Why can't we just all get along?

ARTICLE: U.S., Russian military hold unannounced talks, AP, Oct. 21, 2008

Good to see.

(Thanks: Jeff Jennings)

Going too harsh on Brooks

I like David Brooks a lot. Sometimes he writes stuff of such intelligence that he really stuns you with his insights.

A bit back, I penned (yet again) another harsh take on one of his columns, reflecting my tendency to either love or hate his work recently, especially on the subject of Obama.

Now, it's clear Brooks wants McCain and wants him bad, and that, after a brief flirtation with Obama in the primaries, he's written several pieces that--in my mind--concentrate on his fakeness as a human and thus his being too weird to be a leader.

I did tee off on the piece below, and too harshly at that.

You can almost track the onsets of my sinus infections by the nasty posts I write, and this was definitely one of them. I try to watch that when I know I'm not feeling great, but it happens and I do apologize for the tone, especially after yesterday's post on comment decorum.

Ouch!

So the comments on that post were correct to call me on my tone.

What I read in the op-ed was yet another attempt by a McCain supporter to go after Obama's coolness as a sign that he's creepily detached from the real world. To the extent people found this piece positive, I think they're missing what I see as a left-handed compliment or damning with faint praise.

Brooks has written a number of pieces about Obama in this vein. I see it as a very purposeful campaign that displays his lack of objectivity on the subject, but then again, this is a close campaign, so I should watch my mouth as well.

Amazon finally gets a pic up for Great Powers

And it's selling better suddenly!

Connection?

The Pacific Century in terms of U.S. immigration

BRIEFING: "Immigration Slowdown," by Alex Altman et. al, Time, 27 September 2008.

Interesting map showing from which continents the current flow of immigrants into the United States originates. The slowdown associated with our now fairly long-running financial crisis is substantial: 1.8 million in 06 but less than a third of that flow today.

What I found interesting: the bulk come from Latin America plus Asia, equating to 80 percent of the total. If you don't do the usual Atlantic Ocean-in-the-middle projection, those numbers give a decidedly Pacific pitch, with Europe and Africa combining for a mere 17 percent.

I have waited years for this analysis on management consulting!

BUSINESS: "Management consulting: Giving advice in adversity; Wall Street's woes are yet another headache for the consulting industry," The Economist, 27 September 2008.

I've had this bit for years: my pet theory on management consulting that I developed when I sought to leave Washington and move back to the Midwest in the 1990s. Management consulting balloons across the 1980s just as major corps cut their strategic planning groups to near zero and starting outsourcing that function. So then you see the waves begin with Total Quality Management (TQM) in the early 90s, then the repackaging called Business Process Re-engineering (BPR). The next wave was consumed by the Y2K effort, which then segued quickly into the Tech Crash and 9/11 and the associated new regs, like Sarbannes-Oxley and the Patriot Act. So the BPR-after-next, as I liked to call it, was long delayed.

Now we're into a world where asking companies to pay you millions for a massive PPT slide deck that says, "This is your company now and this is what your company should look like tomorrow," is simply a non-starter. So while the tech-heavy firms like Accenture and Cap Gemini do well at the bottom and the high-end starts like the Monitor Group do well at the top of the pyramid, a lot of mid-range, standard cookie-cutter management consulting firms are seeing their market decline. Everyone wants the super-integrated solution now that combines compliance, security, systems-integration, performance metrics—and they want it delivered in a service-oriented architecture that frees companies up to evolve in ways commensurate with globalization's many demands and opportunities.

Thus, the article says, "the industry badly needs a 'Big New Idea' that it can sell to clients."

Naturally, Enterra sees resilience as the front-runner. Don't just describe the condition; enable it all the way through the architecture and technology.

The continued rehabilitation of Chile's military

THE AMERICAS: "Chile: A force for good, now; A newly streamlined army polished its democratic credentials," The Economist, 27 September 2008.

Chile's maligned military (read, the Pinochet era) rehabilitates its international reputation in the most acceptable manner known to nation-states and aspiring great powers—peacekeeping.

It started at home with natural disasters and now has PKO troops in Haiti.

But to keep it in scale: we're talking about a 16m population with a 40,000-man strong army, or about one-quarter of our Marine Corps.

You play with the big boys, you enjoy their same threats.

ARTICLE: China workers abducted in Sudan, BBC, 19 October 2008

I delivered this message in Beijing last year.

Simply inevitable.

(Thanks: Cadet Echo Boomer)

The story about Favre . . .

Calling the Lions and tutoring them for 90 minutes on our offense is about as low-class as you can get.

There is no logic for the act other than sheer personal spite.

Thank God we didn't let him stay in the NFC, much less our division.

The man has gone off his rocker in a very uncool way--very unsportsman-like.

This gets to be more like a nasty divorce by the week. Really sad.

A clear rule set for the comments

As I expect Obama to win and thus we'll be debating his choices and ideas for at least four years, let me be clear about what I consider acceptable comments regarding him.

Any links to smears or jackass comparisons to the rise of Adolph Hitler (a recent low point offered by a new commenter) won't be tolerated. I know there's a lot of people out there who consider all that stuff free speech.

I just don't want any of them in my virtual living room.

I realize there are a number of you out there who have only known me under a GOP president. If you sense the shift is going to be too much, better to leave now and avoid being asked to leave, which is always uncomfortable for the recipient (Sean and I got used to it a long time ago). Everybody's got their needs, but when the market shifts, sometimes you just have to seek out a new supplier.

As I have told some over-the-top readers in the past, there is crazy in your own house and then there's crazy on my front lawn.

I don't have to deal with the former.

I won't put up with the latter.

Tom's latest piece for GOOD

From their 'Why Vote?' issue

Look Out, World

Despite all the talk about our troubled economy, this year’s presidential race will still come down to competing visions of the post-9/11 world, and what America needs to do about it. George W. Bush leaves office stunningly unpopular, due overwhelmingly to his schizophrenic foreign policy (six years Hyde, two Jekyll). Given the strong political impetus for change, this election has always been the Democrats’ to lose.

Barack Obama will make America smarter about the outside world, and John McCain will make the world smarter about America. And on that score, there are plenty of ways to divvy up the global landscape. Here are ten criteria you can use to compare the candidates and help you break down the basic choices.



Priorities: Where’s the focus?

Allies: How to pick ’n’ save?

The vision thing: What to expect?

Heal the force: How to repair the U.S. military after Iraq?

Globalization: America’s new bogeyman, or its logical cause célèbre?

Climate change: The end of the world as we know it?

Iraq: When do we wrap up?

Afghanistan and Pakistan: How do we ramp up?

Iran: How far do we go?

The war on terror: Remember that?

Read on at GOOD Magazine.

Tom's notation:

I liked the 5k version better. I was promised 5k but got cut down to 4k. It happens.

I felt like I gave a balanced appreciation. I don't agree with a good portion of McCain's vision but I wanted to voice that disagreement without unduly polluting the analysis--thus the tie judgment.

Naturally, I might adjust the opening sentence a bit now! But as a foreign policy guy, I'm naturally going to make that argument.

Pack trounces Colts

I'm Thomas P.M. Barnett and I approved of this game.

Argentina's bankruptcy—still proceeding

THE AMERICAS: "Argentina: Better late than never; Ms Fernandez tries to charm the markets by revisiting the 2005 debt swap," The Economist, 27 September 2008.

When Argentina went through its IMF-sort-of-approved sovereign bankruptcy a few years back, it basically told it's creditors it would pay 35 cents on the dollar—take it or leave it. Those who left it saw no repayment whatsoever.

Now, years later, Argentina under Ms. Fernandez (that's what the mag calls Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner) seeks to make some amends with the 24% of creditors who said no to that deal by offering a new bond series that is expected to bring them in from the cold.

Fernandez does this to repair the country's credit perception as she seeks to float new debt, the assumption being that the savings in interest rates makes up for the back payments.

So even now, years later, Argentina's bankruptcy still stings, creating a "credibility gap with investors."

Not exactly the triumph of the Washington Consensus, but hardly its total repudiation, either.

The world's connected now

ARTICLE: Sell-Offs Hurting Emerging Markets, By Ariana Eunjung Cha, Washington Post, October 18, 2008; Page D01

One good thing with all this financial contagion is the deflating of all those theories that claim the East will rise on top of the West's--or more specifically, America's--financial collapse. It just doesn't work that way in a connected world.

Once in, you depend on everyone else.

Otherwise, mercantiism would work.

Will the loser whining from Brooks on Obama never end? [updated]

OP-ED: Thinking About Obama, By DAVID BROOKS, New York Times, October 17, 2008

Along with his psychobabble analysis?

It's just pathetic. Now we're subjected to insinuations that Obama is emotionally retarded because he doesn't share McCain's freak-out nature.

Maybe, Dave, he's just one helluva lot more self-aware than you. Because while he controls himself well for all sorts of logical reasons, your columns get more fear-filled and hyperbolic by the day as the election draws near.

Brooks will be the new Krugman, and it will be an equally pathetic descent unless he reins it in.

(Thanks: Dan Hare)

Update: Tom's moderated his tone on this one: Going too harsh on Brooks

Dreaming of Maine

Barely functioning because of a sinus infection, which either resurged once I returned from the East Coast on Wednesday or kicked-in anew once I got back to this allergen hell (little rain, until recently unusually warm, ragweed like crazy, no freeze in sight, and harvesting of all those bone-dry fields going on--plus the usual pollution from the north and--as always--not even the slightest frickin' breeze!). My allergic reactions are becoming so strong here (and I mean, on anything--meaning I don't even weed anymore) that I can even judge which of those scenarios makes sense, because I always feel sick starting the minute I get off the plane here. It is truly odd, and very disheartening, but thank God I feel so much better when I leave.

Since this is the first time I've lived in a new house, I wonder about that too, but I tend to discount it due to how much better I feel when the weather changes here.

My wife, who grew up here without any medication as aid, warned me this could be the case, but it's turned out a lot worse than I ever could have imagined, to the point where the oldest daughter is having trouble with her choir stuff and ends up medicating a lot more here for what was--in RI--only an exercise-induced asthma. We're considering a Canadian college for her, sort of an easy warm-up for a planned international life, but also to show her how much easier life would be for her in a colder clime.

I will be living in the North Pole about the time global warming peaks later in my life.

Not to make it all sound bad. I pushed my youngest in a buggy (Burley) for a 5k race Friday night that was a lot of fun. Kev ran a relaxed pace and finished second in his age group, and Jerry ran a 3.1-mile best (27:03) to place third in ten-and-under. I would have taken 6th place male 45-49, but the race official forgot to give Jerry his stick, so I gave him mine (Mei Mei and I finished right behind) and got the correct time recorded for him. But even during the race, which was at a very cool dusk, I could tell I was going downhill in my throat. It just bugs me that I have almost no slack here in Indiana after I spent three surgeries over four years in RI to create a ton of it out there. But here, I'm back to that thin slice of living where, if I make the slightest error, I'm in the penalty box fast. And there really aren't any surgeries left for me. At this point, it's just clean living and the right air and protecting myself as much as possible given the heavy travel.

But again, it's just so obvious living here and traveling a lot that it's the "here" that's my main problem. I'm just certain I'd be a better husband and dad if I lived somewhere else, and as soon as that thought creeps into my head, my Indy days were numbered. If not for a HS senior year coming up, I would be plotting for next summer, but that's what you get when you go down on your knees and inform God that a five-year-survival rate for a two-year-old with an advanced case of cancer just isn't going to be good enough.

Hmm. Reminds me that that book is still sitting around, collecting dust. . .

Soon . . . soon.

In Enterra's Reston office last week for a series of meetings with other companies. Despite the financial crisis, our outlook remains bold (indeed, the crisis hardly hurts arguments for taming complexity). We will need to become a very large entity in a year or so. Business is clearly looking for new models, and Enterra presents a nifty cornerstone for a lot of different angles. Then there's simply the reality of the pipeline. Either way, we've got to grow magnificently--and fast. It is stunning to behold and even more fun to work, alongside Steve. There is that fantastic feeling of building something so big--that being there "at the creation" feeling that's hard to beat. I am so glad I got the book done when I did, as I think life will change dramatically for us.

Along those lines, Vonne and I increasingly target the summer of 2010 to return back East, and Maine is considered the prime landing zone. Having lived in a bunch of states now (WI, MA, MD, VA, RI, IN) and traveled this country more than I ever imagined I would, Maine appears to be our answer. Yes, I know there's pine pollen, but for me, at least, that's not the big problem anymore, but rather an issue for two weeks in the spring. I guess that just living with Vonne for so long means we start to resemble each other physically, like my biological clock has been reset.

Anyway, Vonne has researched this to an unreal degree (she can tell you the basic stats on any major/mid-sized city in America), like she does everything else in our lives (I talked her into Indy--yet another sign that I should avoid strategic planning in my own life!), and since she's done taking in inputs from me (smart choice), sh/we've narrowed it down to a number of coastal cities in Maine.

Which means we've already got a realtor for considering a land purchase and just getting us attuned to the possibility of existing houses. I gotta admit, just looking at the photos reminds me of the air there, and I do miss it--the sharpness and moisture and the wind. It stuns to miss wind so much, but I do. I just love blustery.

I also miss seeing the ocean all the time. I miss the idea of a boat and exploring around tiny islands on the coast. I miss my Boston whaler, rented at the Naval War College. I miss all craggy coastline--especially in the fall.

I just really like New England. The pattern seems clear enough. Liked growing up in Wisconsin, but loved going to grad school in Boston. Disliked MD and Virginny, but then loved moving back up to the island. Now hate Indy and dream of Maine.

I'm stopping the yo-yo. Working with Enterra has given me the freedom to do this time near Vonne's mom, but the cost is proving too high. I simply cannot function well like this, and I can see all the difficulty in my kids' eyes (which often look like I punch them out or something--that purply raccoon tint that ring the bottom). I'm back to sneezing a lot, something I gave up after my RI surgeries to the point where I forgot what it was like to sneeze ten times every morning I woke up. Now I listen to my youngest son do it, and I feel bad for him. I watch Kevin become this fantastic runner and realize he's doing it all while feeling like crap, so what would it be like if he didn't feel bad? Ditto for Emily's singing.

It really does depress me and gets me more excited about roll-up possibilities with Enterra (both above and below) that should logically force me back to the upper East Coast. I almost want a clause put in the contract!

But I also am just so desirous of seeing this thing through, now after being with the company since the summer of 05. There is a real thrill to making something grow like that. I feel all mavericky!

Plus it's just been so interesting--fascinating really--to plot and scheme and plan and build and sell with Steve all this time (Steve is a natural teacher, so you learn a lot just hanging with him). It is very empowering to be an entrepreneur. There is an excitement there that you just can't find when just drawing a salary from a big company.

I've been earning most of my money in an eat-what-you-kill environment for just over a decade, meaning I live and die on performance: you like and you continue to buy, you don't and I'm in trouble. I love the contingency aspect of that. I enjoy the discipline and the fear. It keeps me alive, especially right now when I feel like I could sleep most of the day.

Anyway, on a different antibiotic this round. Between Em's chemo and my many sinus/ear problems, I've become a strange expert on antibiotics (most chemo is classified antibiotic, believe it or not). I don't advise anybody to replicate my hard-won knowledge, because it's a bad way to spend your time. If I wasn't so damn healthy ever other way, I'd really would get depressed, but since I've had these problems since way before kindergarten, I simply know no other life.

I just know where I want to spend it.

Much writing looms: a piece for Mark and Esquire (first of a bunch), a quick one this time for Good, the usual column and getting caught up on the posts. Then I expect the book to show up not much more than a week from now. Spent Thursday doing a host of new corrections, aided by my mother-in-law (whose eye for typos is unreal) and Lexington Green, who is helping me trim back some arguments and refine them. Lawyers really are tremendous editors when it comes to logic. My sister Cathie, another lawyer, was really my first writing coach and I learned a ton from her regarding paragraph construction, which is really all about logic.

Anyhow, going to chill today and make more posts happen until the Pack game begins. Hoping to beat those Colts but not sure we can. Two good teams experiencing weird years, but I always like desperation at home.

Ah, last point. Shot of me atop the blog was done by great photographer (Connie Dawson) of Terre Haute. This is the nicest smiling picture of me ever, in the sense that that is really what I look like in person. When you have a lot of photos taken of you over the year, or appear a bunch on TV, you realize how strangely flattening those perspectives are, so when you get something that really does capture you, you're ecstatic.

BTW, the shine on the forehead is considering a sign of great fortune among the Chinese--meaning success. I have no idea why.

Nyren and Putnam went with a different photo from the bunch--a bit more somber, but the minute I saw this one I knew exactly where it would go. So my great gratitude to her.

Funny thing is, I had a sinus infection when the shot was taken. Very apropos.

Column 124

Post-Caucasian world hardly post-American world

As our financial crisis unfolds, Americans suffer a serious bout of existential ennui. Unsure of whom we are or our global role anymore, our self-doubt scares the world in near-equal measure. Predictably, both skeptics at home and challengers abroad tell us that we must get used to this post-American world. My advice is to resist these sirens' song.

From the perspective of grand strategy, such pessimism is unwarranted: just as our international liberal trade order -- known now as globalization -- encompasses the near-totality of the planet, vastly outreaching all previous attempts to establish a global order and doing so in a manner that both enriches and empowers individuals, too many Americans feel alienated from this world so clearly of our creation.

Read on at KnoxNews.
Read on at Scripps Howard.

Funniest line from Obama at the Al Smith dinner

McCain was pretty good, but Obama was frickin' awesome. I simply skipped SNL's Thursday show and watched Obama live on Larry King and was chortling throughout.

Best bit (paraphrasing): John's campaign is now accusing me of having fathered two African-American kids in wedlock.

Simplistic portrayals of Russia don't cut it

ARTICLE: As Palin assails Russia, Gazprom meets with Alaskan officials, Bloomberg News, October 14, 2008

Interesting piece that betrays simplistic portrayals of Russia's disconnectedness or lack of ambition regarding further connectedness. A rising great power in this era is necessarily a connecting one. That's the only way to truly amass power: connecting your supply (tail) to demand (dog).

(Thanks: Charles Ganske)

Abizaid repeats the call I’ve offered back in 2005 on Iran’s nuke effort

PERISCOPE: “Israel: Iran Nukes: Out of Reach,” Dan Ephron, Newsweek, 29 September 2008.

Retired Army general and previous CENTCOM boss John Abizaid, speaking at Marine Corps University (I last spoke there on the day of Art Cebrowski’s funeral in 2005) “appeared to echo the thinking of at least some in the upper echelons of the U.S. military: Israel is incapable of seriously damaging Iran’s nuclear program.”

Abizaid previously stated, also in my vein, that Israel and the West could handle a nuclear Iran with the usual deterrence strategy.

Naturally, I continue to view Abizaid as a very smart and realistic observer.

India’s military: heart’s in the right place, but acquisition is not

ARTICLE: “Land of Gandhi Asserts Itself as Global Military Power,” by Anand Giridharadas, New York Times, 22 September 2008.

Starts by noting ship-boarding exercise, and then extrapolates a bit boldly to India refashioning itself “as an armed power with global reach,” which turns out to mean the Indian ocean and the PG but not really anything else.

No doubt of India’s rise or the natural ambition of its navy. Hell, I wrote that piece (“India’s 12 Steps to a World-Class Navy”), much to the delight of its naval establishment, more than seven years ago. But my point there, using the 12 steps program of Alcoholics Anonymous (a trick I resurrect in Great Powers) was to highlight how India’s logical global naval ambitions were held captive, in terms of acquisition, to its ground-forces mafia that remains—to this day—totally wrapped around the axle called Kashmir.

This article acknowledges that little change has occurred in that realm, so we have the vision but not yet the resources, which equates—as the old Pentagon saw goes—to hallucination but not grand strategy.

Clearly, India’s navy stepped up big time on the Christmas tsunamis a few years back, and in 2006 did a classic NEO (non-combatant evacuation operation) in Lebanon. But these remain essentially baby steps.

So the acquisition money and planning impulse still remain with the ground forces, even as India begins to recognize the disjuncture between that mindset and its emerging economic interests around the globe. In my mind, then, India remains a rising power whose power projection capabilities are still worth shaping.

As the article also argues, much of this push comes in response to China’s own naval expansion. Like India, China’s military remains myopically focused on a border situation—Taiwan, but in this instance there is plenty of opportunity for the PLAN (People’s Liberation Army Navy) to mine—pun intended.

Thus another example why we should target the PLA first and foremost as a strategic ally and garner India’s attention in the process. Between them, we’re talking a lot of natural ambition to run things in the Indian Ocean and Central Asia—for now, with that ambition naturally expanding over time to include the PG over oil and gas.

Sounds very good for the U.S.—if those capabilities are harnessed to some larger grand strategic vision.