Thomas P.M. Barnett :: Weblog

China's U.S.-like time machine

I recently flew from Chicago to Beijing, a prosaic enough journey for this experienced business traveler and, yet, a fascinating journey for this student of U.S. history.

How so?

Putting aside all the cultural differences, traveling to China is like surveying - in real-time fashion - the past dozen decades of America's social and economic history. It's all there: from our 1890s robber baron capitalism to today's high-tech post-industrialism, with a slew of social revolutions tossed in. [read on]

Lexington Green of Chicago Boyz sends in link to Deeshaa's Rural Infrastructure & Services Commons.

The aim of RISC is to address the problems of one such complex nonlinear system — the rural Indian economy — and to outline a solution that addresses the problem of economic growth comprehensively by accomplishing a set of interlinked transitions to a more efficient equilibrium.

It is interesting... about Connectivity, and microcredit, and seems closely related to issues Tom has written about.

Now our failed missile defense is matched by Pyongyang's failed long-range missile offense. Symmetry achieved!

Got back to Indy and saw my builder had gotten our flag pole up just in time to hang Old Glory.

ARTICLE: “Of meat, Mexicans and social mobility: Among the very poor, the American Dream is alive and well,” The Economist, 17 June 2006, p. 31.

Most of this article is about the meatpacking industry (clearly, one of the 3-D jobs--as in, dirty, dangerous and difficult), but what struck me were the following factoids about Mexicans in America:

But in absolute terms, Mexicans have grown much richer by coming to the United States. If they had not, they would go home. And their children are doing even better. Whereas only 40% of first-generation Mexican immigrants between the ages of 16 and 20 are in school or college, nearly two-thirds of the second generation are…

Immigrants’ children are typically American citizens, having been born on American soil. More than 90% speak English fluently; by the third generation, 72% speak nothing else. Many help their less-fluent parents with form-filling, as other children help their elders navigate the Internet. The parents, in turn, try to infuse their offspring with their work ethic and entrepreneurial spirit. (Latinos open new firms at a rate three times the national norm).

Three times the norm in start-up businesses! How can entrepreneurial America turn down a crowd like that?

ARTICLE: A Big Shot in China: To fight Nike, an (sic) Beijing sneaker giant aims to turn NBA journeyman Damon Jones into a star,” by Stephanie Kang and Geoffrey A. Fowler, Wall Street Journal, 24 June 2006. P. A1.

ARTICLE: “Indiana Town Woos Honda: Region Reviled Japan’s Cars For Years, but Now It’s Battling To Win New Plant to Build Them,” by Ilan Brat, Wall Street Journal, 22 June 2006, p. B1.

ARTICLE: “Indiana Wins the Bidding for New Honda Assembly Plant,” by Micheline Maynard, New York Times, 29 June 2006, p. C4.

In Blueprint for Action, I describe the journey from Gap to Core, noting that a state’s status as New Core reveals a number of inconceivables, such as it now becomes highly lucrative to become famous in your market.

Well, that day has arrived for Damon Jones, journeyman NBA non-star. Watching a local sneaker firm use him like he’s some Michael Jordan reminds me of middling Major League Baseball stars becoming superstars in Japan in past decades (something that is greatly diluted when you get guys like Suzuki ripping up the record books here in the States).

And far faster than anyone realizes, Americans will soon be wooing Chinese manufacturers (yes, even car manufacturers) just like we now woo Japanese ones. Twenty years ago, if you drove a Honda in Indiana, you risked having it keyed by angry local residents who saw the state as GM territory and nothing else. Now, of course, Indiana woos companies like Honda (successfully, in this last investment decision).

I know, I know, it can never happen.

Except it will, and far faster than anyone can imagine.

ARTICLE: “Palestinian Leader Orders Forces to Find Seized Israeli: Israel Masses Troops and Armor at Border,” by Steven Erlanger, New York Times, 27 June 2006, p. A8.

ANALYSIS: “Hamas: Rivalry Breeds Extremes,” by Steven Erlanger, New York Times, 2 July 2006, p. WK4.

ARTICLE: “Seizures Show New Israel Line Against Hamas: Party Officials to Face Criminal Charges,” by Steven Erlanger, New York Times, 30 June 2006, p. A1.

ARTICLE: “Israel Squeezes, Steering Gazans Toward Hamas,” by Ian Fisher, New York Times, 2 July 2006, p. A1.

EDITORIAL: “Hamas Provokes a Fight,” New York Times, 29 June 2006, p. A24.

First I was a clear Israel-backer with PNM, because of my arguments on Iraq. Then I was a clear enemy of Israel with BFA, because of my arguments on Iran. Naturally, many saw me as just plain inconsistent, because you have to be one or the other, right?

Well, I think Israel is doing the right thing right now on this latest terrorist attack from Palestine. The one-state solution with the fence isn’t enough if Hamas can’t change its stripes once in power. Israel has waited long enough for some signs, and then got a clear one with this tunnel-enabled attack.

The truth is worse than the implied assumption: Hamas may well have had nothing to do with the attack, because Hamas is no more in control of Palestine’s security situation than Fatah was.

The Palestinians have a bitter joke: What would happen if the Palestinian Authority disappeared? The answer: How could you tell?

Those of us who argued for patience had the hope that Hamas’ reputation for unity would mean than deeds would match words, but that unity has proven to be quite fragile. The political wing can promise, but the military wing does what it wants, as do the exiles in Lebanon and Syria.

Israel isn’t strangling the infant government, Hamas’ military wing is, but expect Israel to extend its punishment to those it can reach: the political leaders and the people in the West Bank and Gaza.

Yes, this effort will be largely fruitless in discrediting Hamas, as the rally-round-the-incompetents effect will be profound (why should anything change in the shift from corrupt and incompetent Fatah to more honest and incompetent Hamas?). But not much will be lost in this punitive push that won’t be lost anyway.

The NYT is correct:

Contrary to the hopes of many outsiders, five months in government has failed to educate Hamas to the reality of the world the Palestinians live in. Hamas has merely assumed the political privileges of power without accept the minimal responsibilities that go with it.

In short, Hamas cannot police its own, so the promises of its electoral victory are illusory.

And so the Wall continues to go up with a determined logic, and my blessing. The one-state solution may be costly today, but it’s the best long-term choice for Israel, which will do just fine with its amazingly robust and competitive economic connectivity.

Meanwhile, Palestine will continue to rot from within…

ARTICLE: “China Covers Up Violent Suppression of Village Protest,” by Howard W. French, New York Times, 27 June 2006, p. A3.

ARTICLE: “Rioting in China Over Label on College Diplomas,” by Joseph Kahn, New York Times, 22 June 2006, p. A1.

Caboose braking comes in many forms in China. In my vernacular, the “caboose” of the globalization train for any country tends to be the rural poor. It’s their ability to handle the whirlwind of rapid globalization that determines any country’s speed in that process. The train’s engine (usually industrialized, well-connected coastal areas) cannot travel any faster than the caboose.

Well, China’s caboose is getting awfully cranky, across the dial. China’s choices here are stark: slow down globalization and risk even further unrest due to slower growth, or make the tough political choices that deal with that despair at its source (like introducing private land ownership to the countryside like it exists in the cities) or give that despair more political voice in the system (more local self-representation and self-rule and more conduits for dialogue with the center).

Right now, if you’re a peasant in China and you’re pissed off, you basically have three choices: live with the pain, leave the pain (illegal economic immigration) or riot to get some action from the powers that be--ever so far away.

This is not an efficient system for China, which is moving a big chunk of its population along to something better--or so some students at a regional university thought when they paid high tuition rates on the premise of receiving a degree with the parent university’s name on the diploma. When those diplomas were handed out and the right seal of approval was not affixed, what did the students do? They rioted too.

One thing when peasants riots in China. That’s to be expected, like the summer dust storms in Beijing. But students at universities? Over a diploma? That shows you that expectations are rising across the dial in China, meaning more voices demanding to be heard when thing don’t go according to the plan--or the market’s expectations.

Many will interpret these examples of unrest as marking the beginning of the end of the Chinese economic miracle, when in reality they mark the end of its beginning. The easy stuff has been done. Now we get to the hard part, where ceilings are increasingly determined by the government’s willingness to trust its own markets and its own people more. Deals are being made and deals are being broken. As long as the volume of the former outpaces that of the latter, this train keeps on rolling.

Losers are hard to manage, politically speaking, but winners even more so.

ARTICLE: “Spread of Islamic Law in Indonesia Takes Toll on Women,” by Jane Perlez, New York Times, 27 June 2006, p. A6.

ARTICLE: “Indonesia Scolds U.S. on Terrorism Fight: Defense chiefs openly disagree on America’s actions abroad,” by Michael R. Gordon, New York Times, 7 June 2006, p. A6.

Great pair of stories on always fascinating Indonesia.

Working woman on street waiting for ride home from work, dressed in standard one might expect from any working woman: casual but utilitarian. She is hustled off, the article says, by brown-shirted “tranquility and public order officers” and charged with lewd conduct according to Shariah:

Her case has become a symbol of an increasingly impassioned tussle in Indonesia between those who favor the introduction of Shariah, or Islamic law--sometimes called Islamic-like laws--by local governments, and those that assert that this large Muslim country, recognized for its moderation and diversity, must hold firm to its secular Constitution of 1945.

There are strong similarities, I would argue, to this local-v-federal struggle in the history of the U.S. civil rights movement: local governments saying “this is how we do it around here” and the central government struggling to respect that desire without letting it ruin the social fabric of the nation as a whole.

As with U.S. civil rights, the strongest undercurrents here are sexual: in the U.S. it was the innate fear of black men “preying” on white women and in many Muslim states it is simply the perceived promiscuity of “dangerous” females imitating the nefarious and degenerate ways of the West.

Beyond that internal struggle, there is the larger strategic reality that Indonesia is a front-line state in the Long War, and as it moves in the direction of Core status, it will tell us much about how we should fight that Long War. As the world’s largest Muslim state, Indonesia is a serious lead goose on both the socio-economic and security fronts:

“Some Indonesia analysts view the United States as focused on the ‘search and destroy’ aspect of the war against terror, and feel that the United States has not focused sufficient attention to winning the ‘hearts and minds’ aspect of the struggle,” according to a study by the Congressional Research Service.

Actually, quite a few American analysts feel the same way.

So Rummy gets a a bit of lecture from his counterpart in Indonesia while visiting there recently. We should get used to such lectures. There will be many more in the future.

The New Core sets most of the new rules in economics, but expect the Seam States like Indonesia to set many of the new rules in security. It’s only natural, given the front-line status.

ARTICLE: “U.S. and Iraq Make Inroads With Insurgents,” by Greg Jaffe and Yochi J. Dreazen, Wall Street Journal, 22 June 2006, p. A3.

ARTICLE: “Some Insurgents Are Asking Iraq For Negotiations: Sunni Groups Reach Out; Reconciliation Plan Draws Responses From Factions Said to Be Nationalist,” by Edward Wong, New York Times, 27 June 2006, p. A1.

ARTICLE: “Car Bomb Kills More Than 60 In Iraq Market,” by Edward Wong, New York Times, 2 July 2006, p. A1.

One story I did not clip but only heard on the TV/radio over the past couple of weeks was members of Congress getting mad at an Iraqi proposal for amnesty to insurgents who have killed American soldiers. All I thought at the time was how unrealistic those sorts of demands would be on our part, plus how insulting they could come off to the locals (as in, it’s okay to kill Iraqis and get amnesty but kill an American and that’s that).

But as far as I know that’s a hubbub that comes and goes, since the first article above said that “the only firm line… was that no amnesty would be granted to members of Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia or guerrillas intent on restoring Saddam Hussein’s rule.” That seems reasonable enough.

But beyond all those details, the key thing is that we’re talking directly to insurgent groups, and when I say “we,” I mean both the U.S. forces and the Iraqi government. To the extent that Sunni insurgency factions come in from the cold and we affect a sort of ideological divorce between them and the Saddamists and Salafi jihadists represented by Al Qaeda, this insurgency becomes a whole lot more manageable and ultimately small enough to turn over to the Iraqi forces with the U.S. remaining primarily in the advising role (sort of a purer SysAdmin from above--or behind the scenes).

All of this unfolds with increasingly bold talk from U.S. commanders of reducing troop levels in the fall. With the continuing violence, that seems far-fetched as a hope, but it need not be. Insurgencies ratchet up violence as negotiations such as these mature. We’ve seen this time and time again. The insurgents want to be able to claim that the change achieved was primarily due to their willingness to commit acts of violence. For some, it’s an honor thing, for others, sheer negotiating plank, and for still others eyeing the next fight (like the Al Qaeda guys), there is the need to start building the myth--however far-fetched--that it was their “glorious victory that drove out the invaders” when--in reality--the “invaders” simply shifted the Long War to its next logical stop.

ARTICLE: “8 Months After Quake, Little Relief for Some Pakistanis: ‘We are sitting here and counting on God,’ says a father of six,” by Carlotta Gall, New York Times, 21 June 2006. p. A3.

ARTICLE: “’Breathtaking’ Waste and Fraud in Hurricane Aid,” by Eric Lipton, New York Times, 27 June 2006, p. A1.

Eight months past the Pakistani temblor that kills 73k and leaves 3 million homeless in a nation of 170 million (the equivalent in America would be 5 million) and so many “families here still swelter in tents waiting for a government compensation plan to kick in so they can start to rebuild.”

Hmmm. Where have I heard these complaints before?

The Pakistani army is credited with averting widespread hunger and disease and providing emergency shelter to tens of thousands, but then the ball is essentially dropped by the government and--by extension--the international relief community (which is obviously limited by the local government’s low-capacity in the matter and the choices it makes).

So we see the usual pattern in Pakistan that we see in so many other places: big splashy effort by military in immediate aftermath which does much good in limiting damage, followed closely by huge outpouring of private giving along with usual scrimpy public giving, followed by all sorts of grand statements about rebuilding and meeting the needs of the people, followed by a lot of inactivity, waste fraud and abuse, delay, and then sad stories 6-to-12 months later about how people are still suffering the effects of the disaster as though the follow-up was essentially a grand illusion.

And where does all that money go?

Typically, no one knows. But one assumes most is lost to graft, theft and corruption.

David Petraeus told me that he constantly ran into the “man in the moon” problem in Iraq during his years there trying to rebuild: Iraqis would say, “America can put a man on the moon” but it can’t do X in Iraq! Why is that so?”

But the truth is, we can’t put the man on the moon here in the States, as New Orleans has shown.

Can you believe that after 9/11 and all the other hurricanes we’ve had that both FEMA and the American Red Cross have to cry “uncle” and admit they were basically unprepared and overwhelmed by Katrina?

So $2 billion just disappears.

Why is a concept like Development-in-a-Box so compelling and timely?

How can it not be, given our track record at home and abroad?

Sar-Box said that there is a new minimum standard for operating a public business in the U.S. Either meet it or get bought, go bankrupt/out of business or go private. The Bush Doctrine said similar things about the international security environment: new standard that you either meet or your choices are play rogue, go failed or get invaded.

These new rule sets are all about setting new minimum standards and pushing players to best practices. No such minimum rule set yet exists on development and especially so on the subject of post-disaster/conflict recovery.

How can we hope to get good on long-term rehab when our emergency room procedures are so inadequate--again, both at home and abroad?

DATELINE: Above the garage in Indy, 5 July 2006

Cut short the family holiday trip over the 4th to get back for quick one-day journey to DC (actually No. VA) to meet with exec of company that’s expressed the usual interest in Enterra.

On cab ride home (Pilot still being fixed) I tried to write down some of my major impressions of how the vision/briefs were received in China at the various venues (U. of Beijing, military research tank/audience, and prestigious China Institute for Contemporary International Relations, or CICIR).

First, I was surprised to see how many had already read the book in English, even more so how many brought volumes for signature. The bottom line being, the Chinese pol-mil elite study our writings a lot.

Second, most of their interest centered on the future of U.S.-China relations, so my argument for strategic alliance were of the utmost interest, the general feeling being that it was possible to consider on China’s side but that the Americans would be too suspicious for it to happen--or simply too fearful of China’s “rise” to see the logic of it.

Third, what seemed to strike the biggest chord with people was my notion that while the U.S. needed alliance with China, China needed it even more with the U.S. Torpedo the global economy and America’s still relatively rich and strong, but China might well come apart. Yes, free-loading on the global security was fine for now (and just about all Chinese I interact with loathe the notion of stepping up the country’s global security profile), but a budding backlash is brewing in the Gap against perceived Chinese economic exploitation that says China’s formula for trade with these states is really no better than the old European colonial model (raw materials at cheap prices for China and a flood of cheap finished goods for the local elites and minute middle class--so some enclaved development but no real integration). So while America catches a lot of flack today as the face of globalization, China’s continued emergence will soon push it into that same limelight. So it’s ally now or ally later, with higher costs likely on both sides the longer we collectively wait.

Fourth, China’s foreign policy elite know that the country’s growing reliance on foreign energy is unsustainable, not merely in terms of potential disruption but--quite frankly--in sheer volume required. The system simply will not adjust enough to accommodate China’s growing appetite, so it’s new rules forged by China’s development pathway or inevitable stagnation at some point in the mid-term, with political instability at home as the by-product.

Fifth, the car culture in China is taking off far more today than it was even two years ago. It’s all so 1950s-like (echoing last Sunday’s op-ed), with the leaded gas and the seat belts no one wears and the slower speeds and the plethora of mismatched vehicles on the roads. And it will only get worse in terms of congestion and pollution. People there simply love the freedom of movement too much. Cat’s outta the bag on that one.

Finally, I believe I now have some new friends on the book publishing front, which makes me a whole lot more optimistic on getting both PNM and BFA out. I’ll let my agents follow up on that, but hopefully something will break by the end of the year, perhaps even a joint publication of both books.

Overall, a great trip that will lead to many more, I am sure, and not just to China but to places around Asia.

Nowhere in my interactions do I get this vibe of China as uber-strategists who think long-term compared to those puny American brains that can only concentrate on the here and now. Nor do I see it in their writings. The more I interact with them, the more I think that's the usual mirror-imaging: they model themselves on us because we're the leaders and then we freak at their modeling behavior, believing it reveals some deep, strategic, long-term thinking when in actuality none exists.

I find China as clueless about the future as most emerging countries. That's why they plan so much. People really confident about the future don't have to plan. They simply know what to do. I believe this is a naturally accruing capability with age, and in that regard, China is "young" despite the age of its civilization. Again, we need to think of them more like the U.S. at the start of the 20th century: getting brash but essentially uncertain and nervous about how to behave in the world. The more the bluster, the more the fear--I always say.

Speaking to defense analysts there, most confided that China's military build-up is without any serious grand strategic thought, and that stuff just gets bought due to bureaucratic outcomes more than seriously applied strategic or even operational rationales. Sad to say, the Chinese military is far too much like our own in that regard.

And that's why the idea of alliance with the U.S. in the SysAdmin function interests them so: they are desperate for hints and guidance on how to emerge militarily over something besides Taiwan, which remains their mindless default position--unless we choose to move them off it.

The growing backlash against the Chinese in the Gap is real, and it will unfold. Better we have them grooved into some useful role there militarily when some serious shit really hits the fan. Better for us, better for the Chinese, better for the Gap, better for the Core.

Sent to me by one of my favorite CENTCOM majors: What US wants in its troops: cultural savvy. He writes:

Another great article on how we are trying to adapt to 4GW. This one caught my eye because Dr Salmoni was one of my instructors at NPS. I know beyond a shadow of a doubt that it's being done right at this school.

Tom got this email from Victor Algaze of Manhattan Beach, CA:

Mr. Barnett-

Many times, I have heard you mention the idea that an Asian NATO (or rough equivalent) could be cemented "over Kim Jong-Il grave" if some provocative action from DPRK unified disparate groups.

With that in mind, I have a question:

I cannot imagine the frustration you must feel when "Monday-morning quarterbackin'" "armchair sitting" geo-strategic thinkers look at a map with a circular overlay of the useful range of that North Korean missile and see an opening, but humor me: what do you think? Can this "crisis", like the Chinese character, represent also an opportunity for a new security partnership?

PS. Last chapter of BFA is EXACTLY what we youngsters are hungry to read- if you can-please do more of that.

Third book will be all that.

On DPRK question is one posed by Sanger in NYT today: does Bush want to work Kim more than Iran in the time remaining?

To me the choice is obvious because Kim is excuse to upgrade relations with China. The Bush problem is that this administration wants to simultaneously constrain China with countries like India, Vietnam and Japan, and China will clearly come away from a reunification process as the dominant regional kingpin (why does the U.S. keep ground troops in East Asia then with such stretching demands in the Middle East and with African demands looming in places like Sudan and Somalia and maybe even Egypt soon enough?).

Strategists keep saying China is not ready to liquidate the DPRK and that the South fears the costs involved. But honestly I think the U.S. defense community is more nervous and least prepared to see that scenario go away because then both our national missile defense rationale and our East Asia rationales are weakened. At that point we must fish or cut bait on the China threat plus explain why we still starve the Army and Marines and the Long War on assets.

That is why I consider North Korea such a positive floodgate of strategic change and opportunity. Done well we can shift a ton of resources from Core to Gap and close off the possibility of great power war in Asia while shifting resources to the SysAdmin force and function and finally accepting the strategic requirements of the Long War.

In my mind Kim is doing Bush a big favor. Big question now is whether or not Chris Hill is empowered to negotiate anything other than useless sanctions when he lands in Beijing.

For those of you who caught it, this space was previously occupied by a significant rant by me in the direction of my former speaking agency, Leigh Bureau.

As much as I feel that organization is very badly run and very dishonest, I don't even want to give them the satisfaction of the diatribe.

It was one of those things that was great to write, but better to toss in the garbage once done, like my previous relationship with Leigh Bureau.

First time I've ever erased a post (yes, I know they don't really get erased) and I'm hoping it shows some emerging maturity. God knows I earned some at Leigh Bureau's gain.

ARTICLE: “Behind Rise of Iran’s President: A Populist Economic Agenda: Ahmadinejad Wins Power Promising Lavish Outlays; Inflation Is a Major Worry; Crunch Time at Biscuit Factory,” by Bill Spindle, Wall Street Journal, 22 June 2006, p. A1.

Really good article on how Ahmadinejad is running more than one race. The nuclear one we know about already, and the strategy of trying to create a non-mullah-based single-party state is another. So those are the military and political ones.

The economic one is no surprise, given his rhetoric and his cash windfall on oil: a populist agenda designed to keep popular support. The man promised to put Iran’s oil earnings on the dinner table of every Iranian, and he’s keeping his promise, basically taking what should be the economic legacy of all that oil and turning it into immediate domestic consumption instead of long-term investment. Billions here and there and it begins to add up.

All of this is a strong turn away from the connectivity-embracing reforms of the late 1990s, which were designed ultimately to gain acceptance into the WTO. Thus Ahmadinejad, focusing on his political agenda, which determines his security agenda, has decided to embrace his inner Chavez (diverting billions from Iran’s Oil Stabilization Fund--essentially a rainy day fund) and eat his nation’s seed corn as fast as possible.

So Iran remains a heavily subsidized minimal-market economy, making its integration into a global competitive landscape all the harder, and that plays nicely into the other two strategies, both of which require high levels of disconnectedness from the world’s rules and networks.

The results of this strategy are predictable: nice growth rates, but at the price of rising inflation and rising unemployment (seen as being as high as 20% in a population that adds millions to the workforce each year because universities are full and 70 percent of the population is under 30).

Ahmadinejad’s strategy reminds me of Gorbachev’s: fix the politics just so before trying to take on the economics. It’s not a bad strategy for us to encourage, because it’s bound to fail.

ARTICLE: “Slow! Government obstacles ahead: The public sector in Latin America is not spending enough on transport, electricity and water, but nor is it allowing private investors to help out,” The Economist, 17 June 2006, p. 41.

The real connectivity problem with Latin America:

Although the region’s economies are growing faster, thanks to an export boom [see China, says Tom], they are hobbled by poor roads and railways, clogged ports and a precarious electricity supply. In the 1990s governments slashed public investment to balance their budgets. They invited private investors to make up the shortfall. Between 1990 and 2003, Latin America accounted for half of total private-sector participation in infrastructure in developing countries. Private investment has expanded telecom networks. But the flow of private money for electricity, water and transport has dried up in many countries, partly because citizens or politicians turned against privatization.

The big exception in the region is Chile, thanks to a long-standing commitment to privatization. As such, the economic connectivity there is quite strong: “Only the most remote households in Chile lack running water or electricity.”

The key for Chile is a rule set for arbitration for investors when things go wrong, so investors don’t fear putting there money into Chile.

Meanwhile, caboose braking in Brazil threatens to make the lack of such infrastructure the key chokehold on future growth, with some there predicting it pretty much tops the country out at 4% and no higher until fixed. Rule-set fights abound in Brazil on utilities, and that too scares away investors.

But a bright spot emerges:

Brazil, after much delay, is launching a scheme under which private companies can build and operate roads, sewerage systems and even jails in exchange for a stream of revenue guaranteed by the government. Local firms are less queasy than international investors about risk. “Can we wait to reach the level of Chile? We need to accept a little the conditions there are (sic),” said Marcelo Odebrecht, boss of a construction firm that bears his surname.

This article reminds my of my ten commandments for globalization, or the original articulation of the military-market nexus:

1) Look for resources, and ye shall find, but …

2) No stability, no markets

3) No growth, no stability

4) No resources, no growth

5) No infrastructure, no resources

6) No money, no infrastructure

7) No rules, no money

8) No security, no rules

9) No Leviathan, no security

10) No U.S. will, no Leviathan.

ARTICLE: “On Lake Michigan, a Global Village,” by Steve Lohr, New York Times, 2 July 2006, p. BU1.

ARTICLE: “”Last Stop, Lhasa: Rail Link Ties Remote Tibet to China; Critics See Cultural Peril and Domination,” by Joseph Kahn, New York Times, 2 July 2006, p. A8.

ARTICLE: “At 13,000 Feet High, Pens Explode, Ears Pop on Tibet Train,” by James T. Areddy, Wall Street Journal, 5 July 2006, p. A15.

ARTICLE: “Business Joins African Effort To Cut Malaria,” by Sharon LaFraniere, New York Times, 29 June 2006, p. A1..

“In the past, Racine was a self-contained economy,” [Gary Becker] said. “But that is not an option anymore.”

Culture is mongrelized and transnationalized in this process, and that is pure evil to some, who would rather keep people pristine and poor, celebrating that lifestyle from afar--no doubt (or perhaps on the occasional visit to their quaint little remote village).

So China’s engineering marvel of a train that now links Beijing to Lhasa is naturally decried as the beginning of the end for Tibetan culture, which has remained so distinct precisely because of its disconnectedness. Tibetan activists will tell us that the rail line is a tool of imperialism, both economic and cultural, and they will be correct. Connectivity brings contamination. It reduces the power of collective identity and raises the power of individual identity.

That scares for a lot of reasons. It challenges the meaning of what it is to be Tibetan. It will change gender roles and relations dramatically, and that subverts traditional society. Some will win, others will lose, and if China’s pattern of resource exploitation holds, the losers will outnumber the winners.

But it’s hard to argue against China’s clear domination of Tibet. China considers Tibet part of its mainland like we consider Texas to be part of ours. Did we get Texas in any nicer a fashion, all myths aside? Hmm. Not an easy argument.

But connectivity-wise, Tibet is more like a Montana or Idaho: landlocked and distant from damn near everywhere. Unless the connectivity is forced through infrastructure development, which almost always is driven by demand for raw materials in the first iteration, then Tibet will remain very pristine and very poor.

Me, I don’t think cultural preservation outweighs the need or right for economic development leading to individual empowerment.

Then again, I’m an American, and that’s our whole raison d’etre.

But once you get that connectivity in there, then you often force private businesses coming into the remote situation to deal with all sorts of collective goods issues that the local weak governments are poorly equipped to handle, like watching mining giant Billiton get sucked into dealing with malaria in Mozambique. Is it better to leave those people to suffer their pristine fate? Or is it better to force the connectivity--and the connectors themselves--to deal with the challenges found within?

I know, I know. Send in the aid instead. But what has all that aid done for Africa to date?

ARTICLE: “Russians Bet Ruble Will Rise To Status of Dollar, Euro, Yen,” by Peter Finn, Washington Post, 29 June 2006, p. A24.

Whether or not the ruble becomes an international reserve currency is less important than the clear signals being sent by Russians themselves: they now believe in their own currency, and believing in your own currency means believing in your nation’s economic future.

All currency panics/meltdowns are triggered when local people start shorting the national currency (i.e., assuming it will devalue). That’s what triggers the similar pressure from abroad.

Now we have Putin talking about paying off the nation’s foreign debt and bills in the parliament that would require all commercial establishments “to express their price in rubles.”

That’s all good stuff, because a stable, growing Russia that seeks not just to sell us oil and gas but likewise seeks investment opportunities downstream in those industries is a Russia we don’t have to worry about militarily.

And not worrying about a country militarily is my most essential definition of being in the Core--i.e., scenarios about sending our troops to your nation become more and more fantastic, so you’re basically in.

ARTICLE: “At the Trade Talks, Threats to Book Flights Home: Failure to agree could mean a delay until the end of the decade,” by James Kanter, New York Times, 1 July 2006, p. B3.

OP-ED: “Doha’s Last Chance: The ‘pain’ is really gain,” by Paul Wolfowitz, Wall Street Journal, 1-2 July 2006, p. A10.

ARTICLE: “French Presidential Hopefuls Play to Disaffection on Campain Trail,” by Leha Abboud and Christina Passariello, Wall Street Journal, 3 July 2006, p. A4.

ARTICLE: "Europeans Broach Idea Of Trade Pact With Russia," by Andrew E. Kramer, New York Times, 4 July 2006, p. C3.

Delving into agriculture subsidies and protectionism is amazingly hard, because the long-held myths about “our food,” “our lands,” and “our farmers” are so strong. Hell, for centuries people bound themselves together mostly over food, so national pride here isn’t just an issue, it’s the identity in many ways.

The deal has been on the table for a while: Europe and U.S. both cut their ag subsidies to a range somewhere near that demanded by New Core powers led by Brazil. Current European offers are less than half the movement desired, while the U.S. offer is roughly two-thirds. We refuse to move anymore unless the Europeans do, and the Europeans are frozen by France’s rather solitary resistance.

So long as those two sides of the “triangle” don’t budge (the U.S. basically wearing the T-shirt that proclaims, “I’m with stupid!”), then the New Core powers (the third corner) don’t budge on their tariffs on manufactured goods.

So if you really want to target the biggest threat to global trade and globalization right now, you plan to invade France tomorrow.

But maybe time will heal that wound. France’s unemployment rate is the highest in Western Europe at almost 10 percent, with the number surpassing 20 percent for those under 25. But you saw what happened when France tried to liberalize its labor laws recently. Add to that the racial tensions over Muslims, and we’re talking one scared and increasingly scarred society.

The last article highlights the current front-runners from the center-right (Nicholas Sarkozy, considered very pro-American) and the left (socialist Segolene Royal). Both are showing some willingness to take on taboos. With any luck, France will fix France and we’ll see a Doha that happens in some significant way prior to 2010--the latest dark-scenario prediction.

Still, with any failure in global talks, there tends to be rising potential for bold bilaterals. And frankly, when the global economy is growing as fast as it is right now, bilats tend to dominate more. Countries are simply less willing to make the big bold deals on global negotiations unless they're feeling more pain. Still, you have to wonder how bad it must get for France to come to its senses.

ARTICLE: “Tribute or Protest? Lowering flags for soldiers killed in Iraq emerges as another flashpoint on the home front,” by Jeffrey Zaslow, Wall Street Journal, 1-2 July 2006, p. A1.

ARTICLE: “Breaking Party Protocol: In the Iraq war, a new approach to welcoming home the troops is emerging. From bonfires to black-tie galas, how some families are bucking tradition,” by Ellen Gamerman, Wall Street Journal 1-2 July 2006, p. P1.

First one explores how state and local politicians are using the flag-at-half-mast tribute in light of losses in Iraq.

Governor Jennifer Granholm, who would be a presidential contender if she wasn’t born outside the U.S. (Canada, I believe) orders Michigan’s state offices to put flags at half mast whenever a Michiganer is killed in Iraq. The U.S. flag code says states can do this only when a state official dies, so, in effect, governors like Granholm are abusing the privilege by treating soldiers like officials.

Is this political in motivation? Anything a politician does is political in motivation. That’s the job.

I think the act is really warranted in the sense that many soldiers dying in Iraq are de facto servants of the state, being in the National Guard, which belongs to the governors first and foremost, but can be appropriated by the Fed when needed. If you extend that privilege to them, then I think it’s no big stretch to do so to non-NG soldiers who also hailed from your state.

Granholm has done this 72 times, each time calling up the family in question in advance to tell them of her decision. To me, this is a solid call that recognizes sacrifice in a Long War where individual soldiers will die fighting individuals--not states. In a war of our ideology of freedom and connectedness and individuality against their ideology of authoritarianism and disconnectedness and collective identity, I think it’s crucial to recognize individual sacrifice, because it’s what defines us in this struggle.

A historian notes that if we had done that in WWII, when Michigan alone lost 13 soldiers, on average, every day, then Michigan’s flags would have been at half-mast the entire war. And I agree with that notion: in that state-on-state war, recognizing sacrifice so individually would have been damaging to morale. But here, in this Long War, fought primarily by our individuals against their individuals, within states and across them, I think individual recognition makes more sense.

Yes, some will abuse the symbology here, but they will do within their rights as U.S. citizens speaking freely on matters of great concern to us all, and that’s okay.

But it’s not just the tragedy that will be marked more individually in this way, so too will the celebrations:

This war’s unique aspects are also changing the homecoming equation. Iraq marks the first extended conflict for the U.S. since the draft was abandoned in 1973. About 29% of the 1.3 million troops deployed since the invasion of Afghanistan in October 2001 have done two or more tours of duty. This is a big change from Vietnam when the draft assured supplies of fresh troops, and from the 1991 Gulf War, which lasted eight months [in terms of deployments]. In this conflict, homecoming is often temporary--and when troops do come back for good, it follows an extended absence.

More troops are returning to spouses eager to celebrate the event. About 52% of the fighting force is married, according to the Defense Department. Military experts say the troops in Vietnam, with a draft that tilted heavily toward young men, were largely unmarried, though the Defense Department said it had not compiled marriage statistics for all the services in that war.

In another shift, many of the troops today are returning directly to civilian communities. National Guard and Reserve members have comprised as much as 40% of forces, compared with a high of 20% during the Gulf War.

And this reality will radically alter all sorts of rule sets for this war-within-peace.

ARTICLE: "Energy Independence: A Dry Hole? Experts Across Political Spectrum Challenge 'Emotionally Compelling' Slogan," by John J. Fialka, Wall Street Journal, 5 July 2006, p. A4.

It is the quintessential irrational slogan of our era, one that places all economic logic secondary to political (and op-ed) opportunism: "Energy independence for America!"

I'm sorry to see Kerry dip into that one recently, but he's in good cynical company with our current president, a recent convert himself.

The truth is, our consumption per thousand dollars of GDP has declined dramatically over the past 30 years, making oil far less crucial to our economy. In 1973 it stood at roughly 1.4 barrels/1kGDP. Now it stands at roughly 0.7 barrels, or a decline of roughly 50 percent.

Not bad for "oil addicted" America, whose only true sin is growing our economy so dramatically since 1973.

But even there our total oil consumption has risen only from about 17 million barrels a day in 1973 to about 21 today. Again, not bad.

The real issue for many is one of imports, which stood at only 5 mbd in 1973 and now sits about 11 mbd, so shifting from about one third of our oil use back then to roughly 60% now.

Still, about the only thing dumber than describing that as an addiction is calling for independence. C. Fred Bergsten, director of the International Institute of Economics, calls the notion "ridiculous," because it implies that "price doesn't matter, that you'll pay any amount to decrease your reliance on imports--and that would be crazy."

Instead, Bergsten, like me, calls for more cooperation between us and rising China (with its skyrocketing demand for foreign oil), calling us "natural allies" because we're both big consumers sitting on the same side of the table opposite OPEC.

Ah, but we can't have alliance with China, can we? That would ruin all those plans for high-tech weaponry we don't actually need for wars we won't actually fight against opponents that won't actually materialize. Calling for energy independence fits that rationale nicely, because it begs America to beg off from trying to connect the Middle East or even to seek Chinese cooperation in that effort. Instead, let's go autarkic on energy, hunker down, keep our powder dry... you know the story.

Strange bedfellows indeed.

But if we stopped all imports from the Middle East, wouldn't the Middle East stop being a security issue? Well, as one expert points out in this piece, we don't import any Iranian oil and haven't in decades. So much for that theory of disconnectedness leading to security.

But the real weakness here is that autarky in any form is not a realizable strategy in an interconnected world, whether you're talking energy or R&D or manufacturing ("Buy American!") or the service sector ("Traitor CEOs selling our jobs to damn furreigners!"). The network of globalization itself becomes the security issue, so building in resiliency is the answer, not the false dream of autarky.

We need new rules to manage this far more integrated and connected security order, to shrink this Gap and grow this Core by keeping it safe. That's what my books are all about: 21st century answers to 21st century problems of war and peace.

And that's what Enterra Solutions is all about, leading that charge (as it should be) from the private sector.

Sure, I could sell more books by peddling more fear and making it all seem so much simpler than it is (we need a Manhattan Project on X...), but I like to sleep at night, and I fear intellectual dishonesty more than anything--even obscurity and failure.

But the truth is there is no logical trade-off between connectivity and security, or between efficiency and security. That's the gospel Steve DeAngelis and I are preaching, and it sells because it speaks to our true ingenuity as Americans: not running away from tough problems but running toward them.

Great piece by Fialka. Pound-for-pound, as good as anything I've read in the last five years.

DATELINE: Above the garage in Indy, 7 July 2006

The folder of articles to blog is now empty, yielding about 10k in post wordage over the past few days. Nice thing about delaying the effort: you find some aren't worth doing in the end and that others should be set aside as future op-eds (this week it's a fight between North Korea and the much-needed rule set on processing terrorists in legal settings, and I lean to the latter simply because I don't like writing a biweekly too closely tied to current events, given the lag between writing and publication and because--quite frankly--I'm trying to keep my column as analytical as possible, so ixne on the eportingre).

I was feeling depressed when I woke up this morning, but I powered through, seeking solutions to my anxiety.

The messy house seemed out of control. So I got up early and cleaned every floor in every room.

A couple of trees looking weak in the yard spooked me. So I walked out and discovered the Japanese beetles chewing them up. Quick call to my lawn guy and that's being worked now (yes, being disconnected from my lawn is the price of blogging).

Felt unhappy about my kids laying about, so I sent them out into the street, and playmates have been found just across the street (where we left them last week). Now, instead of lecturing Kev on what a lousy big brother he is to Jerry, Kev is playing pied piper to Jerry and other younger boys in the neighborhood, doling out rides in the buggy we pull behind our bikes. They run to the intercom every so often, regaling me with their exploits. They feel connected to our new neighborhood, and everyone likes this.

Meanwhile, the three females are all off shopping, connecting themselves to my future earnings.

Peace reigns supreme in the household.

So it must be time for me to depart... to Eastern Europe this time, or more specifically Dubrovnik, Croatia, for an international conference on regional security. Supposed to be senior government officials--even leaders--from a number of European countries. Not sure what I'm doing, just that the Croatians are thrilled to have me coming (they sent diplomats to check out my talks in recent months, but I'm not sure I'll be giving one when I'm there, as it seems the conference is a series of roundtables, so looks like talkinghead duty, interrupted by the occasional wisdom-implying tug of the chin).

I am doing this for no fee, but simply for the connectivity for the company. Steve and I are increasingly being asked by major corps and multinationals to provide geo-strategic advice on security and globalization, and we figure we need to sell our network as much as our content--or not just what we know as whom we know. So you never turn down a chance, as Steve likes to say, to meet a foreign leader (within limits, of course), because strong personal connectivity plus the content is a powerful package.

First time to Dubrovnik for me, but not the first time to Croatia. Passed through on train and bus back in 1985. If this trip works out well, I may well take up a similar offer from Romania later in the fall. But the Croatia invite was fairly easy to say yes to. Not every day you get mail from a prime minister.

And no surprise here on the symmetry: corps want to grill Steve and I on New Core and Seam States and my books/vision appeal most to New Core and Seam States. So I go where I'm asked to go and Steve is cutting deals where it makes sense to cut deals and these travels naturally take us to such states, and multinationals naturally are interested in such states.

Ain't rocket science, but it does pay better... well, some of the time.

Looks like I will end up suing Leigh Bureau for money it's witholding from me. It'll be the first time I've been forced to take legal action against someone business-wise, but better that than just getting ripped off.

The first is the nuclear cooperation pact with Russia ("U.S. and Russia to Enter Civilian Nuclear Pact, by Peter Baker, Washington Post, 8 July 2006). After the Indian one and this one, the next two should be with China and Brazil.

The second is to reject solo talks with North Korea ("Bush Rejects Solo Talks With North Korea," by Michael A. Fletcher, Washington Post, 8 July 2006). No sense in biting on that one. North Korea is ultimately an Asian problem with a largely Asian solution that segues into a U.S. troop reduction in the region. The only way that string is pulled is for something to step into the place of our historic balancing role in the region, and that is some sort of region-wide security alliance. Alliances are built off of common threats and shared victories, and again, both in this case must be primarily Asian in character.

Our fight lies in SWA shifting to Sub-Saharan Africa. Resources must be freed for the Long War. New allies must be obtained and stupid fights (Iran) must be obviated in order to keep our eyes on the prize of defeating this latest historic variant of the rejection of the ever expanding global capitalist economy.

Great article ("On Policing the Frontiers of Freedom" in Army Magazine sent to me by Waveman, who constantly pesters me with questions and avoids my wrath by sending me little gems like this now and then.

As indicated in the byline,

BRIG. GEN. HUBA WASS DE CZEGE, USA Ret., a consultant for the U.S. Army Training and Doctrine Command advanced warfighting experiments, was one of the principal developers of the Army’s AirLand Battle concept and the founder and first director of the School of Advanced Military Studies, Fort Leavenworth, Kan.

The General's distinction on war and policing captures exactly what I reach for with Leviathan and SysAdmin. Here's the first five paras (find the whole article in the link above):

We Americans and our usual allies will be warring and policing on the new 21st-century frontiers of freedom for the foreseeable future. Often we will be doing both in the same place. A survey of the strategic problems U.S. forces have faced since the dawn of the 21st century, arguably beginning with Urgent Fury in Grenada, would uncover only two commonalities. One could describe them as “messes” or “wicked problems.” The literature of policy planners dealing with urban, ecological and social programs define such problems, their usual sort, as ill-structured, even problematic to define. Invariably they beg for a solution even though no clear solution, with wide consensus, is readily apparent. One could also describe these wicked problems as wicked social problems because they seem lodged in a complex social ecology. Solving them always requires restoring a bargain in which the people provide support and soldiers and marines provide a safe environment, not only for the people, but for the nonmilitary actors who really have the expertise and means to deal with the root social causes.

Much of the discussion of how to cope with such problems is about how the leaders of those soldiers and marines, and military overhead structures, can compensate for the non-military problem solvers who are absent because the environment is not safe. While this is an important issue, it is the subject of a different article. A more important issue is how soldiers and marines provide the safe environment at the real root of local popular support when security forces collapse or are overwhelmed. The first step in answering that question is to realize that we make war on an enemy, and we police a problem. When we need to make war, we ought to make war wholeheartedly, and when we need to police a problem, we ought to do that wholeheartedly as well. Applying this principle and understanding the difference is of tremendous importance.

The article “War with Implacable Foes,” (May) outlined the enduring and fundamental logic of war. In that article I said, “Statesmen should know that the logic of war may be significantly different from the logic of peaceful political intercourse, and that policing and warring are two very different things.” The very fundamental difference has been stated, but there are overlapping commonalities, and a very different enduring fundamental logic. This article primarily addresses those.

Twenty-first-century soldiers will need to be proficient in both warring and policing. The flexible and smart soldiers and sergeants the U.S. Army has in the field today are ample evidence that the same units can do both equally well, provided they are well-trained and led, and know how to think differently in the novel situations they keep finding themselves in today. There is no real need for specialized soldiers and units. The impracticality of that idea is not addressed here, but the nature of the wicked problems they will encounter will often favor units that can readily switch from a warring to a policing mentality and back again even in the same tactical action.

U.S. forces are currently combining warring and policing in various locations throughout the world. While the logic outlined in “War with Implacable Foes” may apply to one group in a particular situation, the policing approach may be more useful for attaining political policy aims with other violent groups. While the best intuitively understand the difference and can show the way for the rest, real success will come only when all leaders and soldiers, as well as statesmen and generals, understand the logic of policing on the rough 21st-century frontiers, whether we find these in the wake of major combat operations to change a regime, in scattered pockets of failed governance on “the Pentagon’s New Map” or at home during major disasters.

What I like least? The assumption of "usual allies."

The General is a legitimate legend as a thinker, so very gratifying to see the casual, unexplained reference to PNM. That is a portable strategic concept at work.

Prof. Niu Ke of Beijing U. introducing Tom on Sunday night (25th June) to crowd at PKU (Peking University is what everyone still calls it).

Tom talking.

Working the A-to-Z rule set.

Talking Kim.

Q&A. 'Guy in blue shirt heard me two years ago at China Reform Forum. I never forget faces, only names.'

Dinner before talk at PKU. Zhang Yu, or "Daisy," is at far left.

Full shot of dinner at PKU.

+ Zenpundit dialogues with Tom in The resilience of civilizations and opines on Blogospheric conversation.

+ Younghusband refers to Tom's call for an East Asian NATO.

+ Lexington Green of Chicago Boyz writes about a family of blogs, listing Tom as the headliner, before going on to recommend Coming Anarchy to his readers who haven't discovered it.

+ Phatic Communion references Tom's plan for nonviolent world change in the last paragraph of the very long Observing the Maturing World: Subtitle: Part Three of Rethinking the OODA, then includes Tom with references to Mark and Steve in Rule Sets and the Revised OODA

+ John Robb links Tom's post on Russian gas dynamics.

+ Opposed Systems Design links to Tom in Body armor.

Did I miss your post? Let me know, or comment it.

DATELINE: JFK, New York, 8 July 2006

An itinerary from hell, befitting Croatia's emerging but still somewhat slim connectivity.

1pm from Indy to JFK on Delta, but then a late night flight to Vienna, another 6 hour layover, and then two flights to get me to Dubrovnik. I will arrive at 9pm Sunday night after leaving home at 1115 Saturday morning. Even with the hours shift, that's a long haul.

So rather than sit so long in JFK (nice lounge for biz class), I hop an earlier flight to Vienna, basically giving me the day there (short train ride into town). This way I have more normal night.

Already decided to bag column effort on flights over. Rather, I'll write about East Central Europe and the conference. Might as well dance with them that brought me!

Plus, the Lufthansa lounge has two very nice German beers on tap (self-serve), and that proves too much for this Scot-Irish-German.

Now, the puzzle is, What to do in Vienna in such a short time? I plan on quizzing the stewards on the flight over.

Worst case? I wimp out on fatigue and watch the FIFA final in the Vienna biz lounge. Saw the end of the Germany romp over Portugal for 3rd place just now, so figure the final must be tomorrow.

Feeling a bit anxious. Hate all this flying, despite the cool locales. Will miss the reception Sunday night at some fortress in Dubrovnik (would have had to fly yesterday, apparently, to make it), but will get a full day with all the leaders on hand at the conference on Monday, ending with some cultural event that night at some other local landmark. My time will be completely booked in Croatia (land 2100 Sunday night, then 0800 to midnight on Monday, then 0600 flight Tuesday morn), so Vienna may be it for souvenirs...

I clutch my Beatles book like it's my bible for the weekend, the vast majority of which I will spend at 40,000 feet.

Thinking St. Stephen's and Freud's museum.

Reading Economist article on India (1 July) and get this cool distinction: hard infrastructure (nets and utilities and roads and transport) versus soft (rules and institutions).

India says it betters China on soft, even if much behind on hard.

Good breakdown to remember re: Development in a Box.

DATELINE: Austrian Airlines Business Lounge, Vienna International Airport, 9 July 2006

Weird surprise trip to Vienna for me by taking advantage of earlier flight out of JFK Saturday night. It was better choice than hanging until 2220 flight because I got to read a bunch of papers, watch a movie (Failure to Launch), eat well, and then go Ambien for four hours, arriving at 8:45 and feeling okay.

Once on the ground in Vienna, I change a bit of money into Euros, and take the CAT train into town (much like London's from Heathrow). By 1000 I am wandering the streets rather aimlessly, sort of trying to bump into St. Stephen's cathedral in the center of town. But being one of those old European towns, the streets go every which way but straight. Still, I saw a lot of cool things, camped for a bit in a platz to do some brot und wurst off a stand, and eventually I did find the place. Pix of all will be posted once I can connect direct off my Mac (using the lounge one now and going nuts over the weird key placements!).

After the cathedral I just kept walking and located Sigmund Freud's old apartment/practice on Berggasse 19. It's now a passable museum. Artifacts are few, but the rooms are real and really unchanged. Got the audio tour and it was worth it.

By then I am dragging from the high heat (90ish with high humidity), all that walking (several miles) and the lack of sleep, so catch metro back to CAT train and then check into the lounge for two hours of R&R, meaning more German beers.

Tonight I will fly twice to reach Dubrovnik, hoping to hit a pillow NLT 2300. The conference's first event starts at 0800 and the last one starts deep into the night, so tonight is the night for the good sleep, since I fly at crack of dawn (same four flights home) all day Tuesday.

But tomorrow, depending on what these guys finally decide to have me do (Croat diplomats checked out my Hudson talk way back when), I should at least keep busy through all the speeches working up some column evoked by this trip.

Should get to see the end of the FIFA final tonight though, with any luck, in my hotel room...

Tom got this email:

Dr. Barnett,

Professor Stephen Hawking recently posted the following question on Yahoo! Answers: "In a world that is in chaos politically, socially and environmentally, how can the human race sustain another 100 years?"

Perhaps you should consider visiting Cambridge to discuss “a future worth creating” with arguably the most brilliant thinker of his generation. Maybe he could be convinced that continued strides in economic connectivity, along with many attendant changes, have us staring not into oblivion but into a world filled with unprecedented promise, where more than half of humanity is ready to emerge from relative poverty and the threat of great power war can be all but eliminated.

My questions are simple: If you could choose one word to answer Prof. Hawking’s question above, what would it be? What one word would you select if the question read, “how can the human race fail to sustain another 100 years?”?

Great email.

From what I know of Tom, I'll take a stab at answers for fun:

1. connection

2. China

Easy. Ingenuity.

Scientists do this a lot in old age: they get scared and think that the ingenuity of their generation was unique and will never be repeated again. It is complete bullshit, and arrogant to boot.

But somehow humanity not only gets smarter, we constantly reinvent ourselves and this world.

DATELINE: Excelsior Hotel, Dubrovnik Croatia, 10 July 2006

Oy vey! What a trip to get here!

After my day sojourn into Vienna and a couple of hours de-compressing in the biz lounge at the airport, I went through an oddly arduous passport control/security process only to find that my Tyrolean Airways flight to Zagreb was delayed two hours. Finally arriving in Zagreb, I quickly discovered I had missed the last Dubrovnik flight. What to do?

I was so fagged by then (2100 local time) that I was just about brain dead. Nonetheless, I got into line to exchange the tickets, with my remaining RAM just swimming with the possibilities of where I would sleep that night since the first flight out to Dubrovnik was 0555!

I was just about to lose it in line when this gorgeous blond from Austrian Air saved the day, coming up and asking if I was Mr. Barnett. I said yes. She said she was changing my flight and preparing vouchers for both the local hotel and the bus to and fro. Amazing!

Then I realized I had checked my bag to Dubrovnik and needed to locate it so I could suit up prior to the trip (I had no idea when I was speaking today so I was worst-casing the notion that I’d show up just in time to go onstage--more on that later). So I go into the lost bag office, only to have it appear just as I was pointing out its type on the chart.

So I went from no room/no bag/no clue to being in my hotel room at 2230 lying in bed (after throwing up, for some reason) and watching the overtime end of the FIFA final. Sure, my wake-up call was 0400, but I was in hog heaven considering the alternatives, and the puking sort of purged me of the two-days’ stress.

I sleep reasonably well and make the 0555 flight with ease. So there I am at Dubrovnik airport at 0700, looking for my name on somebody’s sign, but nada. In fact, I can’t find anybody who seems to know anything about any summit in town. So I figure, if they want me to talk, someone will show up, right?

Two hours of reading later, I start getting nervous. So I have the Croatian Air passenger handling office call the hotel and someone shows up from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, saying they had expected me the night before (duh!) and had basically given up when I did not appear. Had they asked the airlines--their national airline!--anything?

No.

So if I say nothing, I would still be at the airport (only two exits at this little airport and I pick the wrong one to camp out in front of). I am told a van will pick me up in 30. So happens that that’s the exact time the Croatian PM and President are flying in, so their caravan of four cars appears, just as my van appears.

My driver, obviously security, thus attaches my car to the end of the official caravan, which is both cool and scary, because they drive at high speeds on very narrow roads that are several hundred feet above the very steeply pitched coastline, and the caravan insists on passing every car in its path, creating more close calls from oncoming traffic that I care to admit, especially since my car was tail-end Charley.

Still, a stunning drive from the airport through mountain slits and down the steep snaking path into this gorgeous, very Mediterranean sea resort town. The Excelsior is a first-class hotel right on the water. Naturally, it is covered with guys wearing ear buds and cords snaking down into the back of the blazers, because there are 8 heads of state here (I type this as the magnificent seven go through their official, post-lunch statements in one amazingly, hot, crowded room where I spoke this morning).

I arrive at 1030, check in and put my garment bag in my room. I check in at the conference and finally get the schedule: I am on a panel that begins at 1050 and I’m to address the “strategic challenges” facing SE Europe in the global security environment.

Hmmm. Nothing like time to prepare.

I check my brief and write down the points I’d like to make in my five-minute presentation (I’m on a panel of four). Ten minutes later we’re on (pix to follow).

It’s a slick set that’s very formal and diplomatic in its layout: big square with cheap seats behind the three sides other than the presenting/stage side. There’s about ten film crews, plus reporters from the WSJ, FT, Economist, NYT, and a slew of European dailies.

There are three morning panels in all, with a dozen speakers. Three are American (myself, a principal from the Albright Group and aN Assist Secretary of State for European Affairs by the name of Dan Fried). I am the only American on my panel. The moderator is a Norwegian ambassador (very cool guy I chat up over lunch), and the other panelists are the Minister of Defense for Croatia, Croatia’s chief negotiator for accession into the EU, and Balkan vet Carl Bildt who is now Chairman of the Board of The Kreab Group.

I go last in the group. I talk about the Balkans’ experience of the 1990s as the first true Core-Gap/globalization war, then make my argument on Leviathan/SysAdmin and make my case for how NATO and Europe need to adapt themselves to that reality. Then I go out of my way to argue against the primacy of the US-Euro bond, arguing that the SysAdmin requirement means we’ll need to ally most with serious “body” states like India and China (BTW, the two biggest peacekeeper-providers in the UN are Pakistan and Bangladesh, two Indian knock-offs).

Following my presentation, we take about seven questions from the audience, half of which consist of statements from Croatian, Bosnia and Serbian diplomats. But we do get some good questions, and most are directed to me. The best, from Mira Ricardel, is about how global institutions must change/arise to meet this new challenge of processing politically-bankrupt states.

Now, Ricardel is both a fan and someone I admire from her stint in the Office of the Secretary of Defense’s office (she was Deputy ASD for Central Asia--she only took me to task for commenting positively on the Shanghai group). The story I tell in PNM about being called on the carpet once by OSD after making some statements about US bases in Central Asia is actually about Mira. She was the senior officer that hosted my brief, the one in which Feith sent one of his minions to check me out).

Once we got all the questions in, each of us got a chance to do a summary reply. I went last again and spoke about the downshifting of global violence over the past generation (in response to a question of “rising” flows of illicit traffic--obviously a big issue for Seam State Croatia, and the question came from a Croatian MP). Then, in response to a question on democracy, I gave my usual answer about pushing economic connectivity first. Then onto the question of energy security in response to a question there. Then I give a quick-and-dirty on the A-to-Z rule set on processing politically bankrupt states in response to Mira’s question. Then I finish with a response to a Bulgarian official who argues for shared Balkan/Central Asia “values” as a guide for realistic foreign policy goals in that region by saying that America needed to look upon the Shanghai Cooperation Organization as a possible tool rather than an automatic threat since we want the fight to go south vice north.

Compared to the other speakers, who spoke inside-out on the Balkans vis-à-vis NATO, I was seemingly out of left field to be talking global security first and then working my way down to the Balkans. But I got a lot of nice comments from people afterwards, especially for telling Europeans that they were neither the “great white hope” nor the “great traitor” in this Long War but that--quite frankly--they are largely irrelevant in comparison to the New Core pillars we really need to court (of course, most of those who congratulated me on delivering that message were non-Europeans!).

But in truth, this is a tough audience for geo-strategy. The Balkans, quite naturally, are so consumed with the question of integrating with the EU and NATO and avoiding Russian domination, that it's hard for most states from the region to see beyond their noses on grand strategy. So I focus here more on connectivity than content, passing out cards like crazy.

Still, in others ways, this is a perfect audience for a grand strategy vision right now. You want to catch states right on their rapid trajectory from Gap to Core, and the Balkans fits that description. Not pretty, but definitely happening. To think of what was happening here a decade ago and then compare it to what's happening now, and it's a real tribute to both the Clinton Administration (as sloppy and slow as their effort was) and America's joint Leviathan-sequing-to-SysAdmin effort with NATO.

After the talk I gave a quick impromptu interview to the WSJ’s Marc Champion for his upcoming story on energy and the G-8 Moscow meeting (something I addressed in my reply on stage as well, noting Putin’s embrace of downstreaming Russia’s energy connectivity, unlike OPEC states), chatted up a Canadian diplomat, and then chilled during the next session.

Once that was over, we had the formal lunch. The heads of state sat at a central table. I sat with Mira and a bunch of other speakers. Ricardel was great to speak with. She’s no longer with the government, spent a couple of years with a private for-profit educational firm, and is soon to join a major defense contractor. She is obviously hugely connected around this region, so sitting next to her over lunch was really an interesting data dump.

During lunch a huge rainstorm let loose, almost completely obliterating our view of the big island just off the coast.

After that we sit through the speeches (I blog this through a WiFi from the conference room, that connect being the only good thing I can say about this steamy venue) of the seven heads/near-heads of states/near-states. The best is Mikhail Saakashvilli, the president of Georgia. Other heads of state were from Romania (PM), Albania (PM), Croatia (PM and President), the Council of Europe (Pres), Montenegro (PM), and Bulgaria (Pres of parliament).

That is followed by the inevitable press conference, group shot, and then tonight we all will go to the opening of the Dubrovnik Summer Festival where even more speeches will be delivered. I’ll get to bed at around midnight and sleep til my 0400 wake-up, giving me less than 12 hours of cumulative sleep for three nights.

Tuesday will be pure joy: four flights to make it home. I’ll write my op-ed column on the Balkans as the first great proof of my A-to-Z rule set on processing politically bankrupt states. Seems fitting enough to take advantage of the trip that way.

I am beat. It’ll be only a short stay at home, then off for a quick trip to DC for two meetings and a speech.

At that point I will face a significantly slower August with no international travel and only one speech--my fourth year in a row of addressing the entire National Defense U. class of officers/students in mid-August (18th). I will make yet another bid to convince C-SPAN to cover that one.

I am looking forward to the lighter travel load like you wouldn’t believe …

Here’s the rundown on 37 countries represented at the conference: Albania, Australia, Bosnia, Bulgaria, Canada, Croatia, Czech Rep., Denmark, Egypt, Macedonia, Georgia, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Iceland, Italy, Japan, Belgium, Latvia, Lithuania, Montenegro, Netherlands, Norway, Oman, South Korea, Romania, Russia, Serbia, Slovakia, Slovenia, South Africa, Spain, Sweden, Turkey, UK, Ukraine, US and the Vatican. Notable academics were Charles Kupchan and Robert Kagan, neither of which spoke.

Big IOs were NATO, the EU and EC, the Council of Europe, the OSCE and NATO.

I was the only speaker who had no title. I was just presented as the author of my two books. That was interesting, and encouraging about the vision’s global spread.

My only bitch (besides the travel) was: where is my cool crystal whatever for speaking? All I got was a lousy insignia tote bag!

Check this one out from today's Washington Post: Well-Paid Benefit Most As Economy Flourishes.

I'm waiting for the headline that says: "Unprecedented Recovery Benefits Poor While Screwing Rich."

No offense, but why the obssession with rich-poor gap? Question isn't whether rich do better, but do lower ranks simply advance?

Here's the key analysis:

Businesspeople cite shifts in the world economy that give educated workers leverage to negotiate for higher wages but make low-paid workers replaceable -- a disparity that is especially pronounced in a service economy like Washington's.

Does this sound broken? Or just the result of a more competitive global economy, one that promotes and emphasizes the benefits of higher education?

I mean, how are you planning to fight this reality?

The region's economy is strong and businesses are expanding, hiring more software engineers, financial analysts, salespeople and other skilled workers, thus bidding up their pay. But companies are simultaneously finding ways to automate clerical tasks, move call centers to cheaper places and handle business online, weakening demand for less-skilled workers.

Consider Focuspoint Inc., a company in Manassas that sells recorded messages for companies to play when callers are on hold. Three years ago, two order clerks frantically juggled calls and faxes from several hundred clients placing orders. Now the company has 1,700 clients and is expanding its sales and other high-level staff but still has just those two clerks -- who now sit quietly overseeing Internet orders.

"Three years ago, we would have had to hire more people to handle all our new clients," said Joe Martin, a vice president. "Now, we rely on new technology to pick up that work."

Should we not be in the business of replacing people with technology and thus advancing productivity?

Ah, but here's the legitimate rub:

Such innovations help explain why, from 2003 to 2005, the average wage for people in the lowest pay bracket, with salaries around $20,000, rose only 5.4 percent in the Washington region -- not enough to keep up with rising prices. For the jobs that pay around $60,000, salaries rose 12.4 percent, well ahead of the 6.8 percent inflation in that period.

That tells me we need to raise the minimum wage--at a minimum.

But, as always, the key is more educational opportunity, especially generous retraining benefits for anyone who's displaced by globalization's rising competitive environment. The key isn't job protection, but job creation and transitioning.

Very impassioned and eloquent--and in English.

Made strong argument against the "absorption capacity" BS coming out of EU's hardliners right now, and declared his number one goal was to make Albania the most FDI-friendly country in the world!

People here said Berisha was a different guy back during the pyramid scheme meltdown of years ago, but that's he's grown immeasurably as a politician since. First time I've noticed him, and found him very impressive in person.

Forget what I said about being ambassador to China. Sitting through speeches like these is near death. No WiFi and I go insane!

Most of the speeches sound a lot better when you take the simultaneus translation headphones off...

Going back and forth by email with NPR's "On Point" about Long War story they plan for tomorrow. Since I am flying into JFK and have a layover in the right time frame, I may get on the show live, which is required.

NPR might find that scenario too iffy, so I suggested they might want to try John Robb. Why leak that in the blog?

One, to give Robb a head's up in case they call.

Two, to get credit for it if it happens.

Three, to emphasize my respect (even as I often disagree with his extrapolations) for Robb's efforts to think systematically on his global guerrillas' concept.

Four, I don't see any harm in it. Most producers I know run around with their hair on fire all day long, so I doubt anyone would read my blog, go "How dare he?!?!" and not call Robb (or worse, me in the future!) on that basis.

People always asking when I'll speak in DC again at some event they might attend. While not just anyone can get into Ft. McNair, some of you can. I will give the max PNM/DiB/BFA brief to the student body of the Industrial College of the Armed Forces on the 18th of August (I believe, in the morning).

Naturally, I will try to get C-SPAN's interest, and will push Putnam to do the same.

I do this every year primarily out of great respect for, and friendship with, Paul Davis there. A retired USAF general, he has been a great mentor and influence on my work. A very good guy, I look forward to making him happy again this year.

Reader Michael Zaharis sent Tom the link to Counterinsurgency by the Book:The lessons of a new Army Field Manual, by Fred Kaplan (not the patron saint of Coming Anarchy, by the way ;-).

Tom's comment:

Kaplan is smart, but a bit too obvious in his agenda. Something like this FM is written with an eye to history and audiences I don't think Kaplan is understanding too well, given his short-term fixation on Rummy.

So, in my mind, not a particularly sophisticated analysis. By writing the FM (and I interacted with both Crane and Petraeus on this when I researched the "Monks" piece--even getting Crane's mega brief on the FM), Leavenworth is both stating the new case to the military audience while simultaneously writing directly to a political audience of current, but mostly future civilian leaders. So it's naturally cautionary in a way I don't think Kaplan's getting.

Seriously, I'd listen to Jaffe on the subject (so many great articles) than Kaplan, who I really think is--not atypically--in over his head on this one.

Then again, so are most journalists who cover the military, which is why Jaffe and a few others stand out so.

ARTICLE: "China's Golden Cities," by David Dollar, Newsweek, 10 July2006, p. 65.

Reading all this back and forth among bloggers on the China book "Will the Ocean Sink the Boat," [Ed. mainly in an email thread] I am reminded of my simultaneous criticism and praise of old buddy Minxin Pei's recent work on corruption among the party in China: good and solid stuff that I do not deny, I just don't extrapolate as much of China's future on that one parameter as he chooses to.

An article that serves as partial counterbalance to both Pei and the "Boat" book is this neat one by the always impressive David Dollar from the World Bank (his co-authored book on globalization was a mainstay source for my work with Cantor and my first book for PNM--he is just stunning good on whatever he produces).

His article just attacks the notion that the impact of China's boom, both good and bad (as he puts it) is concentrated just in the coastal cities.

His article leverages interviews by the WB of 12,400 firms in China spread out over 120 cities.

Biggest point: no correlation between fast growth and the "breeding of corruption or pollution."

Basic notion: Cities that feature best climates for investment tend to be ones with lower state-run enterprise quotients. Those more burdened by SREs tend to be heavier in content (thus more polluting), plus they tend to resist reforms to protect what they've got and don't want to lose.

Meanwhile, the really positively blooming cities are those that were all industrial backwaters back in 1978, when this all began, and thus they were able to work off a cleaner slate, thus keeping it all cleaner both corruption- and pollution-wise. That's why the cities with the most square meters of green space per capita are also the best places for investors.

But getting to the "Boat" argument: I think it just shows the growing pressure to extend private land ownership rights to the rural areas, as I've blogged earlier. The speculation driving the corruption is feeding off that lack of a rural rule set, which has long existed in the urban areas. Once land in the countryside gets properly revalued, watch Chinese ag really take off from the shot of new capital and watch the population shift to the cities pick up even more speed.

All this says that China, as Zenpundit points out [Ed. in the aforementioned email thread], has a huge rural population with a huge development claim on China's emerging wealth creation. So does China get old before it gets rich? Sure. Does it also get hugely urbanized before it gets rich? Sure. Do those sequences make it that much harder for China to be confrontational with the outside world? You bet.

I don't expect the land reform to happen in Hu/Wen's second term. Really see it breaking in first term of 6th generation, primarily in response to Hu and Wen's tepid efforts and the overall mounting pressure described in things like the "Boat' book, which--again--I think is good and accurate. It just needs to be contextualized a bit.

These are not questions re: China's future civil wars or break-up. This is what I mean by caboose braking, or the rural interior of any state tending to set the lower speed limits on globalization, which --as always--is overwhelmingly a domestic policy question.

Alles über Star Wars und Star Trek.

My boys would approve of Peter Parker's prominence.

Too bad this one not open on Sunday. Would have gotten some comics in German for Kev.

Waiting room at Berggasse 19, Wien.

Franz Shubert in the Stadtpark

Those Scot-Irish Barnetts married a Shubert, which I believe is the maiden name of my paternal grandmother.

Hot day in Wien.

Another tight spot I found myself in!

Had mein brot und wurst off a vendor. Still wandering to find St. Stephen.

Wandering around backstreets in Wien's center, where there are many cool book shops, but all closed on Sunday.

The guy apparently behind all these buch stores. I believe he started with the Word.

Ze famous Anker Clock (Anchor Clock). How do I know? Said so on web.

One of many possible cool shots outside St. Stephen's.

Gargoyles at Stephen's.

Shot from inside looking to altar.

Al Chase of White Rhino Report sends in his review of BFA.

Al's an 'Executive Recruiter in Boston, with a specialization of placing senior executives who are former military officers and who have earned MBA from top-tier schools'. So, if you're looking for that kind of service, drop him a line.

(There'd normally be a 'review of the review' by Tom, but he's a little out of comission from his trip... ;-)

View from room.

Back side of big square.

Panel presenting before mine.

Straight-on view.

All the PMs lined up.

Here's a comment upgraded to post:

I apologize that this is slightly off topic. I have a question that has been lingering on my mind recently. When Dr. Barnett writes (regularly!) about the how the U.S. should engage (connect with) China more completely and ask/use THEM to help resolve the N. Korea matter I find myself in complete agreement. Now, I happen to read a LOT of blogs written from, in and about China. Lately many of them (especially the excellent albeit unsettling China Confidential (I have no affiliation with them)) have been writing that China does not WANT to help. That they are using the situation to keep the US preoccupied, distracted etc.

I guess my questions are:

1) Does Dr. Barnett agree with this assessment? and

2) Assuming it is true, what should the US being doing?

Thank you. Always enjoy the blog

It is true. It's because they feel Bush Admin basically seeks to contain them (also correct). So for now, this path unlikely.

This admin just not up for a different relationship with China. It wants China's help on NK, but offers nothing in return.

(Note: TMLutas had a comment over there, too.)

John Robb had an assessment of the Mumbai attacks: Bombing systems in Bombay.

Lexington Green responded on Chicago Boyz: The Mumbai Attack: A Success for "Global Guerillas"?

Tom's comment:

I think Lex is basically on target here. There is the tendency now to exalt the strategic cleverness of terrorists. I think Robb is correct on systempunkts being targeted, but I also think such targeting is unlikely to overwhelm. The key here is the desire of people to carry on. That's why Hamas and Hezbollah go nowhere, while Israel can turn the West Bank into complete disarray. Israelis refuse to give in, while the Palestinians stew in the victimhood.

4GWers in general buy into Occidentalist views too much: West are pussies and easily put into chaos (we've gone soft with our liberalism and rationalism and feminism and all those machines we depend on, thus we are so vulnerable). Meanwhile, the guerrilla cultures of all stripes are so tough, masculine (keep their women in place), close to nature, natural warriors--all the "good stuff" that we remember now in Russell Crowe and Mel Gibson movies.

And yes, this Occidental description extends into the East, so I'm not out of place extending it to rising India. In effect, this bias is now equivalent to modern development (such as Japan or South Korea) or even the aspiration for the same (or basically, my New Core states like India or China). To move in this direction is to suffer all the same weaknesses, in the eyes of the Occidentalist mindset. This is what I told the Chinese a couple of weeks ago: "Soon, you will be viewed by many in the Gap as the face of globalization/modernization and thus you too will be targeted."

Believe such a shift is impossible? Tell it to the Japanese: once the center of Occidentalism (it led them to believe the ultimate "punch" called Pearl Harbor would flatten the weak and decadent America), it is now a post-modernist dream, and thus a target itself of Occidentalism.

There is a profound reason why we're rich and powerful and connected and the enemy is none of those things. Terrorism is a strategy of the weak, and it earns them only what the powerful decide they no longer want.

As I opined in BFA, there are no lasting 4GW victories. Yes, sometimes conflicts are won, but what is really achieved? Look at Cuba or Nicaragua or Palestine--or best yet--Vietnam or China?

All these 4GW "victors" got was amazingly bloody disconnectedness, and--when they got smart--then they came back crawling to the system, the nets, the rules, the "decadence."

4GW is not some apogee. No Kaplanesque romanticism please. This is the dregs and nothing more.

Our nets are our strengths. They will attack and we will grow more resilient. Bush was right: Bring it on. Speed the killing. Flush the losers. Extend the nets. Be resilient.

Watch India. These attacks will accomplish nothing.

DiB is the phrase Steve DeAngelis and I have used up to now to describe a rapid reconnecting of a post-conflict/disaster/whatever state to the global economy/global info grid.

We do get a certain push back on the term, primarily on the word "development" and the implication that something so complex can be so summarily packaged up and dropped on somebody's doorstep. That's the Left's problem. The Right's issue is more one of commitment--as in bucks and oversight implied. A middle-ground resistance centers on the implied-but-wrong assumption of top-down planning.

In sum, all this resistance says to me that "development," like democracy, is just too loaded a term for our purposes, so I'm going to start describing it more as Connectivity-in-a-Box (connectivity is my phrase for obviating the up-front demand on democratization anyway, and it's always worked wonders for me in that way by steering the discussion to where it needs to go instead of bogging it down in debates on cultural norms), which I think comes closer to Steve's old term, "civilian infrastructure insourcing," a great but a bit too technical phrase.

Why now?

I'm writing a new article on the subject that should get some good coverage, so it seems a good time to switch. Also, today Steve and I are meeting with an organizer of a major global conference and we're pitching the concept.

In the end, I think CiB is a much better fit, for carrying both less baggage and for narrowing down our goals more realistically, plus it plays into our "standards and metrics" argument better, plus it more accurately captures the promise of rapidity, which is crucial. So CiB deflects the Left on hubris, the Right on pricing, and the Moderates on centralization fears.

Plus it addresses all the feedback we've gotten on the term from wordsmiths who fear we pick too many unnecessary battles with the phrase while burying the lead, which is really the connectivity interface.

ARTICLE: "Saudi Arabia Tests Its Potential For Unlocking Heavy-Oil Reserves," by Bushan Bahree and Russell Gold, Wall Street Journal, 10 July 2006, p. A1.

We forget that Saudi Arabia's known reserves have always been calculated in terms of the easily accessed light oil, or the stuff that just comes up when you pump some water down.

If [Saudi Arabia] succeeds in overcoming the technical hurdles, the effort could significantly increase Saudi Arabia's oil reserves over the next several years, potentially adding some slack to tight energy markets. It would also be a blow to so-called peak-oil theorists who have forecast that world oil production is on the brink of peakin.

Hubbert's Curve works, on known fields. But it doesn't tell you much on Saudi Arabia's unexplored and unexploited heavy-oil fields, or Canada's oil sands or...

"Look for resources and ye shall find..."

My first globalization commandment.

The U.S. Geological Survey now estimates that in there is an much heavy oil in the Western Hemisphere as there is light oil today in the Eastern Hemisphere, or roughly one trillion barrels.

ARTICLE: "On the Road Again: A Chinese Company Intends to Build MG's in Oklahoma," by Nick Bunkley, New York Times, 12 July 2006, p. C1.

Remember that post of... oh... several days ago when I opined that someday soon American states would welcome in Chinese auto manufacturers like we do Korean and Japanese ones today?

As I have often said, it's tough to be a futurist right now. Economically, things are easily OBE, a phrase that began in the time of the Soviet bloc's rapid collapse.

Nanjing, the Chinese car maker, says it has $2B in investment to start rebuilding MGs, the old Brit car, here in the states. Awfully niche, this production goal, but an early indicator of things to come no doubt, as Chinese car makers want to build for here and there, as well as build them here and there.

More prosaically, Nanjing wants to give Mazda a run for its Miata money, which seems sensible enough. Can't have enough mid-life male crisis cars around.

PHOTO: "Memories Of a Massacre," Associated Press, New York Times, 10 July 2006, p. A3.

By most reasonable accounts, we're approaching 40k deaths in Iraq since the 2003 takedown (still under the UN-estimated 50k we killed each year with sanctions across the 1990s), but the Balkans were a place where the massacres ran into the thousands, not just dozens.

The photo showed a woman touching the inscribed name of a loved one on a new monument in Srebrenica, where over 8300 civilians were slaughtered in one bloody stroke by the Serbians. Most were Muslim men and boys. Most bodies were never recovered/identified.

And yet look where the Balkans are today. Getting past the blood lust took some firm military intervention, followed by a major babysitting job with peacekeepers and development personnel, but now we had--as I witnessed in Dubrovnik this week--these states' diplomats all arguing over who can be a better NATO ally fastest or harmonize their political and economic systems most quickly to become viable candidates to join the EU.

Did you know that Macedonians and Croatians both serve alongside our NATO troops in Afghanistan today? No big numbers, naturally, but a real start.

Can you dream of Iraqi peacekeepers patrolling alongside American and Chinese (already there) peacekeepers in sub-Saharan Africa ten years from now?

ARTICLE; "Russians And U.S. Push Hard On Trade," by Andrew E. Kramer and Steven R. Weisman, New York Times, 12 July 2006, p. C1.

This article indicates that, rather than take up John McCain's scary call to boycott the G-8 meeting in Moscow over Putin's policies, Bush is pushing to have an accelerated deal on Russia's entry into the WTO, presumably to trumpet it at the summit.

Sharp move by this administration, though I do harbor some fears that deals like this with Russia and China are all part of the master China containment plan, which, as I've said before, is doomed to fail simply because so many allies, both old and new, will not let themselves be forced to choose between old American fears and new Chinese opportunities.

Still, good move by Bush. The Euros were signalling their own desire to cut a special trade deal with Russia to lighten the perceived blow from a failed Doha round. That we perhaps beat them to it is just fine: any bilat pressure stemming from intra-Core deals only pushes these states collectively toward more realistic stances in the Doha Round, along with those who sit across the tables. So every little bit helps.

Got this comment from Brandon Winters:

If the Bush administration is a lost cause on China, who would be a good candidate for President that would seek to engage, rather than contain China?

(Can you guess it?)

(I'll 'hide' it in the comments, just for fun ;-)

One of our readers wrote in to say 'Where's the sidebar?'.

Answer: I have no idea. I didn't even touch that template.

So, I'm piecing it back together. Sidebar under reconstruction until Saturday. Please excuse the mess.

OP-ED: "India's Indestructible Heart: Once again, Mumbai pick itself up," by Naresh Fernandes, New York Times, 12 July 2006,p. A23.

ANALYSIS: "India Is Resilient in Wake of Deadly Blasts: Inured to Terror Attacks, Citizens Resume Daily Lives and Investors Defy Fears of a Selloff," by Peter Wonacott and Eric Bellman, Wall Street Journal, 13 July 2006, p. A5.

But as the WSJ piece listed, Mumbai has had numerous significant terror attacks in the past dozen or so years.

I remember being a bit nervous about being in the company of India's PM, President and other senior cabinet members during my spring 2000 trip to Mumbai for the international fleet review I described in PNM. Just being around so many of their special ops guys, the Black Cats who dressed in ninja black from head to toe, made me a bit wary. I mean, if you need that sort of protection, who's out to kill you?

Well, as we know from India's history, plenty of people are out to kill its leaders, and since Rajiv Gandhi was assassinated, I think the ultra-high security around the top leaders has forced terrorists to go after softer targets.

But like the Brits with the IRA bombings in the 1980s, Mumbai--and India in general--basically shrug off these attacks:

The key lesson, say those who have lived through attacks, is that even if markets go down and political temperatures go up, life goes on.

The [market's] resilience emboldened people from juice salesmen to top government officials. "Your resilience and resolve will triumph over the evil designs of the merchants of death and destruction," Prime Minister Manmohan Singh said yesterday in a nationally televised speech. "No one can come in the path of our progress. The wheels of our economy will move on."

But here is my favorite line, one that undercuts the synchronicity argument of regular attacks (as in, ping the system regularly and keep everyone in a state of freaked out alert):

"We have seen this in New York, Madrid and London. Lots of countries today are dealing with terrorist attacks," Mr. Nilekani [InfoSys CEO] said in an interview. "The people of Mumbai are especially resilient."

So we're not such wimps after all...

ARTICLE: "Late and Costly: Pentagon Still Pays; Spending More for Less is Frequent In Weapons Projects Since 9/11," by Leslie Wayne, New York Times, 11 July 2006, p. C1.

Chuck Spinney must be spinneying in his grave (actually, I have no idea if he's still around, I just couldn't resist). As I wrote in BFA, Spinney's brief in the 1980s on the spiralling costs of major programs of record explained the logic by which costs tended to run out of control over the life of any acquisition. It made him famous enough for the cover of Time.

This dynamic of spiralling costs is alive and well, as the F-22 Raptor projected in 1992 to cost $125m per copy is now weighing in at $361m per unit.

Yes, yes, Rummy promised streamlining designed to put some dents in those typical glidepaths, but 9/11 gave him as close to a blank check as one gets in this world, so with the lack of fiscal discipline from across the river (neither the White House nor Congress shows any restraint here), Rummy gets to love all his children, with no Sophie's choice in sight.

Like too many tough calls with this administration, it's being passed on to the next.

Naturally, the biggest money--and thus the bulk of the overruns--sits with new weapons systems. New ones will cost a good trillion and a half between now and just 2009, with $800 billion set to be spent in a grand flurry as this administration exits some 30 months from now.

As so many critics note, there are real needs, and then there are what the Pentagon wants, and that's where the mania on China is so damaging, setting us up to underfund the ground forces that should be seeing their budget shares grow dramatically in this Long War, but instead are being starved by the Leviathan's dreams.

I'm all for unfair fights, but this 12 Sigma approach is just too rich for our 4GW environment. It's strategically criminal waste, and letting it pass with so little effort to stem it is--in my mind--the great failure of Rumsfeld's reign. He's done plenty of good, but he hasn't dealt effectively with the bad, and that simply pushes the truly hard decisions to the next administration.

ARTICLE: "For South Korea, 'Emerging' Label Can Be a Burden," by Ian McDonald and Karen Richardson, Wall Street Journal, 12 July 2006, p. C1.

Why?

"One obstacle to an upgrade is the risk of political instability in neighboring North Korea, as evidenced by that country's missile test firings last week."

You want serious Core status, you need to act like a serious Core power, not bury your head in the sand and expect others to carry your weight.

OP-ED: "Send in the Advisers: An easy way to help the Iraqi military," by Andrew F. Krepinevich, New York Times, 11 July2006, p. A19.

Paging Col. Lawrence...

We need to reward "living native"--hell, even "going native" if that's what it takes to prevail in the Long War at a loss rate that is tolerable.

As Andy says, "Their success will determine whether we win this war, at what cost, and how soon."

DATELINE: Above the garage, Indy, 14 July 2006

I blog a lot through my phone now, just firing off emails to Sean Meade, my webmaster, for him to post to the blog.

Sean naturally enters the blog site through his own account, thus when he posts my stuff for me (yes, he gets paid like any job), the blog will list him as the posting agent at the bottom of the post.

Sean, I believe, has taken great pains to make it obvious when he's speaking in his own voice, but I can see how some people have gotten confused.

From now on, Sean will enter the blog through my account whenever he's posting my direct feeds so that the post authorship at the bottom does not confuse any readers.

I had assumed that Sean was posting my stuff through his account, thus he was being listed at the bottom of the posts, thus the confusion of a reader who emailed me today wondering if my blog had somehow been taken over by Sean.

But as I scan the posts just now, I realize Sean always posted my blogs for me in such a way (using my account) as to make the software list me as author (thus eliminating any confusion), so frankly, right now I have no idea what this reader is talking about.

Sean does an excellent job of moving things along on the blog, and I'd welcome even more of his input that keeps materials and events up to date for readers. His role is only likely to grow, simply because there are only so many hours in the day and--for example--I just don't have the time to read everything that's connected to discussions out there (something Sean and many other readers do for me, sending me what they feel I need to know). If a few people get jazzed about seeing his posts alongside mine, then that's just gonna have to be too bad. I travel just too damn much, and I like my kids too damn much, to care.

Found as an update to his original: http://globalguerrillas.typepad.com/globalguerrillas/2006/07/bombing_systems.html.

John's point on "think Israel, not Vietnam" is a good one. But I think it works better for me than him.

I'll take Israel's enduring connectivity and resilience, no matter what counter-guerrilla wars they are forced to wage.

But in the end, Israel's Old Testament choices reveal themselves to be strategically unsound, in that they do not get them what they really want: eyes for eyes makes the Middle East blind.

Our model here is not Israel, but the Brits in Northern Ireland. This is what Chiarella argues and seeks to achieve. It's is amazingly hard stuff (reducing kinetcs on all sides), requiring a discipline among troops that is profound and hard to train up.

And John, that's why the COIN won't push 4GW. The celebration of gore implied far too often in its enunciation makes it inappropriate for a Field Manual. Full-throated 4GW (is there any other kind?) is too Israeli and too Old Testament in tone. What Petraeus and Nagl and Crane and others are reaching for here is counter-4GW that recognizes, sensibly, the limits of military power. 4GW adherents want too often to militarize our responses or make our military too much of the lead. Don't assume that countering 4GW looks like 4GW. Assume we meet their asymmetry with a better version of our own asymmetry. Defeating 4GW doesn't mean you become adept at 4GW. It means you become supremely resilient, as in, anything you can do I can counter faster.

Quick day trip yesterday to DC to meet with planner for next year's Davos conference. Steve DeAngelis sat in and we had a great talk.

Then Steve and I greet a U.S. News & World Report fellow doing a biz story, who came by to interview Steve for the piece.

I ducked out of that one, though, to keep a longstanding promise to finally return to the National Reconnaissance Office at the request of the director. Briefed an afternoon audience of a couple hundred in a nice, fancy, very secure auditorium.

You don't get rich briefing to government bureaucrats, but you may just change some minds. I must have had some impact, because suddenly all five versions of my two books climbed to below 70k on Amazon rankings.

As of a few minutes ago, the bargain paper PNM was under 4k, and the hard BFA sat under 7k. The regular paper PNM was at 54k and the hard PNM at 17k. And the newest one, the advance paper BFA, jumped from high-hundred-thousands to 67k. Pretty much all this was driven by the NRO talk, I am sure, which is nice to see.

And yes, I do check regularly.

Little payoff today, but hopefully big investment in tomorrow's thinking.

I was told the director was really intrigued with the whole notion of Connectivity-in-a-Box. So yes, the rebranding seems to work nicely!

Only bitch of the day: missed the direct outta Dulles, which was crammed beyond belief. Instead flew to Chicago and then home by 1am.

No fun, but always good to help out when you can. The Long War will be long, and that means multiple generations to educate...

Tom got this email:

You highlight successes of the big bang on occasion. The Washington Post's Dionne really nails it as a failure in today's edition: Big Bang Theory In Ruins. Is he looking only at short term issues, where you look farther down the road, or is there more to the differences you both seem to see? Hope the visit to Westfields went well yesterday. Meant to make that, but duty called at the Pentagon. Thanks!

Good and fair assessment by Dionne, one that speaks to the major tactical errors in this strategy: not doing well enough in postwar Iraq (enough said) and not being more imaginative on Iran, which would have gotten us better control remotely in Syria and Lebanon (Hezbollah) and Palestine (Hamas) WRT Israel.

Blaming the current Israel situation on Bush and the BB is a bit much though. There is the dream that the Arab-Israeli thing can get fixed directly, when Arab regimes plus Tehran have always used the Palestinians for their own trouble-making reasons at home (averting popular attention from much-needed reforms), in the region (stirring the pot) or complicating things for the Americans. So it's just naive to think you will ever "fix" this conflict short of fixing the regional security issue, and that's where the current Bush track on Iran lacks all strategic imagination.

When you pursue the BB, you lock in wins along the way, and Bush failed to do that in postwar Iraq and with an Iran we just made strategically ecstatic by removing threats both east (Taliban) and west (Saddam). Instead, Bush ignored and still ignores the soft-kill option on Iran (its nuke run should trigger our leadership with other Core powers on a comprehensive regional, CSCE-like agenda) and instead he's rerun the WMD drama (as if the screw-up on that subject never happened in Iraq!).

Shortest reply to all those post-Saddam-toppling mistakes?

Kerry should have won in 2004. We needed a dealmaker with strategic imagination. Carp all you like on Kerry's behavior since (he ain't prez but an opposition senator, so DUH!), but he would have been a huge and likely successful opportunity for smarter choices on pushing the BB to better fruition.

He and his certainly would have done no worse than what we've had with Bush and Rice and Hadley running our foreign policy.

These people are just tapped. As I've said many times before, they know how and when to say "no," they just don't know how or when to say "yes."

If I could give a short critique of their mindset (still very neocon, in my mind, just neocon tamed by the Iraq tie-down), that would be it. After that one bold stroke with Saddam, no strategic imagination.

In that sense, the Big Bang is a big over-reach for this crowd.

But yes, I still support the decision to go. The alternative of stasis still sucked.

Better the tumult over there, not here. Better the killing and terror over there, not here. And better professionals wage (and fight and die) in this war than U.S. citizens on our shores.

This fight was preordained in the Middle East by globalization's rapid expansion. Somehow, some way, the Middle East will be forced by history to rejoin the larger world. You can't have 3 billion new capitalists and all their needs and desires and pretend the Islamic Middle East will somehow continue in its queer disconnectedness or immoral civilizational apartheid and gender repression.

Osama picked the timing of this fight (9/11) and Bush picked the venues (Afghanistan and Iraq), but never entertain the delusion that we can "just make it all go away" with isolationism or pull-outs or hydrogen cars. Problems postponed are not problems solved, they're just problems passed on.

And on that note, Dionne is equally correct.

... in the only way it can.

Behind Hamas and Hezbollah stands Iran and its proxy Syria, which is why Israel has always worried far more about Iran than Iraq.

We had a choice on Iran, and we chose to rerun the WMD dynamic, believing--as this Administration seems to--that it was simply a matter of showing that diplomacy can't work before setting in motion the kinetics sometime before the term is up.

Guess what? Iran doesn't care to wait on that timetable, and so it launches it's form of a pre-emptive war--well-timed and well-placed.

Hamas and Hezbollah know what buttons to push with Israel (snatch-and-grabs), and Israel is more than obliging, in its ceaseless quest for buffers, to play its role.

This "open war" will feature far more firepower than deaths (AP reporting 73 Lebanese and 12 Israelis so far, which is barely a decent train wreck). Israel will suffer minimally, mostly in diplomacy. Lebanon and the West Bank will suffer large amounts of infrastructure damage.

None of this will matter in Tehran, which is more than happy to exploit Hamas and Hezbollah to its purposes. Assad will do whatever seems to help most in tying the Americans up and diverting their attention from his failed regime, whose economic fortunes--as always--will rise or fall with Lebanon (get ready for a drop).

In the end, the Palestinians and Lebanese and Syrians and Iranians will remain impoverished and disconnected, Israel will remain prosperous and connected, the conflicts will seem all the more intractable, and Iran will have bought itself some serious time.

Bush is no longer running the Big Bang. You have to go faster than the current if you wish to steer in this river. Because if you don't, someone else inevitably will.

Interesting how all this seems to come down just as the U.S. mistakenly believes it's finally getting somewhere on putting the Iranian issue in the UN Security Council.

Still believe the "perfect peace plan" between Israel and Palestine is what's really holding up stability in the Middle East?

What America should have learned from Balkan wars

This week I spoke at Croatia Summit 2006, an international conference exploring future security challenges for southeastern Europe. Held in the gorgeous resort city of Dubrovnik, this gathering of heads of state served as a celebratory reunion for diplomats who, a mere decade ago, strained to stamp out a series of wars in the Balkans.

The U.S.-led military interventions into Bosnia and Kosovo evoke few memories back here in the States. Remember the anti-war movement? The acrid public debates? [read on]

An American Foreign Policy That Both Realists and Idealists Should Fall in Love With.

It rolls for the first chunk, when Wright is describing the broad outlines of progressive realism as a bridge between idealism and realism, but then it gets bogged down in some old-think on turning to the UN as the ultimate answer. Wright's earlier points about faith in markets should have led him to promote the notion of more competition--thus new rules and new institutions rather than tired formulas of UN-this and arms control-that.

Still, good piece overall. I would gladly call myself a progressive realist. That label certainly beats Republican versus Democrat, or Wilsonian versus Kissingerian, or Idealist versus realist. And that's Wright's main point: the old dichotomies get you nowhere.

Spent this weekend penning two rather short first drafts for Mark Warren for possible inclusion in an upcoming issue this fall. Both were essentially look-aheads on global security, and since I love writing "what comes next?" pieces, they were pretty fun.

Naturally, I wrote both too long, but they hummed in my opinion, and both will make great op-ed columns if they don't find a home there. But I think they will.

+ Looney Dunes compares and contrasts Tom and John.

+ In referring to Tom's article on energy independence, chiasm coins a hip hop name for Tom: T-Barn. I like it. But aren't such names normally written without the dash: TBarn? ;-)

+ Phil Windley of Technometria links Tom's post on the Mumbai bombings as 'a very rational view on what terrorism really means'.

+ Tom's analysis of the current increase in Middle Eastern violence being Iranian pre-emptive war gets picked up by Defense Tech.

If I missed something, please let me know.

Curzon of Coming Anarchy discusses Norman Angell. It caught my eye because Tom is sometimes accused of being Angell in the sense of 'optimistically predicts an end to great power war because of globalization, but tragically wrong'. Tom says the difference is that now we have nukes, which have ended great power war. So Tom says he's Angell, with NUKES! Tom says globalism plus nukes ends great power war. I think this is one of the places where he and the Coming Anarchists (and their patron saint, Robert Kaplan) are in fundamental disagreement.

I solicited Tom's input on this one, and he wrote:

I also argue that the European-derived globalization of the late 19th Century and early 20th century was both corrupt and fatally flawed, as well as being nowhere near as integrating globally as the U.S.-source-coded globalization of today. As Steve DeAngelis likes to point out, there were no Dells, Wal-Marts or IBMs running hyper-efficient global platforms of integrated/localized centers of production, sales, and R&D. There were no globally integrated enterprises back then, just colonial holding companies that moved raw materials in uncompetitive bilateral markets from the colonies to the colonial powers.

So not only was Angell painfully right back then, his logic is made unassailable today thanks to America's source-code for this era's globalization, plus nukes.

Then again, many strategists prefer living in the 19th century. Things seemed easier to understand back then. You could just argue "interests" and "power" and get away with almost no understanding of global economics because--gasp!--there were no global economics back then, just an integrating core of colonial powers in Europe that ultimately turned on one another out of foolish greed.

ANALYSIS: Options for U.S. Limited As Mideast Crises Spread, by Robin Wright, Washington Post, 13 July 2006, p. A19.

ANALYSIS: U.S., Needing Options, Finds Its Hands Tied, by Helene Cooper, New York Times, 15 July 2006, p. A1.

EDITORIAL: Iran's First Strike, Wall Street Journal, 18 July 2006, p. A14.

ARTICLE: Syrian President May Hold Key To Mideast Crisis: As Diplomatic Steps Begin, Assad's Choices Could Fan Or Defuse Regional Violence, by Karby Leggett, Mariam Fam, and Neil King Jr., Wall Street Journal, 18 July 2006.

There is a growing consensus that begins to see this mini-war as having little to do with the Arab-Israeli conflict and mostly to do with the settling out of the U.S.-rogue regime relationships in the region. In other words, this is still all about the Big Bang.

Many have called that strategy "failed," and yet look how it still plays out. Iran and Syria, both openly named as potential "who's next?" candidates, are clearly pre-emptively striking out. Some will naturally see this as Iran's answer to the offer made by the Bush Administration recently--thus the logic of direct action against Iran looms larger.

Me? I just see the logic of the Big Bang giving us what we always wanted: decision points for the region's dictators. The choice right now is to force some larger security engagement (the settling of issues that Iran has signalled it is interested in pursuing, but not in any venue that discusses ONLY their pursuit of nukes--go figure!) or to take action pre-emptively to rule out American-led invasions.

Our tie-down in Iraq is real, and everyone in the region knows it, so if we're not willing to engage the larger regional security agenda (and that's the signal we send with this myopic focus on WMD that's perverted our foreign and security policies almost like abortion has perverted our foreign aid agenda), then we give off the vibe that our diplomacy is fake, largely designed to buy time and consensus for ultimate military action. And guess what? The pigeons in question aren't going to wait around for that plan to unfold on Bush's watch, so their socialize their problem quite effectively through Hamas and Hezbollah.

As the NYT article pointed, it gets tough to seek diplomatic solutions when your basic foreign policy strategy is that we don't talk directly to rogues, we just threaten them and let others speak on our behalf.

Right now our approach comes off as rather bassawkwards: we decide who's bad and we threaten them directly, then we sort of backtrack to having our key allies (basically the G-8 crowd plus China) try and work the diplomacy. But we're leading with the military threat as the big prod both to our enemies and our allies, and that puts both in the position of being reactive, so the dialogue stays rather stale when our focus is so heavy on just this notion of WMD prevention.

Russia and China, no surprise, are acting like they won't let us track this war back to Iran. That leaves Assad as the weak link, so our focus will likely turn there. But if it does, Iran's already won what it really wanted: to move this discussion off their WMD pursuit, pushing the conversation back in the direction of Israel.

When I wrote last year in Esquire that Iran can basically veto our peace efforts in Beirut and Baghdad and Jerusalem, this is exactly what I had in mind. We go myopic, they socialize the problem, and our only option is diplomacy to achieve the same ends that we earlier vowed never to accept, or we fight, which we can't really pull off right now.

Iran remains the key, but this Administration hasn't expressed any interest in trying to unlock that particular door, so this war is what gets lobbed over the transom instead, and now Israel is running America's Middle East policy--which is exactly where Tehran wants us.

COLUMN: "The New Atomic Age Requires New Nonproliferation Strategy," by Frederick Kempe, Wall Street Journal, 18 July 2006, p. A6.

ARTICLE: U.S. and Russia Will Police Potential Nuclear Terrorists: Bush and Putin to Release Details Today, by David E. Sanger, New York Times, 15 July 2006, p. A5.

Arms control has never really worked. When treaties are signed, they pretty much represent the world moving on from whatever's being banned at that moment. So you get a chem treaty at a point in history when no one's interested in using chem anymore. You get a no-atmospheric test of nukes agreement when basically no one (except the French) are still interested in that. All these agreements, both formal and tacit, happen when the collective consensus emerges.

Or you have the bilateral stuff we did with the Sovs, which was mislabeled arms control because it only moderately slowed the growth of both arsenals . . . until, both sides wanted to reduce them, and then you got an agreement on that.

Arms control operates in the real world out there like the passage of laws often do here in the States: pre-emptively emerge they do not. Instead, they arise when a general consensus is reached on something--here, the disutility of still doing or having something.

And the countries not part of that consensus? They simply opt out.

Let me tell you what's really worked to stop the spread of nukes: the U.S. says, "Accept our security guarantee on nukes and our economic activity or... go it alone on nukes." As the Kempe piece argues, that basic transaction has talked a lot of countries out of pursuing nukes in the last 25 years. Or as Ash Carter is quoted: "We told them it's either the bomb or us, pick who you want to protect you."

Now, that works for states we're willing to defend. But what about states that aren't part of any alliances or security schemes that we promote--the isolated ones? For them, the choice offered is, "Be scared of a U.S. invasion without nukes or push for one if you reach for nukes."

And guess what? That offer doesn't work so well.

So the danger of proliferation is more existential than realized: either it's already in the cards or it ain't, because either a state is already a friend of the U.S. and our sheer existence as the world's sole military superpower does it for them, security-wise, or it doesn't. If it does, then no need for nukes. If it doesn't, then they'll be looking for nukes--by definition.

Tell me where arms control gets in between any of that logic. Tell me where the great treaty makes any of that happen or not happen--that which would happen anyway.

So we now have all the usual suggestions for even "tighter regimes" of control and embargo and whatnot to stop proliferation, even as the world is clearly headed to a major plus-up of nuclear power usage that will make most of these schemes highly unlikely to be effective.

Why do we keep coming up with these firewall schemes in a connected world? Just habit, I guess.

One of the things Steve DeAngelis and I push in our Enterra work is that we now have it within our means to move beyond that mindset and embrace the notion that you want to be in the business of tracking things real-time more than trying (often futilely) to stop their movement whatsoever. The computing power is there, and so are the sensors, with the key missing link being our forte: the automation of rule sets that allows rapid-fire sense, think and respond capacities.

So the argument here is, it's not the treaties that will keep us resilient but the technology and our willingness to embed that technology throughout our environment, something the average American is most willing to do. If we make that connectivity and transparency our essential offering, then we're doing far more than just offering to come to somebody's rescue. Instead, we're opening our nets to their participation. By adding them we expand our networks of transparency, and by joining us they gain access to those networks of transparency. Som

ARTICLE: "In Booming China, A Doctor Battles A Polluting Factory: Fouled Rivers and Lakes Spark Flood of Protests; Officials' Mixed Messages; Inspired by Erin Brockovich," by Shai Oster and Mei Fong, Wall Street Journal, 19 July 2006, p. A1.

One of those listed for China is a Chinese "Erin Brockovich."

Looks like he showed up right on schedule!

Great piece by Oster and Fong, both of whom are great.

Pluralism is beginning politically in China, from the bottom up, and environmentalism is the spark, as I also noted in BFA.

ARTICLE: "Bush's Risky Mideast Strategy: Seek Change, Not Quick Peace; Rice Will Solicit Backing to Disarm Hezbollah; Fears of a Broader War; New Order or Chaos Ahead?" by Neil King Jr., Karby Leggett and Jay Solomon, Wall Street Journal, 19July 2006, p. A1.

OP-ED: Iran Against the Arabs [subscription required], by Michael Rubin, Wall Street Journal, 19 July 2006, p. A12.

ANALYSIS: "Analyzing the Options, As crises expand, the United States considers a strategy--and finds a common thread," by Robin Wright, Washington Post (national weekly edition), 17-23 July 2006, p. 16.

I will say this for Bush: the man is nothing if not bold.

Why does Israel go along? It answers the mail right now, diverting attention from the fence building and re-establishing some buffers that need to be reset in the north (Lebanon) and solidified in the east (West Bank). Plus, it's the most Israel is going to be allowed to pursue by Washington in the direction of Iran right now, so why the hell not?

So Tel Aviv administers the chemotherapy to Lebanon, hoping to kill the rogue cells while not harming the post-Cedar Revolution body that has successfully expelled the invasive presence of foreign matter (Syrian army).

Bush and Co. have long referred to Hezbollah as "A team" players in international terrorism, and with good reason, so Israel does us that favor (although one wonders how this blood-letting will let what is good in Lebanon survive this onslaught).

Short term, the target in question here is Assad. Israel puts enough pain on Lebanon and Syria suffers the cut of its economic lifeline to the world. Add in the refugees fleeing (reports of near 100k so far), and you stress Syria even more. Ultimately, one supposes, you hope to flush a lot of fighters outta Lebanon and into Syria, deradicalizing the former and radicalizing the latter (or just making the subsequent direct targeting of Syria as state sponsor of terrorism all the easier).

In effect, Bush lets Israel take up the challenge of Iran's asymmetrical war against America and our strategy of Big Bang I. We're fighting proxy to proxy now, making clear, Bush hopes, to Tehran that this route of diversion or diversification will fail.

The turning of the tide here, ideologically, is expressed by Rubin, with whom I think I've been on Kudlow: the notion of creating an anti-Iranian backlash among the Arab world. Or, to put it more crudely, we get our usual Sunni friends (that's why we liked Saddam way back when) to help us contain the perceived Shiite threat led by Iran.

If all this goes fast enough, Bush's bold second Bang could bring some real promise, but as we've seen with Iraq, good outcomes typically require significant wading through a lot of bad stuff first, meaning a lot of old bad blood has to be bled before fatigue pushes the unreasonable types into something more reasonable. In the Balkans, we let that blood-letting proceed apace before we intervened. In Iraq, we intervened first and now are forced to babysit that nasty but somewhat inevitable process of sectarian violence.

There is little hope, I would argue, that Hezbollah can be driven from Lebanon, so the real danger of this strategy is that you simply bog down Israel (once again) in bloody sectarian strife in Lebanon, Syria is destabilized but not enough that Assad can't survive by simply imitating his brutal dad, and all this tumult really--in the end--gives Iran what it wants: time and blood being shed elsewhere, plus now both the Israelis and the Americans are effectively tied-down elsewhere.

Yes, even with the tie-down America and Israel can bomb the hell out of Iran, and they together may well be building that case in their minds. But they are unlikely to find any major allies will agree with that additional plotline, as evidenced by the ongoing G8 meeting.

In that unfortunate pathway, then, we may well pull the air trigger on Iran, getting us nothing militarily but simultaneously locking us into what I warned in the Esquire piece where I first broached the rapprochement/soft kill option with Iran: we've just created a Yalta-like divide in the Middle East, with the West keeping the Sunnis and the East keeping the Shiites and Osama has his renewed split of the Core and the House of Saud becomes the crucial swing vote--and potentially crucial battleground--in what comes next.

As Robert Malley (Dir of International Crisis Group's Middle East program) points out in the Wright piece: "Here you have actors [Syria, Iran] who are basically pariahs who are trying to find their way back in. They're doing it the way they know best--brinkmanship. They want to change the rules of the game."

The real problem for Syria and Iran, both of whom I really do believe want back in (despite the hype on Iran as non-status-quo power, the attraction of its Shiite revolution has proven zero historically, and we routinely underestimate the depth of the economic stress in that country, relieved now only by the oil revenue), is that they are dealing with a very revolutionary-minded American administration right now, one that gleefully seeks to rewrite rules on global security--and shows no sign of stopping.

Picture of GHWB at Houston airport. I am just passing thru to the O.C., where I brief the Army Science Board tonight at their annual awards dinner. Brief is being taped by docu film, "Iraq Beyond the Headlines." I also sit for filmed interview with filmmaker Dan Hare once I hit ground in Newport Beach.

Then, unfortunately, the red-eye to BWI to speak at leadership conference at U.S. Naval Academy with Steve on Connectivity-in-a-Box.

Played first round of golf with son Kev last night on local beginners course (all par 3). Kev shot 91 on front nine and I shot 58. We even shot realistically for par a couple of times. Kev passed on back nine in 95 degree high humidity heat. I shot 24 on 4 holes before lightning drove us off 14th tee. Fun to play with my Dad's clubs. Kev is already asking when we can go again!

Facing quandary on possible quick Disney jaunt with kids and wife in fall school break: spend time with them or return to Pop!Tech. What to do?

Mark Warren hates Connectivity-in-a-Box. He says that whenever he mentions Development-in-a-Box, people say, "What's that? Tell me about that!"

CiB, he says, comes off as soft-peddling to reduce critical resistance, a wuss-out ploy I never seem to indulge in, and certainly NOT how I got to where I am today.

Steve DeAngelis is looking smarter on this proposal. He opposed it. Now I am feeling chastened--and wussy.

Five paper PNMs in one airport store and 2 hard BFAs in another.

Between such random signings and the organized ones (once signed 400 for a bank's annual dinner gala), I estimate I've signed roughly 5k volumes between PNM hard, PNM paper and BFA hard.

The reason why I woke up one morning and started contemplating Connectivity-in-a-Box over Development-in-a-Box is because Steve and I are getting a lot of handler advice on taking the concept to the higher levels of public/government/corporate awareness, and, quite naturally, a lot of that advice is coming from the world of official developmental aid (aka, the foreign aid crowd). Even more naturally, the bureaucratic tendency of such advice is to offer all sorts of softening and inclusive language, designed to make everyone feel part of the solution and dampen any implied insult by DiB's enunciation--as in, the vast majority of foreign aid is broken and wasted, so let's fix it!

Frankly, when I read the material softened in this way, a creepy feeling wells up in my gut. Do enough of this to "gain acceptance" by the establishment and pretty soon you have something that's so inoffensive and so vacuous and so marginal that any "victory" in gaining said acceptance is basically worthless.

Why? By making the concept more acceptable and less threatening you've basically given all the established players enough coverage of their equities (preferred way of doing business) that you've opened the door for them to say, "we already essentially do that" or "we've got that capability already in house" (typically in some lesser-included formulation where it is assumed that existing capabilities and procedures can handle the scenario/goal you raise) and you close the door on any substantive change.

Strategic concepts need to be bold, clarifying calls to action. How they get translated to projects and products is another matter. Strategic visioneering isn't about the means, but the ends. Development-in-a-Box is insanely ambitious by past standards, but why speak to that past? Why not speak boldly and clearly to the future worth creating? Why not appeal to the next generation instead of the powers that be--right now.

Frankly, I like the image of "young man, narrowly read" (the title of my favorite Amazon review where I got 4 stars for my ideas but a stern dressing down for not spending more time cross-referencing the ideas of other authors, instead relying so heavily on newspaper articles--the shame!), because the vast majority of what gets published in my universe of national and international security is such hide-bound pablum that I can't even finish the summary op-ed, much less the weighty tome standing behind it. I read that "widely," I'd never say anything original. Indeed, this is why I read almost exclusively outside my field.

And I like the results, and judging by the speaking fees, so do other people, both inside and outside the system.

When I spoke at the DC chapter of the Society for International Development about DiB, almost every speaker after me made a point of disclaiming its viability, to the approving nods of grey beards throughout the audience.

And yet I signed a slew of programs for all these twentysomethings who rushed me after my presentation (even having my picture taken with several).

So which side do you appeal to as grand strategist in a Long War? Why, it's obvious. You go with the Long Tail in the Long War--i.e., not where the power is concentrated or bunched up now You wage your struggle as outsider to the system.

And frankly, I've found much more success as the outsider than the insider, and I've found that success in both the outside (DiB is an easy sell outside of the DC/gov world) and on the inside (DiB seems to get Steve and I the partners we really need).

It's not hubris to be so audacious, so long as you run with those who get it and don't bog yourself (or your enunciation) with those who want to nibble you to death or those who will--quite frankly--never get it

Make your breakthroughs and exploit the chaos.

In the end, there will never be one Development-in-a-Box thing or product or contract or project. There will be a host of things and products and projects and contracts that explore the dynamics and mechanisms and procedures and goals implied.

So why not keep the main strategic concept bold? Audacious? Breathtaking? Even confrontational and slightly insulting?

If you're in the business of creating and promoting new rules, why not be all those things?

In the end, Connectivity-in-a-Box just isn't far enough out there. It's basically already here in cellphones (he types, blogging away from his Treo, now using his Mac basically only for PPT) and WiFi. I say, let's piss people off. Let's challenge them to dream of that future worth creating. The stronger the resistance, the better the conversation--and the better our enunciation becomes.

I wrote in BFA that the grand strategist wants to be exactly at that point where people say, "I like your logic, but it'll never happen." You want people right on the edge of plausibility. That's where you want to be operating.

DiB keeps us on that edge, whereas CiB does not.

So here endeth the rebranding proposal.

OP-ED: Democracy's Long Haul: Looking back on the liberty to come [subscription required], by David Brooks, New York Times, 13 July 2006, p. A23.

It was odd to read Friedman in the "World is Flat" act so surprised when Michael Sandel (one of my favs at Harvard and a great guy to boot) basically told him that his "flat world" concept was simply Marx updated or Marxism on steroids. You just wanted to go "Duh!"

Then again, Friedman rehashing Marx in his book would get awfully dull awfully fast, so there you have it.

Now we get David Brooks, whom I generally like even more because he's not so cut-and-runnish on Bush in general, who just last week declared Big Bang dead after just three years but now takes the long view on backsliding among the class of Huntington's "third wave of democratizaton" (Sam's best book by far, IMO).

Resurrecting the revolutions of 1848 (Marx's favorite intellectual stomping ground), he notes that many of those new dems slide back into authoritarianism, only to see these same states turn quite innovative, democracy-wise, a bit further down the road. So, taking a cue from both Russia and Iraq of today, he sees basically four stages of democratization, followed by chaos, followed by authoritarians restored, followed (hopefully, like the class of 1848) by gradual reform.

To me, this makes perfect sense: a rapid expansion of the Core is likely to unfold in this manner, hence a certain patience is in order and it's better to stress growing connectivity in the short term instead of rapid democratization--especially in Friedman's hypercompetitive flat world. Such conservatism in politics is an acceptable form of protectionism in the face of globalization's rapid embrace of your society It's the defensible social "tariff."

ARTICLE: Selling 'Japan-ness': Japanese Retailers Try Trendier, Cheaper Approach As They Expand Into U.S. [subscription required]," by Amy Chozick, Wall Street Journal, 14 July 2006, p. A9.

Basic fashion world article, but one that highlights Japan's growing content clout in globalization. No one calls them "cultural imperialists," and yet their impact is no different from ours: the selling of the cool and new that crowds out any locality's old and traditional--if given the chance:

"People don't just think of shrines and temples when they think of Japan now, " says Nobuo Domae, chief executive officer of Uniqlo USA. "This is the perfect time to take advantage of our Japan-ness."

And in a Left Brain world, that's pretty cool.

BOOK REVIEW: Goliath's Burden: Josef Joffe argues America's power is crucial to global security [free registration required], by Roger Cohen, New York Times Book Review, 16 July 2006, p. 13.

But Joffe loses me with his preferred East-West divide between a Belgrade-Baghdad-Beijing Belt and a Berlin-Berkeley Belt (now that's Friedman envy of the worst sort!).

Europe keeps expecting America to "come home" and it just ain't gonna happen. We're living in the vast rule-set reset that is globalization's advance around the planet. Europe and Japan, the classic West other than America, wants largely to sit this process out, instead arguing over cheese standards and ag subsidies and UN Security Council resolutions.

That is not how the Long War will be waged, much less won. Frankly, nobody's putting either Berkeley or Berlin in charge of anything. In those soft, protected enclaves, all is protected and connected. There are no incentives to wage this fight, to build those markets, to extend that connectivity.

Again, our main allies in this Long War/shrink-the-Gap effort will be New Core, not Old Core.

Joffe, as smart as he is, has outlived his era.

ARTICLE: Bridging the Digital Divide: In war-torn Congo, cellphones are radically changing the way people live, by Kevin Sullivan, Washington Post (national weekly edition), 17-23 July 2006, p. 10.

Until not long ago, if Zadhe Iyombe wanted to talk to his mother, he had to make the eight-day boat trip up the Congo River to the jungle town where he was raised. In a country with almost no roads, mail or telephone system and a grisly guerrilla war raging, making that exhausting and dangerous trip was about the only way he could find out if his 59-year-old mother was still alive.

Then he got a cellphone.

Now he talks to his mother every day.

Cellphones are revolutionizing commerce and medical treatment and advertising and agriculture and just about anything you care to name in Africa, simply by connecting people to people and people to information and sellers to buyers.

The article says there are now 2.4 billion cellphone users in the world. Experts used to say that half the world's population had never used a phone. But with the majority of the world's cellphone users (59%) being found in the developing world, cellphones become the first technology in history to have more users among developing states than developed ones.

And this usage trajectory is steepest in Africa. 63 million users two years ago, but 152 million today. Congo is ground zero for this connectivity make-over: 3.2 million cellphones to only 20,000 conventional landlines.

And so the global cellphone companies come --and invest.

This is connectivity-in-a-box, pure and simple. Harnessing that rapidly to a postwar or postdisaster situation? That's Development-in-a-Box.

And guess what? Steve DeAngelis and I don't need to sell that vision to the aid bureaucrats in DC. We really need to sell it to the corporations who can make money in the interventionary aftermarket.

Cellphones are such a great commerce steroid:

Conveniences such as laptops, Internet access, ATMs and credit cards are rare or nonexistent in Congo, so entrepreneurs are devising ways to use cellphones to serve the same functions.

That can be Development-in-a-Box, meaning one crucial component. Not a big aid program, but something where the Pentagon hard-wires the private-sector effort right into its campaign plan, so that it's ready--bingo!--right from day one, demonstrating the immediate empowerment that makes individual-led economic recovery/development possible.

Great article that many readers sent me last week. As will be my custom, now, given my heavy sked, I wait until the piece shows up in my national weekly edition that I get in the mail.

For now I get the WSJ every morn, the NYT every day in the mail (usually 2 days late) and the WP in the weekly edition. Yes, I could spend all day online, but I like my busy life and my kids too much for that sort of lifestyle.

The Duke at the OC Airport.

Not tonight. Bad weather strands me for the night as I miss the last connection to BWI. Free night at cheap hotel sees me cruising the Strip at 1am in a cab. Unexpected weirdness. My bad luck with airlines continues. Tough summer for biz travel.

Mark has a nice post where he picks up Tom's deliberations about Development-in-a-Box v. Connectivity-in-a-Box. As he so often does, Mark zooms out and offers some helpful meta-analyisis. One excerpt:

The difference between the two concepts comes down to ends and means.

While it is true that "development" is actually a process, "Development in a Box" is a phrase that screams "Outcome!". In contrast, "connectivity" has a range of possile understandings that can indicate only the potential for future exchanges or mass migration or ongoing flows of economic and military might. Therefore, what "Connectivity" yells is "Change!".

DATELINE: DC, 21 July 2006

Spent yesterday getting from Nevada to Baltimore. A real disaster to complete a disastrous week. Suffice it to say it's 2330 when I'm sipping a martini with Steve in DC.

Spent the time writing.

Looks like I'll have short piece in October Esquire on the Middle East, but--as always--it will look ahead more than behind. Talking now about something for the end of the year as well. Good to feel, since it was getting to be a while since my last appearance (March).

Today is easy day. Quick trip to Langley to visit the National Intelligence Council. I have an old friend there who's now the vice chair. Want him to meet Steve given Enterra's growing profile in the Intell Community.

This weekend is the Enterra summer party at Steve's. With my phone screwing up, I will be effectively out of pocket.

DATELINE: Yardley PA, 22 July 2006

I had this discussion with Gingrich in Alabama earlier this year: he's pushing the Civil War metaphor, declaring 2006 to be the equivalent of 1862, and I'm pushing the far longer concept (I'm a big believer of Abizaid's Long War concept) of the settling of the Wild West.

Now, Gingrich, among others, are reviving the talk of WWIII that a lot of excited pundits were tossing about right after 9/11.

I consider this approach to be as wrongheaded as the End Times thinking: it's a form of escapism that turns the definition of war on its head.

First off, the world has never been more at peace. This is a not a claim or a vision. It's just the way it is, statistically speaking.

Second, World Wars were wars between states. We have none of those here. No State A on State B. The "war" that revives all this talk is Israel going into Lebanon against non-state actor Hezbollah. Wasn't a state-on-state war when Israel did the same to the PLO in 1982. Isn't a state-on-state war today.

Third, the road to victory in the Long War, as the new Counter-insurgency (COIN) doctrine argues, is overwhelmingly non-kinetic. A "war," however "global" in its day-to-day expression (I have freckles all over my body, but it doesn't make me a black man), that is both won or lost on the question of non-kinetics (the ultimate exit strategy in the Middle East is called JOBS!) ain't exactly a rerun of either of those two bloodbaths.

Fourth, the scale here is all wrong. Not just the tiny percentages of combatants, but the tiny amounts of death. This whole "world war" since 9/11 hasn't yielded a good week's worth of WWII dead.

Fifth, this view indulges in the myth that what Israel does against 4GW opponents actually works, when it does not. Masada-on-steroids isn't the answer. We, the Core, don't have to shoot ourselves out of this situation. Time is on our side, as all all the major dynamics that count (energy, investments, demographics, sheer firepower, enduring ingenuity, strength of our societies, our enduring resilience--none of which favor the other side). The Brits in Northern Ireland or the U.S. cavalry in the Wild West are our models. Stick to the Long War. Don't give in to quick fixes or Armageddon-like fantasies. WWIII is just the End Timers with a patina of strategic analysis, but shit on a stick still tastes bad.

But worst of all, the WWIII talk obscures the solution set, which is not destruction but construction, not disconnectedness but connectedness, not take down nets but put them up. When you call everything a war, you come up with more "war" answers, and those inevitably involve firepower.

Firepower won't get us the win here, plain and simple. WWIII is not realism, it's romanticism. It's starry-eyed, not clear-eyed. It looks for what is easy, instead of what is right.

Resist the temptation. Make your own history. Stop living in the past and embrace a future worth creating.

... that the WWIII is the wrong metaphor thread is up to 14 comments? Check 'em out and weigh in yourself!

ARTICLE: "You Won't Read It Here First: India Curtails Access to Blogs," by Somini Sengupta, New York Times, 19 July 2006, p. A6.

ARTICLE: "Putin Favorite Re-emerging In Ukraine: 2005 Election Loser Gathers Support," by Judy Dempsey, New York Times, 19 July 2006, p. A6.

A lot of internal chaos, a huge amount of external criticism for not letting Russia itself splinter like the rest of the empire (Chechnya, as ugly as it gets), not much help or entry into the corridors of power (sort of in NATO, sort of in G-8, not yet in WTO), and most of its former holdings gobbled up as quickly as possible by the West.

And so we wonder why the counter-reaction is so strong.

Me? I wonder why it remains so weak.

Russia right now is just recapturing the standard of living it once enjoyed, back before the Wall came down.

I wrote a piece for the Center for Naval Analyses back in 1993, called "Tracking Russian Foreign Policy Into the 21st Century: A Bear-Watcher's Guide." In the briefing version of the text, I end with a slide that shows an interpretive line graph suggesting that Russia's "political-economic path" was going off a cliff in the early 1990s, that it would trough painfully in the mid-1990s, and that, in the "best case," it would return to roughly where it left off in late 1980s by 2007 (I have no idea why I picked that date, I just did).

When I published the piece, I caught a lot of crap for that slide, and the notion that Russia's recovery would be so swift (I titled the slide, "Out on a Very Long Limb"!). My worst case was "Russia on the Eurasian Periphery," but my mixed one was "Russian as the Eurasian Bridge" and my best one was "Russia as the Eurasian Hub." Clearly, today Russia sits somewhere between the mixed case ("normal great power") and the best one (there I had the West integrating Russia as the "Fourth Pillar" in a northern hemispheric security zone centered on North America, united Europe, Russia and Co. and a rising East Asia).

Is Russia all that we hoped it might be? No way.

But is it any of the fears we really harbored ("resurgent Russia" was the excuse for the "reconstitution" pillar of U.S. national security planning over the first half of the 1990s)? No again.

All in all, Russia's been almost no trouble for us since the end of the Cold War. Yes, it went bankrupt in 1997. That was contained.

Yes, it's been a prickly partner on a host of issues, but it's never really taken us on anywhere, and hasn't stopped us from doing anything we really want in the Middle East, except repeat the Iraq bit with Iran (which, quite frankly, none of our allies want to see).

And yet, with all that compliance or acquiescence, Russia has little to show for giving up the Cold War, its huge military, and its empire.

So Moscow does what it knows how to do, historically speaking. It seeks to create controllable buffers between itself and the scary world outside--especially to the south.

It will largely fail in these efforts, especially over a long term that's probably not nearly as long as we assume (it gets easier to see "beyond the foreseeable future" with each passing year).

Will we seek to integrate it more in the meantime? I hope so.

India's path has been so much smoother from outsider to insider, and yet it's really no closer to the Western-dominated hall of global power than Russia is. Instead, it's kept almost like an American pet, or long-term hedge against rising China.

India's got its buffers and it border woes, just like Russia. No one has lost more "empire" in terms of bodies than India has over the past half century. And no one has sought more connectivity with globalization than India has in the past decade and a half.

But India wants its buffers too, and in fear after the Mumbai bombings, the government will do some stupid things with blogs. New Dehli just wants more control over the situation right now, because it has a poor sense of where things are taking India in the months and years ahead. The rule set seems so unclear. Is India in or out? Can it be "lost"? Is it a front line no one in the West really cares about?

Tumultuous times indeed, but hardly as scary as made out to be. These are all problems of rapid but uneven integration: economics racing ahead of politics, technology racing ahead of security. These are good problems (I mean, it sure as hell beats economics and technology falling behind of politics and security, or the great, unfulfilled Orwellian fantasies we've long entertained for our world), ones that can be solved by better definitions of resiliency and rules that help a Moscow and a New Dehli see their real strengths, so they don't feel the need to reach out and try to control the uncontrollable in such petty fashion.

Plenty of people look at the world today and see only decline and violence and chaos since 9/11. I am amazed at how little the Functioning Core of globalization has suffered since that date: no real violence or threats of same amidst our ranks, slow but steady political integration that's still not keeping up with the economic bonds that are booming, spotty but emerging sense of shared security values, and the usual pin-pricks of harm inflicted by terror and God, but all in all, nothing really bad despite all this "tumult" centered in the Middle East and the rising price of oil.

These are all globalization's growing pains, and despite the lack of strategic imagination of our current White House, we're handling them quite nicely.

I know. I can't sell any newspapers or any air time with that message. That's okay.

ARTICLE: "Four Nations Face Barriers as They Seek Bids to Join NATO," by Nicholas Wood, New York Times, 19 July 2006, p. A11.

The Americans are acccused, quite naturally, of pushing the enlargement issue for the sake of their own agenda.

Damn straight. We'd like to not have to go back to the Balkans for genocide-cessation duty.

EDITORIAL: "The Taepodong Democrats: Missile-defense politics in the age of Kim Jong Il," Wall Street Journal, 21 July 2006, p. A14.

Now, don't get me wrong. No one in their right mind is against TBMD, or theater ballistic missile defense, or the sort of Patriot stuff that sort of works. That, I would spend bucks on.

I'm talking the dreamy strategic stuff that's somehow supposed to keep Kim in the box, or solve our troubled relationship with Iran. How strategic missile defense stops Iran from sending in Hezbollah against Israel is beyond me, but such is the state of the logic here.

Here's my favorite line: "Neither logic nor deterrence are the first words that come to mind when we think of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad."

Oh really!

I'd say the man is quite logically deterring our attack right now in Lebanon.

This is a sad sort of nonsense from the WSJ. Journalists as strategists--gets you in trouble almost every time.

COLUMN: "Count Ethnic Divisions, Not Bombs, to Tell if a Nation Will Recover From War: "Long term, a squiggly border indicates less strife than a neatly drawn line," by Austan Goolsbee, New York Times, 20 July 2006, p. C3.

For months now, in my brief, I've been ad-libbing this bit about fake states, noting how America is all squiggly lined on the right and straight-lined on the left, and comparing that to how Europe is all squiggly, but it left behind a post-colonial Middle East and Africa full of straight lines.

This observation dovetails with my usual argument on the Balkans' break-up as real success and the assumption that Iraq must remain whole as naive, and it goes nicely with a long-term argument I've nursed in the brief that says that fake states will naturally trough-out in disintegration in response to globalization's disruptive integration and eventually the process of breaking up fake states will segue into the integration of newer, smaller, real ones (like that article on the Balkan states all wanting into the EU and NATO).

How long does such a process take? Well, it took the latter half of the 19th century for the United States (Civil War, settling of the West), and it took almost the entire 20th century for Europe (WWI, WWII, Cold War, now the EU), so yeah, it's gonna take a while in the Middle East and African portions of the Gap.

So I've been saying lately that our task in shrinking the Gap is mostly about managing the devolution of straight-line fake states into squiggly-line real ones. That devolution is likely to turn violent most of the time, so our task is managing that violence and pushing the situation as quickly as possible toward integration, reconstructuion, connectivity, and economic development (hence, Steve DeAngelis and I reach for Development-in-a-Box, quite naturally, as the next tool in the toolkit).

I've been thinking for a while that I just need some patina of academic research and I've got a new sequence of slides here, and voila! Easterly and Company come along with this great bit of work that says there are two key predictors for resiliency after civil strife: the more squiggly the lines the better, and the corollary (saying the same thing) that, the more ethnic groups are divided politically, the more security troubles you have and thus the less likely development will occur.

Great stuff.

Tom's commentary on the situation in Lebanon has been so popular, I'm only going to feature it in this post

+ Weblogs that linked to A sense of the wider conflict emerges:

• The Glittering Eye calling it 'tremendous' and 'a must read'
  
  
• Pajamas Media
  
  
• Fester's Place
  
  
• Matthew Gross, who leads me to...
  
  
• Kevin Drum of the Washington Monthly who writes 'Barnett is almost certainly too optimistic about what we could accomplish with Iran -- and far too cavalier about nuclear proliferation -- but this still seems mostly correct to me.' Oh, well: one outta' three ain't bad ;-)

+ Weblogs that linked to Iran launches a pre-emptive war...

• Atlantic Rift
  
  
• New Yorker in DC (whom we've sometimes seen around these parts)
  
  
• History's End

Let me know if I missed any...

OP-ED: "Bush's Unintended Internationalism," by Jim Hoagland, Washington Post (national weekly edition), 17-23 July 2006, p. 5

The global reaction to that new set of rules comes in a variety of manners, usually lumped under the rubric of diplomacy, since nobody out there seeks to balance the U.S. directly on security matters.

But there's another, more discrete reaction, one not unlike the usual domestic response to such dramatic shifts (seen most clearly in U.S. Supreme Court rulings like the recent one on tribunals). In effect, it's the rest of the Core generating its own version of an A-to-Z rule set on contextualizing the use of American military power:

In spite of itself, the Bush administration is reshaping and revitalizing international law as a governing concept and a force in world politics. This White House gives new meaning to the notion of unintended and devoutly unwanted consequences.

Its highhanded policies in the war on global terrorist networks and the occupation of Iraq have provoked sharp reaction at home and abroad. Over time, this reaction has turned into a search by others for legal and political frameworks to contain President Bush's campaign to concentrate national security power in his hands and shield it from even cursory scrutiny and consultation.

Good example of where we fail is provided by Hoagland here: the Bush Administration's refusal to work out some SOFA or Status of Forces Agreement with the new Iraqi government. This is a basic attribute of state sovereignty that forces our troops toward some nominal Iraqi control, as Hoagland points out.

All these efforts are the collective equivalent of my A-to-Z rule set on processing politically bankrupt states. Hoagland captures this well when he writes:

A new framework for international law is being developed in reaction to Bush's global policies--without other significant American input. That is the message from America's allies, from Congress and now from the Supreme Court that the president should finally heed.As I often write, it is one thing to propose and demonstrate a new rule, something Bush does well, and another thing to achieve its acceptance beyond your immediate circle. A first Bush administration was great at the former, but a second Bush administration was doomed on the latter.

Hans Suter emailed the following to Tom with a link to Ethan Zuckerman's Is Israel a problem for the Democratic Republic of Congo?

Dear Tom, the mental image of core and gap in the largest number possible of people is easily one of the most important items in the political process of the core.

Nathan Zuckerman has an excellent post on this. To wet your appetite here an extract:With forty times the violent death toll, you’d expect to hear a bit more about conflicts in central Africa - instead, Congo, Uganda and Sudan rank #1, #2, and #3 on Alertnet’s list of “forgotten emergencies.” Through hard work and advocacy by activists and journalists, many Americans have some awareness of the conflict in Darfur. But the deteriorating peace process in Sudan gets lots less attention than the details of the current Israeli incursion in Lebanon.

The other two conflicts almost never make the news, even when major developments occur. DR Congo will have elections on July 30th, a chance for the first democratically elected government in that unhappy nation since the US helped overthrow Patrice Lumumba and install Africa’s greatest kleptocrat, Mobutu Sese Seko. The elections are difficult, fraught with infrastructure issues, political tensions, flares of violence and accusations of fraud. But they’ve merited 6,180 stories for “congo” on Google News over the past month, while “lebanon” yields 96,100 and “israel” yields 136,000.

There are lots of reasons why conflicts in the Middle East garner so much attention. Some are newsgathering factors - news happens where there are reporters to cover it. While many US newspapers are cutting overseas bureaus, most have maintained a major presence in the middle east, often in Baghdad and Jerusalem. And most don’t have bureaus in Kinshasa, Kisengani, or even Nairobi. Newspapers have finite staff resources, and the conflict in Lebanon is demanding the attention from those reporters, as Joe Strupp reports in a story for Editor and Publisher:

The most important measure of connectivity is caring. Israel is hugely connected, so when it acts, we care, because we can see it. Congo is amazingly unconnected, so when far larger numbers die there under the same levels of injustice or insanity or whatever, no one cares. In the end, right or wrong has nothing to do with it. It's where you can get the reporters to cover and the cameramen to film.

ARTICLE: "Multinationals 2.0," by James M. Pethokoukis, U.S. News & World Report, July 31, 2006 [page TBD].

You remember the article from IBM's CEO. I blogged it and so did Steve. The U.S. News & World Report journalist, who now reads both our blogs, contacted Steve for an interview, yielding the great paragraph here. Of course, you're always reduced to a single sentiment, but Steve's basic idea here is both sound and great to be identified with--including the follow-on Bono reference!

In his satirical new book Rome, Inc.: The Rise and Fall of the First Multinational Corporation, Stanley Bing humorously makes the case that the proto-capitalistic Imperium Romanum--with its bold takeovers, power-mad CEOs, and compelling brand--was the beta version of the globe-spanning Microsofts, General Electrics, and IBMs of today. Or perhaps more accurately, the Enrons and WorldComs of yesterday. While Rome Inc. had a great multicentury run, eventually it went out of business. One wonders if the feckless Emperor Honorius, watching the Visigoths coming over the seventh hill in A.D. 410, truly realized that the Roman Empire was about to fall.

Granted, IBM CEO Samuel Palmisano doesn't have to contend with Visigoths, Vandals, and other pesky barbarians. But like any modern CEO, he does have to deal with flash mob protests by antiglobalization advocates, company-bashing websites, protectionist legislation, and a high-velocity, Internet-connected world where the burgeoning Chinese and Indian economies spawn both profitable market opportunities and lethal competitors.

Here's the even bigger vision: As more and more countries--particularly the developing ones in Africa, Latin America, and the Middle East--become more interconnected and dependent, it will result in a safer, more orderly world. "The business world has this enlightened self-interest in integration," says Steve DeAngelis, CEO of Enterra Solutions, a software solutions company that helps global companies integrate far-flung operations. "Look at China and the United States. Look at all the economic bridges we are building. Each one we build is a step away from military conflict." So while multinationals have traditionally been stereotyped as corporate villains--for polluting the environment or attempting to overthrow unfriendly Third World governments--the new organization would supposedly make the planet a better place.

Yet given all this Bono-friendly talk about corporate responsibility and global economic development...

Tom got an email from RP linking a transcript of a chat session with Thomas Ricks, author of the new book FIASCO: The American Military Adventure in Iraq. RP quoted Ricks:

One senior officer in Iraq told me earlier this year that about one-third of his subordinate officers "get it," one- third are trying but not really getting it, and one-third just want to kick a little butt. That means your force is probably less than half effective, and part of it is counterproductive.

The percentages strike me as very accurate and somewhat inescapable, given the current force.

But made sufficiently coalitional, the SysAdmin force can be easily built out an American "coalition of the willing/made able."

DATELINE: Boscobel WI, 25 July 2006

Noticed the nice article on the subject this morn in WSJ. Clipped it while watching end of Vol. 5 of the Beatles Anthology (worked out during first 50 mins), and had planned to blog it from home.

But then I got caught up in Enterra end-of-month paperwork and finishing my column (something along the lines of "Resetting the Rules on the Long War").

The WSJ piece is a good summary. Other rounds (Tokyo, Uruguay) full of "collapses" and both went closer to a decade than the planned period of just a few years, so no big surprises on this one.

Why fail?

The Doha Round was the promised give from the Old Core on ag subs in exchange for reducing tariffs on industrial goods in New Core and Gap. Gap basically ready, New Core (India and China especially) less so, and Old Core very stubborn (will no one rid us of this man, Chirac?). Only US mistake? Waiting on the compromise from the Euros. We should have just made our deal and left them out to dry. But I guess we need them in the Middle East more now, so...

Gist of article, then, is that this goal was too ambitious and offered too quickly in aftermath of 9/11. Too bad if true, because the instinct was right. As I always say on 9/11: it had nothing to do with U.S. Rather, like all feedback, it was about the giver, not the target. The right instinct was to say to Gap, "I feel your pain" and then do a bunch of things about it (imagine Bob Rubin still as SECTREAS!). This was a good stab at that, and a rare one from the Bush crowd. It was the right thing to do, if only to isolate the French on this issue. That dam will break soon enough, as Chirac leaves.

But to me, real reason why Doha expectedly slow: global economy doing very well right now, despite the heightened oil prices (which reflect the growth, actually, of the New Core). When global economy hums, it's usually bilats that flow, not regional deals nor multilats, much less global deals. People cut deals when they're desperate, and no one is really desperate right now.

Damn that humming global economy!

Amazing, isn't it? Never more at peace globally than today, and never has the global economy hummed so nicely in a comprehensive manner as right now (global growth very even at 5% in sum).

And yet, all because of Israel into Lebanon it's WWIII and the End Times and "chaos" the world over, according to the editorial boards of the majors.

Good God! As a professional in the biz of watching the world, I find all this pretty decent: Big Bang still getting some play (I mean, at least stuff is moving in the region.) Iraq settling into the reality of a break-up to go with its breakdown. Global economy booming and we're moving closer or no farther away from the key New Core pillars (India, China, Russia, Brazil). I mean, as someone who worries about system-level conflict primarily and accepts the notion that globalization will trigger integrating wars and disintegrating civil strife in its expansionary path, I don't see that much wrong with the world right now.

That's not me offering ass-covering 20/20 on the Big Bang: I always expected it to play out nasty and long. That was never the question. Question was whether we'd start the process with enough force (done) and stick with it (hmmm, depending on how you like George's Big Bang II with Israel providing firepower). But moving this Big Bang is, that much is certain. You may not like the direction, nor the actions triggered, but move it does.

Does it beat the alternative? Almost anything beats the continued stagnation of political-economic evolution in the region.

So, add it all up, and it's a decent world given the continuing tumults caused inside the Gap with globalization's rapid expansion of late. Put in that light, a few extra years on Doha is no big deal.

Would have been weird if it had gone fast.

Geez! Realized I've never done it before and thus have no idea how to spell!

Fifth row off third base with Kevin at Miller Park in Milwaukee against Pirates.

Fear not. Last night late on Mom's PC in Boscobel and whole drive here (3 hrs) on phone.

But yeah, it feels good on a Wednesday afternoon!

Only problem? Intense sun and fouls drives!

Statue of Henry on way in

Saw 754 (walk off in 11th) and last time in field (LF, one put out) at County Stadium with Dad back in mid-70s.

Nephew Mike has run his last convoy op and sits behind the wire until shipped home with his WI Nat Guard unit in mid-August.

News today had spooked us a bit, as replacement WI unit had taken 2 hurt and 1 dead in first convoy op, leading father of dead soldier to complain about short training (Mike got about half of what he was promised), so this is nice news.

Mike was on pace to log 60k of convoy op miles, so we thank the Lord for his life and we thank Mike for his service...

The China hawk crowd loves to push the notiont that Iraq is a one-off, that the Middle East is a blip, and that the Long War can be outsourced completely to Special Operations Command.

None of that is looking so good right now in Southwest Asia.

Of course, back in 1982 (a great summer for me, as I met my wife that summer) we had much the same tumult with Israel invading Lebanon to evict the PLO that time, and Iran and Iraq both seething with violence--just directed against one another. None of this was considered "World War III" or the "end times" by anyone other than Jack Van Impe on his late-night cable show (boy, does he have some competition nowadays!). America was too busy enduring the first Reagan term recession.

Like in 1982, a lot of brave talk about an international peacekeeping presence. Back then the U.S. went into Lebanon basically on its own, leading to Reagan's darkest day: the Beirut Marine barracks bombing in 1983. We pulled out then, declaring it a one-off and vowing not to return.

That was two wars and one counter-insurgency ago.

And it's that sort of understanding and frustration with history that pushes this administration to go farther and deeper than any previous one in trying to shake things up.

Recently there was a WSJ story (sorry, summer, and my citation skills are slipping) about how the Old Core was debating who should go into Lebanon and how many troops should be involved. A Euro diplomat said something to the effect, "There is no set formula here," insinuating that anyone who proposed such a thing must be some doctrinaire nimrod.

But ask yourself: why aren't there any formulas for this? Everyone is talking about the need to regularize such efforts, and yet, whenever such an opportunity arises, the same people act like having anything close to doctrine would be constricting.

Yes, yes, keep your options open. That's a great way to explain your inaction, your muddled responses, and the general inefficacy of the subsequent intervention and reconstruction program. Make it all sound so idiosyncratic to the culture and the region and the religion. Trot out the regional experts who can tell you 1,000 ways why nothing you try will succeed. Treat everything as a one-off.

I mean, why change a winning hand?

At Six Flags Great America with Kev, but pull over for quick phonecon with Dobbs producer.

Question: Bush says "death squads" and others say "civil war." Who is right?

My answer?

Both are, to extent. Enough sectarian violence to describe as low-grade civil war. Also clear death squads are tools for minorities on all sides with designs on score-settling, secession strategies, full-blown civil war goals with eye to reconquering whole, etc. Also clear vast majorities of all 3 sides on side lines, not sure which way to jump.

So use either term, I don't care. Just having the discussion moves us collectively toward more realism on squiggly-line outcomes (or transition eras) for pretend straight-line Iraq.

The faster we move toward realizing that Yugoslavia's break-up-leading-to-today's-integration-"race" was actually a great predictor of short-term-zero-sum-fights-leading-to-nonzero-sum-outcomes, the smarter we become on how we're going to turn lotsa straight lines into squiggly ones in the rest of the Gap.

In the end, the neocons were a necessary but strategically immature phase for America. Now the serious thinking begins on inescapable truths, ones that are a whole lot more inconvenient than global warming.

As my lingo may indicate, emailing now with Bob Wright, thanks to Banning Garrett intro. Trying to lure him to possible Resilicon 2006 mini-blogger conference that Steve is threatening to hold!

DeAngelis really should try sleeping some time. I get tired just listening to his sked and he's constantly dreaming up more inventive stuff, venues, deals, concepts.

I gotta get Dobbs and Esquire on his case--you know, slow him down a bit with celebrity!

Tom says of the comments on the post No, it's not the SysAdmin yet, but...:

Best comments on a post I've ever seen.

Thanks for the education.

(And while you're there, y'all regular readers answer Ian's question:

Dr B:

I'm one of the dim ones who still doesn't really understand the SysAdmin concept.

Is it fair to ask you to amplify how such a force would act in the Lebanon scenario, as a specific example?

Check out IAVA (Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans) Blog, especially the posts by commenter Ray Kimball. Check out his bio (about halfway down).

Many weblogs picked up Tom's WWIII is the wrong metaphor.

• Zenpundit in Recommended Reading. And Mark agrees, besides.
  
  
• Coming Anarchy
  
  
• Clinton Blog
  
  
• Hootsbuddy's Place
  
  
• Making a long story longer
  
  
• Valley Jew
  
  
• Outside the Beltway
  
  
• ka1ogm who writes 'Barnett's stuff is worth reading, regardless of your politics (which I often find difficult to agree with). He's an in depth futurist and his credentials carry a lot of weight.'
  
  
• Amendment Nine who writes:

  I took a little heat for a post of mine which criticised aspects of the Barnett hypothesis. All well and good, and from my view, enjoyable.

  
  

  But let me laud Dr. Barnett as well from time to time. There is a "better" side of him in my opinion, one which sometimes gets lost in the seemingly frenetic shuffle he makes day to day.

  
  

  This post of his is the better Barnett. Indeed, it is Barnett at his best.

Best definition of success: How your child describes you to a friend.

Think about that...

DATELINE: Boscobel WI, 28 July 2006

Got back late yesterday after "spending" the day at Six Flags with Kevin. I say "spending," because I managed to burn out my cellphone battery on Enterra business, plus the Lou Dobbs Show calls, which gives you a sense of why it's hard for me to figure out when to actually put in for vacation.

Ah well. Kevin was understanding (although the jokes about Dad "ignoring us and always talking on his damn cellphone" begin to sting after a while), and I did what any parent does in such situations: I bribed him with a Robin T-shirt and bobblehead doll.

My allergies are killing me right now. Took all I could muster to do this 15-minute over-the-phone with Voice of America on the question of the emerging "anti-Chinese axis" of America, India and Japan (oh yeah, I really see that one working!).

Naturally, I was brought on for my usual counter-intuitive take on the subject (sad to say, I appear to be the only strategic thinker of note who considers this axis complete bullshit doomed to fail in its intent, but there you have the state of my field right now--more divorced from economic reality than ever).

Kinda neat to do the interview using my Dad's old office phone and sitting in his Lazyboy, looking out the window to the Koeinig house and my Grandpa's old place (two lawns I mowed for years). Very nostalgic.

Dad would have liked it.

Jones Lake to Blue River to Wisconsin River to Boscobel...

Looking for the Blue off Jones Lake...

Water low

Never found the Blue, just the indirect connection to Wisconsin.

Water very low. Just too much portaging to get to the Blue.

Digging around in our referrers this this morning I discovered:

+ Terry Collier, who sent Tom an article back here (just to show off my research skills), is responsible for 1.14% of referrals to our website.

+ Next is ZenPundit at .11%

+ Third is Sun Bin at .07%.

And those are quality referrals, too! Thanks, guys! ;-)

+ Tom's post On China: Pillsbury well read, but Zoellick well versed is the fourth result in a Google search for Michael Pillsbury. And who could forget Pillsbury, the Panda-slugging China hawk?

+ Tom's post WWIII is the wrong metaphor is the 27th result in a Google search for wwiii

+ And it only makes sense that the pride of Boscobel has the third and fourth results when you search Google for Boscobel Dial.

No need to thank me for this valuable information! ;-)

ARTICLE: "Time to Talk: Diplomatic jujitsu could help create a new Middle East," by Leslie H. Gelb, Wall Street Journal, Friday, July 28, 2006

As the major noted, it's a great summary of where things stand. Plus it echoes most of my recent themes, especially the riskiness of pursuing the Sunni-Shiite split on a strategic basis and the clear need for some regional security dialogue (which mitigates the danger of that split segueing into an Old Core/Sunni-New Core/Shiite Yalta-like divide that imperils globalization).

Most salient is the critique of the Bush Admin's lack of strategic imagination, which I see here, in the Doha "collapse." in the absurd "anti-China axis," etc.

This Old Core deficiency (meaning Euro and Japan are just as bad right now) is what leads some pundits to wax enthusiastically on "globalism's demise" (or at least their preferred strawman parody), as if the concept is the West's pet fish to flush down the head the minute it gets bored.

Remember, globalization comes with rules, not a ruler. Globalism isn't an ideology, but rather a realization of that emerging reality.

Declaring globalism dead is like declaring Darwinism dead: it is the declaration of ideology (realism), not it's repudiation.

Resetting the rule set on this Long War

Between the United Nations, G-8, Congress and the Supreme Court, it seems like everybody nowadays is working to rein in the Bush administration's conduct in this Long War. All these attempts at producing counterbalances - both legal and diplomatic - should be welcomed by the American people.

Why?

First off, legal and diplomatic reactions sure as heck beat military responses. Ever since the Cold War's end, so-called realists have predicted the world cannot long endure a sole military superpower. In other eras, such domination spawned arms races, hence the balance of power. [read on]

I will be upgrading the website today (Movable Type, if you care to know). Hopefully, it will go off without a hitch. But if not, you'll know why. I'll sound the all clear when I get to that point.

Update: Well, I wouldn't say it went off without a hitch on my side, but I don't think you should have noticed anything on yours.

Torrent of email reporting Michael Barone's major piece on Tom, 'And now, the good news'. We've seen it on Jewish World Review and Real Clear Politics, and U.S. News and World Report (where it will appear in the August 7th edition).

Tom's comment:

Barone gets me better than just about anybody, save Ignatius and Jaffe. Just wish the left-center got it as well as the right-center does. This is a cool example of how the blog works for me 24/7. Barone's basically interviewing/reviewing my blog in this piece. Don't get much better than that!

Update: Subsequently also found on The New York Sun, The National Ledger, and Townhall.com. Any more?

ARTICLE: "The Next Steps With Iran: Negotiations Must Go Beyond the Nuclear Threat to Broader Issues," By Henry A. Kissinger, July 31, 2006; Page A15

ARTICLE: "Beyond Lebanon: This Is the Time for a U.S.-Led Comprehensive Settlement," By Brent Scowcroft, July 30, 2006; Page B7

Tom writes:

The big solution set on Iran idea doesn't seem so crazy now, does it? The myopic focus on WMD is a dead strategy. Even the heaviest realists see this now, thanks to Iran's successful (it's working for Iran, isn't it?--who cares about anyone else here, because Tehran doesn't) preemptive war.

ARTICLE: "Cease-Fire to Nowhere," By David Brooks, The New York Times, July 30, 2006.

Tom writes:

Excellent piece by Brooks. Once we let Israel engage Iran's pre-emptive war against our interests in the region, we need to let nature take its course. Demonizing Israel by making them the implied bad guy in any quickie cease-fire/withdrawal will come back to haunt us by creating the impression that diversionary wars get you off the hook vis-a-vis the U.S. Plus, letting the carnage pile up a bit incentivizes everyone in the region toward some effort better than that simple sit-down in Rome recently that accomplished nada.

Best yet, the more intractable Lebanon gets, the quicker Israel moves toward letting a coalitional force ultimately take over security for the entire fence. The sooner that happens, the better, because it facilitates Israel's "one-state" solution, and once that happens, the big red-herring that is the Arab-Israeli conflict is shelved, strategically speaking, and we concentrate the debates on what really needs to change: the Arab/Persian autocracies themselves.