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

■"A Kinder, Gentler Wolfowitz at World Bank? New Head's Low-Key Approach Masks Subtle Shift Toward Agriculture and Infrastructure," by Greg Hitt, Wall Street Journal, 22 September 2005, p. A4.

Wolfie keeps the low profile at the WB. Just floats ideas for change here and there, but no big plans. Speaks of redirecting the bank toward ag and infrastructure with a big focus on Africa. Sounds about right to me, but one can take the low-profile thing too far. Opportunities for significant reform get lower the further you go in someone's tenure. Is this Wolfie playing it smooth or just revealing himself as the policy wonk academic he has long been accused of being?

When I did the interviews for the July Rumsfeld piece in Esquire, I got the distinct impression time and time again that Rummy was his own SECDEF and DEPSECDEF, or both Defense Secretary and Deputy Defense Secretary, with Wolfowitz basically a glorified Under for Policy and Doug Feith a glorified Deputy Under. I'm not just making that up. I heard it time and time again.

People in the Building always said Wolfowitz was too ideological for SECDEF but not cut out to be the business guy who led the building (DEPSECDEF). Question now is, Can he be a visionary at the WB or does the job actually take somebody who might have some skill in managing a bureaucracy?

Why U.S. tertiary education still leads the world

■"Secrets of success: America's system of higher education is the best in the world. That is because there is no system," by Adrian Wooldridge, The Economist, 10 September 2005, p. 6.

Interesting survey of global education by one of my favorite Economist writers celebrates that which Tom Friedman seem to dismiss a bit too casually in his "World is Flat" book.

Wooldridge says three reasons account for this: 1) the Fed plays a limited role, unlike in a France or Germany; 2) schools compete for everything, including students and teachers; and 3) our universities are anything but ivory towers, instead being quite focused on practical stuff (Great line: "Bertrand Russell once expressed astonishment at the worldly concerns he encountered at the University of Wisconsin: 'When any farmer's turnip go wrong, they send a professor to investigate the failure scientifically,'" So true, as anyone who's grown up in Wisconsin farmland can attest.)

Two interesting data points: listing of top global universities features 1 from Japan, two from UK and 17 from U.S. Wisconsin, my alma mater is 18 (ahead of Michigan!) and Harvard is number 1.

Also interesting: Of the students who travel abroad, 30 percent come to America. Britain is next at 12%, then Germany, then Australia, then France and Japan. After Australia it's all single digits.

I guess America isn't exactly out of the source code business, at least in the most important software package known to man.

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

■"Brazil Weathers Scandal Well: Threat to Da Silva Doesn't Becloud Markets, Currency or Growth," by Matt Moffett, Wall Street Journal, 22 September 2005, p. A15.

For a while now, Brazil's been suffering through the sort of senior political corruption scandal that's routinely torpedoed Latin American governments (along with their economies) in the past.

But not this time in Brazil, which is growing well, exporting better than ever (the "breadbasket" phenom I describe as the basis for Brazil's emerging agricultural superpower state in BFA), and attracting foreign direct investment just fine. Currency's also trading at 40-month high.

What gives? The article asks.

Ag exports and global liquidity help, but the biggest deal is a series of rule-set resets in the public and private sectors (opening economy to imports, privatizing state industries, limits on government spending).

Simply put, good rules, good credit, even when politics sours. A real Core country can withstand bad politics because politics in general become fairly irrelevant.

"Jack" Swigert - Apollo 13

John L. "Jack" Swigert, Jr.

Executive Forum in Denver today

September 22, 2005

Economic Globalization (pdf)

The Pentagon's New Map: A Cutting-Edge Approach to Globalization

Tom will be presentiing the full brief, including 10 Enterra Solutions' slides for the business audience.

My talk at Belmont Abbey in Charlotte, NC, is touted in local press

Here's what the Charlotte Observer has to say:

Author will speak on global conflict

New York Times best-selling author Thomas P.M. Barnett will present a program on global terrorism, international peacemakers and economic stability in foreign markets at 8 p.m. Oct. 5 in the Student Commons at Belmont Abbey College.Admission is free; reservations are required.

Barnett's program is part of the Father Cuthbert Allen Visiting Speakers Program. He will look at the forecast of global conflict and share his thoughts on the history and strategy of the U.S. military, outlining the unique role that America could and should play in establishing international stability. His presentation will be based on his new best-selling book, "The Pentagon's New Map: War and Peace in the Twenty-First Century."

To make a reservation, call (704) 825-6728.

Here's the link to the page (a bit of a scroll down): http://www.charlotte.com/mld/observer/news/local/states/north_carolina/counties/gaston/12699842.htm

Davis impresses ...

Just looking over the post below on AFEI's new blog and its coverage of Geoff Davis's remarks, I have to say the guy really impresses for a first time congressman.

Then again, he had a serious military career (Ranger and time in 82nd). Sweet man in person, though. He had me in his Hill office a while back and he impressed me there one on one. Public speaking is a very different thing, though, so now I am doubly impressed.

The top twenty: it's all relative (almost)

Dateline: Frontier Airlines flight to Denver, 21 September 2005

Funny to have the Post link back to my weblog as a result of my blogging one of their stories. Now I feel like I'm working for the WP for free, just like all my readers!

Fret not. Real business opportunities come to me regularly through blog readers, demonstrated yet again at Monday's Enterra-sponsored conference in Manhattan. I will get paid, my friends, and quite nicely. The blog is a mechanism of intellectual connectivity, but business naturally follows it, because it's an idea-driven world, even if it's still divided between the Lexus-obsessed Core and the Olive tree-obsessed Gap (see, I still love Friedman-just the "early Friedman," you know, like the "early Woody").

Got caught up on a bunch of stuff today before heading out to run Kevin's grade school cross-country team practice. Head coach can't be there on Wednesdays, so I step in and keep it disciplined.

I forgot to share that Kev did even better in his second meet last Saturday than in his first, although he placed lower and did not score a ribbon this time (off by only 4 seconds). In his first meet of a week earlier he ran 5th out of 21 boys in just under 15 minutes for 3k. Last Saturday in a much bigger meet of 8 teams (with some big schools fielding large teams and our little school having just Kev and his older-grade teammate) Kev finished 12 of 40 and took 73 seconds off his previous best (the first meet). I was very proud and I'm dead certain no one younger than he finished before him.

Today it's a long slow run with Kevin and I running with the senior kids. As the youngest by a year and a half (though not the shortest), K-man struggles a bit on the jaunt, complaining of back tension, but he guts it out and I give me a major-league massage on the grass before we end practice with our "strides" (stretching runs of about 100 meters). Spouse and youngest Vonne Mei show up at end of practice, and the Mei Mei (as I am wont to call her) does a decent job of imitating our contortions.

Then I bug out and drive to the airport for a non-stop on Frontier to Denver. Perfect ride where we can watch 24 TV channels the whole way (if you pay; me, I just watch other people's screens without the sound, which works just fine), so I get to watch that JetBlue's fire-filled landing at LAX live while I'm flying at 38k. Neato! Especially since the pilot warned us of a bumpy landing here in Denver due to high winds.

Actually a pretty nice landing during which I was reading the pure China section of Chapter 3 in Blueprint for Action-pound for pound my favorite writing in the piece (which reminds me that I still haven't heard from Beijing U Press about our negotiations on the Chinese-language version of PNM and which words could remain in; guess I better ping my agency on that one).

There is nothing quite like reading your final book in the weeks running up to its publication. It is the sweetest sort of anticipation there is for a writer. The magazine equivalent just doesn't compare (neat, just not as profound because it's not "for the ages" in the same way). I'm hoping Warren feels the same way, but I doubt he has the luxury of perusing it much.

I have to keep reading it, so when Enterra colleague Bradd Hayes sends me his 100-plus slide package on BFA, I'm ready to dive into it on animation. Gotta have all the stories and lines in your head because my briefs are never written down-except in transcription.

And ready I will be for the new brief's big unveiling at National Defense University on 19 October in the late morning in front of the entire invited student body, in the same hall where CSPAN first filmed the original three-hour brief that it showed over Labor Day 2004.

And the goal is the same here: get CSPAN to tape it and show it soon after. They asked for such an opportunity through Putnam, and I've got one for it now that I've taken up NDU's longstanding offer to give a distinguished lecture. Paul Davis, a prof and big supporter of mine there, told me that all the students at ICAF (Industrial College of the Armed Forces) got hardcover of PNM and read it through early in the school year, so they will be the perfect audience for the unveiled Vol. II brief.

Get it taped on the 19th and the book comes out on the 20th. So long as CSPAN doesn't sit on it for months like it did last time, we should be in business.

Reading the book makes me realize something, though. I am moving more and more in the direction of my agent Jennifer's original advice that the near-term effort with Steve DeAngelis might be better served as a serious business-focused volume published by an established biz school press, keeping the Putnam-type bestselling volume as the more distant goal. I think we need a year or two to build up the success stories and create a host of shared ones between us, Steve and I, and yet, I don't want to hold up his desire to lay down some serious intellectual markers with his content material on Enterprise Resilience Management, his trademarked concept. Not sure if I co-author that first book, as the original idea was that I would just write the foreword, but no matter what the decision ultimately is, Steve's thought leadership should not be held back. We have to get it out fast somehow. He's got enough content for that biz book, we just need more narrative stories for the popular bestseller I hope someday to write with him.

Finally, today I got 20 volumes from Putnam, my author's free take of books (I can buy more at great discount), but these are the true freebies written into my contract.

Here's how they shook out in the mass mailing already accomplished this afternoon:

First, I have six siblings, so there goes books 1-6.

Then there's my Mom, #7.

Then there's my mother-in-law and father-in-law, #s 8 and 9.

Then there are two brother-in-laws that cannot be denied, #s 10 and 11.

Then there are my four kids and my wife, #s 12-16.

Then there's the potential second adopted daughter from China, or the child to be named at a later date (and yes, I saved an original PNM hardcover for her too, just in case!). That's #17.

So the family takes the first 17 of 20, leaving a precious three to distribute.

Number 18 goes to mentor Hank Gaffney, and 19 goes to other great mentor Art Cebrowski.

Number 20 is a fairly easy final call: my new boss Steve DeAngelis, whom I thank twice in the acknowledgments (once in a sentence where Putnam screwed up his name as "DiAngelis" [and yes, I still have the notes to prove I gave them the correct spelling] and a second time in a listing of "thank you" names where Putnam gets his last name right--thus proving they knew the right version all along!).

Landing at Denver is pretty cool. Way modern and spacious and efficient airport.

Nice limo driver waiting for me (I type these final sentences en route to what I assume will be a pretty nice hotel-and it's everything of the sort, to include the neat view of the clock tower in downtown Denver).

Tomorrow I am up for a three-hour version of the PNM brief, which I will backfill with some of the shared Barnett-DeAngelis brief that we debuted in Manhattan on Monday, at the request of my sponsors, who asked me to bring it all down at the end to terms that would grab the assembled business execs at their throats.

And enterprise resiliency does just that: keeping your business going when disaster strikes, keeping your CEOs out of jail, keeping your firm competitive and safe, and triggering the society-wide resilience that ultimately keeps America likewise strong and someday shrinks the Gap. So yeah, the big book will definitely come at some point, but only when it can be supported by the right narrative. Steve and I have yet to live that narrative, but we will.

Here's the daily catch:

■ China's many rule-set resets: you need a scorecard to keep up with it all
■ The amazing self-delusion on North Korea

■ The "Shiite strategy" was always the default strategy

■ In Globalization IV, you fight pirates with attaches

■ Europe gets closer, closer, closer to actually starting membership talks with Turkey

■ Old rules, old roots

■ Extend the re-insurance safety net for God's sake!

China's many rule-set resets: you need a scorecard to keep up with it all

■"English 101 Becomes a Booming Business," by Jason Dean, Wall Street Journal, 19 September 2005, p. A15.

■"Bridging China's M.B.A. Gap: U.S. Universities Forge Alliances to Help Groom Managers," by Charlotte Li, Wall Street Journal, 20 September 2005, p. A15.

■"Deep Flaws, and Little Justice, in China's Court System," by Joseph Kahn, New York Times, 21 September 2005, p. A1.

China's massive globalization reset (you think China changes the world, you ain't seen nothing yet on how globalization changes China) is amazing to watch unfold.

Three stories here on progress, shortages, and serious stubborn deficits.

The teaching of English in China is taking off like a rocket. Give Chinese families a taste of globalization and put some money in their pockets and they will spend it on getting their kids ahead. In the minds of most parents, English gets their kids ahead like nobody's business.

Here's a sign that you're either in the Core already or heading that way quickly: when your young people see English as a competitive advantage. Show me a Seam or Gap government pushing English, and I'll show you a future member of the Core.

Then there are U.S. biz schools stepping into China big time to help it deal with a huge looming shortage of senior managers, which is a key reason why Chinese companies are so eager to buy American ones: they want the managers as much as the assets.

At the end of the Cold War, there were 9 universities in China that granted MBAs. Now there are almost 100, and they cranked 12,000 a year. Still, this is tiny given the rising demand, so watch U.S. schools augment that domestic effort greatly and--by doing so--export rule sets like crazy.

This can only help in the most dangerous rule set deficit in China today: effective rule of law. We can't expect China to generate that absent a smart, informed demand rising from the business sector. That won't happen without smart, informed managers and lotsa transactions to fuel that learning curve. The drive for economic efficiency will drive the process of legal reform as much or more than the Party's growing fears that unless they push for it there will continue to be rising social unrest.

The amazing self-delusion on North Korea

■"Northern Exposure: Seoul's food aid only helps Kim Jong Il," op-ed by Jason Lim, New York Times, 21 September 2005, p. A27.

■"A Skeptical View: North Korea gets its way-yet again," op-ed by Nicholas Eberstadt, Wall Street Journal, 21 September 2005, p. 26.

■"U.S. Says North Korean Demand for Reactor Won't Derail Accord," by Steven R. Weisman, New York Times, 21 September 2005, p. A6.

Great op-ed by Lim on how Seoul's turn-a-blind-eye on Kim only keeps a population living in inexcusable misery for the long haul. All because the South fears the price tag of the country's rebuilding. With relatives like these, who needs enemies?

Kim is worth taking down solely for the 1-2 million he's killed by starvation and malnutrition over the past decade.

The White House and State Department might be happy to stick with their Beijing Declaration, but that's all it is--a declaration. It's like Al Capone promising to pay his taxes all of a sudden, even as his nefarious and brutal criminal empire keeps humming along ("Well, if you'll pay taxes on it all, then fine!"). So we get another false promise from Kim on WMD. Getting him to pay his "WMD taxes" while a generation of kids is stunted, kept in the closet that is disconnected North Korea, is a truly false victory, something only Neville Chamberlain in his prime could celebrate.

And yet watch the major papers celebrate this "breakthrough" in their editorials. Oh yes, the great "diplomatic victory" signifying nothing but ending some sound and fury over the "unilateral" Bush Administration.

Read the great op-ed by Nick Eberstadt. We are deluding ourselves on this deal:

Contrary to conventional wisdom, which holds the North Korean state to be an unremittingly hostile "negotiating partner," history actually demonstrates that Pyongyang can be a highly obliging interlocutor under certain very specific conditions. All that is necessary to "get to yes" with the Democratic People's Republic of Korea is to concede every important point demanded by the North Korea side while sacrificing vital interests of one's own.

You tell 'em, Nick.

Enthusiasts contend that the North Korean regime, after two years of tough talks with five other countries united in the desire to force it to dismantle its nuclear weapons program, has at last agreed to a step-by-step process that will eventually resolve the crisis. In reality, nothing of the sort has taken place. A careful reading of the Sept. 19 joint statement suggests instead that North Korean negotiators have just achieved a stunning advance in their government's quest to "normalize" its nuclear weapons program. There's also been equally momentous progress in Pyongyang's longstanding campaign to sunder the U.S.-South Korean military alliance. Wittingly or otherwise, the U.S. negotiating team has executed an apparent cave-in-embracing precepts crucial to North Korean objectives but inimical to Washington's own.

Simply put, we're written into an agreement wording that legitimizes North Korea having nuclear power and set ourselves up for a "denuclearized Korean peninsula" that will never be. The U.S. has no nukes in South Korea and South Korea has no nukes, so it's unclear how one "denuclearizes" the peninsula unless it involves getting the U.S. forces, with their nuclear guarantee, off the peninsula.

The only diplomatic triumph here belongs to Kim Jong Il, in a victory only the creators of "South Park" and the puppet movie "Team America" (in which Kim "starred") can truly appreciate.

Bottom line: North Korea was just punted to the next administration.

The "Shiite strategy" was always the default strategy

■"U.S. Shiite Strategy Faces More Clouds: Fresh Iraq Violence in Basra Raises Doubts on Free Rein For Militias Linked to Iran," by Yochi J. Dreazen, Wall Street Journal, 21 September 2005, p. A12.

U.S. forces in Iraq, because we didn't attract enough allied boots-on-the-ground and screwed up the initial rebuild period during which we had 90% of the Iraqi people on our side and failed to keep them there, has been forced into a devil's bargain: letting the Shiites grow some serious militias to keep themselves safe from the insurgency. Amazingly, so far those militias haven't given into the temptation for all-out civil war, which to me signals that the Shiite region of Iraq is already achieving a functioning political system of sorts (yes, highly Islamist, but expecting anything else was silly, like expecting the young U.S. to be anything but highly Christian in orientation).

A largely autonomous Kurdistan was in the works for a good decade prior to the Saddam takedown. Our most successful nation-building effort to date in the post-Cold War period was the one in which we did nothing but the overarching security (no fly zone in the north) and let the people get their own act together (see, it doesn't have to be rocket science if the party in question is really incentivized--as the Kurds were).

Now we have a fairly successful nation-building story emerging in the Shiite portions of Iraq, with some of the credit going--quite frankly--to an Iran that wants to see a historical enemy kept divided and weak and to gain a significant ally in the region.

One wonders if this outcome wasn't always in the cards, no matter how good our SysAdmin effort. But clearly, absent one this outcome became the path of least resistance and--given the alternatives--not a bad one at all so long as we can reach some modus vivendi with Iran like we did with a Soviet Union back in the early 1970s.

And our biggest friends in this process will not be the EU, but India, Russia and China. You will hear this ad nauseum from me in the future: the New Core sets the new rules.

In Globalization IV, you fight pirates with attaches

■"U.S. Plans Deployment of Antipiracy Attaches," by Greg Hitt, Wall Street Journal, 21 September 2005, p. A5.

■"Worry Over Trade Pacts Roils Washington: Lawmakers of Both Parties May Be Vulnerable to Voter Backlash Over Job Losses," by Greg Hitt, Wall Street Journal, 20 September 2005, p. A4.

Commerce is making ready a team of intellectual property (IP) specialists to deploy to nations giving us fits on piracy. Sort of a WTO-enforcing SWAT team.

The lead experience here is China, and that is all fine and good. This is where our "conflict" with China should really be centered: in economics and in rules.

Other countries targeted are all either New Core (Russia, India, Brazil) like China, or key Seam States (Thailand) or places where we're making a special trade effort to shrink the Gap (Big Bang-land Middle East).

Good move, I say. One the White House can point to in upcoming trade pact battled with Congress, which, in its infinite wisdom, is moving more and more toward protections as a catch-all answer for America's economic woes. Bad, stupid, ahistorical choice, but there it is.

Europe gets closer, closer, closer to actually starting membership talks with Turkey

■"Europe Is Closer to Talks With Turkey," by International Herald Tribune staff, New York Times, 21 September 2005, p. A8.

One of my headlines for "Blogging the Future" is about Turkey's surprisingly rapid entry into the EU, generating a serious civilization rapprochment between that body and Islam.

I know, I know, it seems crazy from the perspective of right now, with Europe seemingly so spooked on terrorism and ghettoized radicals in its midst, but that just means the solution set draws near. Remember, it always gets nasty just before the political will is reached for serious reform.

So bring on the nasty, I say.

Extend the re-insurance safety net for God's sake!

■"Expand the Terror Insurance Safety Net," by William R. Berkley, Wall Street Journal, 20 September 2005, p. B2.

Congress passed the Terrorism Risk Insurance Act (TRIA) in 2002 in response to 9/11, in effect clearing up the whole "who insures the 're-insurers'?" question.

What question is that, you ask?

Insurance companies need insurance too, and they turned to far larger insurance brokers known as "reinsurers" who basically offer them insurance against high-end losses. It's like the back-up plan for the insurance industry.

Well, 9/11 spooked the reinsurance industry, which said, in effect, "We won't offer insurance to insurance companies over catastrophic terrorism or other, similar beyond-imagination disasters."

In turn, insurance companies were limiting the amount of property insurance they'd offer companies, which got to be a scary concept for big companies in big cities like NY and LA.

Thus, Congress stepped in and passed the TRIA in 2002, saying in effect, "We'll pick up anything beyond the fantastic figure of $30 billion paid out by the insurance industry." At that point the Fed is responsible for 90% of damages up to 100 billion.

Needed or not?

I say needed, for psych value alone. Of course, if anything went over $30 billion, you know the government would be picking up the rest of the bill. That's what it's for--the common weal and what not. Just making it explicit chilled the reinsurance industry and that chilled the insurance industry and that's something worthwhile all in itself. It also says to the rest of the world--meaning terrorists--that we have our shit together on this subject: You dream of financial meltdown? Well, we have some plans to counter your schemes.

The law runs out at the end of 2008. Congress is debating whether or not to deal with it. It should extend it, not for property damage per se, but for business continuity losses first and foremost. Keeping business up and running is everything. It's what Congress should be focusing on for America. It's what the White House should be focusing on for our economic ties with the outside world. And it's what all advanced nations and their national security establishments should be thinking about and planning for with regard to the global economy as a whole.

In a connected world, business continuity is everything. Look at New Orleans and ask yourself what will be the biggest horizontal scenarios coming out of that disaster: loss of business continuity will lead the pack in several industries. Resiliency, my friends, is the best defense. Congress should be promoting it by extending TRIA.

Old rules, old roots

■"Germany's Political Crisis Has U.S. Roots: State Governors Wield Veto Power in Post-World War II System to Prevent Rise of Dictator," by Marcus Walker and David Crawford, Wall Street Journal, 21 September 2005, p. A10.

■"A New Look At Nukes: Energy firms push to build reactos as natural gas prices soar," by James M. Pethokoukis, U.S. News & World Report, 26 September 2005, p. 52.

Fascinating WSJ story on how the American approach to setting up West Germany's political system after WWII is the prime cause behind the current political paralysis (e.g., weird afterlude to election, several recent attempts at political and economic reform stymied by regional governments). Basic truth is that we made the regional governments very strong in West Germany to prevent another Hitler, or another World War. This was never a big problem so long as it was West v. East, but now that the unifying dangers are all gone, it gets problematic, keeping Germany sclerotic and rather neurotic. America had this problem to a very real degree prior to the Civil War and the huge rise in Federal power that it triggered. That's when we stopped being these United States and became the United States.

Obviously, the Nazi period was seminal for Germany, but as it's several generations removed now and even its top leadership is post-WWII in its formative years (0-10), it's time for Germany to move on.

Yet look at something like the history of nuclear power in America and you see that early traumatic experiences can scar a society for "life," or until the memory ages out of the political system. We chose unwisely in terms of the original generation of nuclear power plants in this country (thank you Hyman Rickover!) and the poor performance and safety record of those plants gives nukes a very bad name here for the longest time.

Elsewhere in the world, the technology has moved on, and the fear factor never quite developed to the degree it did here. Now, we look fairly backwards in our attitudes on nuclear power: an old social and political rule set that's desperately outmoded given the changes in technology, the progressive de-carbonization of our energy profile (short course: wood to coal to oil to gas to nukes/hydrogen), and the rising prices for oil and gas thanks to the rising Asian economies.

People tend to think energy is all about oil and cars, but that's about 40% of our usage. Electricity is the King Kong of our b-t-u-sage. American energy companies have been building mostly gas-powered turbines for electricity generation over the past 20 years, and now gas prices are rising just like oil prices (Guess what? Electricity is tripling in Asia over the next twenty years!), so nukes are looking more and more real as a significant answer over the coming years and decades.

Get used to the idea.

A blogger blogs my blog WRT to my blogging and being a blogger

An interesting rewrite of my blog. This guy could pen novels he does so well with so little!

Here is his rather interesting post: http://www.perceptric.com/blog/_archives/2005/9/18/1234383.html.

For comparison, see my original posting: /weblog/archives2/002292.html

Wash Post reverse-blogs me!

Here is the page where they do it: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/09/16/AR2005091601983_3.html.

Actually, it only makes me wish I had written more on the piece. The key would seem to be the hot link back to the Post I'm pretty sure that's how they track you.

Think I've just found another task for my webmaster. . .

AFEI blog: the net-centric dialog

Dave Chesebrough, President of The Association for Enterprise Integration (AFEI), is now blogging at the net-centric dialog:

http://netcentricity.typepad.com

An excerpt from yesterday:

"Congressman Geoff Davis (D-KY) spoke about changing rules sets, and the need for this country, in both its security and economy, to understand these and to adapt. He cautioned the audience to continually evaluate their own rules sets and to not fall victim to a false set of assumptions. As an example he pointed out the discrepancy between how well we thought we were prepared for an emergency, and the response to the aftermath of Katrina. As Senator McCain said this week, everything has changed. He spoke of two kinds of rules: those that are immutable, and those that are adaptable. For this country we have two immutable rules.

The first: all people have dignity, value and worth.

The second: we are a people accountable to higher authority, the rule of law.

The future, he said, is all about sticking with these rules while also challenging our assumptions about our adaptable public and private rule sets. . ."

Read the full text. . .

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Fox Fallon, one to watch on China

Fallon is the new head of Pacific Command. Despite all the war-posturing and tough talk on China coming out of that command, he's calling for more mil-mil cooperation with China.

Here's a snippet from a recent WP article:

"Do we have to have conflict because of the rise of China? I don't believe so," said Adm. William J. Fallon, who heads the Hawaii-based Pacific Command from an office with a sweeping view of Pearl Harbor and the vast ocean beyond.

"As they grow, there's going to be an inevitable push as they take advantage of their economic ability to improve their military capabilities," he said of the Chinese. "We ought to recognize that as a reality. This is not a zero-sum game.

"I do not buy the program," he said, referring to the presumption that conflict cannot be avoided. "I just don't buy it."

Fallon said he had received a clear mandate in this regard from Washington, despite widely noticed remarks in June from Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld questioning China's motives in modernizing its military forces. In addition, Fallon said in an interview, this approach means China's cultivation of stronger diplomatic and military ties with other Asian nations does not have to compete with U.S. changes in the Pacific.

"A rising China that is actively engaged in helping the countries of the region maintain security and stability can be a very good thing," he explained.

Fallon is a bright guy and a bright star. One can only wish him well. While you might expect him to tout the highly anti-China line coming out of too much of the Navy, he's done the right thing by thinking of how best he can make his mark in the region during his time. War over Taiwan is unlikely, so if he's going to get credit for anything, it might as well be for improving relations between the U.S. and Chinese militaries. Lotsa Combatant Commanders go all "SysAdmin-y" (meaning they focus more on administering to the regional system of security than posturing for war) when they reach that post. Why? It's just the natural inclination when you sit in the top spot and say to yourself: What can I do to make this region better than I found it?

Full story at: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/09/16/AR2005091601983.html.

Thanks to Manuel Sandoval for reminding me that I need to get a paper subscription to the WP.