Classic Prahalad story on India

That old power at the bottom of the pyramid stuff:

Building Wealth by the Penny

In Rural India, a Sales Force in Saris Delivers Soap, Social Change

By John Lancaster

Washington Post Foreign Service

Tuesday, March 14, 2006; A13



CHOLLERU, India -- With its open sewers and mud-walled homes, this impoverished farming village of 2,200 in southern India did not look like fertile territory for an entrepreneur. But Srilatha Kadem was undeterred. Oblivious to the midday heat, she marched briskly along the unpaved streets, her cloth bag filled with soaps and shampoos and her heart with vaulting ambition.

She stopped at a tile-roofed house, where a gray-haired woman in a green sari lounged in the shade of the small verandah. "You're charging the same as the shops," the woman said grumpily.

"There is a difference in quality," replied Kadem, a cheerful woman with silver toe rings and a fifth-grade education who works as a saleswoman for Hindustan Lever Ltd., the Indian subsidiary of the Dutch consumer products giant Unilever. "What you buy on the streets, it doesn't come from a good company. These products which I brought are from a good company."

Consumer culture, spurred by rapid economic growth, is spreading to the vast rural hinterlands where two-thirds of India's 1.1 billion people still live. The trend is creating new opportunities not just for big business, which has long focused on the urban middle class, but also for some of India's poorest citizens...

Prahalad's book is probably the best volume on global economics that I've never read.

But I did see the master class brief live at a Highland's Forum.

A little more imagination please on Iran

The story:

U.S. Push for Democracy Could Backfire Inside Iran

By Karl Vick and David Finkel

Washington Post Foreign Service

Tuesday, March 14, 2006; Page A01

TEHRAN -- Prominent activists inside Iran say President Bush's plan to spend tens of millions of dollars to promote democracy here is the kind of help they don't need, warning that mere announcement of the U.S. program endangers human rights advocates by tainting them as American agents.

In a case that advocates fear is directly linked to Bush's announcement, the government has jailed two Iranians who traveled outside the country to attend what was billed as a series of workshops on human rights. Two others who attended were interrogated for three days ...

We need a different relationship with Iran that allows the floodgates of economic connectivity to tap into all that unmet ambition trapped within.

I don't see this as the way. Look at how pissed we get whenever foreign governments spend money or seek any sort of influence in our elections. Why do we think it works overseas?

We should be dangling investments, not getting local reformers in trouble by tainting them.

A plague upon our apartment

Dateline: In the Shire, Indy, 15 March 2006

Beware the Ides of March. They brought strep throat to our apartment!

That's the lowlight for today.

Highlight was carving the names of all our plankholders in the cement sidewalk that rings our new house. It's hard work actually.

Driveway laid today as well. We close early next week.

Til then, I foresee a lot of antibiotics...

And we can't forget the Iranian youth

Same drill, but this time young people in the restless south:

Report: Iranian youth defy ayatollah

Protesters burn images of Tehran's clerical leaders

Posted: March 14, 2006

6:25 p.m. Eastern

© 2006 WorldNetDaily.com

Students set fire to image of Iranian leader (Iran Focus)

Iranian young people staged anti-government protests in Tehran and other cities across the country today, using the annual Persian "fire festival" celebration to burn effigies and pictures of the country's leaders and set cars ablaze belonging to the State Security Forces, according to the London-based independent news agency Iran Focus.

In the southwestern city of Ahwaz protestors set fire to an effigy of Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. Similar demonstrations were reported in Garmsar, southeast of Tehran, and in the southern city of Rafsanjan.

Youth in Tehran reportedly burned pictures of Khamenei and Islamic revolution founder Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, according to dissidents who reported to Iran Focus.

The independent news service said it received a photo from the protesters who set fire to pictures of leaders that had been placed on lampposts along Tehran's Mirdamad Street.

The demonstrations were part of the traditional "fire festival" celebration, or "Feast of Wednesday," on the last day of the Persian year, in which people jump over bonfires to "drive away evil."

Iran Focus said the demonstrations took place despite a massive crackdown by the country's paramilitary police to prevent people from turning tonight's festival into organized anti-government protests...

Still feel that Ahmadinejad is all-powerful?

Thanks to another reader for this one as well, but no link provided.

Interesting Wash Times story on elite unrest in Iran

Here's the start:

Tehran elite turning on extremist presidency

By John R. Bradley

THE WASHINGTON TIMES

Published March 14, 2006



TEHRAN -- Iran's clerical and business establishments, deeply concerned by what they see as reckless spending and needlessly aggressive foreign policies, are increasingly turning against President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

Within this context, many see the president's long-running confrontation with the United States and Europe over Tehran's nuclear program as an attempt to demonize the West and distract the Iranian public from pressing domestic problems.

A relatively small group of extremists "at the top of the government around the president" are seeking to benefit from a crisis with the West, because "that way they will be able once again to blame the West for all of their problems," said Mousa Ghaninejad, the editor of Iran's best-selling economics daily newspaper, Dunya Al-Eqtisad.

Millions of low-income Iranians voted for the new president last year, motivated by his firm stand against corruption and pledges to give financial priority to their needs.



"His appeal was to those for whom class discrimination is important, and his simple lifestyle gave an air of credibility to his claims," said Nasser Hadian, a political analyst at Tehran University who attended high school with Mr. Ahmadinejad.

Mr. Hadian predicted that senior Iranian clerics would continue to support Mr. Ahmadinejad -- or at least not move against him -- for about a year because of that popular support. But privately, he said, they feel he is isolating Iran internationally and putting its economy at risk.

Also at the back of their minds is the fear that his anti-corruption drive ultimately threatens their own considerable privileges...

Read deeper into the story for the key bits on stock market value dropping and capital flight.

You had to wonder how long it would take for this sort of story to appear.

You also have to wonder how the Bush Administration seeks to take advantage of such divisiveness. Are we just waiting on the Iranians to rise up, with us cheering from afar via "strategic communications"? Hell, the LA Iranians do that better.

Or will we be ready with something better?

Thanks to the reader who sent me this link.

Those inscrutable Chinese bloggers!

ARTICLE: "Chinese Bloggers Stage Hoax Aimed at Censorship Debate," by Geoffrey A. Fowler and Juying Qin, Wall Street Journal, 14 March 2006, p. B3.

ARTICLE: "Rock 'n' Rolling Into China: Rolling Stone Has Launched A Chinese Edition--Minus The Sex, Drugs and Politics," by Geoffrey A. Fowler, Wall Street Journal, 10 March 2006, p. B1.

Those gnarly Chinese bloggers fooled Western media into thinking a huge crackdown had occurred. How? They all just voluntarily and secretly shut down their blogs one day.

Why, you may ask?

In an interview, Beijing-based journalist Wang Xiaofeng of Massage Milk says he shut his blog down to make a point about freedom of speech--just one directed at the West instead of Beijing. He calls the Western press "irresponsible" and says that the hoax was designed "to give foreign media a lesson that Chinese affairs are not always the way you think."

"They are not just supposed to report based on their own perceptions, without understanding the circumstances in China," he says ...

Buddy, the press reports everything here in the States based on gossiping among one another, why the hell should it be any different in China?

Gotta wonder what all the Western doom-and-gloomers on web censorship in China had to say on this one. If I wasn't so busy packing up the apartment, I would surf the web on this one.

And yet the Western media keep coming. Esquire has had a China edition for years (I've been reprinted there in Chinese), and now so does Rolling Stone, just quieted down a bit (What? No Lindsey Lohan on the cover spilling out of her blouse?)

I guess RS is just adjusting to the local circumstances ...

China's political sleaze factor approaches . . . a Western standard?

ARTICLE: "Lobbyists in China Raise Their Voices: Growth of Interest Groups Amid Societal Shifts Could Mean More Transparency," no author listed, Wall Street Journal 10 March 2006, p. A4.

ARTICLE: "Planning an Event? Is China's Great hall Of the People Free? Mao Gives Way to Motorola, Jackie Chan, 'Riverdance'; Anybody Can Rent It," by Shai Oster, Wall Street Journal, 13 March 2006, p. A1.

Gotta like this.

A touch of Washington-style politics is knocking on the doors of China's rubber-stamp legislature: lobbyists.

With nearly 3,000 delegates gathered in Beijing for the annual meeting of the National People's Congress, representatives of interest groups have flocked to meet with delegates in greater numbers than ever before, seeking to influence policy on issues such as corporate tax rates and peddlers' rights. Delegates, too, are becoming more outspoken in representing their constituencies.

To be sure, China's leadership continues to set the agenda on legislation and major policies. But the growth of interest groups could be a step toward a more transparent legal system and more influential legislature. Such a development is important at a time when corruption and other abuses of power at the local and provincial levels are sparking growing unrest and discontent among an increasingly vocal population. The rise of China's interest groups--amid an expanding economy and emerging middle class--underscores the dearth of effective channels for people to push their causes.

Seems a pretty clear dynamic, does it not? More economic transactions and more network connectivity to the outside world and pretty soon--really just within a generation--you have a far more vocal populace demanding effective means to communicate their growing needs to a leadership that either listens or faces the rising tumult.

So economics drives politics, and networks drive security.

That's the profound. The profane, to some, is the easy renting out of the Great Hall to anybody with enough money. I've visited the place. It's a nice hall. Not stunning, but nice. And it sits unused virtually all the time.

So why the hell not rent it out? It's one of the coolest places in Beijing.

It's this kind of reporting that needs to balance the doom and gloom about China's reform process becoming overwhelmed by the rising tide of corruption in China. The tide will drive anger, and that anger will seek outlets, and those outlets will drive pluralism--and the occasional fab parties at the Great Hall.

Money, money--not everywhere

ARTICLE: "Venture Capital Swarms China: Gobi Leads a Frenzy to Snare The Next Tech Darling as Concern Abounds of Another Sector Bust," by James T. Areddy, Wall Street Journal, 14 March 2006, p. C1.

ARTICLE: "Pentagon's Blank Check May Be Withdrawn: Congressional Unease Mounts Amid Off-Budget War Spending and Ballooning Deficits," by Jackie Calmes, Wall Street Journal, 10 March 2006, p. A6.

American high-tech venture capitalists head to China while Congress re-thinks the open piggy bank approach to the Global War on Terorrism. Something's gotta give, me thinks.

Too many in the Pentagon want to hold onto the past and subcontract the future to Special Operations Command, but going long on China and short on the ground-pounders just won't do.

And it's amazing that the ground forces feel such a budgetary squeeze amidst this stunning rise in spending (our spending rise alone since 2000 is roughly three times the highest estimate of Chinese defense spending).

The real danger to defense, of course, will be the big push to shift funding from the Pentagon to other long neglected parts of the federal budget. You just watch the Big War crowd wave the red flag on China then to stem the inevitable platform acquistion losses.

But isn't it weird to see our own best and brightest VC pick China over the U.S. economically while defense spending remains so fixated on Big War spending that can only be justified by China's "rising threat"?

I guess it all depends on how you define "smart money."

A quick review of Neither Shall the Sword by Chet Richards

This book is a bit of a sequel to Chet’s 2001 book entitled A Swift, Elusive Sword, in which he made some radical arguments for the restructuring of the U.S. military, a process that would yield a force not unlike my Leviathan, according to Chet himself. This Sword force would be shaped largely around the concepts of maneuver warfare, the notion being that “history shows that forces that fight according to this doctrine virtually always defeat those that don’t, regardless of how much the other side spends or how many troops it has.” Given that bent, this force is relatively ground and Fourth Generation Warfare (4GW) friendly.

But this book is also a bit of a survey of new ideas of warfare against a non-state enemy, and Chet pursues this survey because he admits his Leviathan-like force is only so appropriate for that new environment. The five “distinguished strategists” he selects to compare are William Lind, Martin van Creveld, Thomas X. Hammes, Michael Scheuer and me. I buy Lind, van Creveld and Hammes as operational strategists and myself as grand strategist. I simply balk at including Scheuer, who I find to be uniformly full of crap on anything other than describing the terrorist threat. A strategist that intell weenie is not.

Chet covers a lot of ground in 95 pages, a stunning amount--really. But I’m not going to review all that because I’m writing this during an oil change and I’m not going to add much to his thinking. If you want a sometimes quirky but often brilliant distillation of descriptions and thinking and analysis on warfare today and into the future (with a focus on 4GW), the first half of the book is well worth the investment. It’s like a lecture course on steroids: you will be significantly smarter once you read it.

Highlight for me: the funky “scheme” of the generations of war on page 21 is cool.

I also like this very nice distillation of future global security:

So far in this monograph, I have suggested that in the future, organized armed conflict will consist of:

‚ÜíFirst, second, and possibly third generation warfare largely between and within developing countries.

‚ÜíSecond and third generation warfare by developed countries against developing countries and very rarely, if at all, against each other.

‚ÜíInsurgency by groups against governments largely in weak, failing or failed states.

‚ÜíAn evolving form of conflict, fourth generation warfare, employed by transnational groups with roots in the developing world against both local governments and the developed world.

‚ÜíMethods, mostly yet to be created, by developed countries to deal with fourth generation warfare.

Succint, dead-on, and comprehensive. Very Chet

After covering a lot of ground in the first 30 or so pages, Richards starts looking at the various strategists and what they say about how to deal with al Qaeda and the GWOT.

First Richards covers Lind’s rather retro concept of isolationism, then van Creveld’s “wall” concept that sounds a lot like Israel’s security fence extrapolated to the entire Gap (go figure!). Then he does Ralph Peters (inserted just here) and Scheuer and their approach to consistently entering the Gap just to do killing and leave it at that (a pre-emptive sort of retaliation strategy). Then comes Stephen Biddle and Hammes and their collective notion that interventions need to be strategically applied (sort of a Peters-Scheuer strategy with brains).

Then Richards comes to me, and my strategy of shrinking the Gap is recast as rollback, which is somewhat accurate but also a bit hyperbolic, suggesting that the 4GW enemies we face somehow own the entirety of the Gap instead of simply thriving there. Better I think, to employ some medical analogy of the chemo-of-connectivity against the metastasized tumors of al Qaeda that live throughout the Gap and sometimes spread into the Core.

But I quibble a bit. Richards does a brilliant job, in many ways, of explaining PNM and BFA, starting on page 38. I don’t agree with everything he says, but I can’t complain about how seriously he treats the vision or how well he translates it into the world that the Linds and Biddles et al. inhabit (largely about war, some politics, almost no economics).

Where Chet gets really interesting for me is how seriously and cleverly he argues the “tool” of system perturbation. Now, in the past, Chet’s use of that concept has gone overboard, as far as I was concerned. But here he’s pretty much dead on, if, as usual, a bit heavy on the pol-mil and light on the socio-economic-networking. So he gets the “war within the context of everything else” approach. He just feels more comfortably explaining how the military changes within that approach than things beyond the military, which is where my work increasingly turns.

But, overall, Chet is quite fair and very provocative in how he treats my ideas and explores my vision. Can’t complain about that.

Chapter IV starts with an analysis of using system perturbations as a strategic tool of change. Very interesting stuff. I learned a lot here. Well worth reading.

Next chapter compares Chet’s original Sword force concept to the various tasks implied by the competing strategies. When he gets to the rollback strategies, it’s interesting how complimentary Chet seems to think my ideas are with Tom Hammes’ (Biddle doesn’t make this grade, apparently). It’s at this point that Chet starts trotting out his most radical idea in the book, which I could basically summarize as governmentize the SysAdmin force as much as possible and privatize the Leviathan force as much as possible. I’m not paraphrasing here: these are basically the words Chet uses, and he adopts the Leviathan/Sword v. SysAdmin breakdown quite openly as he discusses the best path forward.

This is where the book really takes off for me, and where Chet does his most interesting writing because, when it comes to provocative ideas that challenge your thinking, Richards is really amazing. Plus, he’s so consistent in examining all sides and possibilities that you feel a lot of trust when reading him, which is impressive considering the seemingly wild things he’s proposing. It’s a wonderful skill that really speaks to Chet’s capacity as a change agent.

Chet punts a bit at the end (Chapter VI), despite all this provocative stuff prior, by basically hedging his near-term bets with a containment force that grows into a more interventionary strategy over time. Even he doesn’t like this outcome, complaining about his choice in print and then enunciating his truly preferred outcome, which is a brilliant description of my three-pronged strategy to shrink the Gap (Chet only seems to focus on my shrinking part, primarily, I suspect, because it is the most military-heavy portion of the overall strategy I propose).

First, though, note the very cool graphic on how the Sword Force evolves into Leviathan and SysAdmin forces over time, along with the privatizing option on the Levithan. That’s found on page 79.

Chet, in this concluding chapter, basically says “I would prefer rollback as a goal, as I think even Lind would, if there were a reasonable chance that it could be made to work. Lind would argue that there is not.” Here is where Chet’s mil-heavy focus perverts his thinking. Globalization will shrink the Gap whether we’re there with military force and focused aid to speed up the process or not. I simply argue for speeding up the process, but I don’t pretend that the military aspect is predominant, by any stretch. And Chet’s problem here is that he’s talking my strategy almost solely in terms of the military aspect. FDI, for example, is simply ignored here, and the private sector’s role is basically ignored.

Because of that, Chet doesn’t get to the truly interesting stuff that my work is now addressing: shrinking the Gap is a market-making opportunity for Core pillars in general, meaning that if you want to define competition in the future, it’s mostly about who shrinks the Gap best by building up and networking into their economic spheres the emerging markets waiting to be developed there. Now some will call this a new form of colonialism. But when you strip out the overt, direct, and comprehensive political control of the states in question, that’s just not a reasonable comparison. That’s like saying it’s still slavery but we give them wages and benefits and workers rights and so on--but it’s still basically slavery! Great rhetoric if you can get it, but basically ideological BS.

My point in exploring that concept: that gets us to the strategic imperative of creating the Development-in-a-Box tool that animates both the SysAdmin force and makes the creation of the Department of Everything Else a realizable goal. Plus, it points out the strategic complimentarity of the U.S.’s Leviathan capacity with the New Core’s ability to provide much-needed manpower to the SysAdmin function, which Chet always presents as basically an America-only affair (at least he never seems to explore its multinational character that I argue for consistently).

It’s on page 82 that Chet basically makes my argument, saying our strategy should “attract” or “pull” countries from Gap to Core, and here he finally raises some economics, like ag subsidies. So his final argument becomes this: “Maybe I can assuage my conscience [for choosing containment] by arguing for ‘coercive containment/attractive rollback’ as my top-level grand strategy.”

Bingo!

That’s my argument in a nutshell: 1) grow the Core’s ability to withstand System Perturbations (very Chet, even though he doesn’t explore this argument); 2) discretely firewall (containment) the Core off from the Gap’s worst exports (somewhat Lind-like); and 3) shrink the Gap by using military power selectively to deal with the worst security sinkholes there and then using private-sector FDI to “attract” the most attractive Gap economies into progressively joining the economic, political, and ultimately security networks that define the Core.

So, in sum, Chet has made quite the journey in this book, coming from a position of great skepticism toward my work (see his original review of PNM, later amended) toward one of near embrace. Whether he realizes it or not, his “coercive containment/attractive rollback” is basically my three-pronged strategy, with the building up of Core resilience in the fact of System Pertubations implied (or how else to maintain our attraction to the Gap in this increasingly complex world?).

Tellingly, though, Chet can come only part way in his acceptance, moving off Lind to a certain degree by embracing Hammes, and through Hammes reaching out to me.

This is fascinating to me, because it basically ratifies my description in Blueprint of the cool week in Bergen, Norway that I spent with Chet and Hammes, arguing out our collective ideas in front of an audience of young officers in the Norwegian Naval War College back in the winter of 2005. When Chet and Tom saw the ability to preserve the Marines and their maneuver warfare, plus their emerging 4GW capacities, within my SysAdmin concept, they basically dropped their strong resistance to my concepts, and we were suddenly united in the theory that the SysAdmin function represented the future toolkit for defeating future enemies while the shrinking Leviathan (shrinking mostly through technology) was our collective hedge against the past (and the great power war models that still lurk in the minds of the “realists”--and nowhere else).

Now, I’m being a bit self-aggrandizing here, but I’m not stretching any truth, and I think Chet’s book backs up that analysis hugely, especially since he uses Hammes as the bridge from Lind’s increasingly anachronistic take on 4GW (he and van Creveld seem stuck in the 20th century, which beats the 19th century purgatory of the realists--by about 100 years) to my hybrid take (war within the context of everything else, or globalization, which Lind defines simply as the decline of the state and which the realists ignore completely in their billiard-ball analysis of great powers and their “interests”).

Final treat to the book: Chet writes cool endnotes!

Overall, this is a strategic-education-in-a-box book, one that is seriously worth the money and time. But to me, it was also quite thrilling to read, simply because it confirms the bridge strategy that I’ve sought to employ in the direction of the 4GWers. Not all will get it, and please don’t ever tag me with that nonsensical, protect-the-(white man) American-culture stuff that Lind peddles primarily now, or the over-the-top bloodthirstiness-without-consequences view of Peters. But when Chet Richards gets it, and uses Thomas Hammes as his bridge toward my strategy, I know I’m making very real progress.

And yeah, I do take that sort of thing very seriously--as in, life-and-death serious.

Ah, my van is ready!

With all this defense spending, where is the SysAdmin’s money?

ARTICLE: “U.S. Annual War Spending Grows: Even With Troop Cutbacks, Costs in Iraq, Afghanistan Will Reach $117.6 Billion,” by David Rogers, Wall Street Journal, 8 March 2006, p. A4.

ARTICLE: “Bush Budget Faces a Senate Effort To Tighten Foreign Spending, “ by David Rogers, Wall Street Journal 9 March 2006, p. A6.

ARTICLE: “Iraq reconstruction plan draws criticism following delays: State Dept. says initiative is moving forward,” by Steven Komarow, USA Today, 7 March 2006, p. 11A.

Iraq and Afghanistan cost us almost 20% more in FY06 than in FY05. Who says there isn’t enough money for the SysAdmin force?

Seriously, though, spending that level of money this late in the show only demonstrates how badly we’ve spent the money to date. The private sector should be running the development show fully by now, but because we didn’t get control of the security fast enough (not enough SysAdmin boots once the Leviathan high-tailed it) and let a Great Depression-like status grip society (no one seems to have any money, or access to outside capital), we got stuck in this deadly struggle with the insurgency that took advantage of the fact that enough Iraqis came to the conclusion that if there wasn’t going to be an expanding pie, they might as well fight over what’s left: oil, land and identity.

Scary, isn’t it? The CPA civilians run things at first and screw it up royally. Then the generals rise up and start taking things more into their own hands, setting in motion the serious build-up of Iraqi security forces that allows the drawdown notion to actually seem feasible this year (we’re not doing that much fighting anymore, but instead we mostly just get blown up). Now the State Department’s really in charge and guess what? The economic stuff seems as slow and confused as ever, even as the vaunted Provincial Reconstruction Team (PRT) approach is duplicated from Afghanistan to Iraq.

So it’s still piecemeal for us. The military is working on it’s A-to-Z system for processing a militarily-bankrupt state, and Iraq gets a decently working security force as an output. But still, we’ve gotten basically nowhere on creating Iraq the reasonably functioning economy, instead obsessing over the constitutional stuff that may, in the end, never work for all the same reasons why Yugoslavia became destined for break-up once the strongman Tito passed (it just took longer for the “economic patriotism” to emerge there as the stronger states sought divorce from the weaker ones). We’re watching the same process here: Kurds and Shiites with oil wealth want nothing to do with their former political masters. And who the hell can blame them?

Some will call Iraq’s inevitable break-up a “loss” for America and a “victory” for Al Qaeda, but this will be complete nonsense. It will just be the result of the booby trap left behind by the British Empire when it created the pretend state of Iraq in the first place decades ago to cover its tracks when it began its colonial retreat from the region. All we did was finally pull the string.

Will the region be better for that daring act? In the end, it’s hard to see how it could be any worse than it was for the past several decades--unless you’re a big fan of dictatorships keeping problems out of your hair (and admittedly, some are, including myself under the right circumstances of growing broadband economic connectivity between the masses and the outside world). But all that “stability” ever bought us was the bigger bang down the road.

And now, thanks to all the mismanagement we’ve seen to date on the postwar handling of Iraq, we’ve got a Congress ready to get stingy all over the dial on foreign spending--aid or otherwise. Combine that with the rising tide of economic “patriotism” we’re witnessing from all sorts of modern-day Know-Nothings, and we’ve got a wonderful package going on here.

Think a well-funded, well-run Department of Everything Else is too much to ask for? Well then, I say, consider what NOT having one actually ends up costing America.

Economic “patriotism” as the folly of our age

ARTICLE: “Ports Deal Shows Roadblocks for Globalization: Foreign Buyers, Not Trade, Spark a Political Backlash; Angst from Bolivia to France,” by Greg Ip and Neil King, Jr., Wall Street Journal, 11-12 March 2006, p. A.

ARTICLE: “DP World and U.S. Trade: A Zero-Sum Game,” by Eduardo Porter, New York Times, 10 March 2006, p. C1.

COLUMN: “The nationalist resurgence: Why the force of economic nationalism seem weaker than those of globalization,” Charlemagne, The Economist 4 March 2006, p. 50.

ARTICLE: “Mideast Investment Up in U.S.: Proposed Ports Deal Is Just Part of Flood of Oil Wealth Spilling Ashore,” by Paul Blustein, Washington Post, 7 March 2006, p. A1.

COLUMN: “Purple haze: Clintonism is alive, well and living in a governor’s mansion near you,” by Lexington, The Economist, 4 March 2006, p. 32.

In retrospect, the failed Dubai ports deal looks a lot like the same fear factor displayed with CNOOC’s bid for Unocal: a new form of economic nationalism recast as patriotism. Hell, if the Statue of Liberty can stand for homeland defense, why can’t patriotism be recast as protectionism?

What’s so slimy about this turn is: 1) it attracts the far right and labor left alike (two “braking cabooses” on globalization if ever they were); and 2) it makes America seem so French that I’m just about ready to vomit.

Of course, it’s the French who push this notion of “economic patriotism,” which represents the Old Core of the West doing nothing more than playing down to the level of the New Core, which does feature this sort of sentiment in their state-heavy planning for export-driven and FDI-driven growth (Brazil, Russia, India, China--the BRIC).

But in the end, it’s just so silly. We didn’t get to the top of the heap by playing this way, although long ago we did play this way. We sit on top of the global economy because our economy is so conducive to risk taking and entrepreneurship and innovation. I’m watching this process in spades with Enterra Solutions. We’ve got the sweet new thing in technology, and we’re marrying it up to some impressive thought leadership, and we’ve got all the usual types of investors to help us start, and all the expected types of larger companies looking to gobble us up. There are players fore and aft of this entire process, who specialize in all of its stages from initial start-up to roll-up into some “next generation entity,” as Steve DeAngelis likes to describe what we’re trying to do in building Enterra. I mean, it’s just been amazing to watch this process unfold and realize that none of it has anything to do with government control. All these investors and mergers and acquirers and buy-outs and venture capitalists and so on and so on: they all just appear of their own volition at the times of their choosing and this train just keeps rolling. We innovate, we attract investors and allies and partners and suitors, and we go from small to bigger to something truly amazing down the road--and no one in the government decides any of this, or protects it, or stops it. It’s just the market figuring stuff out on its own, and it is really cool to watch and participate in. Gives you a lot of faith, actually.

But too bad there’s not enough of that faith to go around. Want to know why the French are so patriotic right now? “Total foreign purchases of French companies hit an all-time high last year.”

And no, it ain’t just the oil-rich players, because in the end, these guys actually buy very little (they like their assets like their oil: liquid). No, the new buyers tend to be New Core companies, stretching their wings in the global economy.

So while they securitize their new wealth, we insecuritize ourselves with this infantile thinking on the zero-sum nature of trade and globalization. It’s pathetic but its widespread, and it reminds one of how humanity once trashed a previous form of globalization in the 1930s: too many identities too challenged all at once.

But it’s pissing in the wind, really. The U.S. needs, Clyde Prestowitz calculates, about $3B in foreign capital every day to keep our economy rolling: “Yet all of the body language here is ‘go away.’”

Indeed, we’re heading into the same stupid territory as some less-developed country headed by the Big Man who has to approve every deal, lest he lose out on some graft. As Kevin Hassett of American Enterprise Institute put it, “I think it is very dangerous to enter a new world in which every purchase of an American asset by a foreign entity is scrutinized by the government.”

Sounds like some socialist BS, doesn’t it?

As Charlemagne points out, the fear underlying all this unease is that these companies who purchase other countries’ companies are really acting as agents of the government. That’s a defensible concept when state-owned companies are involved. But ask yourself, which side changes the other more? Do the increasing trader roles of the state-owned companies make the government more capitalistic, on average? Or does that state make the market more statist in form or operation?

History says, the more trading, the greater the resulting pluralism and market-orientation of the entities involved. I mean, that’s how it worked in America, in sector after sector, and in century after century. But somehow we forget that constantly repeated trajectory of dominant monopolistic player that originally defines a sector, often with government help or complicity, and then eventually withers under the onslaught of competitors who arise, sometimes with government help or complicity. Microsoft is just the latest example in a very long list of companies and sectors that arose in this manner in the U.S.

But there is little escaping this rising tide of fear. We’re watching a flood of mergers and acquisitions right now, the biggest since the dot.com era (oh so long ago), and this time it’s amazingly cross-national, reflecting the BRIC’s rise. So now we have lean-and-mean BRIC companies targeting our fatter and slower and less competitive companies--and well they should. That’s economic Darwinism at its best: let the new and nasty devour the old and pokey.

National politicians and nationalists in general will fear this, but now is a time to watch the governors, or the guys and gals who are classic Clintonians in their approach to international relations. Clinton was the purest governor-president we’ve ever had: half the time working the domestic scene and half the time playing American salesman to the world, pushing U.S. companies and deals abroad like no other president we’ve ever had.

Now, the only Clintonians you find are governors, as the Republicans have turned the federal government into one giant spendathon, jacking up our deficit primarily through the ill-advised tax breaks Bush pushed through (and I say that as someone who will pay more federal taxes this year than I made in income just a few years ago, and I was earning a decent living back then).

And so you wonder why I pine for a Clintonian’s return! Someone who gets back to the biz of selling America in a competitive global landscape and who works alliances to make things like the Balkans go relatively smoothly as a SysAdmin effort (remember all our casualties on that one?).

And when you think of Balkan military boss Wes Clark as SECDEF in another Clinton Admin… that really gets my attention.

I know, I know. It’s just dreaming for now. But spot me the same sort of internationalist-free trader mix on the GOP side right now. Please! Spot it right now! Because if one isn’t found, this election could be as bad for America as Bush’s win in 2004 is turning out to be.

And that won’t just be bad, it could be disastrous. You combine an inward-turning America with a protectionist White House and all this economic patriotism flourishing in Europe, and you have the mix to turn the 2000s into the 1930s all over again.

And yeah, millions upon millions will die prematurely in that scenario. And if you’re in the business of preventing that, you need to care.

Yes, the slow-strangulation of Iran is making America rather short of breath

ARTICLE: “Who’s isolating whom? Despite their fear of Iran and of Islamist movements at home, most Arab regimes seem loath to co-operate wholeheartedly with America in the region,” The Economist, 25 February 2006, p. 51.

ARTICLE: “Everyday Iranians Nervous About Push For Atomic Power,” by Karl Vick, Washington Post, 8 March 2006, p. A15.

It’s so sad, really. We’ve got the Big Bang rolling throughout the region, and we’ve got an Iranian public that’s favorably disposed to America and ever more unhappy with their leadership, and what do we do with this amazing mix?

We settle into a long, slow isolation strategy with Iran, as if to purposefully piss away all the momentum paid for by those 2,000 soldiers to date. We get back into the same myopic obsession with mechanisms that twisted any logic (and there was a surfeit of defensible reasons) for the Saddam takedown into a ludicrous rationale for unfound WMD (“Bulletin: Ted Bundy arrested today on strong evidence of killing dozens of women, but no weapon found! Authorities admit entire arrest was bad idea!”).

We have history on our side, blood to be accounted for, and this is the best we come up with?

Seriously, in the end, I truly believe Rice will be as big of a wasted opportunity as Powell in the role of SECSTATE. Great reps. Uplifting stories of personal achievement (and job-holding), but not a single G.D. legacy worth mentioning.

Oh, I almost forgot! Strategic alliance with India over the sharing of… what?

China’s fear-factor grows. Why? Because there is so much money to be made (and protected) in this image

ARTICLE: “As Trade Deficit Grows, So Do Tensions With China,” by Keith Bradsher, New York Times, 10 March 2006, p. C1.

OP-ED: “Trade And the China Card,” by Sebastian Mallaby, Washington Post, 6 March 2006, p. A15.

ARTICLE; “China Plans to Address Wealth Gap: Premier Offers Education In Effort to Improve Lives Of Rural and Urban Poor,” by Andrew Browne, Wall Street Journal, 6 March 2006, p. A8.

ARTICLE: “In Latin America, Commodities Boom Has Unlikely Fallout: Many Mayors Flub Opportunity To Help the Region’s Poor; Populists See an Opening,” by Matt Moffitt, Wall Street Journal, 6 March 2006, p. A1.

ARTICLE: “China Defense Outlay To Increase by 14.7%, The Most in 4 Years,” World Watch column, Wall Street Journal, 8 March 2006, p. A8.

Expect the China bashing to grow mightily this spring, especially when President Hu Jintao visits.

Of course, the “trade deficit” drives this, even though it’s largely a chimera created by our multinationals going over to China for final assembly reasons, and then, by the rules of trade, we instantly declare the total value of the assembled good as being Chinese in origin, so when the same multinational ships the final goods to America for sale here (with that transnational transaction really being more accurately described as intra-MNC trade than interstate trade), we call that an import and say “China’s beating us in a trade war!”

Stupid as shit, but there it is.

So we’re going to have a hard time not playing the China card on trade. As Mallaby (always brilliant, almost to the point of restoring my faith in Brits in general) points out, “For a fear monger with a club, next month’s Chinese state visit is a self-teeing golf ball.”

Why? Mallaby’s just great here:

China … has become a proxy for all globalization anxieties; It’s painted as a low-wage threat and simultaneously a high-science threat [Boy! There’s Tom Friedman’s book in one fear-mongering sentence!], a piratical menace to technology patents and simultaneously a challenge to America’s scientific preeminence. Meanwhile, China constitutes a security threat too: It’s spending billions on an arms build-up, and lying about the real numbers [which, in our highest estimates, don’t come anywhere near what we will spend in Iraq and Afghanistan this year, or on our acquisitions, or on our R&D; but no mind, Sebastian’s on a roll!]. If demagogues can turn a tiny ally such as Dubai into a villain, you can bet they’ll do the same for China.

Damn straight!

And who will lead this charge? The Dems, of course. See why I pine so for Clinton’s return? Instead we have world-class dumbasses like Chuck Schumer speaking for America (yes, the bad NY senator). And his shenanigans may well push the prudent Bush into something truly stupid WRT China.

But even if you buy all this hyping of the threat. Why does China seek such rapid export-driven growth?

Buddy, have you checked out the 900 million or so Chinese living in poverty inland? I mean, we’re only talking the equivalent of the entire Western Hemisphere in population! Big enough development challenge for you?

The world saw the biggest reduction in global poverty in the last 50 years. Almost all of it was due to China’s emergence and India’s emergence. That’s the most poverty reduction we’ve ever enjoyed in five centuries--bang! Just like that.

Do you want to pay for all that global development while enjoying cheap goods in Wal-Mart? Or do you want to fight some senseless war with China in the future? Which path seems to make America more prosperous and safe over the coming decades?

People want to point out China’s defense spending (roughly one-tenth of ours when all our “supplementals” are added in) and say we’re looking at Germany at the beginning of the 20th century.

I say check out the UK at the start of the 21st century. Look like a dominant global power to you? Want to know why it isn’t? Because it let itself be sucked into two pointless wars with rising Germany, which Europe and the U.S. mishandled in the extreme following the first self-immolating civil war known globally as WWI.

Feel like becoming a second-tier power in the 21st century? Or would you rather see those 900 million get a better deal?

Yes, yes, WWJD?

Meanwhile, the commodities boom created by China and India has the possibility of lifting even more millions upon millions out of poverty elsewhere, like in Latin America. Should we be focusing on how to help those states use this wealth more effectively, or should we treat China’s growing economic presence there and in Africa as a zero-sum threat to America’s “national interests” (Ah, to be a realist! Or should I say, a national-interest patriot!).

Seriously, stupidity knows no bounds in U.S. national security and foreign policy thinking today. People want me to declare “victory” over the smallest little changes here and there, when in reality, my work will never be done.

Bret Stephens is death-on-wheels regarding Fukuyama’s about-face volume

BOOK REVIEW: “Fukuyama’s Pivot: He urged military intervention in Iraq and hailed the country’s liberation, but now this leading public intellectual has second thoughts--and a new plan,” by Bret Stephens, Wall Street Journal, 11-12 March 2006, p. P10.

Ouch!

Stephens deftly chronicles Fukuyama’s participation in groups that vilified--quite rightly--the horrible Saddam, calling openly for his toppling. Then quotes him during the period immediately following the successful war stating that this was a very good thing.

Now, apparently, after realizing how hard state-building is (you remember, of course, that Fukuyama wrote an entire, but rather slim book on the subject that was really quite excellent), and apparently after getting quite scared about just how many pent-up emotions have been released by the Big Bang strategy (anti-Americanism that, quite frankly, will disappear for the most part the second Bush leaves office, and radical Islamism in power, which, quite frankly, beats the alternative and will do much to domesticate it over time).

Most interesting, Stephens points out how many of Bush’s key allies abroad have done just fine in subsequent elections (UK’s Blair, Aussie Howard, Danish Rasmussen and Japan’s Koziumi), while several key allies have put in power new leaders who openly seek similar approaches in supporting American policy (Canada’s Harper and Germany’s Merkel, both of whom campaigned, as Stephens notes, for better ties with the U.S.). Meanwhile, inveterate America-hater Chirac is definitely a lame duck, and his likely successor (Sarkozy) is unabashedly pro-American. So where, Stephens asks, is Fukuyama’s huge tide of anti-Americanism? In the BRIC? Hardly. Lula gets along with Bush, as does Putin. India’s a new strategic ally and Hu and Wen can’t have much trouble with a White House working so hard to tamp down rising American protectionism.

Sure, plenty of rank-and-file citizens are agitated in the Middle East, and there is always the temptation to blame all the unhappiness there on the U.S., but Bush’s real accomplishment is to turn the vast majority of that anger inward--against the decrepit elites that have too longed ruled across the region.

Fukuyama's big conclusion is that states won’t go democratic through outside machinations, but only when the people within demand such change. Hmmm. And what brings that change? Strategic communication? Pretend governments overseeing pretend states?

Or could it be economic connectivity with the outside world that brings in FDI and sends out exports other than raw materials and energy, in turn creating a stakeholder class of wealth that seeks protection in political pluralism?

It’s weird, but in the end, Fukuyama is still trapped in a lot of realism, seeing the cooperation among great powers as the key to global stability rather than simply building good states from the private-sector up.

In the end, a depressing review of a weirdly disavowing sort of volume. Fukuyama comes off as lost right now--all because of Iraq.

Me, I’ve never felt more centered in my understanding of how the world works: bad guys to be removed, but entire populations that need to be reconnected to the outside world in the aftermath. You realize that the awesome power to achieve #1 only creates the awesome responsibility to get better at #2.

Now is not the time to get lobotomized on global economics and return to the empty-headed realism of the 19th century. Please. Let’s leave that bankrupt model where it belongs. No billiard balls for me. See the connectivity, and understand how it creates both vulnerabilities and opportunities. Re-imagine the useful role of the state, a la Clinton. Get back in the business of selling America and keeping it strong in the only way that matters--economics. See and understand the military-market nexus that has returned with a vengeance, from America’s Wild West, and realize that it’s now been projected across the entire Gap as our historical challenge--the manifest destiny of making the world safe for economic connectivity and the individual freedoms it unleashes.

Now is the time for all good men to come to the aid of the global economy, the only force on Earth that rivals the U.S. military’s record for generating planet-wide collective goods.

Final Installment of Mapping the Gap

Chirol has posted his fourth and last part of his Mapping the Gap series. This one focuses on Theresa Whelan's definition of 'ungoverned areas'.

The "Enter Stage Right" interview

Twenty questions from Steve Martinovich, twenty answers from me.

Posted today at: Planning for a peaceful world: An interview with Thomas Barnett.

Planning for a peaceful world: An interview with Thomas Barnett

By Steve Martinovich

With the publication of Blueprint for Action: A Future Worth Creating, Dr. Thomas P.M. Barnett has once again crafted a strategic vision for the future that is as compelling as his highly-regarded The Pentagon's New Map: War and Peace in the Twenty-First Century. Where in TPNM Barnett identified the key issues he believed were needed to be resolved before we could expect a peaceful global community, that the United States needed to stop thinking of the world in Cold War terms and to craft a new military, political and economic rules to deal with the new reality, in BFA he goes one step further and ambitiously builds on those ideas to create a specific strategic roadmap to reach that world of peace and security. Dr. Barnett recently sat with ESR to discuss his new book and the ideas behind it...

The Future of American Military Strategy...

Not sure exactly why The Future of American Military Strategy: a Conference Report is on moldova.org. Undoubtedly one of Tom's knowledgable readers will be able to enlighten us.

At any rate, Tom gets endorsed about 75% of the way through the report by former colleague Colonel Mackubin Thomas Owens, USMCR (ret.), the Associate Dean of Academics for Electives and Directed Research and Professor of National Security Affairs at the US Naval War College. The brief quote directly about Tom reads:

Endorsing the views of Thomas Barnett, Owens’ [sic] said that we must “export security from the core . . . on the one hand, to try to make that part of the world more secure, and at the same time, take whatever steps are necessary to try to accommodate the rise of China.” Problems arise, however, if China does not want to be accommodated.

Tom comments:

An interesting capture of debate between ground forces types who want to deal with the world as we find it and those "realists" who believe it's still a giant pool table with billiard ball great powers bouncing off each other.

Guess which side notices globalization-the-economic-phenom?

That's the basic question right now: is Fourth Generation Warfare a "fad" or ascendant? I say the latter, not because states decline, but because nukes killed great power war and interstate war goes the way of the dinosaur, meaning that's all that's left.

Owens is a surprise fan for me: pretty conservative but a classic former Marine--so nuf said.

"Reflections: I miss Lady Liberty" in the Knoxville News Sentinel

Here is column #3 in the Sunday column series in the Knoxville News Sentinel. As I noted earlier last week, I really wanted to do something more intimate and conversational this time without straying too much from my expected subject matter. This way, I slowly but surely introduce myself as someone who can write global affairs and national security, but likewise use that content as a prism for more down-to-earth and personal observations, connecting the macro to the micro.

And here I'm very happy with the outcome:

Reflections: I miss Lady Liberty

By THOMAS P.M. BARNETT, tom@thomaspmbarnett.com

March 12, 2006

I've worked in national security since the end of the Cold War, and I've got to say: I miss the old Statue of Liberty.

You know her, the one that used to welcome "your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free." That's the monument I grew up with, and she symbolized America's open door.

Old Lady Liberty's got a new job now representing national fear, and it saddens me deeply to see her image perverted that way...

Go here for the full article.

I look into my Chinese daughter's bright eyes as she saunters past this morning and I suspect I have a column there...

Is the US/China relationship a rerun of UK/US?

Or, to take you back to your SAT days, Is US:China::UK:US? ;-)

Tom got the following email from a reader (who shall remain anonymous unless he outs himself):

Is China the Nemesis in a New Cold War?

Thought you might be interested. This author compares US/China relationship to UK/US relationship of 1800's with some focus on financial issues, and non-military nature of competition.

Tom's reply:

Although a bit harsh on the U.S. and ignoring the huge differences between the globalization model pushed by colonial England compared to US, as well as the different security "exports" offered by each, this is still an interesting analysis that gets closer to what needs to be said about the China "threat" than most of the bullshit from people like that Wash Times whack job. Worth reading and pondering.

The nice thing about Restless Leg Syndrome...

...is that it provides you with that much needed boost of energy you're always looking for at midnight, regardless of whatever time you planned on getting up the next day.

I used to chalk it up to weird nerves or something, until I read--about a year ago-- about RLS and I was like... man, does that ever capture me!

It comes and goes with no rhyme or reason, as far as I can tell. Now, the big difference are drugs like Ambien.

Still, it's fun to blame it on "nerves" (whatever those are) and use the excuse to blog something fast at my mother-in-law's.

Last month has felt like a tipping point for me. It is clear that Blueprint won't be making the same first-year dash that New Map did. PR is the big driver in book sales, I find, and I'm just not the fresh new thing I was in 2004. Plus, where most reviewers could be blown away by the system-level diagnostics of PNM, as many readers have pointed out the same cannot be true of BFA because there I go supremely prescriptive, and prescriptions scare people a whole lot more than diagnoses.

But, truth be told, I knew all along I was writing BFA too fast for the market, given the scope of both. If was just that, at the time, that pathway was perfect for me in so many ways: I had all the material in hand, I had the time, it triggered the inevitable forced departure from the Naval War College and thus the government, it made Putnam happy, and I was convinced I needed the income right then (which I did) in my career. The same logic pushed me in the direction of exclusive agency relationship with Leigh Bureau (about to run out in around 60 days): I saw the writing and the speeching as essential pathways to achieving the stature and reach and income flow I needed to effect the departure from the East Coast.

And it all worked wonderfully. And I don't regret any of it whatsoever--especially writing BFA so fast on the heels of PNM. I had to write BFA so fast because I needed to get all those logic pathways down in print, lest PNM's diagnosis leave me open to too much interpretation of what such policies and strategies might logically ensue. And yes, the Vol. III option sits there, ready to roll on both the sides of my usual ledger: the profound and the mundane, or the descriptions of great visions interspersed with the details of the visioneer.

But I feel myself now tipping down such a different pathway, and I am surprised to be feeling this way so quickly.

The main change agent here is Steve DeAngelis, of course, who's shown me two things: the real reach of my work and the real capacity that exists in productizing it in high-level consulting with a host of both national security related companies (the obvious ones) and associated public sector entities (both here and among logical allies), as well as with a secondary circle of global corporations that naturally seek such content and advice (this is the bigger surprise to me).

The other serious change agent has been my speaking agent, Jennifer Posda, who, along with Steve, has shown me how my thought leadership can be translated into more than just one-off speeches.

So I find myself, right on the eve of buying this house in Indiana, now considering that my planned income streams and all the places such work will take me are potentially quite radically different than I was expecting just six months ago. Back then I imagined the public policy writer route as supreme, buttressed by speeching gigs. But now, as I go into more and more rooms arranged by Steve and Jenn, I come to see a far more exclusive yet more far reaching path that puts me less on camera and in print and more in boardrooms and in senior official settings.

Either way earns the comfortable living. I'm good at what I do and I work very hard at it. I'm just surprised to find myself riding this decent writing wave and discovering that, while I still need it, I don't really NEED IT in the way that I until very recently thought. It becomes less the driver of career choices and more just the conduit of expression.

Soon, very soon I think, I will find myself writing less to be "out there" building that persona and more just to signal what I want signaled, and the real influence I wield will be more behind closed doors than on bully pulpits.

Of course, this path dovetails nicely with the notion that you move away from the obvious path to power to take your sojourn in the real world, make your money, and then return more ready for the struggle. And perhaps that notion still works for me somewhere in my head, but I do wonder.

More and more I discover that what I say makes a whole helluva lot more sense to the private sector than to the public one--much less the silly academic crowd. I just don't have to fight for either recognition or serious consideration there, as the business world seems to get my logic from the get go, unlike all the goofy "realists" who crowd the usual bastion of public sector policy authority (My definition of a realist? A poli sci type too stupid to get international economics, the proudest "A" I ever earned.)

And that's been the big surprise for me over the past months as BFA received less approval from the cognoscenti types and suffered lower sales: meanwhile my status with practitioners in both public and private sector settings has skyrocketed. So my assumption, long held, that acceptance among those I want acceptance from most must necessarily be accompanied by a celebrity/sales status is suddenly put at risk. I find myself fearing a peaking on the public persona trajectory just as the private persona takes off.

In other words, I assumed a never-ending treadmill of chasing public approval and fame as the price for the real influence I sought, and I seemed to have already passed over into that desired influence realm with the result being little clear impetus for continuing to devote so much of my career to maintaining the public persona.

Doesn't mean I suddenly go away. It just means a new balance, one that I have been hinting at (to both myself and you) for the past few months, I guess, as it began to dawn on me what Steve and Jenn were saying was true about where I am in my career.

Vision-wise, the good news is that I feel better positioned now than ever to accomplish the global work I truly, madly, deeply believe in. I just don't know if I'll be using books, Esquire, the blog, the column in ways I had previously assumed. I don't know how to say it any better than that right now, though I wish I could.

I guess I just feel like I've been working on this cocoon thing for so damn long and so damn hard that I'm amazed to feel myself waking up as something other than the caterpillar I once was.

The past few weeks working with Steve and plotting with Jenn have really been eye-openers. I can basically make all the money I want from here on out, which immediately makes the issue of making money irrelevant (As Mr. Bernstein said in "Citizen Kane": "It's not hard to make a lot of money, when all you want to do is make a lot of money."). Other than the time and experiences it buys me and mine, I just don't find it interesting except that it makes problems that typically intrude upon my creative space simply go away.

So the real challenge comes in spotting the worthy challenges and goals presented to me by this perceived new phase in my life. I'm coming up on 44, so if I decide certain things are events or goals or achievements worth pursuing, then they better be about the best years of my adult productive life. I mean, if I want to change the world for the better, now is not the time to get shy or hesitant on the subject--just focused on the pathways.

What Steve and I are working toward right now is a very powerful package of thought leadership with attendant methodologies and technologies about which I grow ever more certain can shape some serious history on many levels. I don't think Steve shows up by accident: in the end, we both self-select each other (and ditto for wise Jenn).

I dunno. I just feel this "A Team," as Steve likes to call Enterra, simply coming together in my life. Today it is called Enterra, tomorrow it may be called something else, but I think the machinery of the core team is starting to mesh together in ever more powerful ways. I see that power, and I recognize my role in it, and it feels like I just walked into the Green Bay Packer locker room in 1960, and I can see the possibilities lying ahead.

And so one achieves that rare clarity I always associate with momentous change in my life: I see all possibilities while holding nothing sacred. I feel empowered but unencumbered. Other than the consistency of my family, all seems negotiable in a 360-degree circle around this growing A Team. We're ready to work in all directions, for all clients, for all achievements--so long as they remain true to our guiding philosophies on war, peace, prosperity, markets, individual freedom, etc.

And with that package now surrounding me, I feel myself on the verge of more creativity in coming years than in the previous half-century. The only uncertainty for me is: how much and to whom will I logically share it?

So I sit here feeling odd. I'm pretty close too abandoning the idea of trying to write Vol. III this year (and maybe ever, in the original form I imagined it), and I could definitely see curtailing the effort on articles, the blog and even speeches, becoming all more selective in those venues. All this to push ahead hard on a pathway of influence I once imagined could only happen within government and now I grow ever more convinced can only happen in the private sector.

I wonder if this is purely me and if I'm not sensing some larger shift going on for people like me? Or it is just where I am in my age range/career/family situation? Or am I going through that normal wilderness phase? Or am I catching onto something truly profound that says "yes" not only to me but to history as a whole?

Then again, maybe it's just the natural creative phasing going on: I've written my two great volumes, I've spoken just about everywhere great speakers end up speaking, and I've gotten to work my writing gears now at all levels (books, articles, columns, blogs). Maybe I built this Indiana cocoon on purpose? Maybe the next transformation comes faster than I realize.

Well, that's about as good as it will get tonight, as the Ambien creeps in. Still, this sense of tipping point feels very profound to me, and I'm betting, thanks to Steve and Jenn, that I will be valuing a whole lot of things very differently within a year.

So what does that make me in the meantime? Not so sure. Just hope it ain't cranky. Certainly it will alienate some while attracting others. It always works that way, so I learned to stop caring about that dynamic a long time ago.

But my sense is that I will be walking into many fantastic rooms in coming months and years, rooms pregnant with the potential to tilt human history.

And I know this: my posse will be one magnificent crew and we'll give it our best shots.