

My phone is losing keys y the minute.

Logging slows as result

let readers know.

Meanwhile enterra usiness oerwhelms

so this will e slow week on log.

Looks like the 'b' and 'v' are gone at least. When I know something more I'll pass it on.

Update:

Furthercomment on my phone dying (keys going one y one):

I am amialent. Feel like i'e logged a lot recently. You know how you can get depressed after a lot of great sex, ecause you realie you can't hae any more for a while, ecause you'e had too "much"?

That's how I feel now. Just can't get my treo up!

Quid pro quo for Turkey on Kurdistan

ARTICLE: 7 Turkish troops killed in rebel attack, By SELCAN HACAOGLU, Associated Press, Jun 4, 2007

As we move to salvage the "other Iraq," the quid pro quo for long-term but late-arriving ally Turkey seems clear: the PKK gets suppressed.

If Kurdistan is serious about retaining their measure of independence, there is no alternative.

Thanks to Tyler Durden for sending this.

On a more serious, self-congratulatory note ...

Letter from Maj. Gen. Stephen Miller, Commandant, Air War College, dated 30 May:

Dear Dr. Barnett

On behalf of the Air War College (AWC) Class of 2007, I would like to extend my since appreciation for your outstanding presentation. Your remarks ... [the usual].

Feedback from our students showed that 86% thought your presentation was either "Excellent" or "Outstanding." They remarked your presentation was very candid, thought-provoking and one of the best of the year.

Again, thank you for your presentation. We appreciate your selfless support in helping prepare our future leaders and look forward to your return to Air University.

"Selfless" means I discount my speaking fee 90 percent, which is a bad way to make a living, but a good way to fulfill a duty you truly believe in.

I never get tired of the letters, nor the command coins. Each one means a lot to me. If all I was interested in was cranking cash, there are much easier ways than spending more than half your year on the road.

Then again, the AWC buys PNM in numbers for the class.

Something bugging me

We have a sun room that's a cement floor over a foundation filled in with rice gravel. We're well aware that can be a breeding ground for bugs, and we have a regular package with Terminex that works well enough to keep the ants out (our land was original forest until last year, so you can't expect all the bugs to up and leave just because you showed up).

Here's my problem: a swarmy on deck and on brick in back of house (deck stuck in corner formed by sun room extension and opens into breakfast nook off kitchen; windows in sun room aren't the heavy-duty stuff elsewhere in house due to large size, so a bit easier for bugs to enter). The bugs are very tiny. Long-oval shape with two antenna on top. Can hop around a bit. Seem interested not in food per se, and the only reason they seem in the house is that they're swarming.

I know it's not termites, because those are obvious in color and size. These things are so small they're almost impossible to see standing up. They seem happiest with grout and brickface (our sun room has original outside wall brickface on interior).

They were just swarming through insulated doors and sun room windows (they are like small gnats, they're so tiny) and the usual ant spray didn't seem to bug them at all.

So I tried pure vinegar, which we use on the tile and marble for cleaning (mild acid) and that seems to both kill and drive them off. Since you can use that stuff ad nauseum with no fear (that happy Easter smell), I'm pretty happy with this outcome (sprayed even the entire brickface in sun room and that seemed to eliminate those climbing there). I have no idea how long the solution lasts (do you have to do it constantly?), nor what Terminex might offer as a solution. Or whether one is really required (is this just a time of year they swarm and then they're gone?).

Again, a new one for me. Just curious if anyone recognizes the problem.

They're not something I haven't seen before. They're the tiny little crawling bugs that you typically find in small numbers in the door jam during the warm months. What's stunning me is their storming and swarming. I'm hoping it peaks and goes away, like June bugs or something, but I just don't know, so I ask.

I know it's cheesy to ask on my super-serious blog, but hey! I'm certain I have bug experts out there among the thousands.

ADDEDNDUM THE NEXT MORNING: I found a few up in our master bedroom, hiding on the tile under a rug and then a few in the bathroom. I now completely recognize them as the smaller versions of the bugs you typically find on your grout inn hidden locations. When I went down this morning, they weren't swarming outside on the brickface or deck, and then weren't streaming in. I found a onesy here and there wandering around. My guess is now that it was one of those mass birth things: they are swarm everywhere they can and prefer cooler locations, hence the desire to sneak into the house. Some make it in, get bigger, and we find and kill them over the next several weeks as they show themselve, hopefully keeping ny survivng population very small so that next year this aint' so bad.

Still, having Terminex come back and spray the baseboards in tiled rooms.

The JFK Terror Plot

Seems like a perfect example of Robb's notions, speaking to the loose-coupling effect and open-source thinking.

Fortunately, as so often is the case, we're not talking about the brightest bulbs in the lot.

But as a model of the future of security threats, awfully powerful, and as such, it becomes the foundation for defining new security relationships.

Share the vulnerability, share the solutions.

And no, a carrier battle group won't do.

We should welcome Asian military cooperation

ARTICLE: Indonesia Requests Maritime Security Help From Japan, China, Korea, By Chad Bouchard, VOA News, 03 June 2007

Natural development, and one that should be welcomed if we want Asia to move down the NATO-like track, begin to police itself, and evolve into a security exporter we can use.

Thanks to Rob Johnson for sending this.

Staring you in the face

I'm riding in the Odyssey with my wife at the wheel and the kids sort of watching the DVD and sort of bickering among themselves. It's 2pm and we're all sort of realizing what a huge frickin' mess we've gotten ourselves into.

We've finally pulled the trigger on Marengo.

Marengo is apparently someplace where either Napoleon won or lost versus the British way back when.

It's also a big cave in southern Indiana.

We've spoken and plotted to go there since arriving in Indiana in 2005. Today we finally pulled it off.

We have everything in tow: the sullen 15-year-old, the incredibly trying 12-year-old, the Yoda-wise seven-year-old with the hair-trigger temper, the three-year-old who mimics them all incessantly, experiments with unclicking and reclicking her seat belts and lost her three front teeth to her diet as an infant in China years ago (the toll only being reached last week, to the horror of her adoptive parents), the wife who loves her husband more than ever as he as grows occasionally quite distant in his work, the dad storming to figure out his book on grand strategy who sometimes seems painfully oblivious to the world around him.

Marengo.

It's almost the title of the reflective memoir of his/her broken family that child # 1, 2, 3 or 4 writes decades from now, to world acclaim.

It's the metaphor for roads not taken, sights not visited, wounds not healed, family not preserved.

Except we pulled off, we had our fights, we managed our hugs, we connected on various levels, and the day ends with several strong bonds reinforced.

It is amazingly exhausting to keep a family going, but it's the most important thing you'll ever accomplish.

They will test you, they will inform you, they will reflect you.

None will turn out as you expect, none will follow the paths you have chosen, all will push every conceivable boundary.

And if you're smart, you will recognize that your love depends on nothing they do, or become, or how they extend your life in the people they choose to love, the children they manage to raise, or the family they're lucky enough to conceive and maintain.

Throughout it all--this parenting gig--I learn one thing: never bet against the need to connect.

Globalization isn't a historical process, nor some sum of national calculations. It's the same expression of desire we've witnessed from humans since their status in this world was still questionable.

Simply put, the questions never stop. They just become more individualized, more concrete, more palpable.

But humanity moves on.

I know, I see it every day, in the eyes and actions of creatures I consider so beautiful and so dear that I sometimes catch myself listening for every breath they take.

There is a saying in youth services, that every kid grows up thinking the world is exactly like their family--no matter what the circumstances.

Think about that for a minute and you crack every code worth deciphering in human history.

The same, I am finding, is true for anyone aspiring to truly strategic thought. The sterility, the humanity, and all the variations in between can be located in this most intimate of processes--this microcosm of global community.

You want ideas that stick? Then connect to that which sticks to you.

There is no escape in a world of complete transparency.

Horizontal thinking is a great gift, but a personal curse. There are so many days and so much empathy to be had in any one life. You share where you can, you husband where you must, and you give it every full measure possible.

There is no retreat once you accept the connection.

You either rush into it all or you spend your days cringing behind your cynicism, camouflaging it as "objective expertise."

I don't want to waste one minute, and I will exploit every source possible in the meantime.

And therein lies my faith.

Tom around the web

+ Curtis Gale Weeks says Tom was wrong in The virtual war yields non-kinetic outcomes and 'Shame on you, sir'. I think that's a little too strong, Curtis.
+ Baudrillard's Bastard linked that post, too.

+ John Robb linked Iraqi DMZ.
+ So did Coming Anarchy.

+ Simulated Laughter linked An overwrought, ideologically myopic argument.
+ Blogs of War linked Rehabbing religion in China.
+ David Knobel reviewed PNM.
+ NonParty Politics says Tom Donnelly often sounds like Tom B.
+ From the Desert to the Sea… linked Global movie marketplace.
+ So did Most Serene Republic (but he said it was because the movie sucked).

+ Small Wars Journal had an article by Fernando Martinez Luj√°n that referenced Tom and BFA on bifurcated military.
+ World Trade Magazine had an article by John L. Manzella that references Tom and PNM.
+ Auspundits linked Romney wants his DoEE.
+ Draconian Observations linked The talks are cordial, but go nowhere.
+ Kindred Winecoff linked Zoellick a good choice for World Bank.
+ PurpleSlog says he can simplify Tom's message to 'justice'.
+ What the Heck was I Thinking!? used 'disconnectedness' which he calls 'a Thomas Barnett-ism'.
+ ZenPundit linked Message in a bottle.
+ Dans Blog reprinted Tom's column from today.