■"Shift From Traditional War Seen at Pentagon," by Thomas E. Ricks, Washington Post, 3 September 2004, p. A1.

An article describing a much-celebrated brief given to SECDEF Rumsfeld regarding "a new long-term strategy that shifts spending and resources away from large-scale warfare to build more agile, specialized forces for fighting guerrilla wars, confronting terrorism and handling less conventional threats."

According to the principal undersecretary for policy, Ryan Henry, who gave the brief:

The lesson learned in Iraqi Freedom is that in some areas, we have capabilities overmatch . . . We can't see many competitors that are coming at us in the traditional domain . . . In the business world, this is the equivalent of coming up with a new product in a new market.

Hmm. New product, new market. I like the lingo. It's almost like he's talking about the exporting of security!

Here's one key new idea in the mix: the "stretch goal" of "being able to invade a country, keep 200,000 troops there for five years, and be able to organize, train and equip a local military force of 100,000 troops in just six months."

Now, you have to wonder why there is such the huge rush to train the local troops in six months if the U.S. plans on staying five years. I mean, it's almost like they don't want to admit that the U.S. military is going to be administering a political and economic system for any length of time.

Hmm. Administering a system. I like that phrase as well!

Here's the best part of the article, though. Check out the graphics from the PowerPoint brief. The old view shows an almost Manthorpe Curve-like unity of purpose: focusing on the "big one" of conventional great power war. But the new view shows a force spread out unevenly toward the two ends of the spectrum, almost as if one is focused on big-time, catastrophic war and the other is focused on the "everything else," with less left over It's almost as if the force is being split in two in terms of capabilities!

Try this as you look at the slide: turn your head sideways by leaning to the right. Now substitute "individual" for "guerrilla and unconventional wars and counterterrorism," swap out "nation" for "conventional state-to-state wars," and plug in "system" for "weapons of mass destruction and new technological threats." Then, check out my diamond-vs-hour-glass capabilities slide from my brief and tell me we're not basically talking the same deal.