Keep that channel open

ARTICLE: How Iran's nuke quest began, by Amir Taheri, New York Post, October 5, 2006.

From TM Lutas, reminding us that while Iran is rancidly authoritarian, it is not without internal politics.

And yeah, I want a dialogue going with a regime exhibiting that much internal play--for intell reasons alone.

God bless Fox Fallon and the fleet he rode in on

ARTICLE: "To Build Trust, U.S. Navy Holds a Drill With China," by Michael R. Gordon, New York Times, 23 September 2006, p. A5.

A notable but modest milestone, says Gordon. Damn straight.

One Chinese ship off the coast of California. It's a start: "the first time that ships from the two navies have worked directly with each other in a search and rescue training session."

This show always starts with things like pass ex's or SARs. Modest, simple, but it gets the ball rolling.

This is all Fox Fallon's doing, and he's gotten no support and some significant pushback from Rummy's Pentagon on the subject (please, no PACOM disclaimers are required--let me stipulate "we're all on the same page here" when everyone knows we're not).

Fallon admits as much:

Frankly, from the military side we have not been very engaged with these folks in the last five years. We are attempting to build a new relationship to try to establish a foundation and hopefully at some level of trust.

Later in the piece, Fallon gets more blunt:

It isn't a clone of the Soviet Union. However, there are institutions of our government that seem to act in a manner that has just transferred whatever we thought the Soviet Union was, and we have moved it into China and we kind of do things in the same manner, which I think is incorrect.

The real hawks want nothing to do with China, and the careful ones, like an expert on the Chinese military quoted in the piece, will tell you that no real cooperation with the Chinese is possible during crisis because our militaries are structured differently. The former are the real roadblocks Fallon is working against, while the latter view simply discounts the reality that China is working hard to modernize its military on our model (many analysts see this as a dangerous catch-up attempt), thus our historic opportunity for influence. Plus, I don't want to cooperate only with China during crises. I want alliance from stem to stern.

Fallon's a great and courageous guy. I wish him all the best. He's doing God's work.

The clock is ticking on Asia's recycling of its trade dollars through U.S. financial markets

ARTICLE: "Rate Rises Expose U.S. Foreign Debt As a Clear Burden: Net Payments Remain Small But Signal Growing Threat To Nation's Living Standards," by Mark Whitehouse, Wall Street Journal, 25 September 2006, p. A1.

ARTICLE: "Faster Pace By China On Rise In Currency," by Keith Bradsher and Steven R. Weisman, New York Times, 29 September 2006, p. C1.

We are over-leveraged with debt as a society right now. You can argue global warming in some circles, but that one's hard to quibble about.

We get away with this for one huge reason: Asia's export-led growth strategies, plus the Asian flu scare of the late 1990s, pushes them all, but especially China, South Korea and Japan, to put a lot of their trade surplus earnings back into U.S. currency holdings and financial markets, basically making our floating of debt (both public and private) very cheap.

For Asia, it's the best bet out there, financially, and China even uses this great recycling as a way of having our financial markets direct investments more wisely in their own economy, as a good chunk of that flow finds its way back into China as foreign direct investment.

But all that recycling will eventually come to an end. The ASEAN-plus process will eventually result in some embryonic EU-like Asian Union, and as that union grows in confidence, it will increasingly turn to itself (one another) for more financing. I mean, they don't need to send all that profit back here just to keep us buying. As their own domestic markets grows (especially China's), the key consumers will become their own.

That means the clock is ticking on this global transaction by which Asia outsources security to America and America outsources Asia's cheap labor. As this situation normalizes, so too will military ambitions in Asia (and not just in Japan either).

Yet another reason why we need to lock in China at today's prices, making sure we're not locked out of an Asian Union and are suitably advantaged--ally-wise--by an Asian NATO.

So be careful what you wish for on China's rising currency...

Clear signs that our SysAdmin effort in Iraq came nowhere near its potential

BOOK REVIEW: "Mistakes Were Made" (Imperial Life in the Emerald City by Rajiv Chandrasekaran), by Moises Naim, Washington Post National Weekly Edition, 2-8 October 2006, p. 32.

BOOK EXERPT: "Ties Trump Experience: GOP connections counted in who got sent to rebuild Iraq," by Rajiv Chandrasekaran, Washington Post National Weekly Edition, 2-8 October 2006, p. 6.

Part of the great advantage of being a WAPO writer: you pen a book and you're guaranteed (let's be honest) a nice review and exerpts. Chandrasekaran is very good, but let's just indulge in some professional jealously for a moment...

(sigh!)

It is a damning book that says all the macro signals we sent to fellow Core states about the postwar being America's party and America's alone were true--but even worse. It was a Bush-GOP "friends and family" sort of party that doled out contracts and top appointments with almost no reference to talent or experience.

The killer line called out in the text: "Six of the 'ten young gofers' that the CPA had requested from the Pentagon to handle minor tasks found themselves managing Iraq's $13-billion budget."

Paul Bremer's brain trust, as identified in the book, were all Bush-Cheney cronies, so, for example, Williamson Evers becomes the senior advisor on education. His credentials? He advised Bush on educational policy in his two elections. His experience in dealing with education in the Middle East or developing countries in general? Not identified here, but one imagines it is scant-to-zero.

Again, a killer string of paras that open the exerpt:

Affter the fall of Saddam Hussein's government in April 12003, the opportunity to participate in the U.S.-led effort to reconstruct Iraq attracted all manner of Americans--restless professionals, Arabic-speaking academics, development specialists and war-zone adventurers. But before they could go to Baghdad, they had to get past Jim O'Bierne's office in the Pentagon.

To pass muster with O'Bierne, a political appointee who screens prospective political appointees for Defense Department posts, applicants didn't need to be experts in the Middle East or in post-conflict reconstruction. What seemed more important was loyalty to the Bush administration.

O'Bierne's staff posed blunt questions to some candidates about domestic politics: Did you vote for George W. Bush in 2000? Do you support the way the president is fighting the war on terror? Two people who sought jobs with the U.S. occupation authority said they were even asked their views on Roe v. Wade.

Many of those chosen by O'Bierne's office to work for the Coalition Provisional Authority, which ran Iraq's government from April 2003 to June 2004, lacked vital skills and experience. A 24-year-old who had never worked in finance--but had applied for a White House job--was sent to reopen Baghdad's stock exchange. A recent graduate of an evangelical university for home-schooled children was tapped to help manage Iraq's $13 billion budget, even though he had no background in accounting.

The decision to send the loyal and the willing instead of the best and brightest is now regarded by many people involved in the 3 1/2-year effort to stabilize and rebuild Iraq as one fo the Bush administration's gravest errors...

And for this Bremer gets a medal?

To me, this is go-to-jail sort of cronyism. Why? Let me give you just over two-thousand reasons.

The Bush administration's ideological blinders are directly (but not totally) responsible for 2100-plus combat deaths since "mission accomplished." But unlike the military's blunders, which can be explained by the Vietnam Syndrome's long shadow, or the State Department's failing to enlist allies, which the White House openly torpedoed, the Bush people involved in setting up the CPA have no good excuse other than extreme stupidity.

Cleary, this administration wanted to succeed, but then chose this route of cronyism as their perceived best bet for ensuring it, and to me, that's just indefensibly dumb. No wonder everyone sees conspiracies. The truth is just too hard to swallow.

I keep asking myself: If I'm Wolfowitz or Feith or Bremer and I'm heading into this thing, do I just keep crossing my fingers or do I succumb, for self-preservation reasons, to all these good arguments that say, "history tells us this and past operations tell us that"? I mean, the ass-covering choice on this is just too obvious for words: you do the usual American thing and throw all the best brains and resources you can at the problem. But these guys did the opposite: they went cheap and stupid on the peace, thus invalidating a spectacularly planned and executed war. I just don't know how you do that to your own military, the guys you live and work with every day. I just don't have anywhere the balls to glide through all those self-doubts--day after day. I would have done a much better job simply by giving into my fears and self-doubts. Anybody would have.

But these guys didn't. Somehow they just knew so much better. They mistook their vision skills for execution skills. They told the military--as I described in BFA--how to suck eggs, despite all evidence to the contrary that they outranked the military on this one. My God, Shinseki and a lot of these guys cut their teeth in the Balkans. How do you just blow that off?

Hubris isn't the word for that. I'm not sure there is one.

And yet, books like this encourage me greatly. I've interacted with so many military who were there for that missing year, and it's clear we have the brain power for the task within the force. They were just cursed this time around by a Republican leadership which had none.

But admitting that does get me a bit depressed. The Republicans are the types to have the balls to pull off an Iraq war, but the Dems are the types to have the brains to pull off an Iraq postwar. Go with the GOP and you end up with Iraq today. Go with the Dems and you have a much harder time getting the go-ahead in the first place for the war.

I know, I know. It's the usual duality of our political system.

That just says we need centrists with great talent at working across the aisle. That's why I'm pulling for Clinton and McCain to emerge in '08. I do want leaders burning so bad with ambition that they'll routinely enrage the extreme wings of their parties.

Cool Friedman bit on India's India

OP-ED: "Anyone, Anything, Anywhere," by Thomas L. Friedman, New York Times, 22 September 2006, p. A21.

For pure unadulturated economic optimism bordering on determinism, Friedman is still the gold standard. Easy to mock for his enthusiasm (I plead guilty on occasion), he remains a strong source for eye-opening bits like this one.

Basically, the piece describes how a Uruguayan named Gabriel Rozman hatched a dream to make his native country an overnight back office to that overnight back office without peer--India.

A tiny country of three million people, wedged between Brazil and Argentina, Uruguay has come from nowhere to partner with India's biggest technology company, Tata Consultancy Services, to create in just four years one of the largest outsourcing operations in Latin America.

Yes, when Tata's Indian employees in Mumbai are asleep, its 650 Uruguayan engineers and programmers now pick up the work and help run the computers and backroom operations for the likes of American Express, Procter & Gamble and some major U.S. banks--all from Montevideo.

Mountain View? Sounds so Silicon Valley, yes?

By creating an outsourcing center in Montevideo, Tata could offer its clients its best Indian engineers during India's day (America's night) and its best Uruguayan engineers during America's day (India's night).

I just love this example. For too many reasons to name, Uruguay has no business joining the global economy--and yet it does.

More to the point of the New Core setting the new rules and my oft-stated theme that it won't be America's model that shrinks the Gap economically, but that of New Core pillars like China and India, look who's doing the work of connecting disconnected Uruguay for us?

Lexington Green is right. We do tend to underappreciate India's importance.

So why do I focus on China? No one's planning war in the Pentagon against India.

[Editor's note: Steve wrote about this same Friedman column recently in Updates on the Global Commute.]

The twins, separated at death in post-Soviet Russia, fight on in Putin's managed democracy

ARTICLE: "Murdered Regulator In Russia Made Plenty of Enemies: Targeting Illegal Cash Flows, Andrei Kozlov Became the Bane of Shady Bankers," by Guy Chazan, Wall Street Journal, 22 September 2006, p. A1.

I spent a summer in the Soviet Union in 1985, learning Russian at LSU (Leningrade State U.) during the day, and hanging out every night with "Big Al," a very sophisticated black marketer, at his apartment on the north side.

Every night the power elite types would file through his apartment, buying the latest VHS tapes of movies from the West, the most modern electronic home entertainment gear, and the highest-quality clothes you could imagine--all of it smuggled into the USSR by Western students Big Al recruited for this purpose (he put the big pitch on me every night after we finished our first bottle of vodka).

It was an education, to say the least, for it told me that there were two great thriving strains in the Soviet Union as it lumbered to its demise across the 1980s: the na levo types (literally, on the left--aka "on the side") who ran the black markets, and the silovki or power-types who had enough access to hard currency (U.S. dollars) to afford a good life on the side.

So the USSR falls apart and who rises to the top? The black market guys and the silovki, and they've been dueling it out ever since. Easy to slip into 1920s gangster capitalism, but far harder to escape.

But understand this demographic landscape and you understand why Putin is Putin, and why so many Russians let Putin be Putin.

Steyn's straw man effort marks him as Frank Rich-lite (or is it Chuck Klosterman-heavy?)

ARTICLE: "Oh God, am I just being neurotic? An author with an end-of-the-world tome due out suddenly finds himself panicking," by Mark Steyn, Macleans.com, 5 October 2006

Mark Steyn should shtick to the Chuck Klosterman-stuff. He's a very funny guy who comes to geopolitics from the the-ah-ter, just like Frank Rich. But where Frank's caustic with a purpose, I don't pick that up from Steyn, who seems more given to his inner Klosterman (whom I like a lot in Esquire; he just doesn't suffer the grand ambitions of Steyn to explain the world).

Plus, he's basically a one-note johnny with his decline-of-Europe-and-the-dark-hordes-from-Islam-threatening argument. Like most inclined to see Europe as the center of the universe, he believes its inability to deal with anything beyond their borders effectively marks the West's essential demise in the Long War. There is no East apparently worth mentioning in Steyn's world view, so my vision of Shrinking the Gap is cast aside as delusional. Why? We'll never talk Europe into it.

Poor Steyn thrusts without locating his target beforehand. If he had read beyond the clippings, he'd know I've never based my thinking regarding the SysAdmin force on winning over Europe--just the opposite. Hell, I've been calling on people to forget Europe and embrace the New Core going back to the spring of 2004 when PNM came out (my piece in WAPO). In BFA, I openly call for strategic alliance with China for exactly this purpose, pushing the argument in Esquire about as starkly as one can.

But Steyn misses all this in his apparent anger that I consider him a "racist buffoon." Racist, yes, but only in a sad, frightened sort of white-man way (What do these savages know of musical the-ah-ter?). I mean, as soon as I hear the "we're not having enough babies" argument, I just wince inside because I know where this line of reasoning is going. I guess if it's not French-on-French action, then you're technically running out of French. But then again, maybe Spanaird-on-French is still good, because then you're still cranking out baby Euros. But French-on-African (Or worse! African on top of French!), then I think you still must be losing the demographic battle right?

Feeling queasy yet? A bit titilated? Somewhat ashamed?

Relax. Steyn's delivery is much smoother and more seductive. It's racial solidarity designed to ennoble--hopefully to make you feel horny for the right kind of sexual partner.

"The seeds of our victory lie in the wombs of our mothers" ---Hamas.

So I guess all Steyn's doing is asking us white folk to go horizontal in order to get symmetrical with the threat.

Bring it on, mother-f--ker!

(Hey, that's not a bad slogan when you think of it: pithy and right to the point.)

Buffoon? Man, you gotta read him to make that call. I mean, Klosterman's not a buffoon because he's so in on the joke that he wears it like a skin, whereas Steyn has serious pretensions, as in, he wants to be taken very seriously but just can't bring himself to the point of staying serious. Perhaps that's just the show biz side he just can't shake.

I prefer to demonize demons, not entire races or religions (in Afghanistan, do you demonize just the Taliban, or do you recognize the thirst for knowledge and advancement as well?). Steyn's voice is important in that he plays nicely to European fears and the continent's preference for inaction. He so eloquently fatalizes every option, hence his new book is so very TEOTWAWKI (the end of the world as we know it)--seriously, he trots out that tired old phrase from the Y2K era!

I say, God bless the fear mongers and the racists. They give me a market niche.

Here's Steyn dagger-to-the-imagined-soft-underbelly of my argument.

At the other end of the spectrum is a hard-headed strategist like Thomas P. M. Barnett, author of The Pentagon's New Map: War and Peace in the Twenty-First Century and Blueprint for Action: A Future Worth Creating. Mr. Barnett divides the world into a functioning "Core" and a "Non-Integrating Gap" and favours using a "SysAdmin" force -- a "pistol-packin' Peace Corps" -- to transform the "Gap" countries and bring them within the "Core." He doesn't have a high opinion of yours truly -- he regards me as a racist buffoon -- and one is naturally tempted to respond in similar fashion. But, in fact, he talks a lot of sense -- up to a point. The trouble is, like many chaps who swan about dispensing high-end advice to international A-listers, he views the world's problems as something to be sorted out by more effective elites -- better armed forces, international agencies, that sort of thing. The common herd are noticeable by their absence in his pages. If he did give them any thought, he'd realize that his vision of a "SysAdmin" force -- European allies that would go into countries after American hard power has liberated them -- is simply deluded. Whatever the defects of the Continent's elites, the real problem isn't the lack of leaders but the lack of followers. The demographic reality is that Europe is running out of Europeans -- the deathbed fertility rates of the French, Italians, Germans, Spaniards, etc. is a continent-wide suicide bomb, a kind of auto-genocide in which one population is gradually yielding to a successor population unlikely to share American foreign policy goals in any parts of the world likely to catch Washington's eye in the next decade or three. Rather than the Continent's leadership class helping move countries from the Non-Integrating Gap to the Core, it's more likely that parts of Europe will be doing a Bosnia and moving from the Core to the Non-Integrating Gap.

Much like Bill Lind's lighting into me way back when, I keep wondering when these guys are actually going to read the books they reference. If Steyn did, he'd be embarrassed that his perceived critique of my concepts WRT to a reliance on European allies actually simply mimics the very same arguments I've made for years now on why we need to look to Asia and not to Europe for help in shrinking the Gap.

A possible explanation for the cultural blinders? Steyn is apparently Canadian, and like many Canadians, his world outlook begins with Europe and ends with those crazy Americans.

A forgivable but utterly irrelevant mindset for someone wading into geopolitics from the the-ah-ter, although I love Steyn's "everyman" references. It's such a short journey from "Broadway Babies" to blue collar, and he manages it with such un-self-conscious aplomb. Most proles I know didn't grow up on Jule Styne. Then again, I hail from the thriving metropolis of Boscobel WI, where Farmer's Day was the cultural highlight of the summer (tractor pulls are the NASCAR of the Midwest), so I should know better than go toe-to-toe with a master of the American songbook.

I guess we just have to blame Reagan for this sort of stuff. Once he turned politics into showbiz, it was inevitable that showbiz types invaded politics--even geopolitics.

Don't get me wrong. I don't advocate not reading the man, any more than I'd say never eat candy under any circumstances. Indulging in empty calories is fine in modest amounts. Just remember to get some real food in your diet now and then.

On a less snarky note: I would advocate reading David Brooks if you're looking for someone with that ability to explain culture and society plus a very realistic take on what this Long War is all about. Brooks is just as funny without being jokey. To me, he's the best broadband columnist out there right now--meaning most clippable.

The internal front in the Long War

ARTICLE: "For Afghan Girls, Learning Goes On, In the Shadows: Home classes proliferate as insurgents attack schools," by Pamela Constable, Washington Post National Weekly Edition, 2-8 October 2006, p. 17.

It all starts with educating young girls, the one great predictor of development.

Naturally, in Afghanistan, it is the great consistent target of the Taliban, who have "targeted dozens of schools in the past year, especially those teaching girls."

The resurrection of schooling, especially that for girls, was heralded as the great advance in post-Taliban Afghanistan. From nowhere, five million kids were in school. Now that tide is receding in areas threatened by the Taliban and across much of the rest of the country--just too dangerous:

According to UNICEF, 106 attacks or threats against schools occurred from January to August, with incidents in 31 Afghan provinces. They included one missile attack, 11 explosions, 50 burnings and 37 threats. In the four southern provinces under serious assault by Taliban forces, UNICEF said, nearly half of the 748 schools have stopped operating.

That's the enemy we fight in the Long War: someone who rams a missile into a school full of kids from their own society:

In Kandahar, all schools are now closed in five districts. Attackers have thrown hand grenades through school windows and threatened to throw acid on girls who attend school.

But then just see how brave these kids are to seek out an education:

During the 1990s... especially in rural areas, public education became virtually inaccessible, especially for girls. In some areas, female literacy fell to less than 1 percent.

Today, most Afghans appear eager to make up for lost time. Their thirst for knowledge is strong... In northern provinces, where the Taliban threat is minimal and tribal customs tend to be more modern, many communities have welcomed foreign offers to build schools for girls.

One teacher summed it up nicely: "If our people do not get educated, it will be a disaster for our country. We see how far ahead other countries are getting, and we are just falling behind."

Turn of the dial in the Gulf region

ARTICLE: "Shiite Politicians Grow More Critical of Iraq's Government," by Sabrina Tavernise, New York Times, 2 October 2006, p. A7.

ARTICLE: "In Northern Iraq, A Rebel Sanctuary Bedevils the U.S.; In Wake of Kurdish Attacks Against Turkey, Washington Is Caught Between Allies," by Philip Shishkin, Wall Street Journal, 2 October 2006, p. A1.

ARTICLE: "Fatal Clashes in Gaza Over Unpaid Salaries," by Steven Erlanger, New York Times, 2 October 2006, p. A9.

OP-ED: "The Key to Afghanistan: More Time," by Jim Hoagland, Washington Post National Weekly Edition, 2-8 October 2006, p. 5.

ARTICLE: "U.N. Force Is Treading Lightly on Lebanese Soil," by Michael Slackman, New York Times, 25 September 2006, p. A1.

ARTICLE: "Growing Unarmed Battalion in Qaeda Army Is Using Internet to Get the Message Out," by Hassan M. Fattah, New York Times, 30 September 2006, p. A6.

ARTICLE: "Report Cites Bid by Sunnis in Bahrain to Rig Elections," by Hassan M. Fattah, New York Times, 2 October 2006, p. A3.

OP-ED: "An Offer Tehran Can't Refuse," by Ted Koppel, New York Times, 2 October 2006, p. A23.

In many ways, it's amazing how much remains in play in the Middle East thanks to the Big Bang Bush laid upon the region.

I never anticipated Iraq would be easy. When I described it in the original Esquire "Map" article, I said, "As baby-sitting jobs go, this one will be a doozy, making our lengthy efforts in postwar Germany and Japan look simple in retrospect." I also said in the later Iraq country entry: "Question of when and how, not if. Then there's the huge rehab job. We will have to build a security regime for the whole region."

For the life of me, I do not understand why there is no effort, especially from our quarrters, to create some CSCE-like (Council for Security and Cooperation in Europe that served as regional security forum for East v. West in the Cold War) entity for the region. Why is there no regional security dialogue that involves all the local players, plus the major outside powers?

You can say it happens in the UN, but that's saying almost nothing. You can say the outside powers cooperate on Iran, but that's only over one single issue (WMD).

Meanwhile, Iraq is coming apart (no big surprise, as the Sunnis are forced into accepting the same reality the Serbs were once forced to swallow--it's all gone and it's never coming back again), but that means--at a minimum--a multilateral conversation that involves the Turks, the Iranians, the Jordanians, the Saudis and the Syrians.

The West Bank and Gaza continue their downward slide, and now Israel is turning an eye once again toward settlements. Again, there is no multilateral regional security forum where that is discussed.

You have UN troops in Lebanon after Israel invaded. That also gets you Syria at the table, and probably Jordan.

Hoagland says more time is needed in Afghanistan. Hell, it's needed throughout the region, and a security forum that puts everyone around the table is a great place to buy such time.

You've got an election scandal brewing in Bahrain, where the government is apparently granting citizenship to any Sunnis it can lure from neighbors. Why? It fears the majority Shiia will be emboldened by recent events in Iran, Iraq and Lebanon. Doesn't that sound like the kind of thing a regional forum might address?

Shiia getting uppity across the dial, Sunni al Qaeda sympathizers pushing propaganda like never before across the web, Iran stepping into a MAD-like stand-off with both Israel and the U.S., both of which would definitely light the place up--with good reason--the minute some terrorist group flashed that it had a nuke and was willing to use it.

I understand that the Arab League gets together regularly and does less than nothing on every issue under the sun. I'm not talking about locals just talking to locals.

I understand the G-7 has talked this up several times. I'm not talking about outsiders just talking to outsiders.

I'm talking about locals plus the outside powers of interest in a forum where we finally get past the annual grandstanding BS we see in the UN General Assembly.

Instead, we get ass-covering foreign policies from both locals and outsiders, with the U.S. leading the pack. Bush and Rice are sitting on top of easily the most fluid and interesting and full-of-potential regional diplomatic situation we've ever faced in the Middle East, but what have we seen from them? Where are the bold strokes and stunning breakthroughs? Where are the inconceivables pulled out of hats by Rice shuttling back and forth in a jet?

Nothing. Nada. Not even an attempt. Not even a floater. Not a thing from this super-bold president and his universally acclaimed Secretary of State, who, like the previous, is racking up non-acccomplishment after non-accomplishment.

Think Kissinger or Nixon or James Baker or Bill Clinton would be sitting on their hands throughout this whole thing? Just staying the course?

I know you can find me dozens of regional experts who will tell you nothing of the sort is possible, for more reasons than I can count. The same regional types would have told you the same about all the diplomatic breakthroughs of the past right up to the moment until they happened.

I guess I just remain stunned that no one proposes anything of this sort, despite everything currently in play in the region, despite its huge importance to the global economy, despite the huge investment of military effort and the accompanying dangers of spreading jihadism.

I mean, Bush wastes his political capital on all sorts of stuff that never gets him anywhere (like loyalty to this or that person in his cabinet) and his second term is disappearing. What in God's name does the man have to lose at this time?

No truces will be offered to us in the Long War

OP-ED: "The Grand Delusion: The folly of withdrawal," by David Brooks, New York Times, 28 September 2006, p. A23.

OP-ED: "Infidel Documents: Intelligence, jihadists and the Iraq war debate," by Fouad Ajami, Wall Street Journal, 28 September 2006, p. A16.

One of the hardest points to get across regarding the Long War is this: globalization is on the offensive in the Islamic world, and radical Salafi jihadists are on the counter-offensive. Bush threw fuel on this firefight by sending troops into both Afghanistan and Iraq, but he neither controls this struggle nor defines it.

If Bush, or his successor, pulls us out of either (and eventually some pullout will make sense, it's just hard to imagine those conditions right now, or their appearance on our current course), the Salafis' aggressive and global counter-offensive will continue, because globalization's penetrating advance into the Islamic world will not be stopped. It cannot be called off by the West, because it's now driven as much by the East, and the East isn't interested in returning to the underdevelopment of yesterday: they've gotten their taste of the better life, and they want more--now.

Remember the Economist's recent survey of the emerging markets: the world has never faced the sort of long-term stimulus of this magnitude. Over the next couple of decades, we'll witness the global economy growing and expanding as never before.

You think the Salafis are irrepressible, but their nihilism is no match for the greed for a better life that's been unleashed across half of humanity recently. Just because we can't get the Old Core of Europe and Japan much interested in this fight, don't assume the New Core pillars like India, Russia and China won't defend their new standards of living and economic freedom. Saddled as we are with a foreign policy elite from a distant era, we have yet been unable to tap the serious sources of new power in the global economy. But we won't suffer this sort of strategic stupidity for much longer--the pain will simply grow too great.

But back to the main point: there is no un-offending strategic posture we can take in the Long War. There is no place to pull back to and hide within. There is no retreat possible, because the Salafis won't stop. And they cannot stop because the clock is ticking on the societies on which they still dream of turning the clock back: globalization will inevitably remake the Middle East over the next twenty years. You can say they'll keep it out, and they indeed will try, but their youth will be both seduced and enraged by this historical process. Either way, they'll be revolting--to their parents or against their rulers.

But there is no peaceful path in the Long War so long as so many within Islam feel they'll lose their collective identity by embracing globalization's many promises and perils.

Ajami:

These warriors have a utopia--an Islamic world ruled by their own merciless brand of the faith. With or without Iraq, the work of "cleansing" Islam's world would continue to rage on.

And those efforts will only grow more intense in coming years, because the "polluting" and "corrupting" influences will only grow stronger--especially among the young. And since the young dominate Islamic societies, the notion that somehow this huge cohort can be insulated and kept "pure" is unimaginably naive.

But listen to Brooks:

... more and more people are falling for the Grand Delusion--the notion that if we just leave the extremists alone, they will leave us alone. On the right, some believe that if we just stop this Wilsonian madness of trying to introduce democracy into the Arab world, we can return to an age of stability and balance. On the left, many people can't seem to fathom an enemy the U.S. isn't somehow responsible for. Others think the entire threat has been exaggerated by Karl Rove for the sake of political scaremongering...

Today's extremists are not the product of short-term historical circumstances, but of consciousness and culture: They are not the fault of the United States, but have roots stretching back centuries. They will not suddenly ignore their foe--us--when their hatred of us is the core of their identity.

And what do they hate so much? They hate our model, which defines--as Brooks points out--a nation's or society's greatness in terms of economic development and technological prowess instead of religious-inspired violence and cultural "honor."

We've simply moved beyond those periods from our past, while the Arab world has not, its economic world tragically retarded by the resource curse, which encourages them to still view the world in terms of zero-sum advance (if I win, you must lose, or vice versa). Wealth, like honor and identity, is a fixed sum in their universe: it cannot be expanded or grown or diversified. Any such "advances" are heresy to these fundamentalists, who defend their desire for dropping out of the economic world around them by pretending it makes them pious.

And if it was just these fundamentalists whose desire for disconnectedness could be accommodated, then this Long War would be obviated. But they are radical fundamentalists determined not just to forge their own pious path, but enslave all those co-religionists who fall short of their ideal (or simply reject its definition, as the vast majority do). And if they cannot be enslaved by their ideology, then they will be slaughtered.

As for the unbelievers... murdering them is as pious as it gets for this crowd.

Again, do you think there is anywhere to hide? Or do we just decide our fields of battle and pursue them?

Me? I vote for the latter, but in a manner designed to accelerate globalization's penetration of the Middle East. I'm all for speeding the inevitable killing, but not for making Iraq-like efforts where we so botch the peace that all we're left with is war, and the unacceptable course of accepting defeat.

We cannot win the Long War with war, but only with the stability that allows globalization's connectivity to advance, creating economic change before political change becomes possible.

This is called by many (including Brooks in another recent op-ed) the "Chinese model."

Get used to hearing it, and get used to the idea that we'll be allied with the Chinese in making that model spread across the Gap.

We're winning wars and losing postwars, while the Chinese are winning the "everything else" while cynically letting wars burn on (like in Sudan). Between us, we'd actually have a package worth delivering to failed states inside the Gap.

Inconceivable to some, inevitable to me.

Now is not the time for all good men to come to the aid of their party.

People need to start making their own foreign policies.

There is much groundwork to be completed between now and January 2009. But even then, there is no assurance that smarter heads will prevail, so I'm planning to have my own foreign policy pretty much from here on out.

I suggest you all do the same in whatever manner makes most sense.

Glad to help out the New York Times' story on Rumsfeld

ARTICLE: "Rumsfeld Also Plays Hardball on Pentagon’s Squash Courts," by David S. Cloud, New York Times, 24 September 2006

I give everyone thirty lashes with a wet noodle for missing my appearance in the NYT!

Mr. Rumsfeld himself has suggested that his ideas about transforming the military into a smaller, more agile force, like the one he pushed for in invading Iraq, were influenced by his squash playing.

In an interview with the military writer Thomas P. M. Barnett last year, Mr. Rumsfeld said, “I play squash with him,” gesturing at Mr. Di Rita. “When I pass him in a shot and it’s a well-played hard shot, I saw speed kills. And it does. If you can do something very fast you can get your job done and save a lot of lives.”

Ah, both the brilliance and the banality on display: Rummy was right about the war, but didn't question how that assumption translated in the peace, and therein lies both the rub and about 2k dead from hostile actions.

Yes, squash can tell us something about war, as all sports can, but typically you need to look elsewhere for inspiration on the peace. No good postwar, no good war worth waging.

This cite shows the utility of putting the Rumsfeld interview transcript online, because that's obviously where Cloud got it. I don't post the transcript, he can't use it (and Rummy didn't submit to an interview, so where else to get his words on squash?).

Also a good lesson: notice how the professional Cloud suitably referenced me (something I blew in my Rummy piece with ABC News, out of complete ignorance on my part) while simultaneously denying the reference to Esquire. Hmm, killing two professional birds with one stone! Nicely done, you competitive bastard!

Actually, I like Cloud a lot and always read him, so way cool.

But again, I chastise all readers who never brought this to my attention!

And actually, I'll confess that I skimmed the piece and missed it myself!

Now to wait on the indignant phone call from Mark Warren...

Column done, and retitled

DATELINE: on the kitchen island, catching up on the blog, Indy, 4 October 2006

Got home last night around midnight and spent an hour scouring my book shelves for all the books I want to read or reread as I gear up for Vol. III. The impetus? BFA the paperback came out yesterday. Got my free copies from Berkeley and the last of my advance checks late last week. Just feel like it's time to move on. Already plotting with Warren, including the pieces to be written for Esquire across the next year (I will appear one more time before year's end).

So there I am after midnight, pulling out about two dozen books and reports. My wife is already reading books on the American West, highlighting for me. I can feel the big creative period looming on the horizon, and it's exciting. Got a white board now in the office, plus wooden boxes into which I toss articles for future reference (system, state, individual). Find myself staring out of windows a lot more. Just the way it's gotta be, apparently. Not sure Putnam will be interested in Vol. III (BFA didn't match PNM's sales, although it's selling at about 4X the rate I had originally hoped to achieve with PNM--back when I was a humble civil servant, so clearly expectations change with success), but strong interest expressed from other very prominent quarters makes me feel confident Mark and I can market this one effectively through our agent Jennifer Gates. No surprise on what I'm going to do with Vol. III: this one is focused on training up the next generation of thinkers while telling many stories of individual-led change within the ongoing evolution that is the Long War. My new working title is "Strategy Compass: Locating Leadership for the Long War." The main title is still designed to sit under the PNM brand name (like BFA, it lacks an indefinite or definite article in front). I toy with "A Citizen's Strategy Compass" and also consider "Developing Leadership for the Long War." All of that cogitating on titles means almost nothing this far in advance (publishers pick titles, typically). I'm just getting the concept down in my head and I look ahead, thus it only needs to work for me at this point.

Spent a lot of time on this week's column (which I am assuming is the first of the weekly columns for the Knoxville News Sentinel that will now be considered for distribution by Howard Scripps, but that is yet to be confirmed from Tennessee). Had first draft done by Monday, so plenty of time to fiddle with it. Original title was stupid, as many commenters rightfully pointed out. I felt that almost the minute I typed it into the Monday post. So I spent a lot of time rereading the piece (maybe 50 times) to discover the real essence of what I was saying, and that led me to swap out about 200 words in text and replace with points I really felt were missing (you always leave out loads in a 720-word piece, but sometimes that definition of what's expendable changes dramatically as you edit the piece over time). The new title is "Which way to the front in the Long War?" Why? I think the general difficulty of defining a true "central front" in such an asymmetrical, fourth-generation warfare conflict as the Long War is exactly what needs to be discussed right now in response to the NIE. Plus, I like the notion of writing lotsa columns on the Long War concept over a long stretch of time (this is number five with the phrase in the title, but arguably I mention the concept almost every other column), because I feel like educating the reader on this notion is really crucial--something I was predestined to do. I mean, everyone contributes in the way they know best, whether it's critical or supportive or both simultaneously (as I often try to be).

Anyway, I finally got happy on the piece and sent it off.

And yes, I do confess to being a Jerry Lewis fan--big time. But don't read too much into that one.

Now, to attack the pile of articles collected...

What You Know Is What You Foresee

DATELINE: USAIR commuter from Reagan to Indy, 3 October 2006

My day of red-teaming with other big brains was interesting enough. Think I got at least two columns out of it (ideas that came to me when I wanted to explain why I thought differently from others). One thing reinforced: how you view the future depends on what you know, so each expert tends to come armed with predictions that match his or her background--no matter how narrow.

Lesson for me? If you want to think systematically about the future, eschew functional expertise and vertical thinking and embrace horizontal knowledge and the generalist within.

Yes, you'll be "wrong" more often in any one venue (as experts will constantly argue how "unrealistic" your vision is WRT their subject matter), but you'll also always be more relevant to a wider array of people (yes, there is a real world beyond the Beltway).

At airport, I picked up a second copy of John Nagl's "Learning to Eat Soup With a Knife," his history of past counter-insurgency campaigns. A cult hit inside the Army and Marines, his expanded edition comes with a new forward that describes his year on the ground in the Sunni Triangle.

A nice surprise: Nagl favorably references PNM in the forward. I am seriously honored.

Punchy p---ing, papers, Packers and (more) papers

DATELINE: USAir flight to Reagan, 2 October 2006

Day lost to column, which I'm still tweaking. Tentative title is "Why Pissing Off Terrorists Is the Right Thing To Do."

Wanted something punchy and topical for first potential Scripps-distributed piece and the first of my now weekly column for Knoxville.

As I start having to come up with something new each week, I'm going to start tapping science and technology issues, as I am informed on them by Oak Ridge National Lab. Next week I'm going to pen something on genetically-modified threats based on my exposure to some work at ORNL. It's a fascinating story I can't wait to explore, although there's only so much you can do in 720 words, as I constantly discover.

Flying to DC tonight for some quiet consulting tomorrow in the intell realm. Hauling ass to get to my hotel not too long after Pack-Eagles game begins. Would love to see them go 2-2 but fear for the worst. Have seen McNabb bedevil them live at Lambeau, and it still burns!

Carrying about two dozen WAPO, WSJ and NYTs on my person. They may be my only consolation if things get bad tonight.

It wouldn't really have been better if we had done nothing

ARTICLE: The Humanitarian War Myth, By Eric A. Posner, Washington Post, October 1, 2006; Page B07

A gloriously one-sided analysis that says in effect, "the only killing that matters is that which occurs after we intervene."

The UN (and no one disputes this) said the sanctions killed 50,000 a year in Iraq in the 1990s, more than the cumulative total of this "disastrous" humanitarian adventure in Iraq.

Then there are all those Saddam killed at home over his long reign, especially in the aftermath of our "limited" campaign (Powell Doctrine in action) back in 1991.

Then there are those who died in his war with Iran (cynically supported by us) and his invasion of Kuwait.

But none of those deaths matter, because they do not occur on our watch--so to speak.

Only a lawyer could argue anything so amazingly one-sided.

But yes, better we "do no harm" and let Darfur burn, let Saddam kill, let the Gap be the Gap, etc. This is realism and the Powell Doctrine and international legal BS at its best.

I am not my brother's keeper. I just manage the cell block, letting out those I care to recognize now and then, and sending in the riot police to quell the riots when forced. Please, please, no shrink the Gap for me. They're all just dark-skinned people in a galaxy far, far away.

Think if we finally did something serious in the Congo we'd rack up 5 million dead in a decade?

Or would we probably have 50k on our hands, and a huge guilt complex to boot for our efforts ("What have we done?")?

Lincoln picked Grant because he could do the awful math required. We live in a world where the equations are all reversed in terms of effort, and still we lack a decent Grant. Instead, we've enshrined our very own McClellan, whose latest hagiographic biography hits the streets today.

Limited regret, limited morals, limited courage, limited caring. We live in an era of great circumspection, where the ass-covering careerist is worshipped and men of any firm action are vilified.

I give it to Bush: he tries. You can disagree with the calls and the execution, but he tries. The Do-Nothings of our age are the foreign policy equivalents of the Know-Nothings that once plagued our political system. They always have an answer to the question, "why not do nothing?" They want from the world but they owe the world nothing. The selfishness and self-delusion know no bounds.

Create the middle class, you get the questions

ARTICLE: In China, Churches Challenge the Rules: Bold Congregations Risk Official Wrath, By Maureen Fan, Washington Post, October 1, 2006; Page A19

Care to bet who's gonna win this struggle over the long haul? China's adding consumers (disposable-income spenders) like crazy and you know what happens to any society when such a critical mass appears? They start asking questions beyond the usual "how do I survive?" They ask political questions, sure. But more and more they ask religious ones.

China's government will be able to squelch neither, just channel them through solutions that increasingly bolster the public's confidence in asking even more questions.

Limited regret yields limited effect

ARTICLE: Ruined Towns Look to Beirut, Mostly in Vain, by By Michael Slackman, New York Times, October 1, 2006

Hezbollah's strategy of divide-and-conquer appears to be paying off. NATO troops won't be disarming anybody and that $900 m in reconstruction aid can't be spent in the areas most destroyed because the Lebanese government's writ doesn't extend there.

Meanwhile, Hezbollah's certainly grows tighter, as Iran's oil money finds purchase there.

Bottom line: one side has fielded a solid SysAdmin force in southern Lebanon and the other side is MIA, afraid to pick a fight with the real power there. This is the outcome of Israel's employment of the defunct Powell Doctrine (pound hard conventionally, but avoid any ownership of the second half, declaring "victory" in your pullout).

Limited regret yields limited effect yields limited outcomes. Third-generation strategy for a Fourth-generation war. Such is the state of our "wisdom" (and "wise men").

Hezbollah and Iran continue to size our SysAdmin force--if anyone cares to notice.