Thomas P.M. Barnett :: Weblog

Nice piece to get a very compact summary of your work out to a wider audience. It's too bad The Brief (in any incarnation) is probably way too long to transcribe and publish in a paper, unless the NY Times or Washington Post gave you some space on the order of the Pentagon Papers.

If I might make a suggestion, your next column could follow up on this one with your current theories of DOEE components in greater detail, as you've presented recently. When it's more clear to the public who would be there and what they would do, and how significantly different that would be from the current DHS (and NATO, and the UN...), more popular support is bound to follow. Emphasis on the multi-national composition of the SysAdmin, and the relatively low-level commitment of US resources compared with other countries (and who those are likely to be) is a very attractive feature of this set-up you're helping to emerge, and the depth of international cooperation required for that organization to emerge and succeed sometime in the future needs to be starting now, not sometime after the next administration settles in and, maybe, gets shocked to reality the ways both Bush I and II did.

Sometimes it's necessary to let generals and troops learn from their mistakes involving false assumptions and obsolete solutions.
If they are forced to use new methods, they will focus on the new methods' faults and imperfections, and the new methods will be abandoned or left to drift without refinement.
If we let them try their old solutions - for awhile - some will learn from the experience, and adopt appropriate new methods, and make the necessary efforts to refine them.
Others will leave the service, write books, and become constant guest critics on TV.

That's a lesson most generations have learn even though prior cycles are well document in history.

MG: just linked your comment in a new post promoting the latest article.

for another concise Brief, you could do worse than the original Esquire article.

LH: yes. part of why Tom has supported Iraq: knew we'd fail and our military would learn.

Oh I've been waiting for you to post something about this Tom, because I've been wanting to ask you a question.

I watched every episode a couple of times, very good program, I was especially interested in the show's revelations of some of the changes that occurred with the US civilian population, as well as the confirmations by actual veterans of how badly some of our fighting men were used by what were at times woefully inadequate and sometimes even criminally negligent generals and commanders. One incident specifically addressed our Japanese-American troops in Italy, and how these elite troops lives were at times recklessly squandered with unsupported frontal assaults on entrenched German positions, which led to them being decimated for virtually no gain. Of course these were the exceptions, but I was glad to see such occurrences included in this depiction of World War II, since they are so often excluded.

The show also addressed how war is a learning experience, and how our people in North Africa, troops and commanders alike, needed the experience of combat to temper them into an efficient killing force. Killing is one of those things that gets easier with each successive occurrence, and at some point even becomes incidental in war, apparently.

But what most caught my attention was a story told by a Marine veteran about his enlistment. After trying repeatedly to enlist in the Navy, and being rejected every time, the man was sitting outside of the recruiting station when he was approached by a Marine recruiter who inquired about his troubles. After telling the recruiter the story of the repeated rejections, the Marine responded by telling this aspiring swabby that he couldn't get into the Navy, because his mother and father had been married.

It took a moment for this to register in my consciousness, but of course the implication that the listener must draw from that statement is that one of the prerequisite for joining the Navy, wait for it, is that you be bastard, according to that Marine recruiter.

It's my understanding from what I've heard Tom, that you are in a unique position to tell us if this is indeed the case. So be honest Tom, is it true, are all Navy men bastards? Or is it just the officers? :-)

Much thought should certainly be given to national defence policy, and the alternatives. Several countries seem to be at the same stage.

the depth of international cooperation required for [a new military] to emerge and succeed sometime in the future needs to be starting now

The international scene is a bit fractious. See Russia's latest complaints about the US.