Tough day at the office, honey

Dateline: above the garage in Portsmouth RI instead of on a plane heading to Norfolk VA, 30 November 2004

All set to fly out of Providence to Norfolk tonight for a briefing at a naval base down there, which C-SPAN was scheduled to tape for later use (originally set for broadcast 6 December), but had the briefing canceled at the last minute, so no trip. Kids and wife happy (number 1 son has state report on Florida due tomorrow, so I help him as I type this), but I was more than a little peeved at having distant higher-ups in DC (not Office of the Secretary of Defense, but my own tribe!) deciding they weren't going to approve C-SPAN taping the brief.

Problem really was in going to a relatively small command and putting a relatively low-ranking person (not even an officer) on the hot seat in terms of getting the usual approvals. Frankly, when you deal with more high-ranking, they don't seek the usual approvals because that's what having rank is all aboutóactually making decisions on your own. But this time events conspired to put me at this particular facility and the person involved did what seemed right in terms of chain of command and in the end, that pretty much killed the whole endeavor.

You'd think my tribe would be happy to have one of their own in such demand, but frankly, that kind of prominence and my current job status simply do not mix.

I'm beginning to understand why some people call themselves "Anonymous."

No hard feelings from me, as I wasn't looking forward to all that flying in the dark on small planes. But, as will all such tussles, you learn who your friends are and those you should never turn your back on, and so you move on and plan accordingly.

Real shame is that C-SPAN is all excited about doing new taping because they have new technology that would allow them to direct feed the PowerPoint slides onto the screen for "close-ups" as desired. To me, that's a briefing worth taping.

I know that, in all these situations, one of the driving impulses for most bureaucratic resistance I run into is the ever-present suspicion that I only give briefs and seek such taping opportunities to sell the book. But in reality, I seek the tapings primarily because I want a permanent record of what I've done in all these countless briefings, and because I feel the American public deserves access to this sort of material through non-profits like C-SPAN. In short, I feel ordinary citizens deserve to know.

If I really wanted to just make money, I would have never joined the defense community or the government, because frankly, neither place is a good one to do anything more than draw a salary. Plus, I just would have written some fantastically accusatory book about who "stole/lied/deceived/etc" America on "the terror war/9-11/Iraq/Osama/etc." Writing that sort of partisan shit isn't hard for someone with my talent for writing, it would just tax my physical strength for having to go through life constantly vomiting.

On the upside . . . I got Mark Warren's edit of the piece I wrote for the February issue of Esquire and it really rocks exactly as designed. Both Mark and I agree: I've really gotten to the point where I know how to write an article like that and make it sound exactly the way I want it to sound while giving it that Esquire flair, which frankly fits my persona well.

Is that persona the cause of my trouble in my day job? You bet. Under no illusion on that one. But Christ! I'm 42 and I buried my father last spring. If I'm not going to get comfortable with that persona at this point in my life, then when the hell am I? You bottle that stuff up and you end up one of those pathetic types who ditched the wife and kids for the young babe because that was the only answer he could come up with at that stage of the game.

There is a mansion in a small, out of the way town north of Kansas City that I have my eye on. Yeah, an actual mansion, which in MO costs roughly the same as my little old Cape Cod house on the island here. What that beautiful old house in MO represents to me is simply walking away from this life and starting something new, something where I could cut my own deals as required with those across the defense community who want my ideas and inputs in spadesówho don't seem to either fear me or feel the need to handle me. And it represents a deep embrace of the writing life: books, the blog, Esquire, private think tank venues.

As goofy as it feels deep down, I am ready to make an offer on the Missouri mansion, which tells me I am so close to an inflection point that I can feel the upward draft.

A famous businessman was once asked, "Are entrepreneurs born or made?" His reply, "They're cornered."

Today I was cornered, and it taught me something useful.

CSPAN taping is go, but broadcast date now unclear

Dateline: Portsmouth RI, 29 November 2004

The good news, looks like Packers go 7-4 by beating Rams at home.

The bad news, although I'll tape the CSPAN brief this week, CSPAN is now saying 6 December evening is no good, because Congress coming back into session over the Intell Bill.

So when it will be aired is up in the air.

Blame it on Congress!

Reviewing the Reviews (Milo Clark at swans.com)

Dateline: Portsmouth RI, 29 November 2004
This review sent to me by a reader. It has the interesting syntax of the self-perceived powerless outsider. My commentary follows, along with today's catch.

Find the original here
Functioning Core And Non-integrating Gap
by Milo Clark
November 29, 2004

(Swans - November 29, 2004) Tom Barnett is a wake-up-call kind of guy. (1) He has a properly iconoclastic point of view. He decodes Pentagon jargon. He has a gut feel for strategic design. He wants to be seen and remembered as the twenty-first century's Admiral Mahan and George Kennan, father and son. (2)

No ambition is too small for Tom Barnett. He lives and breathes in the esoteric world of Pentagon strategic planning, hanging out in the Naval War College for now.

The Pentagon tends to be a very dualistic place. No matter who you are, you are or you aren't. Gray is not a Pentagon color. Nuance is touchy-feely and verboten. The name of the Pentagon game is clarity. Clarity leads to Congressional support and the megabucks for exotic high tech systems to meet future enemies presently unidentifiable beyond conceptual identity as a Big One.

Barnett looks about the world and finds little possibility or probability of a Big One emergent or even lurking over some horizon. What's a twenty-first century Mahan or Kennan, father and son, to do? Who is "Us" and who is "Them"?

Before 9/11, the Bushies worked hard to make PRChina the Big One. At that time, Russia as remnant of Soviet Big One was out of it. Putin was not yet. PRChina, unfortunately from Pentagon perspectives, was evolving towards bigger power status as mega-capitalists in Communist clothing. Capitalists in Communist clothing? Too confusing. Too gray.

All too soon it emerges that PRChina is now America's Number One trading partner. Wal*Mart is PRChina's Number One customer. Wal*Mart is the new America.

PRChina holds a very large chuck of American Treasury debt. PRChina could, if so motivated, pull the financial plug on the USA. Ironic, no? Do capitalists pull plugs on capitalists?

New Big One Enemy needed. Barnett, with Mahan and Kennans in mind, crafts a new conceptual framework. He needs to fit the Pentagon Point of View with a new lens. Same old, same old is too old. How does a new clarity drag in big Congressional bucks and strike projectable fear into the Limbaughs and O'Reillys of broadcast media?

Barnett divides up the world into a new duality. He comes up with a scheme to make a new "Us" and a new "Them," a scheme which fits a post-9/11 American world. He lusts to become the Karl Rove of Pentagon strategies. And he could be on to something.

"Have's and Have Not's" are old frame. With a Pentagon sense of buzzword power, Barnett comes up with "Functioning Core" and "Non-integrating Gap." Of what? Globalization is the answer.

"We" are the globalized or globalizing. "Them" is everybody who is neither globalized nor globalizing. Barnett has a briefing theme and briefing themes are the life-blood of Pentagon strategists. Now Barnett has a mission and a book title: The Pentagon's New Map, War and Peace in the Twenty-first Century.

Peace lies with the globalized or globalizing: The Functioning Core. War, if need be, lies with the Non-integrating Gap. The "if need be" phrase is key. Carrot and Speak Softly/Carry Big Stick merge.

Barnett draws a new world map with a new dotted line. Outside the dotted line lies the Functioning Core: the globalized or globalizing. Within it lie today's post-9/11 trouble spots and irritants: The Axis of Evil, al Qaeda, Palestinians, et al. subsumed as The Non-integrating Gap.

Tame the Non-integrating Gap by integrating it within the Functioning Core of Globalization. Out with democratizing, in with integrating. More pragmatic and descriptive, no?

The Pentagon now has a new Big One as a collection of little ones around which to focus Congressional Clarity and garner ever bigger bucks. Only trouble is that Pentagon Big Ones historically have been nation-states with a future potential more than a present danger. Within today's Non-integrating Gap, nation-states tend to be dysfunctional and festering.

Prone, as ever, to fight the last war now, the Pentagon goes into strategic schizophrenia. The Pentagon buzzword "Transform" creates new Big One capabilities, while festering sores need balm or bombs now.

Congress likes Big Ones, not collections of little ones. Missile defense costing mega-billions sells in Peoria where relatively low-cost balms for festering sores are too yucky to market.

A new Mahan or Kennans has to capture imaginations. A new Mahan or Kennans has to have a marketing plan, a grand strategy to capture the hearts and minds of Congress and Peoria.

And this may be where Barnett could be on to something. Globalization personalized is Wal*Mart and Wal*Mart is America. Wal*Mart is Bentonville, Arkansas, heartland, solid red on today's political maps.

The old games rule set, parenthetically the Bush game, said that democracies do not war on democracies. Hence, "democratize the world" sold as a slogan. Got us Iraq. Perhaps the right idea but wrong execution.

The new game says that suppliers do not war on customers. Hence, customers do not war on suppliers. Today's news is that K-Mart and Sears are merging to out-Wal*Mart Wal*Mart. Within the Functioning Core, we don't outsource, we insource. Nice reframing.

Festering sores? Nuke 'em (with the new mini-nukes or DU, of course.) Unless strategic raw materials are involved, leave the Non-integrating Gap a wasteland uninhabitable for half-lives far into succeeding administrations peacefully devoted to ever-burgeoning Pentagon budgets and manageable low-casualty short-term high-cost wars. Wars only entered into as nudge toward globalization, of course.

Can we apply Barnett's strategic design to the once United States of America? Would it be a stretch of imagination to see the "Red" states as Non-integrating Gap and the "Blue" states as Functional Core? Reframers of the world, unite!

Indeed, we are not in Kansas anymore. Kansas is certainly within us, however.

ï ï ï ï ï ï

Notes & Resources

1 The Pentagon's New Map, War and Peace in the Twenty-first Century, Thomas P. M. Barnett, G. P. Putnam's Sons, New York, 2004, ISBN 0-399-15175-3

2 US Navy Captain Alfred Thayer Mahan (1840-1914) formulated the strategic concepts which became the Great White Fleet heralding America's emergence as a world power. His strategic design led and leads American naval strategies to this day.

George Kennan, son, (b. 1914) is credited with formulating the post WW II containment strategy which guided American tactics during the Cold War with Soviet Communism. George Kennan, father, while little known today, physically traveled the length and breadth of then Czarist Russia penetrating Central Asia and Siberian areas. His visceral understanding of the power of land mass and old peoples was grokked by his son.

COMMENTARY: Because Clark is so committed to his I'm-just-a-little-guy-in-a-big-scary-world persona, he never really gets too close to the book (e.g., the take-it-or-leave-it "dualism" shtickócute, but to what end?). Because everything is imposed on him from on-high (e.g., Pentagon, Bushies, a Walmart-run globalization, powerful right-wing commentators), he can only comment upon the book rather myopically, meaning "Here is the next big idea to be afraid of!" (e.g., "Globalization personalized is Wal*Mart and Wal*Mart is America."ópowerful analysis, huh? Really clear things up for you?). To the extent he tries to engage the material, he's so trapped in his language (e.g., "Carrot and Speak Softly/Carry Big Stick merge.") that he says almost nothing despite all the wordage (if this is what passes for good writing on Swan.com, they need to cast their nets more widelyóor hire an editor). It's one of those reviews where you wonder why the guy bothered to write it if he had so little to say (e.g., "Wars only entered into as nudge toward globalization, of course." Yes, yes, making the world safe for WalmartóGod you nailed me with that one!). As for the "nuking the Gap" stuff, that's just pathetic and makes it look like he didn't bother to read past the first chapterósomething I highly suspect. But I imagine he's preaching to the faithful on the site, so it's strictly nothing ventured, nothing gained.

But what's so truly asinine about this review is the guy's breathless attempts to make PNM sound like the next strategy to justify big-ticket weapons systems and platforms via-a-vis Congress. Here the reviewer reveals his sheer ignorance of the process and the reality of what shrinking the Gap will entail in terms of military assets (again, suggesting he made it all the way through Chapter One before penning his ditty). The SysAdmin force is low-tech and people-intensive, or the complete opposite of the Big One model of great power war. Combine this guy's wrongheaded logic with his pathetic attempts to sound like a world-weary cynic with insider knowledge and you get one truly misguided attempt to "reveal" the truth.

Today's catch:

■ One senses the coming new rule set on currencies will be profound

■ Plotting splendid wars beneath the waves

■ China is going to try anything and everything on energy

■ Fidel pretends the bucks don't matter in Cuba

■ Good pipelines require/make good neighbors

■ Getting real on Ukraine

■ The coming economic integration of SE Asia

■ How big a SysAdmin force for the Gap?

One senses the coming new rule set on currencies will be profound

■"Currency on a Collision Course: For how much longer will America have the luxury of running its own independent monetary policy?," op-ed by Christopher Wood, Wall Street Journal, 29 November 2004, p. A14.

Fascinating analysis from Christopher Wood. Very clarifying:

The comments emanating from Washington since the November presidential election,and the related action in the foreign exchange markets, make it clear that "go for growth" will be the preferred Bush strategy. This is an administration driven by ideological supply-siders, not fiscal conservatives. Sure, this suggests a still wider current-account deficit. And America's current-account deficit already accounts for about 77% of the world's total current-account deficits. But this is a game of chicken which Asia will be expected to continue to finance.

So the dollar falls and everyone is expected to adjust in order to make our goods more attractiveóeveryone but fixed-to-the-dollar China, that is. So naturally there is more pressure from the U.S. on Beijing to float the yuan.

Here's where the op-ed really gets interesting:

But on this occasion, this writer is no longer quite so sure as before that the old rules apply. China is now at the center, not the periphery, or discussions about developments in the world economy. This massively higher profile on the global stage makes it much harder for the Chinese to ignore external pressures. Their problem is, however, if they only revalue by a marginal amountóby which is meant 10% or lessóthis is only likely further to fuel speculative pressures as the animal spirits move in for the kill.

All this raises another question: Is it really in America's interests to pressure China for a renminbi revalution? The U.S. trade deficit is clearly one motivating factor. The U.S. merchandise trade deficit rose by 19% year-on-year in the first nine months of this year to $470 billion, with China accounting for 24% of the total. But this is, to a certain extent, offset by China's trade deficit with other countries, notably those in Asia. Excluding America, China posted a trade deficit of $50 billion with the rest of the world and $62 billion with Asia alone in the first nine months of this year. But U.S. pressure also seems to be driven by other considerations, notably the ideological view that floating currencies are a good thing and that mercantilism is fundamentally unfair as well as misconceived in that it suppresses the purchasing power of Asian consumers.

If this is all true, it also ignores the point that America needs to be careful what it wishes for. The Bush administration can only "go for growth" on the assumption that Asia will keep financing its current-account deficit because it has no choice if the region's exporters want to maintain access to America's domestic markets. This is all very well. But America can only run such a strategy because the dollar holds the privileged position of being the world's reserve currency. The dollar paper standard, which has been in place since Richard Nixon broke the last link with gold in 1971, has meant that America has the luxury of running its own independent monetary policy. That happy situation can continue only for so long as the dollar decline remains gradual and does not turn into a rout.

America's dollar being the de facto reserve currency for the world is how we're able to afford the military we now possess, meaning the rest of the Core subsidizes our Leviathan to a tremendous degree. When we overspend on our budget, we expect the world to pick up the tab, so anything that threatens that implicit transaction threatens our ability to continue exporting security around the planet. Without it, we'll soon enough have a military like everyone else's: good for guarding the homeland and nothing else.

And something very large will be lost with thatÖ

Tom Toles for The Washington Post, Universal Press Syndicate (the little cartoonist who chirps up in the corner says "Öwhich brings us to your saving rate . . . .)

China is going to try anything and everything on energy

■"China banks on new energy plan," by Le-Min Lim and Loretta Ng, International Herald Tribune, 24 November 2004, http://www.iht.com/bin/print_ipub.php?file=/articles/2004/11/23/bloomberg/sxcoal.html.

>■"Latin America Isn't Likely to Send More Oil to U.S.: Increasing output requires money that the region's cash-strapped governments lack," by David Luhnow, Wall Street Journal, 29 November 2004, p. A2.

First article sent to me by reader details a new Chinese energy plan to produce gasoline directly from coal in a series of coal-to-liquids plants built in conjunction with Royal/Dutch Shell:

The plans tie in with the Chinese government's drive to cut reliance on crude oil, said Wu Guihui, an official with the National Development and Reform Commission. Those plans, which include building more nuclear power plants, finding and importing more natural gas and building the world's biggest hydropower plantóthe Three Gorges Damóhave been given added impetus by the gain in oil prices.

Meanwhile, cars continue to multiple throughout China in a population explosion. Sales are up 18 % from a year ago.

So when China starts pouring money into Latin America, it's simply taking advantage of the capacity there, as it will everywhere else it can across the planet. Since the most stable reserves sites are already taken by oil companies from the Old Core, expect China to go into the more desperate and risky situations, including those the U.S. tries to isolate for political reasonsólike Iran.

All this energy-driven activity can put China on the wrong side of Gap conflicts that the United States gets drawn into, like Sudan, and all these "conflicts" only reinforce the perception that "rising China" must be a threat to the United Statesóhence we must do things like counter China's military influence and rising threat to Taiwan.

It amazes me how people are so quick to see energy as the root cause for many U.S. foreign policy decisions and yet seem to miss it completely on China. For Beijing, just like us, there is a profound military-market nexus that cannot be ignored.

The danger is, of course, that military planners on both sides routinely ignore that reality, preferring to plan splendid wars. There is a reason why "resource wars" is a big fad right now in national security planning circles. And that reason is, big-ticket platform planners are looking for new scenarios to justify their desired "requirements" in light of the rise in funding going toward the Global War on Terrorism.

It's that underlying reality that also makes the Swans.com review so asinine in its logic.

Plotting splendid wars beneath the waves

■"China's Growing Undersea Fleet Presents Challenge to Its Neighbors," by David Lague, Wall Street Journal, 29 November 2004, p. A12.

■"Eyeball to Eyeball," book review by Ben MacIntyre (High Noon in the Cold War by Max Frankel and Engaging India by Strobe Talbott), New York Times Book Review, 28 November 2004, p. 9.

Another piece (WSJ) about the Chinese-Japanese nuclear sub incident that occurred earlier this month, filled with ever more warnings about how China's economic growth translates into military power.

Of course, no foreign direct investment of $50 billion a year from the outside world (really, primarily from the Old Core of the U.S., Japan, and Europe), and you'd see Chinese military spending plummet just like it did all over Asia following the Asian Flu of 1997-98. So China's "independent" military muscle is no more independent than oursóit's a luxury that requires others to essentially foot the bill.

What will China do with all these subs (around 70 by 2010)? They can threaten our attempts to threaten their attempts to threaten Taiwan following its threats of going independent. Got that?

Oh, and they can threaten shipping lanes and work to cut off the flow of energy from the Gulf to Asia.

Does all this logic sound like it emanates from a distant age? It does. But guess what? That doesn't deter the submarine commanders or commentators on either side, who just love to go on and on about this scenario, as if it had any real legs.

I'm not saying neither side lacks the right mix of bravado and stupidity to try something, just that it wouldn't last for very long. China couldn't pull off an imitation of Nazi U-boats for very long and if it tried, what would be the point? To tank its economy or ruin the last 25 years of economic development there?

Ah, but we are told that we must always take into account the irrational? Like the irrational desire of the submarine fleets on both side to justify their existence?

The U.S. submarine fleet has been smarting ever since the Sovs left the scene, and they are fairly desperate in their attempts to justify their ever-dwindling numbers.

My question is, How much do we owe the global economy versus how much do we owe the Navy's submarine community? If you're telling me that Taiwan is the source of the problem, then we need to redo the deal on Taiwan, not give in to this idiotic logic that says this conflict is inevitable simply because the sub guys on both sides are just itching to make it happen.

Smart leadership would defuse this situation now. Our historical knowledge of brinksmanship between great powers says this: "For the roots of crises, look to powerful men feeling vulnerable. It leads to belligerence."

In Taipei, powerful men feel vulnerable over that country's progressive economic integration with rising China. In Beijing, powerful men feel vulnerable over Taipei's threats to make explicit their desire to make permanent their independence from China. In Washington, outside of the Navy's submarine community, powerful men should know better.

Fidel pretends the bucks don't matter in Cuba

■"For Many Cubans, an Uneasy Farewell to the Dollar: Putting an end to dependency on a symbol of capitalism," by James C. McKinley, Jr., Wall Street Journal, 29 November 2004, p. A12.

Fidel is trying to de-dollarize the Cuban economy, which, quite frankly, has been dollarized for so long that Cuba barely has a national currency. Now Castro issues a decree saying you can't use dollars anymore, although you can hold them in bank accounts (boy, that makes it seem like a permanent rule set, huh?). To incentivize citizens to convert their dollar holdings, Castro is enforcing a 10% surcharge on all money changing after 15 November.

And yet still people holding onto their dollar savings. Why?

"Nobody knows if this is permanent or momentary," said a 33-year-old plumber, who like many people interviewed for this article asked that his name not be published. "A year from now the law supporting the convertible peso could not exist. This exchange rate only exists here in Cuba, because Fidel Castro is the only one who says it is true. So the smart ones who have money are guarding their dollars.

Fidel must be feeling vulnerable, cause he's cutting off his nose to spite his face, but clearly he feels this desperate move will solidify his grip on power, which surely was weakened over the years by a dual economy: one based in pesos that he could control and one based in dollars over which his control was largely marginalized (its implicit slogan being, "To each citizen according to his uncle in Miami"). So now Castro reins in private enterprise and re-establishes state control over the lucrative tourism industry.

All this represents is yet another way the government of Cuba takes from its people and gives little back in return. This is nothing more than Castro's hard-currency accumulation scheme: give me real money and I'll give you pieces of paper that are worth whatever I damn well declare they're worth. This is the logic of the Big Man at work, and it's why Cuba remains firmly inside the Gap.

Getting real on Ukraine

■"Ukraine's Rifts Extend to the Economy," by Erin E. Arvedlund, New York Times, 29 November 2004, http://www.nytimes.com/2004/11/29/business/worldbusiness/29econ.html.

Key point of this piece: Ukraine needs economic association with both the EU and Russia to survive and grow, so pretending it can go one way or the other is simply some Cold War logic rearing its stupid head.

When I last blogged this, I asked the question, "Why does Russia fear the alternative outcome to this election so much?" posing it in the direction of the Bush administration.

Fellow-blogger T.M. Lutas followed up with this post, of which I quote the following:

Russia should look to the UK/US relationship if it is serious about its need to maintain influence over Ukraine. The UK has good relations when it has an ideologically friendly party alignment (center-right Thatcher with center-right Reagan, center-left Blair with center-left Clinton) as well as opposite ideological tendencies (center-left Blair with center-right Bush).

If Russia could generate that sort of relationship, appeal both to western Ukraine as well as the more russified eastern section, it wouldn't have to put its thumb on the scales and spend so much political capital ensuring that "Russia's man" won the election. All the major parties would nominate people acceptable to Russia. This is going to be difficult because Russia has not been a good steward of Ukraine, dominating instead of partnering Ö

Dr. Barnett has the question right when he addressed this issue. The only problem with his approach is that he seems to think that we're the ones who should be asking it. We should not. It's Russia's problem to solve and us butting our noses in that relationship infantilizes Russia and will inevitably cause resentment.

President Bush has got it about right. Electoral irregularities need to be adjudicated and settled by Ukrainian institutions before we, or anybody else, recognize one or the other candidates. Can you imagine if some country had recognized Gore during the recount phase in 2000? It wouldn't have been better if a country recognized Bush during that same period.

The situation in Ukraine is not settled, according to the law. If the courts find fraud, Russia should stay out. In fact, the best thing we should all do is to sit on our hands and let Russia be the first to recognize the official results. That would be a tremendous statement of respect and deference to Russia that would cost us absolutely nothing

but could salvage honor and pride in the East.

Some very solid analysis from TM, in my opinion. Got right to the sore spot about the 2000 U.S. election.

Good pipelines require/make good neighbors

■"How a Thirst Led To a Thaw," by Manjeet Kripalani, Businessweek, 15 November 2004, http://www.businessweek.com/print/magazine/content/04_46/b3908046.htm?chan=mz&.

Article sent to me by reader reminds us yet again of the military market nexus: you need energy to develop and that energy takes infrastructure and so you do what you have to in order to make that infrastructure come about.

Is this the logic of resource wars? Shouldnít an India desperate for Iranian natural gas simply wage war with obstacle Pakistan in order to achieve its energy security?

Or do the leaders of the two countries agree to an unprecedented series of negotiations for India to build a gas pipeline from Iran to India that passes through Pakistan in exchange for transit fees plus some of the gas being bled off for Pakistan's use? As the article says, "Funny how a thirst for energy can make the oldest of foes suddenly eager to cooperate." Funny to everyone except military planners who still dream of nuclear war in South Asia.

But India isn't stopping there. "Indeed, India is conducting petroleum diplomacy throughout the region and beyond"óas in Burma, Bangladesh (another pipeline), Sudan, Russia, Vietnam, and Iraq.

And guess what? "Everywhere it goes looking for petroleum, India is overshadowed by China."

Geez, I thought only America did this sort of thing! So I guess it will have to be India and China, in addition to America, "waging perpetual war all over the planet."

Or not.

How big a SysAdmin force for the Gap?

■"African Union Strives to End Deadly Cycle in Darfur," by Somini Sengupta, New York Times, 29 November 2004, p. A3.

Sudan is becoming a key proving ground for the African Union, and they certainly couldn't have picked a more difficult spot right now:

For the African Union, a nascent organization representing African governments and struggling to shake off the mantle of its largely ineffectual predecessor, the Organization of African Unity, Darfur represents a crucial test. If the union's mission succeeds in Darfur, it will score a major credibility victory. If it fails, the price will be dear.

"We will take a long time to recover our credibility toward our people and our partners," Jean-Baptiste Natama, a senior political officer in the African Union, said this week.

The African Union's success or failure will be measured, in part, by how it responds to incidents like the one in Tawila and whether it can prevent others like it. For now, its troop strength in Sudan, which may take until February or later to reach its full level of 3,400 peacekeepers, is grossly insufficient to deploy full-time to every fractious, violence-prone town like Tawila.

Privately, diplomats in Sudan have long worried that deploying so few troops would be a recipe for failure. Since the violence in Tawila, Jan Pronk, the top United Nations envoy for Sudan, suggested expanding the African Union force to more than twice the number.

To me, it's situations like this that speak to the compelling need for the Core as a whole to be able to put forth a SysAdmin force that would enable a regional entity like the AU to do more than just run around snapping photos and taking notes while the killing continues unabated. Everyone in the Core wants this situation to settle, but we don't have a transparent, non-zero-sum process for making it happen, and that process can't come into being until the military resources are pooled and coherently arranged in a larger whole, and that international military capability won't come about until the Pentagon shows it's serious of fielding its own version of a Sys Admin force.

How much force would that need to be?

Recently, Chet Richard's review of PNM ended with the following bit of logic:

If there are indeed two billion people in the Gap, one could envision the need for an international Core Sys Admin force of some 20 million members [applying Shinseki's ratio, which in light of recent events may be conservative] trained and funded to take control of failed societies and rebuild them not as Western, Christian democracies but as connecting members of the World Core in all its myriad forms, each respecting all the others as long as they continue to connect. Although a force this size may seem impractical, it is only marginally more than the 16 million Americans who served in WW II. The entire modern Core holds around 4 billion people, and eliminating the Gap is the most critical factor in their, that is, our continued well being and perhaps of our continuing to exist at all.

When I reviewed this review, some readers were unhappy I didn't deal with this cited figure of 20 million, which frankly, I viewed as bizarre in its logic of positing an occupation force for the entire Gap all at onceóand I still do.

Here now is how I would disaggregate that number down to something more realistic: Let's go with Mr. Richard's 20 million total, as extrapolated from Shinseki's calculations for Iraq. There are roughly 100 countries in the Core. As I recount in PNM, at any one time no more than about one-third are experiencing levels of mass violence of the sort likely to trigger outside interest. So if we need 20 million SysAdmin personnel for the entire population of the Gap (2 billion), then we can lower that estimate by two-thirds right off the bat. So let's go with 7 million troops to possibly cover upwards of three dozen Gap states at any one time. Then let's use the U.S. standard of the past 15 years, which is to try and deal with the toughest cases with the highest interest levels and best chances of success. That has equated, historically speaking, to roughly one-quarter of the extant mass violence situations, or roughly 8 region- or country-specific responses a year. If we talk about a large-scale long-term effort in one country, then that simply lowers our capacity for others so long as it continues.

That brings our proposed total down to something in the range of 1.8 million personnel. Taking cue from the Europeans' recent proposal regarding a Human Security Force, let's go with the notion that one-third of the force must be civilian (mostly cops, but also judges, administrators, medical, etc.). That takes us down to 1.2 million personnel in uniform. Now let's set a standard for how big a role the U.S. should play in this total force package, because we'll primarily play a hub-within-spokes function.

Keeping that goal in mind, I would propose the U.S. supply roughly one out of every ten bodies. How do I come by that number? When polled in the mid-1990s about proposed peacekeeping in the Balkans, Americans replied that the U.S. should supply roughly one out of every five peacekeepers for such overseas situations. That's because they assumed we provided roughly 40 percent and thus they wanted to see that share cut in half, because they thought it was too high.. Actually, cutting that assumed figure in half would have yielded a burden roughly 5 times what we supplied the UN effort in Yugoslavia, which was/is only 4 % of the total. On that basis, I'm willing to bet Americans would support a ten percent share.

Ten percent of 1.2 million troops would be 120,000 troops. We have 130,000 basically engaged in Iraq today. Does it strain us at the bit to do this given all our other responsibilities around the world? You bet. But it's do-able if we restructure our forces to rebalance the Army and Marines in this direction, a process that's already in motion.

To have 120,000 out in the field, you need a force roughly 4 times that size in active duty order to handle the rotation and nine times that size in reserve components (reserves and National Guard). The Army and Marines number about 400,000 in deployable troops today, yielding a rotation of 100,000 out in the field. We have 500,000 such troops in the Reserve Component, yielding another 50k or so. That gives us 150k out of the Army, Marines, and reserves in today's largely imbalanced force. Given further transformation of the warfighting side of the house and a general rebalancing of our troop strength across the various services, and I think this is a burden the Pentagon could easily adjust to.

Could the rest of the Core supply the almost 1.1 million men? India's army alone is home to roughly 1.1 million ground forces at this time. It is the third-largest force in the world. China has two million in ground forces, plus 2.5 million more in reserve militias and police-type forces. The numbers are there, and the money is there, when you add up the entire Core as a whole.

None of this is realistic until we decide to make it realistic. Then it all becomes possible overnight.

The coming economic integration of SE Asia

■"Southeast Asia Urged to Form Economic Bloc" by Jane Perlez, New York Times, 29 November 2004, p. A8.

The Association of Southeast Asia Nations, aka ASEAN, are once again talking bold on economic integration. They did so previously following the Asian Flu of 1997-98, but back then the fear was subsequent financial panics. Now the threat perception is different. As the new leader of Indonesia declared, "Our main challenge today is to deepen our economic integration. Why? Two words: India and China."

The association is signing a new trade pact with China to remove tariffs on merchandise by 2010, and there's a long-term plan to create an EU-like economic community by 2020. My guess is that it will happen before then and it'll be driven by China's continued rise. By 2020, as I predicted in PNM, I expect to see not only a NATO-like Asian military alliance, but an Asia-wide EU-like entity. For that to happen, ASEAN will have to move much faster than planned, and, judging by this article, it sounds like that's a growing realization shared by several of its leaders.

On the beach ...

Dateline: Second Beach, Middletown RI, 28 November 2004

Took my boys and our pup Stormy to Sachuest Beach in Middletown (called Second Beach by everyone on the island). It's where we regularly boogie board and surf when the weather's right. Despite facing winds of roughly 30-40 mph with gusts up to 50, we walked the length of the beach and then climbed the cliffs overlooking the beach. Our goal was Purgatory Chasm, a big crack in the cliff. The sand was blowing so hard on the beach that Story's was figuratively painted during our journey (first her hind quarters as we walked with the wind and then her face and we walked against it).

Some photos from the handi phone-cam:

Heading west toward the cliffs.

Our favorite big rock on the way.

The view of 2nd Beach from the cliffs.

View of Purgatory Chasm from foot bridge above.

Heading back to the car along the beach; son Kevin setting the pace.

Catching up on the news over the holiday weekend

Dateline: Portsmouth RI, 28 November 2004

I know it's a slow surfing weekend, but here's all the news I saw fit to comment upon. Like most people, I spent most of my weekend doing aimless things with my family. But thanks to our new puppy, I get up early no matter how late I go to bed (nor how many hours our baby keeps us up with her latest night terrorsóman, I see a sleep-walker here very much in my own vein). So here I catch up through yesterdayís Times Then I think itís duckpin bowling with the kids:

■ The stories of our times

■ How the world votes on our elections

■ The classic African plight

■ It gets ugly in Ukraine

■ The Iran-Iraq connection presents both danger and opportunity

■ Pakistan is the reason why we can't do Iran right now

■ China's people-driven connectivity spreads around the Pacific

■ Europe will get more interested in Gapówith age!

■ The tipping point on air pollution grows near in Asia

■ The myth about the myth about moral values

■ The very loose rule set on special ops inside the Gap

■ Smart Palestinians desperate to move beyond Arafat

■ Kansas: center of global freedom!

The stories of our times

■"Good News About Poverty: Poorer nations are leading the way," op-ed by David Brooks, New York Times, 27 November 2004, p. A35.

■"Quiet Time: A new Saudi law silences dissent by public employees," op-ed by Khalid Al-Dakhil, New York Times, 27 November 2004, p. A35.

■"Iranís Lonely Crowd: Being an intellectual means keeping your thoughts to yourself," op-ed by Farouz Farzami, New York Times, 27 November 2004, p. A35.

■"Saving the Iraqi Children: Child malnutrition is soaring," op-ed by Nicholas D. Kristof, New York Times, 27 November 2004, p. A35.

No real commenting on the articles themselves, just noting the pattern array: one piece on how globalization is working and then three pieces on negative politico-military situations in three key pillars of the Middle Eastóa region that sucks at globalization.

These are the stories of our time: excel at globalization or become a security issue for the worldís Leviathan. It really is that simple.

How the world votes on our elections

■"Foreign Interest Appears to Flag As Dollar Falls," by Edmund L. Andrews, New York Times, 27 November 2004, p. B1.

In PNM, I wrote that although weíre the worldís sole superpower, there is a way for the rest of the Core to ìvoteî regarding our employment of that awesome power, and itís called being willing to buy our debt.

Right now the rest of the Core is voting no:

Investors and market analysts are increasingly worried that the last big source of support for the American dollar - heavy buying by foreign central banks - is fading.

The anxiety was on full display Friday, when the dollar abruptly slid to a record low against the euro after a report suggesting that the Chinese central bank might start to reduce its holdings in the American currency.

Though Chinese officials later denied the report, and the dollar recovered, analysts say the broader trend is that foreign governments are becoming less willing to finance the growing debt of the United States government.

On Tuesday, a top official with the Russian central bank said his government had become worried about the sinking value of the dollar and might switch some foreign reserves to euros.

A day later, India's central bank hinted that it was worried about the same issue and might shift some reserves into other currencies.

Japan and China, which together have amassed nearly $900 billion in United States Treasury securities, have both slowed their buying sharply from the frenetic pace in February and March.

"There is an emerging consensus that banks around the world are moving to expand their reserves of euros at the expense of dollars," said Laidi Ashraf, chief currency analyst at MG Financial Group in New York.

The Bush administration is going along with the dollarís decline because it makes sense economically, as does pushing China to make the yuan convertible, but the effect of both efforts will be to dramatically dry up the pool of foreign governments willing to keep buying up our debt. Our current accounts deficit is such that we need to attract $2b a day to maintain our overall deficit spending, a good portion of which is driven by our military costs in this Global War on Terrorism.

American can afford its current Leviathan force, but it cannot afford to self-finance the bulk of the follow-on SysAdmin work that will ensue from efforts like our recent takedown in Iraq. The coming renegotiation of that security burden is inevitable, otherwise youíll see American withdraw dramatically from the world militarily.

Admitting that strategic reality is the first step toward making the deals weíll need to make if weíre going to get truly serious about waging a Global War on Terrorism that will clearly last decades.

There is no alternative.

It gets ugly in Ukraine

■"Rivals in Ukraine Agree to Negotiate Over Disputed Vote: Little common ground, but planned talks signal an easing of tension," by C. J. Chivers, New York Times, 27 November 2004, p. A9.

■"A Tug of War Over Ukraine: In Cold-War-Like Rift, It's Putin vs. the West," by Steven Lee Myers, New York Times, 24 November 2004, p. A1.

■"Powell Says Ukraine Vote Was Full of Fraud," by Steven R. Weisman, New York Times, 25 November 2004, p. A10.

Ukraine is a tricky one for this administration, given itís own history of getting elected not twice but onceófinally!

To me, fixating on Ukraine the issue itself is not the long-term answer to anything. What we need to be thinking about is, Why does Russia fear the alternative outcome to this election so much? Deal with that fear effectively and it wonít matter who gets elected in Ukraine, which is how it should be.

Instead of asking that question, too many on our side are getting all excited about recasting Russia as the bad guy, a tendency that will only grow as we increasingly become intertwined economically with rising China. For the U.S. to work the Russia issue only reactively like this shows what a poor job this administration has done over the past four years in terms of solidifying the Core political alliances with any eye to amassing the resources and will necessary to successfully prosecute this Global War on Terrorism.

Powell canít leave fast enough, as far as Iím concerned. At least Rice will know Moscow from her elbow.

The classic African plight

■"Despite Pact, New Violence Stymies Aid in Sudan," by Somini Sengupta, New York Times, 27 November 2004, p. A1.

The story you know: Sudan is imploding with internal violence and nobody seems able to do anything about it. Europe stands idle, the U.S. is too busy elsewhere, the UN does nothing (in keeping with its charter of complete impotence), the New Core powers like Russia and China havenít been brought on board in any significant strategic sense so they block what meager procedural moves we do try in the UN, the African Union is there in force (all 1,000 troops armed with notebooks and cameras), and now we reach the CNN moment where tens of thousands will start starving while food aid sits piled up in local warehouses.

Everyone wants this problem to go away and for what little oil there is to flow, but we donít have a working system to deal with this sort of ìinternalî problem that effectively defines the Gap. And until we get that A-to-Z system for processing politically-bankrupt states there, there will be no shrinking that Gap.

Pakistan is the reason why we can't do Iran right now

■"Hiding in Plain Sight: Why Pakistan still isn't aggressively pursuing the ex-Taliban leaders living inside the country," by Tim McGirk, Time, 29 November 2004, p. 44.

■"C.I.A. Says Pakistanis Gave Iran Nuclear Aid: An illicit network passed bomb-making designs in the 90's," by Douglas Jehl, New York Times, 24 November 2004, p. A8.

Pakistan gave Iran the bomb, basically, and we can either accept that or turn it into a giant West versus the Shiites. If we chose the latter course, we canít expect much support from either India or China, because both countries need Iran economically and both countries need Pakistan to be stable militarily. India has to live with Pakistan and its bomb, thereís just no two ways about it, and China sees Pakistan as itís great land bridge into the Persian Gulf region. So if we make Iran with the bomb the center of all evil, weíre picking up the Pakistani problem and all the New Core allegiances that go with that problem, and that scenario pathway gets you about as closes to Hungtingtonís ìclash of civilizationsî than any other nightmare I can dream up.

If we let the Global War on Terrorism draw a line through the Islamic world, isolating the heavier Shiite populations in Iran, Afghanistan and Pakistan, weíll find ourselves providing a strategic rear to Osama bin Laden and al Qaeda that may end up being impossible to surmount for many, many years, especially is we simultaneously isolate Russia and its ìnear abroad.î Check out a map. In that strategic package, Osama is safely embedded deep inside an opposing security rule setóbe default, becoming the New Coreís war by proxy with the West.

Thatís why Iran is more important now than ever. Getting to Iran stops that domino effect from going into motion. Otherwise, we may find ourselves staring across a serious civilizational faultline for decades.

The Iran-Iraq connection presents both danger and opportunity

■"Iranians Refuse to Terminate Nuclear Plans: Step Threatens Accord With Europeans," by Elaine Sciolino, New York Times, 26 November 2004, p. A1.

■"Iraqi Leaders Plan to Meet Insurgents in Jordan: Call for Rebels to Join Political ProcessóZarqawi Aide Held," by Edward Wong, New York Times, 26 November 2004, p. A1.

Anyone who believes this European-led negotiations with Iran is going to accomplish anything is simply dreaming. Iran will continue to use these negotiations to forestall any military actions by the West to the point where theyíll finally have nuclear-tipped missiles capable of making any invasion of their territory highly improbable.

Unlike a North Korea, there isnít any single dictator to knock off at the top, because the regime rules with far more legitimacy than does Kim (as evidenced by the far smaller police-state presence in everyday life in Iran). Moreover, unlike northeast Asia where there are big rich countries all over the dial who would be very interested in making sure any takedown goes well, in the Gulf area, weíd really be on our own.

Plus, North Korea serves no strategic purpose in Asiaóitís basically good for nothing. Whereas Iran could serve some serious strategic purpose in the Gulf, by helping us deal with the aftermath that is Iraq.

In both regions, itís all about local ownership of security issues: where you have it already, I say use it, and where you donít, I say, you better create some.

Europe will get more interested in Gapówith age!

■"Demographic Time Bomb Threatens Pensions in Europe: Saving more, paying higher taxes and working longer for retirement benefits," by Alan Cowell, New York Times, 26 November 2004, p. A3.

Hereís how one European expert describes it:

ìThey got used to having that very cushy social system, and now they are slowly coming to grips with the fact that the cushy system doesnít hold any more.

When itís pay-as-you-go you need a lot of payers if you want to ìgoî onto to retirement, and Europe simply isnít creating the babies to make that happen. The number of workers to retirees in Europe today is about 3 to 1, compared to 5 to 1 in the U.S. By mid-century, it will be 2 to 1, unless Europe lets in a lot more immigrants.

Old James J. Pinkerton might find that advice to be insane, but he isnít going to try and retire in Europe.

So either Europe lets in many more immigrants, or that ìdreamî that Jeremy Rifkin loves to talk about is going to disappear.