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.