|
Introduction > briefing by briefing
First I want to describe the long strange process of building the brief
and how it evolved—briefing by briefing—as I spread the message
throughout the defense community.
March 2004
The Brief, or “You’ll Know it When You See It”
The story of the book really begins with the brief, because
basically everything that animates the book began somewhere
first as a slide, meaning a PowerPoint slide.
The brief began as a request from Art Cebrowski, retired Vice
Admiral and former President of the Naval War College, who had
just begun his new job as Director, Office of Force
Transformation, Office of the Secretary of Defense following the
terrorist attacks of 9/11. He hadn’t been brought into the job
due to 9/11, as his new office had been months in the works. In
fact, at his retirement ceremony in July of 2001, he told me to
keep my in-box open, meaning he’d be tapping again for analysis
in the future.
April 2004
Talking “everything else” with the Joint Staff and the Journal
Today I spend four hours speaking to and with the Policy and
Plans group within the Joint Staff, known by the code J-5. I
give my full up briefing over 3 hours, with extensive Q&A. You’d
think the focus would be strictly war, but it was really on what
I like to call the “everything else.”
By special permission, Greg Jaffe of the Wall Street Journal
sits in on the proceedings.
Jaffe, a true student of how the Pentagon works, is
interested in tracking how unconventional ideas move up the food
chain within the building, and my brief fits his bill.
Afterwards, we have dinner at Reagan National before I fly out.
Talking with Greg is always a treat, because few know more about
the current mood and workings of the Pentagon. All in all, a
fascinating day—worth getting up at 0430 to make happen.
May 2004
The Changing Nature of Warfare
A tough night of travel puts me in a tired state for
Tuesday’s activities. I was supposed to fly out of Providence at
6:15, but thanks to some regional storms, it wasn’t wheels up
until 9:15. Thus it was a very late end to the day quickly
segueing into a very early start.
Why was I concerned? I had to give a brief at a conference at
CNA (sporting the title of this blog) that was held for the
benefit of the National Intelligence Council (NIC), which is
sort of a supreme court of the intelligence community (these are
the wise men and women who put together the all-important
National Intelligence Estimates that drive the government’s
overall sense of strategic risk and focus its general approach
to intelligence collection and processing.
I hadn’t given a brief in a very long time for me (almost a
month due to the book tour), plus it was a largely new
collection of PowerPoint slides. That’s exciting for me, because
new slides make for uncertainty. But lack of sleep dulls the
blade in terms of delivery.
So I coffee’d up as much as possible in anticipation of the
conference’s first panel, in which I appeared with Kurt Campbell
of CSIS and Monty Marshall of the University of Maryland
(co-author of the brilliant “Peace and Conflict” series of
worldwide conflict analysis). The brief went reasonably well,
considering the audience was full of insular-minded military
analysts who refuse to see much—if any—connection between what
they see as pure war and the everything else that is simply too
complex to imagine, much less model.
This was a conference examining war almost strictly within
the context of war, with the real world relegated to an
afterthought. More disturbing, the wholesale pessimism of this
crowd stunned me. For a collection of strategic thinkers, the
downcast interpretation of events in Iraq over the past six
months simply stunned me. If strategic thinkers can’t see the
forest for the trees, then how can we expect the public to do
better?
June 2004
Preaching to the choir in North Carolina
At the beginning of June I got a rather desperate call from
the Civil Affairs Association: they were looking for a
replacement keynote speaker for their end-of-conference awards
dinner down in Raleigh NC the night of the 19th. Being desperate
myself for personal leave days (looking ahead to our lengthy
trip across China in search of Vonne Mei Ling), I said yes
because I figured I’d pick up a couple of comp days while
helping out a very worthy organization. The CAA represents
military officers from all over the world who engage in sys
admin-style ops in countries following either war or some
humanitarian disaster. The organization goes way back to the
seminal experience of civil affairs officers in both postwar
Europe and Japan (they actually followed en masse very closely
on the heels of the D-Day invasion force).
July 2004
Got a call late last week from the actual office of the
Secretary of Defense (not the huge bureaucracy known
collectively as OSD but his actual office): a request to fly in
today to brief someone special.
I get to the Pentagon a couple of hours earlier than my
scheduled brief so I can meet with a colonel just back from
Central Command in Baghdad. He’s set to do a big lessons learned
document on acquisitions and logistics, and he’s a big fan of
the Sys Admin concept. So we grab an empty office and chat our
way through his take on the big issues coming out of Operation
Iraqi Freedom. This guy’s been to basically all of the shows
going back to Panama in ’89, so he’s a wealth of information and
experience. I give him my impressions of the big changes
exemplified by the advent of the Sys Admin function, and we
separate promising to exchange products in the future, plus set
up some good opportunities for me to brief in his community.
It’s an exciting exchange; I feel like we’re plotting a
revolution from within.
Once done with the colonel, it’s off to the nearby Office of
Secretary of Defense conference facility suite deep inside the
Pentagon to brief my singular principal. I never mind the
one-person brief. It’s actually easiest to deliver because you
can keep it fairly conversational and fast-paced, because all
you need to do is read the one pair of eyes and zip right along.
I got to give the brief in one of those inner-sanctum rooms that
actually comes close to capturing the Pentagon as displayed in
movies (the real building is almost always such a drab
disappointment—so 1940s).
The brief goes well, the principal is a very intelligent guy
who likes to explore a lot of the concepts as we go through the
brief. Plus there’s a second senior who’s sitting in who has
heard about the brief for years and finally wants to see it.
That guy interrupts even more, but since he’s been through so
many high-level decisions in the past 4 years, his interruptions
are quite fascinating. In all, an amazing interaction that
demonstrates to me once again how well the vision mirrors the
strategic reality that the Pentagon is facing and that—contrary
to some reviews which insist my constructs and prescriptions are
far too “theoretical” and “impractical” to apply—these ideas are
not only finding acceptance but real action with senior
leadership. They aren’t moving in these directions because it
does or does not fit some particular Bush Administration agenda.
They argue, just like I do, that this grand strategic approach
is simply inevitable—not something particularly Republican or
Democratic.
At the center of the universe in Tampa
Last of four days with Special Operations Command, where our
“experts” group briefs out our first workshop’s worth of ideas
on strategy in the Global War on Terrorism to the command. Not a
bad start, and the senior leadership seems happy with the
broader perspective we’ve brought to the problem set. We leave
with a set of questions to work on over coming months and a
promise to reconvene again back down in Tampa sometime before
the end of the year. I don’t think we did any harm, and I think
we opened up a few minds—including all of our own as we
encountered one another in this diverse array of expertise.
August 2004
The theory of peacefully rising China
The venue was the China Reform Forum, which is
housed—quite literally—in a beautiful old compound-style house
in an old neighborhood in Beijing. When I say compound-style, I
mean a walled-off collection of small buildings all carefully
integrated with one another and centered around a small
courtyard—very traditional.
The conference room where I gave my talk was full of photos
of the Forum's chief executive, Mr. Zheng Bijian (abroad on
travel that day) with various senior U.S. officials (both past
and present)—most notably George W. Bush, Condi Rice, Brent
Scowcroft, and Henry Kissinger. So I was immediately impressed
by the place, even though the setting was rather sedate and low
key. The CRF opened just a few years ago, but already it has
strong institutional ties with U.S. think tanks like the Rand
Corp, with whom it hosts an annual conference.
When I first entered the room, I snapped some photos for my
memory, and then realized that I didn't see a projector
anywhere, much less a screen. I got a bit nervous at that, but
minutes later both appeared, along with all of the academics
invited to hear me speak. Fortunately for me, all spoke
reasonably good English, so no translation was required. I gave
a version of the brief that focused on the Core-Gap thesis, the
need for an A-to-Z global rule set on processing
politically-bankrupt states, and the four flows of
globalization. I then ended with a single slide of questions
regarding the future of China.
September 2004
The seat of power
Flew to Baltimore-Washington International today for a couple
of days of meetings/briefs. Today my schedule brought me to the
Pentagon to sit with senior staff from the J-5 (Plans and
Policy) of the Joint Staff. This is the same branch I briefed
last spring in the off-site event covered by
Wall
Street Journal reporter Greg Jaffe in his profile of me.
As you might expect, these guys try to take the longest view
of things like the war on terror (inside the Defense Department
now it is called more and more the WOT, instead of the GWOT, a
change I approve of, simply because I say it's a war only inside
the Gap, whereas it's basically a law-enforcement ops inside the
Core). It was a great session, held in the Secretary's Executive
Conference Room in the National Military Command Center (I sat
at the head of the V-shaped table, which was pretty weird, since
I'm so used to always standing up the entire time in rooms like
that—made me wonder if I could catch "neoconservatism" from a
chair). J-5 told me in advance they didn't want the brief, but
simply to have me sit with them and discuss a series of
questions they wanted to pose. So that's what we did for two
hours. I got a lot of good feedback in the process, and plenty
to think about. I feel myself close to an explosion of new
slides. I just need a couple of days back in the office to
settle it all out in my brain.
October 2004
Talking with the seapower gang from down under
Two senior researchers here at college today from Sea Power
Centre of Australia's Department of Defence. They're getting the
usual package of briefs and tours. The only unusual thing was
their up-front request—by name—to spend time with me. So I went
90 minutes with them, basically doing the same package I put
together for the Defense Science Board last week. Lots of
interesting discussion, most of which involved the Aussies
trying—up front and early in the brief—to sound out my
statements about the "back half" force to see if I was some
neocon hardcore that says it's all about the military and nobody
else, when naturally, they see the SysAdmin function being more
civilian than military, more inter-agency than DoD, and more
international than US.
These very positive responses from foreign militaries is
quite important, because it says I'm reaching my goal of
creating a national grand strategy for the US that serves the
Core's interests as a whole and not just "homeland defense"
(God, that phrase still grates!). When the Core expresses a
strong preference for Kerry over Bush, it's because they see the
likelihood of that sort of vision being pursued more vigorously
by Kerry than Bush. Yes, Bush will wage a Global War on
Terrorism relying more on the U.S. military, but Kerry will wage
one that brings all the elements of the Core's collective
capabilities to bear better than Bush, who simply does not know
how to ask for help effectively—yielding a grand strategy that
seems to work for the US and nobody else in the Core. That
approach is simply non-sustainable over the long haul, much like
the massive borrowing our government is now doing.
November 2004
Briefing the managers at C.I.A.
The brief took place in a modest conference room, and I gave
them a medium-sized version of the spiel (75 minutes), with an
obvious focus on intell issues. Despite my great sleep
deprivation (God I want to sleep in my own bed several nights in
a row!), I performed reasonably well, and the Q&A was lively. I
also handed out the book to the various seniors in attendance
(dutifully signed) and signed a bunch of others for those who
brought them along to the talk. All in all a good time, not to
mention an interesting time to be back here taking gauge of the
intelligence community's mood.
You know, that intelligence community is far less broken than
imagined, and real fixes required have little—if anything—to do
with creating a cabinet-level intell czar. As a group, the 15
elements of the intelligence community interact with each other
fairly well. If we would only dial down the classification
requirements, this network would work just fine. But because we
stovepipe the information in this manner, the networks aren't
allowed to function anywhere near peak capacity.
But instead of just dialing down the secrecy, we propose
centralization, which by and large negates most of the best
attributes of having that distributed network of agencies who
all collect, process, and analyze a bit differently from one
another. In short, we're more likely to get group think with a
National Intelligence Director than without one. But until we
rethink the ultra-secrecy of most of these information flows, no
amount of deck-chair rearranging will do the trick.
December 2004
It's a wrap for C-SPAN at the Highlands Forum
Gave the brief for the camera this morning at the Highlands
Forum to a wonderfully high-end cast of conferees in a
wonderfully intimate environment. The Highlands Forum I attended
back in late 1998 on Y2K was one of the best I've attended
across my entire professional career, and this one is just as
good.
But, of course, this one is better in the sense that the
program uses PNM as its operating theory of the world, meaning
every presenter after my kick-off address was asked to couch his
or her remarks around the basic themes of the book, the biggie
being "disconnectedness defines danger." As you can imagine,
it's awfully cool to kick off a conference of this caliber while
being taped for CSPAN and then sitting through the rest of the
day when all-star after all-star explores their topic while
trying to relate their material to your thinking. And I'm
talking people like Daniel Yergin and Robert Hormats talking
global finance, and
Rebecca
McKinnon and
Ethan Zuckerman talking the Internet.
Then the
CEO of WorldSpace, the global company that's bringing
satellite radio to the planet (he sold off the U.S. version, XM
Radio, to others), gives a presentation where he says his life
dream is to blanket the entire Gap with coverage, or what he
calls "a future worth building" (he loved the book, can you
tell?). And he does that after coming up to me just after my
presentation and proudly showing me how his brief includes a
slide where his satellite coverage zones encompass my entire
Non-Integrating Gap. And I'm talking a guy (Noah
Samara) born in Ethiopia to an Ethiopian mother and a
Sudanese father, who later emigrated to the U.S. as a teenager
and now he's running the biggest satellite radio conglomerate in
the world. You gotta love this guy's story, I'm telling you.
All in all, very cool and very gratifying. Every author wants
his or her ideas to be taken seriously, and this is about as
good as it gets.
|
TPMB Updates
Newsletter
Archive
March 21, 2004 - March 27, 2004
March 28, 2004 - April 03, 2004
April
April 04, 2004 - April 10, 2004
April 11, 2004 - April 17, 2004
April 18, 2004 - April 24, 2004
April 25, 2004 - May 01, 2004
May
May 02, 2004 - May 08, 2004
May 09, 2004 - May 15, 2004
May 16, 2004 - May 22, 2004
May 23, 2004 - May 29, 2004
May 30, 2004 - June 05, 2004
June
June 06, 2004 - June 12, 2004
June 13, 2004 - June 19, 2004
June 20, 2004 - June 26, 2004
June 27, 2004 - July 03, 2004
July
July 04, 2004 - July 10, 2004
July 11, 2004 - July 17, 2004
July 18, 2004 - July 24, 2004
July 25, 2004 - July 31, 2004
August
August 01, 2004 - August 07, 2004
August 08, 2004 - August 14, 2004
August 15, 2004 - August 21, 2004
August 22, 2004 - August 28, 2004
August 29, 2004 - September 04, 2004
September
September 05, 2004 - September 11, 2004
September 12, 2004 - September 18, 2004
September 19, 2004 - September 25, 2004
September 26, 2004 - October 02, 2004
October
October 03, 2004 - October 09, 2004
October 10, 2004 - October 16, 2004
October 17, 2004 - October 23, 2004
October 24, 2004 - October 30, 2004
October 31, 2004 - November 06, 2004
November
November 07, 2004 - November 13, 2004
November 14, 2004 - November 20, 2004
November 21, 2004 - November 27, 2004
November 28, 2004 - December 04, 2004
December
December 05, 2004 - December 11, 2004
December 12, 2004 - December 18, 2004
December 19, 2004 - December 25, 2004
December 26, 2004 - December 31, 200 |