Calling on Top Military Academies, Graduate Schools and Think Tanks

Please read below PR calling on members at Military Academies and Think Tanks as well as Graduate Students in top schools to participate at 2011 Grand Strategy Competition

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For Immediate Release

Media Contact:                                                                               

Milena Rodban    Phone: 410-929-5262   Email: milena@wikistrat.com           

WIKISTRAT ISSUES A CHALLENGE: “MAP A FUTURE WORTH CREATING”

--INTERNATIONAL GRAND STRATEGY COMPETITION DRAWS TEAMS FROM LEADING UNIVERSITIES--

(Washington, D.C. - March 21, 2011) Against the backdrop of dramatic political developments around the world, Wikistrat’s International Grand Strategy Competition, the first wiki based competition of its kind, is drawing intense interest from teams at leading universities and think tanks eager to demonstrate their analytical prowess by mapping the future.   

Wikistrat, which is already leading a revolution in geopolitical analysis and forecasting, is now applying its interactive model toward a revolution in grand strategic planning. Wikistrat currently provides businesses with the ability to interact with its innovative system to create scenarios, pathways and shocks-to-the-system, and explore them alongside the world's leading strategic thinkers. Now the firm is issuing a challenge to graduate students and emerging experts in the foreign affairs field who are anxious to put their skills and knowledge to the test to analyze and forecast highly relevant issues including the 2.0 revolutions, global economic rebalancing, oil interdependency, nuclear proliferation, and the implications of China's rise.

Managed by former Pentagon strategist and Wikistrat Chief Analyst Dr. Thomas Barnett, the month long competition, starting June 1^st_, will provide participants with the opportunity to test their skills with global counterparts and network within the community of experts while competing for a $10,000 prize.  According to Dr. Barnett, however, the benefits of participation far outweigh the prize: “Wikistrat and I are very excited to pool this much young talent in the same cyberspace. You are going to experience what the educational system won’t provide you and what your career will do its best to deny you – the consistent opportunity to think systematically about the future by thinking synergistically across a wide number of domains.  Given globalization’s fast pace of expansion and exponential complexity, these skills will be in higher demand than ever in the years and decades ahead.”

Participants will test their skills, network with other emerging experts in a collaborative environment and showcase their analytical talents before an audience of corporate observers seeking to recruit up and coming talent. These unique opportunities are attracting accomplished students like Zach Miller and Elizabeth Betterbed, who previously graduated first in their class at Williams College and West Point, respectively. Both are excited to represent Oxford University during the competition.  “Given the complex strategic challenges that exist in the world today, the Wikistrat Grand Strategy Competition represents a unique opportunity to apply our academic work to practical situations with potentially important, real-world implications,” says Miller, who will lead the Oxford team.

“As self-aggrandizing as it sounds, we are coming together to map a future worth creating by developing our own myths about its best and worst unfolding pathways.  Like most things in life, you only get what you give. So bring it all,” advises Dr. Barnett.

The challenge has been issued and dozens of teams from leading universities and think tanks are ready to show the world what they can do. Will you join them? Register your team and find out more at http://www.wikistrat.com/competition.

ABOUT WIKISTRAT

Wikistrat stands at the interface between business and geopolitics. Wikistrat’s geopolitical analysis subscription service tracks the advance of globalization and enables clients to access a unique strategic model, analytical methodology and interactive client delivery services. Interacting with the Wikistrat system allows subscribers to create own scenarios, pathways and shocks-to-the-system, and explore them alongside the world’s leading strategic thinkers.

Media Contact:                                                                                

Milena Rodban                                                                                                                    FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Phone: 410-929-5262

Email: milena@wikistrat.com                      

WIKISTRAT ISSUES A CHALLENGE: “MAP A FUTURE WORTH CREATING”

--INTERNATIONAL GRAND STRATEGY COMPETITION DRAWS TEAMS FROM LEADING UNIVERSITIES--

(Washington, D.C. - March 21, 2011) Against the backdrop of dramatic political developments around the world, Wikistrat’s International Grand Strategy Competition, the first wiki based competition of its kind, is drawing intense interest from teams at leading universities and think tanks eager to demonstrate their analytical prowess by mapping the future.   

                Wikistrat, which is already leading a revolution in geopolitical analysis and forecasting, is now applying its interactive model toward a revolution in grand strategic planning. Wikistrat currently provides businesses with the ability to interact with its innovative system to create scenarios, pathways and shocks-to-the-system, and explore them alongside the world's leading strategic thinkers. Now the firm is issuing a challenge to graduate students and emerging experts in the foreign affairs field who are anxious to put their skills and knowledge to the test to analyze and forecast highly relevant issues including the 2.0 revolutions, global economic rebalancing, oil interdependency, nuclear proliferation, and the implications of China's rise.  

Managed by former Pentagon strategist and Wikistrat Chief Analyst Dr. Thomas Barnett, the month long competition, starting June 1^st_, will provide participants with the opportunity to test their skills with global counterparts and network within the community of experts while competing for a $10,000 prize.  According to Dr. Barnett, however, the benefits of participation far outweigh the prize: “Wikistrat and I are very excited to pool this much young talent in the same cyberspace. You are going to experience what the educational system won’t provide you and what your career will do its best to deny you – the consistent opportunity to think systematically about the future by thinking synergistically across a wide number of domains.  Given globalization’s fast pace of expansion and exponential complexity, these skills will be in higher demand than ever in the years and decades ahead.”

Participants will test their skills, network with other emerging experts in a collaborative environment and showcase their analytical talents before an audience of corporate observers seeking to recruit up and coming talent. These unique opportunities are attracting accomplished students like Zach Miller and Elizabeth Betterbed, who previously graduated first in their class at Williams College and West Point, respectively. Both are excited to represent Oxford University during the competition.  “Given the complex strategic challenges that exist in the world today, the Wikistrat Grand Strategy Competition represents a unique opportunity to apply our academic work to practical situations with potentially important, real-world implications,” says Miller, who will lead the Oxford team.

 “As self-aggrandizing as it sounds, we are coming together to map a future worth creating by developing our own myths about its best and worst unfolding pathways.  Like most things in life, you only get what you give.  So bring it all,” advises Dr. Barnett.

The challenge has been issued and dozens of teams from leading universities and think tanks are ready to show the world what they can do. Will you join them? Register your team and find out more at http://www.wikistrat.com/competition.

ABOUT WIKISTRAT

Wikistrat stands at the interface between business and geopolitics. Wikistrat’s geopolitical analysis subscription service tracks the advance of globalization and enables clients to access a unique strategic model, analytical methodology and interactive client delivery services. Interacting with the Wikistrat system allows subscribers to create own scenarios, pathways and shocks-to-the-system, and explore them alongside the world’s leading strategic thinkers.

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Grand Strategy Competition - Wikistrat

Wikistrat is gearing up for an exciting International Grand Strategy Competition.

Select teams representing leading academic institutions from around the world are invited to participate in the first ever wiki-based grand strategy competition. Managed by Dr. Thomas PM Barnett, this competition will provide participants with the opportunity to test their skills with global counterparts and network within that community. Participants can demonstrate their capacity for strategic thought to agencies, institutions and firms seeking to recruit up-and-coming analytic talent.

We are currently reviewing applications by groups representing top Universities and Think Tanks worldwide. There are still open spots available for this exciting event.

To nominate a team, or to see if you institute has been invited, contact us HERE.

Participation is free, and winner team will get a $10,000 prize.

Some of the issues we will cover in the Competition include (Download the full PDF OUTLINE:

1. Global Energy Security

2. Global Economic “Rebalancing” Process

3. Salafi Jihadist Terrorism 

4. Inevitable Sino-American Special Relationship

5. Southwest Asia Nuclear Proliferation

Some of the Scenarios explored will include:

1. Major Biological Terror Attack

2. “2.0 Revolutions” in Arab World

3. + Additional Surprise Shocks

WPR's The New Rules: Leadership Fatigue Puts U.S., and Globalization, at Crossroads

Events in Libya are a further reminder for Americans that we stand at a crossroads in our continuing evolution as the world's sole full-service superpower. Unfortunately, we are increasingly seeking change without cost, and shirking from risk because we are tired of the responsibility. We don't know who we are anymore, and our president is a big part of that problem. Instead of leading us, he explains to us. Barack Obama would have us believe that he is practicing strategic patience. But many experts and ordinary citizens alike have concluded that he is actually beset by strategic incoherence -- in effect, a man overmatched by the job. 

Read the entire column at World Politics Review.

WPR's The New Rules: Globalization's Staying Power a Triumph of American 'Hubris'

There’s no question that globalization, in its modern American form of expanding free trade, just went through its worst crisis to date.  But while economists debate whether or not we in the West are collectively heading toward a 1938-like “second dip,” it’s important to realize just how myopic our fears are about the future of a world economy that America went out of its way to create, defend, and grow these past seven decades.

Read the entire column, which you can consider my oblique response to Peter Beinart's "Icarus Syndrome" book, at World Politics Review.

See the references for my inspiration on this piece.

Obama: Frustrating the grand strategist in me

Warren Christopher LAT op-ed by way of WPR's Media Roundup.

Christopher makes his usual bland appeal for small steps leading to a legacy of modest, move-the-pile accomplishments.

Example:  

During the 2008 presidential campaign, Barack Obama promised he would end our diplomatic isolation and pursue "engagement" in foreign affairs. His opponent tried to turn his proposal against him by saying it would be reckless and naive. Obama regarded his election as a mandate for engagement, and no campaign promise has been more faithfully carried out by his administration . . .

Beyond Mitchell's efforts, Obama has been using engagement in pursuit of his foreign policy goals. One of the president's chief goals, as he said on receiving the Nobel Peace Prize, is "to prevent the spread of nuclear weapons, and to seek a world without them." His personal intervention in talks with President Dmitry Medvedev of Russia was instrumental in finalizing a replacement agreement for the Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty, which expired in December. The signing in Prague last month was a tribute to their mutual engagement, producing major reductions in both nation's nuclear arsenals as well as advancing U.S.-Russian ties in general.

The priority that Obama is giving to engagement has also been apparent in recent exchanges with China. The president, unhappy when the Chinese sent lower-level diplomats to meet with him at the climate change summit in Copenhagen, announced an arms sale package for Taiwan. The Chinese objected stridently.

To prevent the exchanges from spinning out of control, the president sent Deputy Secretary of State James Steinberg to Beijing to reassure the Chinese ... The Chinese responded by announcing that President Hu Jintao would come to Washington for a nuclear summit ...

Improvement in human rights has been the policy goal of recent engagement with the repressive nation of Myanmar . . .

Policy goals, of course, sometimes remain elusive despite efforts at engagement. Iran, while initially intrigued by the idea of shipping uranium abroad for enrichment under International Atomic Energy Agency supervision, has now descended into a sea of political invective in the wake of controversial election results and an emerging internal opposition. Nevertheless, the president is working to build a coalition to impose a stricter set of sanctions . . .

Obama has judiciously used engagement in pursuit of our foreign policy goals. The measure of his success in using this tool will be judged by the effectiveness of our foreign policy in the hardest cases, like Iran and North Korea.

It's a decent capture and a decent defense, and it expresses the root of my frustration with the seeming lack of any big think in this administration:  SECSTATE has her lists and checks them off dutifully, Jones keeps the trains running at NSC, Gates runs his own kingdom--and well--but keeps his nose out of foreign policy, our special envoys are quite special and almost completely devoid of any accomplishments, the drawdowns proceed in Iraq and will proceed soon enough in Afghanistan and all balls are kept juggled.

What is the Obama vision?  Oh yeah, the world without nukes--the Nobel made good.  Like a Miss America contest focusing her answer down to world peace, there is an earnestness there, but likewise a distinct lack of imagination.  Obama gets to run the US at this point in history, and all we get is a world without nukes?

Moses, my man, don't go promising the land of milk and honey at year one of the 40-year wandering.

I will admit it:  I feel stale on the man.  I wrote the 12-step recovery program for a superpower in Great Powers and Obama checked them all off in the first year--just like I hoped he would because it all seemed so obvious and logical to me (go overboard, well . . . then you apologize and make it better--not exactly rocket science).  And the world (or just Norway--which is a decent approximation of the world's conscience) was just so happy in return ("A superpower that apologizes!") that it gave him the Nobel for Peace, even though he hadn't done anything concrete--just indicated that he would be far more polite and reasonable and consensual than his abrasive predecessor.

And then I waited for something to emerge after the first, realigning year.  

And I'm still waiting.  The nukes thing, I will admit, doesn't do anything for me.  I think it's goofy and meaningless and naive and a colossal waste of time. I know the man is busy with the economy and a rancorous Congress and he wants primarily to focus on domestic issues, but I think that window is going to close fast--as in, November.  

Eventually, this administration will have to show more vision than simply treading water and keeping its head up at all times. Eventually, when there's not much else that can be done in the domestic sphere, Obama will turn, as all presidents do, to foreign policy.

And he's going to need something beyond a world without nukes and everybody getting along.  Nothing that wrong with either notion, in the abstract, but in aggregate they do not constitute leadership. I see a world where China, India, Turkey, Brazil and others are all moving faster than the current, but we are not.

And the Obama administration does not seem to realize this. They seem very proud and happy just to keep the balls all moving and in the air.  

And that makes me very ambivalent, in a professional sense, about whether this guy is one-&-done or gets to stroke the back nine.