Thomas P.M. Barnett :: Weblog

What we need now is a mechanism to make China's pain in Africa to become our pain, as Africa's pain is becoming China's. What we need are links such that when Chinese get shot up there, we think of supplying airlift and logistics. That's how we make China part of the Sysadmin Industrial Complex.

From the article:

Politically cautious, China prefers to send medical and engineering troops rather than soldiers who might find themselves in the line of fire.

The chocolate and peanut butter mix is there, no doubt!

Got an error message when I tried to open the link, so pardon me if I veer off-topic.

Seems to me this is one area where it would be good for the Old Core to take the lead. As China makes some of the same mistakes prior colonial powers (aka, afore mentioned Old Core) made, having an alternate model available for their use could come in handy. The countries who made, and got burned by, those mistakes may be good ones to find that model if they're willing to look for it.

dang: there this morning, then expired.

Google turns up the same story persisting on boston.com; replaced above.

Interesting article I scanned in Economist on helos being long pole in SysAdmin tent, something I've been saying for a while.

Then the piece quoted some mil expert saying to the effect, if we bring Russia and China into mix, lotsa helos suddenly available.

Then I thought of Indians offering helos to helo-starved, Leviathan-heavy Pak military after earthquake. But of course, the Pakis said no, because uncool to have Indian pilots over Pakistani soil.