Surfacing ...

Dateline: Holiday Inn Express in MD, near DC, 18 October 2005

Talk last night to hundreds of cadets at New Mexico Military Institute went well. Bed very late, then up very early for dawn flight out of Roswell NM back to Albuquerque. Then a SWA direct to BWI, all the way I'm working like crazy to get new BFA brief just so. Way too many slides, but all pretty quick, so I'm really uncertain about how far I'll go tomorrow at National Defense U, where I unveil it.

Nostalgic, last night was (the jet-lagged traveler, says, lapsing in Yoda-speak), and that was the last time I'll ever give the PNM brief in that form. From here on out, it's combined PNM/BFA, or just BFA. My brief tomorrow at NDU will feature just two slides from PNM (map and splitting the force, or basically the first and last slides of the old brief). Yikes!

Wish I had night off to dick with brief til 3am, but have dinner with congressmen planned, so duty calls. I am likely to be up most of the night. Giving second brief at classified military site later in day tomorrow. Then I chill at hotel (I hope, unless another dinner set up) and I go like the wind on Thursday with PR handler Paul Peachy (not sure I spell that right). Paul is way cool and way fun. Had him last time.

Two things to watch:

1) Washington Post tomorrow (no guarantees . . .)

2) ad in NYT on Friday (think that is a definite since Putnam pays for it!).

BFA in the hundreds on Amazon (277 when last I checked on Treo; I sometimes go 5, maybe 10 minutes between checks. Very exciting to be in the triple digits again!

Request for PR help

Dateline: New Mexico Military Institute, Roswell, New Mexico, October 17, 2005

This may seem like an odd request, but if thereís anyone Iíve interacted with in organizations, commands, offices, think-tanks, foreign governments willing to talk with a newspaper reporter why Iíve been asked to brief at these high levels, hereís your chance.

Steve Oppenheim is working DC PR for Putnam and he can put you in touch with the reporter.* This person is a respected journalist, writing for a major paper.

I know this is an odd request but Iím trying to do my duty by Putnam, which promotes the vision which I think does good things. I realize that the vast majority of the players who invite me into these privileged rooms arenít predisposed to want to discuss what they find attractive about my ideas. Thatís a real problem in being a visionary, a term I embrace because I think it accurately describes what Iím trying to do. To be a visionary is to be ìout there.î And as much as people may value that, asking them to describe to a reporter why they bring me in for interaction is a bit much.

But if youíre out there and youíre comfortable with the notion, please give us a call. You know who you are.

The marathon begins Ö

Dateline: Continental flight to Houston TX, 17 October 2005

Bid my family good-bye yesterday, after my wife and I spent the afternoon picking out (basically designing from scratch) a slew of new furniture for the house. I spend money so fast I think I really should consider a run for Congress some day.

Up at 0400 today to catch a flight to Houston, then to Albuquerque, then to Roswell NM, where I'll be briefing a contingent of extra-terrestrials assembled by the highly secretive World Government Assocciation at the location known euphemistically as "Area 51."

Okay, I'll just be talking at the New Mexico Military Institute, in what we will be last time I ever deliver the PNM brief, so some real personal history today.

Yup, from here on out it will be the combined PNM/BFA brief, to be unveiled at National Defense University on Wednesday.

First order of business today was writing quick 800-word op-ed for journal "Homeland Security." Hope is to get it into the December issue.

Second order (since #1 went so fast) is three (make that more) quick blog posts I just couldn't resist making.

Then I need to sign a load of book plates for an appearance I'll be making on behalf of Oak Ridge National Lab in my new capacity there (can't remember the exact title, except to note its vague loftiness).

Finally, whatever time I have left before my speech tonight in Roswell I spend on working the Bradd Hayes package of 194 slides into shape for the NDU unveiling. Fortunately, I shift only one time zone today.

Here's the daily catch:

■ The Iraq vote looks awfully good

■ China will outsource all rightóto it's interior!

■ Big WSJ section on corporate governance

■ My problem with game theory

■ Qaddafi reminds us yet again why he should be toppled

■ This ain't your daddy's G-7!

My problem with game theory

■"To Prove You're Serious, Burn Some Bridges," by David Leonhardt, New York Times, 17 October 2005, p. C4.

I remain unimpressed with Economics Nobel going to the gamersóagain. In saying it last time, I got some emails making the case that Schelling and the gamers were instrumental in helping the U.S. understand what became Mutual-Assured Destruction, or the concept that nuclear war was unwinnable.

Worth arguing, although it says little about why the gamers get Nobels for economics, but since most social science is just a fancy way of repackaging common sense, let's not get too nasty on the economists.

As for Schelling and the gamers role on MAD, I guess I would feel less queasy about giving them the Nobel for peace, because I do believe MAD was the lynchpin strategic concept. I'm just not sure I'd recognize the gamers as being responsible for its spread as a political-military concept. Instead, there are several military and civilian political leaders I would credit for that.

I would be reluctant to credit the gamers because they came up with a host of concepts, some of which helped enunciate MAD and some which helped to fuel arms races and put us several times on the brink of nuclear war. In short, the gamers brought plenty of both good and bad to the strategic nukes question, as much Strangelovian as Sagan-like. I guess I just see their historical role as being far more conflicted than others.

I view things that way, I guess, because I had to endure ten years of undergraduate and graduate training in an international relations field that, by the 1980s and still to this day, had become overrun with the gamers and their "elegant models" of behavior. Frankly, I think most of that stuff is like crack to your strategic brain: you get all jacked thinking you've figured everything out but you just keep moving further and further away from any sort of reality that most of the world recognizes. I avoid it whenever and wherever possible in my work, because I honestly feel it does more harm than good, making people stupider rather than smarter.

In my mind, game theory has had a hugely negative impact on my field, and I know of plenty of political scientists who'll agree with me--most of them, however, being the practicing sort and not the types to have stayed behind in academia for their entire careers.

Big WSJ section on corporate governance

■"Corporate Governance (The Journal Report): Living With Sarbanes-Oxley," by Dina Gullapalli, Wall Street Journal, 2005, p. R1.

■"Corporate Governance (The Journal Report): The Global Agenda: Wherever investors go, demands for better governance follow," by Mary Jacoby, Wall Street Journal, 2005, p. R7.

Great section, full of interesting articles.

Two great PPT slides are to be found: 1) on the historical march of corporate governance (a graphic attached to the first article lists 11 milestones dating back to 1933, with four of the 11 falling in the last five years); and 2) a listing of "notable developments in corporate governance around the globe (associated with the second article.

Real point of second article is one I harp on in Blueprint for Action: attract investors and they'll start making demands for better corporate governance, and that in turn triggers the private sector's higher transaction rates (simply asking for more acts, services, laws, etc.) with the government, thus improving that with time.

As Martin Wolf puts it: good markets need good governments.

China will outsource all rightóto it's interior!

■"A Booming Coast Breathes New Life Into China's Inland: Cities Benefit From Highways And Foreign Investment: Wal-Mart Sets Up Shop; Opening Day Brings 100,000," by Andrew Browne and Kathy Chen, Wall Street Journal, 17 October 2005, p. A1.

Fascinating story on my daughter Vonne Mei Ling's (then Zou Yong Ling) "adopted hometown" of Nanchang (pronounced Nan-chung), capital city of the largely impoverished interior province of Jiangxi (Gee-ang-shee). I say "adopted hometown" because that is where we first met and adopted her by Chinese law (later getting her immigrant visa in Guangzhou and then re-adopting her by U.S. law in Rhode Island. Vonne Mei was abandoned a day after her birth in a village located about four hours north of Nanchung (Yongfeng, population of about 400,000; big "villages" in China). We don't know where she was born, but obviously we suspect it was either in Yongfeng or nearby.

Nanchang is a backwater, fairly sleepy provincial capital of merely 5 million citizens, which would make it a top-five city in the U.S., on par with a Houston. But in China, Nanchang is so small that it does not make the national weather maps in the daily newspapers (putting it in the range of Terre Haute or Fort Wayne).

So huge, so poorly connected to the outside world (there were no Westerners in this city to speak of, and really no foreigners whatsoever), that it's a huge deal when foreign stores begin appearing, like the revolutionary impact of a Wal-Mart store in downtown Nanchang, just off the main square.

Long-time readers of my blog will remember my description of this store, and what it was like to walk around with a Chinese baby I just met 48 hours earlier on my hip, the only white person for as far as the eye could see (which in any crowded Chinese scene, ain't very far; every time my wife and I would separate in the store I felt like kissing her goodbye with, "No matter what, you will survive and I will find you!" like Daniel Day-Lewis in "Last of the Mohicans").

And anyone who reads my current piece in Esquire ("The Chinese Are Our Friends," November) will see how I repurposed that material in the piece. Strong impression, yes. Some serious rule-set changes for a previously isolated provincial capital. Definitely worth a front-pager on the WSJ. To me, it's a sign that the future of Chinese outsourcing (yes, that process has already begun) will end up being as much a boon to its interior provinces as it is to small regional neighbors.

Again, great read.

The Iraq vote looks awfully good

■"Sunnis' Turnout Points to Role In Iraqi Politics: After Constitutional Poll, Minority Group Targets National Assembly Vote," by Farnaz Fassihi, Philip Shiskin and Greg Jaffe, Wall Street Journal, 17 October 2005, p. A1.

As always, whenever the Bush administration helps to pull off an election in Iraq, you have to hand it to them. Poor job on occupation, no doubt, but this thing keeps muddling through. Of the Sunni provinces, only two are expected to reject the constitution. Remembering back to our own constitution coming online once three-quarters of the states ratified (Rhode Island, I will remind, was the very LAST!; we called the holdouts "Tories" back then, or just plain criminals, which shows you how much things change!).

Meanwhile, a lot of Sunnis are shifting from fighting the system altogether to working within the political process. This is crucial.

As I say in Blueprint for Action, Rome wasn't built in a day, and not as a democracy either. Iraq is doing just fine given all poorly planned occupation (F to the neocons, C+ to the officers doing their best in a crappy situation on the ground).

You will have pinheads of all political stripes intoning ominously that "democracy will not be the solution to the insurgency" as if that's news to anyone. No, democracy alone doesn't get you security, a robust internal security system gets you that. We forget how pervasive ours is, because it's so transparent, but building that takes a lot of time. It's the ultimate in System Administration, and there our forces still get a C+, but an A for effort.

Now the trick is to get the Sunni population to start policing its own a whole lot better, or at least not supporting them or tolerating them, and increasingly turning the bad guys in. Kurds and Shiites enforcing this narrowing outcome on the Sunnis as a whole looks a whole lot less necessary after this election, and that's potentially (there's always room for backtracking) a VERY good thing.

Remember, eventually the Serbians policed up their own and turned over the Milosevic clan. This is the next milestone we seek.

Qaddafi reminds us yet again why he should be toppled

■"Time Is Short for Bulgarian Nurses Facing Death in Libya," by Elisabeth Rosenthal, New York Times, 17 October 2005, p. A3.

Five Bulgarian aid nurses are on trial in Libya, accused of infecting hospitalized Libyan kids with AIDS on orders from Mossad, the Israeli intell service. Their final appeal, after seven years in captivity and numerous incidents of torture, falls next month. Some diplomats say that if the nurses were Old Core citizens, like Brits or Italians, there would be an international protest. But instead, mostly-Gap Bulgaria doesn't get the same consideration, and so this travesty of justice reminds us, yet again, what a complete nutcase Qaddafi is.

The man will never play by the rules. He remains on the list "to go," notwithstanding his recent grandstanding "capitulations."

This ain't your daddy's G-7!

■"U.S. Investors Shift Bets Overseas: Uncertainty Over Interest Rates, Economic Expansion Is Steering Americans Toward Europe, Asia," by E.S. Browning, David Reilly and Mary Kissel, Wall Street Journal, 17 October 2005, p. C1.

I don't know about you, but I was always entranced by that kitsch painting of dogs playing poker. Frankly, I still am.

Well, this story has a drawing that parodies that famous painting, with the seven animals playing poker being a lion (UK), kangaroo (Australia), eagle (U.S.), poodle (France), panda (China), dog (Germany), and elephant (India).

Not exactly your dad's G-7, with Canada (moose, I imagine) and Italy (beats the hell out of me) dropped from the tableau in favor of India and China.

Amazing times we live in, huh?

Signposts - Sunday, October 16, 2005

Signposts is a weekly digest of major op-ed and feature analyses from the blog of Thomas P.M. Barnett -- www.thomaspmbarnett.com/weblog -- and is distributed via email in html format.

Robb and Barnett: talking about Open Source War

Agreeing to disagree

John Robb wrote a NYT op-ed, The Open-Source War. Tom Barnett blogged a commentary:

Interesting piece on diagnosis, but implied prescription is wrong, in my mind.

In the Global War on Terrorism, the temptation, like in all other long struggles, will be to mirror image the enemy on supposition that his asymmetrical challenge must prevail. But just pushing our "open-source" proxies into wars against our enemies threatens to replicate colonial struggles in the Gap between us and rising New Core powers like China. It is the ultimate in "playing their game" if we let that struggle, which we will obviously engage as required, define our center of gravity in the GWOT.

Remember, super-empowered individuals can rule vertical scenarios temporarily, but it takes states, and all their resources, to rule horizonatal ones. In short, don't confuse disruption capacity with rule-making capacity. To believe the former rules all is to engage in what that battle-tested revolutionary, V.I. Lenin, called the child-like belief that the right bomb in the right place at the right time changes everything. Modeling ourselves on OBL's and Al Qaeda's infantilism isn't the answer. Building the bigger open-source net is. This is my A-to-Z rule set on processing politically bankrupt states.

Creating better rules is how we win. By doing so we attract good citizens and good states, slowly but surely. Killing symmetrically is gratifying, but ultimately pointless. Reformatting their world so that their cause dies is the real victory. Not a matter of making it like our own, but simply making it connective in a deep sense with the outside world, so that individuals can choose their level of connectivity no matter what the authorities say or do.

So I say, bet on numbers. Bet on bigger networks. Bet on growing the Core and, by doing so, restricting the enemy's operating domain.

Information technology analogies are great, but they do not constitute tactics, much less strategy. The winning remains the same: kill their bad guys and replace bad governments with good. Don't confuse the friction with the formatting. Don't confuse skirmishes with campaigns. Don't confuse their asymmetry with our disadvantage.

In the end, we win as we always do: with stuff. Capitalism bribes off its enemies with wealth. Worked in 1848 in Europe and it's worked ever since.

Fourth Generation Warfare is the diagnosis, and it's a good one. But it will never be the answer because it sees only about 10% of reality. We need to wage peace from the outside in, spreading connectivity, not wage war from the inside out, hoping for democracy. We will never win in Iraq. Globalization will. What we wage now in Iraq isn't war. It's a holding action for history, which isn't so much on our side as constantly on our ass. Globalization is the ultimate horizontal scenario, the ultimate open-source net. Resistance is futile, but it will remain all some people have. They will die in a form of political-military evolution: the decline and disappearance of the unconnectable.

4GW adherents believe our enemies can play the waiting game, but it's the other way around. Time is on our side. You can tell simply by the perversity on their side. It signals their nihilism, or the realization that they cannot win.

As for Robb's notion that Iraq proves the fallacy of arguing for the SysAdmin, this is the analytical equivalent of a tautology, and I was surprised he made it. Arguing a non-attempt as proof of the concept's failure is just plain weak, which is probably why he tacked it on the end of the piece with no explanation. The SysAdmin was applied in Bosnia and Kosovo. Someone please point out the civil wars still raging there.

Chins up. The gloom-and-doomers always prevail in newsprint. They don't, however, in history.

Robb writes interesting blogs, a pair of them. On a daily basis he comes off less dark and more analytically balanced, but as so often happens when dark siders have to sum up in print, this one was dark seemingly for the sake of being dark. There is no way out in this piece. Many consider this realism, but in reality there is always a way out.

And, of course, John blogs back:

Tom Barnett writes a critique of my article. Here's my rebuttal. I agree with Tom that globalization will win in Iraq, eventually. Our dispute is solely on how we get there. It isn't a contest of light (light) and dark (pessimistic) views. We are both optimistic about the future.

Where do we differ? Tom views our future through the lens of the state. I don't. I view the world as a complex network of dynamic flows that only begrudgingly heed the dictates of the state (and often treat those dictates as damage to be routed around if they are not in alignment) -- in short, Friedman's flat world. This viewpoint translates into our approach to solutions. He's sees Iraq as a non-attempt at state-sponsored nation-building and I see it as the best attempt that this approach could muster.

In the long view, everything will likely work out. However, the path we take to get there matters. A short-term, heavy-handed approach will put us into unworkable situations. This is precisely the case with Iraq. We have boxed ourselves into a very difficult situation that may end in a Pyrrhic result. It may be inconvenient to point this out, but that is the reality of the situation.

Change in the future requires a decentralized approach and success will be measured in small steps that mitigate risk and improve system function. It will not come from reckless system shocks and grand schemes of reconstruction -- these only serve to fuel the workable but sub-optimal solutions posed by our open source competitors. Remember, in this networked-world both states and guerrillas gain power through their influence on global supply chains. Let's not give them the window of opportunity to do so.

So Tom says:

I would just say, go easy on Flat World. Freidman never argues the irrelevancy of states. As Martin Wolf points out, as does every economist on globalization, the most globalized economies feature the biggest govs, highest tax rates, and most regulation. OSW flourishes, as opposed to OS software itself, in nonglobalized environments only, where govs are weak. In good states it's just crime and lone wackos and LEA a plenty. Inside my Core, OSW remains a nuisance to be managed, not a defining threat. So to win ultimately, we expand that reality while shrinking the enemy's operating domain.

Yes, fight fire with fire in the weeds (the 10k terrorists we estimate we must manage, along with thw 80-90k at-risk pop), but that struggle alone never becomes an organizing principle for DoD. Instead, reformatting the Gap does. So "no flavor of the month," but inescapable reality. C-terror remains niche, otherwise we risk losing all by engaging weaker enemies symmetrically, throwing away all the economies of scale our magnificently networked economy provides.

Of course, John responds:

Thanks for the feedback Tom.

Just a clarification, I am not saying that states are irrelevant either. I do think that they are diminished in this century and should be much more careful about how they utilize the resources they have available. Moderation is the key to long-term survival.

Your old core isn't vulnerable to OSW yet, but your new core is. It's right on its doorstep. How long before it hits? I wouldn't discount this as a nuisance.

Okay, okay. . . he, Tom, isn't discounting. . . at least not yet. He's on the road, but wants to keep this thread alive. In the meantime,comments go here.. . . . ..

The talking to the press begins

Back to being the interviewed vice interviewer. A good 90 minutes tonight with reporter from major paper. Not sure how the story ends up: more book, more me, more brief, or more "influence."

Even less idea on when it would run. I've had some go in days and others take months. Always a mystery on timing.

Interview went well, I felt, although it's always very hard to say. An awkward discussion when describing the reach of your ideas (better to ask others, yes?). If you claim much, then you're a megalomaniac, but there seems little point to claim too little (why in the hell would the journalist be interviewing you then?).

In the end, of course, the reporter needs to adopt an angle, just like I did with Rumsfeld. It drives the piece. Never captures all, just some slice of the essence.

We shall see . . . but good practice for me.

Finished up a double-sized op-edish piece today for submission to major pub. No guarantees on it going to print. It's that kind of piece that comes out when a book comes out ("So and so is the author of "Book!" as byline). Another shorter one teed up for tomorrow on a more specific subject for an industry journal. Then I focus on shaping up the new BFA brief for Wednesday at National Defense University.

And then the tour begins.

I face the week feeling exhausted and in desperate need of a break, which is probably just the opposite of what I need to be feeling right now. But little choice to be had. Die is cast, much like that article that will come out.

So you do your best and don't worry about it too much.

Befitting his name, ZenPundit sees all on entropy v. evolution

Check out this great post on Robb's piece and my analysis. Safranski has a huge facility for categorization of concepts, which here is very helpful, meaning I think he really gets to the heart of the matter, no matter which way you come down on the subject.

http://zenpundit.blogspot.com/2005/10/open-source-warfare-vs.html

Commentary on Robb's Op-ed

■"The Open-Source War,"op-ed by John Robb, New York Times, 15 October 2005.

Interesting piece on diagnosis, but implied prescription is wrong, in my mind.

In the Global War on Terrorism, the temptation, like in all other long struggles, will be to mirror image the enemy on supposition that his asymmetrical challenge must prevail. But just pushing our "open-source" proxies into wars against our enemies threatens to replicate colonial struggles in the Gap between us and rising New Core powers like China. It is the ultimate in "playing their game" if we let that struggle, which we will obviously engage as required, define our center of gravity in the GWOT.

Remember, super-empowered individuals can rule vertical scenarios temporarily, but it takes states, and all their resources, to rule horizonatal ones. In short, don't confuse disruption capacity with rule-making capacity. To believe the former rules all is to engage in what that battle-tested revolutionary, V.I. Lenin, called the child-like belief that the right bomb in the right place at the right time changes everything. Modeling ourselves on OBL's and Al Qaeda's infantilism isn't the answer. Building the bigger open-source net is. This is my A-to-Z rule set on processing politically bankrupt states.



Creating better rules is how we win. By doing so we attract good citizens and good states, slowly but surely. Killing symmetrically is gratifying, but ultimately pointless. Reformatting their world so that their cause dies is the real victory. Not a matter of making it like our own, but simply making it connective in a deep sense with the outside world, so that individuals can choose their level of connectivity no matter what the authorities say or do.

So I say, bet on numbers. Bet on bigger networks. Bet on growing the Core and, by doing so, restricting the enemy's operating domain.

Information technology analogies are great, but they do not constitute tactics, much less strategy. The winning remains the same: kill their bad guys and replace bad governments with good. Don't confuse the friction with the formatting. Don't confuse skirmishes with campaigns. Don't confuse their asymmetry with our disadvantage.

In the end, we win as we always do: with stuff. Capitalism bribes off its enemies with wealth. Worked in 1848 in Europe and it's worked ever since.

Fourth Generation Warfare is the diagnosis, and it's a good one. But it will never be the answer because it sees only about 10% of reality. We need to wage peace from the outside in, spreading connectivity, not wage war from the inside out, hoping for democracy. We will never win in Iraq. Globalization will. What we wage now in Iraq isn't war. It's a holding action for history, which isn't so much on our side as constantly on our ass. Globalization is the ultimate horizontal scenario, the ultimate open-source net. Resistance is futile, but it will remain all some people have. They will die in a form of political-military evolution: the decline and disappearance of the unconnectable.

4GW adherents believe our enemies can play the waiting game, but it's the other way around. Time is on our side. You can tell simply by the perversity on their side. It signals their nihilism, or the realization that they cannot win.

As for Robb's notion that Iraq proves the fallacy of arguing for the SysAdmin, this is the analytical equivalent of a tautology, and I was surprised he made it. Arguing a non-attempt as proof of the concept's failure is just plain weak, which is probably why he tacked it on the end of the piece with no explanation. The SysAdmin was applied in Bosnia and Kosovo. Someone please point out the civil wars still raging there.

Chins up. The gloom-and-doomers always prevail in newsprint. They don't, however, in history.

Go here for the full piece: http://www.nytimes.com/2005/10/15/opinion/15robb.html

Robb writes interesting blogs, a pair of them. On a daily basis he comes off less dark and more analytically balanced, but as so often happens when dark siders have to sum up in print, this one was dark seemingly for the sake of being dark. There is no way out in this piece. Many consider this realism, but in reality there is always a way out.

Thomas P.M. Barnett comes to Second Life in avatar form

Hamlet, blogging at New World Notes announces A New Map for a New World. Snip follows:

New York Times-bestselling author Thomas P.M. Barnett comes to Second Life in avatar form to speak on his Blueprint for Action-- October 26, 11:30am-1pm PST (details at the end of this entry)



He'll address us from the floor of a virtual UN building, speaking to an audience, one hopes, that'll include Residents from around the globe-- those in the Functioning Core, those in the Seam states, and with luck, even those from the Non-Integrating Gap itself.

Continue reading at the source: "A NEW MAP FOR A NEW WORLD"

The wave begins, the narrative supercedes

Dateline: In the Shire, Indy, 14 October 2005

Nice day and evening yesterday in Minneapolis with Steve DeAngelis working a potential new, non-Fed client. Really got a chance to watch Steve do his sales pitch close up and it's quite the experience. Overall went well and both sides see big possibilities, so we walked away feeling very solid.

Also got chance to sit down with my two sisters for about 2 hours into the late evening.

Back home now for a bit before launching into travel that segues into BFA book tour. The stories blogging goes away now for a while. Crush of events too much, plus I'm sort of working two articles on short notice.

So it gets experential for a while here . . .

Esquire piece on China now out with November issue, along with a short blurb on BFA in the "Man at his best" section. Looks good. Pretty happy with how it turned out.

If you want to read it right away, it costs a bit here: http://www.keepmedia.com/ShowItemDetails.do?refID=19&item_id=1037812

A day at CENTCOM

Dateline: SWA flights back from Tampa through Chicago to Indy, 12 October 2005

Pretty cool day. Into Central Command's HQ at MacDill by 8:15, starting with relaxed breakfast with head officer and leading brains (so many guys in cammies with PhDs!) of General John Abizaid's commander's advisory group, or CAG. This is the private little think tank of the CENTCOM's boss.

Then off to special auditorium of coalition forces in "coalition village." Brief goes two hours with Q&A to about 50 foreign senior officers (more countries than I can remember) and about 50 CENTCOM middle officers.

Then a private chat with Abizaid himself in his office. Good talk. Very smart guy. More to come, at their choosing on time.

Here's the official photo. Have no idea why I do that with my neck. Nervous I guess. Just don't know how to pose for a photo. Always pull my head back like a turtle or something!

Then lunch with CAG brains.

Then brief to middling-to-senior officers of CENTCOM, with small audience linked by video screen in Qatar at forward command.

Then two SWA flights home after Northwest cancels my second leg of round trip because I neglected to take first leg (due to Enterra stint in Princeton).

Remind me never to fly Northwest again, those pricks.

Ooop! Think I'm flying them again tomorrow Ö

Here's the daily catch:

■ Pakistan's pain perturbs across the system

■ The immoral logic of American food aid

■ Canada reminds the U.S. that connectivity goes both ways

■ China plan to make sure the caboose doesn't fall too far behind

■ Oooh! The U.S. has filed charges on Kim!

■ Earth to Germany: hyphens are good!

■ Brazil keeps waging the good fight on AIDS

■ The mature IT industry: Enterra's been a real lesson

■ A one-sided clash within a civilization

Pakistan's pain perturbs across the system

■"Aid Fails to Reach Thousands in Pakistan Quake Zone," by Carlotta Gall and David Rohde, New York Times, 12 October 2005, p. A12.

■"Asian Quake May Be Serious Blow To Islamic Groups Hostile to U.S.," by Zahid Hussain and Peter Wonacott, Wall Street Journal, 12 October 2005, p. A15.

■"A World Turned Upside Down: The aftershocks of Pakistan's tremblor will be felt for years," op-ed by Russell Seitz, Wall Street Journal, 12 October 2005, p. A16.

■"Next: A War Against Nature," op-ed by Robert D. Kaplan, New York Times, 12 October 2005, p. A27.

Pakistan is way short on helos, and yet turns down India's offering of helos. Keep your eyes on that one as public frustration builds in country.

Who knows what happens when an immature nuclear power suffers such a System Perturbation? asks Mr. Seitz.

Who knows indeed.

Seems like the anti-American Kashmiri terror and insurgency groups suffered badly in the temblor, as this kind of quake is called. Seems like U.S. relations with the government can only improve with our big effort, and when we offer $50 million and India offers $116 million, you gotta believe that cross-border ties can only improve between Islamabad and New Delhi.

And Kaplan is right, this sort of event only highlights the long-time and rather huge and definitely hidden-from-view role of the U.S. military as the world's largest relief agency.

But Kaplan also engages in his usual queer hype, claiming that in the future more will die from natural disasters than ever before in history.

Actually, global deaths from natural disasters are down about 90% from the early years of the 20th century (Bjorn Lomborg, Skeptical Environmentalist), and there is no reason (nor statistics) to suggest that Kaplan's typical hyperbole is anything other than his usual bullshit about the future being so much worse than we can possibly imagine.

Still, Kaplan's bit about "the distinctions between war and relief, between domestic and foreign deployments, are breaking down." That part is way true.

Canada reminds the U.S. that connectivity goes both ways

■"Canada Warns That Tariffs on Lumber Could Imperil U.S. Access to Oil," by Clifford Krauss, New York Times, 12 October 2005, p. A5.

We owe Canada $5 billion in wrongly assessed tariffs, says a NAFTA panel, but we're not paying.

So Canada's resource minister says, "If NAFTA is called into question by U.S. action,it calls for us to diversify our trade and investment relations."

If that wasn't clear enough, Canada's guy gets on a plane to China, noting on his way that, "On the Chinese side, I am sure there will be receptivity."

Oh yeah, Canada's ready to lock in China at today's prices. When Chinese President Hu Jintao visited Canada last month, he spoke of "strategic partnerhship."

"Got China?"

Apparently Canada's gonna get some . . .

Right now Canada basically sends all its oil to the U.S., but China's investing already in the oil sands and a pipeline to carry the product to the Pacific coast.

Wanna say goodbye really fast to 8 percent of our total oil imports?

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See also: Crude Oil and Total Petroleum Imports Top 15 Countries from the Energy Information Administration at Department of Energy

Total Imports of Petroleum (Top 15 Countries)

(Thousand Barrels per Day)

CANADA (#1)

Jul-05 = 2,079

Jun-05 = 2,155

YTD 2005 = 2,121

Jul-04 = 2,178

Jan - July 2004 = 2,146

The immoral logic of American food aid

■"African Food for Africa's Starving Is Roadblocked in Congress," by Celia W. Dugger, New York Times, 12 October 2005, p. A4.

Our laws say the only food aid we can send overseas is stuff grown by our farmers and shipped by our shippers and-apparently-sold often on the side by our relief agencies to self-finance their own anti-poverty programs. Nice huh? CARE and Catholic Relief Services and five other biggies will take food designated for people in Africa and sell it in markets there to raise money for their programs in the region. Talk about starving Peter to finance Paul!

Well, Congress tried to change this stupid law, which basically results in 50% of our food aid disappearing in admin and transportation costs, but the Iron Triangle of food businesses, shippers and relief orgs successfully blocked the legislative change, despite firm White House support. The reform act was supposed to allow U.S. Agency for International Development to buy food locally for starving populations, thus simultaneously improving local agriculture conditions. Sounds pretty sensible given that poor local ag conditions is what gets your starvation in the first place.

But no, better for our companies and relief orgs to get their slice of the pie up front.

Immoral doesn't begin to cover this. This is homicide by negligence and greed.