Why the SysAdmin is really the whole ballgame in the
Big Bang

David Ignatius, quoting another columnist today in his own column (
"Iraq
Can Survive This"), July 29, 2005:

Michael Young, the opinion editor of the Beirut Daily
Star, wrote a column yesterday, "Preparing for a shipwreck in the
Middle East," in which he cautioned: "The American adventure in Iraq --
creative, bold and potentially revolutionary -- threatens to sink under
the weight of a Sunni insurgency that has fed off the Bush
administration's frequent incompetence in prosecuting postwar
stabilization and rehabilitation."

Ignatius' larger point is a good one: letting Iraq go the route of
Lebanon in the 70s and 80s is just putting the country on ice in terms
of political development, while the killing goes on and troublemakers
the world over benefit from the ensuing loose security rule set that
defines the country for the length of the sectarian violence.

You can say: we don't take down Saddam, we don't have to deal with
this. But frankly, that's a cop-out. There will always be these places
to deal with inside the Gap until we shrink the Gap. Saddam's many sins
just gave us the excuse to actually take a job on, rather than just
come up with the usual excuses like we do with North Korea, Sudan or
Zimbabwe. These situations will not go away from criminal neglect on
our part.

Women running for their lives in Afghanistan elections

This is a big theme in Blueprint for Action. No women, no
connectivity.

Afghan Women Put Lives on Line To Run for Office

By N.C. Aizenman

Washington Post Foreign Service

Friday, July 29, 2005; Page A01

CHARKH, Afghanistan -- The note slipped under Mahmoud Shah's front
gate was written in a tidy, graceful hand. But the message brimmed with
venom: "If you don't stop campaigning for Noorzia Charkhi, your life
will be in danger. Also tell Noorzia Charkhi that she should give up
her candidacy. Aren't you ashamed to put up posters of your family's
women in the bazaar?"

Charkhi, 36, is a journalist based in the capital, Kabul, who is
campaigning for a seat in Afghanistan's new parliament. But in this
mud-walled village in Logar, the home province she hopes to represent,
Charkhi's candidacy is such a challenge to tradition that she and her
relatives, including her cousin Shah, have faced repeated threats ...

Read the full text here.

You want the market, you work the military--that's
the essential nexus!

Today's Washington Post

Security Costs Slow Iraq Reconstruction: Contract
Excesses Also Hamper Progress

By Renae Merle and Griff Witte

Washington Post Staff Writers

Friday, July 29, 2005; Page A01

Efforts to rebuild water, electricity and health networks in Iraq
are being shortchanged by higher-than-expected costs to provide
security and by generous financial awards to contractors, according to
a series of reports by government investigators released yesterday.

Taken together, the reports seem to run contrary to the Bush
administration's upbeat assessment that reconstruction efforts are
moving vigorously ahead and that the insurgency is dying down ...

Read the full text here.

Score one for the expanding Core ...

As noted in the previous piece, CAFTA squeezes by in the House. God
bless the Republicans on that one.

Here's the opening of a good Washington Post piece on it (
found
here)

Trade Pact Approved By House

GOP Struggles to Eke Out 217-215 Victory on CAFTA

By Paul Blustein and Mike Allen

Washington Post Staff Writers

Thursday, July 28, 2005; Page A01



The House narrowly approved the Central American Free Trade Agreement
this morning, delivering a hard-fought victory to President Bush while
underscoring the nation's deep divisions over trade.

The 217 to 215 vote came just after midnight, in a dramatic finish
that highlighted the intensity brought by both sides to the battle.
When the usual 15-minute voting period expired at 11:17 p.m., the no
votes outnumbered the yes votes by 180 to 175, with dozens of members
undeclared. House Republican leaders kept the voting open for another
47 minutes, furiously rounding up holdouts in their own party until
they had secured just enough to ensure approval ...

On environmentalism, the US and New Core come
together--right now

Sent to me by reader, Eric Rohrs.

Here's his analysis:

Hi Dr. Barnett,

Just wanted to draw your attention to

this agreement:

[NOTE: registration is required for free access]

If it proves not to be just window-dressing, but rather a serious
attempt at greenhouse emission reductions, I'd say this is excellent
proof of your idea that the U.S. will be closer to New Core nations in
the future.

Also, I find it very hopeful because of the concord shown here
between the U.S. and China, which is no doubt immensely frustrating to
many Cold Worriers. Between this, the mini-devaluation of the yuan, and
the return of North Korea to the disarmament talks, it looks more and
more like the Bush Administration is getting serious about dealing with
China (I hope).

These events, along with the passage of CAFTA, have made it a very
good week for shrinking the Gap, all things considered!

Pact halves emissions by the next century

By Connie Levett, Louise Dodson and Cynthia Banham in Vientiane

July 29, 2005



Clean energy projects aimed at halving greenhouse gas emissions by the
end of the century will be financed as part of an international
agreement signed by Australia yesterday.

The American-led partnership is a challenge to the Kyoto Protocol,
promising co-operation with developing countries and increased use of
new technologies to reduce global warming.

The agreement - covering the United States, China, India,
Australia, Japan and South Korea - set out a new agenda identifying
mutual interest and commercial benefit as keys to a cleaner
environment. The details will be negotiated at a meeting in Adelaide in
November. The ministerial meeting was expected to set up a joint fund
to finance projects aimed at cutting the emissions, the Industry
Minister, Ian Macfarlane, said yesterday.

The Foreign Minister, Alexander Downer, insisted the new Asia
Pacific Partnership on Clean Development and Climate would "complement
and not replace" the Kyoto agreement, which sets specific targets for
reducing greenhouse gas emissions...

The reproducible strategic concept just keeps reproducing . . .

My God! What a neat rejoinder to that Cold Worrier admiral!

[Note: I didn't post reader's name because I did this on a
whim and didn't have time to ask his permission. Critt: if obtained,
please add]

The pure essence of Navy fear-mongering on
China-Taiwan: it doesn't get any more absurd than this

Here's the beginning of the article. (Full text here.)

Navy officer warns of Chinese subs

BY: Charles Snyder, Taipei Times

07/28/2005

A former senior US naval officer warned Monday that within 20
years, China will have the ability to wreak havoc on US naval forces
going to Taiwan's defense against a Chinese attack.

Such a defeat of the US navy by a Chinese force "will ruin America
as we know it today," Vice Admiral Al Konetzni said. He was testifying
before a hearing of a commission formed by the Pentagon earlier this
year to probe plans for closing dozens of US military bases in a bid to
save money.

Konetzni was testifying at a hearing in Boston on plans to close
the Naval Submarine Base in New London, Connecticut, one of 33 major
bases slated for closure under the Defense Department's base closure
initiative.

He made his comments less than a week after the Pentagon released
its annual report to Congress on China's military buildup, which warned
of a grave threat to Taiwan stemming from China's military
modernization and of its submarine force expansion.

A key role for Chinese submarines, the report and US military
experts note, would be to prevent the US from coming close enough to
aid Taiwan by essentially closing off the Taiwan Strait to US vessels
and troops, allowing China to complete its attack on Taiwan without US
interference.

China's submarine force is larger than the US', and "in the year
2025, they'll have three times [as many as the US] at the rate we're
doing business," Konetzni told the base closing commission hearing.

"I see a problem with Taiwan," he added.

"I see us putting our white hats on and going across the world and
getting there" in the case of hostile Chinese military action against
Taiwan requiring a US response, he said.

"And I see one punch in the nose, and it will ruin America as we
know it today," Konetzni told the commission.

Until his recent retirement, Konetzni was the deputy commander of
the naval command that covered Europe, the Atlantic and the Pacific.
Before that he spent three years as commander of submarines in the
Pacific and before that, three years in Japan and South Korea.

He testified in opposition to the closure of the New London
submarine base...

This is the essence of Occidentalism being used by fear-mongering
Navy types as a last-ditch effort to stave off sub base closings: China
will land one punch to our nose and Western civilization falls. It's so
absurd as to be dismissed out of hand as sheer nonsense, but here's a
retired 3-star peddling this crap.

Truth be told, I have interacted once in my career with this guy and
found him to be a bullying jerk with a strategic IQ just north of 40.
He's a dinosaur of the worst sort, and it pains me to think he made 3
stars. But it's good to hear he's retired. He's one of the last of a
dying breed, and I say good riddance to them all. If he thinks the
challenge we face from China 20 years from now is just some bloody-nose
strategy (the essence of the Occidentalist view of America--one we
encountered with Pearl Harbor, 9/11, and video beheadings of hostages
in Iraq), then the admiral's gotten even dumber with age.

When will these submarine guys learn?

Thanks to a reader (USAF, of course) for alerting me to this
wonderful blast from the past.

BTW, I encounter this sort of strategic stupidity and I realize that
Friedman's book (World is Flat), for all my problems with it, is a good
antidote for this sort of thinking. At least it broadens the vision.

Updating the "global struggle on extremism": less
Leviathan, more SysAdmin

■"New Name for 'War on Terror' Reflects Wider U.S.
Campaign," by Eric Schmitt and Thom Shanker, New York Times,
26 July 2005, p. A9.

■"Plan Of Attack: The Pentagon has a secret new strategy for
taking on terrorists-and taking them down," by Linda Robinson,
U.S. News & World Report, 1 August 2005.

■"Taliban on the run but far from vanquished: Afghan successes
eclipsed by Iraq," by Paul Wiseman, USA Today, 26 July
2005, p. 1A.

■"Sunni Arabs rejoin constitution committee with list of
demands," by Associated Press, USA Today, 26 July 2005, p.
8A.

■"Shiites: Better Safe Than Sorry; Makeshift Militias Are
Formed to Thwart Sectarian Attacks in Iraq," by Yochi J. Dreazen, Wall
Street Journal, 26 July 2005, p. A10.

■"New U.S. Envoy Will Prress Iraqis On Their Charter," by
Dexter Filkins and James Glanz, New York Times, 26 July 2005,
p. A1.

■"Security Forces Of Palestinians Are Found Unfit: A Legacy of
Yasir Arafat; Independent Study Calls Units Badly Motivated,
Disorganized, Weak," by Steven Erlanger, New York Times, 26
July 2005, p. A1.

■"Groups Worry Attacks in Egypt May Slow Changes: Mubarek
Critics Also Fear Red Sea Resort Bombings Will Lead to a Crackdown,"
by Karby Leggett and Yasmine El-Rashidi, Wall Street Journal,
26 July 2005, p. A10.

The Bush Administration is moving off the phrase "global war on
terrorism" and toward the "global struggle against extremism" in an
effort to describe what it has come to understand as the larger context
of defeating the global Salafi jihadist movement. This is good and
right, and in some ways represents the mea culpa of the neocons
(Doug Feith is now a loud cheerleader for this broader view as he
departs the Pentagon) for their tendency to define the GWOT almost
exclusively in terms of Afghanistan and Iraq.

Still, progress is progress.

Question for me as Putnam inputs all the edits to the unbound galley
copy that Mark Warren and I worked over in late June and early July: do
I seek to capture this shift in my own use of the phrase "global war on
terrorism" in the text? I don't use it that much, and largely give it
up after the first hundred pages (the Pentagon likewise disappears
after the first hundred or so pages), so it's a real question.

Thing is, that phrase will be a beyond-the-Pentagon phrase by and
large, as demonstrated by the new Joint Staff-issued "National Military
Strategic Plan for the War on Terrorism," a document I helped shape in
the most marginal sense through consultations I had with Central
Command's J-5 (plans and policy), the Joint Staff's J-5, and Special
Operations Command's current commander General Doug Brown through my
participation in SOCOM's "strategists panel" last summer (all of these
interactions are described in Blueprint for Action). Naturally,
all three elements interacted with a host of thinkers and strategists,
so I will claim no great influence-just the repeatedly demonstrated
capacity of PNM to take me into these discussions.

There's a great piece in the current issue of U.S. News &
World Report on that strategic plan. Here are the key excerpts I
drew from it:

On March 3, with little fanfare, Secretary of Defense
Donald Rumsfeld and the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Gen.
Richard Myers, signed a comprehensive new plan for the war on
terrorism. Senior defense officials briefed U.S. News on the contents
of the still-secret document, which is to be released soon in an
unclassified form. Officially titled the "National Military Strategic
Plan for the War on Terrorism," the document is the culmination of 18
months of work and is a significant evolution from the approach adopted
after the 9/11 attacks, which was to focus on capturing or killing the
top al Qaeda leaders.

For the first time since then, Pentagon officials say, they have a
strategy that examines the nature of the antiterror war in depth, lays
out a detailed road map for prosecuting it, and establishes a score
card to determine where and whether progress is being made.

The origins of the new plan lie in an October 2003 "snowflake," as
Rumsfeld's numerous memoranda to his staff are called. Was the United
States really winning the war on terrorism, Rumsfeld asked his
commanders, and how could we know if more terrorists were being killed
or captured than were being recruited into the ranks? …

The initial result was a 70-page draft report, which subsequently
went through over 40 revisions as it was shared with Rumsfeld's inner
circle, then a larger group, called the senior-level review group
("Slurg," in Pentagon-speak), and then regional commanders and other
agencies. The president was briefed on the report last January and
presented with recommendations for presidential-level initiatives to be
included in a government wide review of counterterrorism policy, which
is still being conducted by the National Security Council. In March,
the final 25-page report, plus 13 annexes, was signed and became formal
Pentagon policy. Key features of the new plan:

The terrorist threat against the United States is now defined as
"Islamist extremism" --not just al Qaeda …

The new approach emphasizes "encouraging" and "enabling" foreign
partners, especially in countries where the United States is not at war
…

The Pentagon will use a new set of metrics twice a year to measure
its progress in the war against terrorism. Commanders are to report,
for example, on successes in locating and dismantling terrorist safe
havens, financial assets, communications networks, and planning cells
for each of the target groups.

The Pentagon's Special Operations Command is designated in the new
plan as the global "synchronizer" in the war on terrorism for all the
military commands and is responsible for designing a new global
counterterrorism campaign plan and conducting preparatory
reconnaissance missions against terrorist organizations around the
world …

The final product reflects changes of profound significance,
Pentagon officials say. First, the enemy is now defined more broadly
than just al Qaeda. Second, the Pentagon has now officially moved away
from what has been widely seen as a unilateral American approach. "It's
not a military project alone," Feith explained, "and the United States
cannot do it by itself alone."

Going global.

The new strategy, for the first time, formally directs military
commanders to go after a list of eight pressure points at which
terrorist groups could be vulnerable: ideological support, weapons,
funds, communications and movement, safe havens, foot soldiers, access
to targets, and leadership. Each U.S. geographic command is to follow a
systematic approach, first collecting intelligence on any of the two
dozen target groups that are operating in its area of responsibility
and then developing a plan to attack all eight nodes for each of those
groups.

Going after high-value targets like Osama bin Laden and Abu Musab
Zarqawi, his emir in Iraq, is still a big part of the strategy but only
a part. Three less direct approaches will now receive much greater
emphasis: helping partner nations confront terrorism, going after
supporters of terrorist organizations, and helping the State
Department-led campaign to reduce the ideological appeal of terrorism.

The latter category includes such things as military-provided
humanitarian aid. U.S. aid to tsunami victims, for example …

For a Pentagon that has been seen as primarily championing
pre-emptive attacks against terrorist threats, the new strategy's
enthusiastic embrace of foreign partners is a real sea change …

For whatever opposition they encounter, Pentagon brass know they
must now rely more than ever on foreign partners; the insurgency in
Iraq and the continuing violence in Afghanistan have stretched U.S.
forces, simply precluding go-it-alone missions …

The new Pentagon strategy gives several new responsibilities to
the Special Operations Command, which oversees all American special
operations forces …

Gen. Doug Brown, the head of the Special Operations Command, or
SOCOM, said his command was selected for the new mission "because,
quite frankly, we are a global command. We've always been oriented
around the world." In June, Brown convened a meeting of special
operations forces from 59 foreign countries in Tampa, where SOCOM is
based [I spoke at the follow-on CENTCOM special ops symposium that
hosted the same officers]

Traditionally, the geographic commands have been reluctant to
yield to SOCOM on counterterrorism issues, but that's no longer an
option. While Brown's command is now in charge of the planning effort
in the war on terrorism, it will lead actual operations only when
directed to do so by the president or Rumsfeld …

The Pentagon is floating one proposal that is sure to cause a stir
in Congress and, probably, the State Department. Feith says there are
good reasons to consider remaking the entire apparatus for aid and
training for foreign troops, police, and other security forces. It was
set up during the Cold War, he says, "more for building relationships
and less for developing capabilities for partners to contribute to our
military purposes." He cites the headache encountered when the Pentagon
proposed to train and equip the Georgian Army in Central Asia after
9/11. "We had to tap five or six different pots of money," Feith says,
"and it took over half a year."

Changing the system won't be easy. Congress has a long history of
attaching all kinds of conditions to foreign aid. While the State
Department administers most foreign security programs, its capability
is small, and the Pentagon is restricted in training police forces
abroad. A senior administration official declined to comment on the
substance of the Pentagon strategy because it is still classified but
said that it had been "invaluable to our government-wide strategic
thinking." At the White House, the official said, the National Security
Council has focused its approach on "an ever growing number of willing
partners . . . to address violent extremists operating within their
borders"

When I get the usual question of whether or not my vision is taking
root in the Bush Administration/U.S. Government at large, I simply beg
off. The question is never one of influence, as I have so often said,
but of accuracy. The U.S. Government is simply too big and too complex
for the single George Kennan-like "X Article" to move everything down a
rather distinct path anymore. Too many players, too many offices, too
many budgets. Any strategic visionary has to see him- or herself as a
very tiny rudder on a very large ship: incremental change is the norm.
Bits and pieces appear, none of it because of your ideas per se, but
simply because the growing consensus emerges and-if you're
successful-you help a lot of players and offices order themselves
around a set of simple rules you've helped to enunciate and popularize.
As always, the best compliments you receive are: "This is exactly the
same things I've been arguing for over the last several years!" Such
bureaucratic momentum is not a single-player sport, but closer to a
massive, multiplayer online game.

Still, you see an article like this and you feel a lot of optimism
in the course of change that's being pursued in the Pentagon.

And damn it, we need a lot of that optimism as we forge ahead in
this war on terrorism or struggle against extremism or tussle about
disconnectedness or whatever the hell you want to call it. Lots of
similar names all suggesting the same thing isn't chaos, but the
gelling of a national consensus.

And this is good.

Consensus gives us a chance to sport real successes, like the
SysAdmin effort in Afghanistan, a country the size of Texas and with a
population not that much smaller than Iraq. Somehow we make do there
with a U.S. contingent of 18k and 2k of coalition troops. Somehow there
the Americans specialize in Leviathan efforts against the Taliban while
the NATO partners focus more on the SysAdmin stuff of nation-building
and security generation across the society. Somehow the militias are
disbanding there more and more often, rather than growing like they do
in Iraq-especially among the Shiites.

Is Afghanistan the model? Beats Iraq. Doesn't quite beat Kosovo and
Bosnia in terms of follow-on economic integration with the global
economy, unless you count all that heroin exporting. But overall it's
pretty good, with plenty of important lessons learned.

Iraq remains no picnic, but it's good to see the Sunnis rejoin the
constitution-drafting process. Lotsa demands? Sure. But demands are
good if reasonable pursued.

We should have some demands of our own, some key principles we argue
for in our role as mentor to this process. The positive connection here
is the shift of Zalmay Khalilzad from ambassador to Afghanistan to
ambassador to Iraq. I know, I know. Many wish to vilify the man for his
"nefarious" connections to oil companies (Imagine that! A guy with lots
of connectivity in Central Asia is sought out by Western energy
companies for advice! Can I get a "duh"?) and his perceived role as
water-carrier-du-jour for the neocons, but the man is smart, practical,
and gets things done.

Khalilzad says the Iraq constitution must provide equal rights for
women and dampen demands by sectarian groups for excessive protection
from one another.

This guy is wise enough to see the possibility of serious civil war
that will serve no one's purposes but al Qaeda's. Eventually these
peoples all have to come together in a larger economic and political
understanding. Cramming in a lengthy, blood-feuding civil war between
today's A and that inevitable Z will just make things harder. Khalilzad
is practicing preventive SysAdmin work, which is the best type possible.

The U.S. needed to be making similar efforts in both Palestine and
Egypt, where serious backsliding on political reforms may well ensue
primarily for security reasons. In the Gaza and West Bank, it's
Arafat's legacy of deep corruption that yields security forces trusted
by no one-a huge potential showstopper in the Israeli pullout process.
In Egypt, it's the fear that 9/11-like strikes will be used by Mubarek
as a pretext to extend his decades-long "emergency rule."

Much SysAdmin work to be done in the region. Our effort gets no more
or less complicated. We just continue to move the pile and-hopefully
judging by the new terminology of the Bush Administration-keep our eyes
on the larger prize of ending the disconnectedness that defines danger
in our globalized world.

Crossing lanes with China is not crossing wires

■"U.S. and North Korea Envoys Meet Ahead of 6-Nation
Nuclear Talks," by Jim Yardley and David E. Sanger, New York
Times, 26 July 2005, p. A3.

■"Sisyphus in China: U.S. Lawyer's Antipiracy Task is Endless,"
by Neil King Jr., Wall Street Journal, 26 July 2005, p. A17.

■"In Search of a New Energy Source, China Rides the Wind,"
by Howard W. French, New York Times, 26 July 2005, p. A4.

America's Chris Hill meets with his North Korean counterpart prior
to the official opening of the 6-party talks hosted by Beijing. This is
a concession on our part, as we've been holding firm to our demand that
Pyongyang deal with all of the region's major powers (us, South Korea,
China, Russia, Japan) at once. That approach didn't get Kim to the
table. Why? It scares him. Plus the delay gave him time to move ahead
rapidly on his WMD capabilities.

Now we're warning of even more severe economic repercussions if
these talks fail, but there's nothing we can do more to NK. The real
leverage, of course, is with Beijing, which wants to keep its
relationship with Washington cool right now, given all of the other
economic issues on the table - -plus Hu Jintao's first trip to the US
in September.

As the first article says, "Failure in these talks could deeply sour
the relationship."

But all that implies is that there is massive cross-lane linkages,
in direct contrast to the U.S. approach to try and keep everything
(economics, political, security) in a series of separate lanes. This is
a weird, anti-diplomatic approach if ever there was one. We need
Beijing on security and they need us on economics (mostly our
forbearance as they deal with a host of issues -- like the massive
piracy that goes on in China today and the regime's neverending search
for the technologies and reserves for their rising energy
requirements). Why in God's name deny these obvious linkages? This
approach remains beyond my capacity to explain.

Expecting the Chinese to be Chinese on the yuan

■"Behind Yuan Move, Open Debate and Closed Doors:
Two-Year Saga Included Secret and Staged Meetings, Weeks of Quiet
Diplomacy," by James T. Areddy, Neil King Jr., Mary Kissel and
Jason Dean, Wall Street Journal, 25 July 2005, p. A1.

■"Yuan Moves Might Stir Big Ripples: Revaluation May Cause Drop
In U.S. Bond, Housing Prices; 'Shot Heard 'Round the World'?" by
E.S. Browning, Wall Street Journal, 25 July 2005, p. C1.

■"Classical Theory vs. the Real World," by Amar Bhide and
Edmund Phelps, Wall Street Journal, 25 July 2005, p. A14.

■"Yuan's Revaluation May Give Asia a Lift, Aiding Global
Growth," by Mary Kissel, Wall Street Journal, July 2005, p.
A2.

■"Look to Virginia, Not China," editorial, New York
Times, 25 July 2005, p. A22. ■"," by , , July 2005, p. A1.

■"China Suppliers Join in Plan To Rescue Huffy," by Henry
Sender, Wall Street Journal, 25 July 2005, p. B1.

First story is simply a fascinating recounting of China's lengthy
and amazingly open decision-making process on finally moving to make
the yuan convertible.

"Open" may strike you as a very odd term to describe China's
decision-making process, because the actual decision was made behind
close doors and then even announced behind them (this part of the story
is quite fascinating and worth a read). But you have to keep things in
perspective: we're talking about a single-party state that's been
rather authoritarian (taking the long view) for about . . . uh . . .
several thousand years!

So when Chinese leaders invite, as they did in May of last year, a
bunch of American economists to debate the issue in front of them,
that's a big step.

When the Chinese spend months having their people study Singapore's
currency-basket float, that's a big step.

And when the Chinese ask U.S. Treasury officials to get certain
big-mouth senators to tone it down for a while so their decision to
float the yuan, however tightly, isn't viewed politically as a cave-in
to American pressures, that's a BIG step.

Remember as I said in PNM: direction is critical, not degree. Show
the direction China is moving in, not the degree to which it remains a
single-party state (like American ally Singapore, I might add).

In the short term, Americans and our economy might get some
benefits, but they'll be small and insignificant. The threats from a
floating yuan are far greater, simply because a floating yuan will push
China to synch up its internal economic rule set even faster with the
emerging Core economic rule set, and that will make China less
dependent on our money as their preferred reserve currency.

Think that doesn't matter to you? Well, speaking as someone paying
rent for the next few months, I'm okay with that. But speaking at
someone facing a 30-year fixed mortgage, I'm far less sanguine.

As Bhide and Phelps point out in their brilliant op-ed (WSJ, natch),
there's nothing wrong with a less developed state like China running a
big trade deficit with a more advanced economy like the U.S. It allows
them to import lotsa technology in gulps (even to buy our companies)
and it keeps the price of money here cheap.

I know, I know, everyone wants to talk about the price of Chinese
textiles, but frankly, the price of money is the only price that really
matters. When money is cheap, it's easier to grow and live well, and
when it's expensive, that gets harder (although a little discipline is
always a good thing).

Well, we wished for it and now we're going to get it, and we're
going to get it the Chinese way: drawn out in slow motion for as long
as possible, with one eye on keeping the Chinese economy rolling and
another eye on keeping the "communists" in power (Wonder what Mao would
say about a floating yuan? Go ahead and ask him. He adorns half the
paper money in China.).

In the end, of course, all that "China said, America said" stuff is
insignificant. A more integrated China is better for the global economy
as a whole-meaning we all make more money. So the Times is
right: get our own economic house in order (primarily by retraining our
workers displaced by globalization's myriad competitions) and stop
blaming China for any economic distress globalization causes us.

You either get busy globalizing or get busy isolating.

And yeah, it works both ways. Chinese bicycle supply companies are
in the process of bailing out American brand Huffy.

I know, I know. The Chinese will soon corner the bike market and
then we'll be vulnerable to their pressures and will!

Too late. One-hundred percent of Huffy bikes built last year were
assembled in China. The Chinse companies are bailing out Huffy (and
picking up a 30% equity) because they fear that if Huffy tanks, there
too will go all their American business.

Connectivity is good, but it's complex. It's not easily reduced to
catch-phrases and finger-pointing exercises so favored by our least
economically sophisticated citizens.

And yes, I'm talking about the Senate.

Lower thresholds for danger are a good thing, but
don't signal a more dangerous world

■"Common Industrial Chemicals In Tiny Doses Raise
Health Issue: Advanced Tests Often Detect Subtle Biological Effects;
Are Standars Too Lax?" by Peter Waldman, Wall Street Journal,
25 July 2005, p. A1.

Fascinating article about how scientists and government regulators
are now coming to the consensus that, thanks to better measuring
technologies, we're able to detect very tiny amounts of certain
chemicals in our environment and begin to trace their impact on our
bodies and lives.

This is, as with most new and improved technologies, both good and
bad. Learning about these things, if we approach them with the same old
same old answers, could end up generating cures worse than the disease.
After all, you can't just say that we're going to build a world without
any of these chemical traces because the benefits we garner from their
use may end up saving or extending more lives than their limited
presence in our environment may cost in terms of lives lost or
shortened.

Here's a good example: When my daughter Emily's kidney cancer is
diagnosed as metastasized to both her lungs, we achieved that diagnosis
with a CT, or "Cat Scan." The chemo/radiation protocols in play at that
time didn't really have a definitive answer to finding these very small
tumors in her lungs, tumors so small that in the past they went
undetected with just X-rays. Here was the conundrum: go more aggressive
on chemo and radiation, armed as we were with this knowledge, or just
pretend like they weren't there on the assumption that a lighter
protocol of chemo and radiation, or the one we would have chosen absent
this additional information, would do the trick and cause her fewer
potential "late effects," meaning physical damage and complications
from the harsher treatment choice.

The history and data to guide our choice back then was very
ambiguous. We could never be sure if we were operating under "better
intell" or just "more information than needed." There was a balance to
be achieved, and the science only provided us with the dilemma, not the
strategic decision.

In the end, we took the harsher approach. And may God have mercy on
our souls if Emily someday ends up paying for our choice.

Connectivity empowers women across the dial, across
the globe

■"Army women defy insurgents, taboo: General says Iraqi
military needs female soldiers, but they face opposition from foes-and
even family," by Rick Jervis, USA Today, 25 July 2005, p.
8A.

■"Editors Tackle Taboos With Girlish Glee: The government, the
military and the church: sacred cows no more," by Raymond Bonner,
New York Times, 25 July 2005, p. A4.

Interesting pair of articles. Makes you wonder why, whenever you
read about women gaining power and independence in the Gap, the title
of the story always seems to contain the word "taboo."

American service women in Iraq are amazed at the speed with which
Iraqi women have achieved some serious parity with their male
counterparts. As one said, "How many years did it take us to reach this
level?"

Ah, but it took America having to resort to a "mercenary army,"
meaning one without a draft, to achieve some gender equality.

Meanwhile, the Philippines' political and social scene is being
rocked by a female-heavy newspaper staff who have the tendency to take
on male-dominated institutions in their country, like the military and
the Roman Catholic church.

When asked who their role models were, the ladies said "Vanity Fair"
and "Mother Jones." VF taught them how to construct covers that sell
and MJ taught them how to rely on foundations for funding-even foreign
governments!

Dangerous thing, all this connectivity. Provides too many dangerous
examples. Gives women guns and pens.

Kim's strategy is same as it ever was

■"N. Korea has little to lose in nuclear talks,
analysts say," by Barbara Slavin, USA Today, 25 July 2005,
p. 9A.

News flash! North Korea is probably risking little in re-engaging
the Core's regional great powers in negotiations regarding its
persistent pursuit of the bomb.

Why? Because Kim Jong Il never keeps his promises and only uses
negotiations to wear out those attention-deficit disorderly Americans.

American-led sanctions do nothing, except probably harm the average
person in North Korea, who, thanks to all those years of deprivation
under the Great Leader and his idiot son, is somewhere on the order of
8 inches shorter and probably about 50 IQ points lighter than your
average South Korean.

So bring on the diplomats please! We've achieved so much using them
in the past.

The SysAdmin ain't yer daddy's military-and that's
okay

■"Energy beam weapon may lower Iraqi civilian deaths:
Seen as way to avoid checkpoint shootings," by Steven Komarow, USA
Today, 25 July 2005, p. 1A.

■"Pentagon deploys array of non-lethal weapons: New devices are
being tried in Iraq to protect troops and civilians," by Steven
Komarow, USA Today, 25 July 2005, p. 14A.

■"Torpedoed ship survivors reunite: Sixty years after tragedy,
ex-sailors keep story of USS Indianapolis alive," by Ken Kusmer,
USA Today, 25 July 2005, p. 14A.

■"Uniform Sacrifice: Americans are fighting, but the country is
not at war," op-ed by David Douglas Duncan, New York Times,
25 July 2005, p. A23.

■"The Best Army We Can Buy: We've lost the link between
citizenship and service," op-ed by David M. Kennedy, New York
Times, 25 July 2005, p. A23.

■"Suicide Bombings Bring Urgency to Police in U.S.: 'It almost
seems to be a question of when in this country, not a question of if,'"
by Sarah Kershaw, New York Times, 25 July 2005, p. A14.

■"In Most Cases, Israel Thwarts Suicide Attacks Without a Shot,"
by Steven Erlanger, New York Times, 25 July 2005, p. A11.

The SysAdmin force is waking up to non-lethals in a big way. This is
a "new development" and a "revolution in thinking" and a host of other
superlatives that indicate that most journalists' sense of history is
frighteningly thin.

All this non-lethal stuff began in our experience in Somalia, and
specifically with CENTCOM chief General Tony Zinni's frustration at
doing SysAdmin work there armed out with bullets, which present a
rather binary rheostat, as in, use 'em or don't, shoot 'em or don't,
and go kinetic or don't.

So Zinni was the bureaucratic push within the Marine Corps to start
the Non-Lethal Weapons Directorate down in Quantico, Virginia. I'm
familiar with that effort, which later morphed into the Joint
Non-Lethal Weapons Directorate, because I, along with Gen. Paul Van
Riper and John Nelson, were part of a group of consultants that the
Directorate used in the late 1990s to engage in strategic planning,
under the guidance of a charismatic former Marine-turned-analyst called
Butch Foley. It was during that effort that I finally found an audience
for my alternative global futures brief that later morphed into my Y2K
brief, and later my NewRuleSets.Project brief, and later my Office of
Force Transformation brief, and later The Pentagon's New Map.
No Butch Foley and Tony Zinni and the Marines' thinking about
non-lethals, and I'm probably still in DC slaving away as an anonymous
analyst.

What was the upshot of all the alternative global futures work I
did? We came to a firm conclusion: you could not imagine a future world
scenario in which NLTs (non-lethal technologies) wouldn't be both
useful and represent a huge return on investment. But the world future
in which they would be most useful would be one where there wasn't any
bipolar standoff, nor any great-power free-for-all, but rather lots of
low-level terrorism and failed states.

The work was summarized in a series of unclassified Center for Naval
Analyses reports, and it was well received by the Marines. Problem was,
it didn't serve them well at all in the budget battles that lay ahead,
so right through 9/11, the Defense Department as a whole was spending
almost nothing on NLTs. This is what I mean by buying one military and
operating another, and it's what I mean when I say that Pentagon
strategists basically blew it on their strategic forecasts, because if
the right ideas had prevailed, our SysAdmin troops would have had these
technologies in abundance going into the Iraq occupation.

So we learn through error, which is natural. And we adapt ourselves
to the new struggle, which is also natural. And we fight a global war
against terrorism with a force that looks more and more SysAdmin and
less like your dad's military, and that is also natural.

Yes, yes, there are many who will bemoan this "mercenary army,"
which is an idiot's phrase if ever there was one. It's a professional
army, just like a professional police force. Why doesn't anyone ever
bemoan America's "mercenary police"? I mean, those guys just do it for
the money, right? And doesn't having "mercenary police," largely drawn
from lower and middle classes I remind you, somehow diminish the links
between citizenship and security in the U.S.?

Hmmm. Maybe we should arbitrarily assign people from all
socio-economic classes to such security jobs as the government sees
fit. That would make for a better citizenry in the United States.

No, wait a minute. The Soviet Union tried that for decades and it
was called communism.

Damn! I hate when that happens!

Ah, but I'm describing something so different from what cops do here
in the U.S. In Iraq, we're talking about guarding people and places,
stopping bad guys from committing wanton acts of violence and seeking,
through that violence, to intimidate a population. Cops don't do
anything like that here in the States. Plus they never get killed in
the line of action. And if they did, certainly their sacrifices
wouldn't compare whatsoever to our loved ones trying to bring similar
benefits to postwar Iraq.

So cops here at home are good, and even if we pay them, they're
certainly not "mercenary." And even if most come from families
(typically not rich) with long histories of being cops, then that form
of social specialization is good. Whereas if similar trends appear with
military families (also typically not your wealthiest clans), and if
we're so crude as to pay them for such services, then this is clearly a
"mercenary force" that diminishes the bonds of citizenship for us all.

Americans are SysAdmin'ing the Middle East, but the country is not
at war. Get used to it. Cop families got used to it a long time ago in
our various "wars" on crime, drugs, etc. And military families got used
to it a long time ago in our various SysAdmin jobs across the length of
the post-Cold War era.

True, there are many old-timers who do not recognize themselves in
this SysAdmin force, nor in the nation-building efforts it so routinely
undertakes. But guess what? It isn't my daddy's international security
system, and thank God for that. Because that system was good for little
except generating great power wars.

I know, I know. WWII was a "good war." Almost a quarter million
American dead. That was a good war, my friends. We're still at less
than 2k combat deaths in this Global War on Terrorism, but naturally,
this war can't be a good one. No, good wars involve "uniform sacrifice"
where we kill off far larger segments of our population. The Civil War,
in this regard, was the "best war," which is why we engage in such
idiotic romanticism regarding it.

I met a survivor of the USS Indianapolis today on my plane out of
Indy. He doesn't remember the war being "good." About 800 guys on his
ship didn't survive. Somehow being part of a "citizen army" didn't make
it any better for him. It became a "good war" only when it ended.

The Indy delivered the components for the first atomic strikes on
Japan. The mission was so secret, it steamed without escort. We dropped
the bomb, killed huge numbers of Japanese civilians, and spared
probably just as large a number of U.S. troops from deaths in trying to
take Japan city by city. One of those troops might have easily been my
Dad, who instead had a fairly quiet time in his Landing Craft Infantry
(Large), or LCI(L).

Yes, yes, the good old days of good old wars.

So I guess we just need to get more Americans killed faster, so we
can have a draft, and so we can engage in "good war" that leads to
"good citizenship."

No, wait a minute. That was Nazi Germany and fascism.

Damn! I hate it when that happens!

Will this war come to our shores again? Only the most optimistic
think we'll be spared forever. But it's interesting that since we go on
the offensive and take the fight to the places where it truly belongs
(the Middle East, because this terrorism isn't about changing
governments here in the States), we haven't seen a major strike or even
the rise of suicide bombings here (What's wrong with American Muslims
anyway? Are they integrating themselves too successfully in our economy
and society? And if they are, shouldn't we put a stop to that
"infiltration").

No, wait a minute. That was McCarthyism and anti-communist
fear-mongering here in the 1950s.

Damn! I hate when that happens!

So maybe working to keep our country open and welcoming to the
world's Muslims could be a good thing, so long as we have a police
system that's smart enough and resourced enough to detect and weed out
the bad apples who seek to do us harm.

No, wait a minute. That's Israel for the last several decades.

Geez! I love it when that happens!

So Israel cops are the hot ticket item for U.S. police commissioners
trying to gear up their systems for the inevitable attempts by the
global Salafi jihadist movement to strike against the Distant Enemy
(us). The Israelis have been doing SysAdmin work for years now in two
of the toughest neighborhoods in the world: Gaza and the West Bank.
While they've kept the violence down to acceptable levels, the Israelis
haven't yet cracked the military-market nexus of fostering broadband
economic connectivity for these regions with the outside world. So they
remain isolated, poor, and full of pissed-off young men.

So let's not assume that getting more Israeli-like in our domestic
SysAdmin force called the police will be the only answer or even the
best answer to stemming any onslaught of suicide bombers here in the
States. If we provide Muslim immigrant families with real opportunity
for economic connectedness, by and large they will police their own,
leaving the jihadist professionals to our SysAdmin professionals to
handle (cops here at home and in conjunction with others cops across
the Core, and the U.S. military in the Gap).

And no, none of this activity constitutes being a "merc." It's a
job. A dangerous job. A job with real honor and commitment. These jobs
don't make you better Americans than anyone else. This isn't "Starship
Troopers." This is a real world, a real global system, and it needs
administering both here and abroad, and the dirty work will get done by
professionals-as it should be.

Al Qaeda was always more ideology than organization

■"Searching for Footprints: With Qaeda a Concern,
Analysts Raise Doubt About Linking Attacks in London and Egypt," by
Elaine Sciolino and Don Van Atta Jr., New York Times, 25 July
2005, p. A1.

■"Egypt Bombings Strike at U.S. Ally On Economic Front," by
Karby Leggett and Yasmine El-Rashidi, Wall Street Journal, 25
July 2005, p. A3.

I don't get this frantic effort to figure out decisively whether the
bombings in London and Egypt received a thumbs up or not from Osama.
"The base" (al Qaeda) was always designed to be more inspiration than
calibration. Osama's not the Pope. He's the "prophet" spreading
rationales for violence. Looking for definitive links is useful for
counter-terrorist strategies but it's a trivial pursuit for the home
audience. Whether such links are discovered or not is never going to
prove anything one way or the other about the "spread" and the
"dangerous turn" and the "new danger" and the "unprecedented
sophistication" and any of the other phrases that journalists love to
use to jack up their daily reporting.

There will be sympathizers who strike on al Qaeda's behalf and in
its name and in keeping to its broad vision of anti-Westernization and
anti-globalization and anti-connectivity for Islamic countries. They
will strike mostly within those Islamic countries, but in their
Occidentalism, or iconic hatred of the West, they will persist in
pursuing a bloody nose strategy of striking in the Core, focusing on
our allies, in an attempt to scare off our publics from persistence in
a Global War on Terrorism, the main outcome of which must be the
connecting of the Middle East to the global economy in a broadband
fashion that liberates populations there first economically and then
politically from decades of state-heavy economic stagnation and
heavy-handed political authoritarianism.

And yes, most of these attacks will be undertaken by those who
emigrate from the Gap to the Core, men who, in the resulting social
isolation associated with that difficult journey, believe they find an
easier way out through martyrdom. Survivor's guilt is a very powerful
thing, and it expresses itself in a myriad of ways. You wanna know why
so many Irish-Americans supported the IRA for years with money, funding
their terrorism? Because it assuaged their guilt in having gotten out
and achieved something better here in the States. Macho bullshit to
some, a deep call to aid the homeland to others.

We're not going to educate this nonsense out of the heads of
prospective terrorists. We're not going to "strategically communicate"
our ways out of this problem. We're going to have to connect these
individuals, but more importantly their families, to economic
opportunity here in the Core. I say, connect the women, and let them
deal with the macho bullshit.

Fastest way to a man's heart is not through his stomach. You have to
aim a little lower.

Kill some international businessmen and it's a
tragedy, kill several hundred thousands young children and it's a
statistic

■"China Bird-Flu Scare Ends," by staff, New
York Times, 25 July 2005, p. A8.

■"Niger's Food Crisis Worsens Depite Appeals," by
Associated Press, New York Times, 25 July 2005, p. A8.

It's truly a reflection of how connected China is to the global
economy that the avian flu scare got as big as it did. Yes, fear of
dead bodies in the millions drove some to act, but it was actually the
threat to the country's economic connectivity that drove the Chinese
leadership to respond so forcefully. Remember when one Western
businessman flying out of Hong Kong with SARS led the World Health
Organization to shut down Toronto? That sort of connectivity is pretty
scary, but don't kid yourselves. The Chinese leadership rules over 1.4
billion Chinese, so kill off a few thousand of them with a flu . . .
hell the flu does that there in tens of thousands and that's just what
they call winter over there. But kill an international businessman and
shut down Toronto, and you've got one scary "epidemic."

Fitting the System Perturbation definition: it's not the amount of
death and destruction that matters, but how much the rising density of
the medium transmits "pain," primarily defined in economics, plus the
resulting rule-set reset, that really matters. SARS was a real System
Perturbation, and because it was, avian flu is unlikely to become one.
Humans matters, but not equally, in this process. The more connected
the human, the stronger the transmission effect and the greater the
potential for a System Perturbation.

Right now the UN estimates that roughly 800,000 children under the
age of five in Niger are facing severe hunger and a good portion of
them even starvation in that country's food crisis. In all, 1.2 million
children are at risk, and as much as 2.4 million adults.

Too bad international businessmen can't catch starvation, huh? Then
you'd see Core powers fork over the money big time. For now, in Niger,
little money is being offered.

Locusts and drought drive this process. But God knows a real
environmentalist stands tall and proud against genetically modified
organisms that are locust- and drought-resistant. Nay, nay, no
Frankenfoods for me! Better all those little kids in Niger pass on and
reduce the surplus population!

I know, I know, the real danger would be long-term. If we gave them
GMOs, then we'd end up having to import their food, and that would put
farm corporations out of work. How many dead African kids does it take
to justify farm subsidies? Never enough, I assure you. No, no, better
to stop Monsanto from ruling the world with GMO seeds. Niger obviously
suffers from too much globalization, yes?

Small dark people dying in a galaxy far far away. I know I shouldn't
care. If they don't die from American bullets, then they're not really
dead-just gone.

I wonder if "Nightline" will spend several dozen shows reading the
names of the fallen? Me, I await the peace march.