Obama the symbol

POST: Goodbye To All That, By Andrew Sullivan, The Daily Dish, 10/26/08

Nice post by Andrew Sullivan. We're looking at the most potently symbolic president since Reagan.

Too late for the split-branch appeal

ARTICLE: Poll Gives Obama 8-Point Va. Lead, By Tim Craig and Jon Cohen, Washington Post, October 27, 2008; Page A01

ARTICLE: Obama Avoids Partisan Rhetoric, Focuses on Unity, By Robert Barnes, Washington Post, October 27, 2008; Page A02

McCain/Palin finally pushing the don't-give-it-all-to-the-Dems argument, but it's too late.

Gotta go very positive in the last week, like Obama is doing.

Two in the hopper

Reworked something I had written this summer for a short piece in an upcoming Good issue that focuses on the planet. Gave them over 2k when they wanted 1k, but I divvied it up for slicing, so I think it's best to let them decide on the right mix of broad description (about 1k) and details (1k). Think we're talking the Jan-Feb issue, which I imagine will come out in early Dec.

Also just finished yesterday a 8k-plus piece slated (for now) for the January 09 Esquire that will come out in early Dec. Adapted some bits from the book (maybe a "k"), and wrote the rest new. It's an interesting spin-off from the book, tailored to elicit thinking about the incoming administration. Naturally, it is designed to be adaptable to any outcome on 4 Nov.

Anyway, nice to have two pieces in the works.

The five fallacies of doom-and-gloomers

1) the old white-guy expert who regrets his entire career (my favorite is nuclear weapons, although Soros is the current poster-child)
2) the senseless extrapolation ad infinitum (e.g., confusing standard of living with consumption)
3) our children are idiots (timeless)
4) changes in direction as "the end of ..." (the slippery slope as demonizing tool = "Obama is a socialist!")
5) "those people" will screw it up (non-whites are inherently inferior and won't match what Europeans did in the past)

A note to myself for next week's column.

Crisis and the next administration

ARTICLE: Around the World, the Signs Of Slowdown Spiral Outward, By Steven Mufson and Blaine Harden, Washington Post, October 25, 2008; Page A01

In many ways, a global recession is a good thing. Globalization had been expanding so fast for so long that a lot of weird dynamics had crept into the mix, as they always do in a lengthy boom. I started to wonder about the sustainability of it all when the food prices jumped following the oil. While demand was rising for both, there just didn't seem to be the underlying short-term need to justify the price cost. Then you read about China and Saudi Arabia buying up arable land globally and that just sounded nuts.

Now all the nutty and panicked behavior is switched to the other direction: all forecasts being lowered and whatnot.

The main upsides are that we're far more likely to get a Doha agreement, a host of much-needed new rules on governing inter-market financial flows, etc.

Eventually, all these new rules were going to have to happen. The longer the boom went, the worse the correction would be, and the bigger the flood of new rules. So sooner, as cruel as it sounds, is always better, because the bigger the volume of new rules, the more likely it is that you overdo and get a lot of things wrong.

Commensurately, we're looking at a similar backlash political/rule-set effect here in the States, AKA the wholesale losses for the Republicans (perceived party in power even though they already lost both Houses, so this just completes the 2006 election). Here, it feels like intense caboose-breaking, or a populist nastiness that may well end up being hard to control. This is arguably Obama's real challenge.

The larger upside to me is that you want a lot of churn going on when a new president takes office, whomever he or she is, because a lot of good work and course correction can get done early in a first term.

So 2009 will be a most interesting year.

For me personally, the churn can't hurt a book that preaches a systemic re-calibration of how we view and interact with the world. The downturn will place a crimp on any calls for activism abroad, but the weird thing is, I sort of anticipate that in the book without realizing it. I don't call for any "big push" in any USG sphere--just the opposite. Even the usual misinterpretations of my message will be hard to generate with this book, because the military aspect is deeply contextualized within a far larger message.

I've been admittedly made nervous by the financial crisis along the lines of, "I worry the book will be dismissed because all that everyone will want to talk about is domestic economic recovery," which is right and smart and inevitable. But as this thing globalizes more intensely than I thought it could at this point in globalization's expansion (we always tend to underestimate the connectivity already achieved--even me), I worry about that less. A Europe might get more insular, but not America. We're simply too engaged and have come to understand--through this crisis--the degree of that engagement and connectivity. Plus, even with Europe, they'll seek new international leadership for a go-slow period on globalization (accompanied with new rules), so I think I see some real ambition brewing with Brown, Sarkozy, Merkel, etc.

The one place I really worry about is China. I don't think their current leadership is up for much (remember, it's 4th Generation homebodies) other than pulling in their heads and hiding in their shell. Maybe a bit more from India, and hopefully more from Brazil. Another upside is that the air is deflating in Moscow's big head, so enough of that nonsense.

If anything, I find this crisis reveals the same playing field we thought we had before all this take-off got crazy: US still the center, Europe not as weak as assumed economically, and the BRIC not at all-powerful as assumed. So yeah, a new heightened role for Europe, as it's go-slow trumps our go-fast for a while (and thank God we have the fleshed-out alternative at hand, because--as always--competition is good), but it needs America desperately in that process because of our intense economic, productive and financial links, so hardly any dawning of a post-American age.

And that's not a bad thing whatsoever.

The big thing is, What do we do with this renewed opportunity for global leadership? Pull in our heads like the Chinese or act with a calm deliberation?

Thus my continued hopes for an Obama administration. This is his kind of crisis, not McCain's. We need the system thinker, the fox, the many-answers-to-every-question guy.

And he needs to lead.

Biden's point, however badly delivered, is totally moot. The testing crisis will be waiting for Obama.

Are Obama's coat tails long enough for Franken?

ARTICLE: Comedian Becomes Serious Contender, By Paul Kane, Washington Post, October 25, 2008; Page A01

If Franken gets in, then this is a total Republican defeat. He was suffering in his attempt not too long ago. Obama's coat tails are long.

My guess is that its the unremitting bad economic news that's propelling him, including new, far less rosy predictions for agriculture next year (far lower prices for commodities, and fertilizer costs up 60%).

Column 125

Heroes and villains according to Woodward

There is an old Washington saying that "where you stand depends on where you sit," meaning policy views correlate to bureaucratic position.

This is worth remembering as General David Petraeus begins his strategy review of Afghanistan. Those looking for an instant replay of his counterinsurgency tactics in Iraq will be disappointed.

Read on at KnoxNews.
Read on at Scripps Howard.

Rebrand or re-Bush?

OP-ED: Rebranding the U.S. With Obama, By NICHOLAS D. KRISTOF, New York Times, October 22, 2008

Nice piece by Kristof that echoes what I've been saying in speeches for more than a year now: going post-Boomer in the U.S. White House gets us a chance to recast our relationship with China by reaching past the 4th generation and starting to connect with the 5th and 6th generations.

Kristof expands that sort of argument to big chunks of the world.

I agree with his analysis here and the underlying notion: in our moment of financial distress, it's a neat trick to instantly rebrand ourselves from distant and harsh global authority figure to something much more in line with the frontier-integrating nature of our age--the self-made man who rises to incredible heights and beats the prevailing odds. The shift taps into a lot of things that the world has always loved about America.

The value of that shift, which would not occur with McCain whatsoever (and could possibly even backslide given his strong identification with punitive warfare) should not be underestimated.

America is indeed rebranding itself for the age, whether it wants to or not. Our success in spreading globalization simply forces this function.

And if we listen to the world in this way, our recovery back to where we once belonged is greatly accelerated. The alternative? What the last three years of the Bush administration has felt like internationally.

(Thanks: Tyler Durden)

Tom around the web

Since I'm so far behind on Tom around the web, I'm just going to list the sites that have linked here with minimal/no comment.

Patterns R' Us (2) (3) (4) (5)
Wormtown Taxi (2) (3)
HG's WORLD (2) (3)
zenpundit (2) (3)
Andrew Sullivan (2)
PCR Project (2)
Headline Junky (2)
Quality Leadership Weblog (2)

Mackinlay's
Written In Dust
The Interpreter
Re-Moralization
THE LAND OF THE FREE
SWJ Blog
Naval Open Source Intelligence
QuoteGator.com
Marketing Shift
Mongolia Monitor (β)

Sun Bin
Jeremy Vernon
TaoSpace
Oliver's Stuff
ubiwar
The Buck Stop
Critt Jarvis
David Kirkpatrick
Competitive Futures
Notional Slurry

Cobb
pep-pep-peptide
The New Slavs Media
Continental Drift
lucasfable
Hidden Unities
Indistinct Union
enrevanche
Centerfield
Roy Mitsuoka

Newshoggers
1 Raindrop
Futures Group
Students for Barack Obama - Edinburgh

Thanks to all for linking. Back to regular commentary next time.

Lots of snakes offer that apple

OP-ED: Petraeus Opts Out of Politics -- or Does He?, Huffington Post. October 22, 2008

A wonderfully subtle smear from Bacevich on Petraeus: Bacevich says Petraeus gives off the impression of being apolitical but is actually a very sophisticated practitioner of politics, therefore he MUST BE WATCHED!!! The warning carries a whiff of McCarthyite threats: "okay, you may have done well in Iraq, but we're keeping our eye on you!" No actual betrayals or treasonous acts cited, just the opportunity implied and the hint that this guy could be dangerous.

Nice ...

It's almost like an offer in the mail: "Dave Petraeus, you've been pre-approved for the charge of treasonous careerism! If you'd care to take advantage, rest assured that we'll process your application with great speed!"

Too bad the general is too mature and sophisticated to accept that apple, because the snakes willing to make that offer are many.

Ivan, can you spare a rocket?

ARTICLE: “One Way Up: U.S. Space Plan Relies on Russia,” by John Schwartz, New York Times, 6 October 2008.

NASA will have only the Russians to get us to the Space Station from 2010 to 2015.

Trust the up-front estimate, but treat the backside one with great skepticism—especially given our finances.

But at least we’re shelving—finally—our state-of-the-art (for the early 1970s—that is) space shuttles.

Yet another reason to tune out would-be Archduke Ferdinands in the Caucasus.

Meanwhile, the new Moon race is on: We promise to get back by 2020, but China may be there waiting for us.

Gott in Himmel! There is no federal program I’d love to privatize more than NASA. Turn our nuts and rich dreamers loose, say I.

Otherwise, we play down to our past—increasingly.

Bargaining from strength, Taiwan buys and buys

WORLD NEWS: “U.S. Proposes $6.43 Billion Arms Sale to Taiwan: Plan to Boost Island’s Defense Follows New Leader’s Warming Relations With China, but Sparks Protests in Beijing,” by Ting-I Tsai and Kara Scannell, Wall Street Journal, 6 October 2008.

In principle, I have no problem with this.

But in a grand strategic sense, this is simply feeding a sunk cost instead of moving the PLA in the direction it needs to go.

I talk about America shifting from the “indispensable nation” to the “insolvent Leviathan” in Great Powers. The best way to manage that reality up-front is to slowly rebrand the PLA as an interventionary Core force, just like I’d like to rebrand the Russian military, which we know—by recent demonstration—likes to go places and blow shit up.

Or I can wait on NATO forever, and put my bucks into places like tiny Taiwan.

Frankly, we should be selling military hardware to the mainland, not the island. We get nothing, long term, from this effort.

And when you’re sucking wind financially, I don’t see the sense in this.

Leave the f—king romanticism of the Cold War in the 20th century. That history, as Fukuyama correctly noted, is dead and buried. We fight different battles today that require different allies.

China is about 30 years old, post-Mao. It should be treated as such. Russia is just coming up on 20, making it your typical, hard-to-control 18-year-old, full of bluster and desirous of a fight.

This is why Obama’s election is so important: we need to bury the Cold War once and forever. It’s all that McCain knows, whereas Obama really doesn’t have a clue.

I can train up the latter, but I cannot deconstruct the former.

So I voted for the conservative, eschewing the radical.

A reality of the globalization of the defense industry

ARTICLE: “Dangerous Fakes: How counterfeit, defective computer components from China are getting into U.S. warplanes and ships,” by Brian Grow, Chi-Chu Tschang, Cliff Edwards and Brian Burnsed, BusinessWeek, 13 October 2008.

This is the longer-term and just an inescapable fear as those our military originally bumped into regarding Y2K: the defense industry, in its network-centricity, has gone global to a stunning degree.

The main carrier of the virus: counterfeit computer chips.

The knee jerk is to declare the need for IT autarky—about as oxymoronic a concept as one can come up with in our networked world.

The smarter play is to recognize that the connected world has been made as interdependent in the security realm as it has become in the financial realm.

So the answer is more regulation and transparency.

An open call for ideas for public briefs in DC & NY in early February to support the book release

Putnam is planning to have me in DC the first half of the 9-13 Feb week and in NYC for the second half, scheduling as many media appearances as possible. A couple of big possibilities are being explored in DC, but both of the entities in question are just holding spots or contemplating without committing, so Putnam is asking me to use my network/contacts to see if I can arrange a C-SPAN-worthy venue on my own, preferring to get one or two in the hand right away.

Naturally, my first instinct is to consider the Industrial College of the Armed Forces at National Defense University, where C-SPAN has taped me twice in the past, and I'll have Jennifer look into that one, but I thought I'd toss out the issue to the readership on the chance that somebody out there has better or additional ideas.

Putnam is asking me to try to arrange a DC event either on the evening of 2/9 (Mon), the afternoon of 2/10 (Tues) or the evening of 2/11 (Wed). In New York, Putnam is suggesting possible events on the 12th (Thurs) and 13th (Friday).

If you know of good venues (think tanks, universities, X club) that can attract C-SPAN coverage, and have real contacts or are one yourself, please send an email to me (tom-at-thomaspmbarnett.com) or Jennifer (jen-at-themeritagency.com), or comment on this post.

Evolutionary Enlightenment's interview with Tom

WEBCAST: Changing the World from the Inside Out, Evolutionary Enlightenment Podcast, October 18, 2008

Tom's part starts at 20 minutes in and continues past the commercial and interviewer break at about 43 minutes (so don't shut it off at that point). The interview resumes at about 52:30 (if you don't want to listen to the break). The whole thing ends at 1:07:00, so you're looking at about 37.5 minutes for the whole listen if you skip the middle.

Something that's nice about this interview is that Tom really has time to talk. The interviewer isn't constantly cutting him off like a radio show host. To me, that makes for a more personal interview.

Stream the podcast or download it.

The great awakening in Russia

ARTICLE: “Reviving the Russian Soul: The surprising success of spiritual films in Russia reveals a longing for depth in post-Soviet culture,” by Mike Kauschke and Elizabeth Debold, What is Enlightenment?, October-December 2007.

Gave a long podcast interview to this mag when I spoke at the religious conference in Palm Springs a bit back. Sean needs to keep an eye out for this, as we must link.

Good story here on an easy-to-predict return of spirituality in Russia. Not just a gap left over from the Sovs, like with China, but the reality of improved economic standing. People want those handholds for a life well-led.

Bring in ’da noise (populism), bring in ’da funk (progressivism). Expect to see these transitions again and again in the New Core, along with the emerging global middle class.

Who wins where terrorism loses out to crime

ARTICLE: “Rethink spending on anti-terrorism, report says: Police, mayors say shift more funds to fight crime,” by Mimi Hall, USA Today, 2 October 2008.

I’ve written about this before: the reality that “three strikes” took many off the streets in the 1990s but that now we’re processing more ex-cons than criminals, so an ensuing flood of damaged people back into inner cities, and guess what? Crime inevitably rises, as long predicted by many far-sighted metro police chiefs I’ve interacted with over the past few years.

Add in the shift to anti-terrorism spending, so mandated in our post-9/11 mania, and you have a bad equation, especially with an economic downturn in the making.

This one was too predictable for words: a recalibration of American strategy that brings us back to the world’s more normal trajectory. This is the essential theme of Great Powers.

Catching up with the Kims

EDITORIAL: “North Korea: Dealing with an impossible regime; North Korea is changing from the bottom: it needs more delicate handling than ever,” The Economist, 27 September 2008.

SPECIAL REPORT: “The odd couple: A special report on the Koreas,” by Dominic Ziegler, The Economist, 27 September 2008.

Mounting signs of new famine, and Kim’s alleged stroke. Both, say the Economist, make it harder to press the regime on nukes, but “outsiders can hardly just stand by and watch millions starve.”

Because of previous famines, informal markets have sprung up across the country, says the mag, “while cross-border exchanges with China have transformed what North Koreans know about the outside world.”

Tell me this doesn’t sound like a détente-dynamic screwing up Kim’s totalitarianism.

Best part in the editorial:

This makes Mr Kim vulnerable—in ways the outside world should exploit. That will be easier if America, China, Japan, South Korea and Russia, the five countries that pushed for the deal with Mr Kim, stand tough together against the North’s attempts to renege on it.

My years-old diagnosis for the second Bush term remains valid: deal with Iran, push North Korea’s collapse.

Basic message of the special report echoes this goal:

Koreans want their international standing to match the south’s economic success. They may have to wait until the peninsula’s unified.

My exact message in every interview I’ve ever given the South Korean press. North Koreans earn, as a per capita GDP, about 1/19th of South Koreans. SK has its own Gap to integrate and exploit in terms of cheap labor, so long as it doesn’t make the same mistake the West Germans did when they made their Eastern brothers their economic equals overnight.

Roy’s prediction on Islam in France going the route of unreformed Catholicism

INTERNATIONAL REPORT: “Spurning Secularism, Many French Muslims Find Haven in Catholic Schools,” by Katrin Bennhold, New York Times, 30 September 2008.

Olivier Roy is the best European scholar on Islam in its globalizing form. In his last book, which I use in Great Powers, he posits that Islam in the West has the option of remaining unreformed and spiritually isolated within a secular society in the manner of Catholicism: you accept that your private sphere/religious beliefs posit a tighter rule set than that allowed by the society within which you live.

Good example: I don’t believe in abortion (my private sphere Catholicism), but I don’t believe the government should ever tell me what to do with my body unless we’re talking a clear and imminent threat spreadable to others (contagion), and so I extend that political right to women on the question of reproductive rights. So I keep those two spheres separate. I admit to the Kingdom of God and the kingdom of man.

Roy always says, watch France because its firm laicite (secularism) means Islam there must adapt or fight back openly (like in the Parisian ghettos). One way, as Roy argues, is simply to avoid the fight, like most Evangelicals do here in the U.S., focusing on social issues but by and large avoiding the political sphere (despite the fabulous reputation, the religious Right in this country is more apolitical than ever—meaning they don’t view politics as the answer per se).

So this story speaks of how many Muslims, desiring a non-secular education, are going to Catholic schools in France.

Why so fascinating? Common schools, or what we today call public schools, were first created in the 18202-1830s in America in response to the perceived threat of the “Muslims” of that age—the arriving immigrant Roman Catholic Irish. Notice how those “parochial” schools still thrive, in part by providing refuge for all manner of religious types (many non-Catholic) who desire a spiritual separatism on the question of education.

And I say that after putting my first-born daughter through 8 years of Catholic grade school, with three more currently in attendance.

The piece says:

The quiet migration of Muslims to private Catholic schools highlights how hard it has become for state schools, long France’s tool for integration, to keep their promise of equal opportunity.

It’s promise of secularization, perhaps, but I don’t get the argument on losing the battle regarding equal opportunity. I mean, that’s hardly been the case here in the States.

According to a former grand mufti (French citizen):

Laicite has become the state’s religion and the republican school is its temple. It’s ironic, but today the Catholic Church is more tolerant of—and knowledgeable about—Islam than the French state.

Don’t look a gift horse in the mouth, I say.

Naturally, Muslim girls can wear their head scarves in Catholic schools. We have a lot history of females covering their heads too. But here’s the larger, downstream reality: without the scarves, half wouldn’t show up at first, but most stop wearing them by the end of the education.

Catholic schools are good for that, too.

God, those Boomers are sensitive

Hearing from a lot of Boomer academics who correctly assumed I didn't include them in my "good" category (biz and tech) and so felt great need to register/mask their humiliation as righteous anger.

Everyone wants their participation trophy nowadays ...

"No, I'm the 'greatest generation'!"

"No, I'm the ...."

Clearly, I should state for the record that all generations contribute equally in all domains.

There ... feel better?