China's tightens on technology, lightens on politics

■"China Tightens Web-Content Rules: Regulations Seek to Curb Information on New Sites As Internet Access Spreads," by Associated Press, Wall Street Journal, 26 September 2005, p. B3.

■" China Tightens Its Restrictions for News Media on the Internet," by Joseph Kahn, New York Times, 26 September 2005, pulled from web.

■"Media Counter Piracy in China In New Ways," by Geoffrey A. Fowler and Jason Dean, Wall Street Journal, 26 September 2005, p. B1.

■"China Plans to Allow Hong Kong a Bigger Voice in Choosing Its Leaders," by Keith Bradsher, New York Times, 25 September 2005, pulled from web.

China's Communist Party is going to try and censor the Internet just like it censors major newspapers and TV channels, applying the same standards for "appropriate" reporting and commentary. China has now over 100 million Internet users, second only to the U.S. In order to prevent the informal spreading of news stories considered harmful to the Party's interests, China will now require site owners to register with the government as a news agency before reposting material obtained elsewhere, like foreign media.

My sense is that these new restrictions will be defeated by the average Chinese in ways too clever to imagine right now but ones we'll all watch unfold in coming weeks and months. Any country whose pirating abilities are so pervasive that Hollywood blockbuster movies can be bought on its streets in DVD format the very same day such movies premier in the West (prompting Hollywood to release such new films in DVDs in China the same day they premier back home (can't beat them, then outsell them!)) will find ways around these laws. The Internet is a big playground, and life will find a way.

Meanwhile, the quest for truly representational democracy in Hong Kong is far from dead, and may have been given new life by Beijing. Like recent moves to expand the size of townships with direct local elections, we see the pattern of China tightening up on technology and connectivity with the outside world while lightening up on politics domestically. This is a devil's bargain. China must open up increasingly to the outside world in order to continue its rapid economic development, and as it does, average people will demand more say first on the local level (where Beijing is focusing its political reforms now) but ultimately on a larger, more national level.

In the end, China's internal integration process will dwarf its external one (yes, that's a line I use in BFA). The Party keeps pretending that it can control the former by offering incentives on the latter, but it's just likely to start that avalanche as it is to prevent it. You can't empower people economically and technologically and not expect them to want more freedom politically.

How much to outsource abortion?

■"Outsourced surgery has leg up on cost: 'Many foreigners Ö worry about safety standards,'" by Ramola Talwar Badam (AP), Indianapolis Star, 26 September 2005, p. A2.

Think about this: if medical tourism (surgery plus air fare abroad) is cutting rates on standard major surgeries by two-thirds, think of what it could do for something as simple and quick as an abortion?

Then think about how pointless it might be for a future Supreme Court to try and reverse Roe v. Wade. Decades ago, you had to be a rich woman to travel abroad for your "quiet" abortion. My bet is, if Roe v. Wade were reversed, we'd see a huge "abortion tourism" industry emerge that no one in America could control, no matter what laws we passed.

That's what globalization has done to America. We can't be isolationist even on something as seemingly a domestic issue as abortion.

Count on it.

The endgame on Iraq began a long time ago Ö

■"Antiwar Rallies in Washington and Other Cities ," by Michael Janofsky, New York Times, 25 September 2005, pulled from web.

■" How to Pitch the Military When a War Drags On?" by Timothy L. O'Brien, New York Times, 25 September 2005, pulled from web.

■"A Shift on Iraq: The Generals Plan a Slow Exit," op-ed by David Ignatius, , 26 September 2005, p. A23.

Antiwar rallies reflect a still small but growing sense of fatigue on Iraq, one that's reflected in the Pentagon's growing difficulty in recruiting as more and more personnel in the Guard and Reserves have cracked the code that SysAdmin work means they're far more likely to spend time deployed than in the old, familiar Cold War model.

Ignatius's op-ed on Abizaid's long-term plan to reduce the role and prominence and numbers of U.S. troops in Iraq reflects all these realities, but likewise the sheer passage of time and the build-up of effort to train Iraqi security troops. Critics will say Bush is pulling out in the face of defeat and low morale, but this was always the plan: train up the Iraqis and pull American troops off the streets and increasingly hide them in forts, letting the Iraqi security forces do the bulk fighting.

This is Musab al-Zarqawi's worst nightmare: the Americans safe behind their compound walls and everyday he's doing battle against Iraqis, or-more to the point-against Shiites increasingly backed by Iran, no friend to the global Salafi jihadist movement, being as it is exclusively Sunni in make-up. Meanwhile Kurdistan gets stronger and the "failed state" scenario for Iraq is reduced to its irreducible one-fifth outcome: the 20% of the population that's Sunni live an existence you wouldn't wish upon your worst enemy.

Pretty it ain't, but realistic it was always. Bush's critics may crow about the "failure" of "Jeffersonian democracy," but that asinine point won't be remembered by history. What will be remembered is that Saddam was taken down, the pretend state of Iraq returned to its constituent parts, and the Middle East was never the same again.

We got what we wanted in Iraq, and we triggered plenty of tumult and change in the region. Now that the endgame becomes obvious to critics and supporters alike, the real question we need to ask ourselves is, What do we seek to accomplish next in the region?

Not, Who do we invade next? Or what do we seek to prevent? But what do we seek to accomplish? What better Middle East are we working toward?

Bush's Greater Middle East Initiative seems to have been reduced to just a Lesser Iraq (Sunni) Compromise (i.e., we let the Kurds and the Shiites gang up both constitutionally and militarily on the battling Sunnis as the price for our reduced role). Perfectly fine dynamic, and very realistic, but what do we seek to accomplish beyond that narrow goal?

What is the Bush White House' big picture on the Middle East beyond the initial Big Bang of removing Saddam? Is it just long-term isolation of Iran? Because if that's all it is, that's just continuing a policy that's gotten us nowhere in a quarter century.

Surely Condi Rice is contemplating something-anything? She's got two-plus years and a pretty long leash, as SECSTATEs go, so what are we waiting for. Or is isolating Iran over WMDs all that there is from here on out?

But where are we going on Iran?

■"Empowering Iran," editorial, New York Times, 25 September 2005, pulled from web.

Smart op-ed with a killer opening para:

It's a great time to be an Iranian theocrat. American military power has removed your most dangerous foreign enemy, Saddam Hussein. American diplomatic strategy has delivered the lion's share of Iraqi political power and oil wealth to the Shiite religious parties you've financed and armed for years and which are now your grateful dependents. Russia, China and the nonaligned movement have been blocking any strong international action to slow down your rush to develop nuclear weapons technology. What's more, you've finally worn down and outmaneuvered those pesky reformist clerics who kept arguing for overtures to the Great Satan in Washington.

After the requisite statements about building a more unified Iraq and a more effective IAEA and pushing New Core allies like India and Russia harder to take tougher stances, we get to the real crux of the problem:

What may be most difficult for the administration is also the most critical requirement. Like it or not, Washington needs to start building up its own direct relationship with Iran, a country it has diplomatically shunned since the hostage crisis. The covert and indirect approaches Washington has relied on ever since then have succeeded only in diluting American influence and leaving American governments more ignorant about Iranian affairs than they can now afford to be.

The best argument for a change in approach is the total failure of the current strategy. A generation of demonizing and shunning Iran has left that country's most dangerous elements more powerful, domestically and regionally, than ever before.

Yes, yes, I read about something like this in Esquire a few months back. But definitely a bold break-through for the NYT!

Interesting feedback from Canadian officer

Got this email today:

Dr Barnett

I was amused to hear that you are considered a "raving maniac" at the

National War College. You are certainly not considered that by most of the

officers I've encountered in a variety of less prestigious circles, and

mostly here in Canada. Your work was introduced to me a year ago by Col

(now retired) Appleton who had recently returned from a posting in the USA

(and Iraq) during a briefing to his headquarters on the operational planning

process in Iraq. I started reading your articles, thought "SysAdmin -

that's what we've been trying to do for years," then noticed your ideas

cropping up in various other briefings. In July I also got to watch a

National Guard Colonel, during an after action review of a Partnership for

Peace style exercise in the Ukraine, hold up your Pentagon's New Map to the

assembled officers representing 19 nations and tell everyone in the room to

read it as it outlined how coalition operations would be done in the future.

Consider this more anecdotal evidence that you are getting through to the

next generation of decision makers.

Actually, I'm sure the opinion is not that uniform (pardon the pun). Got an email on Friday from a student at Naval War College and he assured me that "not everyone" on staff there that he's interacted with considers me nuts.

More seriously, the more positive response from foreign officers is something I describe in BFA, and it comes out exactly as it did from this guy: "Hey, we've been doing this for years!"

What's so important about that response? It says to America, we'd have plenty of friends for doing SysAdmin if only we'd move more in the direction of fielding a force of our own that's clearly more optimized for the job. It says, shrinking the Gap won't bankrupt the Defense Department because it won't be the only national defense ministry involved--if it rethinks/reimagines/revamps a bit on operations, how it recruits and handles personnel, etc.

My point: When we redefine the problem/solution set in this manner, we're no longer the lonely superpower. Plenty of countries and militaries want to help. People don't hate us, they're just very disappointed in a lot of choices since 9/11.

But in the end, they want us to succeed because we're all in this together.

Signposts - September 25, 2005

Signposts is a weekly digest of major op-ed and feature analyses from the blog of Thomas P.M. Barnett -- www.thomaspmbarnett.com/weblog -- and is distributed via email in html format.

Tom Barnett has "Died and gone to heaven."

He told me so himself. Called me on the phone just now, he did. . .

Dateline: Sunday morning, September 25, 2005, Lambeau Field

An hour or so ago, Tom shook hands with one of the Packer all-time greats--Jerry Kramer. Tom's son, Kevin, spotted him coming out of a control booth at Lambeau.

Good catch, Kevin.

Going, going, gone! It's a run from home!

Dateline: In the Shire, Indy, 24 September 2005

Get up tomorrow and help my son's school host a cross-country meet (got my metal fence stakes for the chute, and a small sledge at the ready). After Kev runs, we drive to Milwaukee and catch the Brewers against the Cardinals. Then we bunk at a local hotel, then we get up and drive to Green Bay for the game.

Then, back home on a long drive that night so Kev misses no school. My Leinie's will be few and front-loaded, so no crying in my beer if they lose three in a row to start the season!

I have no plans for newsletter essay this week (I know, I abdicate two weeks now), But I will begin my director's commentary series of blogs on BFA on Monday to make up for it. Newsletter will come out this week (I am assuming), with usual highlights, letters, and perhaps a guest essay (or just lotsa letters, cause I've been answering more than a few lately).

Sorry to skip out, but Packer weekends rule!

Good piece on the real remaining challenge of nation-building in Iraq

Here's the opening paras:

September 23, 2005
The Danger Next Door
By SETH G. JONES

THE Sept. 18 elections for Parliament and provincial councils were an important step in Afghanistan's march toward democracy. But now that progress is threatened by an increasingly violent insurgency that uses Pakistan as a staging area for attacks. Unless the United States and Pakistan take steps to eliminate this sanctuary, the security situation in Afghanistan will continue to deteriorate and undermine the country's fragile democracy.

This year has been the most violent in Afghanistan since the United States helped overthrow the Taliban government in 2001. The number of Americans killed so far in 2005 (74) is a 570 percent increase from 2001 and a 50 percent increase from 2004. In addition, the number of insurgent attacks against Afghan civilians has steadily increased each year since 2001.

Unlike the violence in Iraq, the fighting in Afghanistan is not the result of a local population deeply hostile to American forces. A 2004 opinion poll by the Asia Foundation showed that 65 percent of Afghans had a favorable view of the United States government, and 67 percent had a favorable view of the American military - findings supported by my own observations and data from trips to the region during the last three years.

Nor is the fighting in Afghanistan the result of a failing American political and military strategy. American conventional and Special Forces have conducted effective strike operations and civic action programs that have undermined Taliban, Qaeda and Hezb-i-Islami insurgents and their local support network in Afghanistan.

Instead, a complex support network in Pakistan is the key to the Afghan insurgency's survival. Taliban insurgents in southern Afghanistan get supplies and help in Pakistani provinces like North-West Frontier and Baluchistan. Numerous captured Taliban prisoners have said they received training in Pakistani areas like the Mansehra district. Even more troubling, evidence suggests that Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence directorate has helped Taliban insurgents . . .

Jones then goes on to list how we can work the Pakistan border issue. Good piece, found at: http://www.nytimes.com/2005/09/23/opinion/23jones.html

Kaplan's "classic imperialism" is just "preparing the battlefield" by good SysAdmin work

Kaplan's better judgments are on display here ("Classic Imperialism," WSJ, 23 Sept, p. A16), though, in trying to push his new book he oversells the material here by saying small mil-to-mil training missions deep in the Gap are the real essence of imperialism, not the overextended nation-building of Iraq and Afghanistan.

Frankly, it's a wasted argument better used to sell books than impart understanding. Because Kaplan believes the Gap really can't be shrunk, just kept down by "imperial grunts" and the local warriorts they co-opt through training, walking in their combat boots, eating each other's food, etc., he contents himself by wallowing in the glow of this very admirable activity and then elevating it beyond all strategic reason.

All fine and good to celebrate, but all Kaplan captures here is the low-end SysAdmin work that prepares the battlefield for struggles ahead or--if we're lucky--secures them without later Leviathan efforts because the private-sector development kicks in and the connectivity comes via trade, not military aid.

But since Kaplan pretty much doesn't see any of that good stuff happening, he constantly paints this picture of neverending "imperialsm" that merely extends the "keep the fight over there" mentality that drove a lot of strategic rationales for crisis response activities in the early 1990s after the Sovs disappeared and the services needed to justify themselves as relevant to the seemingly "flatter" security environment (if I may be so bold to borrow Friedman's term). Here, "flatter" would mean no peaks formed by great powers bent on military adventurism, so only small stuff is left.

Between reading this op-ed, his Atlantic Monthly article (also basically an excerpt), and scanning his book at an airport bookstore recently), I continue to admire his reporting on the low-end SysAdmin work (now done overwhelmingly by Special Ops guys spread out way too thin, increasingly needing to be done more and more by Marines and regular Army--one of my many judgments that gets me called a "raving maniac" by some), but likewise find tiresome his mistake of extrapolating a universe from his very narrow reporting perspective.

Simply put, Kaplan's soda-straw view (which I find to be, quite frankly, much like Michael Moore's--just from another angle), no matter how many SOF guys he hangs with on how many continents, is still a guide to nothing beyond tactics. That his work passes for strategic thought speaks to the very sad state of affairs in national security circles.

I have said it before and I used to teach it at a War College in every brief I gave: when the defense crowd abdicates strategic thought to journalists, we are totally screwed and deserve what we get. We don't just need good descriptions of how we're going to manage the world as we find it. We need good narratives for how we're going to make this world better. You can manage the former arguing so narrowly from a military perspective and get away with it. But to argue the latter you need a perspective of war within the context of everything else, not one that merely elevates the military perspective to "imperial" universality. Please! Leave that nonsense where it belongs--in the past.

Kaplan delivers the former, avoid him on the latter. And do not take his inabillity to move beyond his tactical view as evidence that any grand strategy is doomed to fail.

If Kaplan just sold himself as a great journalist, I would agree with those who praise him to the hilt within the U.S. military, but his tendency to extrapolate to the strategic from his exceedingly myopic tactical view ruins his material for me. In the end, I see his work doing more harm than good, and so I do not advise people to read it.

Too bad, say I, but chalk it up to the need for all journalists to be celebrities nowadays.

Two interesting definitions of capitalist China today

First one ("In China,That Ivy League Degree Isn't Gold: Some Venture Firms Seeking Talent Favor Homegrown Entrepreneurs,", by Rebecca Buckman, p. A1) speaks to trend that VCs (venture capitalists) looking for investment opportunities are increasingly favoring young-and-tough local capitalists over the returnees from the States, armed with their top school degrees.

I will admit, when I saw the headline, I feared I would read some piece that contradicted what I wrote about Chinese business generations in my China piece for the November issue of Esquire. There I basically said that Western businessmen tend to favor younger Chinese capitalists (second generation, so to speak) over the first generation unleashed by Deng's reforms, the older generation being too tainted by their socialist upbringing.

Rather than subverting my point, this piece only emphasizes it more, by saying that this second generation of younger, more pure Chinese capitalists is considered by the VCs as being superior to even their Western-educated contemporaries.

That means China has already become so capitalist generally that local knowledge trumps education--all other capitalist instincts being equal. Impressive, say I. China keeps surprising: stuff you figured you wouldn't be able to say for decades you end up being able to say in years--sometimes even months!

Second article tackles the question quite literally: "China's Private Sector Can Be a Boast--If It Has One," by Andrew Browne, p. C4). The first-ever Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) report on China's economy says the prviate-sector's share of GDP rose from 50% fin 1998 to 59% in 2003, suggesting an historic tipping point that makes a real turning point in the history of globalization.

Financial analysts from various firms pick numbers to the north and south of that total, going as high as 70% or as low as 30%. Naturally, much depends on definitions. There is the tendency of many true private-sector firms to "wear a red hat" for protection, thus calling themselves state-owned and taking on the appearances of one when really they're not.

Why this debate matters? Question is, Who owns the business cycle in China? State or companies?

One thing no one doubts: the private sector share is growing dramatically with time.

One scary factoid: Chinese passenger car factories are currently operating at just over 50% capacity. God help Detroit when those first Chinese-made cars start showing up.

If all comments were this astute, I'd put that function back on the blog . . .

From TM Lutas, who keeps me honest, in an email to me:

I haven't read the article you talked about here on the PRC's barefoot docs. I thus can't entirely be sure whether I'm misreading things or perhaps you are. The indiscriminate use of antibiotics is one of the biggest international public health threats we've got going, far outweighing the danger of SARS or even H5N1 which has got me scared to death already. The problem is that tossing out antibiotics when inappropriate is like providing combat training classes to gang members. It's just a very bad idea that's going to come back in spades to haunt us all.

In other words, if the doctors aren't trained sufficiently to know when *not* to give antibiotics, their actions will likely pick up the pace of new disease plagues in future, possibly beyond our ability to discover new antibiotics to replace the old ones. That's Gap enhancing, not Core enhancing behavior.

I do wonder if there's a meta-category for reforms that you think are going to help you get into the Core but really pull you further away from it. . .

The official word from State on Iraq each week . . .

This link (http://www.state.gov/p/nea/rls/rpt/iraqstatus/2005/c15442.htm) was provided to me by a Central Command officer who reads the blog. The site provides the Iraq Weekly Status Report. He said it is a "good document covering what is working and what is not."

It is an interesting PPT brief to peruse. Worth a look.

"Raving maniac" or "distinguished lecturer"? Same difference

Having just signed up to give a "distinguished lecture" at National Defense University, it's good to know my ideas haven't lost their capacity to spook people. I wouldn't want to become too accepted.

Got an email from a fellow author today who's a 20-year-plus USAF officer (retired, now in industry). After encouraging me to read about Col. John Boyd and stating his hope that I use his ideas in BFA (I do), he ended the piece by noting that he'd recently spoken with someone at the National War College (part of NDU) and asked him if he was familiar with my work. The response? "Everyone around here thinks he's a raving maniac."

My old hand then went on to say: "That tells me two things: a) You're incontrovertibly on the right track, otherwise they wouldn't be so worried about you, and b) If "everybody" thinks that way, then there's a helluva lot of group-think happening on the National War College faculty. You've struck a nerve---keep sticking it!"

You have to love emails like that!

I only hope I get a chance to sign that faculty member's book. . .

On a related note, got a nice thank you from the Office of the Secretary of Defense (not The Man, but one of the men in the office) for coming in to brief the new Secretary of the Navy nominee (whom I was impressed with) a couple of weeks back. The hand-written P.S. on the bottom read "I note the discussion made your blog."

No "cut it out" or "why I outta . . .!" Just "noted."

Me, I'm just glad they read the blog . . .

Neat constellation of opinions huh? Read by some, scorned by others. Brought in to brief senior PNT officials, couldn't keep my job at the Naval War College. NDU invites me as distinguished lecturer despite many (I'll assume not all) staff considering me a raving maniac. Some retired military officers think I'm dead on, others send me letters (more than once) offering to kick my ass--personally.

Striking nerves all right. Real "bringer of pain and delight," as they said on Star Trek.

The marathon teaching session in Denver at Executive Forum

Dateline: United flight from Denver to Indy, 22 September 2005

I will say, I have never encountered an executive teaching organization as slick or as professional as this one here in Denver. Good pay, good coordination, good accommodations and travel, great site, great students, great food and AV support, and I got to finally visit Denver for at least a few hours on a nice day.

I only wish all my speaking gigs went this smoothly.

Actually trotted out a bunch of "enterprise resilience management" stuff today at the end of the brief, in a final section entitled "getting down to business." It worked pretty well, giving me yet another chance to learn by speaking on the subject.

Signed some books after the event, then had a nice meal with the Executive Forum staff before heading back to the stunning airport, where I snapped that photo of Jack Swiggert, the Apollo 13 astronaut played by Kevin Bacon in the popular movie by Ron Howard.

Here's the daily catch:

■ Wanted for nation-building: actual nations, not pretend ones

■ Barbie meets her Middle Eastern match!

■ The kidnap industry reflects the individualization of insecurity-just like warfare

■ The return of China's barefoot doctor: a flu-driven stop-gap measure

■ The magnificent FCS looks awfully Leviathan-like

■ Wolfowitz: either low-key mastermind of change or academic out of his depth

■ Brazil matures to the point where scandals don't much matter anymore

■ Why U.S. tertiary education still leads the world

Wanted for nation-building: actual nations, not pretend ones

■"The Afghan Difference," editorial, New York Times, 22 September 2005, p. A30.

The NYT editorial wonders aloud why Afghan the nation-building experiment goes reasonably well while only "the most die hard Bush administration spinners pretend to see any significant and lasting gains in Iraq."

"One reason," we are told, is that Afghanistan actually has a "long and continuous history as a single nation," meaning not one invented by colonial masters to cover their tracks as they left the scene, like Yugoslavia or Iraq.

Still, Yugoslavia emerges from its wars of the 1990s with a number of viable functioning states. Still residual ethnic hatreds and economic development proceeds slowly enough, but functioning all right, and moving toward the Core more and more.

So Afghanistan does all right as a nation because it's actually a coherent nation, and Yugoslavia does okay when it breaks back down to its constituent parts, but Iraq is a full-blown failure because we couldn't keep that pretend state together, instead seeing it fall into three parts: 1) a Kurdistan that's been a wonderfully functioning state for years now, thanks to the no-fly-zone the U.S. provided across the 1990s; 2) a Shiite region that's moving toward constitutional agreement with Kurdistan for a federated Iraq and which has, so far, resisted the impulse for war against Sunnis who have targeted them unceasingly in terrorist violence; and 3) the basket case that is the Sunni portions.

If Iraq the unitary state was the goal, then yes, we have failed, but that was a stupid and unrealistic goal from the start, and why anyone wants to compare it to Afghanistan on that basis instead of the now defunct and broken-up Yugoslavia is beyond me.

Iraq is not the failure it is made out to be. Sunni land is a complete failure, but Shiite land and Kurdistan are not.

Barbie meets her Middle Eastern match!

■"This Doll Has an Accessory Barbie Lacks: A Prayer Mat," by Katherine Zoepf, New York Times, 22 September 2005, p. A4.

I told my Barbie story a lot when I first gave the big brief in the Building and elsewhere in late 2001 and through 2003. The story got old eventually, even as it was given new life by Saudi Arabia repeating the same ban on Barbie that Iran had implemented earlier (its preferred hijab-clad Sara doll never kept pace on store shelves).

Now, the big craze among young Arab girls in Syria, Egypt and Qatar are the Fulla dolls that look just like Barbie but come with "Muslim values." Same body shape, but dressed with a black abaya and head scarf. Oh, and the prayer rug. Other than the doll's clothes, the bigger line of girl-oriented merchandise favors pink almost exclusively.

Why does this doll finally top Barbie? Advertising like you would associate with your average George Lucas "Star Wars" film: "On the children's satellite channels popular in the Arab world, Fulla advertising is incessant."

Fine and dandy, as are plans to intro Teacher Fulla and Doctor Fulla. Remember, everyone gets content at their own pace. Prayer mats are good, so long as the message is conveyed that careers are possible and good.

And don't worry, Barbie has stared down many a fad in her day . . .

The kidnap industry reflects the individualization of insecurity-just like warfare

■"Dutch Court Fight Lays Bare Reality Of Kidnap Industry," by Andrew Higgins and Alan Cullison, Wall Street Journal, 22 September 2005, p. A1.

A subject plagued by weak data, but best guesses say the practice is booming from Iraq to Chechnya to inland China-all Gap or Gap-like situations. Lotsa money involved, enough to fuel insurgencies, criminal gangs and terrorists nets.

Rough global figures say maybe 6k cases in 2001, racing up to almost 15k by 2004.

To me, this is analogous to the warfare-against-individuals phenomenon we've seen in U.S. military interventions over the past decade and a half, a subject I run through (the downshifting of violence and danger) in BFA.

The return of China's barefoot doctor: a flu-driven stop-gap measure

■"Barefoot Doctors Make a Comeback In Rural China: Trained as a Nurse, Ms. Li Treats Datan Village; Delivering a Baby for $4," by Peter Wonacott, Wall Street Journal, 22 September 2005, p. A1.

Mao created an army of "barefoot doctors" in the 1960s and 1970s as a low-cost way to extend medical networks into rural regions beset by pervasive poverty. They did a lot of good along the way, reducing infant mortality and curbing contagious diseases.

But when China shifted to market economics under Deng, the communes fell apart in the countryside and health care stopped being subsidized with things like the barefoot docs. Rural incomes did not keep pace with urban ones, so good healthcare became very hard to find in remote agricultural regions.

Now, the 4th Generation leadership of Premier Wen Jiabao and President Hu Jintao have shown a real focus on dealing with the needs of the rural poor, speaking to my theory that The Train's Engine Can Travel No Faster Than Its Caboose, a phrase that popped out of my mouth during my presentations in China last August and now recounted in an entire chapter section in Blueprint for Action.

So Wen and Hu push to revive the program, yet some critics say it's a waste of time, as these lightly trained medics mostly just hand out antibiotics indiscriminating. Hell, we have highly-trained and highly-paid doctors in America who can do that!

Still, I think it's good that Wen and Hu continue to emphasize the needs of the rural populations left behind by the fast moving train that is China's globalizing economy. In BFA, I call this "caboose braking."

It matters, because when you don't pay attention to such things, you end up with things like SARS, Avian Flu, or New Orleans after Katrina.

The magnificent FCS looks awfully Leviathan-like

■"Army Display Woos Project's Foes," by Jonathan Karp, Wall Street Journal, 22 September 2005, p. A6.

Army trots out some Future Combat System gear and does some demos for congressional leaders and staff who seem intent on stripping the program of some of its $125 billion price tag, believing it's chock-full of immature technologies that-even if they did work-wouldn't exactly be useful in the sort of counter-insurgency Fourth Generation Warfare that Army's likely to be focused on in coming years and decades.

Rumsfeld's been promising the Army that if they switched from a century of big division structure (stretching back to the First World War) to these new, smaller brigade units of action, that the FCS would be its reward. Historically, I think this will go down as a bait and switch: the reformatting of the divisions will occur, but FCS will prove to be a fairly small carrot in the end. Too complex, too expensive, and not relevant enough to the likely battlefields of tomorrow.