1930's Redux?

Martin Wolf is associate editor and chief economics commentator at the Financial Times, and writes this about the financial crisis in the United States. Wolf is a mind that Thomas Barnett once said would be his cerebral companion of choice if stranded on a desert island.

He begins:

It is just over three score years and ten since the Great Depression. Judged by its rejection of the plan put forward by Hank Paulson, US Treasury secretary, Congress believes it is time to risk another one. That slump was, arguably, the greatest catastrophe of the 20th century: it was, among other things, responsible for the events that led to the second world war – not least Hitler’s rise. One can only imagine what horrors a depression might bring now?

Such forebodings must seem exaggerated. So, I expect, they will be. But that dire outcome is no longer impossible, not because a slump is inevitable, far from it, but because action is needed to prevent one.

We are watching the disintegration of the financial system. Finance is the web of intermediation binding economic agents to one another, across both space and time. Without it, no modern economy can survive. Yet that is now threatened, with the ongoing collapse in trust and flight to safety. We can indeed run this experiment. But why should we?

Read the whole article:
Congress decides it is worth risking depression

Earlier he had this article that opened with caution;

No doubt, the crisis has long passed the stage when governments could leave the private sector to save itself, with just a little help from central banks. For the US, the rescue of Bear Stearns was the moment when that option evaporated. But the events of the past two and a half weeks – the rescues of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the failure of Lehman Brothers, the sale of Merrill Lynch, the rescue of AIG, the flight to safety in the markets and the decisions by Morgan Stanley and Goldman Sachs to become regulated bank holding companies – have made a comprehensive solution inevitable.
In detail:
Paulson’s plan was not a true solution to the crisis

A John Boyd Minefield at Small Wars Journal?

The release this week of The John Boyd Roundtable, Debating Science, Strategy, and War has sparked a spirited debate over at Small Wars Journal. One of their council members Cavguy
opened the following discussion thread, What's the big deal about John Boyd?

Cavguy begins by asking:

Okay,Probably stepping into a minefield here.

I was reading Selil's blog on the new Boyd book coming out and it got me thinking. First, I'll admit ignorance similar to I had on EBO a few months ago. I've heard of OODA (big shrug of shoulders, failed to see how it could change my life in any away) and know he was a deep thinking fighter pilot who concentrated on how to do things faster/better/more efficiently. I also understand he was a magnetic personality, kind of a Tony Robbins for the military.

Far from stepping into a minefield, Cavguy asked the kind of questions that any good officer should ask before following anyone into a proverbial or actual minefield. The ongoing discussion generated comments that John Boyd would have welcomed.

Council member Eden writes:

I have to say this has been one of the most stimulating threads I've followed in a while, and one of the reasons why I keep coming back here when I should be working. The references and explanatory notes have given me a better understanding of Boyd and his work - though I have to admit I have never been a fan.

Adding valueable insight to the discussion is William F. Owen.

He writes in part:

I have no beef with Boyd.

MY beef is with those who advocate him out of a sense of fashion, and mostly have little experience or knowledge with the wider and mostly more useful bodies of military thought.

Clausewitz is not simple either, but I get him. Most people criticising Clausewtiz haven't read his work thoroughly and/or discussed it with others. Boyd left very very little written work to "not get".

He left presentations that are now presented by others, and were constantly evolving.

The editor of the book which sparked this discussion, Mark Safranski writing as Zenpundit had this to add:

Great Thread! Now Boyd in context.....

This has been a marvelous discussion and I thank CavGuy for initiating it after reading Selil's review of the short book I edited. I've been following the thread carefully since Wilf gave me a head's up in an email and I wanted to put in a few words on some points of the debate on Boyd's relevance or importance to military thought.

I've learned a fair amount about John Boyd's thinking in the last few years though I do not have near the same level of expertise as do Boyd's collaborators like Chet Richards, Chuck Spinney or William Lind. Or that of Frans Osinga, whose book Science, Strategy and War is a must read for anyone who really wants to know what Boyd actually argued. I think that last point is one on which Wilf would agree.

There's been a discussion if Boyd merits being called "the greatest" or a "great" strategist or theorist. I think it's fair to say that Boyd himself would never have put forth such a claim of that kind or wasted time worrying about what people thought of him or whether he made a more significant contribution to the study of war than Colin Gray or Carl von Clausewitz. Boyd was more interested in learning, teaching and discussing conflict (moreso than just "war") and were he alive, I'm certain Boyd would be delighted with the Small Wars Council and the endless opportunities here for discussion and reflection.

Was he "great", much less "greatest" ? In his briefs, Boyd was trying to shift the paradigm of American military culture away from linear, analytical-reductionist, mechanistic, deterministic, Newtonian-Taylorist, conceptions that resulted in rote application of attrition-based tactics toward more fluid, alinear, creative -synthesist thinking and holistic consideration of strategy. Give the man his due, in his time these were radical arguments for a Pentagon where the senior brass of the U.S. Army had reacted to the defeat in Vietnam by purging the lessons learned of COIN from the institutional memory of the Defense Department.

To me at least, looking from a historical perspective, that's great. In a world with a population now close to seven billion, where the United States maintains a relatively small but expensively trained professional military, remaining wedded to attrition warfare would seem to be losing strategic bet. "Injun country" doesn't just have more Injuns than we have cowboys, they have more Injuns than we have bullets in the six-shooters our cowboys use. Moving the USMC away from an exclusive focus on attrition - and in the long run large portions of the Armed Services - by itself would lead me to use the word "great" in describing John Boyd's work.

Is Boyd a "strategist" or a "theorist" ? Historically, the 20th century is an anomaly because the Cold War and the advent of nuclear weaponry caused the center of gravity of strategic thinking to shift away from generals and admirals and toward statesmen and social scientists - except for George C. Marshall, our great postwar strategic thinkers were entirely civilian: George Kennan, Dean Acheson, Paul Nitze, Albert Wohlstetter, Herman Kahn, Bernard Brodie, Thomas Schelling, Henry Kissinger, Richard Nixon and so on. The U.S. military reacted to the overriding strategic impetus of potential thermonuclear war by retreating psychologically away from the messy complexity of the world into a surreally compartmentalized military professionalism allegedly devoid of politics, economics and other questions considered routine variables by generals in past ages of warfare.

Boyd's briefs, however pedestrian this very self-selected group may find his military history, argued for that messy complexity properly being at the center of military thought. Moreover, and it's kind of amazing no one has mentioned it, Boyd hammered at how revolutions in science were changing society and were going to ultimately change warfare. I'll buy that there were a few other colonels or flag officers at the time Boyd was briefing who were deep reading military classics in an impressive way but I'm skeptical that the potential impact of complexity theory or Kurt Godel on operational art were frequent topics of discussion before Boyd wandered in with some briefing slides. He's a theorist. About what? Strategy.

Much of Boyd's work is modeling a process of dynamic synthesis, of continual learning and adapting competitively and reaching to fields further and further away from "pure" military concerns in order to generate new insights. That's been criticized in this thread repeatedly as lacking in "originality" ( except at the time, no one else was doing it). That was a feature, not a bug, gentlemen. If the U.S. military then or now was overflowing with creativity, novel problem solvers and was a true "learning organization" - to borrow Dr. Nagl's phrase - then Boyd would fail the "So, what" test.

In my humble opinion, the military, while a good sight better on the "learning" score in 2008 than in 2004, still has a ways to go.

Following this discussion, I was drawn to the theme of a column by Thomas Barnett: To rule high seas, make sea traffic transparent .

Barnett argues that:

One of the main problems in counterterrorism today is that there are so many people and vehicles and so much data and material moving through globalization's myriad networks that it seems virtually impossible to track it all effectively. Nowhere has this problem been more acute than on the high seas.

He writes about how former Adm. Harry Ulrich, then U.S. commander of NATO Naval Forces Europe addressed this problem:

Ulrich began stitching together a network of shore-based sensors ringing the Mediterranean. His naval command then began initial monitoring by tapping into the International Maritime Organization's existing Automated Identification System, transforming NATO's ability to track ship traffic in the Med.

Ulrich told Barnett in an interview in 2007.

"I don't do defense; I do security. When you talk defense, you talk containment and mutually assured destruction. When you talk security, you talk collaboration and networking. This is the future."

This led me to think about the evolving role of our military. Defense has been the mantra since the first family unit organized itself for protection against outside aggressors. As societies evolved so did the role of defense. When nation states find themselves interconnected by trade, culture and mutual collaboration, security becomes vital to ensure that those threads of connectivity remain secure. Much like a police force in a community, defense begins to move beyond guarding the walls to protecting the streets and networks beyond those walls.

To paraphrase both Tom Barnett and Admiral Ulrich the future, is security of those networks and threads of collaboration. Connecting the dots between the discussion at the Small Wars Journal's Discussion blog and Barnett, is that both represent a shift in the thinking of how we define the role of our military in the 21st century. In turn the contributions of those who take the time to share their thoughts on the Small Wars Journal blog adds much to this important subject.

Update: Defense and the National Interest has this post by Robert M. Toguchi an active duty Army colonel who draws a connection between Nassim Taleb's best-selling book The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable and John Boyd's OODA loop theory.

Implications of the Black Swan

Toguchi writes in part:

In the case of responding to a Black Swan initiative, Boyd recommended several approaches to buy time and to regain the strategic initiative. They include: divert attention, use a multiplicity of options, create strategic depth, use rapidity, gain internal harmony, and magnify the adversary’s friction while streamlining one’s own. Using historical examples, Boyd demonstrated how these methods have great applicability to throw any adversary off of his game and to provide the breathing space for the U.S. to employ strategic options.

Reads of the Week

Steve DeAngelis, Enterra Solutions blog captures must read for two posts, one that begins with optimism and the other which sounds a cautionary note.

Steve begins:
In the New Testament, one of the Apostle Paul's letters to the Corinthians says, "For now we see through a glass, darkly." Over recent weeks the glass, it seems, has grown darker. Financial and insurance institutions are failing, the situation in Afghanistan is deteriorating, hurricanes and earthquakes have caused destruction across the globe, Russian/U.S. relations are increasingly tense, and the list goes on. Newsweek columnist Fareed Zakaria, however, reminds us that looking through dark glass can falsely color the world ["The World Isn't So Dark," 13 September 2008].

Looking at the World Optimistically

And in this post Steve warns of letting the innovation advantage that America enjoys slip away.

Before Hurricane Ike threatened oil production and refining facilities in the Gulf of Mexico, oil prices had begun to creep down from their record setting highs. The reason, as even politicians now admit, is that there appears to be a global economic slowdown in work. To help stop the bleeding, the U.S. Government has taken over Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac and seeking $700 billion for a bailout plan following the collapse of Lehman Brothers. Claire Cain Miller, writing in the New York Times last month, reports that at least Silicon Valley entrepreneur is concerned that there is also an innovation slowdown brewing ["Another Voice Warns of an Innovation Slowdown," 31 August 2008].

Another Slowdown to Worry About -- Innovation?

And economist Martin Wolf sounds caution amid the pages of the Financial Times

Desperate times call for desperate measures. But remember, no less, that decisions taken in haste may shape the financial system for a generation. Speed is essential. But it is no less essential to get any new regime right.

No doubt, the crisis has long passed the stage when governments could leave the private sector to save itself, with just a little help from central banks. For the US, the rescue of Bear Stearns was the moment when that option evaporated. But the events of the past two and a half weeks – the rescues of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the failure of Lehman Brothers, the sale of Merrill Lynch, the rescue of AIG, the flight to safety in the markets and the decisions by Morgan Stanley and Goldman Sachs to become regulated bank holding companies – have made a comprehensive solution inevitable.

Paulson’s plan was not a true solution to the crisis


And from Fabius Maximus A solution to our financial crisis

Michael Yon has been reporting from Afghanistan and files this final report of his time with British troops.

Great opening photo, reminiscent of Tommies on the line in past wars, sans the pants!
Death in the Corn: Part III of III

A Shameless Attempt at Self Promotion ;-)

As noted in an earlier post, a NEW BOOK, The John Boyd Roundtable, Debating Science, Strategy, and War has joined the millions of remnants of dead trees that are offered to a curious public every year. So in a shameless plug I heartily recommend this book as a quick primer to introduce you to John Boyd's mind.

I used that post to introduce my colleagues, who in my opinion carried the bulk of what the book is about. My treatise dealt with looking at Boyd's strategy through the prism of military history and true to a historian's craft followed the empirical evidence chain that Boyd used to build his ideas on the foundation of past military achievements.

Our effort could not have been possible without the masterful work done by Lt Col, Frans Osinga of the Netherlands Air Force who wrote, Science, Strategy, and War: The Strategic Theory of John Boyd, and W.F. “Fred” Zimmerman of Nimble Books, who sought out Mark Safranski, with an offer to publish the results of our roundtable.

John Boyd's theory the OODA loop has found traction in fields far from the world of military science.

Chet Richards uses the OODA loop strategy in business applications Boyd at FBEMBA.

And in the world of global supply chains, Shawn at Asia Logistics Wrap has this post, Asia Logistics Wrap: Global IT Deployment.

And politics, where Michael Barone of U.S. News and World Report recently described John McCain's strategy as employment of the OODA Loop. McCain Flies His Campaign Past Obama.
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There are over six billion ways to employ Boyd's strategy, one for every person on the planet, who in order to survive goes through those four simple stages every day.

Again, they are, Observe, then Orient, then make a Decision, then Act, on the data from the previous stages. Success means doing it faster and smarter than the other guy.

EARLY REVIEWS:
Shlok Vaidya:

Michael Tanji:

Pundita

Sam Liles:

Asia Logistics Wrap, A View From The East.

Part of the fun of blogging is meeting others with ideas that cause one to stop and ponder their thoughts. One of those people is Shawn Beilfuss, host of Asia Logistics wrap. Shawn writes from Tokyo as he travels throughout Asia setting up global supply chain systems.

Shawn has recently written several informative posts covering a broad range of subjects related to the global supply chain. His latest is how The Financial Markets and Supply Chain Impacts both goods-oriented and services-oriented supply chains.

He writes in part:

Focusing on the 'financial architecture' of supply chains, basically the biggest worry is operational financing and the degree to which firms have to raise cash via bank loans or through issuing investment vehicles such as corporate shares or corporate bonds.

Moving on to address free trade. Shawn uses a play on words to hammer home his message.

Flipping Asia the Byrd on Fair Trade.

He begins:

The Wall Street Journal published an editorial September 11 regarding legislation strongly supported by primarily two US congressmen to undercut fair trade with Japan, Korea, and China, amongst other countries. This is a follow-up to a more lengthy article on August 11 and inspired a response from the two congressmen, Democratic Senator Byrd of West Virginia and Democratic Senator Sherrod Brown of Ohio, in a letter-to-the-editor. Unfortunately, support for the Byrd Amendment--otherwise known as the Continued Dumping and Subsidy Offset Act--is bipartisan.

Finally as a piece de resistance Shawn examines US Presidential Candidates on Foreign Affairs/Trade with Northeast Asia.

In a detailed post Shawn outlines the positions of each candidate, with supporting links to their stated postitions. He begins:

In terms of foreign affairs and foreign trade, there is never a dull moment in Northeast Asia. This region demands a considerable amount of attention from the US President and his (Senator McCain or Senator Obama) administration across a wide range of topics and issues....

Although the Vice Presidential candidates have attracted much attention, I want to explore first the history of decisions and/or opinions of Senator McCain and Senator Obama in regards to Northeast Asia. The VP picks traditionally follow the President's lead in shaping policy. I will attempt to let the candidates' words and decisions speak for themselves and refrain from conjecture. In the process, I expect to find more material for Senator McCain due to his depth of experience compared with Senator Obama. Where I could not find any significant material, I will state so as 'Not Available'.

This post is one of the most detailed comparisons of what we can expect from the two men running for President of the United States, in regard to their views on Asia. Shawn concludes his post by adding his comments:

In reality, the President, once elected, will be flanked with advisors and policy experts to help solidify the approach towards Northeast Asia. So basically two key questions are required:

1. What philosophy, vision and judgement will the candidates bring to the Presidency?

2. What advisors and experts does the candidate surround themselves with?

As seen with President Bush and 9/11, foreign policy assumptions and strategy can be dramatically turned on its head by events that occur during office. This is where philosophy, vision and judgement come into play--the foundation of a candidate's character and what will drive them in a crisis situation.

Most Americans are aware of Northeast Asia to the degree it impacts or influences their lives. In the bigger picture, the overall region will probably register low on the totem pole of Americans' top priorities, but perhaps it is on the radar if you are one of the following people:
Someone whose company or small business exports to Northeast Asia or imports from Northeast Asia

+ Someone who works for a Japanese or Korean auto manufacturer or parts supplier.

+ Someone with a relative that works or lives in Northeast Asia.

+ Someone who is/was based with the US military in Northeast Asia, or knows someone with such experience.

+ Someone in financial services, supply chain consulting or international law familiar with the complexity of a globalized and integrated economy between the US and Northeast Asia.

+ Someone who lost their job due to a production facility and/or services moved to the Asia region

+ etc, etc, etc...

How the election plays out over the next month and a half will be quite interesting and I look forward to following any new developments in the candidates' positions on Northeast Asia.

Take the time to get to know Shawn and explore his world via his excellent blog.

The John Boyd Roundtable, Debating Science, Strategy, and War

NEW BOOK - The John Boyd Roundtable: Debating Science, Strategy and War

Early this year I was invited by to participate in an online Roundtable on: Science, Strategy and War: The Strategic Therory of John Boyd by Mark Safranski. The roundtable consisted of eight contributors who wrote essays and exchanged discussion comments as we reviewed the book Science, Strategy, and War: The Strategic Theory of John Boyd" by Dr. Frans Osinga.

After the discussion ended I wrote a postscript describing my feelings at being invited to be a part of this discussion.

It was a pleasure to participate in this discussion and read the comments of the other participants. This type of forum, held online holds promise for future discussions. No great decision was reached, and I doubt if anyone's mind was changed by any of the arguments. But everyone gained by reading the thoughts of others on the same subject.
This intersection of views gives purchase to a new tool with which to discuss the revelevant topics of the day. A sort of Junto society if you will, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Junto where in 1727 Benjamin Franklin founded a society to discuss the issues of the day. The Junto's Friday evening meetings were organized around a series of questions that Franklin devised, covering a range of intellectual, personal, business, and community topics. These questions were used as a springboard for discussion and community action. In fact, through the Junto, Franklin promoted such concepts as volunteer fire-fighting clubs, improved security (night watchmen), and a public hospital.
Ever since I began to read blogs and now write my own, I am struck with the similarities of the original intent of Franklin's group and the online blog community today. Another point that todays blog community has with American history is the similar tone and function of the blogs, in relationship to the prevalence of pamplets, extolling the virtues and vices of life under the British. Much has been made by historians, that this grass roots element was insturmental in uplifting the American spirit towards revolution, by the reading of thousands of pamplets in taverns every night.
Today's blogs instead of talking of revolution, are formulating revolutionary thinking, where new ideas are given an intersection to meet, and reasonable men and women can offer thought and comment, in order to find new innovations for the challenges that confront us.

Shortly after we completed the roundtable, the editors Nimble Press of approached us for permission to compile our essays into book form. The result of that effort has been published this week.

http://www.amazon.com/John-Boyd-Roundtable-Debating-Strategy/dp/1934840467/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1221928920&sr=8-1

http://www.nimblebooks.com/wordpress/

I want to introduce the authors begining with our editor, Mark Safranski, followed by Thomas Barnett, who graciously wrote the forward.

Mark Safranski - Teacher, Educational consultant. Adviser, Conversationbase, LLC. Contributor, HNN. Member, Small Wars Council. Blogger, Zenpundit, Chicago Boyz.

Thomas Barnett, Best selling author of "The Pentagons New Map" Blueprint for Action and

soon to be released "Great Powers, America and the World after Bush. "

Daniel H. Abbott is a doctoral candidate at the University ofNebraska-Lincoln. He writes at the blogs www.dreaming5gw.com and www.tdaxp.com. He has also written Revolutionary Strategies in EarlyChristianity: The 4GW Against Rome and the COIN to Save It,published by Nimble Books.

Dr. Chet Richards of Defense and the National Interest, a mathematician and business consultantand was one of Colonel John Boyd's close associates and collaborators.The only authorized briefer of Boyd's Patterns of Conflict, Dr. Richardsoperates two websites dedicated to Boyd's strategic theories, Defense& The National Interest and Chetrichards.com. Dr. Richards is theauthor of numerous books on business and military strategy includingCertain to Win, A Swift Elusive Sword and most recently, If We CanKeep It. Richards is also a retired Colonel in the USAF and wasformerly the Reserve Air Attache in Saudi Arabia.

Lexington Green, is an attorney and a blogger of Chicago Boyz

Shane Deichman is a nuclear physicist and the President/COOof EMC2 LLC. Deichman is the former Science Adviser to MarineCorps Forces-Pacific, was Experiment Operations Director at U.S.Joint Forces Command, and has served as director at scientific andprivate sector institutions such as The New England Complex SystemsInstitute, the Institute for Advanced Technologies in Global Resilienceat Oak Ridge National Laboratory and at Enterra Solutions, LLC. He blogs at Wizards of Oz, Dreaming 5GW.

Adam Elkus - free-lance writer for Defense & The National Interest, The Huffington Post,

Athena Intelligence, Foreign Policy in Focus. Blogger, Rethinking Security, Dreaming 5GW.

Frank Hoffman, a former Marine Officer and national security consultant, is currently a Research Fellow at the Center for Emerging Threats and Opportunities at the Marine Corps Combat Development Command, Quantico, Virginia as well as at The Potomac Institute for Policy Studies; and a Senior Fellow at the Foreign Policy Research Institute's Center on Terrorism, Counter-Terrorism and Homeland Security. Hoffman is the author of Decisive Force: The New American Way of War and a contributing author to the new U.S. Army/Marine Corps Counterinsurgency Manual.

Dr. Frans Osinga - Colonel, Royal Netherlands Air Force. Fighter Pilot. Associate Professor of War Studies at the Netherlands Defense Academy. Formerly, of Nato’s Supreme Allied Command Transformation. Research Fellow, Clingendael Institute of International Relations. Author of Science, Strategy and War:The Strategic Theory of John Boyd.

And finally, your humble scribe, HG, whom by simple deduction is revealed within the pages of yonder book.

Sunday Morning with Coffee and the Blog

In years past Sunday morning was a time to pick up the paper and retreat to a quit place with a cup of coffee to peruse the major events and opinions of the past week, laid out amid the fresh ink and ads of what once had been a tree. Today, the electronic media has largely replaced that method for educating one's self on the events of the day.

The follow articles caught my fancy and I am endorsing them over to all those interested to read and expand one's viewpoint. I don't agree with everyone, but each is excellent in the level of craftsmanship of their arguments.

Leading off:
Mark Safranski of Zenpundit who links a post by Tom Barnett and adds comments that make more sense to the average reader. Barnett on Peters analyzing Putin.

Mark says:

One departure for me from Peters and from Tom ( at least in the sense that he did not mention it) is that I do not see Putin as consumed by anger or temper in his moves against Saakashvili, though Putin may very well have a temper.

And the welcome return of abu mugqawama aka, Andrew Exum, who has returned to the blog he founded to offer these wise words. Back like Jordan, wearin' the 45 .

Nuts, that took long enough. I told Charlie last week that I would be willing to help out on the blog a bit, and she only took five days to send me an invitation. No wonder this blog has gone straight to hell in my absence. (Not really. You guys have been great.)Now don't everyone get all excited. I'm still semi-retired. I just told Charlie that I would blog once a week -- in the first person no less! -- to help out with the load now that Kip has done rode off into the sunset.

And a view of the crisis on Wall Street by Steve DeAngelis;

Amidst all the bad news continuing to emanate from Wall Street and the accusations of corruption, greed and incompetence aimed at corporate executives who permitted it to occur, Americans haven't take much thought about the effect all of it is having on emerging markets around the world. As troubles in the American economy ripple around the globe, fears of a recession or depression are starting to grow and some countries appear on the cusp of economic panic ["Russia Again Halts Stock Trading," by Philip P. Pan and Anthony Faiola, Washington Post, 18 September 2008].
Read it in full:
Wall Street and Emerging Markets

Turning to look at American politics from across the pond, is an essay from economist Martin Wolf in the Financial Times.

He begins:

We are all Americans now. By this I do not merely mean that the leadership of the US shapes the world in which we live. The world we live in is the world the Americans or, more precisely, the Anglo-Americans have made. The US will retain a huge influence. How will it use it? That is the question we should ask about the presidential election. The choice also seems clear: it is between those who expect a world of conflict and those who believe in seeking co-operation.

What the presidential choice could mean

Prolific blogger Fabius Maximus challenges all, to open their minds and explore the issues with him as he posts on the emerging financial crisis gripping the nation.

Slowly a few voices are raised about the pending theft of taxpayer money

What do we know about the financial crisis? What are the key questions?

A vital but widely misunderstood aspect of our financial crisis

Op-Ed column from Thomas Barnett Barnett: America's hard-learned lessons from Iraq


Finally, a short report from Michael Yon on what happened to the French last month in Afghanistan, where he asks: Please read this short dispatch

So grab a second cup of coffee and go back and enjoy your Sunday blog.

Death in Corn-Dispatch Afghanistan

This was just posted by Michael Yon America's brave independent correspondent who for the past five years has covered the war in Iraq and Afghanistan. He reports from FOB Gibraltar, and advises that he will soon become a free ranging correspondent moving freely around the country to report the truth about the progress or lack of it. His report is riveting and places you among those brave lads from 2 Para of the British Army.

It begins:

15 September 2008Helmand Province, Afghanistan

The soldiers are living like animals at a little rat’s nest called FOB Gibraltar. They call it “Gib.” Named after the lynchpin of British naval dominance in the Mediterranean, this cluster of mud huts in the middle of hostile territory is more like Fort Apache, Afghanistan. The British soldiers from C-Company 2 Para live in ugly conditions, fight just about every day, and morale is the best I have seen probably anywhere.

The link to read:

Death in Corn Part I of III

As a companion piece this report by Yon, addresses the scourge of opium production.

The Perfect Evil, Part I of III

NEW UPDATE: Please read Death in the Corn: Part II of III

McCain and the OODA Loop

A-4's over North Vietnam

John McCain being taken prisoner October 26, 1967 North Vietnam

The OODA Loop in Practice

Forty one years ago next month will mark the anniversary of an unexpected consequence that has led John McCain to be where he is today. On October 26, 1967 John McCain was at the controls of an A-4 Skyhawk fighter bomber over North Vietnam. His mission was cut short by a SAM missile, and he spent the next five years as a POW.

A lot has been speculated about McCain's pick of Sarah Palin as his running mate. The articles below offer some reason behind how his mind works. Being a fighter pilot, McCain seemed to channel another lesser know pilot from the Vietnam War who has left an enduring legacy among those who follow military strategy.

Michael Barone of U.S. News and World Report writes.

John McCain was trained as a fighter pilot. In his selection of Sarah Palin, and in his convention and campaigning since, he has shown that he learned an important lesson from his fighter pilot days: He has gotten inside Barack Obama's OODA loop.

That term was the invention of the great fighter pilot and military strategist John Boyd. It's an acronym for Observe, Orient, Decide, Act.

Read the whole story below:

McCain Flies His Campaign Past Obama

And as Barone noted:

I am not the only one to notice that John McCain and Sarah Palin have gotten inside the Obama campaign's (and mainstream media's) OODA loop. Blogger Charlie Martin sprang into pixels on www.americanthinker.com before I could spring into print with this column.

McCain and the OODA Loop

The line of the day, by Barone:

John Boyd would have been a terrific political consultant.

There will be more to come in the next two weeks about John Boyd, and how his strategy transcends all forms of combat, military, business and politics.

It's The Money Stupid!

Trade beads 500 BC

Ancent Chinese Money

Gold Dubloons

$Money$

"It's the money stupid" has been a refrain, made popular by politicians in recent years. I first heard this term decades ago when a history professor in describing the motivation behind the Age of Discovery exclaimed that, "It was the money, that rich white guys sought, when they expanded across the globe." That quote as politically incorrect as it would be interpreted today, is at the core of what makes the world function. Money, the token of value that allows for easy trade transactions, is also the primary tool of peace.

Examples of societies who gravitated to trade and in turn creating methods of currency, stand out in contrast to those societies whom, only relied on total warfare to restock their community pantry.

Robert Wright the author of The Moral Animal, pointed out that societies that cooperated and avoided conflict thrived, where societies that were constantly at war with their neighbors eventually were cut off from all contact and withered. And Jared Diamond, in the Pulitzer Prize-winning Guns, Germs, and Steel (1998), gave further support that societies became less violent when they learned through trade, that those they trade become quasi-kin, with whom conflict needed to be resolved quickly, in order to maintain the all important life sustaining trade.

.

This week I was reminded of the these two books, and the words spoken by that long ago, history professor about it being the "Money" that makes the World what it is today.

The trigger for that recollection, came when I perused Tom Barnett's column this week. He writes to remind us of a future that is linked to interconnection through trade and in turn, "Money." The product of ecomomic interconnectivity is security and the advancement of civilization, by connecting as many people on the planet to each other through mutually beneficial arraignments. Thus, reducing the likely hood of total war conflict.

Tom writes:

Think about what made America the world's most stable and prosperous democracy for almost a century and a half: the middle class ideology that emerged when we knit together our sectional economies into a continental juggernaut following the Civil War. That class consciousness wasn't born when the victorious North imposed itself on the prostrate South but when the ambitious East integrated the frontier West.

Today's globalization echoes American experience as West networks East and East integrates South, reducing global poverty at speeds never before seen in human history. This international liberal trade order, modeled on our "uniting states," is America's greatest gift to the world.

Read the whole article:

Barnett: Finding logical center for grand strategy

Looking back one week the theme of money and the economic activity to make it is the theme of an earlier column by Barnett.

He begins:

With American combat troops now slated to depart Iraq by 2011, our intervention moves into its final phase, with the crucial goal being the expansion of economic opportunity for ordinary citizens.

When international business looks at oil-rich Iraq, it sees plenty of opportunity. What it doesn't see in many instances, despite rising security, are sufficient local counterparties - both private and public - to make the necessary deals happen.

As America moves on, we must leverage that example to lock in our hard-fought security gains with follow-on economic progress in connecting Iraq to globalization's juggernaut.

Read the whole article:

Barnett: Develop Iraq to cut deals with world

Adding more to the theme today of it being "It's the money stupid," are two posts by Steve DeAngelis, Enterra Solutions blog.

Steve writes:

The news coming out of Afghanistan over the past several months has been mostly bad. Violence is up and development progress has been stymied by the security situation. For most Americans, Afghanistan was the right conflict to undertake following the terrorist attacks of 9/11. The fact that progress has been spotty and that the Taliban seems to be gaining strength in their Pakistani sanctuaries has generated calls for an Afghani surge comparable to the one that made a difference in Iraq.

As tense as U.S./Afghan relations might be at the moment, even the Afghans understand the importance of creating a secure environment to foster a better future. Sustainable development requires a stable and secure environment. President of the World Bank Group, Robert B. Zoellick, recently provided his thoughts on how to proceed in Afghanistan ["The Key to Rebuilding Afghanistan," Washington Post, 22 August 2008].

Read the whole story at"

Moving Forward in Afghanistan

And turning to another example of ecomomic progress being the catalsys for permanent change is this post by Steve DeAngelis about North Korea.

North Korea looks to be once again a country in trouble that cannot even feed its own people [see "U.N. says North Korea needs $503 million in food aid," by Ben Blanchard, Washington Post, 2 September 2008]. I have repeatedly asserted that historically economic progress precedes political progress. Impoverished people are much more tolerant of repressive governments if they believe they hold the key to a better economic future.

Anyone that has followed the Beijing Olympic Games has to have been struck by the Western character of the Chinese audience. I don't know if the Chinese government issued grooming and dress standards for ticket holders, but gone were the drab military-style outfits that characterized the awful days of the Cultural Revolution. The Chinese audience was genuinely polite to the achievements of foreign athletes and just as clearly thrilled with the achievements of their own athletes. There was nothing staged about that. Economics has clearly changed China for the better and its citizens are the beneficiaries of most of those changes. That is exactly the kind of changes that the South Koreans would like to see in the North.

Once globalization washes over walls of North Korea's isolation, it will help bring millions of people living there out of poverty. It will do it one job at a time, but it will succeed.

The whole post:

Breaching North Korea's Walls using Economic Development

In reflection of today's links about money, often touted as the root to all evil. I have another take. Money and economic interaction is the essence of kinship that binds people together. Individuals and societies may falter and fail to see this truth for moments in time, but those who recognized this truth will endure.