ARTICLE: Twisting Arms Isn't as Easy as Dropping Bombs, By Shankar Vedantam, Washington Post, January 29, 2007; Page A02

Good research that buttresses our common sense appreciation of the limits of "war within the context of war." You want an opponent to submit militarily? Pretty easy for U.S. But if you want a country to change and simply apply military power alone, you will lose half the time. The point to take away is not to avoid trying. Failed states don't heal themselves. The question to ask is, What are we not doing now that gets us a "loss" half the time on coercive efforts? Steve and I say what we're missing is an effective SysAdmin force/function, followed up with connectivity efforts like Development-in-a-Box. So what this research says to me is that the SysAdmin should prove decisive in roughly half our military interventions, because just shooting the place is not enough. Thanks to Jean Rogers for sending this.