Tom on CT radio tomorrow

Larry Rifkin
Saturday, March 28
1:00 p.m.
1320 WATR
Waterbury, CT
watr.com

Listen Live is available.

Having listened to the HASC subcommittee audio

And having a day pass, leads me to appreciate the substance more.

It also leads me to note that I was the only one of the four witnesses that actually said anything substantive about the future global security environment, the default position of Houley being more, more, more (and worldwide) in terms of requirements (while he implicitly admitted no strong case for higher-end scenarios) and Thompson falling back on the classics of "the future is unknowable" and therefore we must plan for all possibilities. O'Rourke, as is his manner, was silent on the subject.

Because I wasn't there for the beginning, I missed hearing Chairman Taylor's opening statement regarding the purpose of the hearing. On the basis of that description, I think I did the best on actually setting the stage for future discussions on force structure and acquisition than the others, because they primarily proceeded straight to those questions (buy more this, reform that, etc.).

Having missed the opening, I felt more the duck out of water, feeling like I was the only one talking the future and serious strategy. But looking back now, I feel like I did as I was asked.

And yeah, that makes me feel better on it, especially when I used that approach to do something nobody ever seems to do at those hearings: challenge the weak force structure rationale of submarines as being primarily intell gathering platforms (and yes, with roughly 15 years of top-secret or better clearance, I know the inside story well enough to call Mr. Thompson's secrecy bluff, although I did find his sigh-heavy condescension on the subject to be most amusing).

In the end, as I read my weekend column (adapted from my testimony and now up on Scripps for distro), I am quite pleased with the message I delivered and would gladly do so again.

HASC encouragement

Tom got the following email from a military officer serving as a professor at one of the service academies:

Sir,
I attended the HASC hearing yesterday for an article I'm writing. I really appreciated that you seemed to be the only voice placing future forces within an appropriate strategic context. I hope you will testify again on the Hill. Your honest, thoughtful assessment to the subcommittee was a refreshing change.

Tom's response

Thanks.

Exactly the sort of encouragement I needed. Felt a bit down afterward, but your feedback is all I need to keep trying.

Actually, that Raytheon globe is way cool

Plexi base. You stick in three plexi sticks at angles. They provide three "fingers" to balance globe. Globe is real painted one inside plexi ball. You put it in a spot with any ambient light, and for some reason, the globe rotates slowly to the east, just like the real deal. No batteries, no wire, just this cool rotating globe about 5-6 inches in diameter.

Very neat.

Other coverage of Tom's HASC appearance

ZenPundit linked our posts over here as well as Galrahn's first person account. The main part about Tom:

My favorite moment was during Thomas Barnett's opening statement, which I thought was really good. Dr. Barnett said something along the lines of "I want allies with million man armies and I want them to be ready to kill people," which is strategically exactly right.

Well, what the audio and video won't show is the reaction by Maine Congresswoman Chellie Pingree (D), who looked to me like she was about to either feint or have a heart attack when Barnett said that. It was a priceless moment of facial expressions as she struggled to cope with the idea he was expressing. Honestly, I'm still laughing writing about it here. It was only afterward I was reminded that she is co-sponsor in the creation of a new government organization.

TOM'S FOLLOW-UP COMMENT: I will go with Galrahn's analysis and retract my "I don't give a f--k" about future testifying. It was indeed an honor to be asked and I gave it my best shot because I did think it was important. Thompson got under my skin a bit, and to my credit (not usual for me, frankly), I did not reciprocate his cattiness. So I unloaded a bit in the initial blog post (heh, it is a diary!).

But Galrahn's take is far more objective than mine--obviously. So if he took the hearing seriously, I will subscribe to his thinking and shelve my ego on that one.

My initial post was like being interviewed right on the field after the game (which I was, actually, and decidedly kept my cool there, too, which is why I felt the need to unload in the blog on Thompson, who really does make you want to take a shower after you've been around him). Galrahn's thinking is much closer to mine, now that a day has passed.

The funny thing about Galrahn's notes: When I told Vonne that I said something that almost gave a Maine congresswoman a heart attack, she quipped, "Did you say, 'I'm moving to Maine?'"

The truth is, despite whatever you feel about any individual encounter, someone like me always wants to get back on the horse. My flash anger is typically about my own feeling that I could have performed better. So yeah, given the chance, I will come back with guns blazing because my #1 rule has always been: NEVER TURN DOWN A CHANCE AT PUBLIC SPEAKING!

Tom in the NL press

ARTICLE: 'Er komt een perestrojka in Iran', By Peter Schong, DePers.nl, March 26, 2009

How's your Dutch?

Article that came from an interview with Tom. Google Translator makes it look like a Dutch treatment of Tom's normal line on engaging Iran with soft power and defeating their authoritarianism like we did the USSR.

HRC: tell it like it is

ARTICLE: Clinton: U.S. Drug Policies Failed, Fueled Mexico's Drug War, By Mary Beth Sheridan, Washington Post, March 26, 2009; Page A01

Like Hillary speaking the truth--bluntly--on our c-narcotics strategy re: Mexico. Saying anything else is dishonest, but being that honest as SECSTATE is truly commendable.

These Are Books I Would Add To A SysAdmin Library

Frequent contributor Louis Heberlein sent this email to Tom:

Dr. Barnett

Besides your Great Powers work,I think the following sources would be useful for background insights. I could write too much more.

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

I. War Before Civilization by Lawrence H. Keeley

Web Site Reviews:

http://www.troynovant.com/Franson/Keeley/War-Before-Civilization.html

http://www.questia.com/library/book/war-before-civilization-by-lawrence-h-keeley.jsp

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_Before_Civilization

http://brneurosci.org/reviews/war.html

Applications Article Involving Such Insights.

http://smallwarsjournal.com/blog/2007/07/coin-in-a-tribal-society-1/

The insights that were important for me:

- Tribal Elders were and are important to tribal leaders for their expanded historical and psychological perspective.

- They accepted the need for military capacity, and use when alternatives failed, or there were unexpected crises.

- Archeology (many cases of huge amounts of spent arrowheads around fabricated field fortifications) indicates there  were some large battles, but tribal strategies sought/seek to turn away, absorb, or wear down a competitive force.

  Their main priority was/is to preserve their military/working population and resources for the future.  

- Tribal elders were aware of the PTSD type impact on warriors from large close conflicts, or continuous hit & run.

  The impact degraded their ability to work with and help their families and communities. So the elders had forms of psychological social care to help the warriors recover. Perhaps they became the next generation of prudent elders.

II. The Global Village by Marshall McLuhan & Bruce R. Powers

The reminder insights that were important for me:

- The Greek/Western/American world's left brain analytical/quantitative intellectual tendency that has often become an unnoticed ideology, rather than a process to be used carefully when appropriate. 

- We 'train' our New Core allies to talk and act like us in making observations and plans without realizing that neither  they (nor we) are aware of the weaknesses from hidden assumptions and 'thinking in the box' rules. 

- The Pentagon/Congress/Media establishments' use of computer generated charts and briefing slides inhibits them  from discussions, let alone analyses/decisions outside the artificial box.

-
It is bad enough that we don't consider other cultures' (like Chinese)
perception of right brain influences on decisions/actions.

  It
is even worse that we make so little effort to monitor the impact and
possible opportunities on our own 'invisible' right brain perceptions .... for which we often contrive an artificial left brain model and rule set.

-
Too often it's the scam artists and consumer marketing crowd that
exploits right brain thinking, which undermines the legitimate use of those processes. (Information warfare is an exception to that remark)

III. Perestroika For America by George C. Lodge

That was a business and economy predecessor to the type of transformation and rule sets covered in Great Powers.

IV. Growth and Development of Western Learning in Japan - Mainly from Dutch to English Studies- 

by Ida Yoshiharu 

V. Dutch Transfer Of Knowledge Through Deshima  by A. Querido

VI. The Rise and Development of Dutch Learning (Rangaku) in Japan by Katagiri Kazuo

- These professional academic works involved the Dutch effort to help Japan modernize its economy, science and technology, and to understand the outside Western world.

- It was done very well, but there was an unintended consequence. The Dutch had lost business and two sea wars to England, and they were forced to become junior colonial and business partners to the English. Their frustration came through in their discussions and writings with the Japanese. The Japanese interpreted the dialogue to mean the 'bastard' American brats of the English would expand West, dominate their continent, and eventually move into Asia and threaten Japanese interests.

- So, for many decades the Japanese leaders and scholars monitored the Americans' wars, Westward expansion railroad and heavy industry developments. When TR first aided Japan in getting a positive 1905 peace after its conflict with Russia, it seemed we could be Asian partners. But domestic politics caused TR to force Japan to keep its workers from coming to America with the 1908 Gentlemen's Agreement. At the same time he sent his Great White Fleet of 16 battleships to open Japan, China and Asia to US businesses. That confirmed the Japanese insights gained centuries earlier from Dutch at Deshima.

  Pearl Harbor eventually followed. There is little indication that America representatives knew, or cared, about Japanese right or left brain perspectives on past American actions. All that counted was the Great Powers competition of that time.     

VII. Eisenhower: A Centennial Life  by Michael R. Beschloss

VIII. John Foster Dulles: The Road To Power by Ronald W. Pruessen

IX. War or Peace by John Foster Dulles (1950)

- This was a Dulles who thought and promoted a transformed Great Powers and Rule Set for his time.

- Then in 1952 IKE made him his 'bad cop' to satisfy right wing momentum of the time while IKE played 'good cop' and back door invisible gamester to contain the Cold War.

X. Politics Among Nations: The Struggle For Power And Peace by Hans J. Morgenthau  

- Individuals choose to subjugate themselves (or are subjugated) to a sovereign national authority.

- This loses much of their personal potential power to influence others. That lost quest is a basic human drive, like survival or reproduction.

- Peoples' fear of real or imagined threats to their (substituted) national sovereignty and power expression, particularly from a dominant power creates crisis reactions .... sometimes a defensive imperialism.

- Morgenthau asked statesmen to monitor the current power expression dialogue between a state, its citizens, and its neighbors.

- His Balance of Powers approach involved a designed mix of existing and emerging powers rather than a summation of the relative strengths of two major powers and their allies.

- There were shabby aspects to the power game, but we had to play it. We should do it maturely rather than seek quick, cheap advantages. He believed the game could provide a conditioning process that might lead to a form of international order to moderate or replace nation to nation power struggles.

XI. The Cold War Is Over by William G. Hyland  

XII. Walter Lippman And The American Century by Ronald Steel

XIII. U.S. Foreign Policy: Shield of The Republic by Walter Lippman

XIIV. The Cold War: A Study In U.S. Foreign Policy by Walter Lippman

- The Lippman books are useful at looking at 'what if' possibilities as we are involved in new power transformations.

14 years and counting for Chavez

THE AMERICAS: "Venezuela's term-limits referendum: Chavez for ever? The president has won a referendum to abolish terms limits. But the coming economic storm may make this a hollow victory," The Economist, 21 February 2009.

Weird, but it's in socialist Venezuela were the financial crisis puts a halt to nationalization plans and it's in capitalist America that it sets them in motion.

As the article points out, "oil is just about the only thing the country now exports," befitting the strong man's rise--i.e., connectivity is decreased AND narrowed.

I wouldn't expect Chavez to quit after 14 years come 2013. With Fidel exiting, he'll become the poster boy for the dictator "too important to the revolution to leave."

Meanwhile, inflation runs at 30%.

Listen and weep: Tom testifies to HASC subcommittee on Seapower

Audio found here: http://armedservices.house.gov/hearing_information.shtml.

Load the audio immediately into WMP by clicking here.

Ed: Tom's comment about subs comes in at 1:20 and then you get the exchange with Thompson and his silly posturing.

Anybody spot on CSPAN?

Busy day

Got up 0645, suited up, grabbed some joe, and did AV check in ballroom where big Raytheon event held. Then checked bag, grabbed big latte with extra shot, and got psyched. About 30 later I go 55 mins on brief and about 15 Q&A. When I'm done, it's exactly 1000, when hearing slated to start.

I have host check my Mac bag with valet, along with speaker's gift (my world-record collection of crystal world globes grows yet again), and I grab taxi to Rayburn.

Staffer waits with sign and I bypass long security line.

Into cavernous and historic House Armed Services committee room. I take seat in middle of witness table (assigned seat) while retired admiral Bill Houley is reading his statement. Loren Thompson and Ron O'Rourke already there. I sit between the admiral and O'Rourke. I've known Ron professionally for almost 20 years and we like each other. Ron is gloriously sensible. He smiles and we shake. I had no expectation of being recognized by the admiral. I didn't like him much during "From the Sea ..." and he always seemed to return the favor. I don't know Loren Thompson and have no desire to. I don't typically get along with such flexible, inside-the-Beltway creatures.

I get glasses out and sit ready to go through my remarks (short version of statement). I am next. Chairman Taylor says I can go longer than five. I go about six minutes.

Then the other two speak.

Questions from members are extremely specific to their pet causes. I considered that exchange largely to be a showy waste of time.

Only sparks: I raise issue of Navy needing to accept more tactical risk if they want to influence events ashore more, referencing LCS. I get a small lecture about "sons and daughters" from Taylor. I refrain from mentioning my family members now in Iraq, considering that a counter-grandstanding move better avoided.

Instead, I counter with logic of Army-Marine COIN: you accept more risk when you get closer in--plain and simple. The Navy has already perfected its force structure in terms of largely rendering itself casualty-free and irrelevant to the long war, so it's just a question of "whose sons and daughters" bear the brunt.

Taylor thanks me for a response he clearly had no expectation of triggering.

Then Thompson, who panders with a grace bordering on the sublime (decrying costs in aggregate but praising individual systems and platforms), gets pissed when I downplay the intell capture argument offered by Seawolf sub proponents (Oh, to need $2.2B stealthy platforms to spy off Syria's coast! His example, not mine). He laments that it's too bad that the American public can't truly know how value such collection is! This is the classic insider put down: If only you knew the secrets I know! Then you'd not dare to question my porkish logic!

Maybe, Thompson suggests snarkily, Barnett wants to get rid of all spy satellites simply because they're secret!

I feel like I'm arguing with a child now. But the stage demands actors, and Thompson is well practiced in feigned exasperation!

I counter that the real choice is whether or not the super-expensive sub is the most appropriate route to go on intell collection versus other, less expensive choices.

Then Thompson gets truly silly. The future is totally unknowable, he cries. He says that if somebody told him ten years ago that we'd be fighting a land war in Asia, it would have been beyond his imagination!

Hmmm, I guess that tells you all you need to know about Thompson's strategic imagination.

His real point now driven home with--again--practiced indignation: America's military must be able to handle all threats from all actors in all places at all times. This is his definition of strategic thinking.

Your tax dollars at work, my friends.

I consider Thompson's tripe to be the complete absence of strategic thought, decision-making, leadership, and risk management. He epitomizes everything I ridiculed in "Pentagon's New Map." If you want to know why our military--large chunks, that is--refuses to adjust to reality, Thompson's mindset it Exhibit A.

To defend against all threats is to defend against none--Sun Tzu 101.

But clearly, when you career revolves around maintaining your access to powerful people, you say what you know will ensure your continued "relevance."

Me? I couldn't give a f--k if I was never invited to testify again. I lack the discipline to mince my words and find the kabuki-style theater unsettlingly unrelated to useful decision-making. Other than providing Members with appropriate outrage opportunities, you're just there to fill in the scenery and the script.

No sense in disturbing the "unknowable future." Better to fill that vast void with every expensive platform we can dream up and call it a "strategy."

(Insert fingers down throat for clarity.)

Other than that, Mrs. Lincoln loved the play.

Gave impromptu interview to defense beat reporter in hallway after hearing.

Then home to do Hewitt taping tonight.

But I doth protest too much.

It was very cool to sit at the table facing the gallery of seats, with the giant paintings of former chairmen on the walls.

I shouldn't let Thompson's industrial-strength shilling sour me on the whole thing.

Tom's testimony today

Statement submitted

By 

Dr. Thomas P.M. Barnett,

Senior Managing Director,

Enterra Solutions
LLC 

To 

Seapower and Expeditionary
Forces Subcommittee,

House Armed Services
Committee,

United States Congress

26 March 2009 
 

I appear before the subcommittee today
to provide my professional analysis of the current global security environment
and future conflict trends, concentrating on how accurately--in my
opinion--America's naval services address both in their strategic
vision and force-structure planning.  As has been the case throughout
my two decades of working for, and with, the Department of Navy, current
procurement plans portend a "train wreck" between desired fleet
size and likely future budget levels dedicated to shipbuilding. 
I am neither surprised nor dismayed by this current mismatch, for it
reflects the inherent tension between the Department's continuing
desire to maintain some suitable portion of its legacy force and its
more recent impulse toward adapting itself to the far more prosaic tasks
of integrating globalization's "frontier areas"--as I like to
call them--as part of our nation's decades-long effort to play bodyguard
to the global economy's advance, as well as defeat its enemies in
the "long war against violent extremism" following 9/11.  Right
now, this tension is mirrored throughout the Defense Department as a
whole:  between what Secretary Gates has defined as the "next-war-itis"
crowd (primarily Air Force and Navy) and those left with the ever-growing
burdens of the long war--namely, the Army and Marines. 

It is my sense that the current naval
leadership views the global environment with great accuracy, understanding
its service role to be one of balancing between four strategic tasks: 
a) sensibly hedging against the slim possibility of great-power war;
b) preparing the force for high-end combat operations against a regional
rogue power armed with nascent nuclear weapons capacity; c) supporting/conducting
ground operations in the struggle against violent extremism; and d)
improving maritime governance and security in those regions where today
it remains virtually non-existent (e.g., most of Africa's coastline). 
Using the vernacular of my published works^*, I consider the
first two tasks (great-power war, war against regional rogues) to fall
under the rubric of America's Leviathan^** or big-war force,
while the latter two tasks (struggle against extremism, extending governance)
define the growing portfolio of our nation's System Administrator^*
or small-wars force. 

Historically, the Department of Navy
defined the totality of our nation's would-be System Administrator
force, meaning, prior to the World Wars of the 20^th century,
it was the job of the Navy and Marine Corps to both defend and extend
America's commercial networks with the outside world, while the U.S.
Army (i.e., Department of War) served mainly as a continental constabulary
force that worked to integrate western frontier lands.  Those World
Wars, in combination with the Cold War, transformed the U.S. Army and
its offshoot, the Air Force, into the
primary Leviathan services vis-à-vis the Soviet threat, while the naval
services, despite the grand ambitions of their 1980s Maritime Strategy,
were left overwhelmingly in the role of managing the adjacent theaters
known as the Third World.  At Cold War's end, those naval forces
gladly embraced their enduring "SysAdmin" role, portraying themselves
as de facto global police capable of handling--on their own--virtually
all developing-region crisis scenarios short of regional war. 
But with the post-9/11 interventions (Iraq, Afghanistan), the Navy quickly
saw its global constabulary role eclipsed by the U.S. Army, as that
force, supported by the Marines, once again stepped into its pre-20^th-century
role as our nation's primary nation-building /occupational/counterinsurgency
force--this time on the shifting frontiers of globalization's advance. 

Now, the Navy finds itself split between
preserving its blue-ocean Leviathan fleet while simultaneously expanding
its green/brown-water SysAdmin fleet, the former speaking primarily
to 20^th-century great-power war scenarios that have lingered
despite globalization's deep, pacifying embrace (see my geographic
definition of globalization's Functioning Core^* in Figure
1 below), while demand for the latter only increases because
of globalization's historically swift penetration of a raft of previously
off-grid, still largely traditional regions (my definition of globalization's
Non-Integrated Gap^**) where today we locate virtually all
of the wars, civil wars, genocide and ethnic "cleansing," mass rape
as a tool of terror, children lured or forced into combat activity,
acts of terrorism, exporters of illegal narcotics, UN peacekeeping efforts,
and 95 percent of U.S. military overseas interventions since 1990. 

Figure 1:  The Pentagon's
New Map (2004)

As someone who helped write the Department
of Navy's white paper, ...From the Sea, in the early 1990s
and has spent the last decade arguing that America's grand strategy
should center on fostering globalization's advance, I greatly welcome
the Department's 2007 Maritime Strategic Concept that stated: 

United State seapower will be globally
postured to secure our homeland and citizens from direct attack and
to advance our interests around the world.  As our security and
prosperity are inextricably linked with those of others, U.S. maritime
forces will be deployed to protect and sustain the peaceful global system
comprised of interdependent networks of trade, finance, information,
law, people and governance. 

Rather than merely focusing on whatever
line-up of rogue powers constitutes today's most pressing security
threats, the Department's strategic concept locates its operational
center of gravity amidst the most pervasive and persistently revolutionary
dynamics associated with globalization's advance around the planet,
for it is primarily in those frontier-like regions currently experiencing
heightened levels of integration with the global economy (increasingly
as the result of Asian economic activity, not Western) that we locate
virtually all of the mass violence and instability in the system.   

Moreover, this strategic bias toward
globalization's Gap regions (e.g., a continuous posturing of "credible
combat power" in the Western Pacific and the Arabian Gulf/Indian Ocean)
and SysAdmin-style operations there makes eminent sense in a time horizon
likely to witness the disappearance of the three major-war scenarios
that currently justify our nation's continued funding of our Leviathan
force--namely, China-Taiwan, Iran, and North Korea.  First, the
Taiwan scenario increasingly bleeds plausibility as that island state
seeks a peace treaty with the mainland and proceeds in its course of
economic integration with China.  Second, as Iran moves ever closer
to achieving an A-to-Z nuclear weapon capability, America finds itself
effectively deterred from major war with that regime (even as Israel
will likely make a show--largely futile--of delaying this achievement
through conventional strikes sometime in the next 12 months). 
Meanwhile, the six-party talks on North Korea have effectively demystified
any potential great-power war scenarios stemming from that regime's
eventual collapse, as America now focuses largely on the question of
"loose nukes" and China fears only that Pyongyang's political
demise might reflect badly on continued "communist" rule in Beijing--hardly
the makings of World War III. 

As the Leviathan's primary warfighting
rationales fade with time, its proponents will seek to sell both this
body and the American public on the notion of coming "resource wars"
with other great powers.  This logic is an artifact from the Cold
War era, during which the notion of zero-sum competition for Third World
resources held significant plausibility primarily because economic connectivity
between the capitalist West and the socialist East was severely limited. 
But as the recent financial contagion proved, that reality no longer
exists (see Figure 2 below).  The level of financial interdependence
across globalization's Functioning Core, in addition to the supply-chain
connectivity generated by globally integrated production lines, renders
moot the specter of zero-sum resource competition among the world's
great powers.  If anything, global warming's long-term effects
on agricultural production around the planet will dramatically increase
both East-West and North-South interdependency as a result of the emerging
global middle class's burgeoning demand for higher caloric intake/resource-intensive
foodstuffs.  To the extent that rising demand goes unmet or Gap
regions suffer significant resource shortages in the future, we are
exceedingly unlikely to see resumed great-power conflict as a result. 
Rather, we are likely to witness even more destabilizing civil strife
in many fragile states (a situation to which even rising great powers
such as Brazil, Russia, India and China could return under the right
macro-economic conditions), thus additionally increasing the SysAdmin
force's global workload and triggering further Pentagon resource shifts
from the underutilized Leviathan force.  Naturally, the same could
be said about the legacy of today's global economic crisis. 

Figure 2: 
Initial market declines during 2008 global financial crisis, Core-Gap
superimposed

(Source: Wall Street Journal, 13
October 2008) 

In sum, I see a future in which the
SysAdmin side of the ledger (more Green than Blue) experiences continued
significant growth in its global workload, while the Leviathan (more
Blue than Green) experiences the opposite.  As such, the U.S. Government's
ongoing budget woes, in combination with the rising costs associated
with equipping the Leviathan force (e.g., incredibly expensive capital
ships), means that the Leviathan's platform numbers will shrink significantly
over the next couple decades while the SysAdmin's numbers (a cheaper
mix of smaller and more disposable/unmanned platforms) will rise dramatically--along
with personnel requirements (already seen with the move to add 92,000
ground troops).   As a result, America's "soft power"
military resources will grow in size and capabilities, over time generating
pressure to create some new bureaucratic entity more operationally in
line with such activities--namely, somewhere between our current departments
of "peace" (State) and "war" (Defense). 

As for the Department of Navy's current
force-structure plan, I think it's safe to say that our naval Leviathan
force enjoys a significant--as in, several times over--advantage
over any other force out there today.  As such, our decisions regarding
new capital ship development and procurement should center largely on
the issue of preserving industrial base.  My strategic advice is
that America should go as low and as slow as possible in the production
of such supremely expensive platforms, meaning we accept that our low
number of per-class buys will be quite costly.  To the extent that
ship or aircraft numbers are kept up or even expanded in aggregate,
I believe such procurement should largely benefit the SysAdmin force's
need for many cheap and small platforms, preferably of the sort that
can be utilized by our forces for some suitable period of time and then
given away to smaller navies around the world to boost their own capacity
for local maritime governance.  In other words, we should increasingly
make our overall naval force structure symmetrical to the now-asymmetrical
challenges and threats found in globalization's frontier regions (what
I call the Gap), our long-term focus being on increasingly the capacity
of states there to govern those spaces on their own.   

As such, I am a firm believer in Admiral
Mike Mullen's notion of the "1,000-ship navy" and the Global Maritime
Partnerships initiative, especially when, as a part of such efforts,
our naval forces expand cooperation with the navies of rising great
powers like China and India, two countries whose militaries remain far
too myopically structured around border conflict scenarios (Taiwan for
China, Kashmir for India).  America must dramatically widen its
definition of strategic allies going forward, as the combination of
the overleveraged United States and the demographically-moribund Europe
and Japan no longer constitutes a global quorum of great powers sufficient
to address today's global security agenda.    

To conclude, the U.S. Navy faces severe
budgetary pressures on future construction of traditional capital ships
and submarines.  Those pressures will only grow as a result of
the current global economic crisis (which--lest we forget--generates
similar pressures on navies around the world) and America's continued
military operations abroad as part of our ongoing struggle against violent
extremism.  Considering these trends as a whole, I would rather
abuse the Navy--force structure-wise--before doing the same to either
the Marine Corps or the Coast Guard.  Why?  It is my professional
opinion that the United States defense community currently accepts far
too much risk and casualties and instability on the low
end of the conflict spectrum while continuing to spend far too much
money on building up our combat capabilities for high-end scenarios. 
In effect, we over-feed our Leviathan force while starving our SysAdmin
force, accepting far too many avoidable casualties in the latter while
hedging excessively against theoretical future casualties in the former. 
Personally, I find this risk-management strategy to be both strategically
unsound and morally reprehensible. 

As this body proceeds in its collective
judgment regarding the naval services' long-range force-structure
planning, my suggested standard is a simple one:  give our forces
fewer big ships with fewer personnel on them and many more smaller ships
with far more personnel on them.   As the Department of Navy
finally gets around to fulfilling the strategic promise of systematically
engaging the littoral ... from the sea, doing so in complete
agreement--in my professional opinion--with the security trends triggered
by globalization's tumultuous advance, I would humbly advise Congress
not to stand in its way.

The compression of time in China

BRIEFING: "Chinese business: Time to change the act; Business in China, like business everywhere else, is being walloped by the global crisis. The slowdown is also exposing some deeper flaws," The Economist, 21 February 2009.

China made a recent career of inserting itself in global supply chains at the top of assembly, but in decidedly low-tech realms by and large, meaning "China is a net exporter of goods with a low technology content and a net importer of more sophisticated wares."

Thus the current crisis will push China harder into higher-margin activities, as the article predicts. China clearly mastered the early Japan model. Now it remains to be see if it can master the more mature Japanese version:

Why, then have Chinese manufactures not done more to improve the quality of their goods? The benign explanation is that China is undergoing the same problems as Japan once did, but in a litigious, consumer-centered age in which every flaw is magnified.

China just lacks, despite the many myths, much long-term thinking in its corporations, which Japan definitely had; the global branding to date has been weak. Taiwan did this well in emulation of Japan, as did South Korea: anonymous producers becoming branded players.

Why less so in China so far? Weakness of IP rights, says the article, and still too much government ownership of many companies.

Point being: the mobilization model of China's rise is nearing its end. What comes next will demand more sophistication, along with more pluralism to deal with the complexity.

That means China's state-directed capitalism hasn't taught us anything new. It's reaching the same limits that every other version has previously bumped into.

Coke overreach?

ARTICLE: China rejects Coke's bid to buy juice maker, AP, March 18, 2009

A tit for no particular tat and yet a sign of rising economic nationalism nonetheless.

Smart money says Coke simply picked the wrong takeover target. You typically want to grab #2 or #3 in the industry, not the #1. So frankly, while disturbing in a big picture sense, I see this more as a tactical error on Coke's part.

(Thanks: Jeff Jennings)

Protection racket

ARTICLE: Taliban Grab Share of Reconstruction Aid, By Fetrat Zerak, Institute for War and Peace Reporting, March 23, 2009

Where the central government has no writ, the mafia (whatever the name) prevail.

And if you want to build in mafia-land, they want their cut up front.

(Thanks: Matthew Garcia)

Tom in Policy Innovations

ARTICLE: Great Powers: America and the World After Bush, Policy Innovations, March 23, 2009

Publication of the Carnegie Council reprinted Tom's address to them

Do we feel enough pain?

POST:
Better Civilian Coordination Needed for Afghan Development, By Paul McLeary, Ares, 3/24/2009

Another call for what I dubbed the Department of Everything Else a few years back.

The real question, for me, is whether the pains of Afghanistan prove to be enough of a spur to make something like this happen.

We traded 'Global War on Terror' for this?

POST: The End of the Global War on Terror - Al Kamen, Washington Post's In The Loop, Small Wars Journal, March 25, 2009

"Overseas Contingency Operation": hmmmmm, how revealing.

The Economist on the Kurds' rising anxiety

MIDDLE EAST AND AFRICA: "Iraq and its Kurds: Not so happy; The new strength of Iraq's central government is alarming the Kurds," The Economist, 21 February 2009.

Overview of coming Arab-Kurd tensions.

My guess, as I have stated before, is that the Kurds will learn to settle for the three provinces they currently have and give in on Mosul and Kirkuk.

Oddly enough, the emerging wildcard here is Turkey, which ends up being more supportive of Kurdish positions that you might intuit.

If the "second Saddam" does appear in Iraq (an old scenario of mine from PNM), then the KRG suddenly becomes the buffer for Turkey, in addition to being an investment beach head and a gateway--ultimately--to the underserved market called Iran.

The end of pleasant surprises?

THE FUTURE OF TECH: "The Next Net: Companies may soon know where customers are likely to be every minute of the day," by Stephen Baker, BusinessWeek, 9 March 2009.

Interesting article that recalls some of the futuristic notions of very direct advertising in the movie, "Minority Report."

But one cannot help but wonder how far this can really go without damaging our inherent hunter-gatherer impulses. If the net is going to anticipate every desire and push the products at you at all times, pretty soon your curiosity is going to atrophy.

Any new connectivity poses this danger, witness the lament in the animated movie "Cars" about interstates killing all the small towns--the end of discovery by driving. Instead, every X miles you are prompted to drink, eat, go to the bathroom, and gas up.

You can almost imagine a new class structure built around degrees of connectivity: those who see pervasive empowerment in it and those who see vast disempowerment in it--do-it-by-net versus do-it-yourself.

It'll be an interesting social evolution to track.