The social reinvention that’s possible through successful immigration: a tale of two cities

ARTICLE: “Cradle snatching: The difficulties of living with a low birth-rate,” The Economist, 18 March 2006, p. 55.

SURVEY (City of Chicago): “The Mexican motor: Latinos are now the region’s biggest minority,” The Economist, 18 March 2006, p. 16.

Two countries going in different directions. In Germany, there is talk of “demographic theft” in which parts of the country that are short of young people are luring them away from other sections, in a Pied Piper like manner. So Germany witnesses a profound shift of bodies from East to West, turning the former DDR into something akin to the Plains small towns that are drying up.

It is an amazingly vicious cycle: “after losing the young, female and well-educated, municipalities have to close schools, increase utility fees to finance an oversize infrastructure and spend more on an aging population--all of which makes them still less attractive.”

Meanwhile, listen to Chicago’s demographic re-blooming: between 1970 and 2004, Latinos account for 96% of population growth in the six counties that define the greater Chicago region. That’s right--96%.

What’s weird with this is that the Hispanics skip the ghetto and go straight to the suburbs, where they do the 3D (dirty, dangerous, difficult) jobs. So they’re dispersed even as they cluster in small networks.

In this somewhat hard landing in America, Hispanics make do with a lot less services, or better to say, they tend to be underserved.

What changes that? Hispanics get money, they elect leaders, those leaders push for changes.

That’s how it’s worked for minorities throughout our country’s long history. You want to tell who’s coming up next? Check out the boxers and cops. At one time, those were more Irish pursuits. At another, more Italian. At another, more black. Now, more and more Hispanic.

Two countries headed in different directions.

I’m not worried. I love Mexican.

The learning organization reaches deeper into its past to gaze farther into its future

ARTICLE: “As Iraq War Rages, Army Re-Examines Lessons of Vietnam: Recent Books Pan Doctrine Of Overwhelming Power When Fighting Guerrillas; A Gift for Donald Rumsfeld,” by Greg Jaffe, Wall Street Journal, 20 March 2006, p. A1.

ARTICLE: “Deaths fall for U.S., rise for Iraqis: Changes in roles shift casualties,” by Thomas Frank, USA Today, 20 March 2006, p. 1A.

OP-ED: “The Stone Face of Zarqawi: The war in Iraq is not a ‘distraction’ from fighting al Qaeda,” by Christopher Hitchens, Wall Street Journal, 21 March 2006, p. A14.

OP-ED: “Passing the Dinar: Postwar planning? Not for this war,” by John Tierney, New York Times, 21 March 2006, p. A17.

ARTICLE: “Kabul faces fury over lack of aid to replace opium fields,” by Rachel Morarjee, Financial Times, 20 March 2006, p. 3

Yet another great piece from Greg Jaffe on how the Army is changing from within, under the duress of Iraq. As I like to say in my brief: the Iraq war changes nothing (what did we prove by waxing the regime?), while the Iraq (non) peace changes everything. Bush 41 crowed about finally killing the Vietnam Syndrome with Desert Storm back in 1991, but no such thing happened. Or maybe it did among the U.S. populace. But within the U.S. Army, the Vietnam Syndrome was really about our inability to do counter-insurgency correctly, and the Army’s profound desire post-Vietnam to get out of that business forever--thus the banishing of civil affairs to Tampa and SOCOM.

The star of this piece is the charismatic Col. John Nagl, whom I had the great pleasure of interviewing by phone for the “Monks of War” piece, even as I wasn’t able to work his stuff into the final version (alas, we could have only so many stars in that piece). Plus, to be honest, Nagl had to push pretty hard to even get permission to talk to me because apparently he was under a bit of a gag order at the time, either because he got a bit too much press when the NYT Sunday mag made him a cover boy a while back (that “Professor Nagl’s War” piece) or because his current role as military aide to DEPSECDEF Gordon England (if I remember correctly) places him a little too close to the top for such things. Nagl finally got permission and we had a great chat, but the word was it was only on background, so I took from him what I could, which was mostly a lot of tips on where to look and whom to interview.

Anyway, this is a great piece by Jaffe examining how the Army is rethinking its past and finally coming to grips with what counter-insurgency really means in this age of Fourth Generation Warfare, so Nagl’s great 2002 book, Eating Soup with a Knife, is cited, among others, as seminal work now making all the right rounds within the ranks.

In the piece, Nagl cites the great influence Andy Krepinevich’s book, The Army and Vietnam, had on his work (basically his Oxford PhD diss turned into a book), and after now spending a couple of days with Andy, I come to match Nagl’s admiration for the man’s very incisive reasoning on all things military. Doesn’t mean I agree with everything he puts out, but his consistent performance over a long, highly productive career is not in doubt.

I guess what I like most about this article is that it signals that Nagl’s influence is growing, and that influence is mostly about overturning Colin Powell’s “overwhelming force” concept as far as the second half is concerned.

Don’t get me wrong: I want the first-half war to be as overwhelming in its power projected as possible. But to me, the second-half peace, and any necessary counter-insurgency effort, is not about overwhelming force but overwhelming presence. So again, my old bit about Rummy being right on the footprint for the war, with all that overwhelming force, but Army Chief of Staff Eric Shinseki also being right about the much larger footprint needed for the peace, or what should have been overwhelming presence--the kind you feel in Manhattan when you turn the corner and bump into a couple hundred of New York’s finest.

It’s never a choice of one versus the other, but really one of sequencing, and to me, sequencing is everything when waging both war and peace inside the Gap, because the ultimate goal is connecting the country to the larger world, a tough process at any time but even trickier coming out of conflict, when you have the potential to either get things very right or very wrong.

So when Rummy shows up in Iraq recently, George Casey, current top U.S. military commander on the ground, gives him Nagl’s book.

And Nagl is one of the four officers tapped by the Wallace-Petraeus-Mattis trio (profiled by me in last month’s Esquire) to co-author the new Marine-Army COIN, or counter-insurgency doctrine. That is some serious God’s work:

One of the doctrine’s primary goals is to shatter the conventional wisdom that defined the post-Vietnam Army. “We are at a turning point in the Army’s institutional history,” Col. Nagl and his co-authors write in a forthcoming essay in “Military Review,” an Army journal.

The doctrine’s biggest emphasis is on the need to curb the military’s use of firepower, which created thousands of refugees and horrific collateral damage in Vietnam. “The more force you use when battling insurgents, the less effective you are,” the draft states.

That is some pretty amazing stuff, if you consider that Harry Summers’ On Strategy has dominated Army thinking on the failure of Vietnam since the 1980s (the idea being that the politicians kept it from fighting as hard it should have).

So what Nagl is doing is more that overturning the Powell Doctrine in the second half, he’s making it smart and cool and right again for young officers to study COIN, a field that fell completely out of favor after Vietnam.

The story of Nagl’s book is cool, because it features the right guys at the right moments helping out. He publishes his diss. with Praeger, just like I did. And I’m sure it sold the same 500 copies that such serious academic tomes do when put forth by the ivory tower’s version of a vanity press.

But then current Army Chief of Staff Pete Schoomaker gets a hold of a copy. And then Newt Gingrich, the Tyler Durden of military transformation (wherever I go, he was just there!), gets a hold of a copy. Newt makes some calls, the story goes, and Schoomaker writes a new forward, and now it comes out at a paperback with the U. of Chicago Press, which is very cool.

Now I know that everyone’s in love with Cobra II right now, and having perused the book, there are many reasons why one should be: it’s an excellent bit of reporting and military history by two of the best storytellers in the national security business--Michael Gordon the NYT and Mick Trainor. And yeah, it’s amazingly important to do the good deconstructions of what went wrong in Iraq. But as good as Cobra II is, it’s reference, not revelation.

The revelation books right now inside the Army are the one that finally do what Desert Storm never could do: exorcise the ghost of Vietnam, which wasn’t about losing but not fighting the right fight.

That fight is mutating as we speak. Iraqis are fighting the fight more and more, and the insurgents like Zarqawi have taken up the goal of trying to foment a civil war, because if the Americans succeed in making this an intra-Iraqi struggle, the insurgency will lose potency in a struggle between stakeholders and non-stakeholders, or between people who want a share of Iraq’s future and those who simply want Iraq.

The new COIN makes the case, as I was told in Leavenworth by its main handlers, that the victory will be only 20 percent kinetic and 80 percent non-kinetic. This informs everything, this calculation, and it’s backed up completely by supplemental spending since the end of the Cold War, which, once broken down, is about 20% war and about 80% peace (or postwar ops).

So yeah, clear the Taliban in southern Afghanistan, but if the promised aid does not appear, don’t expect the poppies to disappear. Eighty percent non-kinetic.

This article by Jaffe does a great job of describing the doctrinal revolution going on within the Army and Marines. It’s another great version of the story I told in “Monks” on lessons learned, and that Barnes tells in his U.S. News & World Report story on the revamped training centers.

It is a story that needs to be told again and again and again.

Sushi 1, Tom 0

DATELINE: Air Force Inn, Maxwell Air Force Base, Montgomery AL, 21 March 2006

Yesterday's closing on the new house did not happen. Last minute scrambling to fix the appraisal, which came in low. The usual culprit: the lazy appraiser. The vast majority of custom homes never see the Multiple Listing Service, or MLS, because... you know... they're custom, meaning they are built specifically for somebody, so they don't go up for sale unless the original owner puts the house up for sale. Since most owners of custom homes keep for a while, it's hard to find comparables--unless you do some leg work.

So our appraiser did some leg work, and the new appraisal works.

Meanwhile, however, I had left town Monday night, providing my wife power of attorney if I don't make it back for the closing later in the week. I fly on SWA through BWI to Islip. My mistake: at the last second I add some sushi to my noodle bowl and egg roll at the airport. Could have gone with the California roll, a safer traveler's choice, but I was daring.

I made it to my hotel, made it through nice phonecons with Steve DeAngelis (just back from China) and my scheduler, Jennifer.

And the worshipping began.

Cleansing, really, in that humiliating sort of way. When I woke up this morning, I realized I had suffered more than some food I couldn't keep down. I was hurtin'!

But, work to be done: putting together a 20-minute presentation to seniors at Northrup Grumman's Bethpage location. If you remember, I was there with fellow strategist-types a few weeks back to hear this division's long-range plan. Today the assembled wise men and one wise woman came back and delivered our feedback.

If getting the strategic dump last time was interesting, this was even more so. I got to sit through Ellen Laipson's take on the world, she of past service on the National Intell Council and main shaper of the last two global futures studies they did (both excellent, and the last one praised by me in BFA specifically). She was lead-in to me. I was a bit wobbly physically, but a strong delivery that went over well.

Then I get to hear Andy Krepinevich's take, which was very impressive, and had a lot of conceptual overlap with me, which surprised me a bit.

Then Bob Work, also of CSBA, and his was like a tutorial on military history that I found very intriguing.

Then a noted biz consultant from Toffler Associates.

As four hour meetings go, it was really interesting, the kind of day you'd would have been happy to experience for free in your younger days--but now you want to get paid for. The NGC people were wonderful hosts, so all around a really cool time--save for the death struggle with the raw fish.

And the requirement to fly to Alabama tonight.

Get out of Islip on commuter Delta for 2.5 hours into Atlanta, with a very windy landing. Got a bit caught up on blogging.

Then 2.5 hours layover, which I didn't feel so hot. But many phonecons later, I connect with some Popeye's, and it's almost like the hair of the dog that bit me. I am revived.

Nice quarters on base, and it's fun to be back. Last time I was here was on election night 2004. I ended up having breakfast debate with military officers the next morning, and my reply to one question became the second "Mr. President" article I published in Esquire, March 2005. That article becomes part of the Best American Political Writing compendium published late last year.

And I got my wallet stolen on the trip home going back through Atlanta.

Have no such aspirations this time, for profundity or victimhood.

Really just want to make that closing.

Two talks tomorrow: Air University student body and a joint flag officer training course. Book signing in-between.

Between Northrup and this, a pretty air-dominated week...

The connectivity battle is won with a million small victories

ARTICLE: “Where Showing Skin Doesn’t Sell, a New Style Is a Hit,” by Marc Lacey, New York Times, 20 March 2006, p. A4.

TECHNOLOGY QUARTERLY: “Wi-Pie in the sky? Communications: Cities across America plan to build municipal Wi-Fi networks to widen access to broadband. Will they work? The Economist, 11 March 2006, p. 22.

ARTICLE: “Ring Up My Bill, Please: Mobile Payment Via Cellphone,” by Eric Dash and Ken Belson, New York Times, 21 March 2006, p. C1.

I know, I know. Everyone wants the Gap gone tomorrow or it’s just too damn hard to even contemplate. It’s gotta be some huge System Perturbation unleashed by the U.S. military to work, right? Followed by the occupation to end all occupations? White man’s burden and all that?

In reality, the victory is won, day in and day out, through millions of small victories, almost all of which will be driven far more by the private sector than by the public one.

Great stories, these three.

First, there’s Nike designing the next generation hijabs that allow Muslim women to participate in sports with as much freedom and comfort as possible while still maintaining the desired modesty.

That, my friends, is some cool connectivity--brilliant, in that British sort of meaning.

Then I read about American cities going all aggressive on setting up urban WiFi nets to jump start connectivity, hoping to rapidly connect up their own mini-Gaps-within-the-Core, and I think to myself, Wouldn’t you want that as part of your Development-in-a-Box package whenever you go into a place? Just crank up the WiFi and pass out those $100 laptops and connect everyone, the locals, the aid groups, the peacekeepers--everyone all at once right from the start. Wouldn’t that send a huge signal (pun intended) about what your military intervention was all about?

Just thinking, mind you …

Then I read the bit about fans at arenas buying their beers and brats with cell phones, and I’m wondering, Why wouldn’t the Development-in-a-Box process utilize cell phones like this? Why not have part of the DiB process be handing out cellphones like crazy to local inhabitants, providing all the hardware and software for free as well, and then using that system to provide secure salaries and payments and whatnot? There were so many practical problems with distributing and managing currency in Iraq, so why not marry the two forms of connectivity that people love: blabbing on cellphones and paying by credit? Wouldn’t that speed things up, offer more simplicity and security, and blow away the locals by connecting them to opportunity that anyone can appreciate?

Just thinking, mind you …

The right way, and the wrong way, to lead a Muslim country

ARTICLE: “Taking Politics Out of Malaysian Business: Prime Minister Abdullah Is Banking on Active Role for State-Owned Investment Agency,” by Cris Prystay, Wall Street Journal, 21 March 2006, p. A5.

ARTICLE: “Change is in the air but happens slowly on the ground: Under its still-eccentric leader, could Libya ever loosen up? The Economist, 11 March 2006, p. 42.

Malaysia is another country that I continue to admire more and more, although I admit that my infatuation with them is recent, as in, since the Islamic scholar Abdullah Ahmad Badawi replaced crabby Matahir Mohammad as PM (who wasn’t so bad for his time, it’s just nice to see Malaysia outgrow him).

Badawi, whom I cite as a shining example in BFA as a modern Muslim leader able to balance a sense of Islamist identity with free market integration into the global economy, is praised in this WSJ article for his efforts at “transforming Khazanah Nasional Bhd.--the state-owned investment agency that controls Malaysia’s power, auto, airline and telecommunication companies--from a passive, bureaucratic investor into an active, professionally run investment fund with some $16 billion of assets.”

This move is similar to that of other Asian countries which are still trying to revamp the role of, or simply shed, the sort of state-run investment houses and businesses that got them into so much trouble in the Asian flu of the late 1990s (all that crony capitalism leading to over-borrowing and over-investment). But Badawi, as lead goose-like as he is, aims to follow the example of the über-goose itself--Singapore. Singapore did this with its own state-run investment house, and turned it into a vehicle for diversifying the nation’s investments beyond its borders (Singapore has no peer in this regard in the world), and such investment patterns signal really positive financial connectivity of the sort that drives my strong expectation that no one will be logically describing SE Asia as Gap in 10 to 20 years. In my opinion, that Gap shrinkage is getting more deterministic by the day, and it’s potential to show the way for the Muslim Middle East becomes more powerful by the day.

Still, the old dunderhead autocrats will hold on in the Middle East for as long as possible. Crafty sonovabitches that they are, many will change their stripes regularly to avoid “external” prosecution, and play all sorts of nasty and cynical and brutal games with their own publics to make sure that internal unrest doesn’t get them either. Qaddafi seems a master at this: reversing himself on basically his entire foreign policy three years ago once he got a whiff that he might be put on the Axis of Evil list.

But what has changed at home? Nothing. Despite all the oil wealth, Qaddafi’s done nothing to modernize or liberalize his economy, and as such, most Libyans are no better off (“I met a guy who spent 15 years abroad, and he said he recognized the same potholes as when he left,” chuckled a Tripoli taxi drive, snarled in one of the rubbish-strewn capital’s daily jams.”).

The good news? Libyans can travel abroad a lot more easily, and have access to foreign goods through private markets, shunning the crappy state-owned ones. And foreigners are swarming in the other direction, including Americans.

In the end, it’s not the worst trade. We just need to make sure we marginalize Qaddafi as much as possible within his national economy, so that when the crazy old jackass finally dies, it’ll be a post-Castro like collapse of the political system and an immediate wiring up to the global economy.

I say, the Libyan version of Development-in-a-Box should be sitting in somebody’s inbox in DC.

The China Price both penalizes and rewards

ARTICLE: “China’s growing pull puts Brazil in a bind: South American nation swamped by imports,” by David J. Lynch, USA Today, 21 March 2006, p. 1B.

ARTICLE: “In Car Junkyards, Scrap Haulers Find a Surprise: Healthy Profits; Facing Global Metal Shortage, Recycler Schnitzer Buys And Modernizes Operations,” by Joel Millman and Paul Glader, Wall Street Journal, 21 March 2006, p. A1.

ARTICLE: “For the Danish, A Job Loss Can Be Learning Experience: Ambitious Retraining Program Keeps Unemployment Low, Even Amid Mass Layoffs; A Drawback: Very High Taxes,” by Marcus Walker, Wall Street Journal, 21 March 2006, p. A1.

China’s growing impact on the global economy is a fascinating historical process to witness, in large part because it spares no one: not the Gap, not fellow New Core, not even the most established of Old Core. It reorders industries, revamps bilateral political and military relationships, redefines strategic interests in places like Africa. I mean, if you had told me growing up that the most profound capitalistic influence in the world in 2006 would be rapaciously market-driven China … hmmm, that would have been a bit hard to swallow.

And yet here it is.

China is flooding fellow New Core Brazil with the same cheap manufactured/assembled goods as it is America, and guess what? What China shoves with one hand, it simultaneously grabs with another: decimating some local industries (low-end manufacturing) while reviving others (typically, commodities and raw materials). So, broom makers of Brazil, beware, but agricultural exporters--rejoice! In the U.S., old-line manufacturing, beware, but recyclers of scrap metal--rejoice!

Isn’t this a losing proposition, though? Don’t we end up buying low-end stuff and selling even lower-end stuff? Aren’t we dumbing down our economy while they’re growing up theirs?

Well, of course it all depends on how we handle the challenge of China’s very rapid rise up the value chain. They’re replicating the strategy of the several Asian tigers that went before, from Japan to South Korea to Singapore, etc., none too subtly inserting themsleves in their supply chain system by becoming the assembler of final resort. But what that forces upon fellow Asian states isn’t the same great leap backward that seems to threaten the manufacturing jobs of a more developed nation like the U.S. So what’s our answer?

It probably should look something close to what the Danes are doing.

I have to admit, the more I learn about the Danes, the more admirable they become in my eyes. They really work at it, whether it’s competition in the global economy, taking on “culture clashes” head on, being key leaders on SysAdmin peacekeeping jobs in the Gap. It’s really an interesting country.

So the WSJ story details the rather ambitious and comprehensive way that the Danish government guarantees job retraining for workers who suffer the dislocation of globalization. That allows Denmark to allow “liberal hiring and firing as in the U.S.,” even as it imposes firm limits on the duration of jobless benefits. It calls this aggressive approach “flexicurity”: you’re expected to seek out government help to get retrained and then get your ass back to work. During your downtime, the government will pay upwards to 90 percent of your former salary.

The result? “Even though Danes are among the most easily laid-off workers in Europe, polls show the country’s workers are the most secure about their future. The European Commission now holds up Denmark as a model for other countries to try to follow.”

Hmm, seems to me that a CODEL to Denmark might make some sense for Hill Dems and Republicans.

The good, the bad, and the unseemly in rising New Core pillars

ARTICLE: “India draws up blueprint for full conversion of the rupee,” by Jo Johnson, Financial Times, 20 March 2006, p. 1.

ARTICLE: “A Study in Diplomacy: Chinese, Japanese Friendship Offers Glimpse Into Difficulty Nations Face Getting Along,” by Sebastian Moffett and James T. Areddy, Wall Street Journal, 21 March 2006, p. B1.

ARTICLE: “Chinese Regulators Caution TV Talent Shows,” by David Barboza, New York Times, 21 March 2006, p. C6.

One of the hardest things I wrote in Blueprint for Action was my description of what the journey is like from Gap to Core. I had collected all these snippet stories, and I needed an ordering principle for grouping them. So I developed triplets, as in, “if the Gap = X, then the New Core = Y and Old Core = Z.” So, for example, going from the Gap to Core is like going from the youth bulges of the Gap to the rapid middle aging of the New Core to the aging demographics of the Old Core.

Putting that list of triplets together was fun. The trick was figuring out a logical order of presentation and then deciding when to cut it off, as in, “Enough already.” But in the end, I didn’t worry about that, figuring Mark Warren would take care of it for me, which he did, lopping off a couple thousand words from the section when it seemed like I was tossing in the kitchen sink. Eventually, when I get done doing my director’s commentary on the entire book (I’m only, sad to say, through chapter 2), I’ll have to dig out the cuts and post them as “deleted scenes.” Then I’ll post the “storyboard” version that Bradd Hayes generated for me, post-writing, or my current brief.

But I digress...

Point of telling you that was just to remind myself that I love collecting these sorts of stories still, like the one about India making it’s currency, the rupee, more convertible, reflecting its growing confidence that its market it maturing.

Up to now, India has allowed such conversion really only for trade purposes, as in, if you convert, you’re buying or selling abroad (goods and services). Now, authorities are basically moving in the direction of making the rupee fully convertible, as in, you can speculate in both directions or invest in either direction. Just as important as making foreign direct investment easier into India, this will make it that much easier for Indian money to go abroad for investment opportunities, further linking India to the global economy.

Will this development push China a bit on this subject? Sure. And every little competitive nudge helps.

That’s the good. The “bad” is a nifty article in the NYT about two young women who’ve maintained a friendship despite their sometimes marked dislike of the other’s culture (Japan v. China). A small story, but a microcosm of the rising nationalism among the young on both sides as the two countries become more intertwined with economic connectivity. Old wounds, yes, but new government programs that fund high schoolers spending time in each other’s cultures.

And yes, every little bit helps get both sides to grow up a bit about the other.

The unseemly is the Chinese authorities warning TV talent shows like the super-popular (as in 400 million viewers last season), American Idol-like “Mongolian Cow Sour Yogurt Supergirl Contest” (plus all the copycat shows it has spawned) to tone down the fist-pumping, “overly” emotional delivery that too many of the contestants seem to be favoring. You know, that old chestnut of “vulgar” clothes and the promotion of “philistinism” (ah yes, the ancient threat of the Philistines rears its ugly head yet again!).

The Chinese Communist Party is just beginning to realize how powerful commercial popular culture is becoming in China--a force unto itself. But this, as I argued in BFA, is just a natural cultural milestone of a New Core state’s emergence: your stars become powerful at home and abroad, big global brand acts tour your market more and more (the Rolling Stones just made it finally, but being elderly, they have to watch the flu season more than most), and it starts to become a very big thing to be famous in your market (a process which creates social power not easily controlled by the Party--look out for the Chinese George Clooney!).

All this makes sense to me: I look at my 14-year-old Emily, and her favorite musical acts right now are Shakira (Brazil--strike that, Colombian), a Chinese (strike that, too, I find out she's originally Korean) female singer named Boa, and the kinky Russian duo Tatu. When Em finally falls for some Indian singer, we’ll have a complete BRIC musical set.

Me? I just watch Shakira’s toppling of Britney Spears with the usual detachment of a middle-aged father, as in, just one fantastic bellybutton replacing another.

mp3 of Tom on Kudlow [UPDATED]

For those of you who didn't get a chance to hear Tom on Larry Kudlow's show on Saturday, here's an mp3 of it.

Please do comment on what you hear.

UPDATE: Had an extra directory in my URL. mp3 should work now, for stream or download.

A more granular version of "The Monks of War" by Julian Barnes in U.S. News & World Report

Barnes sent me an email a couple of days back alerting me to the piece, saying it covered much of the same ground as my March Esquire piece, but at a lower angle.

And he was right. His piece, entitled, "The Army is rethinking how to fight the next war—and win the current one", is really good. It's like you're reading my "Monks" piece and you want to drill down on the whole Fort Irwin reference (which we collapsed into just a line or two), so you click on the URL and up pops Barnes' very descriptive piece, which takes you deep inside the basics of this new form of training at the Army's main training center. Lots of good detail. Definitely worth a read.

Several quotes in Noah Shachtman’s Popular Mechanics cover story “The Great Weapons Debate” (April 2006 issue)

I spent the better part of an hour sitting on my apartment balcony talking to Noah back at the start of the year. His story finally appears in this month’s issue of Popular Mechanics. It’s a good story.

I get a good quote in the fourth full-text page (70), then two additional ones on the final jump page (102), to include the closing quote--very cool. Still, gives you a sense of the boil-down, yes?

Among others quoted: John Pike (GlobalSecurity.org), President Bush, Ralph Peters (quoted saying similar things to me), U.S. Navy Captain James Syring (DDX program supervisor; DDX representing the next generation destroyer), Rear Admiral Charles Hamilton (Syring’s boss), Captain Don Babcock (LCS planner; LCS representing planned new Littoral Combat Ship), Bob Rubino (Lockheed Martin), my old buddy retired USMC Maj. Gen. Tom Wilkerson (I wrote of him in PNM), and Army Lt. Gen. Joseph Yakovac (acquisitions chief for service).

Here are my segments:

PAGE 70, IN THE SECTION “DOMINATING ALL SEAS”

… “We’re thinking the Mogadishu scenario,” Syring says. “The DD(X) is designed to put a ring of fire around that Black Hawk.”

Talk like than might ordinarily encourage Thomas P.M. Barnett, a Pentagon consultant who has become an influential Long War evangelist. But the idea of the DD(X) as a guerrilla fighter makes him fume. Ships a third smaller and 500 times cheaper can drop off SEALs. And those big guns? With a maximum artillery range of 100 miles, the DD(X) couldn’t target an insurgent stronghold in Baghdad. “There are other ways to do this,” Barnett says. “Why not just launch an airplane?”

Barnett sees the destroyer as a Cold War throwback. Today’s enemies defend themselves with speed, not armor. There are no Warsaw Pact-style headquarters to flatten. “So what’s the point,” Barnett asks, “of packing everything into big, concentrated assets--assets that provide a single point of failure--in a world where warfare seems to be going in the exact opposite direction?”

That bit is naturally followed by a Navy guy saying that if we optimize for the GWOT, we’ll be blindsided by a “near-peer competitor”--namely China.

PAGE 102, IN THE SECTION “WINNING THE LAST WAR”

Immediately after 9/11, there seemed to be few, if any, consequences for delaying decisions on what kind of military to build. Congress wasn’t about to skimp on defense. But money is getting tight. And tomorrow’s massive weapons programs may be undermining today’s war on terror.

Stopping insurgencies and chasing extremists take manpower; the QDR [Quadrennial Defense Review] acknowledges that, adding 14,000 Special Forces over the next five years. But, at the same time, it reduces the planned size of the Army by 30,000 troops, in part to preserve FCS [Future Combat System; a massive Army modernization program]. The Air Force will let go 40,000 so it can hold on to its new jets. The DD(X), which uses half the sailors of today’s destroyers, is part of a long-term Navy plan to cut its workforce by 12,000.

All of which strikes Barnett, the Pentagon consultant, as odd, when the president and the defense secretary keep talking about reorienting the military to handle the global war on terror. “We’re making this long-range hedge versus the possibility of--what, exactly?” Barnett asks. “Losing Taiwan? Well, justify that against losing 1000 men per year.”

But the American people expect a “full-spectrum” military, Army acquisition chief Lt. Gen. Joseph Yakovac tells me--one that quickly, decisively wins wars of every kind, everywhere. “Our soldier, he’s got to dominate that urban battle space and this Cold War-style, tank-on-tank fight,” he says. Until a political decision is made that one threat is the absolute top priority, Yakovac will have to keep buying systems for every scenario. Thousands of lives and tens of billions of dollars could go to waste. “We’ve got to reorient to this new world we’re in,” Barnett says. “And we’re doing it--operationally and doctrinally. But when it comes to acquisition--buying big weapons systems--too many people are trying to revive yesterday’s war.”

And the story ends on that quote, which obviously informed the final section.

Reading the piece now, I understand Noah’s original pitch to me that it was logically a continuation of my November Esquire piece, “The Chinese Are Our Friends.” Without realizing it, Noah’s piece also fits quite nicely with my March piece, “The Monks of War.”

So, for me, worth the effort of the interview. Very cool to appear in Popular Mechanics for the first time in my career, and especially cool to get some quotes in such a great piece.

Final list of corrections for the paperback version of Blueprint for Action

The paperback BFA, already listed on Amazon, comes out in October of this year. I had until 31 March to submit my list of corrections. I was told to keep them as short as possible, to avoid mucking up the typeset pages too much with ripple effects that would raise the cost of printing.

Fair enough, thought I, so kept the changes to the smallest number with the smallest impact possible.

Here’s the list I turned over to my contact at Berkeley, Jessica Wade.

TO: Jessica Wade

FROM: Tom Barnett

CC: Jennifer Gates

DATE: 20 March 2006

SUBJECT: Corrections for “Blueprint for Action” paperback version

Jessica,

I have sought to keep these changes to the bare minimum, passing on a number of corrections in the endnotes (overuse of conjunctions) and skipping an updating on the number of agencies in the Intelligence Community (the number went from 15 to 16, but adding the extra title would shift too much), plus a repeated name in the acknowledgements.

So these dozen changes are the ones I feel strongly about. Eleven of the 12 changes involve only one word, and the 12th involves a pair of words.

That’s it.

Thanks for making sure these changes happen,

Tom Barnett

1) PAGE 6, LINE 17

CHANGE “Office of New Assessment” TO “Office of Net Assessment”

(New‚ÜíNet)

2) PAGE 19, LINE 20

CHANGE “Colonel Picket’s” TO “General Pickett’s”

(Colonel‚ÜíGeneral)

(Picket’s→Pickett’s)

3) PAGE 68, THIRD LINE FROM BOTTOM

CHANGE “the Pentagon’s recognizing” TO “the Pentagon recognizing”

(Pentagon’s→Pentagon)

4) PAGE 126, LINE 20

CHANGE “great power inside” TO “great powers inside”

(power‚Üípowers)

5) PAGE 129, LINE 26

CHANGE “we bend the rule here and there” TO “we bend the rules here and there”

(rule‚Üírules)

6) PAGE 305, LINE 13

CHANGE “Swedish environmentalist Bjorn” TO “Danish environmentalist Bjorn”

(Swedish‚ÜíDanish)

7) PAGE 355, LINE 13 (NOT COUNTING BREAK IN PAGE)

CHANGE “agreements with Central American” TO “agreements with Central America”

(American‚ÜíAmerica)

8) PAGE 355, LINE 15 (NOT COUNTING BREAK IN PAGE)

CHANGE “and Andean South American” TO “and Andean South America”

(American‚ÜíAmerica)

9) PAGE 364, LINE 16

CHANGE “Steffany Hedenkemp” TO “Steffany Hedenkamp”

(Hedenkemp‚ÜíHedenkamp)

10) PAGE 364, LINE 18

CHANGE “Steve DiAngelis” TO “Steve DeAngelis”

(DiAngelis‚ÜíDeAngelis)

11) PAGE 397, SECOND LINE FROM BOTTOM

CHANGE “immediatley” TO “immediately”

(immediatley‚Üíimmediately)

12) PAGE 419, LINE 10

CHANGE “Swedish environmentalist Bjorn” TO “Danish environmentalist Bjorn”

(Swedish‚ÜíDanish)

Looking this over, and realizing I only passed on about another 20 words of changes, I felt pretty good. Remember, this is a text of over 175k words!

On the radio with Kudlow

Sean is right. Larry, for some reason, had "Encerra" stuck in his head. Other than that, it was a blast.

Obviously, there's some heavy self-selection here: he likes the way I think and I like the way he thinks. But there's nothing wrong with that. Kudlow regularly has on people he both agrees with and disagrees with. I just fall into the first camp, by and large.

We went about 35 minutes, taking into account all the newsbreaks, commercials, etc. So I started around 3:07 and ended at 3:50. Got emails later from people who called in for questions, but Larry was intent on covering a lot of ground (he focused on two recent posts quite a bit: Economic “patriotism” as the folly of our age, Contrary to current conventional wisdom, Bush’s Big Bang strategy will be treated very favorably by history).

Off-mike, Larry said that he really loved the blog, stating that even when I bashed Bush (a favorite of his), he thought it was warranted. Kudlow really praised the blog on the air, saying it was a mix of personal and really great analysis. I made the point of sptting out the URL, which he then picked up several times. He also mentioned both books repeatedly, and despite the mispronounciation on Enterra (weird word, admittedly) he noted my work there a lot.

Just before we went on air (this was his maiden voyage, because his true slot will be 10-1 on Saturdays), I asked him to ask me about my company, so I could explain that side of my work as well, and he was kind enough to oblige. This opportunity (about a four-minute spiel) was my first broadcast commercial for Enterra. I thought it went okay, as I mostly just repeated all the stuff Steve DeAngelis typically runs through in his elevator speech. But as with all such things, you only get better through practice.

Still, felt like I earned my Enterra salary for the day, and a Saturday at that!

After the show, I thought to myself: I think I've been on radio maybe a hundred times now, and I really must say, it's my favorite format to spread the word. TV is just so distracting with all the visual performance aspects, whereas radio is pure message. After live public speaking, it's about as good as it gets for me.

Finished my next Knoxville News Sentinel column today. This will be #4. It's entitled, "Feeling Insecure About Global Security? You Shouldn't." It leverages data from the "2005 Human Security Report" put out by the University of British Columbia--stunning piece of work, really. Fits my vision to a T. Thought the column would be easy to write, cause the guts of the piece is a series of bullets that sum up the trends, but I actually spent more time on this one than others, I guess because I wanted the sandwiching text to be so on-target, and because I rechecked the data a bunch of times to make sure I wasn't misrepresenting something. In the end, it feels like a great piece.

Haven't heard anything on the possibility of syndication yet, but hoping my performance to date is making that a real likelihood.

Meanwhile, we escape the apartment by hitting some downtown Indy attractions this afternoon.

Did you listen...

...to Tom on Larry Kudlow? What did you think?

My number one thought: Tom just couldn't get Larry to say 'Enterra'. Kept coming out as 'Enserra'.

Anyway, Larry certainly seemed to be on the same page with Tom on most of the economic connectivity stuff. Fun to listen to.

Don't forget!

Tom's going to be on Larry Kudlow's WABC radio program today at 3 pm EST. You can Listen Live by going to the WABC Radio website. Wonder if there's any call-in?

Spending the afternoon with TransCanada at the Peninsula

A shot of the room in which my portion of TC's exec retreat was held at nice hotel downtown in Chicago.

I got up this a.m. felling just awful, drove my eldest to school, and then drove up to Chi-town -- on St. Paddy's no less (river didn't strike me as any greener than normal, but perhaps my vision has been skewed by all those years on the coastline).

Anyway, valeted car, headed to spa to change into suit, and then hung out in this room working the brief til the execs showed up.

I went 90, then break, then I lead off 60 of discussion on Gap-shrinking scenario pathways from BFA.

All in all, a great way to earn a living and network with potential Enterra clients. Sharp bunch, TransCanada. Would love to keep some relationship going with an ambitious energy player like this from the stealth energy superpower to the north.

[posted by Sean for Tom]

Caboose braking in India and China: one physical, one functional

ARTICLE: "In India, the Path To Growth Hits Roadblock: Slums; Huge Squatter Settlements Hem In Development Sites; A Potent Political Force," by John Larkin and Eric Bellman, Wall Street Journal, 17 March 2006, p. A1.

ARTICLE: "Chinese Regulator Lacks Enforcement Power to Close Polluters," by Rebecca Blumenstein, Wall Street Journal, 17 March 2006, p. A6.

Doesn't get any more real that the limits imposed by impoverished squatters. I remember driving around Mumbai back in 2001: fantastic development right next to vast squalor. Same deal basically holds in China, where it's the inability to sell or properly value rural land that leads local party bosses to reclassify the land and speculate on that basis.

Nasty stuff that gets you peasant revolts, so the caboose braking is quite similar in both countries, despite the political differences.

But it is true that China lacks far more functional capabilities for processing such demands from the caboose population. When the main enforcer of pollution regs says he's not empowered nearly enough, you know the Communist Party is headed into new territory. To empower this guy is to standardize the regs, making them transparent. Once transparent, other rural areas will demand similar enforcement. Pretty soon it's the law that matters more than the Party.

Until then, the caboose braking by the rural poor will only increase.

Sean: I think we need a glossary entry for "caboose braking," no?

The new National Security Strategy...

...has my friend Michael Lotus worried. He sees too much eagerness on Iran. I see an unthinking replay of the whole WMD dynamic, with Kim Jong Il relegated to second-tier status, which I find both puzzling and dangerous.

First, we can't do the Iran scenario--for years. Unless we pin-prick them conventionally or go nuclear. So Iran's basically got us by the MAD already.

Second, doing Iran does nothing to progress the most important relationships we're working right now: China and then India. Instead, it pushes them in the wrong direction by forcing choices that do not make sense.

Third, Kim beats the mullahs or Ahmadinejad on all scores: bad actor at home, bad actor abroad, potential to derail globalization (Kim's got nothing to lose, but Iran would lose everything). Plus Kim's got the nukes and the missiles already, while Iran's got some missiles from Kim but no nukes.

How's that for prioritization and strategic thinking?

To me, this NSS is just further evidence that the Bush post-presidency began with Katrina. This is more aspirational than operational. It's auto-pilot. Bush has run out his string early because he's run out his troops. I look at the NSS and I see only the opening of the debate for 2008.

If I'm Hagel or McCain or Kerry or Clinton, I pretty much ignore this and start proposing my own.

Still, Michael's fears concern me some. He sends me this article from Newsday.

Me, I'm more intrigued by the WSJ story from Jay Solomon, Carla Anne Robbins and Philip Shishkin ("Iran Offers to Open Dialogue With U.S. on Iraq: White House Says Focus Of Talks Would Be Limited To Baghdad's Transition," 17 March 2006, p. A3).

You have to love the White House position on this: "We'll only talk about Baghdad, not nukes! We're not interested in any quid pro quos. No sir! Separate lanes! Separate lanes!"

If Condi Rice was anywhere near the hype surrounding her, we'd see some Kissingerian swapping going on here. That man knew how to deal from a weak hand. Rice is either out of her depth or powerless on Iran, just like Powell was on Iraq.

Even better, read this:

The White House official said, however, that the U.S. wouldn't use the talks to try and get Tehran to affect the actions of various Shiite politicians or militias, like the Mahdi Army or Badr Brigades. "We'd simply say stop interfering in the internal affairs of Iraq." said the official. "We'd say you too can play a constructive role in building a democratic Iraq."

As Dr. Evil would say, "Riiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiight!"

What is it about this crowd that they never see the larger connectivity?

On Larry Kudlow's new WABC Radio talk show this Saturday

Got an email today from his company's (yes, it really is "Kudlow & Co.") CEO, who said that Kudlow was offered 3 hours every Saturday on WABC NewsTalk Radio out of NYC and that he wanted to have me on his first show this weekend.

I have a b-day party to work over most of the day, but readily agreed to the 3-4pm EST slot with Larry, who I readily admit demonstrated to me how to pick out good French cuff-tie combinations on all those CNBC shows of his that I've watched over the years (the man knows how to put together a suit). I'll probably be in jeans and a sweatshirt and talking out of my aparment's bathroom, but just use your imagination.

Larry's CEO promised a pretty wide open discussion of concepts and career, which should be fun. Kudlow's a very direct questioner, which makes things easy, as he's both easy to understand and he manages the flow nicely--like a great dance partner (the good interviewers always are).

Looking over the site, you can listen live over the Internet. I am looking forward to this a lot.

Between now and then, though, I have a day trip to Chicago to spend an afternoon with a mid-sized energy company in a downtown hotel. Should be interesting, but I loathe the 7 hours of driving across the day. Still, it gives me time for lotsa phone calls and a book-on-tape I've been wanting to start on the history of the Chinese in America.

I just hope the pencillin kicks in before my throat gives out...

Webmaster UPDATE: Put this on your calendar for this Saturday at 3 pm EST!

Upcoming highlights

DATELINE: In the Shire, Indy, 16 March 2006

We are transitioning at high speed. With the move to the new house we switch schools and parish next year. Eldest goes to high school, and two boys shift to smaller grade school closer to our Indy home. The accompanying parish, likewise small, becomes our new church. That's the macro.

The micro is closing on the house on Monday, and beginning all the new utilities while ending all the old. In almost every case, we leave behind one provider and pick up another, which is weird, but Indiana is more balkanized than most on this subject.

We are days from moving in, after some business trips by me. Got the local movers set for the apartment-to-house move and have all the PODS scheduled for sequential arrival, followed by another visit from the moving crew to handle the heavy items I can't get outta the garage.

Today I walked on my big driveway. Not long, but big. Following feng shui, we designed the house with the garage doors not facing the street. Because of the swail along the property line on that side, we need to come up a drive and then do a 90-degree turn into the garage. Coming out, it's a Y. So the drive widens to almost 30 feet against the garage doors, which creates a very neat basketball platform.

Also walked around house today on sidewalk that we have circling the entire place, which was my wife's idea. Also very cool to do for the first time.

Spent morning going through all the antique lighting fixtures (all rewired) that we purchase for the house. Most are 80 to 100 years old, and are really stunning. All were reclaimed from old Indy houses. We picked them out last August--virtually our first choices. Now we were matching each up with its room or wall sconce placement.

Also did one of the last choices with my builder: where to hang all the towell racks, TP paper hangers, etc, in the various bathrooms. A weird coda to about a million decisions over the last 10 months.

Also walked the yard and made all the final landscaping choices: failing trees to cut, where to mulch, where to put rocks and bushes and the last trees we're planting. We must have cleared 30 trees to make the lot work, and we've planted about 30. In all I think the 4/5ths acre will feature about 100 trees, which will be great in summer but a bundle in the fall. The vast majority are all original forest, never tilled, so they stretch, on average, about 60-70 feet. None are climbers, however. Too bad. I had a pine in my yard as a kid that we could ascend to about 80 feet, which was really amazing.

Also marked out the footprint of what will arguably be the world's largest private playset, designed by me. Of all the nice things we've done with this house, this is clearly the over-the-top call by me and me alone. But I really have a soft spot for my kids on this subject. It's a great magnet for friends, and I like having a yard that other kids like to visit versus seeing mine run off all the time to somebody's cooler set. I am, admittedly, a playset snob. I just remember my own playset and yard as a kid growing up, and it was the most magical place for me, to include the wooden "log cabin" we put up every spring. It's weird, because I built our first Cedarworks in Rhode Island for my older kids, neither of whom will probably play on this one much, especially the high schooler--save in babysitting mode. No, this one is for my younger family (I like to intro my older pair as my kids "from my first marriage," because that really did feel like the first one, while having #3 and adopting #4 seemed to belong to a "second marriage," one bigger and more challenging than the first).

But I haven't forgotten the older kids. I constantly scan every river we cross and I am committed to buying the world's longest canoe as soon as we move in. We are going to explore this state from the waterline up, and there are some neat rivers here to ply.

Yes, yes, I am feeling full of expectations as we get closer to this house my spouse and I shaped in every tiny detail. Dad gone, building my first house--I feel like the man like never before. There is no longer that sense of seeking permission or pleasing those above, mostly because I've lost a lot of those "above" symbols lately.

So I see myself working meetings with Steve DeAngelis and our main DC guys Darrel Lowery and Kevin Billings and I realize: we're all about the same age. I keep looking around for the adults in the room--the much older guys. And they're not there. We're the guys who pull things off like this now. We don't ask for permission or seek approval so much as we win clients and attract partners.

It's just that time of life for me all around. Can't be the 8th of 9 any more. Can't be the boy wonder any more. Can't be a lot of things I was for so long any more. It all becomes so... for the marbles. It's about making change, making money, having influence, leaving things permanently improved and better. It's about providing for the right now and the next generation. It's an awesome sense of responsiblity.

When I went to DC in 1990, I met guys like I feel I'm now becoming, and they always blew me away. They seemed to know so much stuff I felt I'd never understand. They got business and bureaucracies and trends and relationships in all their magnificent complexity.

And they all mentored me graciously, consistently, and with great skill, subtly reminding me throughout that they did this simply because they wanted the next crew to do a better job than theirs did--a serious pay it forward sort of thing. Many were Catholics, and an amazing number were Vietnam vets, although none of them made a big deal about that and few had any regrets about their service. These guys were my icons. They demonstrated how to eat, how to travel, how to run meetings, handle careers, find the right services, buy the right car, network, deal with family challenges--the works.

I had no idea how much I learned from them collectively until I reached this point in my life: when there were fewer of them "above" than my replacements down "below."

So a sense of a tipping point, but also of nearly unlimited possibilities lying ahead.

And that's not bad for a day when my home features 3 strep throats, three colds and a broken ankle.

Steve DeAngelis' upcoming piece on "Development in a Box" at Tech Central Station

Apparently Steve and Max Borders of TCS have been going back and forth about the D-i-B concept that I broached in my interview with Borders, and it came down to sort of a dare from Borders to Steve to lay out the argument for the preeminent role of the private sector in making D-i-B truly feasible and realistic in a globalized world.

So Steve is formulating his answer, and it's going to be a great article. I gave it a once-over edit this morning and came away impressed. I think when you read it you realize why Steve and I are feeling more and more like a hand-in-glove fit in our individual efforts at thought leadership.

Once his piece comes out at TCS, which will be soon, I will be sorely tempted to try my own peculiar version in my Sunday column.