Strategic fear: what goes around comes around

■"Sputnik Scare, Updated," op-ed by Robert J. Samuelson, Washington Post, 26 May 2005, p. A27.

When I did my diagnostic on op-ed columnists recently, I neglected to mention the most excellent Robert Samuelson who writes for the WP. This piece is another great example of why I like him: he too likes to put fear in context. The China/India bogeyman sold by Friedman and othersówhether in economic or military formóis just the latest version of America getting itself lathered over some imaginary "gap" in capabilities. Typical of our myopia, instead of focusing on the real Gap of regions poorly connected to the global economy, we obsess over our own levels of connectivity and skill sets, indicative of the type of zero-sum mentality (if you gain, I must be losing!) we constantly tell developing countries to abandon as they adopt market principles.

Here's the best part from the op-ed:

The Sputnik syndrome is an illusion. It transforms a few selective economic happenings -- a satellite here, a Toyota there, poor test scores everywhere -- into a full-blown theory of economic inferiority or superiority. As often as not, the result is misleading. We are now going through this process with China and India. Their entry into the global economy is a big deal, with some obvious pluses and minuses for us. As they get richer, some of their talent that once came our way may stay home (especially if we make getting U.S. visas harder). On the other hand, good ideas that originate in Bangalore or Shanghai will soon benefit people everywhere -- just as good American or Japanese ideas have before.

Do China and India threaten us economically? Possibly, though not in the usually imagined way. Their low wages and rising skills will continue to cost us some jobs, especially in an easily interconnected world. But if global trade were reasonably balanced, we should roughly gain what we lose. Countries that export would spend their earnings on imports.

Unfortunately, trade isn't well balanced. China and many Asian countries (though not India) run huge surpluses; they sell more than they buy. That's why the Bush administration is rightly pressuring China to revalue its currency, which would make Chinese exports more expensive and its imports less expensive. The danger is that the China bloc destabilizes the world economy -- not that it soon overtakes us.

On being overtaken, history teaches another lesson. America's economic strengths lie in qualities that are hard to distill into simple statistics or trends. We've maintained beliefs and practices that compensate for our weaknesses, including ambitiousness; openness to change (even unpleasant change); competition; hard work; and a willingness to take and reward risks. If we lose this magic combination, it won't be China's fault.

Like my day of self-doubt, it's a natural indulgence. But don't give in, America. Remember your strengths. We have always assumed we're raising a generation of complete idiots, and we've always been wrong.

Revisting: New Rules for a New Era

From Deleted Scenes from The Pentagon's New Map.

Deleted Scene #1

Chapter One: New Rule Sets

Section: New Rules For a New Era

Commentary: This first "deleted scene" was something I ginned up in response to Mark Warren's concern that Chapter One really needed some firm explication of what I felt were the major rule-set shifts between the Cold War that ended years ago and the post-9/11 global security environment we find ourselves now inhabiting. We figured it would go in the second section entitled, "New Rules for a New Era." I cranked this out one afternoon after finishing some writing on Chapter Two. Mark liked the material and spent a lot of time trying to figure out where it might go in the first chapter, but in the end we decided not to use it because there was no easy place to put it and we feared it would slow down the pace with its intense summarizing qualities.

Deleted Scene: Rule-set Shifts From Cold War To Current Era

[TEXT BEGINS]

Let me offer a dozen examples of the rule set shifts I think we have undergone since the end of the Cold War, but which were not apparent to us until 9/11.

First and most obviously, in the Cold War the old rule was that our homeland was an effective sanctuary thanks to our nuclear stand-off with the Soviets. They could not touch us at home and we did not dare touch them where they lived for fear of triggering global war. When the Cold War ended, the misalignment that emerged was our assumption that we could play a pure "away game" militarily (i.e., intervene overseas) with no incurred dangers back at home, and that simply was not true. What we learned on 9/11 is that if we took the fight to them, eventually they would bring it back to us, and since no relationship of strategic deterrence exists between the U.S. and these new bad actors (exactly which society do we hold at risk to deter Al Qaeda?), any "away game" we engage in from now on will necessarily trigger a "home game" heightening of security.

That leads to the rule set shift that says war is no longer something you plan for in isolation. In the Cold War, the old rule said that if we went to war, it would be total, so planning for war was -- in many ways -- fairly simple, because you would not need to account for any simultaneous peace. War planning, therefore, was conducted with almost no reference to the larger world outside -- or what I call planning for "war within the context of war." The misalignment that emerged in the 1990s was caused by globalization itself, which generated levels of worldwide economic connectivity that soon dwarfed the sorts of wars that still occur. In other words, the global economy no longer comes to a standstill for wars, so planning for wars now has to take into consideration the rest of the peace -- or what I call planning for "war within the context of everything else." Truth be told, the Pentagon is chocked full of people with great expertise at planning wars within the context of war, but almost none with any expertise at planning wars within the context of everything else.

The third rule-set change involves how we define the threat. The old rule set said the Pentagon should focus on the biggest threat to U.S. security emanating from the strategic environment. For most of Defense Department's existence, that threat was the Soviet Union. When the Soviets disappeared, the Pentagon spent the nineties searching for a peer, eventually settling on China as the next best thing -- a "near-peer." But that need for a nation-state as the biggest threat blinded the U.S. to the growing danger of transnational terrorism. After 9/11, the new rule set says the Pentagon should focus on the strategic environment that generates threats, not on any one specific threat.

A fourth rule-set change concerns how we define the major divisions in the international security environment. During the Cold War, it was the West versus the East. In the nineties, most assumed the dividing line would lie between the North (rich) and the South (poor), with the first Persian Gulf War signaling the beginning of resource-focused conflicts between advanced states which lacked key raw materials and developing economies that possessed them in abundance. But as globalization grows more pronounced and visible, the new rule set becomes the division between the connected or globalizing economies of the world (Core) and those which are largely disconnected from the global economy (Gap). In the past we asked, "Are you with us or against us?" From now on, the question becomes, "Are you in or are you out?"

A fifth rule set shift involves the difference in defining strategic success. In the Cold War, strategic success could be simply paraphrased as "hold that line." So long as the Soviet bloc was not expanding, we were winning, because it was our contention that the socialist states would weaken and collapse over time. The mistake assumption we made over the 1990s was to assume that the "bad stuff," or conflicts of the international security environment could be safely kept "outside, over there." That was, in fact, the unstated motto of ÖFrom the Sea: we wanted to "keep it over there" and -- by doing so -- keep America safe. After 9/11, we know how self-deluding that sort of security strategy really is. Because if there is enough pain "over there," eventually we will be made to feel it "over here." Therefore, "holding the line" between globalization's Core and Gap is not even an option. We cannot wait for the Gap to weaken and collapse; that is already happening and the major reason why security issues there abound. Now the status quo is our enemy and our motto becomes, "shrink the Gap."

A sixth rule set change emerges directly the previous: our definition of problem Third World states. During the Cold War we called them "client states," and they belonged either to our bloc or the other guy's. During the nineties, these largely fragile states typically failed to attract the generous sponsorship of any major power, and in many instances collapsed into endemic internal conflict, and so we called them "failed states." But after 9/11, the new rule set says that the states we tended to ignore over the nineties, or the ones that became increasingly disconnected from the global community, became havens for such dangerous transnational terrorist networks as Al Qaeda. So now we pay very close attention to these "disconnected states."

Our concerns about such disconnected states yields a rule-set shift in the area of weapons of mass destruction. The old Cold War rule set said arms control was the way to go in controlling a stand-off with an enemy we knew -- deep down -- we could deter. In the 1990s, a misalignment emerged thanks to our over-reliance on the instrument of sanctions to stem what we feared would be a "fire sale" of WMD from the collapsed Soviet Bloc states to rogue nations. As Al Qaeda proved on 9/11, mass deaths can be achieved without recourse to WMD, and yet, does anyone doubt Osama Bin Laden would have used WMD on 9/11 if he had had the capability? So now the new rule set says that, rather than hoping sanctions will be enough, America preempts in those special situations where we judge the "bad actors" in question are potentially undeterrable.

But as preemption is easily characterized by critics as a rash strategic response, the Pentagon is forced to reevaluate its focus on strategic speed -- or how fast we decide to go to war. During the Cold War, we maintained ourselves on a hair-trigger alert with the Soviets, a stance we relaxed in the 1990s. But our focus on rushing to respond to crisis situations remained strong in the 1990s, thanks in large part to our experience with Iraq's invasion of Kuwait. With the emergence of our new strategy of preemption, however, it is a "fast" U.S. military establishment that the advanced world fears most: reckless, trigger-happy, and prone to unilateralism. Thus the new rule set on strategic response is that Pentagon stresses the inevitability over speed.

A ninth rule-set shift involves our technological standing vis-a-vis potential foes. During the Cold War, we faced an enemy of roughly equal technology. When that "peer" disappeared, we spent the nineties preparing for less-advanced foes that would negate our military strengths "asymmetrically" by attacking our weak spots. But those fears have proved misplaced. As our recent military victories in Afghanistan and Iraq demonstrated, America has no problem overwhelming smaller foes in war. Instead, we discover that our military Achilles' heel is not our dependency on technology to wage war, but the lack of a sufficiently large, low-tech constabulary force to win the peace that follows.

A related rule-set shift concerns the long-vaunted requirement that America must always have an "exit strategy" in place prior to beginning any overseas intervention. In the waning years of the Cold War, the Pentagon sought to distance itself from the lingering effects of the Vietnam War, or the nation's profound reticence to jump into potential "quagmires." The Powell Doctrine, so named for then-Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff General Colin Powell, sought to prevent such open-ended interventions by requiring both the application of "overwhelming force" and a pre-determined definition of a completed mission that was limited in scope. So, if the Cold War rule set stated that America could not leave without a victory, then the Powell Doctrine declared that there could be no victory without leaving. The new rule set of this global war on terrorism turns the Powell Doctrine completely on its head by saying--in effect--that military victories in war are meaningless unless they are followed by political victories in peace. But more importantly, the military's role does not end with war termination.

The death of the Powell Doctrine also marks the resurrection of the Army from its strategic deathbed. During the Cold War, strategic nuclear forces ruled the Pentagon roost, thanks to their dominant role in deterring the Soviet threat. Across the nineties, thanks to Desert Storm and the Kosovo campaign, air power was promoted as the heart and soul of a "transformed" military, while "antiquated" ground forces were slated for the dustbin of history. Now, thanks to the inescapable nation-building requirements triggered by preemptive wars, the Army shifts from transformation bad boy to "imperial" poster boy.

Finally, the global war on terrorism redirects the Pentagon from its decades-long focus on internal networking among the four services to a much-needed expansion of its external networking capacity. During the Cold War, the four services largely operated on their own, with their coordination primarily defined by "deconfliction," or the avoidance of friendly fire. In the post-Cold War era, inter-service coordination was expanded to the concept of "jointness," or the notion that individual services would seamlessly support one another on the battlefield. As such, the Pentagon spent the nineties wiring up the four services to one another to achieve what was called "network-centric operations." With the global war on terrorism, the past focus on "jointness" is overwhelmed by the need to improve "interagency" coordination between the Defense Department and the rest of the U.S. Government. In other words, "war within the context of war" meant you had to make sure every soldier could communicate with every other soldier, but "war within the context of everything else" means that same solider must also be able to communicate with a host of non-defense organizations -- both public and private-sector, both U.S. and foreign.

[TEXT ENDS]

A day of self-doubt

Dateline: SWA flight to San Diego, 24 May 2005, 53 days to the move

I will confess, as I ran the kids to and from schools today, I spent a lot of head time simply wondering if I was taking my family down the path to ruination. Here I am moving them, building a nice house, and planning to make a living remotely from my perch in Indiana.

Quick! Name the most influential defense intellectual writing in Indiana today!

That's not me being snotty, just a bit scared at the notion that I will maintain today's momentum while living an allegedly slower life in Indy.

Then again, I could just as easily fail horribly right here in Rhode Island, so what's the big scare? I mean, I can't return to the War College so long as the same guys who ran me out are still in power, so if I can't make this remote thing work here I'll have to suck my tail up between my legs and move my family to DC or somewhere else mil-heavy anyway, and I guess I could do that from Indy just as well as from here.

So I keep telling myself: the writing is going well for Esquire, the second book seems solid (another good talk with Neil Nyren today calms my nerves a bit, except when he notes that the last big push on editing the galleys might fall in mid-July!!!!!), there's no reason why I couldn't start a third one in 2006 for a spring 2007 release, I've already written the first draft of book # 4, the speech gigs are still rolling well over a year after PNM came out, and the consulting, while starting slowly as always, is maturing into two very solid alliances between the New Rule Sets Project LLC and two outstanding firms with hugely bright futures.

Add it all up, and given my instinctive Irish "optimism," I fully expect this jet to crash somewhere in the Rocky Mountains.

I'm just getting antsy, I guess, as the move becomes more real. Plus, here I am on a tortuous trip of flying all evening to San Diego, talking for 30 minutes on stage with no PowerPoint (it's a Future-in-Review thing reflecting how many people apparently stink at PowerPoint in the IT industry), and then immediately flying back all afternoon and evening tomorrow (thanks to the three hours lost).

[And yes, I'm wearing my anti-Deep Vein Thrombosis custom-fitted support socks as I type.]

I know, I know. Despite no pay this is all a really important opportunity for me to showcase my ideas in front of an important crowd.

Where have I heard that before? Hell, after seven years in the US Government, where haven't I heard that before?

Pop!Tech was worthwhile, because it got me the Leigh Bureau, and they've been spectacular. No LB, no move to Indy-plain and simple.

TED hasn't resulting in anything tangible whatsoever, although it was the most thrilling 22 minutes I've spent on stage, and I have both an audio and video capture on DVD to remember it by. Plus I was told by Roger Rabbit that my performance beat virtually every stand-up Charles Fleischer has ever seen in his career-and baby, that meant something!

So maybe Future in Review (FiRE) does something for me, but I'm betting it won't. I will meet some visionaries, as I so often have in the past at such IT gatherings, and several will speak glowingly about a brave new world we could create together, followed by a flurry of emails, but eventually they get bored and move on-truth be told.

I'm not saying they're insincere, because they're not. They're just not cut out for what they're dreaming they might do. They made their money in IT, and suddenly they want to save the world. But saving the world isn't something you do via email, or in VTCs or conference calls or by taking a few meetings F2F. Typically it's a long and difficult slog that defines an entire career, not an early retirement whim or perhaps a far-fetched brainstorm for a new product line and a new company.

I'm being harsh here, because some of these types really do have their heads screwed on for the task at hand. But you know what? They don't come to me for answers, but rather for real-world partnerships because they already know the answers and recognize readily how PNM encapsulates a vision they can market and improve the world by pursuing. In short, if I have to translate PNM for you after you've read it, we have no chance of fruitful collaboration. Because if you don't know the answer, I'm sure as hell not going to pull it out of my rear-end just because you pose the question. I wish I could, but I've not yet met that genius and don't expect I ever will.

And maybe that's what is spooking me today: heading off for the guru-among-gurus shtick sans PowerPoint. Very few people at FiRE will have read PNM, so I'll be stuck trying to explain a map without a map, and laying out a vision with no pictures. To me, that's like inviting Fred Astaire to sing or Madonna to act: interesting, but why bother? I mean, I can get a dog to walk on its hind legs too, but what does that prove?

I also worry about The New Map Game next week, primarily because I'm a control freak who made the Y2K and NewRuleSets.Project wargames work because I handcrafted those babies, along with my colleagues Hank Kamradt and Bradd Hayes, to within an inch of their lives. And that's not the case here. Yes, Alidade is inventive and clever and they've done some amazing things in the past, but it is scary to have someone else take your vision, which I consider akin to my fifth child, and put it in play before your eyes. Yes, I'll be the head of the Control Team, and I can indulge my inner freak on that basis, but it'll be scary going in, although I imagine it'll get awfully fun and exciting as it unfolds, because the ones I've been associated with in the past always have-even the spectacular failures (in fact, especially the spectacular failures!). We won't be making any money on this game (it's a labor of love for my crew), though I suspect we might be making some history, especially with the top-flight press in attendance.

But thinking of them only makes me nervous again . . .

But nervous is good. Geez, I was so nervous at TED you can hear my rapid breathing on the DVD for the first five minutes of the talk! And that was a great performance, maybe my best ever, so obviously a little fear is a very good thing.

So I guess I have little to worry about . . . except for that bit about moving my family of six halfway across the country on the theory that I can be a national security heavyweight who lives in Indiana.

Oh hell! Planes leave Indy just as nicely as Providence. No one cares where I live, and as for those who someday might, I will seek to be more circumspect regarding certain details of my family life in future blog entries-if only to make my Mom less concerned about her grandkids.

So if you think those nice emails of support you send don't matter to me, you're wrong. They matter a lot.

I recently watched "Lawrence of Arabia" on DVD and, as with all movies, I saw either my life or my personality in the main character.

I know, I know. A couple of weeks ago I said I saw myself in Harvey Pekar from "American Splendor," and now I'm Walter Mitty-ing my way in El Orance!

You know, they say there are two types of people in the world: those who see their lives as being like movies and those who see movies as being like their lives. I fall into the latter category, despite my self-absorption (or maybe because of it, I can't tell-the distinction here is a fine one).

Anyway . . . I really identified with Lawrence's constant fluctuating between wanting to rule the world (!) and simply wanting to be as ordinary as possible. There are many days I love what I've turned my life into and there are many days I would gladly escape it, and I think the latter impulse will only grow with age and more self-awareness, as it must for all people, I imagine.

This afternoon as we drove home I listened to my two older kids just prattle on about their school days, making jokes about this or that, and I thought to myself: I'm not going to find anything this cool or exciting or gratifying in San Diego, so why go?

On the way to the airport tonight I actually found myself wishing for bad traffic so I'd miss my plane. Granted, no fee involved, otherwise I would have pushed the thought instantly out of my mind-and yet, it got me wondering all right.

And I guess I come to the conclusion that San Diego gets me Indiana.

Here's the daily catch:

■ Where the real jammin' needs to occur in national security

■ The other culprit on high oil prices

■ Brazil's not yet out of De Soto's "legal tangle"

■ Why Kristof is optimistic on China

■ Again with the British Empire!

■ The Axis of Evil's A and B teams

■ Bill Lind's kindler, gentler take on Kaplan's war-with-China spiel

■ Bob Zoellick, the smartest man in the Bush Administration

■ Ralph Peters' 2, Straw Men 0

The other culprit on high oil prices

■"Oil Industry's Refining Squeeze Limits Prospects of Price Relief," by Bhushan Bahree and Thaddeus Herrick, Wall Street Journal, 24 May 2005, p. A1.

Another great front-page WSJ on the global oil markets, pointing out that after the rising demand of India and China and other emerging markets, the key culprit in persistently high prices today is the fact that global oil companies simply haven't invested in refining capacity for years now.

What's interesting about this is that it's really a self-fulfilling prophecy: the oil companies resist sinking the big bucks because they fear oil is receding in importance in coming years and decades as we shift to hydrogen (e.g., British Petroleum becomes Beyond Petroleum), and so by eschewing these investments, they create persistent high prices that accelerate that shift.

But if you don't believe in that, you can always stick to the Hubbert Curve and wah-wah-wah yourself all the way to some scary doomsday scenario.

Where the real jammin' needs to occur in national security

■"Rocker Jeff Baxter Moves and Shakes In National Security: Once With Doobie Brothers, Now in Counterterrorism, He Has Ear of Pentagon," by Yochi J. Dreazen, Wall Street Journal, 24 May 2005, p. A1.

■"Pentagon Aims to Keep 'Jammers' Current: Procurement Process Delays New Defense Against Insurgents' Remote-Detonated Devices," by Greg Jaffe, Wall Street Journal, 24 May 2005, p. A4.

When the Black Box a' rockin', don't come a' knockin' . . .

I love these periodic articles on Jeff Baxter. They're just so cool and hip and fascinating and . . . completely off target.

I have no doubt the man is smart, although I can't say I've met him, read anything he's written, heard any arguments he's made besides "missile defense is good" or really heard anyone mention his influence or impact in 15 years of working in this business. But hey, it's a huge field and the missile defense crowd is about as insular as it gets (also about as inbred as it gets, as analysts there spend careers talking to the same cast of characters-many of them as colorful as "Skunk," and frankly, with far goofier names).

But frankly, jamming missiles isn't our big security issue today, despite the constant howling of the missile defense crowd, and it ain't about terrorists striking America. It's about keeping our SysAdmin troops alive day-in and day-out in places like Iraq.

When my young nephew runs convoy protection duty in coming months, what'll keep him alive is our ability to jam simple cellphone signals to remote bombs planted along the roads.

I say, if the Skunk is so clever (and who the hell am I to disagree with a front-page profile in the WSJ!-cut immediately to Tom standing proudly next to his framed edition), put him on a job that really matters-now. Cause it's minute by minute by minute by minute . . . right now in Iraq.

Why Kristof is optimistic on China

■"Death by a Thousand Blogs: China's leaders have a new watchdog," op-ed by Nicholas D. Kristof, New York Times, 24 May 2005, p. A25.

Another brilliant piece by Kristof on China, who is America's best Sinologist. Here are the key parts:

The Chinese Communist Party survived a brutal civil war with the Nationalists, battles with American forces in Korea and massive pro-democracy demonstrations at Tiananmen Square. But now it may finally have met its match-the Internet.

The collision between the Internet and Chinese authorities is one of the grand wrestling matches of history, visible in part at www.yuluncn.com.

That's the Web site of a self-appointed journalist named Li Xinde. He made a modest fortune selling Chinese medicines around the country, and now he's started the Chinese Public Opinion Surveillance Net-one of four million blogs in China.

Mr. Li travels around China with an I.B.M. laptop and a digital camera, investigating cases of official wrongdoing. Then he writes about them on his Web site and skips town before the local authorities can arrest him.

Kristof lambastes Hu Jintao's recent turn toward old sloganeering, especially in support of North Korea, but I think he forgets that not only must "Nixon go to China," sometimes "Nixon needs to rule China." Hu needs to be hard as the party goes soft, because a soft Hu will lead to a political collapse no one wants.

Kristof himself sees the path I also predict: "I think the Internet is hastening China along the same path that South Korea, Chile and especially Taiwan pioneered. In each place, a booming economy nurtured a middle class, rising education, increased international contact and a growing squeamishness about torturing dissidents."

My point is the same: China will change because of the Chinese, not because of the West, although we can certainly screw it up all right with crazy dreams of wars some may consider worth waging.

Brazil's not yet out of De Soto's "legal tangle"

■"In Brazil, Thicket of Red Tape Spoils Recipe for Growth: Former Emerging-Market Star Loses Ground to Asia, EU; Lufthansa's 24-Year Fight; Waiting All Night at Tax Office," by Matt Moffett and Geraldo Samor, Wall Street Journal, 24 May 2005, p. A1.

Good front-page piece in WSJ about how Brazil backtracks some in recent years under lefty Lula, not so much because he adds new rules but because, being a socialist, he's not aggressive in trimming them back. In a mercantilist-mindset like that afflicting Brazil's government bureaucracy, if you don't prune hard, the "legal tangle" described by Hernando De Soto as plaguing much of Latin America simply grows back even thicker.

So either Lula gets pruning or Brazil keeps dropping in international rankings as a good place for foreign direct investment.

The Axis of Evil's A and B teams

■"Ayatollah Orders Review Of Ban on 2 Iran Reformers," by Neil MacFarquhar, New York Times, 24 May 2005, p. A6.

■"Syria Stops Cooperating With U.S. Forces and C.I.A.: Growing strains between Washington and Damascus over the Iraq insurgency," by Douglas Jehl and Thom Shanker, New York Times, 24 May 2005, p. A10.

■"Dragnet Arrests In Zimbabwe Send Warning Amid Disorder," by Michael Wines, New York Times, 24 May 2005, p. A8.

Small but significant sign from Tehran: Khamenei orders the watchdog Guardian Council to review its decision to disallow two presidential candidates, one a former minister of education and the other being a current vice president-for crying out loud.

The Guardian Council banned a bunch of parliamentary candidates last year, and all it earned them was a massively low voter turnout, increasing "both apathy and anger, particularly within the huge bloc of young voters. About two-thirds of Iranians are younger than 30."

Think time is on our side or the mullahs'?

Meanwhile, Syria's Assad regime is getting scared about internal stability. When you withdraw like that from a puppet state . . . remember what happened to the Sovs.

The insurgency in Iraq will claim more regimes as victims all right, but not inside Iraq itself, where the U.S. military commitment is too great.

The only question now is how Assad loses power.

So the Big Bang keeps a' rumblin' along. But you have to get past the A Team of North Korea and Iran before you can concentrate your powers more fully on the B Teamers like Syria and Zimbabwe. Mugabe's regime is clearly a failed state. When state-sponsored terror against the masses becomes the norm, watch the transnational types show up over time.

Not an if but a when.

As always for the Pentagon, the question will really be: What does the military get out of the inevitable intervention? A better SysAdmin force or a more burned-out one? That choice is definitely ours.

Again with the British Empire!

■"Cowboys and Indians: An 85-year-old plan could rid Iraq of insurgents," op-ed by Niall Ferguson, New York Times, 24 May 2005, p. A25.

I like the title, just as I like it when Kaplan uses the imagery. Weird thing is, though, that the title has nothing to do with the piece. Typical, as editors pick titles and authors just have to take it.

Still, Ferguson has used the British Empire thing for so long now (two books, innumerable articles) that a different title slant is clearly in order.

I like Ferguson's historical take on SysAdmin work. I just wish he wouldn't be so literal about it. For example, he says that if America met Britain's troops-to-masses ratio from their time in Iraq in the 1920s, we'd have a million men there.

Yeah, and I guess if we still plowed with mules we could have 40 percent of our labor force still on the farm, just like in the 1920s!

You know I just finished David Lean's "Lawrence of Arabia" on the treadmill, and I thought to myself: instructive, but not exactly a blueprint.

Ferguson gets warmer when he says the Brits made do on manpower shortages by drawing elsewhere from the empire, like India, and insinuates we should be talking to the Indians themselves.

Hmmm. If I hadn't already written that op-ed for the Post last April I'd rewrite it again for the Times.

Ferguson's best point, typical of his wonderfully snarky style (which I do indeed like) is when he says Rummy's 10-30-30 standard (10 days to topple a regime, 30 days to get order, 30 days to be ready to move on to another regime) makes sense if you put it in terms of years. A bit hyperbolic, but closer to reality than Rumsfeld's fantastic notion.

Bill Lind's kindler, gentler take on Kaplan's war-with-China spiel

■"Outside View: Don't Mess with China," op-ed (I assume) by William S. Lind, UPI, 21 May 2005, sent by reader Kev Hall.

Lind, Mr. Fourth Generation Warfare himself, offers this more forgiving critique of Kaplan's article:

A war with China-hot or cold-would be perhaps the greatest strategic blunder the United States could make, beyond those it has already made. The end result would be the same as that from the 20th century wars between Britain and Germany: it reduced both to second-rate powers. In the 21st century, the real victors would be the non-state forces of the Fourth Generation, who would fill the gap created by the reduction of both Chinese and U.S. power.

"Fill the gap." I like that. There's no doubt the Gap-however defined-would grow under a Sino-American war scenario. Think we'd win a Global War on Terrorism this way?

After noting that Kaplan has been writing so long and so well about the rise of non-state actors, Lind says he "gets it wrong" with his imagined Sino-American war.

You know, I have to wonder, if Lind is right, and I believe he is, maybe Kaplan argues for this war because he wants the non-state actors to rule!

Okay, okay. But you'd have to admit it would send his book sales even higher ;<)

Lind says, "Regrettably, there are influential voices in Washington that want a war with China, the sooner the better. The most likely cause is Taiwan."

Got that right, and the loudest voices wear navy blue uniforms.

Lind says China will go nuke right away in any big naval clash, and that will deter us from trying to deter them further. Sounds to me like Mutually-Assured Destruction hasn't exactly gone away with 4GW.

Darn!

Ralph Peters' 2, Straw Men 0

■"Myths of globalization," op-ed by Ralph Peters, USA Today, 23 May 2005, sent by librarian brother from Yahoo News.

Peters is very intriguing. Former Army intell, writes projections of future warfare as well as Tom Clancy-like novels, and his next book is boldly entitled, New Glory: Expanding America's Global Supremacy. The man know no subtlety, but he believes what he believes and he says it loud and hard. He gets invited to a lot of conferences because, as everyone says, he can always be counted upon to stir the pot by offering several provocative and often outrageous statements. He's generally fun to be around, but I worry about someone who always seems so naturally pissed off.

If Peters has a weakness, it's that he tends to be an intellectual bully. Not a mean one, mind you, because he prefers to box alone, laying waste to straw men both far and near. In this piece, he crushes two straw babies: 1) globalization immediately brings universal peace to the planet; and 2) globalization is new.

Second one is not even worth explaining, and I wonder why Peters bothers after several thousand historians have already plowed that field to fine dust. As for the first one, the notion that anything as disruptive to traditional societies would engender anything but serious tumult amidst all that social, economic, political, technological, and environmental change is at least worth explaining to anyone who thinks Europe constitutes the rest of the world outside America.

Me thinks old Ralph is gearing up to flog his book by promoting the notion that globalization needs a bodyguard and that it's spread will be accompanied by civil strife and transnational terrorism. No argument there. But the answer to this conflict won't be American global supremacy. By 2005, no one besides Ferguson is seriously talking about American "empire."

Bob Zoellick, the smartest man in the Bush Administration

■"CAFTA Is a Win-Win," op-ed by Robert B. Zoellick, Washington Post, 24 May 2005, p. A17.

My title has nothing to do with the piece. I just think the world of Bob Zoellick. He's the Bob Rubin of the Bush team. Naturally, he's an acolyte of James Baker.

Bob's just old enough to remember working hard to bring peace to Central America in the late 1980s, and now he wants to take advantage of that relative political quietude to pursue a significant liberalization of trade in the region vis-‡-vis the United States.

Zoellick's main point is that CAFTA's (Central American Free Trade Agreement) opponents are using the old Mexico line from NAFTA: "they're not ready/suited!" He counters with the simple notion that after you create peace, you create prosperity, and after you create prosperity you get political pluralism that's stable. Waiting on that last leg to grant the middle one is completely backasswards.

Besides, if we want stable democracies in the region, the best thing we could do is give up our great love of illegal narcotics. Absent the free trade, this is all we leave them.

BTF: Is Dr Barnett a closet Republican?

Bill Millan writes at Blogging the Future:

Some here seem to have a problem with "globalization." I think Tom's major breakthough is that connectivity is happening to all of the countries in the world. It's inevitable. You don't get to choose whither you want it or not. You are going to get it anyway.

Societies have three choices about connectivity. They can try to stop it. They can ignore it. Or they can accept and facilitate it.

Tom's premise, IMO, is that connectivity lead to prosperity. Which leads to freedom. Countries which are in the gap now, but will join the "core" in the future, have all sorts of Governments now. They may have different kinds from us in the future. But one thing they will not have; as they become "new core," is a desire to promote war with other countries. And they will have a lot less people in those countries who want to attack us.

That is all we can ask. Tom is not promoting a "utopia."

The key thing that happens when you understand Tom's POV is that you leave your personal politics at the shoreline when you approach the rest of the world. This is not a "conservative/liberal" approach. It is an attempt to look at the world as it really is, understand what is happening, choose what works-connectivity-and help it happen.

Thanks, Bill

Say, sometimes the blog really does piss readers off!

Dateline: above the sold garage, 23 May 2005, 54 days to the move

How about that letter in the Newsletter! Too bad he doesn't have a subscription to cancel, but maybe that's why I decided not to have any. No interest in self-censoring, or turning the blog into anything as safe as a newspaper column.

Would I write like that in a paper or a magazine? No. But that's the whole purpose of having the blog, and if my man gets turned off or scared off the first time I show some fangs, well. . . he was never my man in the first place, now was he?

What's great about the blog is that one can fire across all 360 degrees. When you purposely seek to isolate your opinion like that, everything and everyone becomes a possible target, which makes command-and-control exceedingly easy: shoot everything that moves.

You want a more careful mix, then don't pull back the curtain, don't walk up to me in the bar, and never ask me a question just after Brett Favre has thrown an INT.

Other than that, the key is not to take anything too seriously--especially yourself. [And yes, I was laughing the entire time I wrote that critique--it was that much fun!]

In the end, the blog only has to work for me. The minute that stops is the minute I stop. A simple rule, but it's the only one that should matter in this very idiosyncratic medium.

The new thing in moving

Dateline: above the sold garage, 23 May 2005, 54 days to the move

Brother-in-law talks my wife into abandoning plan to have established moving company pack us up and ship us to Indy for lotsa money (roughly $15k), and instead using the PODS approach offered by the company of the same name. Here's the deal: you can and order a container (basically the storage part of a big U-Haul sized truck) and the company drives to your house and gently places one on your driveway. It costs you $200 a month to have. You take your time to fill it up with stuff, then call them back and they pick up. They will take where you want or store it for you.

For us, the deal with work like this: mid June Pod #1 appears and we fill over three days, then it's picked up and goes off to Providence climate-controlled warehouse. At the end of June, we do it all over again, packing up the rest of the house we plan to put into storage during the home-building process in Indiana. Then the week before we leave, Pod #3 shows up and we pack what we want to keep in our apartment for six months (or more), and when that Pod reaches the Providence warehouse, all three go to Indianapolis to the company's warehouse there. A day later Pod #3 shows up at our apartment complex and we'll have several days to unload before the company takes it away for good. When we move into the new house, we'll move ourselves from the apartment and Pod #1 and Pod #2 will appear, as desired, in our new driveway for us to unload as we see fit. Whether on our driveway or in the warehouse, it's always $200 a month per pod, but this way we pack most of our house only once for the new house, repacking only that which we take into the apartment.

Oh, and it costs $7k instead of $15k, even with all the packing stuff we purchase (but then also get to keep, like a high-end hand truck).

Spouse Vonne greatly prefers this because she dreaded the tumult of the movers in the house doing everything so fast, plus she knows I can disassemble and pack all the antique furniture (some of it amazingly complex and idiosyncratic) carefully. Our insurance covers either way, so this seems the better route.

Got to give it to that Todd. He's always on top of the newest business practice, being an inveterate salesman himself.

Here's the daily catch:

■ The quality of op-eds columns today: a personal observation

■ al-Sadr's shift to mainstream continues

■ The BRAC: Pentagon strategists versus the wisdom of crowds

■ For print mags, the online presence is key

■ As the record of failures pile up, the UN gets tougher?

■ Russian courts versus Chinese baskets

■ Shrinking the Gap: it's all in the details

■ Seam State Indonesia is re-growing some links to the Core

The BRAC: Pentagon strategists versus the wisdom of crowds

■"Panel on Base Closings Says The List Is Likely to Change," by Eric Schmitt, New York Times, 23 May 2005, p. A16.

Ah yes, now the local "outrage" is transmuted into intense lobbying of the commission, where every affected city and region is hoping they'll be part of the 15% that typically get a reprieve from the commission after the Pentagon makes its initial requests.

Now is the time for all local and state politicians, along with their congressional delegation, to instantly morph into high-end military strategists able to leap tall stacks of Pentagon reports in a single bound!

Ted Kennedy is mega-pissed about the idea that Otis Air National Guard Base will be closed. After all, it was from this airfield that F-15s were scrambled on 9/11 to try to intercept the hijacked jets. Had no impact whatsoever, but that's meaningless to this sort of debate. It's all about imagery and sound bites and anguish over job losses. For most Americans, the Defense Department is more trough than emblem of national security; it's a job and a paycheck and local economic impact.

So people will ask tough questions, like why not merge the war colleges that currently exist for each of the armed services?

Ooh! That's a nasty one. But have no fear. My old employer will survive even as it will grow increasingly irrelevant in a super-joint world where service distinctions become less meaningful with each intervention overseas. There is no separate naval strategy anymore, so their doesn't need to be a separate naval war college. But little Rhody is well represented in the House and Senate, so there's little chance it would be added.

al-Sadr's shift to mainstream continues

■"Rebel Shiite Cleric Hints Shift to Politics, Not War," by Richard A. Oppel, Jr., New York Times, 23 May 2005, p. A1.

This was a notion long ago floated by the man and blogged by myself, and when it first surfaced it seemed unthinkable. Now it just seems like an insurgent leader of sorts coming in from the cold.

Can he be trusted? About as far as his militia can be thrown off the field. We can trust Moktada to be Moktada and little else. And yet, if he turns to politics, this will be a serious tipping point in the counter-insurgency effort led by the U.S., so it bears watching.

The quality of op-eds columns today: a personal observation

■"America Wants Security," op-ed by Paul Krugman, New York Times, 23 May 2005, p. A21.

■"The Rumsfeld Stain: What happened to the U.S. military?" op-ed by Bob Herbert, New York Times, 23 May 2005, p. A21.

■"An Axis of Oil: The U.S.-Saudi equation still dwarfs China-Russia," op-ed by Vijay V. Vaiheeswaran, Wall Street Journal, 23 May 2005, p. A14.

■"On Monetary Policy: Yap At Japan, Not China," op-ed by Michael Cosgrove, Wall Street Journal, 23 May 2005, p. A14.

■"High-Profile Help for Africa," op-ed by Sebastian Mallaby, Washington Post, 23 May 2005, p. A19.

The Times seems to be going downhill on regular columnists. Herbert, like his column today on Rumsfeld, is just plain bad, a real shrieker. Krugman, whom I used to consider a real water-walker, now just sounds shrill and relentless in his hatred of all things Bush. Friedman still performs, but he's given up on international security (good idea) and is back to his smiley-face globalization, although now it wears the sneer of competition from New Core India and China. When all is said and done, the one high performer there is Nick Krystof. No surprise, as he cut his teeth on economics and Asia (his book on rising China with his wife Shery Wu Dunn is the best I have read on the subject). But overall, the Times seems weak on the op-ed page now, even as its reporters remain the world's bestóespecially on China.

The Post has become less and less a source of op-eds for me. I used to think Jim Hoagland was spectacular, but he hasn't adjusted well to the post-9/11 world, and he seems more confused and befuddled than prescient. I don't know why he lost his edge, but I don't read him much any more for insights. Richard Cohen used to be great, but I think his health has taken him down a few notches in recent years, and that's too bad, because he has a rare gift. Frankly, the guy who writes the best there now is Sebastian Mallaby, likewise with an economic background. His stuff on national security outperforms the rest in aggregate.

Among the big three, though, the Journal right now is top performer. The two regulars who write on big global issues (George Melloan and Mary Anastasia O'Grady) are really solid. You may not agree with them, but their strategic minds are always on display. But where the Journal really cleans house now is in the guest columnists, who regularly outperform those invited in by the Times and Post. It's not surprising for me to find two great guest columns in the WSJ every day, like those two today by Vaitheeswaran and Cosgrove), and just as unsurprising to find any worth mentioning in the NYT and WP.

Have the trio changed that much in recent years? Shouldn't the NYT and WP naturally be way out ahead in the climate of a Global War on Terrorism? Why is this the case?

Or am I just becoming more conservative and more capitalist in my middle age?

Russian courts versus Chinese baskets

■"Russia's Courts Go on Trial: Yukos Case Bears Witness to Series of Defects in Legal System," by Guy Chazan, Wall Street Journal, 23 May 2005, p. A11.

■"China Is Considering A Currency Basket As Option for Yuan," by Mary Kissell, Wall Street Journal, 23 May 2005, p. C1.

These two New Core states showing very different faces right now: Russia looking unfriendly to business through the actions of its predatory courts and tax collection agencies, and China trying to placate the Old Core on currency convertibility (meaning getting the yuan off its fixed peg on the dollar). While Putin seems intent on settling old political scores, Jintao seems intent on avoiding economic clashes by considering a yuan pegged to a basket of currencies.

Makes you wonder why China is the big worry of the Big War strategists in the Pentagon and not Russia, doesn't it?

Ah well, it's all about money on both sides: China is growing and so has enough to grow its military as well, and that's the image needed by Big War strategists in the Air Force and Navy to justify their stances against cuts in big-ticket items in favor of more spending on the SysAdmin-taxed Army and Marines.

Big War needs Chinaóand badly. But the Gap needs the SysAdmin force, and so do any Americans who'd like to reach a finishing line in this Global War on Terror.

As the record of failures pile up, the UN gets tougher?

■"U.N. Forces Using Tougher Tactics To Keep Peace: Congo War Is An Example; Attempt to Overcome the Failures of Rwanda, Bosnia and Somalia," by Marc Lacey, New York Times, 23 May 2005, p. A1.

The UN is trying to show a tougher side in its peacekeeping efforts, and the Congo is its first great application of this harder line. As the subtitle says, this is an effort to overcome the legacies of Rwanda, Bosnia and Somalia, otherwise known as the 1990s. The tipping point for the UN was Sierra Leone in 2000, when their own after-action report came to the conclusion that "No amount of good intentions can substitute for the fundamental ability to project credible force."

Sounds like a cry for help more than a declaration of new intent. There is only one military that can credibly project combat power around the planet. No U.S. military on the scene, then no hope for credibility. The Leviathan begets the capacity of the SysAdmin and the SysAdmin creates the possibility that the UN can become relevant again. The Iraq occupation was the best thing to happen to the UN in decades, because it made the U.S. serious about the SysAdmin function, and that competitionóand nothing elseóis what gets you the recent change of heart in the UN. It's the fear of competition, pure and simple.

And competition is good.

You want a better UN? Demand a better Pentagon! Put a leash on the Leviathan and grow the SysAdmin! Write your congressional reps and senators! And be amazed at the resultsÖ