Fareed Zakaria cracks the code on Iraq

■"A 'Shiite Strategy' in Iraq?" op-ed by Fareed Zakaria, Washington Post, 14 September 2004, p. A27.

My old classmate Fareed Zakaria seems to have cracked this administration's code on Iraq: keep the Kurds happy, win over the Shiites, and keep the insurgent Sunnis under "house arrest" in the seemingly ungovernable "triangle" north of Baghdad.

Think we can't end up with three "Iraqs"? Think again. This is the pathway that corresponds in PNM to the "Arab Yugoslavia" scenario (see the section "The Big Bang as Strategy"). Kudos to Fareed for his diagnosis.

Persona Au Gratin

Dateline: above the garage in Portsmouth RI, 13 September 2004

My kids always know to be careful around me on game days, because I can be a fairly tense person where the Packers are involved. I know, I know. Owens and McNabb looked awfully good yesterday, as did Culpepper and Moss. And we're playing the league's toughest front-7 on defense tonight--at their place (Carolina). The truth? Buddy, I can't handle the truth! I just know all is possible with an 0-0 record. So I'll grit my teeth and do my yelling from my hotel room tonight.

Speaking of holding on . . . PNM is clinging to 99th place on Amazon's hourly Top 100, as it has for the entire weekend. Tough little bugger. But thanks again to Brian Lamb and C-SPAN. The book has no business spending an entire 8 days in double-digit heaven on Amazon, this being about its 20th week in circulation. But it just goes to show, when I get access to the audience, I can move the book just fine.

Today's main offering is a nice review that appeared over the weekend in a local AZ paper. Spoke to the woman last week by phone. She had caught the C-SPAN and decided she had to do a review. This veteran TV news anchor was really struck by what I had to say about women in the PNM.

The C-SPAN broadcasts seem to be generating their own little media buzz. Got my first offer to go on talk radio in several weeks. Going to do one-hour with Alex Jones on Wednesday at 1pm EST. Just Googled him and didn't like what I saw: lotsa conspiracy stuff. So my appearance may be very brief if he starts spouting anything too oddball. Scheduled for an hour. Click here for affiliates.

Here's today's catch (and no, I won't blog the North Korean situation until I read something other than guesses and speculation):

ïPreventive war isn't going away, just ask Russia

ïIraqis fighting for their right to market

ïNationalism versus Islamic radicalism: a false dichotomy

ïToday's rather compelling yin-and-yang(-and-more-yang) on China

Reviewing the Reviews (Arizona's East Valley Tribune)

Here is the piece in whole, followed by my commentary:

Publication:East Valley Tribune;

Date: Sunday, September 12, 2004 ;

Section:Perspective;

Page:106

THE PROTRACTED CONFLICT

Waging war ó and peace

In order to truly win the struggle against terrorism, America must connect ëGapí with ëCoreí

- Linda Turley-Hansen is a syndicated columnist and former veteran Phoenix television news anchor who lives in the East Valley.

She can be reached by e-mail at letters@lindastake.com.

To all those who are convinced that George W. made a mistake by waging war on Iraq, pick up a hot-selling book by Thomas Barnett, a military analyst with the U.S. Naval War College. Critics are calling his vision of solutions to todayís world conflicts "a template," a "Rosetta stone."

The title might intimidate the average Joe (thatís me), but fear not. "The Pentagonís New Map" is thoroughly readable. Besides, weíre much in need of fresh ideas, void of stale, political wind.

My first reaction in watching the Harvard Ph.D.ís ideas on C-Span was hope. I relaxed for the first time since 9/11. Who was this guy who views the bigger picture with a super-size lens? I soon found out.

This Valley is full of people who believe Christís return is just around the corner, but first, we can expect global catastrophes of inconceivable proportions. Of course, itís the sitting president who has started the beginning of the end. Then there are the others who agree Armageddon is unavoidable, but perhaps without deityís appearance to save us. Kerry is going to do the saving.

Barnett has different ideas. His "new map" divides the world into the "Core" (or the haves) and the "Gap" (or the have-nots.) Barnett fully supports Bushís decision to take out Saddam Hussein and suggests that North Korea be next ó because there cannot be global peace until crazy dictators in the "Gap" are removed to allow "connectivity" with those in the "Core."

Why does Barnett support carefully identified targets of war? In a telephone interview, he told me that helping "Gap" citizens escape cruel domination is the only road to their economic development, which is a connector to "Core" states ó then peace. But, in doing so, Barnett stresses that America must build a strong contingent that comes in right behind the tanks and planes to mend and heal the broken nation ó and thatís where he says Bush blew it.

Is it his fault? Barnett says no. Presidents before Bush sent troops into troubled "Gap" areas with no plans for putting Humpty-Dumpty back together again. So, according to Barnett, the second half of the equation, the system of peacekeepers who bring stability, must be developed by "Core" countries, but not necessarily under the label of democracy. In this scenario, in the future, Americaís number one export will be security.

What caught my ear first, like an explosion, was Barnettís contention that developing countries, which keep women under wraps, will never build economic stability. Instead, they breed hostile thinking.

"Our goal should be very simple here: Keep young girls in school at all costs, delaying sex and pregnancies." Then, he points out that women are potential entrepreneurs who can build village economies with the help of small loans from "Core" nations. The trick, of course, is to get the women out from under the veils of male dominance.

In a brief departure from my book report, Iím intrigued by Barnettís understanding of the power of womenís role in civilization beyond childbearing. Itís my take that the spirit of any society that would cut out half of its citizens is steeped in evil. The devastating practice of eliminating the intuitive side of a community is laced throughout history.

Itís interesting that in order to pursue evil activities of domination, creeps like Osama bin Laden have had to first disenfranchise women. They force them into brutal, submissive conditions and prevent them from having influence, including in their own homes. Their imposed silence leaves the men with nothing to balance their reality.

So why do these nut-cakes wage terrorism? I think itís simple: Itís a lot easier to cook up war games than teach a child to read or work out a disagreement with the wife. It satisfies sick egos to sit around the campfire and brag about how tough they are and how many people they can kill with one airplane. For good measure they throw in a few religious references. They have no comfort from family love or country. Theyíve desecrated home.

And thatís Barnettís point. Until there is economic reason to stop waging war, so-called "freedom fighters" will continue to spread their immoral work. He predicts that if peacekeepers can train one generation of youth and give them a taste of what can be, theyíll never go back in the caves again. He predicts that world peace is possible in his lifetime.

Itís true. Barnettís theories require a nation of courageous, visionary Americans, beginning with our commander-in-chief, plus "Core" allies. I think four more years of George Bush might be the way to go.

This quick review is simply a tickler, but for me stirs new understanding. Read the book, or go into Barnettís Web site, www.thomaspmbarnett.com. Then, as Fox News says, "You decide!"

LINDA TURLEY-HANSEN COMMENTARY -

FRESH VISION: Naval War College analyst Thomas Barnettís new book sets out a plan for defusing todayís increasingly deadly world situation.

COMMENTARY: Little unhappy with her describing the Core-Gap as Haves versus Have-nots, but she gets the rest of the story down awfully well, so that's a minor complaint on my part. Obviously, what's different about this review is the focus ont the role of women in economic development, which is admittedly a sidelight in the book but one that draws in readers who might not otherwise pick up PNM, so I'm very grateful to this journalist for bringing up that angle to my work. Plus, I like how she handles my criticism of the current regime: noting it but not overselling it. All in all, a great review, especially for citing the website.

Preventive war isn't going away, just ask Russia

ï"Preventive War: A Failed Doctrine," editorial, New York Times, 12 September 2004, p. A12.

ï"Russia May Fight Terror Pre-Emptively," by Associated Press, Dallas Morning News, 13 September 2004, [captured from Early Bird]

The New York Times sees fit to declare preventive war a failed doctrine on the basis on there not being any WMD in Iraq and no clear ties between Al-Qaeda and Saddam's regime: "The real lesson is that America dangerously erodes its military and diplomatic defenses when it charges off unwisely after hypothetical enemies."

So now Saddam's status as enemy has shifted to "hypothetical." And they accuse the Bushies of rewriting history!

The point of taking down Saddam was to trigger a significant System Perturbation on the Middle East as a whole. There is no doubt that transnational terrorism stems from that region, and that that terrorism is a direct threat to national security. That threat will not end until the Middle East is integrated with the outside world, or--more specifically--what I call the Core. That would never happen until Saddam was gone. Now he is, and the process begins for real.

Is it easy? No way. Have we created a "super bowl of terrorism," as Paul Wolfowitz has called it? Absolutely. Is it better to fight them over there than over here? You bet. Will the rest of the Core eventually come around to that understanding? Good time to check back with the Italians, French and Russians.

Russia, especially, is warming up to the idea that maybe just sitting on your heels and waiting for them to come to you isn't the answer. Maybe, just maybe, the answer is to take the fight to them. Russia's very able foreign minister Sergei Ivanov now says that a "pre-emptive strike may involve anything except nuclear weapons."

Sounds to me like a new security rule set emerging . . ..

Iraqis fighting for their right to market

ï"Merchant Class Casts Lot With New Iraq For Now, Despite Physical and Fiscal Risks," by Sabrina Tavernise, New York Times, 12 September 2004, p. A11.

To be a businessman in Iraq right now is to risk kidnappings, bombings, and cargo theft galore.

Many wonder if the danger is too great for them to stay. Yet so far, some entrepreneurs like Mr. Hanna are deciding not to give up. The chaos is their new life, and many are learning to adapt.

"Sometimes I am thinking to leave my country," he said on a recent Wednesday in his Baghdad shop. But, he added: "I am Iraqi. I am respected here. My dream is here, not in another country. So I will wait to see what will happen."

Historically, people with that sort of gumption have simply given up in places like Iraq and emigrated to places like the United States, which is why our country sports such a vibrant atmosphere. But if we are going to succeed in transforming Iraq and integrating it with the outside world, we'll need a lot of Mr. Hannas, or people willing to pioneer in their own societies.

For now, Mr. Hanna is optimistic but guarded, so we should be too:

"No new investment until we see what will happen," he said. "I want to see people coming back to Iraq, foreigners coming, businesses opening up. I don't want to leave," he added. "Believe me."

Nationalism versus Islamic radicalism: a false dichotomy

ï"Chechen Rebels Mainly Driven By Nationalism: Islamic Role Described as Real but Limited," by C.J. Chivers and Steven Lee Myers, New York Times, 12 September 2004, p. A1.

People always want to find the links in this sort of thing: Where is the money? Are they receiving arms? Are they receiving instructions? If they're not, then there's no "Islamic connection" and the threat is only one of nationalism.

Putting it in such stark terms (Is it nationalism or radical Islam?) is very misleading. The question really should be: Does the movement seek to connect the society up to the outside world more than it is now? Or is it likely to lapse into authoritarianism once in power and generate significant disconnectedness between the society and the outside world?

I don't see Chechen independence serving the cause of connectedness, and so whether or not there are strong ties between radical Islamic terror groups and Chechen nationalist terror groups isn't the be-all-and-end-all question for me. I see the violent path to power here as serving the Forces of Disconnectedness through the Caucasus region as a whole, and so I don't distinguish between their terror and that of the Taliban in Afghanistan or Al-Qaeda in the Gulf: they seek similar ends, which I define as exclusionary rule sets designed to keep some in and the rest out.

Today's rather compelling yin-and-yang(-and-more-yang) on China

ï"Let a Thousand Ideas Flower: China Is a New Hotbed of Research," by Chris Buckley, New York Times, 13 September 2004, p. C1.

ï"Rivers Run Black, and Chinese Die of Cancer," by Jim Yardley, New York Times, 12 September 2004, p. A1.

ï"In a Tidal Wave, China's Masses Pour From Farm to City," by Jim Yardley, New York Times, 12 September 2004, p. WK6.

The good news is that China is moving up Ray Vernon's product chain with a rapidity that is unprecedented in human history. You wanna Great Leap Forward? Baby, Deng gone got it for ya!

But there are huge costs involved with that leap, with environmental damage leading the list. There was a reason why our third "economic security wargame" with Cantor Fitzgerald in the NewRuleSets.Project was about environmental damage: you can't grow an economy that fast, sucking up that much energy, without exactly a profound human toll.

Don't believe me? Then go back and reread my posts about traveling in China, where I couldn't see the sky on a cloudless day in Guangzhou. China is full of rivers that are polluted and cities with "red alert" conditions 365 days a year.

The Chinese are reaching--as they always seem to do--the social tipping point on pollution faster than just about anyone in human history. And it will be both destabilizing economically even as it is stabilizing politically. It will destabilize economically because it will demand from China's private sector a far greater effort at reining in pollution, which won't be cheap, and as a result will begin whittling away China's enormous cost advantages associated with all that cheap labor. But it will stabilize things politically because, as the masses begin to agitate upwards for better environmental regulations and responsibility, the political system will inevitably pluralize itself to accommodate those demands. In short, China will be a lot richer in 20 years as a result, but also a lot freer and a lot cleaner.



And there's no turning back this train. The massive industrialization of China has set in motion one of the biggest internal migrations in human history--if not the biggest. And again, it's one of the most rapid ever witnessed--if not the most rapid. In 1990, only about a quarter of rural Chinese worked in non-farm industries. By 2000, that percentage was just over three-quarters. That, my friends, is a profound rule set shift for not only China, but the world. It sets in motion the sort of discombobulations that gave socialist revolutionaries like Vladimir Lenin dreams of conquering the world a century ago.

Why? He posited that all those just-off-the-farm laborers wouldn't be able to land jobs in the city, so there they'd be--trapped in urban environments with diminished expectations and thus just ripe for radicalization. No slouches as left-wing-deviationalists they, the Chinese Communist Party leadership understands that it is playing with fire on this one, so the races (and they are so many in China right now) are on! The race to create jobs. The race to industrialize. The race to stem the rising tide of pollution. The race to quell labor unrest. And so on and so on.

China's rapid development is a threat alright, but not in the way the Pentagon understands it. It is revolution within the context of everything else--and it matters to all of us whether we realize it or not.

Some of the many letters received about C-SPAN broadcast

Dateline: above the garage in Portsmouth RI, 12 September 2004

I took a political philosophy course at Harvard as a graduate student with the legendary professor Judith Shklar. Originally from the Baltics, she had a slight accent and this way about her that reminded me of the most intimidating nuns I had ever encountered in grade school at Immaculate Conception in Boscobel WI. Trying to debate philosophy with this woman was like trying to box Muhammed Ali in his prime: she would just float around your arguments, smiling wanly, and then sting you like a bee. I had a cat like her at the time. His name was Karl. This black cat could cut you with his right paw three or four times before youíd even know what was happening. He was the Waco Kid of cats. Shklar was like that: an unbelievably adroit mind.

Well, one time she pounced on me during class. Now, you have to remember, this class was me, Andrew Sullivan, Fareed Zakaria, Minxin Pei, and a few others just as sharp. She wanted to know my opinion of an op-ed that had appeared in the New York Times that morning, and I froze. I always read the Times at night, to chill after a lot day of studying. She could sense my hesitation and fear, old Judith could, so she was nice to me that particular day. The professor announced to the class: ìAh yes, I see. Mr. Barnett likes to read the paper at the end of the day, much as I like to read the Sunday Times on Sunday night. So weíll give him a pass on this one.î

And she moved on around the table . . ..

This is just my long-winded way of saying that Iíll blog any stories from the Sunday Times tomorrow, not today, because I like to read it about 10pm on Sunday nights, after all the cleaningís been done and everyoneís in bed.

So instead of stories today for the bulk, Iíll offer a selection of the letters I received from people regarding the C-SPAN broadcast of my brief at National Defense University (originally taped 2 June, shown 4 Sept). I only kept letters from the first 100 or so. In all, I must have received somewhere in the vicinity of 1,000 letters, but I only kept some (primarily) from the first 100 or so, because I figured those would be all I received, and I wanted to remember as many as possible.

Now, Iím happy to say (on some levels), that my email box is back to being filled daily with penis-enlargement and mortgage ads, apparently the two things a 42-year-old father of four desperately needsóat least in the minds of the spammers. So hereís a bunch in no particular order. Just ones that caught my eye. I will include names, but not the email addresses. And donít worry, whenever anyone wrote ìnot for postingî on the letter, I was sure to delete upon reading.

Will confess that none of the nasty ones are in here. Got a special file for those.

Here we go:

LETTER

Dear Mr. Barnett:



I have just read your most recent weblog entry and watched a rerun of your speech (date 6/2/04) "The Military in the 21st Century". I cannot wait to read your book. You are quite blessed with intellect and a wonderful teaching delivery. Wonderful - completely enthralling. You have done more in your 41 years than I could do in 400.

(I also enjoy the humor you insert in your lectures).



From a humble NY music teacher who loves to read and learn,

Jane Keidel Bader





P.S. If you have a mailing list please add me on it. My husband will enjoy your writing.

LETTER

I'm hopelessly hooked to your presence on the scene* as an important figure (* the scene is the maelstrom of bits of information that assault the senses in our culture on a minute by minute basis). You're important because you're an "explainer" who's also an optimist.

Further, you appear to be dealing with the reality of the political structure instead of complaining that it even exists. It's more than refreshing, it's enlightening because it doesn't even begin to bother with the fait accompli of the world's current power structure, but is simply focused upon making it work right, and why.

Frankly, I probably never would have read you had I not by chance "channel surfed" into your presentation on C-Span last weekend. My path over the years, since the 1960's when I came of age, has been from Marshall McLuhan to Noam Chomsky, for instance, seeking to make sense of the world that I live in. I've been inordinately exposed to the sector of popular information that's pessimistic about our future, and I've found myself not feeling very hopeful about the future of our world. I've felt this way all of my adult life.

You've changed that for me. Before you, Daniel Yergin assuaged my pessimism to a small degree with his books, "The Prize" and then "Commanding Heights". But I've never encountered anything like your work to this point. And I probably never would have purposely gone looking in your direction, either.

What you've changed for me is my "heart and mind" about the prospects for our future under the vast, complex bureaucracy of our government, the "military-industrial complex" that Ike defined in his farewell speech, and all the attendant noise that this indordinate complexity generates in the world. From what I can see, you've done that for a lot of other people, as well.

You've de-mystified the process that produces change within the system, as well.

I believe that your activities in bringing this information to the public sector are important, but I fear that you will run up against the same problem that Noam Chomsky has: the message isn't reducable to "sound bytes".

Or is it?

I did a google search on "pessimism" and got 321,000 hits. Then I did a search on "optimism" and got 1,540,000 hits. This says it all: optimism has a bigger market than pessimism.

That's the "hook".

Jeff Barnard

LETTER

I was channel surfing and came upon your lecture on CSPAN. I live in Santa Cruz CA, the "National Headquarters" for every hippy and liberal in America. Personally, I have participated in at least two dozen protests against the war in Iraq and have been a very strong anti-war advocate. After I watched your lecture, I hurried to our local bookstore and with difficulty, found your book. I read for about 30 minutes and decided to purchase the book, next week, I still have two books sitting on by reading sofa at home. I am amazed at how you have put this information in such simple terms and explained to me what the hell is going on. I love your work so far, I will still speak against the war, but at least I have begun to understand why it's happening. Thank you very much! If

you're ever in the Santa Cruz area, your soy nonfat mocha is on me.

-helbard.

p.s. I loved the graphics on CSPAN, very clever, too bad they are missing from

the book.

LETTER

Dear Mr. Barnett,

Thank you for your work and your passion for your work! Your appearance on C-SPAN and my subsequent reading on your Web site has re-ordered my understanding of the World and of myself.

Your briefing gives the first legitimate, coherent argument Iíve heard as to why there are solid strategic reasons to be in Iraq, and which can help the cause of world peace. Your work has had the effect of helping me see the broad context of the ideological rhetoric taking place and I suddenly feel I am viewing political questions from outside of the communications echo-chamber network for the first time, because Iím finally looking at foreign affairs through the lens of a scientist committed to objective truths, rather than from the perspective of an ideologue seeking to win an election or a news personality working for a network that depends on the advertising of ideologically motivated businesses.

I believe that an important component of the new paradigm that global civilization is entering into is transparency, openness and truth. What your work helps me see is that what so many, including myself, have reacted to against Bush, is not that invading Iraq was necessarily a bad thing (which is what I thought until I read your work), but that he and his administration did not have enough respect for its citizenry to even attempt to articulate to us the main reasons why they wanted to invade Iraq. Wolfowitz admitted this in his Vanity Fair interview last year, in which he said they settled on WMD and specious connections to Al Qaeda, because they thought the public wouldnít buy the real desire, which was to bring democracy and work to more fully integrate the region into the world economy (and also, of slightly lesser strategic importance, to shift military bases out of Saudi Arabia). I understand they made their calculation based on getting the war off the ground in time to create a positive case study for the reelection campaign, but I still resent it and hope Kerry will manage your strategy more competently.

So, thank you for all your hard work and research that allowed you to integrate so many different disciplines into your Global Transaction Strategy and for thinking strategically and optimistically of a future in which we can all live in together and prosper!

Sincerely,

Eric Forst

Culver City, California

LETTER

Mr. Barnett:

My husband and I caught (most) of your presentation on C-SPAN on 9/04/04, and were transfixed the entire time. We had only one (rhetorical) question when your presentation was over: Why are you not given an hour of prime time to enlighten the American public? It's a sad truth that most of what we get from the general media (i.e. CNN, MSNBC) re: the Middle East is politically motivated and dumbed down to baby food. I would suggest that you accept any opportunities to present to a larger audience even though at first glance it may seem fruitless.

I read your blog, I know you're busy with thousands of other emailers so the fact that you read this is enough.

Rock on,

Zoey Rawlins, MBA 2005

LETTER

Dear Dr. Barnett,



I was fortunate to catch you on cspan the other night, and just wanted to let you know that I was blown away. Without a doubt, you were the best thing I've seen on t.v. in years.

Thank You !!!!!

Do you have any political aspirations ?

Yours,



Kelby N. Phillips

LETTER

Quickly, I just wanted you to know you've reached way beyond your usual audience of government/military personnel and touched the common man in the street (me). My compacency has been challenged and I am grateful. As a Republican isolationist, you have eloquently given me sufficient data to convince me your observations are valid. After watching your presentation on CSPAN, I had the best night of sleep since before 9/11. I intend to read MUCH more of your excellent work. Truly, I thank you.

-Chaz Thompson

LETTER

Tom,



I watched your program on C-SPAN last night, twice!

I think it is the most informative program I've ever seen on TV.

The matter is so timely and your case so compelling it needs to reach as wide an audience as possible.

What would it take to get you to come to Cleveland?

If the people were better educated (like I became last night), it would be easier for the politicians to support implementation of your recommendations.

Keep up the great work.



Best Regards



Rich Lowrie

Cleveland, OH

LETTER

Dr. Barnett-

I happened upon your taped briefing last night on CSpan while awaiting Hurricane Francine to appear.

Had to stay up until 2 am for the finish.

Wonderful presentation and very illuminating. I really enjoyed the whole thing but especially the interplay with the Pakistani gentleman.

When I can get out I will go to B&N to get your book and I intend to follow-up on your blog page.

Thanks for an interesting evening.

Richard J. Greenspan, DDS

LETTER

Dear Dr. Barnett,

I was fortunate enough to catch most of your presentation at the War College on C-Span yesterday, and wanted to let you know that I am very excited about the work you are doing. I had never heard of you prior to yesterday. I'll be out today looking for a place to buy your latest book.

In a country filled with confusing noise and political baloney, you are a rare and unique voice of sanity who inspires confidence that there is at least ONE person out there who may be able to positively influence the future that we all must move forward into.

I am a 56 year old man, working as a taxicab dispatcher in Worcester, Ma.

Jeff Barnard

LETTER

Dear Mr. Barnett,

I am and many others I know in Asia are very interested in your concepts especially About China , Far East and oil and gas.

Please direct me to your material that will give your view of this region , foreign direct Investment and oil and gas . Thank you for any sections I can read on line.



May I say that I feel lucky to have seen your Presentation lecture , The Military in the 21st Century--on C-SPAN TV today. Although I understand it is about the US military I feel it is very valuable for its global picture .



Are your books , The Pentagons New Map available in Singapore , Indonesia and Thailand ?



If not, how would several people I know in thoses countries aquire your book soonest. It is very important for them to have it to read as quickly as possible.



How would they get a copy of the video presentation lecture i saw here in Hawaii today?



I am an American who has worked in Asia much of my life ,now retired . I have many friends who are still working in Asia and should read your book . Some need it immediately as everyone is struggling with what the future holds and how to face it the best way economically in Asia .

Thank you for any help and directions .

Aloha from Hawaii

P.M. Lorentz

LETTER

Dear Thomas,



Just by accident I caught your talk on C-SPAN at 11 o[clock. Most of it went over my head, but being very interested in world affairs I was mesmerized by your presentation, and I am encouraged that the military and our government has clear thinking men like you to advise them. I went to your web page and read your blog. I am so happy to read that you will be voting for John Kerry. The real reason for this E-mail is to give you a recipe that may help you relieve the sinus infection.



Fresh ginger. . .. Grated on a fine grater so that you can get some juice

Garlic . . .. . ...put through a press

Fresh lemon juice

Honey

Very hot water

Cayenne pepper



In a 8 oz. cup add 1tsp. or more ginger juice, 1lg clove garlic 1 tsp or more lemon juice, honey to taste, HOT water, and a few generous shakes of pepper.



Drink this a few times a day. It will not cure the infection if it is very severe but it really helps with very bad head and chest colds and may give you some relief.



I know this sounds trite, but. . .. . .. . .. . .. . .. . ..Thanks for your service to our country!!!! I hope the people in power listen to your ideas and take them to heart. Our future depends on it.



Respectfully,

Barb Juras

LETTER

Dear Dr. Barnett:

I had to write after seeing your presentation on C-Span. I am a 67 year old woman who remembers the clear cut rational of World War II and the cold war. Either us or them. Since the end of the cold war, our foreign policy has seemed to be without purpose; our military reactive and tentative. You have presented a very positive vision of what the world could be. I hope those in power in our country and abroad see the wisdom in your vision and plan accordingly.

Also, I wish to commend you for your response to the gentleman from Packistan who asked why the west does not make an effort to understand the Moslem culture. While government officials and the press describe the "culture war" between the west and Moslem countries in terms of wealth and power, I believe you properly described it as a difference of women's participation in life. You are the only person I have heard describe it thus, and also to note that the west already has been through this process. Thank you for being so candid in your response.

Sincerely,

Lucille Gray

LETTER

Hello Mr. Barnett,

I was awestruck by your presentation. I sat down and caught over an hour's worth and it made so many geopolitical issues clear to me. Most notably "following the money" to see who our allies or potential allies are or will be.

I found that $3,000 per capita figure which determined the benchmark for a happy state fascinating. The more money flowing into an out of a country the more likely "Barbie" has established a beach-head and the more likely we have an ally.

When Saudi Arabia's inflow/outflow benchmark was presented, it became clear why the most blood-thirsty terrorists seem to come out of there.

Another point I thought was really cool was when you stated our next line of attack would be to hunt down "bad actors" with one of those "Nintendo gizmos", that flying drone with those hell-fire missles. ("Hell-fire", what a name. Makes you definitely not want to be on the business end of one of those weapons.) Anyway. I found that the battle theater will become more like the classic, Alexander the Great paradigm whereas you kill the leaders first.

I plan on watching the rerun on Sunday.

I hope you are on somebod's radar for a potential Secretary of State gig on 2006.

Tony Austin

--

Creative Director

LETTER

Dr. Barnett,

As an ex-Democrat, non-Republican (independent) I have been ideologically disenfranchised by the current administration's take on globalization; and yet not wholly won over by the left's "hearts and flowers" socialism.

I stumbled across the C-Span replay of your June 4th presentation at Ft. McNair, National Defense University regarding the role of the military in the 21st century, and was Astounded by your logical summations of where we are and where we're headed.

Nice presentation, too. Dry wit goes a long way with me intellectually.

Damn, what a concept: Logic. Statistics. Extrapolations. Facts. Flashy presentation software. It's been a great way to sit through a hurricane (Francis is right on top of us right now.)

If some of your ideas and explanations had been used by either party in their all-too-simplistic rhetoric I could have been swayed in either direction. Hell, if the Bush administration had just bothered to explain WHY they were making the moves they were, instead of so stupidly lying to me, I wouldn't have so strongly opposed them. I'm all for tossing out dictators.

Unfortunately, It seems clear that they don't know what they're doing when it comes to following through on foreign policy.

Thanks for the food for thought. I was ravenous.

I'm reading every article of yours I can find.

Sincerely,

Tim Powell

LETTER

Sir:



I just watched your speech 'The Pentagons new map' on C-Span. This 'new map' was a very interesting concept on the use of military sources and how they should be managed. I would like to thank you for the information I learned. Your recorded speech also helped to put some things into perspective for me. I work for a leading semiconductor manufactory here in Austin (freescale, formally known as Motorola SPS) and trained workers from China in the not so distance past. Your explanation of China as a 'new core' hit home for me because I could see it from working with these folks.



I produce local television access in Austin and would like to ask your permission to use some of the information I learned. In particular I would like to use your terms that explain 'the gap, the old core and the new core' from your speech to tie together what I call 'misinformation about globalization'. Also do you have the power point slides used in 'The Brief' speech made available to the public? I would like to get parts of your message out through my access television program.



Thank you.



David Holsonbake

Austin Texas

LETTER

Being an ordinary American woman, age 56, with very little knowledge of the military, turning on C-Spann tonight by chance, I must say I was truly transfixed in my seat seat listening to your lecture about the world and the military decisions of the future. You are a brilliant man and you made it so understandable, although so many new concepts were introduced to me that I was glad I had my VHS recorder available to record you so I can go back and re-listen to parts of it again. Your comments on connectivity and our real relationship with the world makes so much sense you wonder why more people don't see it the way you do. I almost think that speech should be passed out as a DVD to accompany your book, which I am going to look for on Tuesday.

I don't know enough to ask real pertinent questions, but one question in my mind while I was listening to you - was the Marshall plan for Europe and the reconstruction of Japan after WWII the predcessor of the System Administration you were talking about - keeping in mind that the war was finished at that point. Perhaps this is a thought you might include in future speeches/lectures.

Thanks again for an astounding opening of my mind experience tonight - and here I thought I was just a stagnant befuddled beginning senior citizen.

Maureen Kennedy

LETTER

Mr. Barnett,



I am an airline pilot, (currently for Continental Airlines), who has spent a good deal of my aviation career living and working in the Middle East. I was riveted by your lecture of 06/02/04 on C-Span; it explained so much of what I experienced in that part of the world during the last decade and a half. I am not sure it gave me much hope, but I definitely have a more complete picture.



I have ordered your book on Amazon, and can't wait to read it. Thank you so much for being on C-Span and the work you do.



Warmest regards,



William F. Newland

Manhattan, Beach, CA

LETTER

Dear Mr. Barnett,



I had the pleasure this evening of watching your presentation on CSPAN (from 6/2004). I do not view CSPAN to regularly, but one of your slides caught my eye so I continued to watch. I am writing to simply tell you that I thoroughly enjoyed your presentation. You have an excellent ability to discuss an issue as complex as the U.S. military role in future world affairs with precise clarity and simplicity.



I must say that I have been disheartened recently watching the presidential election coverage, where it seems that our candidates lack substance, and real issues are replaced by finger pointing and misinformation. A new hope of mine is that whoever leads our country over the next decade and beyond will have people with insight such as yours influencing their policies.



Thank you again for the excellent presentation. I look forward to reading your book!



Sincerely,



Thomas K.

Philadelphia, PA

LETTER

Dr. Barnett -



I greatly enjoyed your briefing broadcast on C-Span this evening. With a son who is a Plebe at the US Military Academy at West Point (Go Army, etc. - sorry!), I am very interested in the future you paint for the military.



Can you provide any advice I can pass on to our Cadet Private as he begins his military career, that he may be better prepared to lead in the next decade?



David Bockstanz

Emmaus, PA

LETTER

Tom

Got your book and saw you on C-Span. Superb. Keep it up.

I hope the military reorganizes to two-forces quickly yet am not optimistic in short term as we are really disorganized for gap administration.



Example: the Army has no regular Army, active duty, military police general as a warfighter (i.e. a general to go into the gap). Instead we take field artillery generals and put them in charge of prisons or at JTF-6 (counter-drug/law enforcement) or send infantry generals to train police forces in Iraq instead of MP generals.



Now, the Army would not take an MP and put him in charge of an artillery unit but the Army will take an FA general and put him in charge of a police unit. How dumb is that? And that Rummy allows this to exist is puzzling. Anyway, one can see that Army branch bureaucratic politics will inhibit the transformation needed for GWOT. I pray your idea of a 4-star MP general for the system admin force will happen sooner than later but expect a good fight from the old guard.

Regards

Steve

LETTER

Dear Tom,



I just saw the last 1.5 hours of your show. Have to admit it was great. I will tape the second showing so I can see it in full.



I am a 20 year vet of the USAF retired in 1996. I was very surprised when you talked about the "purple flags." As an enlisted near the end of my career I can recall discussions with my friends about the idea that the miltiary should gel into one large force. The US Armed Forces or whatever. The idea being in line with your thoughts on the flags. I think that your idea holds more water at this stage. Starting at the top would be better but in the end I still think that in the end it will be one uniform.



I also agree with the seperation of the forces to the extent that you showed. Had there been a place for me to stay in and be productive without being pushed ot get more rank or get out, I would have stayed in at the level I was at (MSgt.E7) We need to make use of the talent that is continuing to get out becasue they are frustrated with the staus quo like I was.



Thanks for your time, I have you book on the way and hope to hear more from you in the future.



Dave Seibert

LETTER

Tom,



I am here in Orlando waiting for FRANCES, the hurricane, to hit and was watching the Weather Channel. While flipping threw the channels, I accidentally ìtuned inî to your lecture. I have not checked the weather, since, but instead watched your whole lecture.



First time somebody finally explained what is really going on Iraq, North Korea, and so forth, than what I get from the media and their 1 to 2 minute analysis. I understood about 70% of your lecture, because I donít know all the DOD and ìInside the Beltwayî terminology.



Again, thank you. I wish you had a bigger audience to hear your lecture.



Sincerely,



Peter S. Bjˆrklund

Contract Software Developer

Orlando, FL

LETTER

You are the first person I have heard make sense of what changes are occurring within the US and the rest of the world and how this is impacting our defense. Just dumb Luck I caught you on CSPAN tonight. I am going to go buy the book. Good job, Good health. (Sinus infections are a bitch)

LETTER

Dr. Barnett;



Cspan got me this week. Like a really good sermon, (there aren't many of em) you have to listen to it again. Maybe I'll go looking for your book this week.



You must dream in graphics. Good show.



Marty Thurber

Fargo ND

LETTER

I've never watched anything on C-Span that sucked me in like your talk on the Military in the 21st Centruy that is being broadcast on C-Span right now. I will grab your book tomorrow.

If the book is, as I assume, the argument I saw you making tonight, I hope the next president will give it a read.

Tim Beidel

South Portland, ME

Time to move on, in more ways than one

Dateline: above the garage in Portsmouth RI, 11 September 2004

No, I donít plan to wax philosophical about the enduring meaning of 9/11 today. Thereís enough of that in the media to satisfy everyone. Instead, I wanted to cross-post an entry from online philosopher Mark, aka Zenpundit, which I think does a nice job of reminding us that even though 9/11 was a shock to the system, or what I call a System Perturbation, the Core fundamentally lives within the stability exemplified by Immanuel Kantís dream of perpetual peace. But that rule set, as I so often point out, does not extend into the Gap, and so what we felt on 9/11 was that Hobbesian world of pain and brutality reaching into our own. America has chosen to respond to that challenge, whereas Europe as not. America has chosen, through this administration that looks to be on the verge of winning re-election, to deal with the main source of transnational terrorism in the Gap right now, which is the Middle East. We chose to set off a System Perturbation inside that Middle East by taking down the nastiest hombre there and throwing down the gauntlet before all the forces of disconnectedness in the region.

What has been the cost of this response? Roughly 750 combat deaths to date, with another 250 lives lost in accidents, diseases, and other sundry ways (as they are every year inside the military with its population of roughly one million souls). How does that stand against the almost 3,000 souls we lost at the start of this war? That is for God to decide in the long term and the American electorate to decide in early November. But no matter what the relatives losses on either side, the matter of the bifurcated rule set remains. Both 9/11 and the Iraq takedown are more related to globalizationís progressive penetration of the Middle East than they are to each other. That much I am certain. In joining this Global War on Terrorism, we joined an ongoing conflict between the forces of connectedness as represented by globalizationís advance and the forces of disconnectedness as represented by nihilistic transnational terrorism, but have no doubt, the bodies have been piling up on both sides for many years prior to 9/11. We just start counting anew on that date.

But we donít need to stay stuck on that date, and we shouldnít link current policies to that past grievance, because thatís not what American patriotism should ever be about. We need to be about future triumphs, not past tragedies, even as those tragedies served ably as spurs to great historical actions that we needed to undertakeónamely, finally doing something about the Middle East.

Having said that, we need to be careful that we divorce our logic on transforming the Middle East from one of revenge to one of genuine hope for all involved. We seek to connect the Middle East to the Core not simply to eradicate transnational terrorism but because itís the right thing to do for the people there, whether we like them or not. So we need to move beyond 9/11 as a rationale and learn, in that most Christ-like way, to love our enemies more than ourselves. Easy? Never. But revenge and payback isnít a strategic vision, and thatís whatís required for the global future worth creating: that sense of how it works out not just for us but for everybody.

Speaking of moving on, I caught myself answering an email from a professor at a DC-based college today, and by doing so I too mentally crossed a line. He had asked if it would be possible for me to collaborate on a course with him because he likes PNM so much and has incorporated it deeply into his current courses. I replied that I was interested, but didnít know how to pursue such a thing from afar (I mean, how to arrange for travel alone?). Then I asked him point-blank: how hard would it be for me to get a permanent post at a university in the DC or surrounding area.

No real forethought, it just urped out of me.

So I had to wonder why.

I thought about the Naval War College mistakenly charging me 34 hours of leave without pay for the last week of my China trip, even though I had submitted a leave slip invoking the Family Medical Leave Act, which allows me to use sick leave for big family events like an adoption. Yeah, you notice that much money all of a sudden gone in your paycheck!

But that seemed petty to cite that. Working for a huge bureaucracy does suck, but thatís not why leave.

How about this? A new assignment I really donít want: ginning up alternative global futures to justify naval force structure arguments in some upcoming budget drill in DC. Christ! Thatís exactly the sort of make-work crap that drove me outta DC and the Center for Naval Analyses. Weíre not really supposed to do that sort of service-partisan ìresearchî up in Newport, but such is the state of affairs in the Pentagon, so my big research opportunity of coming months is anything but research or an opportunity. Itís budgetary hack work. Iíll gin up scenarios I donít believe in to justify force structures I donít feel are warranted by the current security environment.

How can I say that in advance? I just know that whatever we produce will need to be ìrobust,î meaning it will show beyond a shadow of a bureaucratic doubt that the Navy should not be cut in relation to the Army or Air Force. To me, that kind of work is soul killing for a serious grand strategist and futurist, because itís basically whoring. Iím not a naval strategist, nor a army one, nor an air one. I want whatís best for the country, not whatís best for one service, and because Iíve never served, I just donít bleed navy blue, or green, or any of those other colors.

And you know what? That objectivity is essential for what I do well and what I did in writing PNM. You donít come up with Leviathan and Sys Admin if you simply canít bear to see your precious service ìdestroyedî by these ìcrazy ideas.î

Then I think again.

Iíve whored before to make money and Iíll whore again. And maybe . . . just maybe, Iíll be able to change some minds with the great and daring work Iíll do on this study.

And no, Iím not waiting for pigs to fly outta my ass. I really do believe I can do good work even under bad circumstances.

So if itís not the petty BS of the bureaucratic life, nor the indignities of paying the bureaucratic piper in terms of analysis, then why the desire to move on?

Perhaps itís just the seven years I will have put in come next summer. Call it the seven-year-itch.

Perhaps Iíve simply grown beyond the venue, or grown stale, or grown too comfortable and egotistical. Maybe I just want to be scared, and scrambling again for every G.D. inch!

Or maybe Iíve just consummated what this chapter in my life and career have logically turned out to constitute: I spent years working the grand strategic vision and now Iíve got one. Maybe I just need to see the next mountaintop worth climbing.

Or maybe I worry about living in such an incredibly white place with an Asian daughter.

Or maybe I like Rhode Island more than I like Rhode Islanders.

I have to admit: while boogie boarding with son Kevin this early eve I did see the most incredible sky, like a beautiful sea shell, and it made me realize what a spectacularly gorgeous place it is where we live. And yet, I donít feel particularly at home here, and talking to many long-term transplants about that feeling, I donít ever expect it to go away.

You know, when the Mayo Clinic in Phoenix offered to do my Dadís dangerous heart surgery (he eventually succumbed to complication post-surgery), he said no, despite knowing the great skill he would enjoy at such a prestigious place. No, my Dad said, ìIf Iím going to die, I want to go home.î

And frankly, this isnít the place I would think of in that light, and at age 42, I have to start wondering: Where is that place?

Todayís catch:

ïìWhat Russia Knows Now,î by Victor Erofeyev, New York Times, 11 September, p. A31.

ïìKerry Criticizes G.O.P. for Failing to Renew Weapons Ban,î by Jodi Wilgoren, New York Times, 11 September, p. A11.

ïìBudget Fares Change Face Of Air Travel For Indians,î by Saritha Rai, New York Times, 10 September, p. W1.

Plus a nice letter I received from a Japanese student currently studying in the U.S. Tomorrow I plan on posting some of the letters I got in response to the C-SPAN broadcast of the brief, so I wanted to get this one out of the way prior. Itís a neat example of how I hope PNM can empower average citizens to think positively about the future of the world and demand that the political leadership not only do the same, but act on it in their policies.

ïA letter from Yuki Yokoyama; sent Monday, August 30, 2004

Zenpundit deconstructs PNM, pitting Kant against Hobbes

Here is Zenpunditís piece. No comment from me. I think it stands on its own. Although I will say this, his points on NGOs brings to mind the negative response I got a couple a days ago from Doctors Without Borders regarding my concept that the Sys Admin force should seek greater cooperation with Non-Governmental Organizations in post-conflict situations:

Monday, August 30, 2004

LEVIATHAN BOUND: THE DANGERS OF KANTIAN RULE SETS AND UNACCOUNTABLE NGO'S

Joseph Nye is justly famous for his articulation of the concept of "Soft Power," the oft-times intangible but influential weight of a nation-state's cultural, ideological and memetic base that substantively makes that society distinct, attractive and persuasive to others. This is contrasted with the "Hard Power" of military and economic might that can intimidate, bribe or coerce. While it's easily arguable that Hard Power is more important or decisive a factor in international relations than Soft Power my response would be, "In what kind of time frame?"

The longer the time frame we are considering the greater the weight we must give to the implications of Soft Power. Great Britain of George III was awash in hard power but its mercantilist empire did not survive the effects of the words of Adam Smith, Thomas Jefferson and Tom Paine. Furthermore, when we recognize the implications of soft power it is all more crucial that we understand the premises of certain soft power trends that are competing in the marketplace of ideas for long-term dominance. Ideas and ideologies do evolve in the real world in response to events but their trend lines tend to stay in the direction of their logical conclusion unless they are conclusively refuted.

This brings me to Tom Barnett's PNM theory. In The Pentagon's New Map, Dr. Barnett discusses many key concepts in his Global Transaction Strategy, one of which is Rule Setsóthe recognized principles by which states interact and evaluate actions or policies in terms of their legitimacy. Terms like "rogue state," "war of aggression," "just war," "illegal combatant" carry in them the implicit understanding of what it means to have operative rule sets. The problem is that there is a significant divergence between the traditional Rule Set the United States has used in international relations since the end of WWII and the vision currently entrancing most of Europe and Transnational Progressive NGO activists. Dr. Barnett refers to the second as "Kantian Rule Sets" denoting the idea of the Kantian "perpetual peaceî that exists within the Core. This new Kantian Rule Set developed with American encouragement and advice to solve "the German problem"ósee Dean Acheson's memoirs on the diplomacy behind the Schumann Planóand to integrate Japan irrevocably into the Core.

Unfortunately, the Kantian Rule Set that worked so well in neutralizing the unbalancing geopolitical claims of Germany and Japan and safeguarding their neighbors is incredibly ill-suited to handling the rogue state aggressors, anarchic failed states and apocalyptic Islamist terror groups that run riot in the Gap. The premises of the Kantian Rule Set prohibit the Leviathan function Dr. Barnett sees as necessary to foster connectivity and control imminent disasters. It is really a rule set for a post-Gap world. If you have any doubts about this I offer Bosnia, Rwanda and the Sudan as an example of the humanitarian and moral costs to applying Kantian Rule Set restrictions to prevent meaningful humanitarian intervention in the Gap.

That however is the danger of misguided moralism in misapplying a standard that can only exist between states that accept the premises of the rule set that governs the Core. There is a second danger in that groups who do not relish the prospect of "Connectivity" with increased flow of information, people, goods, transparency and accountability have seized on Kantian Rules to keep the Gap poor and disconnected and aggrandizing power for themselves. They are not what you could describe as friendly toward market mechanisms, democratic accountability or honest debate.

One of their key arguments is the illegitimacy of traditional, Westphalian concepts of national sovereignty, which they like to misrepresent as "New Sovereigntist" when most of these historic principles are still the operative tenets of International Law. Legitimacy, in their view, is vested rather ambiguously, in a collection of transnational bodies, courts and commissions which create a consensus opinion from the larger community of IL scholars and NGO activists. Sort of a Transnational Progressive Ulemna, to borrow a concept from Islamic jurisprudence and equally unaccountable to those over whom they purport to claim authority.

These NGOs have moved to claim political power through established mechanisms like the UN and the World Bank, often advocating Deep Ecology positions that do not reflect the wishes of the citizens of the Gap states activists claim to be championing, blocking much needed development projects. Recently The Schlesinger Commission upbraided the venerable Red Cross for attempting to hold the United States government accountable for controversial protocols to the Geneva Convention that require "police model" restrictions on the U.S. military that the U.S. has neither signed nor ratified. This misrepresentation of their preferred and novel interpretation of treaty clauses or International Law as a supposedly universal and accepted standards is a frequent NGO tactic for accumulating power or "containing" U.S. policy. NGOs count on journalists and citizens of democratic states not having the inclination or time to read tedious treaty clauses or case histories and try to attach a negative connotation to policies that might promote Connectivity in the Gap.

Not all of the NGOs or even the majority of them have this ideological agenda in mind. Most of them were founded and continue to operate with the intention of helping people in dire circumstances. Much of the work they do is invaluable. However, we must be aware that the Transnational Progressive trend is out there in the NGO world, it has political currency in important circles and the logical conclusions of this ideology are exceptionally pernicious. Deep Ecology alone contemplates a scenario that I can charitably describe only as Hitlerian in scope. They are not working to help the farmer ambling behind a water buffalo.

People living in the Gap should not be condemned to the precarious Hobbesian world of genocide, war and famine to suit the interests of wealthy professional activists and string-pullers residing comfortably in the Core.

6:01 PM

Click here for Zenpunditís site and the posting

Russia moves closer to an understanding of Core-wide security

ï[op-ed]ìWhat Russia Knows Now,î by Victor Erofeyev, New York Times, 11 September, p. A31.

Nice piece from a Russian editor. No commentary needed, other than ìAmenî and these two clips:

We Russians believe that grief brings people closer together - it has always been and still is a feeling that is shared. Sept. 11 changed the image of the United States in Russian consciousness forever: we realized that we live in a single world and that world is in need of our care and protection. Sept. 11 also affected us in another way. The whole of Russia was struck by the disciplined manner in which Americans and their government behaved during that tragic time.

The Russian state, alas, has lagged behind the heart: the leadership here has lacked the courage to draw the conclusion that we share a common enemy. I am by no means one of those who believe that America under George W. Bush has done everything right. In apparent mockery of its own freedoms it has developed ominous tendencies toward Orwellian social distortion. But at the same time, I admire America for seeing what we should have seen in Russia . . .

Russia is far from certain that it has any substantial relationship to this newly imperiled civilization. It relapses into a stupor in the face of its enemy's audacity. It looks back, sometimes with nostalgia, on Stalin's cunning imperial maneuvers, at his seizure of half of Europe. Nowadays it is awkward and ungainly.

But while Russia has been unsuccessfully searching for its own national idea since the collapse of communism, the extremists have listed it as one of their enemies, and have acted accordingly. A war has begun here, and we have to live by the laws of wartime and submit to the ruling authority. This authority has unfortunately inherited a bad legacy; it is not responsible to anyone and it is inclined to tell lies. But no matter what one might think of Mr. Putin - we know his weaknesses, we know his penchant for censorship and restrictive legislation - he is the one who must lead us. In the absence of any real political opposition or civil society, it is the president who must decide whose side Russia will be on in the war. As to the right decision, there is no question.

Russians would like to remain hors de combat in the conflict of civilizations, but they won't be able to. On Sept. 11, 2001, we wept in sympathy with America; after Beslan we have to dry our tears and try to build genuine ties with the West.

Assault weapons ban: why is this even being debated during a GWOT?

ïìKerry Criticizes G.O.P. for Failing to Renew Weapons Ban,î by Jodi Wilgoren, New York Times, 11 September, p. A11.

This is why I agree with Michael Moore whole-heartedly: Americaís love affair with guns is just plain sick. There is no reason why the ban on assault rifles should not continue. Weíre in a GWOT, for Godís sake, how hard should it be to make it difficult for criminalsónot to mention terroristsóto get their hands on killing machines that have no hunting nor self-protection purpose?

Kerry wants the ban, and so does Bush. But Bush isnít pressuring lawmakers in his party to do anything about it, and thatís plain sad, because thatís about making sure seats stay Republican and sacrificing American lives in the process.

Clear sign of connectivity: budget airlines emerge in India

ïìBudget Fares Change Face Of Air Travel For Indians,î by Saritha Rai, New York Times, 10 September, p. W1.

Fabulous story that reminds me why itís so important to be optimistic about India: Air Deccan, basically the Southwest Airlines of India, is having a revolutionary effect on air travel there, simply by offering very low fares. People whoíve never flown in their lives are all of a sudden flying. 700 rupees (or $15) to fly from Bangalore to New Delhi.

Most people flying now are completely new to the industry, which spells very good things for airport infrastructure spending in India. Right now 15 million fly a year. By 2010, that number is expected to be at least 70 million, but Iíd guess much higher. As one airline executive there explained, ìLow-cost airlines will unlock a massive aviation and tourism growth potential.î

That, my friends, is connectivity of the best sort. Everybody makes money, people get to travel, connections are made.

A letter from someone who wants to believe in a future worth creating

ïA letter from Yuki Yokoyama; sent Monday, August 30, 2004

Hi. My name is Yuki Yokoyama.



I am an undergraduate student in California State University Northridge, and my major is Communication Studies.



I have purchased your book in July and read it over the summer in order to be prepared for the class I had in mind for taking, which is an interdisciplinary class called "Glopan Peace and Justice."



I was amazed by the wisdom encoded in your book when I finished reading it. (It took me quite a while because I am a Japanese international student who practically began studying English five years ago.)



Here is my story: On the first day of the class, we were asked by one of the professors (we have three professors in the class because it is an interdisciplinary course) to introduce ourselves to other class mates and ask four questions to different students individually.



When I were asked to ask the fourth question, the question was whether we as a humanity achieve a state of global peace and an establishment of universal justice. Being influenced by the optimism I leaned from your book, I answered to the other student that "I think it is possible." Then, she took the other position in extreme and said, "no, it will never happen."

As a result of my personality, I answered back to her, "of course we can! The question session ended with her parting shot, "we'll see!"



Soon after the class ended, I realized the meaning of what I have just done. It is much, much harder to prove my position with substantial, empirical evidences. So I started to brainstorm hypothetical strategies that we can achieve the "global peace and justice."

By the end of the week, I had developed four primitive hypotheses.

Then, I decided to refer back to your back because I remembered the surge of positive emotion when I first finished reading your book.



Then my eyes got caught on the chapter 8's title; "Hope Without Guarantees." Then, I thought, I got the answer that I had been looking for. Your thesis is backed with 10 hopes without guarantees. So as my hypothesis is backed with 4 hopes without guarantees. I realized that whether the hypotheses would turn out to be true or not does not really matter. It is a fact that there are hopes without guarantees in our hands!



I'm not sure whether I can prove my hypotheses are achievable, but I am quite certain that

I can convince the student that I am standing on the right position.



Furthermore, I realized when I read the director's commentary that the chapter is not the conclusion.



Thank you so much for giving me an opportunity to touch on the wisdom, enabling me

to find a reason to commit, and, most of all, giving me your time for reading this letter.



Sincerely,



Yuki Yokoyama

A "Chicago Boy" deconstructs PNM and the Sys Admin Force

Dateline: Above the garage in Portsmouth RI, 10 September 2004

[NOTE: When I first posted this blog on 9/10, I cited friend and fellow blogger TM Lutas as the author of the following lengthy posts about PNM. TM sent me an email today saying I was mistaken. While he sent me notice of the posts, and does himself also post at Chicago Boyz.net, he is not the author known as "Lexington Green." Who is Lex? I have no idea, other than he must have studied economics at U. Chicago. So my apologies for misidentifying TM and not giving "Lexington Green" his due at the time of my initial posting. Here is the post re-edited as a result.]

Lexington Green (a pseudonym, I imagine) writes at Chicago Boyz , which is explained as:

Some Chicago Boyz know each other from student days at the University of Chicago. Others are Chicago boys in spirit. The blog name is also intended as a good-humored gesture of admiration for distinguished Chicago boys including those pictured above, and others who helped to liberalize Latin American economies.

Here is Green's magnum opus review of both PNM and the Sys Admin force in two very long blogs. His pieces ignited a lot of comments on the site, and these constitute some of the best discussions I have ever read of the book. I don't include them here, but you can find them linked below.

Here is the first more general blog:

August 21, 2004

Barnett, The Pentagon's New Map

For some time now I have had a stack of books I've been going to blog about. The top of the stack is Thomas Barnett's book The Pentagon's New Map. First, the book is good, it is worth reading, and you should do so. Barnett is engaging and smart and is seriously trying to think through important questions. This is demonstrated not only by the book, but also by Barnett's website. Barnett's book has been reviewed far and wide, and on his website he publishes the reviews and responds to them. In fact, his website is almost the ideal of what a web-minded author can do. He engages in a dialogue with reviewers and responds to criticisms. Others, hopefully, will adopt his approach. May they also have the stamina to sustain it.

I read the book a few months ago and I hope I can make sense of my notes. I'll focus on points that relate to issues which interest me. There is much in the book which I simply won't touch on here. There are plenty of summaries on his site, if mine is too cryptic. But everybody reading this blog has heard about it and has some idea what it is about -- The Core and The Gap, to get it down to five syllables. These terms, as well as many others, are part of Barnett's idiosyncratic nomenclature.

Barnett asserts throughout that globalization means increasing "connectivity" to "content flows", and that "disconnectedness is itself the ultimate enemy." The Core is that part of the world in which is "functioning within globalization" because it "accepts the connectivity and can handle the content flows associated with integrating one's national economy to the global economy." How countries handle the "content flow" turns on their internal "legal rule sets". Traditional-minded (or just oppressive) countries try to limit the content, e.g. Internet pornography or criticism of the government. Core countries also succeed in "harmonizing their internal rule sets" to the "emerging global rule of democracy, rule of law, and free markets." Success at synchronizing with the global rule set, itself an evolving set of norms, means investment and other "connectedness" increasingly links a country to the functioning Core. The pace at which countries make these transitions, and which parts of the global rule set they adopt first, vary. A good index of "connectedness", as Barnett notes, is the way a society treats its women, a point Ralph Peters has also made.

Barnett addresses at length the more strictly military side. He correctly notes that the United States has been spending more and more "billable hours" in the last 20 years, starting before the Cold War even ended, sending its military into the disorderly and violent regions of the Gap (Haiti, the Balkans, the Middle East). It has done so on an ad hoc basis as crises boil over, with no over-arching rationale to these various ventures. This is in part because the military has resisted acquiring the capability, equipment and knowledge needed to intervene with long-term success in these places. Each intervention has been treated by the Pentagon as a distraction from some forthcoming major war, which looks less and less likely to occur any time soon. The military, according to Barnett, still clings to a planning and training and acquisition mindset focused on one Big One akin to WWII or the Cold War, with China nominated to sit in the Bad Guy chair. Barnett sees this fear of China as overblown, if not unfounded. The military needs to learn that the Gap is not a distraction from its job. Its job is the Gap and there is no exit strategy.

Barnett says we need to recognize that the security goal of the United States is to eliminate the sources of disorder and terrorism at their roots, in the Gap. We need to learn and accept that connectedness has raised the cost of fighting within Core way too high for sensible people to contemplate. And most compellingly, nuclear weapons are always in the background as a deterrant if anyone were foolish enough to start an intra-Core war. So, the Core states have too much to lose by fighting among themselves and they know it. Hence we are happily surprised to find something like a firm basis for perpetual peace in the nicer parts of the world.

According to Barnett, a big part of why people worldwide have "freaked" about Bush's assertion of preemption and apparent unilateralism is they don't realize, because the Bush team has failed to clearly articulate it, that the "rule set" for the Core (Mutual Assured Destruction, deterrence, collective security) is still in place. We we only mean to operate in the rougher, more Hobbesian fashion in the Hobbesian badlands of the Gap.

So much for the descriptive part. Barnett goes on to advocate making it an express goal of United States policy to "shrink the Gap." One way to do this is to encourage trade and particularly technology transfer to the Gap. He believes it is futile to try to prevent dangerous technology from reaching rogues in the Gap by restricting trade. Barnett advocates a robust system of threats and preemption instead.



Ö if you have a bad actor, whether he is a superempowered terrorist like Osama bin Laden or a rogue leader like Kim Jong Il, who has a long list of boxes that says he is not to be trusted or that the world would be a better place without him, then I say you move on to preemption. There is no negotiation at this point in the process, because you have given them plenty of warnings and requests to cease and desist. In the case of a regime, you simply keep ratcheting up your demands for compliance, and when the regime cannot comply and cannot be provoked into a precipitating action by your constantly growing military pressure, you preempt. In the case of a terrorist group, you skip even these preliminaries and preempt the moment you have any of them in your crosshairs.



Barnett notes "that may sound pretty harsh", and rightly so, though I like the sound of it. I think those who don't like Bush's "unilateralism" will also 'freak" if we do things way, especially if we announce we are going to. Barnett asks rhetorically, what "gives America the right to make such decisions"? He answers that "'might makes right' when we are talking about America playing Gap Leviathan." And when the French get in a snit, what then? "[I]f the other Core powers want a greater say in how we exercise that power, they simply need to dedicate enough defense spending to develop similar capabilities." In the meantime, "America will need to act unilaterally inside the Gap on a regular basis . . . because Ö quite frankly -- no other military power on the planet even comes close to matching our capabilities. [H]ave no delusions: the United States owns the only 'fist' in the business." Again, this sounds pretty realistic.

However, Barnett says the problem is that the United States cannot do Part 2 of a war all by itself. We can conquer anybody, but getting the conquered territory up and running requires lots of help. We need to get the rest of the Core to assist us in these ventures, not just "the Brits and Aussies" (i.e. the Anglosphere, a word Barnett does not use). How, do we get other Core powers to join us in the "follow-through effort"? Mostly, "we need to be more explicit with [our] allies about the better world we want to create whenever we undertake these necessarily difficult tasks." Bush et al failed to articulate this vision, hence isolating us unnecessarily.

I'm not exactly sure why we need the other guys to help us do Part 2, assuming we were to acquire the skills needed, but let's just take it that Barnett is right that we do need help. Barnett goes on to ask what happens if others do not buy our vision of a "happy ending", what then? Uncharacteristically, he does not provide a plausible seeming answer to this.

This points up one of my biggest problems with the book. The Core is an amalgam of countries with interests and beliefs which conflict. Yes, intra-Core warfare is highly unlikely, especially in the "Old Core". But explaining ourselves more carefully before we invade somewhere in the Gap is not ever going to make the Russians or the French or the Chinese support us. These countres have learned over the centuries to survive in a harsh, zero-sum world in which their own unique and prized identities were always in constant, mortal danger. All of these ancient countries resent American power. All of them want more freedom of action in the World. All perceive the United States as in some degree hostile to their interests. None of these countries wants to blow up a trading partner, or get in a war with another powerful country. But any of them could very well want to see the United States suffer some spectacular failure in the Gap because they may well believe that such an outcome would enhance their own status and opportunities. The Core is still a realm of zero-sum competition for some of the players. Shrinking the Gap is not a project they are going to want to invest a nickel in if the USA will do the heavy lifting anyway. And there is always the chance the USA will suffer some exploitable setback while policing the Gap. Many countries would, sensibly enough from their perspective, rather stand on the sidelines and see what opportunities emerge from the smoke when the USA ventures into the Gap. Barnett is aware of this dynamic, but I think it is more important than he apparently does.

This leads me to another related point, which is something which Barnett hints at, but is not explicit about. As I read the book, I repeatedly thought, "the Core of the Core is the Anglosphere." The Core "rule sets" which Barnett refers are classically those of Anglo-American liberalism -- representative democracy, apolitical militaries, strong sovereigns with delimited powers, flexible common law, free trade, free markets, openness to immigrants, economic dynamism and openness to change. These values and institutions were spread around the world by the maritime trading powers, Britain, then America. I think Barnett is therefore mistaken when he says that the United States is "globalizations godfather, its source code, its original model", "its first great multinational state and economic union". He acknowledges that the USA restarted a previously derailed globalization in 1945. However, I would attribute more than he does to this older globalization of the 19th Century and earlier. (See Kevin H. O'Rourke, Jeffrey G. Williamson,Globalization and History: The Evolution of a Nineteenth-Century Atlantic Economy). So, contra Barnett, the true "first great multinational state and economic union" was the British Empire, which we were once part of. It was this first globalization, which was ruined in 1914, which laid much of the foundation of the globalizing order the USA picked up in 1945. The "source code" Barnett is looking for is therefore not the architecture of the early Cold War Wise Men. They put upper stories on a structure that stared much earlier, whose foundations go back to the middle ages in England. This very ancient civilization originated in England, and is the source of the liberal order established in its colonies, and which is the source of the "rule set" which is now spreading around the world.

Why does this remote ancestry matter, since Barnett is addressing what the United States should be doing now? Because to "shrink the Gap" we need to understand how the Core became the Core in the first place -- a process which began in a particular place and time, i.e. England in the Middle Ages. (See Alan MacFarlane's wonderful books The Riddle of the Modern World, and its sequel The Making of the Modern World: Visions from the West and East.) (And while you are at it, pre-order Jim Bennett's forthcoming book on the Anglosphere.) We need to accurately understand the foundations of our political and economic success -- our "rule sets" in Barnett's parlance -- if we wish to understand what it will take to "shrink the Gap", i.e. to build states and to spread the benefits of our values and institutions around the world.

The fact that the dominant "rule sets" we hope to spread into the gap are Anglo-American is yet another source of intra-Core tension. These Anglo-American values and institutions enjoy at best mixed popularity in Old Europe. France in particular does not like "Anglo-Saxon" liberalism. (See this earlier post, citing Walter Russell Mead's review essay of recent French books.)

On the military side, Barnett repeatedly and accurately points out that Britain, Australia and the United States are reliable allies who are increasingly intermeshed and interoperable. This is the Anglosphere in arms. While Uncle Sam is the Leviathan, these junior powers continue to make disproportionate contributions. (The United States and Canada are joined at the hip economically, though Canada has long remained in our shadow militarily. Even so, we have a long-standing defensive alliance (NORAD) with Canada.) So, nothing in Barnett contradicts the notion that the Anglosphere is the core of the Core in terms of institutions and values, strength of alliances with the USA, or military capabilities. He just does not focus on it, or the ongoing intra-Core tensions this fact will continue to provoke.

Barnett mentions astutely notes that of the "New Core" countries, "China is the most worrisome" and India is the most promising." I think he gets this almost exactly right.

China faces the biggest challenge to changing its "rule set" -- moving away from one party rule. The Party is maintaining itself in the saddle by playing up nationalism and by bribing the People's Liberation Army with rhetoric and funding which keep the PLA dreaming and planning its big showdown with the USA over Taiwan. Barnett notes that the "rule set fallout from a United States-China conflict" would "effectively bar[] Beijing from stable Core membership for the foreseeable future." That is correct in my view. Let us hope the hard-faced men in Beijing manage to ride the tiger and not get into a war with the USA. Even if they "win" it will be a disaster for all parties. China can make the world a monumentally better place, or do horrendous damage, and it is all a matter of luck how the Party oligarchs handle the next few decades. I wish there was a way to put more certainty into the equation, but I don't see it. Offer a decade of the rosary daily for things to go well in China. (Yes I am literally suggesting you pray for this. I do.)

And India. One of Barnett's most unusual insights is his awareness of the critical importance of India. This is a point I have long believed and few others seem to focus on it. Barnett intriguingly mentions India as a "former colony" of Britain in the same breath with Australia, and even refers to India as "a crucial military partner" of the United States. Barnett sees India moving more and more toward the Core Anglophone states, both economically and militarily, a point made several times on this blog. He quotes approvingly a comment that India is "the most important country for the future of the world" because "if globalization succeeds in a democratic society where half the population is impoverished and one-quarter is Muslim, then it can succeed anywhere". I don't exactly agree. India will succeed relatively early and briskly precisely because it is a former British colony, which has a large population with a facility with English, a large and relatively wealthy diaspora population which wants to return and invest in India, a functioning democracy and a fairly well-functioning court system a relatively competent and law-abiding military all of which it inherited from Britain. India is not a long shot to succeed at globalizing, once it abandons the socialism it also inherited from Britain, it is an odds-on favorite to do very well indeed. (See the much-discussed essay Can India Overtake China?.)

Barnett offers a nice rebuttal to the claim often made by British scholars (e.g. Niall Ferguson, Paul Kennedy, Paul Johnson) that we are in fact (or ought to be) an "Empire". This is a pet peeve of mine, and Barnett pithily points out in his own unique consultant-speak that Empires are about "maximal rule sets" where the globalized world order America is establishing is about "minimal rule sets". (At some point I'll finish a partially written post in lawyer-speak about why the United States is not an empire, but Barnett's riposte will have to hold you for now.)

Barnett makes a two-pronged argument for America exerting itself to shrink the Gap. On the negative side, he points out that Gap is the source of disorder, criminality, terrorism and other Bad Things in the world, and this is only going to get worse unless conditions there improve. So, we need to do it to protect ourselves. On the affirmative side he makes an impassioned and evidently sincere argument that the United States, to be true to its own patriotism and its own destiny must help to spread the blessings it enjoys to the rest of the world, to end "disconnectedness" and bring everyone into the globalized Core. He addresses many of the obvious counter-arguments, which discussion I won't summarize here. He forthrightly says that American lives will be lost in the process and that it is a cause which is worth that price. I'm not sure that he is right because I'm not sure that "connectivity" is a cause which can inspire the Jacksonian core of America to go to war, or that they will perceive need to bring order to the Congo to protect America in the long run. They have tended to want to stay home and only venture abroad to destroy specific threats. In Walter Russell Mead's parlance, Barnett is offering a modernized Wilsonianism, an approach which has never enjoyed strong majority support. Also, I found myself asking whether this venture is this really something which is demanded by our founding principles and our very identity? Barnett has not fully convinced me it is. But he'll keep writing and I'm still listening.

The practicality aspect in particular concerns me. I'm also not sure we really can pull off the kind of rock-bottom nation-building which would be necessary in the worst parts of the Gap. Does this mean millions of people are condemned to tyranny or poverty or both? Maybe. Not by me. By history, by fate, maybe. I wish it were otherwise. Maybe it is. Maybe very great improvements can be made for the lives of vast masses of people, even if the United States has to conquer the places to bring it about. Barnett has not yet convinced me it is possible. (Francis Fukuyama's book on state-building, which I read and hope to write about on the blog, takes up this question.) And if it is a long-shot, I don't want our soldiers dying in the mud for it. But I am open to hearing and seeing more arguments on this point from Barnett and others, because he may be right about the scope of what is possible. Iraq is a test case, even though it is not the test he would have preferred.

Another facet of the book seems mistaken to me. Barnett's Gap is all one color. Core, Gap. Two zones. Now, such a bipartite division is a useful simplifying tool as far as it goes. But just as I think there is a Core-of-the-Core (the Anglosphere, potentially eventually including India), I think there is a heart of darkness in the Gap -- the Arab Middle East. Barnett hates this idea. In Pentagon-speak, this represents a focus on the so-called "Arc of Instability", and is code language for keeping a lid on the oil-producing regions of the world. That issue aside, and even accepting Barnett's framework generally, the most threatening part of the Gap is this region -- Islam famously has "bloody borders". We have a huge population surge there, with many young men who have no opportunities in horribly stunted economies, oil revenue which has allowed exposure to the Core and access to its products and weapons without having to adopt its values and institutions, a popular and violent ideological mutation of Islam which presents a particularly serious menace, a strong aversion to much of the Core's liberal values based upon even a more benign interpretation of Islam, and the problem that we are reliant on the material located under the surface of these places. Whether spreading "connectivity" into this area is going to lead to pacifying it is a very open question. It is just as likely to provoke a violent response. And we cannot choose to ignore what happens there, as we can and do about places like Burundi. We have to take an interest in these places. Barnett has not convinced me that a program for dealing with the Gap generally (1) will work in the Arab Middle East, or (2) will not be a distraction from the most urgent menaces we face, which do originate there. We need to focus on the primary danger first, and if we eventually get to Colombia and Zaire and Burma, good. But the recruiting grounds for a future Mohammad Atta and his colleagues has to be dealt with first. If the Gap is to be shrunk, if it can be shrunk, we should start there for our own good.

Barnett has many interesting things to say about the changes which will be necessary in the military and other arms of government to carry out the tasks he is proposing. His proposal that the military be divided into a Leviathan force, to fight wars, and a SysAdmin force to manage the peace, seems like a wise course. The great fear the military has is that it will become diluted if it gets into too many ancillary roles. If we do it his way, one part of the military can retain a total focus on shattering America's foes without too much distraction. It could stay focused on high- and medium-intensity operations. As Steven Biddle put it in his brilliant recent book, our enemies only resort to unconventional warfare because we have such an overwhelming edge in conventional warfare. We should make absolutely sure we maintain that. The way to square the circle is to create an arm of the military which has the specific job of supervising the post-war phase. This force, as Barnett notes, would be composed of older personnel, would have more of a police function, would have a range of reconstruction skills, would have a high level of interagency cooperation, and would otherwise possess distinct capabilities which did not overlap with Leviathan. (Incidentally, Leviathan is a darn cool name. We need to come up with something better for SysAdmin.) Building the SysAdmin force makes sense to me whether or not we make transforming the Gap our primary focus.

This relates to a point I have thought about a lot. Our Army is always, always, always surprised when it has to do occupation, nation-building and constabulary work. They never learn. They don't want to learn. They refuse to prepare or to commit resources or people to the task. They want to spend money on fancy weapons, train for and fight "proper" wars, and come home. But it rarely works out that way. This persistent, culpable negligence is something the military really needs to deal with. (See this essay, and this one for good books on lessons learned the hard way and then ignored.) We cannot afford to relearn for the umpteenth time these same hard lessons.

There are a lot of reasons why this has repeatedly happened. (1) The military is properly focused on the biggest dangers, and defeating those. Insurgencies are not perceived as existential threats the way the Wehrmacht or the Red Army were. You can lose Vietnam and survive. If you fail to defeat the blitzkreig coming down both sides of the autobahn into the Fulda Gap, you have lost everything. (2) The military is driven by budgets, and counterinsurgencies don't have many big-ticket purchases associated with them. (3) The military is driven by career-enhancing postings, and counterinsurgency operations have few glamorous, resume-building opportunities. A victory is when nothing happens. And they offer many, many opportunities for career-destroying mistakes. So, the expertise always evaporates. No one wants to go near this stuff. With good reason. That is why political leadership is necessary to make the soldiers think about, equip for, train for, and do well the distasteful but necessary things they don't want to do. Barnett's proposed SysAdmin force would be an institutional home for these capabilities and this knowleged, and it would be composed of a group of people who would lobby for their organization and its budgets.

(The military is already thinking somewhat along these lines. See this fascinating article, which proposes something akin to Barnett's SysAdmin force. The author proposes an interagency government task force to be attached to each Marine expeditionary unit and Army brigade, particularly in urban combat, so that the reconstruction process can start in the immediate aftermath of the fighting, even during the fighting.)

This post is insanely long and it could be a lot longer. Go read Barnett's book.

Here is the second blog, more specifically on the Sys Admin concept:

August 22, 2004

Further Thoughts on Barnett's Proposed SysAdmin Force and State-Building

My previous post about Thomas Barnett's book The Pentagon's New Map was so well-received (see the comments to that post), that I decided I'd put down a few further thoughts on it.

Barnett's call for a distinct SysAdmin force to handle peace-keeping, stability operations, nation-building, etc. is probably his best idea. These tasks will not go away. We can either do them well or do them badly. We can either allow them to erode our military's core function of war-fighting, by misusing a war-fighting military to undertake tasks it is not trained or equipped to do, or make sure we have the full range of capabilities in place. The very good article Why Great Powers Fight Small Wars Badly. Its author, Maj. Robert M. Cassidy makes this point.

[t]he military organizations of great powers Öembrace the big-war paradigm, and because they are large, hierarchical institutions, they generally innovate incrementally. This means that great-power militaries do not innovate well, particularly when the required innovations and adaptations lie outside the scope of conventional war. In other words, great powers do not win small wars because they are great powers: their militaries must maintain a central competence in symmetric warfare to preserve their great-power status vis-‡-vis other great powers; and their militaries must be large organizations. These two characteristics combine to create a formidable competence on the plains of Europe or the deserts of Iraq. However, these two traits do not produce institutions and cultures that exhibit a propensity for counter-guerrilla warfare.

Moreover, however dire the need for low-intensity and reconstruction capabilities may be, the Big War capabilities must be created and maintained, a point which Barnett is very clear about.

Steven Biddle puts it very well in his brilliant recent book, Military Power: Explaining Defeat and Victory in Modern Battle. Biddle's focus is on what he calls "mid- to high-intensity conflict", i.e. conventional warfare in "the middle part of the spectrum ranging from guerilla warfare at the low end to global thermonuclear war at the high end." He then asks: "Why this focus? Is this just irrelevant 'old thinking' in an ere of counterterrorist warfare, ethnic conflict, coercive strategic bombing, and weapons of mass destruction (WMD)?" The answer:

The answer is no. While major conventional war is only one among many important missions, it remains far more important than some now suppose, and it will be for the foreseeable future. It will also remain the most expensive mission to fulfill, it will remain the central purpose for the majority of the U.S. military, and it will continue to occur between other parties in other parts of the world.

In the emerging war on terrorism, for example, counterintelligence and police work against terrorists hiding in the shadows will be accompanied by periodic major warfare against states who harbor them. Ö

[A]mong America's most powerful escalatory threats is the ability topple regimes by invading and taking political control of their territory -- that is by fighting and winning a major conventional theatre war. Ö Even where this ultimate sanction is unused, its existence makes other more coercive means more effective Ö

Nor are concerns with major warfare limited to great and regional powers, or wholly superseded by ethnic disputes, guerilla warfare, or other low-intensity conflicts elsewhere. The recent wars in Bosnia, Croatia, Eritrea, Zaire/Congo, Rwanda, Azerbaijan and Kuwait were all mid- to high-intensity conflicts I which combatants sought to take and hold territory in conventional ways.

So, we clearly need Leviathan and will continue to do so for the imaginable future -- probably forever.

However, we do not yet have a well-developed suite of low-intensity capabilities to complement Leviathan. Major Cassidy cites to a report from the United States Institute of Peace, which contains excerpts of interviews with senior U.S. Army officers who participated in operations in Bosnia. "The USIP report also concluded that peace operations are the new paradigm of conflict that will confront the army in future deployments as more failed states emerge and peace enforcement and nation-building become staples of the senior military leadership diet.'"

The USIP report quotes General Shinseki as saying:

Army doctrine-based training prepared him for warfighting and leadership at all levels, but ìthere wasn't a clear doctrine for stability operations. We are developing it, using the Bosnia experience, to define a doctrine for large stability operations. But it is this absence of a doctrine for a doctrine-based institution that you walk into in this environment. There you are in a kind of roll-your-own situation.

Cassidy also quotes "[a] study, [in which] the former Implementation Force chief of staff expressed the need to "build a military capable of many thingsónot just the high end." That study, A Force for Peace and Security U.S. and Allied Commanders' Views of the Military's Role in Peace Operations and the Impact on Terrorism of States in Conflict(1999) is here. A more recent update of the report is here. These studies, which I have only skimmed, appear to give a good overview of what the SysAdmin force would, at least in part, look like.

"Rolling your own" is something we cannot do in the future. The postwar situation in Iraq has a distinct "roll your own" feel to it. It is imperative that the United States do better at these things.

These same concerns are also addressed in this recent article, The Army's Dilemma, which concludes:

It is essential to remember that the US Army, the premier land force of the worldís sole superpower, must maintain primarily a warfighting focus in its culture, organization, training, and modernization plans. That is unassailable as the Armyís central focus. The issue for the Army is one of balance. Given the changing realities in how the United States will conduct future joint operations, plus the fact that mid- to low-intensity missions will clearly dominate in the coming decade or more (and the Army is the optimal force for such missions), the Army has to reexamine how it will balance its traditional focus on high-end combat operations with the need to perform the other missions that will predominate in the coming years.



Answering this question is exactly what Barnett is doing, with his suggestion a separate force with its own identity "to perform the other missions". These authors suggest that the resolution is "Önothing less than a cultural change, and these are neither lightly undertaken nor easily accomplished, particularly in conservative military organizations." I like Barnett's idea better. Keep the Leviathan culture just like it is. It is good at what it does. If you need a different culture to do a different job then create a different entity which can embody that different culture. Barnett's proposal makes a lot more sense. Let the warriors be warriors. When you really need a warrior, nothing else quite does the trick.

A breakthrough for Barnett's sales pitch in the Pentagon will come when the Army realizes that SysAdmin is not a threat to their warrior culture. Rather, it is the only way for them to preserve their warrior culture.

It occurs to me that this need to undertake two functions, one fighting major wars, one dealing with lesser contingencies in the Gap, has some analogy to a historical case. Specifically, Britain's performance in the last 150 years or so sheds some light on what the United States is going to need to do in the future. (And even if the analogy is not so strong, it is an interesting digression so sit still and read it.)

The very short version is this. Britain rose to preeminence in the mid-19th Century and started the 20th Century as a very wealthy and influential world power. It lost its Empire and became a second rate power as a result of costly participation in major wars. Some of this decline was inevitable, possibly. But the way it happened was not. Britain had two distinct groups of security challenges, (1) policing its Empire and the Empire's frontiers, and (2) deterring and if necessary defeating major-power threats to its Empire or to Britain's home island itself. It did the first task decently well and cost-effectively and humanely, at least in comparison to other colonial powers. But as a consequence of the disastrous human and material costs, and initial defeats, in the major wars it was compelled to fight, Britain could no longer sustain its Imperial enterprise. The British failed to master what Biddle calls medium- to high-intensity war. They failed to make the necessary investment to build continental-scale military forces prior to either world war. Despite early, episodic insights into modern warfare, the British failed to develop appropriate doctrine or equipment and failed to teach, buy and train as needed. The lessons about charging machine guns that they taught the Sudanese dervishes at Omdurman were lost on them. (See Daniel R. Headrick'sThe Tools of Empire: Technology and European Imperialism in the Nineteenth Century.) The lessons they learned about attacking infantry armed with magazine rifles, which they learned the hard way from the Boers (and which were captured in Swinton's Defense of Duffer's Drift) were lost. The British thus failed to acquire an army which could deter Germany in 1914, or which could fight as effectively as possible if committed to battle.

The British by the end of World War I had made huge strides in developing doctrine, tactics and equipment (e.g. tanks, which they invented) needed to survive and to attack and to prevail in modern warfare.

(See Paddy Griffith's Battle Tactics of the Western Front: The British Army's Art of Attack, 1916-18.) The British proceeded to squander all of this knowledge, won at the cost of hundreds of thousands of lives, during the period before World War II. Even the victories of the last 100 days in 1918 were forgotten as soon as possible and only the massacre on the Somme was remembered. In light of these memories and its pre-existing biases, the possibility of fighting the Third Reich was greeted in the 1930s with horror. The British leadership recoiled from that prospect and sought technological panaceas such as "strategic bombing". So they again failed to create adequate military power to deter war or to wage it in a tolerable fashion if deterrence failed. When they were compelled to go onto the Continent after all in 1939, they had to enter that conflict in a condition even less well-prepared than they had been in 1914. They extemporized, and that doesn't work against professionals. They were repeatedly smacked silly by the Germans. They never completely got the hang of major, high-intensity war, and the British army generally performed poorly most of the time throughout World War II. The section in Russell A. Hart's recent masterwork Clash of Arms describes this inter-war failure by Britain in harsh but fair detail. (If you read one work of military history in the next year, read this one.) In other words, the British Army's institutional bias was a large factor in their disastrous performance in and preparation for the major wars against Germany, both of which they did not so much "win" as barely survive. (A classic book on this topic which I read recently is Michael Howard's The Continental Commitment: The Dilemma of British Defense Policy in the Era of the Two World Wars.)

The United States must not and will not follow in Britain's path, of course. We must always maintain Leviathan and keep it current and devote the human and material resources needed to make Leviathan second to none. We must always have a force which can deter conventional war, or prevail if deterrence fails, or make credible threats and deliver on those threats if necessary. We are however, faced with the challenging task of learning to do things Leviathan cannot do, things that the British used to do fairly well -- police and build institutions in what Barnett calls the Gap.

The British Army in the 20th century was too distracted by and bound up with its Imperial policing role, its proto-SysAdmin role. It did not want to do high-intensity warfare, i.e. spend the money and effort to learn to be Leviathan. To the old-time British army "normal" soldiering was running around in Waziristan or Somaliland or in the highlands of Burma. Our Army's institutional bias is the other way -- it has no nostalgia for chasing the Apaches or the Moros (to say nothing of the Phoenix Program). It's hallowed memory is of the clattering, green juggernaut which rolled over the Wehrmacht in 1944-45. Frankly, if there must be bias, ours is better. Better to mishandle the threats which are not existential. But even better than that, and best of all, would be to create a military which is organized to carry out well all of the tasks which it is ordered to undertake. The knowledge of how to carry out the low-intensity end of the spectrum exists. A distinct arm of the military charged with those functions is Barnett's best suggestion, and I think we may see it come into being. I hope so. (But call it something other than "System Administrators". Give it a more appealing name. Send all suggestions directly to Barnett. Ha.)

Of course, Barnett wants his SysAdmin team to do more than win counter-insurgency struggles. In fact, they may not get involved until Leviathan has finished at least the heaviest part of that heavy lifting. SysAdmin's true tasks would get underway as the shooting died down, and it began to function as a security force, and to build a local police force, and then schoolhouses and hospitals Ö . Barnett wants it to have a large inter-agency component, be multi-lingual and deal with foreign governments and NGOs. "The SysAdmin force will not be in a hurry to leave, and will remain until the locals are ready to assume control or the UN mission is up and running. All the broken windows will be fixed before this force departs, and the American public will come to understand that these are the troops who remain after we bring the boys home." I could quote at length his description of the proposed SysAdmin force, which is fascinating.

One element of the SysAdmin force that Barnett doesn't mention is that it could become Ö popular. There are a lot of people who want to "make a difference" and have some adventure in their lives, but are not young and rock-hard enough to be a paratrooper. For one thing, old guys like me, too old for Leviathan, could maybe work for it. (I wonder if they need any monolingual 41 year old lawyers with prostate problems? Honey, great news! I'm taking an 80% pay cut and we're going to Somalia!)

This all begs the question I raised in the prior post of whether we really know what the Hell we are doing if we try to do state-building. Do we really know how to get Gap territories organized for participation in the Core? I will mention here that Francis Fukuyama's short book State-Building: Governance and World Order in the 21st Century. I read this a few months ago. I strongly recommend it. (So does Max Boot, in this review.) (I'll note that Fukuyama is a very reliable writer. All his books are good. He is condemned by those who haven't read him for his "End of History" thesis, but he is more right than wrong even on that point, properly understood.)

Fukuyama appears to summarize much of the current wisdom on the topic, with many good footnotes to current scholarship. He breaks "state-building " out into building various interconnected institutions, some harder than others to construct. He makes a distinction between "strength of state institutions" and "scope of state functions". The ideal is a strong state with limited scope -- i.e. a state which is very effective at its core competencies (law enforcement, protecting property rights, honest and efficient tax collection being rock-bottom basics) and which does not get too mixed up in other stuff. The old Soviet Union had too much scope and too much strength in the wrong areas. Zaire has neither. Both are bad. Fukuyama refers to four "aspects of stateness", all of which must function, in increasing difficulty of importation or imposition: "(1) organizational design and management, (2) political system design, (3) basis of legitimization, (4) cultural and structural factors." He notes an important fact -- foreigners who go into Gap locations frequently destroy local institutions in their zeal to quickly do good. For example, rather than try to reform a corrupt, under-funded and incompetent local public health agency, they just step in and take over the function, hiring the few able locals. The local capacity withers entirely. Fukuyama also notes the basic challenge of measuring public sector outputs, a point with larger application.

All in all, Fukuyama's book offers the unspectacular but positive news that we know a fair amount about state-building on the level of administrative and political organization, but less on providing legitimacy and the cultural end of the spectrum. So, there are some things we don't know and others we can't know, and if we undertake these tasks we can count on them being difficult and providing us with surprises. A particular complicating factor is the extent to which cultural factors prevent the "connectivity" which Barnett sees as critical. In other words, if you can install the top of Fukuyama's chart, the superstructure, can you also generate or impose a cultural foundation which will support it if what is there already is not working? How hard is it to have foreigners create a government and then have people who live there think it is legitimate? Anyway, Fukuyama's short book is a good guide to the challenges that the SysAdmin force will be facing in the mid- and late-occupation phase.

Another point more specifically related to this blog and its small-l libertarian cousins comes to mind. Fukuyama quotes Milton Friedman, who said after the fall of the Soviet Union that the best course was "privatize, privatize, privatize". Friedman later conceded that he "was wrong" and "the rule of law is probably more basic than privatization." This points to a larger point, which is the growing consensus of the imperative need for effective government, and how its absence is the worst thing going on in the world. Those of us of a libertarian cast of mind need to adjust our thinking somewhat. We reflexively think: Government Bad. I know I do. Plus as Fukuyama points out, most of the 20th Century was a tale of bad deeds by too powerful governments. However, the mere fact that a state is a state does not make it "Our Enemy", as Albert Jay Nock famously called it. The State may never be our friend, but its necessity is apparent, especially when you look at places which don't have one. There is an optimal middle ground on this. Providing the Gap with Good Government is the foundation needed to get the people in these areas on the road to a better life, and ourselves a more peaceful world. How much we can really do to make this happen is an open question.

This need for functioning government, and much else of value, is summarized very well and in detail in Martin Wolf's brilliant new book Why Globalization Works. (Stellar review in the Economist, here.) The one sentence version: "Good markets need good governments." (Once I finish this book, I may have more to say about it on this blog.) Wolf's section on the initial wave of globalization, its collapse in 1914-45 and its Postwar resurgence is superb, and worth the price of the book alone. Wolf is the Chief Financial Commentator at the Financial Times. His recent Hayek Memorial Lecture is an appetizer-sized portion of the book, which should make you go buy it and read it.

Another book which I just finished reading also focuses on these issues -- but it looks at the true "first round" of state building in the Middle Ages -- Joseph Strayer's On the Medieval Origins of the Modern State. Strayer wrote the book with the state-building of the decolonization-era then going on in the 1950s in the background. In one comment on contemporary affairs, Strayer noted that those former colonies had armies but not much else. This did not bode well at the time, and subsequent events have not been happy. The first things the early kings of England and France put in place were law courts, both to impose peace and to sort out property disputes and enforce property rights, and they organized tax collection so it was systematic rather than predatory. The very first functions of the very first (and most successful and longest-lasting) modern states were the same core functions which Fukuyama identifies as the basics for state-building today. Some things don't change. Or not much, anyway.

That's it. Finally, Lexington Green got PNM off his chest. Like many of the Chicago Boyz, I am very grateful that he made such a supreme effort. I take it as a huge compliment to the book.

Here's today's catch:

ïì[op-ed] Stop Blaming Putin and Start Helping Him: Unless peace is made in Chechnya, the war may spread,î by Fiona Hill, New York Times, 10 September, p. A27.

ïìOdds of Bird-Flu Epidemic Rise As First Thai Death Is Confirmed,î by Gautam Naik et. al, Wall Street Journal, 10 September, p. A2.

ïìA Farsighted New Fortress Mentality on Wall Street: Relocation, Relocation, Relocation,î by Landon Thomas Jr., New York Times, 10 September, p. C1.

ïìIntelligence Test: On Ground in Iraq, Soldier Uses Wits To Hunt Insurgents: Sgt. McCary, Fluent in Arabic, Improvises Tactics in Field; Not the War He Trained For; Deception Within the Rules,î by Greg Jaffe, Wall Street Journal, 10 September, p. A1.

ï ìPowell Says Rapes and Killings in Sudan Are Genocide,î by Steven R. Weisman, New York Times, 10 September, p. A3.

ïìPolls Suggest War Isn't Hurting Bush: Mounting Deaths in Iraq Have Not Resulted in Major Backlash in Public Opinion,î by John F. Harris and Thomas E. Ricks, Washington Post, 10 September, p. A10.

Helping Putin means listening to what he's saying

ïì[op-ed] Stop Blaming Putin and Start Helping Him: Unless peace is made in Chechnya, the war may spread,î by Fiona Hill, New York Times, 10 September, p. A27.

What was Putin trying to say in his angry press conference on Monday?

Clearly, he was sending a message that he needs the United States and Europe to pay careful attention as he responds to the massacre. More specifically, he was saying three things: first, the situation in the North Cauccasus is no longer just about Chechnya but involves dozens of potential ethnic and religious conflicts across the region; second, the West must stop simply criticizing me for the war in Chechnya without offering me any realistic solutions; and third, some things you are doing are making it more difficult for me to resolve the situation.

Hill then goes on to say this is what Putin needs from us:

1) Chechen independence can't be on the table

2) Putin should not be pushed to negotiate with the former Chechen president, Aslan Maskhadov, who is used up as a unifying force within the Chechen population, and

3) We need to share intell with the Russian to help them "discern the links between the Beslan terrorists and others operating in Europe" (which are known by many European states) and we could "offer Russian troops and police opportunities to train alongside their European counterparts on border security and antiterrorism strategies."

Hmm. Sounds like some Sys Admin work to me. Raising security practices among Seam States and sharing intell across the Core as a whole.

I may have to write another book . . .

The avian flu: be afraid, be very afraid

ïìOdds of Bird-Flu Epidemic Rise As First Thai Death Is Confirmed,î by Gautam Naik et. al, Wall Street Journal, 10 September, p. A2.

I leave you with just the opening paras, which is all you need:

International health authorities say the death on Wednesday of a young man in Thailand from bird flu provides another worrying sign that the world may be edging toward a long-awaited influenza pandemic against which humans have little protection.

Tests have confirmed that the death of the 18-year-old man was caused by the H5N1 bird-flu virus, the first such human casualty in Thailand since the disease re-emerged in Asia in July.

If this virus mutates toward the ability of being able to jump quickly from person to person, we could be talking an epidemic of very big proportions. Everyone now knows that the connectivity of the global economy means an epidemic can travel very quickly, primarily through air travel (as all System Perturbations seem to do, yes? Whether the time bombs are the planes themselves or the sick bodies within). So we may be looking at the biggest flu since the Spanish flu epidemic of 1918 killed 20 million.

Inconceivable? No. Would it perturb the system something fierce? Yes.

And it will be a war to tame it if it does come--this pandemic. It will be war within the context of everything else like nothing we've ever experienced to date.

New rules on a new Wall Street

ïìA Farsighted New Fortress Mentality on Wall Street: Relocation, Relocation, Relocation,î by Landon Thomas Jr., New York Times, 10 September, p. C1.

Just an interesting article about how big Wall Street firms now regularly wargame terrorist attacks on downtown Manhattan.

An amazing idea. Gee, I wonder who thought of that?

That would be Cantor Fitzgerald in their historic series of "economic security exercises" with the Naval War College. The same Cantor that somehow survived 9/11 despite losing the bulk of its HQ employees on 9/11. [see the accompanying story in the Times, "Firm That Was Hit Hard on 9/11 Grows Anew," by Riva D. Atlas, p. C4; and "'New Cantor Fitzgerald Now Looks to Compete," by Ann Davis and Aaron Lucchetti, Wall Street Journal, p. C1.]

But the biggest change on the "Street" belongs to that "Street" itself:

Indeed, of all the institutions on Wall Street, the exchange--which was forced to close for four business days after the attacks and was said in August to be a target of a terrorist threat--has enacted the most significant and far-reaching security and contingency plan.

New rules, a new way of doing business, and a new sense of the military-market nexus. Yeah, that's why I call 9/11 a System Perturbation, because it changed so much more than just the cityscape of lower Manhattan.

A glimpse at what it may take to be a Sys Admin officer

ïìIntelligence Test: On Ground in Iraq, Soldier Uses Wits To Hunt Insurgents: Sgt. McCary, Fluent in Arabic, Improvises Tactics in Field; Not the War He Trained For; Deception Within the Rules,î by Greg Jaffe, Wall Street Journal, 10 September, p. A1.

Another great article by good friend Jaffe. Here's the interesting passage:

Sgt. McCary graduated from Vassar College with a degree in French literature before enlisting in the Army in 2000. Before basic training, he had never touched a gun in his life. Because he had a college degree and a knack for languages, the Army sent him to its Defense Language Institute in Monterey, Calif., for Arabic instruction. He picked up the language so quickly that his instructors nicknamed him "the sponge."

He's been working an insurgent stronghold near Fallujah since last fall. More:

In the last year, the sergeant has conducted more than 1,000 interrogations of Iraqi insurgents, trying to figure out how they are organized and where they are hiding. He's walked hundreds of patrols, dodged rocket-propelled-grenade fire and watched friends--both Iraqi and American--die grisly deaths. So far, 19 soldiers and three Iraqi translators in his battalion have been killed.

His presence on raids helped in efforts to bring in only Iraqis who had actual knowledge about the insurgency. It also had another benefit. Interrogating detainees in the first few minutes after capture allowed him to question suspects while they are disoriented and unable to construct a good alibi. He says his battalion is the only one he knows of that uses counterintelligence in this way. "I didn't realize how innovative we were until I started talking with friends from other units," he said.

Lt. Col Gerard Healy, an Army spokesman in the Pentagon, says it isn't unheard of for counterintelligence soldiers to accompany troops on raids. "But we don't have enough of these assets to use them in this war on a regular basis," he says.

Vasser.

French literature.

Hundreds of times walking the beat, getting to know his precinct.

1,000 interrogations and no bad photos, just real information.

Not unheard of, but we're desperately short of guys like this.

This is why when gray beards like Gen. Bob Scales says the Sys Admin concept is ludicrous, I have to wonder what planet he's on. I see a US Army desperately struggling to create just such a force right on the ground now in Iraq. Scales can say his Army will always be able to do both the warfighting and the cop-on-the-beat stuff, but tell me we have enough McCarys in this Army of One.

Powell crosses a rhetorical Rubicon on Sudan

ïìPowell Says Rapes and Killings in Sudan Are Genocide,î by Steven R. Weisman, New York Times, 10 September, p. A3.

Powell bites the bullet and in Congressional testimony says the "G" word with regard to Sudan. This is why it matters that he said this:

While the declaration has no immediate effect on the role or obligations of the United Nations, said Fred Eckhard, spokesman for the Secretary General, Kofi Annan, it could be viewed as tantamount to invoking Article 8 of the 1948 Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide--the first time that any nation had invoked that provision calling upon the United Nations to take action.

Hard to say which is more stunning: that we finally did this, or that this is the first time that Article 8 seems in danger of actually being invoked in all these years since WWII.

I credit Powell on this one. Good call. Here's hoping it has some effect on the rest of Core that needs to reach some level of caring on this that supercedes the non-stop bitching on Iraq.