The coronavirus reminds us just how connected our world is, how there's no going back, and how this is the nature of crisis in the age of globalization

When I wrote my trilogy of books (Pentagon's New Map [2004], Blueprint for Action [2005], Great Powers [2009]), my primary purpose was to explore and explain what I thought was the new nature of crisis and conflict in the world.

In the first instance, it is about globalization's rapid and penetrating embrace of lesser connected countries, or what I dubbed the Gap. By and large that is a great thing (reduction of global poverty, creation of first-in-history truly global middle class), but it's very disruptive of culture and tradition and power structures, and conflict (largely in the form of state and non-state resistance to all this rising and intrusive connectivity) ensues.  That's why I called it the Pentagon's new map, my argument being, this is the nature of crisis and conflict.

The terror strikes of 9/11 represented that sort of new crisis: actors targeting symbols of connectivity (trade, security) and hoping to trigger a self-isolating effect (West leaves the Middle East). West, instead, came in force, triggering all sorts of refugee flows, revolutions, crackdowns, civil wars, etc.  West got tired and now it's mostly the East working this problem, but the connectivity continues and grows - both good and bad.

As my previous post indicated, Y2K was, for me and many others, a scheduled practice-like glimpse into these dynamics of system perturbation as the defining form of international crisis (vertical shocks followed by long horizontal waves of impact). 

Since 9/11, we've had the Great Recession and a variety of lesser pandemics.  Now we're finally confronting the long-anticipated killer pandemic that is coronavirus - the first great replay of a Spanish Flu-like transmission under the conditions of modern globalization.

How are we handling it? Actually, pretty much like expected.  

Authoritarian countries seek to hide or minimize the situation, while democracies are slow to act despite mounting evidence. This is to be expected.  Vertical power systems like China know how to handle horizontally spreading crises like this through traditional means of centralized control. Once the initial vertical shock passes (Wuhan for China), vertical systems tend not to fear horizontal dynamics. They are built to suppress such dynamics. Vertical systems really fear the out-of-the-blue stuff at the beginning because it triggers that popular emperor-has-no-clothes realization that all dictators fear so intently.

Instead, it's the horizontal political systems (like US and democracies in general) that tend to struggle more with the follow-on horizontal scenarios like this. We see the vertical shock of Wuhan in the distance and we blow it off (too far away, nothing to do with us). Then we start noticing the horizontally travelling shock waves approach through the world's many networks. But, given our system and culture, we fear the imposition of vertical controls ("evil Washington," "black helicopters," "take my guns" and other fantasies) that oftentimes work best right off the start, and so - over time - we suffer being the land of a 1000 different responses. Who's in charge? Hard to say. News comes in from all angles (POTUS, CDC, Congress, governors, mayors, school districts, etc.). The broken-clock preppers are right again! And the rest of us fight the inner panic urge.

While that decentralized approach, at first, seems to makes the problem worse (and it can alright), over time, our horizontally-defined strengths emerge. Our horizontally-structured system is free to experiment across the board, and our free press (even under conditions of political polarization) are adept at discovering, critiquing, and spreading best practices as they emerge (God bless them, one and all).  In the end, our horizontal political structures will tighten up some (centralize), but not wildly so, and they tend to re-relax over time as the crisis fades in memory and legal remedies ensue.

But lessons will be learned, and we will structure aspects of our polity, economy, networks, etc., to account for what we've learned.  And yes, it will make us better next time.

The larger lesson that remains is the same one we've been learning for two-to-three decades now, or since the end of the Cold War freed our minds to look at our connected/connecting world without the overlay of the superpower conflict/great-power war paradigm: our modern world is defined by connectivity, which grows over time and sets the parameters of all meaningful crises and how we respond to, and grow from, them.

Yes, we may think we can unilaterally withdraw from that world - however selectively or broadly, but that's a myth.

Yes, we may think we can renegotiate all the terms of our connectivity with the outside world, and, while we can certaintly adjust, that's a multi-sided game now with all sorts of great powers trying the same trick at the same time, so rule-set clashes proliferate.  These clashes are far from traditional conflict, but they do represent those powers realizing that, now that globalization is here, that is the best way to fight for what you want - or believe in.

Since 2016 America has sought to withdraw from the world, and it hasn't gone all that well. Our ability to set agendas, dampen great power tensions, or steer developments has been hugely diminished.  So has the global appeal of our rule-sets, which we spent the previous seven decades advocating for, and spreading, around the planet. We are a much smaller power in the world right now, and we're increasingly nervous about that, because the world hasn't grown any simpler as a result.

The coronavirus crisis exposes the folly of our recent approach (The Wall being our most hilariously sad example), more saliently than the still-dismissable (in too many minds) slow-mo climate change crisis (which certainly drives the uptick in zoonosis transmission events [animals-to-human disease vectors] by pushing humanity and wildlife together in more disruptive synergies).

And so corona does us this favor: it reminds us of how far we've come in this globalization and how going-your-own-way is a fear-threat reaction beneath our standing as a long-time global leader and - indeed - the primary architect of the world we still find ourselves in.

And so we learn again about the nature of our globalized world, the threats it poses and the crises it generates, and - hopefully - we once again reconsider our recent slide toward fantasizing about the return of conventional/strategic great-power war as a possibility (or, more insanely, as an inevitability) and we re-embrace what we re-learn everytime we endure one of these vertical-shocks-triggering-scary-horizontal-waves ...

Namely, that we are all in this together, and increasingly defined by our global connectivity.

We can try to shape that hardening reality for the better, or we can stick our fingers in our ears and scream nonsense in an effort to block this reality out. In our worst fears, we can always retreat to nostalgia, demanding that the homogenous world-of-our-youth magically return. But frankly, along that path lies not only self-delusion of the Osama Bin Laden sort but also the political violence that pathetic neediness begets.

But that world is gone, and that America is gone. What has replaced both is something far better, full of far more freedom, acceptance, diversity, and tolerance that what came before - yes, even despite our predictably frightened behavior of the past few years.

That new world/new America simply requires new and better skills.  And the coronavirus is just another experience that will generate, teach, and codify those lessons and skills.

And it will make all of us, our nation, and this world stronger (or, if you must insist - greater).

"Capability Gaps Threatening CBP’s Present and Future Operations" published in Homeland Security Affairs Journal

The article was posted to the online journal Friday.  I wrote it at the end of winter, updating it as it went through the peer-review and editorial-board processes. It is based - in part - on analysis I did for Creek Technologies out of Dayton OH.  Creek is a prominent DHS contractor and is naturally always looking to understand the evolving needs of its government clients. The company is also very forward-looking and innovative on workforce development issues.

I found the work fascinating for a lot of reasons, but specifically because:

• Customs and Border Protection - and DHS writ large - remind me of a pre-Goldwater-Nichols DOD, and 
• CBP suffers the same sort of stressing institutional bifurcation that I once encountered in the Pentagon - namely, a force that got too militarized after 9/11 but now finds itself playing humanitarian in the vast bulk of its operations (thus the familiar problem of buying one type of force but operating another).

CBP is clearly not enjoying its "time in the barrel" right now, and needs help. 

This is how HSAJ's editor introduced the article:

The September issue of Homeland Security Affairs marks the rollout of a new recurring feature called Policy Perspectives. From its founding, CHDS has had twin missions of educating and informing policymakers as well as furthering scholarship in the discipline of Homeland Security. In order to better serve both constituencies, HSA will begin to provide its readers with occasional policy-focused analyses and position papers in addition to peer-reviewed scholarly articles and book reviews. With the addition of the new Policy Perspectives features, Homeland Security Affairs will now serve as an enhanced platform for the discussion and debate of important policy ideas and proposals while it continues to serve as an outlet for outstanding scholarship designed to further the growth of knowledge within the developing discipline of homeland security.

Our first Policy Perspectives feature will be an analysis of key capability gaps at Customs and Border Protection (CBP) by Thomas P.M. Barnett. In addition to our inaugural “Policy Perspectives” feature, the August issue also contains an essay which reviews an important new book on domestic intelligence in the U.S., and an essay which presents an andragogical approach for learning homeland security.

In “Capability Gaps Threatening CBP’s Present and Future Operations,” Thomas P.M.Barnett analyzes key operational shortcomings at Customs and Border Protection and recommends targeted reforms for the agency.

The "Climate Changes Everything" June 2019 Brief

65-minute presentation delivered in Idaho to a convention.

Recent appearance at Purdue symposium on AI and future of war (video)

Video of panel three on YouTube.

Embedded below:

Pictures from TRT World Forum panel

Video of "World In Or Out of Order?" session at TRT World Forum 20128

My moments come at:

• 24:40 and
• 46:15.

 

My prepared remarks at the TRT World Forum 2018 in Istanbul

I participated today in the panel entitled, "A World In or Out of Order? A Hundred Years Since WWII."

The following were my remarks prepared in advance.

I am by nature a contrarian, and on this panel, I will remain true to that nature. I don’t view the 20^thcentury along the lines described by this forum’s organizers. I don’t recognize its most important historical dynamics in structural terms – multipolar, bipolar, unipolar, etc., because that approach tends to obscure today’s pressing challenges. It does so by convincing us that we live in a world of uncertainty, crisis, conflict, and even chaos – all historically false exaggerations. Our world is anything but fragmented. Instead, we live in a world full of predictability, control, orderly transactions, unprecedented peace, and unequaled prosperity. I do not dispute Turkey’s instinct to view the world in this way, but I’m going to offer you a different, more positive historical narrative – one that does not conflate globalization’s profoundly integrating forces with its social and political frictions, which pale in comparison. In this story, I’m going to sound very Marxist in my mindset, with technology and economics driving the vast bulk of change, while politics and security lag woefully – and sometimes tragically – behind. But, frankly, this is how it has always been – and should be, and so the future will be no different.

I begin my tale in the post-Civil War United States of the late 19^thcentury.  Prior to that bloody conflict, America was an agrarian economy clearly divided into regional sections. But following that radically networking event, the nation’s three dozen states plunged into a vast integration scheme of infrastructure development, Westward consolidation, interstate investment, and rapid industrialization - making America the rising China of that era. The key political-economic dynamic? The emergence of the nation’s middle class and its famously insatiable demand for consumption. This led to boom-and-bust cycles generating horrific pollution, extreme income inequality, and pervasive corruption - all tamed by a Progressive Era triggered in response. America cleaned up its act and became a world power in the process.

As the 20^thcentury dawned, Europe experienced many similar dynamics, even as colonialism allowed states to avoid accommodating the rising middle class – often until it was too late. The political equations here were simple: What did the poor want? They wanted protection from their circumstances. And the rich? As always, the rich wanted protection from the poor. But what this emerging middle class wanted was far more difficult to provide: protection from the future – from uncertainty that threatened their success.  What did Europe’s Left prescribe? Bolshevism, or rule from below to stifle the bourgeoisie. And Europe’s right? Fascism, or rule from above to protect shopkeepers from revolutionaries. But what was really needed was for the middle to rule itself – a process America pioneered across its progressive era. 

America’s salvation was to transform itself into a middle-class-centric political system – a complex effort led by two cousins of an ethnic Dutch family known as the Roosevelts. Traitors to their class, they regraded America’s economic landscape, placing middle class demands – and fears – at the center of governance. As World War II wound down, Franklin Roosevelt set in motion his “new deal for the world” – a liberal international trade order that we know today as globalization. That is what America actually achieved in the Cold War, which was – in retrospect – less about defeating the Soviets and more about setting in motion the rise of a global middle class, tripling its share from 1/5^thof world population in 1950 to 3/5ths of today’s global economy.  Herein lie the planet’s essential challenges going forward.

Challenge #1: Meeting the global middle class’s insatiable demands for personal consumption, economic opportunity, and political freedom in their pursuit of happiness. The temptation here is obvious: retreat, out of fear, to old solutions. Vladimir Lenin’s greatest political invention was single-party rule, which supposes that humanity’s path to happiness is singular, and thus to be entrusted to an all-knowing single political party headed – invariably – by a single indispensable man. But there’s been enough history to know how that story ends – in economic stagnation and political revolt. Without political competition, all manner of innovation wanes. Walls are erected, exclusionary ethnic identities are prioritized, and connectivity with the outside world curtailed - all proven recipes for political failure leading to security breakdowns.

Challenge #2: The rise of the global middle class generates unprecedented resource requirements. Its demands are limitless: unlimited access to education, unlimited bandwidth, unlimited personal mobility, unlimited caloric intake, and unlimited electricity. When the middle class hailed solely from the West, meeting such demands required modest innovation in resource utilization schemes, but now, with 60% of the planet making such demands, there is an inescapable requirement for radical improvements in efficiency. This will not happen if single-party states are tasked with picking economic winners and losers; it will only happen if markets remain unfettered, if cross-border trade and investment flow with reasonable restrictions, and entrepreneurial freedom is enabled throughout the private sector.

Challenge #3: This much-needed adherence to the precepts of a liberal international economic order is now being tested, less so by the stubborn reassertion of single-party rule than by a profound crisis of confidence concerning that system’s enduring utility among its two greatest champions. Here I cite the UK’s stunningly self-inflected wound known as BREXIT, along with America’s historically predictable flirtation with authoritarianism, protectionism, and isolationism – in the form of Donald Trump – when its middle class senses an existential challenge (proximately, China’s rise, but artificial intelligence and robotics). America and the UK have experienced this scary political dynamic before and recovered, and they will do so again, thanks to avoiding the temptation of single-party rule. Competitive elections, whatever the level of partisanship, signal political vibrancy – not weakness. That is not optimism but realism.

The United Kingdom, thanks to its colonial past, and America, thanks to its history of welcoming immigrants, have been forced to adapt to the reality of a multicultural citizenry of synthetic ethnic identity. My own household is a microcosm of this process: After having three children, my wife and I adopted three girls from abroad – one from China and two from Ethiopia. Now, as our third child heads off to college, my wife and I, as white Americans, suddenly find ourselves the majority-minority within our own family – outnumbered by non-white immigrants! But this is already true in every major American city, in the states of Florida, Texas, and California, and in America’s zero-to-age-ten cohort. In just over a generation’s time, it will be true across America as a whole. America, like Britain, has little choice but to accept multiculturalism.

Here’s where the rest of the world will be forced into similar accommodations – my global challenge #4, for it is climate change that is driving this process of mass migration – not conflict. As the planet has warmed over the past several decades, we’ve seen species of all sorts move upward in elevation and pole-ward in latitude – in effect, abandoning an increasingly inhospitable middle Earth. The same is true of clouds, reflecting radical changes in weather patterns worldwide. Humans are not immune to this process, as both North and South are seeing mass migrations come their way, creating huge political tensions on a country-by-country basis and fueling that temptation to resort to, or reassert, the perceived sanctuary of single-party rule. As with rising ocean levels, this reaction is wishful thinking – holding back the tide with a broom.

I am under no illusions here: globalization is a revolutionizing, transformational dynamic. While virtually all nations welcome its physical and virtual connectivity, most have great difficulty processing its content. The former enables easy networking among globalization’s many rejectionists and violent extremists, while the latter prioritizes individual choice above all else – rendering that global middle class all the more unreasonable in its many demands. Here I locate my 5^thglobal challenge:  the inescapable competition among the world’s great powers to recast the globalization’s essential rule set to their individual advantage – not just Trump’s America but Putin’s Russia and Xi’s China, to name only the most aggressive. While tumultuous and scary, this process of rebalancing the world order is inevitable and needed.

Simply put: America’s unipolar moments have long since passed –despite white America’s great nostalgia for the so-called good old days.  Globalization comes with rules but not a ruler. There is no single party smart enough or powerful enough to run this increasingly complex world. And while most Americans forget this truth, it was always America’s intention to spawn a world order stable enough to rule itself collectively. However awkward and annoying, the rise of Donald Trump proves that enduring instinct – an America made great again is one suitably unburdened of its disproportionate responsibility to run the world. As always, a proud America has a difficult time making its wishes clear to the world, and so we must all endure the tantrums of Trump, whose targets are accurate even as his tactics are atrocious.

I finish with my sixth global challenge. I believe – and trend analysis backs this up – that global capitalism presently achieves what Karl Marx once labeled its era of “superabundance,” in effect, when the world suffers too much disposable income – as opposed to not enough. This superabundance of worldwide consumption is what fuels climate change, animates the political restlessness of the global middle class, and attracts the planet’s economic migrants. In historical terms, these are the best problems we’ve ever faced. But what they tell us is this: it is not the world system’s structural order that will save us in the end, but a redefinition of capitalism among the world’s leading economies. That challenge captures the essence of a global progressive era that all responsible nations now instinctively seek, whether they realize it or not.

Speech in Denver this month

America the Aggrieved Departs Center Stage

Alex Wong/Getty Images

It was always going to be the case that America would eventually want/have to renegotiate its relationship with the world and the many great powers whose rise we encouraged and accommodated.  Eight years ago I published an entire book (Great Powers) that laid out a host of accommodations, deals, renegotiations, compromises, etc. that we'd have to pursue to re-rationalize our relationship with the world and globalization itself - the most obvious being we'd have to get along with, and forge new, more realistic and equitable relationships with New Core powers like China, Russia, Turkey, Iran, and so on. As I have maintained for a couple of decades now, globalization comes with rules - but not a ruler.

President Obama did a lot of good things while in office, most notably symmetricizing the war on terror (our SOF/drones against their badasses). But he also engaged in the ill-conceived and poorly executed "Asian pivot," created a serious great-power leadership vacuum in SW Asia (into which strode Russia and Iran), and abandoned all pretense of responsible nation-building (logically adhering to the pottery barn rule - yes, but doing it by sharing both the burden and the decision-making with all those far-more-local-and-incentivized New Core powers named above). By doing these things, Obama encouraged the "G-Zero" atmosphere that President Trump now exploits to complete his very dark take on the state of America and the world - a take that allows him to regurgitate the "America First" vision of pre-superpower America.

That vision is arguably the greatest threat that our democracy faced in the 20th century, and, to my deep dismay, we toy with it again in the 21st.

Do I think it will succeed as a lasting grand strategy?  No.

Do I think this administration will be allowed to pursue it sufficiently to inflict great damage on the global economy (and us by rebound)?  Also no, but I will admit to worrying greatly about that possibility. American-hatched-and-nurtured globalization is here to stay. We simply were too successful in spreading it, creating vast and deep constituencies for its survival in a host of rising economies - most notably in the BRICS (whom I have identified for a dozen-or-more years now as our natural allies of this century).

Do I think there's a better and right way to do this?  Sure.

Much of what President Trump said today contained grains of truth - very important grains of truth:

• America did seek to encourage the rise of other powers - at its own expense.
• America did seek to spread liberal trade - at its own expense.
• America has provided more security to the world than the world did in return.

And you know what? Our efforts fueled the greatest advance in human development, peace, prosperity, and freedom that the world has ever witnessed.

Simplest numbers: 

• In 1950, 55% of the world's population was living in extreme poverty. Today that number is just under 10%.
• In 1950, only 23% of the world's population could be described as middle-class. Today that number is 58%. 

All that happened as the world ballooned from a 1950 population of 2.5B to 7.3B today.

That means that, in absolute terms, the number of people living in extreme povery decreased from 1.4B in 1950 to 650m today, while the middle class skyrocketed from 575m to 4.2B! So, we cut extreme poverty in half - in absolute terms, and increase the global middle class over seven-fold. 

Amazing stuff.

That's what American "empire," "hegemony," "militarism," "imperialism," etc. actually wrought. 

Did we stress the planet?  Yes.

Was it worth it? Most definitely. Nobody living in extreme poverty gives a rat's ass about the environment - nor should they. You want environmentalists? Get yourself a big middle class.

Does our role in enabling the globalization of the international liberal trade order (based on the model of these United States) these past seven-plus decades mark us as the world's greatest nation? Absolutely.

Were we slated to play this pre-eminent role forever? Hardly.

Did the time come, in the Great Recession, for America to begin re-calibrating its role in the world. Yea, and I wrote a whole book on that.

So am I surprised or dismayed by Trump's ascendancy? No to the first, yes to the second.  You give me Mike Bloomberg in exactly the same role, and I'm loving it.

The correction is long overdue, and it's driven by what I (in Blueprint for Action) once dubbed any country's "caboose" - namely, its conservative, rural, interior poor. What I said back then (2005) is what I still say: The train's engine can travel no faster than its caboose.

That's true of globalization itself and it's true of every nation in the global economy - including ours. Because, if you go too fast, you end up like Iran after the Shah's White Revolution - in a reactionary backlash that can f*#k you up for a very long time.

How much is Obama to be blamed for not doing more to address America's "caboose" these past 8 years? No more than the GOP House and Senate membership. As I have stated for many years now, the Boomers have been a complete disaster as a generation of political leaders (and the Gen Xers pulled in their wake haven't been much better up to now). [Note: I remain supremely optimistic about the Millennials for many reasons long and often noted in past writings and speeches.]

In the end, America was going to flirt with economic nationalism. We went overboard on security after 9/11 (forcing the Obama retrenchment), and it was inevitable that the Great Recession would eventually push us to experiment with the self-destruction that is trade protectionism, wall-building, economic nationalism, and the mercantilist dream of winner-takes-all. In short, when we want change, we tend to freak out. That's the hidden opportunity cost of democracy. We don't do incremental change very well. That's why the Founding Fathers built in so many checks and balances - all of which I expect to function well across the Trump administration.

The pity is, America can and should renegotiate a more self-preserving economic relationship with the global economy. I truly believe the world knows it's time and it's the fair thing to do. And frankly, with China so "risen," the world economy no longer needs to rely on the US consumer so much, meaning we have it within our power to genuinely self-correct greatly while demanding appropriate "gives" from the rest of the world for whom we did so much to fuel globalization's successful rise and continuing durability.

But, again, we're not like that. When we freak out in any direction, it's all the way. That's what generations and generations of A-type personalities interbreeding gets you - and Trump is the perfect embodiment of that self-centered ambition and aggression.

My best positive spin on Trump is that he's crazy like a fox and will exploit all his over-the-top rhetoric and threats to achieve the much-needed recalibration between America and the world.

But I will readily admit that I fear he's an overboard character elevated by America's typically overboard political impulses, and that we'll learn many hard lessons over the next four years.

Either way, I've often said in speeches that America gets the president we need - and deserve, even as the course corrections pursued are often way too much.

But that's just who we are.

I will say, though, that I don't much care for this America the aggrieved persona. It strikes me as too full of self-loathing and far too fearful. I prefer the "better angels" and "shining city on a hill" stuff.

Because that's actually more of who we are.

But, rest assured, the Great Recalibration that I spent chapter upon chapter detailing in "Great Powers" is most definitely in full swing now. Obama got it rolling but it's moving into high gear with Trump. It could be done right and I expect it to be done mostly wrong by this raucous crew, but the effect is the same. [Much like Bush with the Big Bang strategy: If he does Iraq right, he scares the crap out of the region and triggers tumultuous change. And if he does Iraq badly, same outcome.]

America is headed toward a future of diminished global leadership: this is - and always has been - the price of our fantastic success in spreading American-style globalization.

Yes, the world is full of idiots who will proclaim America's relative "decline" in zero-sum terms. But don't let them bother you. What we did for humanity is the greatest single achievement ever accomplished by a nation-state - in addition to being the most Christian display of generosity and sacrifice by a country.

Point being: America has never been greater than it is now.

Remember that in the weeks and months and four years ahead. 

Making It Hardest For The Most Resilient Among Us

HUMANITY HAS TRANSFORMED THE NATURE OF LIVING OVER THE PAST CENTURY, ROUGHLY DOUBLING LIFE EXPECTANCY AT BIRTH AND THUS SHIFTING THE MEAN AGE RADICALLY UPWARD. This changes the structure of all societies, albeit at uneven paces. Globally, the worker-to-elder-dependent ratio was 12:1 in 1950, dropping only to 9:1 in the year 2000. But with globalization's profound expansion over the last 25 years, we're looking at a ratio of just 4:1 in 2050 (per the UN). That's an amazing burden shift that will be accommodated by people working later in life, technology and productivity advances, and — most crucially — the proper harnessing of youth as future labor. The big problem? Most of those youth are located in the emerging South, where a 10:1 ratio will still exist in 2050, whereas the advanced West will be looking at an untenable 2:1 ratio.

This is why I have advocated, throughout my career, for the West's open borders and active recruitment of immigrants from younger parts of the world. It is the only realistic solution — necessary even as it's insufficient (people will have to work longer and productivity will need to advance). Right now, Westerners seems to be dazzled by the imagery of robots running all and there being no work to be done, but this is a queer illusion that encourages inward-looking perspectives on the future, the classic example being Japan. The zero-sum mindset is also unrealistically greedy — as in, we have ours, so tough on you.

And yes, this generational divide, so well encapsulated in a North-South divide, dovetails quite negatively with the unequal social and environmental burdens generated by climate change, which likewise pits the "old" poles against" young" Middle Earth.

Simply put, we are eating our seed corn.

On this disturbing global trend comes a great editorial in the Economist. Some highlights, with commentary:

Roughly a quarter of the world’s people—some 1.8 billion—have turned 15 but not yet reached 30. In many ways, they are the luckiest group of young adults ever to have existed. They are richer than any previous generation, and live in a world without smallpox or Mao Zedong. They are the best-educated generation ever . . . they are also more intelligent than their elders. If they are female or gay, they enjoy greater freedom in more countries than their predecessors would have thought possible. And they can look forward to improvements in technology that will, say, enable many of them to live well past 100.

Another theme of my work over the years: when America stood up and took on the responsibility of running the world after WWII, it didn't simply replicate the global orders imposed sequentially by Europe's colonial powers over the centuries. Instead, it fundamentally reshaped it to enable global economic integration on an unprecedented scale — and based on our own model of states uniting. This is the primary reason why global standards of living have skyrocketed over the past half century.

But this creates class and generational consciousness on a global scale:

Just as, for the first time in history, the world’s youngsters form a common culture, so they also share the same youthful grievances. Around the world, young people gripe that it is too hard to find a job and a place to live, and that the path to adulthood has grown longer and more complicated.

The primary culprit? "Policies favouring the old over the young."

Last hired, first fired is the most obvious one:

In most regions they are at least twice as likely as their elders to be unemployed. The early years of any career are the worst time to be idle, because these are when the work habits of a lifetime become ingrained. Those unemployed in their 20s typically still feel the “scarring” effects of lower income, as well as unhappiness, in their 50s.

This is very bad news for a planet experiencing rapid demographic aging, the scariest and most self-destructive expression being the tendency of the old to want to "keep out" the foreign or "scary" young. This is a great deal of the emotion behind America's current passion for such slogans as "make our country great again!" It is simply nostalgia for the way things were.

But it denies us sufficient access to the most important resource on the planet — namely, youthful ambition and drive and creativity:

Young people are often footloose. With the whole world to explore and nothing to tie them down, they move around more often than their elders. This makes them more productive, especially if they migrate from a poor country to a rich one. By one estimate, global GDP would double if people could move about freely. That is politically impossible—indeed, the mood in rich countries is turning against immigration. But it is striking that so many governments discourage not only cross-border migration but also the domestic sort … A UN study found that 80% of countries had policies to reduce rural-urban migration, although much of human progress has come from people putting down their hoes and finding better jobs in the big smoke.

The aging of the North is making it brittle, self-centered, and selfish in spirit, and this is being increasingly reflected in government policies, in large part because, on average, 3 out of 5 elders regularly vote while only 1 out of 5 youth do.

The old have always subsidised their juniors. Within families, they still do. But many governments favour the old: an ever greater share of public spending goes on pensions and health care for them. This is partly the natural result of societies ageing, but it is also because the elderly ensure that policies work in their favour. By one calculation, the net flow of resources (public plus private) is now from young to old in at least five countries, including Germany and Hungary. This is unprecedented and unjust—the old are much richer.

This is where the newspaper nails the long-term danger:

That is a cruel waste of talent . . . Rich, ageing societies will find that, unless the youth of today can get a foot on the career ladder, tomorrow’s pensioners will struggle. What is more, oppressing youngsters is dangerous. Countries with lots of jobless, disaffected young men tend to be more violent and unstable . . .

The great challenge of the North's rapid demographic aging is resisting the general political crabbiness that comes with growing old, which eventually turns us all into cranky, get-the-hell-off-my-lawn types.

I don't know about you, but I don't dream of a future of gated communities populated mostly by the elderly who receive "personal care" from robots. That sounds more like the North turning itself into a giant nursing home.

Social resilience is a renewable resource, but it gets renewed generation by generation. We are not promoting that dynamic today in the West/North, and it will come back to haunt us.

YouTubes of 2015 Washington DC speech

Video segments of September 2015 briefing to an international military audience in the Washington DC area.

Part 1: Introductions and US grand strategy

 Part 2: America's looming energy self-sufficiency

Part 3: Climate Change and its impact on food & water

Part 4: The aging of great powers

Past 5: Millennials & Latinization of U.S.

Part 6: Evolution of US Military under Obama

Part 7: Dangers of a "splendid little war" with China

Part 8: Middle East without a Leviathan

Part 9: Answers to audience questions

(RESILIENT BLOG) Internet Censorship As An Inverse Indicator of National Resilience

FREEDOM HOUSE RECENTLY ISSUED ITS 2015 REPORT ON INTERNET FREEDOM, a timely notion given the ongoing debates about encryption, monitoring of social media, etc., in the wake of recent terrorist attacks ... 

READ THE ENTIRE POST AT:

What China wants, China gets - at a cost to the planet

One of the ways in which China starts getting blamed for all things globalization is the direct impact its consumers can have on global markets - sending them soaring and crashing in a historical heartbeat.

I've talked about China's incredible hunger for various nuts in the past, and how that demand has fundamentally reshaped ag markets in the US.

This NYT story discusses how fishermen off the coast of Mexico are ignoring governmental attempts to preserve an overfished area for sea cucumbers.  Out-of-area guys are slipping into zones being vigilantly guarded by locals and pulling out hauls right under their noses.  This creates a "wild west" atmosphere were towns square off against towns over their precious slices of the pie and every stranger is treated like a would-be criminal.

Until China emerged in its middle-class glory, they wasn't much of a demand, as sea cucumbers aren't really eaten by Mexicans.  But now the demand is such that one guy poaching can claim $700 a day in profit.

So this section of Mexico's coastline is in uproar . . . because Chinese like their sea cucumbers.

There will come a time - soon enough, when virtually everyone in the world who isn't Chinese will be living some version of this story.

A while back, America played that role, and while everyone wanted to please that American consumer, the dynamic created a lot of antipathy too.

And that is what's coming toward China at high speed.

Iraq at ten years

Cartoon found here (in an FT op-ed that fits this post nicely - if orthogonally).

Read through a variety of the tenth-year anniversary reviews, and I thought Thomas Friedman's was the best - despite the weird title (Democrats, Dragons or Drones?).

His basic notion that it takes the next generation to create and shape the subsequent reality is correct.  Friedman pegs it at "9 months and 21 years to develop."

Fair enough. But the question (as he also notes) hinges on that generation's journey.  Done well, it works.  Done badly enough and a vicious spiral ensues.  In truth, the jury remains out on that score.

We won the war - no doubt, and then took a pass on the postwar.  If we hadn't, then questions of "why?" fade away.  In the post-9/11 mood, America possessed the desire to reshape the region and Saddam was the obvious target. Direct causality was not the issue, although Dick Cheney tried to sell that.  Nor was direct threat, referring to the late and frantic oversell of the WMD to Congress.  The purpose - all along - was structural retribution: as in, you reshaped our world, now we reshape yours.  Americans are just deeply uncomfortable admitting that, so we needed a clear and present storyline to drive our revenge-flick dynamics.

The resulting strategic "pre-emption" was oddly symmetrical in ambition but certainly not in cost (and why should it be so between a superpower and a non-state actor?).

So when we take that pass on the aftermath of the war, and basically pretend that what comes next doesn't really matter, we abort the entire regional restructuring ambition (which, if you remember, was on a nice roll for 2-3 years there) and we allow ourselves to be swallowed up (in terms of strategic effort and attention) by an insurgency that was completely foreseeable and completely manageable - if we had bothered to embrace that inevitability.

But instead of embracing it, we did what we always do and called the postwar another war.  And wars yield a singular answer in US military history - called, more firepower.  And then we found that made things worse (go figure).

And then the White House, chastened finally by the 2006 midterms, relabeled the conflict and rebranded the mission - and then we succeeded again.  

But by then the public narrative had already been cast (Bush lied, too many deaths, too much cost).

So ultimately the Bush administration pays the legacy cost for its mistakes, which mostly had to do with stubbornness.  They had their narrative of a successful war and stuck to it - until it hurt so bad that they had to change.

So what are we left with?

In structural terms, I like what the Middle East has become.  The inevitabilities are being processed and Iran is more isolated than ever.  And thanks to larger structural changes in the global economy, the area is coming under new superpower management - inexorably.  None of it is nice, but it was never going to be anything but painful and violent.  The Arab world has an enormous amount of catching up to do WRT globalization, and it will be awful in execution (and with Africa leaping ahead on many fronts, the Middle East and North Africa - or large portions of it - risk becoming globalization's long-term basket case).

If the US had handed off the region still encased in its many dictatorships, China would have a much easier time over the next two decades.  Now, it faces challenges that are likely to alter its own political structure significantly - just like it did to the US.  Some naturally see the "defeat of American empire" in the region, but since empire was never America's goal, that judgment is meaningless.

All that matters is the relative evolutions of the three superpowers of the 21st century:  China, India and America.

America did, per my original Esquire piece, take strategic ownership of the Middle East in a big way.  That ambition was both debilitating and liberating:  we took our shot (badly) and now we're done "owning" things there (besides Iran's nukes).  In that way, Iraq processed our inevitable post-9/11 over-reaching response (we are a democracy) and hurried us along the exhaustion-collapse-rock bottom-recovery-resurrection dynamic that was always slated for us in the post-Cold War world (our inability to handle the success of the "end of history" - aka, the globalization of our economic connectivity model).  We had gotten used to running things, and we weren't going to stop until something made us stop - an unpleasant journey but a necesssary one.

Now, in grand structural terms, the race among my C-I-A trio is well underway.  The Obama administration, needing a switch-over target, sells its Asian pivot.  This is not a good answer, as I have noted frequently - but rather a red herring.  The real struggle in Asia doesn't involve us except in an off-shore balancing role.

Instead, the real struggles of the future involve the very same frontier integration I've been talking about for a decade now.  On that score, we are looking fine enough in our ongoing restructuring of our portfolio, while China's grows frighteningly larger relative to its ability to deliver and manage regions distant from its shores. India is just begining to recognize what responsibilities lie ahead.

You'll say that China will do it differently, but the structure of the system will force the same responses: China cannot afford to lose its growing overseas dependencies (much greater than any borne by the US), and so the responses will be mounted.  And when they don't go well (whoever gets it right - right off the bat?), change will double back upon China - to its general benefit (along with the world's).

Iraq was always a means to an end (when in history has great power war ever been anything else?).  During the real-time execution, it seems like everything - as does every war throughout history.  But half a century later?  It looks very different.  It's a stepping stone for superpowers:  some step up and some step down, some step away and some step in.  None of it is exactly what it appears to be in the light of present-day reporting.  Per Zhou Enlai's take on the French Revolution, we will be witnessing the downstream consequences across the century.

China: The hunger = the hate

On a walk last night and I was thinking about what I know about the future that I feel supremely confident about, and the answer that popped into my head is China's coming difficulties.  Not that I wish it any harm - anything but.  It's just that the hubris and the nationalism and the hunger for all things - all completely natural in a rise of this caliber - are combining to create antipathy abroad and extreme anxiousness at home.  The tough times that follow will force China into a scary and dangerous democratization. It happens to the best; it happens to the rest.  There is no Chinese "alternative."

Neat pair of NYT stories to illustrate.

First one (above) is about an Asian art exhibit.  The paper version had the title that caught my eye:

East is East; West is Omnivorous

Exhibit covers the time period of Europe's early global expansion and the apocalyptic views it generated among the conquered in Asia.

The only thing I thought when I saw the title was, now the worm has turned.  Now the West is West and the East is omnivorous.  And that hunger for all things creates the growing hatred of China.

This has a been a prediction of mine since New Map:  China becomes the face of globalization and thus the target of anti-globalization anger in all forms.  I've been saying this in Beijing for almost a decade, and I don't get many takers.  "We are different," I am told. 

But they're not.  The hunger is unbelievable (China adds ANOTHER 300m to its US-sized middle class in the next 6-7 years) and the hate is real and growing.

See Shambaugh's excellent NYT op-ed on global attitudes toward the Chinese:  all downhill.

Meanwhile, the US is in its hibernation phase, and Obama is the perfect hibernation president.  I'm not bitching. We asked and he delivers.

But the regeneration proceeds.

China, however, tops out on all sorts of things - signalling tougher times ahead.  And this is not a system built for tough times.  You may think authoritarianism is, but it ain't.  No ability to "throw the bums out" = building hatred within the system (frustration that finds no relief).

Nothing I describe here happens tomorrow, and it's easy to dismiss.

But I know this with a certainty:  Right now China is perceived to be passing the US and we find that scary.  But between now and 2030 this all gets reversed in a big way, and that will be far more scary for both sides.  

This is why we cannot abide the fear mongers on both sides; they are too dangerous for the world's future.

The outreach must be pursued and eventual partnership revealed - not out of our fear for them but to modulate what will become China's great fears of all things during the difficult times ahead.

Nice side-by-side capture of globalization dynamics (guest post)

From Thomas Frazel of Tulane:

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887323478004578303733925078030.html

Heinz Sold as Deals Take Off

"We've been prospecting in the emerging world for a long time, and now they're prospecting here,"Heinz's Mr. Johnson said in an interview. "You're seeing a shrinking world and an equilibrium of wealth creation, and this kind of activity is only going to accelerate over the next five to 10 years."

In the interview, Mr. Johnson said he was surprised that firms from emerging markets would be capable of taking over America's most established companies.  "I didn't see this happening eight weeks ago, let alone five years ago," he said.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887324162304578304512387875482.html

First Bud, Now Heinz, Tycoon Grabs Brands

Though Mr. Lemann is a Brazilian business icon, he moved his family to Switzerland more than a decade ago following a kidnapping attempt in Brazil, a stark reminder of persistent problems of crime in the South American nation. Mr. Lemann's family is of Swiss descent. He declined an interview request through an associate, and has denied past requests as well.

Frazel's comment:

It was too perfect to see these things side-by-side — money in the Gap, instability in the Gap.

The more sophisticated read of PENTAGON'S NEW MAP was that the Gap would experience more instability as globalization rapidly improved things.  Change destabilizes.  It's as simple as that.  

The security challenge that results more resembles small-wars than large - thus the call for the SysAdmin force. It's about seeing the world as it is - what really matters in terms of structural change, and staying true to America's several-decade effort to replicate its core dynamics on a global scale.

What did we get for our effort?  Our blood and treasure?

The best and most radically improving period in world history.

Many other powers had their versions of globalization before ours came along.  And they were all far less fair and far more bloody. Ours is hardly perfect, but much like a democratic republic, ours is the best worst version yet.

Our challenge:  China and India will be the shapers of this system in the future - more than us. That is why understanding those two powers and joining with them in co-managing this world is America's number 1 long-term foreign policy objective.

And this is why I find Obama's Asian pivot so idiotically misguided. Scratch that - too harsh. He is ideologically misguided.  He mistrusts US power and does not acknowledge the decades of effort that I cite - nor its success.

THAT America did far more good than harm, but he does see that America.

And so he does trust the future that that America made possible.

Obama's serious movement toward a genuine foreign policy legacy

NYT front-pager yesterday on "Obama's Bid for Trade Pact with Europe Stirs Hope."

Impossible!  I know.

If trade deals are hard in good times, then they must be harder in tough times, right?  I mean, aren't we told by stern-faced national security experts about how the Great Recession is fostering trade wars and currency wars, so this move - amidst all such rising trade protectionism - is IMPOSSIBLE, correct?

Except trade deals like this get down EXACTLY during slow times.  Remember when we got NAFTA, because this one will end up being just as big or bigger.  NAFTA was Clinton's signature foreign policy achievement.  I know, I got the grand tour of his library from the director when I gave a speech there years back, and NAFTA was front and center.

If successful (and this will be), then this will be Obama's big achievement - the one history will remember.  Compared to this, the wars and the targetted assassinations will be miniscule, because they just deal with the friction caused by globalization's historic expansion, whereas this will fuel another wave.

Aren't all those Islamists now in power supposed to keep globalization out?

Interesting NYT story on the cotinuing explosion of social media across the Middle East:

The use of social media exploded during the Arab Spring as people turned to cyberspace to express themselves. On the back of that, social media networks, including Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn, have moved into the region commercially, setting up offices to sell advertising products to companies like Mobily, which has over 200,000 Twitter followers, to capitalize on the growing audience.

“In Saudi, social media gets everyone talking to everyone, which is something we just don’t have in the streets here,” said Muna AbuSulayman, a Saudi development consultant and formerly a popular television talk show host, who has over 100,000 followers on Twitter.

“It’s a unique opportunity that lets people have conversations in a boundary-less way that wasn’t possible before,” Ms. AbuSulayman said. “In addition to promoting social and political discussion, it carries a powerful economic incentive for businesses, too.”

Well, you know what the experts say:

• The Arab Spring failed - turned to a terrible winter.
• Globalization is on the retreat- everywhere.  
• Connectivity is oversold; it doesn't really change all that much.
• Authoritarianism is resurgent.
• We lost the Middle East, thank you very much.

What's odd to me?  People have no sense of patience anymore and reach for the fatalism in a heartbeat. Meanwhile, everything is moving at such a fantastically high speed in terms of positive change.

Iran's fear - in a nutshell

NYT story:  "Monks Lose Relevance As Thailand Grows Richer."

Per my post yesterday about individualism:  the connectivity afforded by globalization and the wealth creation diminishes the hectoring/exemplary power of religious leaders who, under past harsher times, were better positioned to keep the social peace by encouraging a certain morality.

When globalization comes in, the socio-economic change happens in a heartbeat, and the churches/faithes/religious leaders simply can't respond fast enough.

As one Thai monk is quoted in the piece: 'Consumerism is now the Thai religion."

He's wrong, of course, and he needs to get off his ass and stop whining.  New spiritual challenges naturally follow.

The monks need to summon up their inner Joel Osteen - or just find one quick.

But yeah, this is EXACTLY what Iran's mullahs fear in any genuine opening up to West/globalization.  Better to pretend it's all about the nukes.

The adaptability of people is consistently under-estimated by experts

Pair of NYT stories from earlier in the month.  Both speak to the realities and myths of people's adaptability.

First one is about how Latvia (a place I very briefly visited back in the 1980s when it was still back in the USSR) and it talks about how, during the Great Recession, Latvians were able to handle the harsh austerity (sort of crew cut instead of the usual haircut).  

Second one is about how Russians are already mall fanatics. I remember Zbig Brzezinski saying, when the Wall fell, that it would be decades and generations before Russians figured out markets, etc.  It was all so godawfully patronizing (as only a Pole or Ukrainian might be WRT Russians).

My point in citing them together:  people are amazingly adaptable.  Latvians remember worse days (like your Great Depression parents or grandparents) and so they are unfazed, but Russians have no trouble slipping right into being material boys and girls (as did the Latvians for a while there and as they will again soon).

Americans have this tendency to believe we're the only adaptable people in the world, and it's true on some points:  on religion and "sacred soil," we are freakishly flexible.  If they declared that the US was being moved to Canada next week, most of us would pack up and go, because it's the freedom rule-set that we're most addicted to, with darn near everything else being negotiable.

Yes, the world is still full of traditional cultures wedded to sacred soil and religious identities (like . . . fuh-ever!), but given even the slightest chance, man, will they ever break out of their shells - and I mean everybody.  Sure, it's the kids who always lead the way, but guess what?  Traditional societies are youth-skewed (all that baby cranking) and they often feel the huge need to BE traditional precisely because there are all those young minds that need bending.  And yes, when the change comes, it does seem like the "end of X civilization," just like when Elvis and The Beatles and Stones showed up. And yes, many prices will be paid and much of the culture transformed and made that much harsher by all that individualism (to include the freedom to be miserable), but people really are the same all over - when given the chance.  No, that expression doesn't come in some archetypal "American" way.  At the end of the day, Russians are still Russians and Chinese are still Chinese (go figure!), so the applications are always different. 

It's just that the freedom impulse (far more economic in nature than political) is the basically the same:  I get to do what I want, when I want, how I want, buying what I want, etc.

So no, no 50-year transformations required on the economics.  It's the politics (single-party states in particular) that go slow.

That's what the military and intell people NEVER understand.  They think the politics (aka, intentions) can go like "SNAP!" while the economics will never change (or capabilities change slowly).  

Truth is, it's entirely the other way around. And all that economic freedom is what drives the super-fast technology adaptations (meaning HOW people use tech is nearly always more revolutionary than the tech itself).

Just my 2 cents .....