A Core-Gap map that's all about the oil

■"Efforts to Reduce U.S. Addiction to Oil Are Few," by Jeffrey Ball, Wall Street Journal, 28 September 2004, p. A8.

Accompanying this rather standard article is an interesting map showing a variety of views of the global oil market and how it changes between now and 2020.

Some great points are made: First, global oil demand rises from 82 million barrels a day today to 104 by 2020. Guess how much North America accounts for in that growth? Less than 10% (roughly 2 of 22 mbd). Europe's total doesn't grow at all. So where's it mostly coming from? From emerging markets. India and China alone will account for almost a quarter of the growth. Not surprisingly, the net production of both countries will decline quite a bit over the next coming years, meaning they join the rest of the Core (save Russia, Norway, Mexico, Canada and the UK) in becoming increasingly dependent on the dreaded "foreign oil."

The map shows all the oil producers considered to be "high risk." Naturally, they virtually lie inside my Gap.

Cell phones lead the way in changing both Japan and Russia

■"Disillusioned Japanese Give Business an Earful: Public Starts to Speak Up As Traditional Views Shift; Softbank President Taps In," by Ginny Parker, Wall Street Journal, 28 September 2004, p. A20.

■"Russia's Battle for Cellular Territory," by Anna Ivanova-Galitsina, Wall Street Journal, 28 September 2004, p. A18.

I love stories about cell phone coverage growing. In Japan, the struggle over high-cost cell phone service is helping trigger a consumer revolt across a wide swath of industries and sectors. Connectivity requires code, but it also creates consumer expectations regarding service and price, and if those expectations are not met, then watch out! (even in normally sedate Japan!).

In Russia, the growth of cell phone markets is yet another example that the country is hardly going to hell in a handbasket, as former Soviet experts are always wont to point out (nostalgia is the sweetest of emotions). Seventy of Russia's 89 regions now have cell phone coverage and the rest should have it within a couple of years.

Can you believe that only 3 big cell phone companies dominate the market? Sounds almost communist!

Certainly never could happen here.

Can you hear me now?

For lack of a floppy . . .

Dateline: the business center of a Holiday Inn which has only wi-fi highspeed Internet in rooms and all the bridges to Ethernet cards are being used and the biz center PC won't take my Memory Stick and I don't have any floppies and it's midnight so . . .

No blog today.

Too bad. Feels kinda constipated to have written 3500 words and not post it.

Will see what I can do on road tomorrow in various buildings. Gonna give a talk somewhere in Northern Virginia . . ..

On the brighter side, both my agent Jennifer Gates and my personal editor and compadre Mark Warren LOVE the 9-page proposal I put together for a book entitled, A Future Worth Creating: Followed By Some Killer Sub-Title Generated by Neil Nyren. I sweated that response all weekend after sending to them on Friday.

Now, I am psyched!

I will post today's material as soon as possible. Sorry for the delay. Baltimore a bit of a mess right now with storm and flights cancelled, so hotels a bit stressed.

The NIC of timelines

Dateline: Portsmouth RI, 27 September 2004

Last May I had the opportunity to participate in a conference on the future of warfare held at the Center for Strategic Studies in Alexandria VA. The event was put on for the National Intelligence Council, which has since published all the papers online. I described my participation back then, noting it was a good two-day event. Now that the NIC has posted the pieces, I'm free to post my contribution here as a stand-alone article.

I was asked to answer the question: Will the future be one of never-ending transnational and subnational violence. The answers I offer won't surprise, as they're basically variations on my usual PNM themes. Where I extend the melody this time was in the scenarios regarding Gap integration. In other words, I posited possible pathways down which the world might travel if the Gap is to be shrunk. Also for the first time in an article format, I spell out the six components of what I call the A-to-Z Core rule set on how to process politically bankrupt states in the Gap. Finally, I spell out my "retreat into the past" argument about radical Islam being the latest version of global resistance to the spread of the capitalist world system in more detail than I do in PNM, using a series of bullets to trace out the major points.

I was pretty happy with the piece, and I intend to extend it further in Son of PNM. Like my never-ending and always evolving brief, the ideas encapsulated in PNM are worth playing out in almost endless variations, because it's in such efforts that we winnow out the weaker arguments and boil the remainder down to its essential truths.

Here's the article in full, followed by todayís catch (bit here and thereódidn't get to them all tonight):

■The killer ants are coming . . . from the Gap!

■Chinese, start your engines!

■The next idiot son rises in the Middle East

■ Saddam: following the Stalinist storyline to the bitter end

■ Proposing new rules on debt bookkeeping

Does the U.S. Face a Future of Never-ending Subnational & Transnational Violence?

Thomas P.M. Barnett

May 2004

The views expressed in this and other papers associated with the NIC 2020 project are those of individual participants. They are posted for discussion purposes only and do not represent the views of the US Government.

Introduction/Executive Summary

The short answer is yes. But the more important answers are that:

1) This future is worth pursuing because it represents genuine historical progress in the de-escalation of mass violence

2) This problem-set is boundable and easily described as a grand historical arc of ever-retreating resistance to the spread of the global economy, and

3) The sequencing of the regional tasks involved is of our own choosing.

But to achieve the tasks implied in this approach will mean that the United States must likewise forge three important new rule sets:

1) Internally, the U.S. must rebalance its own force to reflect the new focus on operations other than the now classic short, highly technological ìeffects-basedî war meant to take down a regime and its military;

2) Externally, the U.S. must recast its national security strategy to reflect the overriding goal of extending globalization, or the connectivity associated with the global economy, thus abandoning a balance-of-power mentality vis-‡-vis other putative peer or near-peer competitors in the military sphere (not the economic); and

3) Within the community of advanced nations, the U.S. must work to establish an A-to-Z rule set (e.g., international organizations with generally recognized procedures) for the managing of politically bankrupt states, i.e., those that are utterly corrupt or suffering some other crisis of governance.

The sequencing of these new rule sets is of great importance. The United States must first demonstrate a commitment to seeding a ìpeace-wagingî force within its ranks that may ultimately constitute a main instrument of power projection across those regions logically targeted in a Global War on Terrorism. With that commitment demonstrated, the U.S. should subsequently enjoy greater success in attracting coalition partners for the ìback halfî (post-conflict) nation-building efforts associated with otherwise successful military interventions involving regime change. Once that full-spectrum capacity is demonstrated, the global community will be able to move in the direction of enunciating the logical global rule set describing how politically-bankrupt states may be successfully rehabilitated and reintegrated into the global economy.

What that sequencing argument really says is that it all begins with the Defense Department generating the required institutional capacity for ìpeace-wagingî that it already possesses for warfighting. Absent that effort, the political leadership may be greatly constrained in its ability to forge the new security alliances required to successfully contain and ultimately shrink the sources of mass subnational and transnational violence in the global community. Without those alliances coming into being, the system as a whole will remain handicapped in its ability to reduce the number of political bankrupt states, and this negative status quo will ultimately settle into a sort of ìcivilizational apartheidî whereby the frontiers of the global economy demarcateóin a lasting fashionóthe divide between the ìconnectedî regions and those areas that remain fundamentally ìdisconnectedî from globalizationís advance.

The Historical De-Escalation of Mass Violence

The post-Cold War era has witnessed an amazing ìdownshiftingî of the source of threats to global stability. In this short span of history, the world has moved from an era in which global nuclear war was the dominant threat, through a transitional era in which it seemed that regional rogues would become the primary source of system instability, to one in which it is increasingly recognized that transnational or non-state actors will constitute the main source of violenceósometimes of a mass natureóthat has the capacity to perturb, even in a significant fashion, the functioning of the global economy. In effect, Americaís definition of the threat has de-escalated from an ìevil empireî to ìevil regimesî to ìevil actors.î

Today, in the Global War on Terror, the United States faces the fundamental prospect of waging wars on individualsónot states and their armies, nor grand security alliances and whatever ìcivilizationî they might represent. Consider the major military interventions the U.S. has made since 1989, the pivotal year in which the Soviet bloc began to unravel:

ï In the Panama intervention, the U.S. went in after just one manóManuel Noriega

ï In Somalia, U.S. attention effectively settled on the disruptive actions of the so-called warlordsóMohammed Farah Aideed in particular

ï In the former Republic of Yugoslavia, the Serbian regimeís hostile actions were effectively ended with the downfall of Slobodan Milosevic and his ruling clan

ï Going into Afghanistan, our targets focused overwhelmingly on the ruling Taliban leadership and that of al Qaeda

ï In the takedown of Saddam Husseinís regime in Iraq, the main goal of U.S. forces was to capture and/or kill a ìdeck of cardsîóor roughly 50 senior members of the governing elite.

In none of these interventions did the United States or the associated multinational coalition declare war on the nation in question, but merely its senior leadershipóor the bad actors embedded within the regime targeted for change. Nor, in any of these instances did the United States military face sustained and/or effective resistance from conventional military forces, either because no such resistance was possible on the part of the extant opposition forces or because the security situation featured no such organized force. To the extent that U.S.-led military coalitions have faced failure in any of these interventions, the failures have been concentrated overwhelmingly in the post-conflict phase of the interventionónamely, the reconstruction or nation-building effort that inevitably follows any combat intervention.

The problems that the U.S. military currently faces in successfully pursuing a Global War on Terrorism are therefore logically located at the level of ìbad actors,î and not at the level of inter-state war (which has effectively disappeared across the post-Cold War era) or system-level war (to wit, the U.S. no longer faces an effective military threat from another great power, but merely the potential threat from some putative downstream ìnear-peer competitorî). In effect, the challenges we face today in taking on the task of increasing global stability reflect the immense success the U.S. has had in eliminating past sources (real or potential) for mass violence throughout the world. Other system-level powers no longer exist to threaten global peace, as the U.S. remains the worldís sole military superpower and the stability of nuclear balances among the worldís advanced nations is essentially unquestioned (because if it were, where are the new efforts to negotiate strategic arms control among these countries?). With state-on-state wars effectively disappearing, in large part thanks to the demonstrated willingness of U.S.-led coalitions to reverse any regional hegemonís attempt to expand through military conquest, the locus of the most salient threats to global stability are logically found at the level of individual actors, whether they are already embedded within existing failed states or seek to capture political control of such a state.

The Ever-Retreating Resistance to the Spread of the Global Economyó a Boundable Problem Set

The definition of ìstate failureî needs to be reflect the fundamental struggle of the age: a state is ìfailingî if it either cannot attract or build itself the connectivity associated with globalizationís progressive advance or if it essentially seeks to retard or deny the development of such connectivity out of desire to maintain strict political control over its population. The former situation reflects the usual definition of ìstate failure,î meaning the regime in question cannot generate sufficient stability (from physical all the way up to financial) within its borders to allow for effective economic transactions with the outside world, whereas the latter reflects the willful pursuit of some level of disconnectedness from the outside world (and typically the ìcorruptî influences it imposes) as a method of maintaining authoritarian rule.

Terrorist networks are likely to seek out the most disconnected/failed states in order to set up bases for a variety of reasons:

ï If the regime in question lacks control over its own borders or territory, the country offers the potential for sanctuary (e.g., Pakistan, Afghanistan still)

ï If the country in question is experiencing civil strife, it offers the potential for recruitment and regime change leading to new political leadership that can be co-opted for cooperation with and support to the terrorists (this situation may be reappearing in Sudan, and could appear in more sub-Saharan African states in coming years).

ï If the regime in question is solidly in power and exercises authoritarian control over its population, it often offers opportunityósometimes on a cash and carry basis and sometimes as a result of genuine ideological affinityófor specific avenues of cooperation/support (e.g., Liberia's Charles Taylor offering sanctuary in return for bribes, the Iranian government's systematic support for Hezbollah in Lebanon, Saudi Arabia's back-door attempts to bribe terrorists to engage in jihad anywhere other than in Saudi Arabia).

But the main reason why we can associateóin a strategic senseófailed states (whether they oversee chaotic internal conditions or engage in repressive rule) with the more general threats represented by global terrorism is because terrorism isólike all politics (recalling Tip O'Neill's description)óderived from the local situation, not the global situation. The global driver in the current era of transnational terrorism is not America's perceived role as "imperial hegemon," nor its continued support for the state of Israel, but rather the historical reality of globalization's progressive advance into traditional Islamic societies. There, people exist who are motivated to fight this penetration in the manner of all-out war they are capable ofóessentially terrorist warfare, with its bombing attacks on civilians, including suicide attacks.

Viewed in this manner, Osama bin Laden and Al Qaeda are just the latest version of an exclusionary/rejectionist ideology that demands from its members that they do everything within their power to halt the spread of the "corrupt" capitalist world economy. By doing so, they would successfully break off from that system's creeping embrace some portion of humanity that they, in the manner proscribed by their ideology, believe they have "liberated" and "preserved." They would do this through a combination of repressive internal political controls (police state), strict separation in terms of political boundaries (bloc-versus-bloc demarcations), and a generally hostile security stance vis-‡-vis the outside world in general, but specifically against the most powerful military power within that "corrupt" capitalist world-system (Britain for Lenin and the Bolsheviksí network, the United States for bin Laden and the al Qaeda network).

Understanding that the current era's Global War on Terrorism is nothing more than the continuation of a long historical arc associated with the expansion of the functioning core of the global economy (traditionally defined by the market economy, free expression, and the opportunities they entail) is crucial to determining both the length of the strategic struggle ahead, as well as its likely pathways.

So far, we have seen the anti-capitalist forces in the world progressively retreat across history:

ï Having failed to hijack Germany with a Communist insurrection during and just after the first World War, Lenin and the Bolsheviks initially retreated to a pre-capitalist environment in order to successfully break off a nation (Russia) from the capitalist world system (though 10 years later they began to build an industrial system).

ï Other Communist successes followed historically, other than those generated by the Soviet Union's military successes in World War II (i.e., the conquering and subjugation of Eastern Europe), and were based on even further retreats back into the pastónamely, Mao's peasant-based revolutions (and all the variants that followed in various Third World locales, with varying levels of success),

ï The peak of this retreat, as far as the Communists were concerned, was seen in the Soviet Union's shift to support of ìCountries of Socialist Orientationî following the Cuban missile crisis. In effect, the Communists experimented with the notion that future successes were to be had in breaking societies off from the capitalist world system and would involve the world's poorest and most economically backward states. This experiment failed miserably, and with it, the grand historical retreat of the Communistsí influence began in the early 1980s, abetted by the rise of internal reformist leaderships in both the Soviet Union and China.

ï With the end of the Cold War, strategic thinkers in the West tended to assume that no coherent resistance to the then-rapidly enlarging market world order would emerge againóor the notion voiced by Francis Fukuyama of an "end of history." In retrospect, this was a fundamental misreading of history. History was simply resuming after the Communist planned-economy interlude, with the locus of violent resistance to the global economy's spread shifting to the traditional cultures of the Middle East.

ï To the extent the United States and its allies succeed in connecting the Middle East to the global economy beyond the slim bond currently offered by the energy trade (which results in wealth for elites but no broad economic development), those elements committed to violent resistance against the spread of the "corrupt," Western-derived global economy (the threat of "Westoxification") may yet again retreat into the past by targeting ever-more pre-globalized societies as their next venues for revolution/jihad. In other words, as we succeed in the Middle East, we may be setting ourselves up for the next historical round in sub-Saharan Africa.

This gets us to the question of the historical sequencing of the tasks that lie aheadónamely, in what sequence are those regions currently not well-connected to the global economy to be integrated into the larger, more stable whole. It is in this grand historical process that we might find the solution to subnational and transnational violence, as well as shifting the battle lines in the Global War on Terrorism.

Scenario Pathways for Future Integration of Disconnected Regions into the Global Eeconomy

Four broad regions can be currently identified as suffering a disproportional lack of broad technological, social, economic and political connectivity to the global economy. As such, it is within these regions that all of the internal and terrorist violence since the end of the Cold War can be located, as well as more than 90 percent of U.S. military interventions over the same time period (for details on this mapping of instability and "disconnectedness" across the world, see my The Pentagon's New Map: War and Peace in the Twenty-First Century (New York: G.P. Putnam's Sons), 2004). These four regions can be loosely described as Southwest Asia/Greater Middle East, Asia Pacific, Sub-Saharan Africa, and the Caribbean Rim/ Central America/ northern Andes region.

Stipulating that the current administration's focus on generating a "big bang" of political change in the Greater Middle East will mean that efforts by the United States to integrate these disconnected regions will beginóin a sequential fashionówith that region, then six alternative scenario pathways can be described:

Discussing each of those six scenarios in turn, in order of judged likelihood, and understanding that some U.S. effort will be made at all times across all four regions, but likewise realizing that a sense of successful sequencing is necessary if political support for such interventions is to be maintained among the public (i.e., avoiding a sense of accumulated responsibilities beyond our national capacity to manage):

1. Rogue State Focus: In this scenario, the United States focuses on dealing with the so-called ìaxis of evilî regimes, a process that began with Iraq and would subsequently focus on Iran and North Korea.

ï Stipulating a strong U.S. focus on Iran in conjunction with the ongoing effort in pacifying and rehabilitating post-Saddam Iraq, the question would then be, at what point does the situation in the Persian Gulf permit a new focus on regime change in North Korea and a ramping up of efforts across Southeast Asia as a whole to deal with the threat of transnational terrorism and ideologically-inspired insurgencies there?

ï Beyond the East Asia/Pacific region, the next choice for significant interventions designed to disable dangerous, rogue-like situations would logically be the long-running failed state of Colombia.

ï In this scenario, U.S. attention would turn to Africa last, primarily because of the lack of any rogue regimes there capable of mounting even indirect threats to either the United States' homeland or the functioning of the global economy.

The advantage of this approach is that by moving fastest against the existing rogue regimes, strong precedents would be set with regard to future potential regimes of that sort. The major disadvantage would be the global community's lack of an A-to-Z rule set on how best to handle a politically-bankrupt regime, meaning the system's major powers could experience significant divergence of opinion regarding the utility of preemptively disabling these regimes, in large part because of the huge military and nation-building resources that would be entailed while the other advanced countries struggle with stagnant economies and aging populations.

2. Islamic Arc Focus: A focus on integrating the Islamic world as a whole would yield a sequence beginning with the Greater Middle East, and then an eastward shift toward the major Islamic populations of South and Southeast Asia.

ï Africa would follow next, given the slow but steady penetration by Islam in societies there that has been going on since around 1100 (see Ibn Khaldun).

ï The Caribbean Rim region, overwhelmingly Christian in religious preference, would constitute the final effort in this historical pathway if it were necessary.

The advantage of this approach is that it speaks most directly to the fears of major powers the U.S. desires as allies in a Global War on Terrorism (Europe, Russia, India, China), as all these political entities have their own concerns about being able to integrate Islamic sub-populations. The major disadvantage is obvious: a clash of civilizations approach carries, among other things, heavy racial overtones, which would make political support at home in the U.S. hard to maintain, thus raising the attraction for many people of accepting the offer of "civilization apartheid" from Islamic radicals, that is, containing them and walling them off.

3. Failed State Focus: Following a focus on the Greater Middle East, which would last at least through the stabilization and functioning of a Palestinian state:

ï This pathway would wind next through Africaóground zero for failed states in general.

ï Beyond Africa, arguments can be made for a subsequent focus on Asia Pacific rather than the Caribbean Rim on the basis that state failure in the former has greater potential negative impact on the global economy than that in the latter (which tends to generate economic refugees migrating toward the U.S.ónot itself a problem and in many ways an economic benefit).

The major advantage of this pathway is that it focuses on the most disconnected regions first and foremost (Middle East and Africa), thereby achieving the greatest good in terms of advancing globalization most quickly to those regions most in need of broader economic connectivity. The major disadvantage is that we tackle the toughest nuts to crack first, raising the question of America's staying power in this long-term effort, not to mention that of other advanced countries who may not see much economic gain in pursuing this pathway beyond securing the flow of energy coming out of the Persian Gulf.

4. Homeland Security Focus: Following the initial effort to deal with Middle East-inspired transnational terrorism:

ï This pathway shifts focus to the Caribbean Rim and the dangers presented by instabilities closest to our borders. This pathway would be driven, therefore, by internal perceptions derived from the inflow of Latinos, Jamaicans, and Haitians into the U.S. population, and the need to maintain America's internal coherence against the "threat" Sam Huntington thinks is posed by multiculturalism.

ï Asia Pacific would form the tertiary focus here, simply because, after those coming from our own hemisphere, Asians will constitute the fastest-growing minority in the U.S. in coming decades.



ï Africa would therefore be stuck in last place in this historical pathway.

The major advantage to this approach is the possibility of maintaining popular support for the security effort over time. The major disadvantage is the flip side: America is perceived as isolationist and overwhelmingly concerned with its national defense as opposed to international stability in general. (This option is included simply for logical sequence. As Herman Kahn once said, you have to include the jokes in a sequence if you want to identify the real options.)

5. Natural Resources Focus: This pathway basically focuses on access to energy, beginning with the Greater Middle East:

ï And then shifting to Africa and the additional energy sources that are being developed there for us.

ï The Caribbean Rim would constitute the tertiary focus,

ï With Asia Pacific receiving the least attention.

In many ways, this pathway could be described as the new colonialism whereby the functioning parts of the global economy (West plus East) fundamentally focus on bringing order first and foremost to those regions that possess crucial raw materials for the growth of the global economy. The major advantage here is the economic logic, whereas the major disadvantage is the popular cynicism such an approach would engender.

6. Humanitarian Aid Focus: this last scenario sees the United States focusing on humanitarian aid efforts following its successful pacification of the Middle East. This would translate into a secondary focus on the Caribbean Rim (due simply to proximity and a larger domestic constituency pushing for such aid) and a tertiary focus on sub-Saharan Africa. Asia Pacific would receive the least focus because of the better economic development situation there. The major advantage here would be the logic of focusing on the underlying conditions that give rise to subnational violence (societies in economic distress), and the major disadvantage would probably be the difficulty of achieving discernible progress except over a very long term.

Major Rule Set Changes Required to Deal Effectively With All Potential Pathways

The first and most obvious rule-set change must occur within the Defense Department itself: moving off the paradigm of the near-peer competitor as a force-sizing principle. So long as the Pentagon views the Global War on Terror or interventions in internal conflicts as "lesser included," sufficient resources would not be devoted to those capabilities within the military required to deal with the operational challenges of eradicating the local, root causes of subnational and transnational violence. In effect, planning for war against a near-peer competitor must be demoted to the position of a hedging strategy, possibly requiring no more than one-third of the investment in R&D and procurement the U.S. makes, with the bulk of such investment prioritized to the areas of small-scale contingency warfighting and long-term nation-building and peace-keeping roles and missions---including the shift of DOD funds to other agencies.



Unless the U.S. military effectively "seeds" the "back half" force designed to win the peace, having the world's preeminent "first half," or war-winning force yields little strategic advantage over our enemies in this Global War on Terrorism. Moreover, until the United States demonstrates the commitment to nation-building and peace-keeping following any major combat intervention overseas, it will not attract the coalition partners who can augment U.S. forces with the numbers of ground troops required to follow through on any effort for nation-building.



Not having that "back half" capability sufficiently in place restricts the ability of U.S. political leaders to argue the utility of preemptive war for regime change and preemptive war within the larger context of the Global War on Terrorism, primarily because prospective coalition partners will not believe our declared intention of successfully concluding the intervention by making the long-term effort at integrating the successor regime into the global community of states. Instead, our efforts at preemptive war will be viewed as nothing more than "drive-by regime changes" or worse, the geopolitical equivalent of "revenge killings."

The failure to attract sufficient coalition partners for the back-half effort would, over the long run, deny the United States the ability to make ad hoc responses to rogue regimes, with each effort considered unique by the global community, and would not lead over time to an enunciation of an A-to-Z rule set, complete with attendant international organizations to guide the process.

What would such a global A-to-Z rule set look like? I canóin a very cursory fashionódescribe it as follows:

1. The existing United Nations Security Council functions primarily as a sort of global "grand jury" that is able to indict parties within the global community for acts of egregious behavior

2. What is needed next in the process is a sort of functioning executive body, made up of the world's advanced nations, to issue effect "warrants" for the arrest of the offending party. This body is logically located within the existing community of the G-8 (or better yet, G-20) states, because not only do these states wield the majority of the world's military power, but their financial resources are required for the successful implementation of the "back half" effort of nation-building.



3. At that point of agreement among the world's great powers, a U.S.-dominated warfighting coalition engages in whatever variation of force-on-force effort is required, apprehending the indicted elements within the targeted battlespace.



4. Following the cessation of major hostilities, a more balanced international security force, including U.S. constabulary units, could replace the U.S.-dominated warfighting force in-theater.

5. Once sufficient security was generated, peace-keeping and nation-building efforts would ensue under the auspices of an internationally recognized organization whose constitutional make-up and procedural approach is roughly equivalent to that of the International Monetary Fund in the rescue of economically-strapped states.

6. The final step in the process would be the legal processing of those actors identified in the original indictments within whatever specific procedures might be established by the International Criminal Court.

Conclusion

This paper has argued that subnational and transnational violence will represent the fundamental focus of U.S. national security efforts in the coming decades, but that this development represents tremendous progress in the institution of a global security system within which neither system-level nor state-on-state war remains a viable or widespread threat.

The major obstacle for the U.S. in dealing with this threat is its own inherent tendencyóthrough the mechanisms of its long-range national security planningóto require that a worst-case scenario involving another great power serve as the "greater inclusive" force-sizing principle. Until the U.S. national security establishment moves from this outdated paradigm of focusing on the greatest hypothetical threat and toward a more purely capabilities-based planning paradigm focused on managing that strategic environment as a whole, the tasks associated with subnational and transnational threats arising from the Global War on Terrorism will continue to be viewedóboth programmatically and politicallyóas an additional or cumulative burden that may then be regarded as simply too great to bear over the long run.

In reality, such a judgment is completely unwarranted, because it reflects an institutional unwillingness by U.S. administrations to persuade the military establishment and its immediate supporters to recognize and take advantage of this country's past overwhelming successes in reducing the threat of system-level war and the incidence of state-on-state war. This inability to exploit past successes will continue to deny us future ones so long as the U.S. national security establishment subscribes to the view that the present global security situation is one of "chaos" and ìuncertainty,î without any specifics, and thus cannot be remedied by any long-term pursuit of a grand strategy designed to generate a successful conclusion to the Global War on Terrorism.

The killer ants are coming . . . from the Gap!

■"Shuttling Between Nations, Latino Gangs Confound the Law," by Ginger Thompson, New York Times, 26 September 2004, p. A1.

Read this excerpt and tell me you can't see the analogy to trying to squash terrorism in the Middle East:

They are gang members, known here as "maras," after a species of swarming ants. Indeed, over the last decade gangs have spread like a scourge across Central America, Mexico and the United States, setting off a catastrophic crime wave that has turned dirt-poor neighborhoods into combat zones and an equally virulent crackdown that has left thousands of gang members dead, in hiding, in jail or heading to the United States.

The authorities estimate there are 70,000 to 100,000 gang members across Central America and Mexico. In the last decade, gangs have killed thousands of people, sowing new fear in a region still struggling to overcome civil wars that ended just a decade ago. Gangs have replaced guerrillas as public enemy No. 1.

The presidents of Honduras and El Salvador have called the gangs as big a threat to national security as terrorism is to the United States. They have revived old counterinsurgency strategies and adopted zero-tolerance laws known as Mano Dura, which loosely translates as "firm hand," that bypass basic rules of due process and allow them to send young men to prison for nothing more than a gang tattoo.

Instead of offering reassurance, official campaigns inflame public fear. And in the last year, human rights investigators have begun to report alarming increases in the numbers of young men killed by the police and vigilantes.

No one denies that gang violence requires a tough response. No one - not even the nurses who remove his tattoos - feel sympathy for men with brutal histories, like Mr. Ant˙nez. But many human rights advocates and community leaders worry that the aggressive measures governments are taking against gangs have not solved the problem as much as they have spread it.

Thousands of gang members are fleeing north, moving with and preying on the waves of illegal migrants who travel to the United States, which is taking aggressive measures of its own and deporting thousands of gang members on immigration violations. The effect is to churn the gangs throughout the region.

When experts count up the actual and potential terrorist pool in the Middle East, they tend to cite 10 + 90 = 100k, or 10k active + 90k potential = a total at-risk population of 100k.

What's interesting to me about this story is the same phenomenon we're seeing in Latin America with gangs is what we're seeing in the Middle East with our Iraq occupation and the crackdowns by the regimes there who--not out of sympathy with our cause but out of simple fear--are doing similar things to delegitimize activity that may have been tolerated at lower levels but once it got to the point of threatening regimes, triggered a reaction from above that's brutal and harmful to civil rights.

Chiapas seems to be the Mexican "seam state" on this one, sharing a rather lawless border with Guatemala.

This crackdown is not going so well. In countries riddled with corrupt police systems, rule of law tends to get tossed to the side in crackdowns such as these. Plus, lo and behold, when you go after someone, they tend to respond in kind, so crime goes up, not down.

But perhaps most to the point: again we see weak governments inside the Gap struggling to deal not with traditional state-on-state security threats, but threats from subnational and transnational groups, showing once again that Gap states tend to feel beseiged from above and below, while Core states pretty much want their borders strengthened, their migration rule sets toughened, and to send in the Marines now and then to clean things up in the bad neighborhoods.

But this story gives you the sense, that old model of ignoring the Gap just isn't working anymore. Something more is needed, and if we don't offer it, the problem will migrate to our neck of the woods.

Chinese, start your engines!

■"With a Raceway, China Motors Toward the Modern Age,"," by Howard W. French, New York Times, 26 September 2004, p. YT3.

Yet another sign of China's aggressive rise: Formula One racing has appeared in Shanghai, that Big Apple of China. The new $300m race track there is part of a $5b complex designed to anchor China's burgeoning car culture and nurture nationalistic dreams of selling autos the world over!

In a China fresh from its success in the Olympics, and in the thick of preparations to hold the 2008 Games in Beijing, a sort of national sports mania has gripped the country. There is a determination to be world class in whatever the form of competition, almost no matter what the cost. In most cases, simply invoking the glory of China is a sufficient justification for the expenditure.

China joins the world quite radically over the past 25 years, and in that process it wants to be the best in everything it does. Remind of anyone you once knew? How about America in the first three decades of the 20th century? That was a country that scared plenty of others with its nationalism and exuberance and manias to be the first in all sorts of wacky things (the greatest hero of the era? Charles Lindbergh, of course).

No, I know, China can't be understood. It's an inscrutable place, inscrutable culture, inscrutable people.

Wake me up when NASCAR arrives.

The next idiot son rises in the Middle East

■"Egyptians Wonder If Dynasty Is Near: Mubarek's Son Gaining Prominence," by Daniel Williams, Washington Post, 24 September 2004, p. A14.

The latest idiot son is on the move in the Middle East. Why? Egypt can't possibly find anyone better after 23 years of "emergency laws." How long has Mubarek the Elder ruled? That would be 23 years.

What will the next "emergency" be? Here's guessing it could be Hosni Mubarek's fading health, and the "emergency" requirement that the parliament in his pocket declare his son his successor one fine day.

Never happen? The son visits the U.S. recently and gets audiences with Rice, Cheney, Powell, and Rumsfeld. A recent shake-up of the cabinet puts a few of his best friends in seats. And at the recent national convention of the Mubarek party, aka National Democratic Party, our boy served as MC.

I know, I know, Gamal has been a banker. Tough work when you're daddy's your country's Big Man. Betcha he clawed his way to the top.

Yes, I see reform coming to the Middle East if the U.S. would only pull out of Iraq . . ..

Saddam: following the Stalinist storyline to the bitter end

■"Saddam, the Bomb and Me: Was Iraq a nuclear threat? Yes--and it still is," op-ed by Mahdi Obeidi, New York Times, 26 September 2004, p.WK11.

You know, Stalin was one whacked fellow his last few years. But when you have that sort of power, crazy is as crazy does . . ..

Quite the summary from Saddam's old bomb maker, used to promote his newly released book.

He says Saddam was well en route to getting the bomb prior to the 1991 war, but that UN sanctions stopped him after that. He didn't try to get around those sanctions. Why? Obeidi's explanation is a beauty:

Another factor in the mothballing of the program was that Saddam Hussein was profiting handsomely from the United Nations oil-for-food program, building palaces around the country with the money he skimmed. I think he didn't want to risk losing this revenue stream by trying to restart a secret weapons program.

Wow. That's a neat explanation for how sanctions "worked" while killing 50,000 Iraqi kids every year thanks to malnutrition and lack of access to medicines. Although I guess you might call them "sanctions of mass destruction," as some did.

Why did we get it wrong in our intell?:

In addition, the West never understood the delusional nature of Saddam Hussein's mind. By 2002, when the United States and Britain were threatening war, he had lost touch with the reality of his diminished military might. By that time I had been promoted to director of projects for the country's entire military-industrial complex, and I witnessed firsthand the fantasy world in which he was living . . .

By 2003, as the American invasion loomed, the tyrant was alternately wroking on his next trashy novel and giving lunatic orders like burning oil around Baghdad to "hide" the city from bombing attacks.

All this story tell me is that Saddam was the complete burnout waiting to be taken by the cops, who had been sitting on him in a brutal stakeout lasting 12 years, while the innocents inside perished year after year and his madness only grew.

Sound familar? It's the basic package you find in the Gap. It's what we have in North Korea. It's what we have in Zimbabwe. There are a few other places as well. Not a neverending list, but one that's always hard to ignore when the facts finally sneak out into the sunlight, like they do in a book such as this one.

The "still is" part of this op-ed refers to all those nuke scientists who hit the road once the regime fell. Proliferation-types always sound this note. It's the WMD equivalent of "people don't kill people, guns do!" Catch the scientists and we'll all be safe, we're told.

Proposing new rules on debt bookkeeping

■"Britain Offering to Pay Off 10% of Third World Debt: A challenge to help the neediest countries get back on their feet," by Alan Cowell, New York Times, 26 September 2004, p. A16.

Britain's chancellor of the Exchequer says all the IMF has to do is revalue its vast gold supplies and it can cancel huge chunks of the Gap's public debts. The IMF gold right now is purposefully undervalued at roughly 1/10th it's market value. Add this voice to the White House and Dem candidate Kerry and it's getting to be a chorus beyond just Bono.

Total "third world" (basically Gap) debt is estimated at $200b, which is less than half the Defense Department's annual budget, to put it in perspective.

What the IMF holds in gold is valued at $8.5 b, but its current market value is over $80 b, meaning all the IMF would have to do is simply revalue the gold and much of the Gap's debt to it could be written off the books. Meanwhile, when a small country like the UK says it will set aside $180m a year in a pledge to cover 10% of that debt all by itself, you begin to wonder why the Core as a whole shouldn't be able to take care of this issue.

Ah, but this must all be seen as the dream of naive thinkers like Bono. Things like killing Gap debt while policing its wastelands . . . are simply too fantastic to contemplate.

Now, selling them arms, that's a different thing.

PNM enters the casual lexicon of strategic thinking

Dateline: Portsmouth RI, 26 September 2004.

A bunch of stuff posted today to clear out my mailboxes. Great cites (articles) and sites I plan to employ in the next book, so keep 'em coming!

First I just leave you with this article from the Seattle Times. I replay it in whole because it's pretty good, but really because I love the casual cite from the book, which shows how it's entering the mainstream lexicon of strategic thinkers in this country:

Thursday, September 09, 2004 - Page updated at 12:00 A.M.

Collin Levey / Times editorial columnist

Kerry's coercive economic patriotism threat to U.S. firms, global prosperity

For the love of a horse race, the recent injection of talent into the Kerry campaign sounded like a good idea. The old Clinton strategists have parachuted in to get the Democrat back on course after the GOP convention. Less Vietnam, more Keynes was the plan, since voters give John Kerry his only lead ó a 3 point margin ó on domestic economic issues.

So the folks who brought us "It's the economy, stupid" are now trying to market Kerry as the Sesame Street candidate. " 'W' stands for 'Wrong,' " Kerry has thundered. And President Bush is the "Outsourcer in Chief."

Impressed as we are by Kerry's spelling prowess, he's now articulating a protectionist policy prescription to make Pat Buchanan blush. The plan is to create economic patriotism similar to the "Buy American" campaigns of old, but by coercing the behavior of business instead of rallying consumer choice. By closing "loopholes" and offering "rewards," Kerry says he'll make American companies keep their jobs here.

Fat chance. Even if government wanted to do such a dimwitted thing, it couldn't begin to compensate businesses for revenue they would lose by operating inefficiently. Nor do protectionist policies sit well overseas, a lesson Bush himself learned the hard way after seeing his steel tariffs smacked down and threatened with retaliation abroad. (Wasn't Kerry supposed to be all about patching up relations with our "allies"?)

At the moment, Kerry seems to be doing his own part for the economy, hiring half the country to join his campaign staff. He shouldn't look too closely at the sources of his campaign wealth, though. Hollywood sends scads of post-production work and animation to India, while movies are shot in Canada. The Heinz Company ó being efficient and sensible ó operates 57 of its 79 factories overseas.

Of course, we applaud anything that keeps condiments plentiful and cheap, even if Heinz's good business sense is the source of Teresa Heinz Kerry's fortune. But then where does Kerry get off opposing trade deals with countries such as Singapore and Chile? They're hardly powerhouse threats to American prosperity. He and running mate John Edwards supported trade with China, a country that poses a much greater competitive threat to the sort of American jobs that are no longer holding their own, but then that was before they began running for the White House.

Of course, any first-year analyst will tell you that job growth has been slow to recover in part because businesses have preferred to focus on productivity rather than rehiring.

Even so, the unemployment rate attached to today's "slump" is comparable to the unemployment rate facing Bill Clinton after his first term. Compare that to the 9 percent rate now in France and Germany and you start to get the picture. Around the world, rich countries are falling behind in the scramble for jobs not because of "unfair" competition but because of the tax and overhead costs imposed by their welfare states.

Meanwhile, Kerry's economic prescriptions should be seen in the context of our times. Contrary to the protesters at the Republican convention, you cannot sensibly be against globalization and the war in Iraq. Trade is the road to peace and prosperity for poor and often unstable nations. We contribute more in direct investment to developing nations than we send in government aid. The process has lifted more people out of poverty in China than anything else. Does anybody doubt that peace and stability for the whole world have been helped by China's shucking off of Maoist radicalism for capitalist growth?

And ó stay with us ó when countries break through the ceiling of $3,000 per capita gross domestic product, every indication is that they tend to get out of the violence business, according to "The Pentagon's New Map" author Thomas Barnett. We help get countries over that threshold through investment and the multinational corporations that Kerry has demonized.[italics mine--TPMB]

That's a tough notion to fit into a campaign slogan ó not as catchy as accusing Bush of "exporting America." So Kerry's plan is to close the tax loopholes for outsourcing and "reward" companies that help create jobs here at home. He also would raise taxes on "the rich" and small businesses, while offering "incentives" (read tax breaks) to major corporations that engage in inefficient business practices.

To a less nuanced mind, this sounds like what the left used to call "corporate welfare." More broadly speaking, we should be troubled at the prospect of an America that wants international co-dependency with the United Nations while galvanizing American companies to withdraw from the world.

John Sweeney, head of the AFL-CIO, has huffed that "companies like Maytag are more loyal to the American dollar than they are to the American flag." Never mind that Sweeney's union members today are increasingly public-sector bureaucrats and health-care workers, not factory workers. When was the last time labor decided to moderate its wage demands for "patriotic" reasons?

For that matter, Kerry hasn't held a job in the private sector since he was making cookies 30 years ago, and Edwards' most sustaining relationship with the drivers of the American economy has been by suing them.

We hope businesses will keep focusing on making the best products at the lowest prices, wherever that leads them to invest and hire. That's certainly likely to produce better results than trying to figure out what Kerry wants them to do by sorting through the mess of conflicting "incentives," taxes and mandates he has been proposing.

Collin Levey writes Thursdays for editorial pages of The Times. E-mail her at clevey@seattletimes.com

Why do I cite this? It's important that PNM can be a touchstone easily accessed by writers and thinkers. That's what a reproducible strategic concept should be. That's what containment was during the Cold War. That's what I'm aiming for in this effort.

Here are the articles and cites I'm relaying from readers:

■Technology is the key to growing the Core and shrinking the Gap

■It takes an entire Core to shrink the Gap

■The China syndrome

■Bit more intell on Syria and latest U.S. pressure

Technology is the key to growing the Core and shrinking the Gap

Here we go with a trio of stories sent to me by readers.

First up is the Business Week 27 September 2004 cover story on how the future of the IT sector will be found in the New Core and the Gap, not the Old Core, where technology is already too saturated to offer significant long-term growth potential.

Take that, Immanuel Wallerstein and the rest of your pinhead neo-Marxists!

Here's the key excerpt from the piece "Tech's Future," to which I was alerted by Justin Baxter of NY:

During the first 50 years of the info-tech era, about 1 billion people have come to use computers, the vast majority of them in North America, Western Europe, and Japan. But those markets are maturing. Computer industry sales in the U.S. re expected to increase just 6% per year from now to 2008, according to market researcher IDC. To thrive, the industry must reach out to the next 1 billion customers. And many of those people will come not from the same old places but from far-flung frontiers like Shanghai, Cape Town, and Andhra Pradesh. "The robust growth opportunities are clearly shifting to the developing world," says Paul A. Laudicina, managing director at management consultant A.T. Kearney Inc.

Tech companies are scrambling to cash in on what they hope will be the next great growth wave. Led by China, India, Russia, and Brazil, emerging markets are expected to see tech sales surge 11% per year over the next half decade, to $230 billion, according to IDC. What makes these markets so appealing is not just the poor, but also the growing ranks of the middle-class consumers. Already, there are 60 million in China and 200 million in India, and their numbers are growing fast. These newly wealthy consumers are showing a taste for fashionable brands and for products every bit as capable as those available to Americans, Japanese, and Germans.

The Old Core desperately needs to keep integrating the New Core and shrinking the Gap if it's going to remain rich. It's that simple.

Second piece also from Justin Baxter, and it's an interview in the same issue of Business Week with Sarbuland Khan, who is the Executive Coordinator of the U.N. Information & Communications Technologies Task Force. Here's the key excerpt on the role of the Internet:

Q: When and why did the U.N. decide that Internet access is important for economic development.

A: This came out of the General Assembly debate on globalization. We studied the role of the technologies and determined that unless developing countries are able to leverage technologies, and particularly the Internet, they won't be able to achieve their goals.

The Internet can diffuse information and bypass some of the obstacles they face. With better information, people can get better integrated into the economy. And they can be independent economic actors, not just receivers. The ICT Task Force was created, bringing together government and industry representatives. It's a multi-stakeholder approach.

The first step is creating an awareness among policymakers that this can be done. The Internet can be a major shaper of change in the developing countries. We've seen it happen in places like Costa Rica, Estonia, and Ireland. In Costa Rica, in 10 years, it leapfrogged other nations. There are many countries with better resources, and they're bigger, but they're way behind.

The second step is to help create the right policy and regulatory environment for broadband, and satellite, and wireless.



The third step is to work with the private sector to lower the costs of technology. There's a reward here for them. If technology diffusion takes off, the private sector can invest and make money in places where they wouldn't have made a profit before.



We're very early in the process. It's hard to say that X technology investment led to Y growth. But early evidence shows that those that adopt technology fast and early, do well.

Guess which region in the world has the worst ICT penetration? That would be the Middle East. Guess which region is the source of most transnational terrorism? That would be the Middle East.

Oh, but if we gave up Israel to the repressive regimes there, then it would all be okay, right?

Last piece sent by Ram Narayanan, who pushes pieces on India to people all over the web. It's about President Bush and PM Singh meeting and how that signals the coming agreement to open up the two countries trade far more on technology. Here's the key excerpt from the 23 September 2004 story from the Mercury News:

"Bush-Singh meeting hints at tech sales boost: U.S. AND INDIA
>MOVING TOWARD STRATEGIC PARTNERSHIP," By Daniel Sneider

Iraq has become the black hole of American foreign policy, sucking up all attention. Every once in a while, though, a ray of light escapes the black hole. That happened this week when President Bush had breakfast with the new Indian Prime Minister, Manmohan Singh, in New York. With little fanfare, the two governments announced small but crucial steps toward removing barriers to cooperation in areas such as space, nuclear power, high technology and defense.

The apparently warm meeting between the two men was a welcome sign. It indicated that the formation of a left-of-center government in India after elections this spring has not slowed the move toward strategic partnership between the world's two largest democracies.

The attention to India by the Bush administration should be applauded. The emergence of India as an economic dynamo and an Asian megastate is among the most significant developments of the last decade.

The American response to this change should not be reduced -- as Democratic candidate John Kerry seems to have done -- to complaints about the outsourcing of American jobs. The growing economic relationship between India and the United States is no small matter.

But our interaction is much broader, and potentially much more beneficial to Americans, than what a bumper sticker implies.

American companies are eager to exploit opportunities to sell to India -- sales that create jobs right here. But they face a bewildering set of controls on the export of technology to India, enforced by an entrenched bureaucracy.

These are the outcome of India's decision to test nuclear warheads in 1998 and join the club of nuclear powers. After those tests, the United States slapped on sanctions that severely controlled the export of sensitive technology, such as high-speed computers, to India. Those restrictions have eased somewhat in recent years but it remains very difficult for American firms to get clearance to sell high technology to India.

The Bush administration, spearheaded by former U.S. Ambassador to India and now deputy national security adviser Robert Blackwill, wants to break through these roadblocks. In January, the two governments announced the outline for ``Next Steps in the Strategic Partnership,'' or NSSP.

The United States will gradually lift controls in three areas -- civilian nuclear technology, commercial space programs and dual-use technology that could be used for both defense and civilian purposes.

In turn, India will tighten controls on the export of such sensitive technologies to other countries and make sure American technology is not used in its nuclear and missile programs. Last week, the two governments announced the first phase, some of which is classified, but includes making it easier for American companies to do business with India's civilian space organization.

Guess which country was cited in a recent World Bank "Doing Business 2005" survey report as cutting its regulations and improving it's foreign direct investment and trade climate most in the last year? That would India.

Thanks to T.S. Walsh for sending me that last cite. I plan on getting the WB report.

It takes an entire Core to shrink the Gap

Two stories sent to me by readers. First is an AP story on base closings (basically the Andy Hoehn study in OSD that I talk about in PNM--years in the works). The second is a Washington Times story on Chinese peacekeeping in Haiti! (On my!)

Here's the key bit on the first story, from the AP, dated 23 September 2004:

Over the next decade, the military will abandon 35 percent of the Cold War-era bases and buildings it uses abroad, even as it seeks to expand a network of bare-bones sites in Asia, Africa, the Middle East and Eastern Europe to help fight terrorism.

Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld was outlining the plan Thursday to the

Senate Armed Services Committee.

In a report to Congress, the Pentagon offered details of the "global defense posture." The planned changes, once completed, will result in "the most profound reordering" of U.S. military forces overseas since the current global arrangements were set 50 years ago, according to the report.

The most widely noted aspect of the plan, which was announced in broad terms

last month by President Bush, is the withdrawal of 70,000 U.S. troops and 100,000 of their family members from bases in Germany and South Korea. That has gained attention in part because it means fewer U.S. bases probably will be shuttered in the 2005 round of base closings than if there were no withdrawal.

Pentagon seeks maximum flexibility

Less well understood is that even while troops will return to the United States from Germany and South Korea, the Pentagon will be building up its network of "forward operating sites," sometimes called "lily pad" bases. These are more austere than the large, fully developed bases - dubbed "Little Americas" - where U.S. forces stood guard during the Cold War.

"During the Cold War we had a strong sense that we knew where the major risks and fights were going to be, so we could deploy people right there," Douglas Feith, the undersecretary of defense for policy, said in an Associated Press interview Wednesday.

"We're operating now in a completely different concept," said Feith, chief architect of the global realignment plan.

"We need to be able to do that whole range of military operations (from combat to peacekeeping) anywhere in the world pretty quickly."

The Pentagon is seeking maximum flexibility in the decades ahead in responding to terrorism and other potential threats, including those to oil supplies. So the military wants a range of basing and access agreements with as many countries as possible and in as many regions as it can.

Sound like a new rule set to you? People in the Pentagon will try to sell you that this was all in the works prior to 9/11, but that's nonsense. The fiddling they had in mind prior to that day was minimal compared to this. This is the Bush Administration embracing the new strategic environment revealed by 9/11 and embracing it big time. Yes, it was long in the works (and I describe it in PNM), and yes it will be long to unfold, but have no doubt about it, it will be big.

So big, in fact, that it will change the way all other great powers think about and employ military power in the world. China, recently, took the step of pitching in with peacekeeping troops in Haiti, of all places. Now, some in the U.S. security community will get all hot and bothered about this, citing the "very bad precedent," but this is silly in the extreme. We're floating proposals out of the White House for a global peacekeeping force and China's the most populous nation in the world. Does it make any sense for them to sit on the sidelines? Of course not.

Here's the Washington Times story on China (excerpted), which I received from reader Terry Collier):

By Bill Gertz

THE WASHINGTON TIMES

Published September 6, 2004

_____



China's Public Security Ministry is set to dispatch a 130-man "special police" unit to Haiti this month in the first deployment of Chinese forces to the Western Hemisphere, Bush administration officials say.

The first advance unit of the police troops, who are specially trained for riot and crowd control, will over the next two weeks join the U.N. Stabilization Mission in Haiti, the multinational force known as Minustah dispatched to the war-torn Caribbean island.

The main body of the force will arrive a short time later and will deploy to the port of Gonaives, say officials who insist on anonymity.

Administration officials are concerned that the Chinese government will use the troop deployment as a way to put political pressure on the Haitian government, one of the few nations retaining diplomatic relations with China's rival Taiwan.

"It's been a big year for China," says one official opposed to the deployment. "They put a man in space, won gold medals at the Olympics, and now they are going to put troops in the Western Hemisphere for the first time."

The official says China's first military presence near U.S. shores would

boost Beijing's long-term strategy to "supplant U.S. influence" in the region. "China is pursuing a maritime strategy in the Caribbean to gain access and control over port facilities, free trade zone infrastructure, fisheries, oil and minerals, and off-shore banking platforms" . . .

Administration officials say the decision to permit the Chinese to join the U.N. force in Haiti was made quietly, without a full debate among defense, foreign policy and national security agencies.

"This was done by the people in charge of peacekeeping," one official says. China has sent small numbers of observers to previous U.N. peacekeeping missions but has declined earlier requests to send active units . . .

Public Security Minister Zhou Yongkang, head of the Communist Party's political police and security organ, says the dispatch of the troops is an important diplomatic move and reflects China's "devotion to world peace and stability."

Gertz's breathless reporting here is a bit much. He goes on to make it sound the beginnings of a 21st Century Cuban missile crisis when all we're talking about here is 125 riot cops. Ooooh weeeee!

Gertz later cites some secret SouthCom report about China trying to use its economic interests in the region to supplant U.S. military power. He cites intell support to Venezuela's Chavez and arms sales to Cuba. All of this stuff if piddling in the extreme, compared to our broadband mil-to-mil interactions throughout Asia. Putting China's current efforts in the Western Hemisphere in the same light is a bit much. Where China is really vulnerable is in the Persian Gulf, where the U.S. just so happens to have the bulk of its overseas forces right now engaged in an occupation of the world's second largest source of oil. If you think that somehow China "controlling" the Panama Canal (which has become so irrelevant thanks to new ships that are beyond "Panamax"--or too big to go through the canal, that officials there are talking about widenind it) compares to our military domination of the Straits of Hormuz when it comes to the global economy and how it works, then you're sorry misinformed.

America is going to need a lot of help in shrinking the Gap. China will need to be a significant player. We cannot even dream of pursuing such a strategy while maintaining a fear-based, competitive relationship with China. Either we choose to do something about the Gap in order to win this global war on terrorism, or we choose to plan on China as the near-peer and start locking down America from terrorist attacks. You tell me which speaks to a better world and richer, more developed America.

The China syndrome

■"Who Hurts if China breaks? Most analysts think the economy will land softly. It had better -- an awful lot is riding on it," by Mark Gongloff, CNN Money, 24 September 2004, cnn=yes"http://money.cnn.com/2004/09/23/markets/china_effects/index.htm?cnn=yes

Sent to me by Justin Baxter of NY.

Great article that tries to get reader to realize just how important China's economy has become to the Core as a whole. People talk about the extreme danger of the U.S. economy failing. Well, China is closing in on the same status.

Here's the key excerpts:

Chinese officials, riding herd on the world's second-biggest economy -- if the undervalued yuan is adjusted to give it purchasing power parity with the U.S. dollar -- have recently tried to cool things down by clamping down on bank lending and foreign investment.

To some extent, they've succeeded. Gross domestic product (GDP) growth has slowed a smidge, from a rate of nearly 10 percent in the second half of 2003, and money supply has tightened. In fact, some observers hope China will soon loosen the screws a little, letting money flow more freely again . . .

"Show me an example of one other emerging market economy that's made such a transition without huge disruptions along the way -- I would love to see it," said Zachary Karabell, co-portfiolo manager, along with Dan Chung, of the China-U.S. Growth Fund at Fred Alger Management. "I think they have been remarkably successful, and I feel more confident about their ability to make more right decisions than wrong decisions" . . .

The China-U.S. Growth Fund, with about $24 million under management, is just one of the players with a lot riding on China's economy. Other mutual funds include the Dreyfus Premier Greater China fund and the China Regional Opportunity Fund at U.S. Global Funds.

In addition to several Chinese and Hong Kong-based companies, the China-U.S. Growth Fund also serves as a "Who's Who" of U.S. multinationals with growing interest in China . . .

China's Asian trading partners, including Japan, Taiwan and Singapore, would suffer from a hard China landing, as would Latin American suppliers of wood, copper and other commodities. Some economists fear a meltdown of China's banking system would spread financial pain all the way to the United States.

You're going to see a lot more overview articles like this in the mainstream press. It's why I've been telling people for a couple of years now that the worst global security scenarios I can come up with all start with a financial failure in China.

Bit more intell on Syria and latest U.S. pressure

Passed on to me by reader, it comes via Stratfor, which is enough notice in the press for me to cite it openly. [Later, on the 27th, I find this citation from old Washington Post, which I get in mail: "Syria Begins Dismantling Some Outposts in Lebanon," by Scott Wilson, 22 September 2004, p. A25.]

Indications are that Syria is redeploying troops in Lebanon in reaction to recent U.S. warnings, and experts consider this yet another good example showing that Assad the Younger is willing to deal.

Everyone wants to crap all over the "neocon debacle" that is Iraq, and while we should decry the poor planning and the misalignment of our force structure to the needs of post-conflict resolution (hence my call for the Sys Admin force), people continue to lose sight of the reality that taking down Saddam was about laying a System Perturbation on the Middle East as a whole. Yes, this administration tried to sell you on the shining beacon of democracy called Iraq being the centerpiece, but that was always a long-term notion. By focusing on that and trying to argue for its discrete fungibility, the White House was seeking to control expectations of how big a regional tumult might be created, but frankly, that was the plan all along--in a for penny, in for a pound.

Now, with the Saudis trying elections and Syria redeploying troops in Lebanon, we're starting to see the change that's been over four decades in waiting. I was at the JFK Presidential Library in Boston yesterday with my son (he's writing an essay for school) and listening to Kennedy talk about the Middle East in 1958 . . . my God, you could have taken the exact words and put them in a presidential candidate's mouth today (e.g., repressive regimes, poor development, irrational hatred of West, danger of violence). That shows you how almost nothing has changed there in the last half century. By going into Iraq, we set in motion a wave of change that will remake the Middle East, but it won't all be pretty and it won't all come fast. It will drag on for decades, just like conquering Western Europe in WWII bought us a many-decade babysitting job that's only ending today.

The difficult calls are always the easiest to make, when you think about it

Dateline: from the worldwide headquarters of Barnett Consulting, Portsmouth RI, 25 September 2004

I have to thank everyone for all the real estate guides and detailed living information that we've received over the past week. I'm a bit stunned by the response. I pass it all along to my spouse, who--as always--is in charge of thinking about where we'd ultimately like to live in this country.

Right now we're leaning toward a return to the Midwest, which is something we've toyed with in the past, so it's hard to say how serious we are about it.

We're serious to this extent: I'm pretty certain I've reached the point in my career when it's time to figure out how to market what I have in terms of capabilities for the maximum gain and the maximum creative freedom. At 42, I'm looking at a great 20-year stretch of my highest creativity--I am certain. If I think of my six years in Boston at Harvard as one stint, then my 8 years in DC as another, then in closing up the seventh year here at the college, I need to think about what the next package should be all about. I know it will include more books, and lots more writing of this sort (the blog, newsletters, articles, stuff like that), because I really enjoy the writing life. I also know that I need to expand my clientele horizontally as much as possible.

The book is doing that for me in the US Government work for now, drawing me to military commands, the Intelligence Community, and elsewhere. But this isn't sustainable at the college, which wants me to focus on navy stuff for navy clients. Fair enough, since they pay the salary. It just doesn't meet my needs for growth or--frankly--that of the Navy's. But that's not my call, and since I don't seek to make it my call (no interest in management here), then I have little right to complain. I just need to figure out what will work best for me and my family and pursue that for all it's worth.

Everything in these big decisions revolves around the school year, because we're not interested in moving our kids out of one school and into another except across a summer. So there's a lot of thinking and effort for us to accomplish in the next several months, to include--I hope--the writing of Son of PNM for Putnam. Ideally, we'd leave on our own terms, creating the best possible legacy relationship between us and the college. Maybe we can do that this year, but then again, mebbe not.

But I've always prided myself on being able to make the toughest choices with the strongest sense of confidence--not to mention speed. Today I decided that Son #2 just wasn't ready for soccer at age 4--organized soccer that is. Jerry loves to play with me in the back yard, and that will continue, but our experiment at having him try to play on a team this year has come to an end. Tough call, because you hate to quit anything, and yet, there's no point in extending something that's no longer working and only creates bad memories.

So you make the call on the spot, and you move along.

I offer a number of articles from yesterday and today, plus some Post stuff from last Sunday's edition. I wanted to clear my deck of these today, leaving tomorrow for posting a bunch of electronic stuff that I've come across or that readers have sent me.

So here's what I got for today:

■Chavez is cruisin' for a bruisin'

■The four next years in Iraq

■9/11 perturbed America's sense of humor

■When the spigots tightened, China loosens up

■China reaching the environmental tipping point

■David Brooks would like his Sys Admin force now for Sudan

■Calling all Sys Admins!

Chavez is cruisin' for a bruisin'

■"Venezuela's Oil-for-MiGs Program: President Chavez appears fully prepared to menace neighboring states,"," op-ed by Mary Anastasia O'Grady, Wall Street Journal, 24 September 2004, p. A15.

I have to admit that I like this lady's stuff by and large. She's fairly hawkish, but she never seems to be unreasonable about it, and her charges tend to stick.

O'Grady's really got it on for Hugo Chavez, as many of us do. He's just clever enough with his populism to appear legitimate, but he's not really doing anything to move the pile in Venezeula. Does he distribute the oil wealth better than the previous controlling elite? Yes. But he also doesn't do any better in improving Venezuela's long-term economic connectivity with the outside world, something a country cursed by oil needs to do with that wealth over time. Instead, he picks fights, he buys arms, he talks tough, he cracks down on dissident, he creates a bully militia to break heads when he feels the need. in short, Chavez is never going to be good for Venezueal over the long run. He's ruled for a while, and shows all signs of never wanting to give up power, so he's pretty much near the top of the list of "big men" who will eventually need to be toppled if the Gap is going to get shrunk.

O'Grady details his regional meddling in this op-ed: he bullies Bolivia like Syria bullies Lebanon, he's building up arms to a level that makes absolutely no sense given his neighbors (unless he's planning to do things to them, which Venezuela engages in every so often)--like $5 B in MiG fighters from Russia. Where is he going with all this? Nowhere good, that's for sure.

Chavez got away with strong-arming the attempted recall vote, but it's only going to get more ugly and he alienates more and more people there and is forced to manipulate the political process more and more to stay in power. I predict he'll declare himself President-for-Life at some point, setting in motion what will be an inevitable endgame with the U.S. at some fork down the road.

The four next years in Iraq

■"Polar Views of Iraq Are Defining Election: Despite the Pitfalls for Bush and Kerry, Candidates Stay on Topic,"," by Dan Balz and Jim VendeHei, Washington Post, 19 September 2004, p. A1.

■"Echoes of a 1972 Loss Haunt a 2004 Campaign,"," by Todd S. Purdum, New York Times, 24 September 2004, p. A1.

Carville and Begala have taken the reins in Kerry's campaign, and have decided to take Bush on--head-on--over Iraq. The question of Iraq rightfully dominates the debate, because it asks the question, "Where is this entire war on terrorism going?"

Bush links Iraq to the war on terror. I buy that. Change the Middle East or rearrange office chairs in the Department of Homeland Security.

But the question now isn't, Was Iraq the right thing to do? That's a done deal. Now the question is, Who will do a better job with Iraq and the Middle East over the next four years?

Who will move that pile without ruining our economy? Who will effectively civilianize and internationalize the U.S. military presence there? Who will cut the deals necessary to bring the rest of the Core to the Middle East now as opposed to later, when it all falls apart because we tried--stubbornly--to do too much on our own without accepting the compromises needed to gain allies?

I think Bush was the right choice in 2000. I agree with most of what he did, especially in Iraq. I also believe he's the not the man to do what's necessary for the next four years. I think the costs will be too high.

That's the message the Carville and Begala have to run through Kerry's mouth. They have to be a one-note-Johnny for the rest of the game, but especially that first debate in Miami this week.

If Kerry can really connect at that debate, then it will be a long TD-drive to start the 3rd quarter in this contest. It will be a monumental affair. It will be Kerry's to lose.

So if he does, the Dems will have no one to blame but themselves for picking him.

9/11 perturbed America's sense of humor

■"Laughing Instead of Screaming,"," by Caryn James, New York Times, 24 September 2004, p. B29.

Yet another interesting example of the long-term social effects of a System Perturbation like 9/11: that which would have seemed offensive in humor is now de rigeur.

The Statue of Liberty is bombed, but that is the least of the horrors in Larry Beinhart's scathing black comedy, "The Librarian," about a plan to seal the next presidential election; the conspiracy includes hired killers working for the Department of Homeland Security . . .

Like many other current political fictions, these [books being reviewed] take a skewed approach to realities too fraught to face head-on. In addition to comedies in which death and global tragedies occur, there are fantasies that lead to a kind of superrealism.

Then she goes on to review Philip Roth's latest book where Charles Lindbergh wins the presidency in 1940 and anti-semitism sweeps Nazi-sympathetic America.

The point of the article to me is how deep the changes have been with regard to the System Perturbation of 9/11: that which was unfunny is now funny. Why? Apparently we feel we have no choice but to deal with these demons.

When the spigots tightened, China loosens up

■"To Rally Stocks, China Moves To Ease Foreign Trading Rules,"," by Bloomberg News, New York Times, 24 September 2004, p. W1.

Does China institute these new rules for the sake of transparency? To please Wall Street? To embrace capitalism?

Hell no!

China opens up yet again because of the slump in the Shanghai and Shenzhen markets, which feed foreign investment flows into the overall economy. Their spigots seemed a bit tight, and so they opened them up a bit more.

They do it because they need the money.

People accuse me constantly of being soft on China (maybe it's the baby!). I'm not. I expect China to be China, now and forever. They change when forced. So to predict their change is not a matter of wishing, it's a matter of seeing ahead as to where they will have no choice.

Not art, not magic. It's called legwork and a systematic approach to thinking about global futures.