ARTICLE: Study Calls for 'Soft Power' Tactics, Virginian-Pilot, March 19, 2008

When you have Chet Richards out in front of the study, arguing its logic, then that's pretty impressive. I've been briefing the SysAmin and Dept. of Everything Else ideas for years, sometimes 4-5 times to the same audiences. In many stretches, I'd think to myself that it had gotten old and I should just give up, especially when you see people whine--with real righteousness--about the extreme costs associated with Iraq. The smart ones say to themselves, "We've got to do better." It's not the globalization of COIN to fight a global insurgency so much as it's making globalization truly global in a reasonably fair and sustainable manner. When you see the rise of Sovereign Wealth Funds, you realize, things have changed and so allies must change if we're going to ride with history's tides instead of insisting on swimming against them by planning a defense posture that tries to counter ALL threats--the very essence of non-strategic thought. The Brits under Blair and now Brown give us big hints as to the look and feel of what we should be after. The "Beijing Consensus" tells us much about the cluster of positions we'll inevitably be forced to accommodate. You can fight all these things and say, "it's the American way," or you can remember your own nation's history better and realize that the world is following the American way right now--just not today's version. We can help that process along or we can obstruct it in the name of 20th-century definitions of threat. (Thanks: Endre Lunde)