Four Days and Counting!

In my continuing effort to promote what I consider a must read for understanding America's role in the future, I am linking an update on Thomas Barnett's latest comments about his book, Great Powers. order GP.

Tom begins by explaining the importance of chapter Three, being the center-piece of the book.

The original title (checking my hard copy print-out) was "The American Arc." In an edit with Mark, I changed it to "The American Trajectory," which Neil liked a lot better. Mark came up with the subtitle, "Of Great Men and Great Powers"--a nice tie-back to the book as a whole.
I will say that I put in more effort on this chapter than any other. To me, it was always going to be the centerpiece of the book--as in, buy this logic and the entire book makes sense. In that way, it is very much like the large chapter 3 in PNM, meaning it's the intellectual anchor to the entire book.

If you look back over the blog, you realize how long it took me to write the intro and the five sections. I was going to have a sixth section about the post-Cold War world, but when I got to the end of the Cold War section, I realized that the first two chapters, plus my first two books, have covered that timeframe in great depth, so the repetition here wasn't worth pursuing. There is good repetition (establishing a theme) and there is everything-plus-the-kitchen-sink repetition, and I felt that re-covering the post-Cold War era would be too much.

Commenting from the viewpoint of someone who has been teaching American history to returning adults in pursuit of their BA's and MBA's, I naturally gravitate to seeing the value of this chapter in explaining the "American Brand" on globalization.

The section headers reveal Tom's wicked logic in writing this chapter.

"IN ORDER TO FORM A MORE PERFECT GLOBALIZATION ..." is obviously based on the preamble to the Constitution.

I started the section by stating that there are three fundamental reasons why American grand strategy matters more right now than any other country's and then, true to form (I just did it on the blog), I provided 4 reasons. I caught that one in a subsequent edit.

THE AMERICAN SYSTEM: PROPOSED AND IMPOSED
The early nod to the Brits here, courtesy of Walter Russell Mead, is amended later in the chapter, thanks to my education at the hands of the Dutch in The Hague last year. The Dutch example yields New Amsterdam/New York, and that centerpiece city defines a great deal of the American System's ethos. See Russell Shorto's The Island at the Center of the World, which the Dutch gave me as a going-away present, along with a gorgeous china plate. The Dutch maintain that the Glorious Revolution is oversold.

THE AMERICAN SYSTEM: TESTED AND TRANSFORMED
The track-back here goes to Andrew Jackson.

THE AMERICAN SYSTEM MATURED, THEN EXTRAPOLATED: My original was something along the lines of "The American Global System Proposed, Then Imposed."

A GLOBAL AMERICAN SYSTEM, AN AMERICAN CENTURY

Great bit about the logic of diplomacy and how the neocons forget that history.

I start this section with a quick, overarching history, because I want to then move into the 14 points section where I make direct comparisons between Wilson (proposing) and FDR/Truman (imposing). I just felt that doing the former and then the latter would be too repetitive, so better to do them both comparatively in one fell swoop.

THE GLOBAL AMERICAN SYSTEM BECOMES GLOBALIZATION

I start with a mini-history of the Cold War before turning to my two big characters: Nixon and Reagan.

.... My ode to Nixon and Kissinger uses both of their autobiographies and Margaret MacMillan's book on Nixon meeting Mao. Basic point: Reagan completes Nixon like Truman completed FDR, but without Nixon and FDR, neither Reagan or Truman would have been possible in terms of their global impact.

Adding my two cents, the United States had always been interested in globalization. Even Presidents most can't remember, played an important role. Consider the actions of our 10th. John Tyler who saw the importance of the Asian Pacific region to trade. He was the first President to send a diplomatic mission to China which was able to open consular and commercial relations between China and the United States. This led to having the same trade concessions that the then "Great Power" Britain enjoyed.

Our 11th. James K. Polk, Tyler's successor, had as one of his "Great Measures" the goal to acquire Mexican California. Gold had not been discovered there yet, but Polk wanted California and its magnificent San Francisco Bay as the American gateway to trade with China and other Asian nations. Polk was worried that other nations, such as England or France, might take California if the United States did not act. Can you imagine the quality of life we American's might be enjoying had these two Presidents not had the vision to look to connecting the Pacific region? Sailing east, past Europe and Africa or through the Straits of Magellen would have left us a pawn to other powers.

The actions of Tyler and Polk, helped to trigger our ability to reach the position in history that makes reading Great Powers: America and the World After Bush an important guidebook to our future as a nation.

Read more:

Director's Commentary On Chapter Three »

Chapter four, addresses the coming realignment and as Tom writes, "The race to the bottom of the pyramid."

There was no question in my mind that the realignment chapters would start with economics. This goes back with me all the way to the original Brief (looking at alternative global futures in the 1995-96 timeframe) where I did the six-lenses (econ, pol, tech, soc, enviro, sec). You always start with the economics when you're a determinist like me (the one part of Marx I still like).

The title is clearly a take on C.K. Prahalad's very cool book, The Fortune at the Bottom of the Pyramid. He and I gave dueling briefs at a Highlands Forum (special floating think tank community that convenes several times a year to look at issues for a senior defense office) that wanted to examine the SysAdmin concept (back when DoD 3000 was taking shape and new hires to that policy office were given PNM as source reading). C.K. and I bonded immediately. He told me that PNM was the pol-mil book he would have written if he had gone in the field, and I basically told him the same about his book and development economics, so we were like blood brothers on the spot. I felt the same way when I finally met Martin Wolf in Australia at the regional Davos meet. It's just that cool clicking together that some people get to enjoy. Plus, both C.K. and Martin are just such cool, fun, friendly guys that it's just neat to hang around them for a bit and be able to say you know them.

The section headers:

THE UNDENIABLE TRAJECTORY: DENG CHOSE WISELY
The tagline here was inspired by that old knight at the end of the third Indiana Jones movie who, when Indy asked about the dead guy in the corner, replied, "He chose unwisely." I always loved that line.

THE AMERICAN SYSTEM PERTURBED: 3 BILLION NEW CAPITALISTS REGISTER THEIR DEMAND
The "3 Billion" bit comes from Clyde Prestowitz, whose book I cite earlier in the text. I met him in Australia at the Davos regional meet too, and I found him a fairly prickly porcupine. Smart guy, but very sarcastic and cynical. I seemed like an innocent angel next to him on the two panels we shared.

THE NEW RULES: CHINA BREAKS THE MOLD OR MERELY RECASTS IT?
This section is based on the Baumol et al. book, Good Capitalism, Bad Capitalism, which I highly recommend. The first version of this section was pretty long, and I went whole-hog on the book and gave all sorts of additional reasoning and even a model of sorts regarding evolution of economies.

THE NEW NORMAL: DEFAULTING TO THE BEIJING CONSENSUS
I thought the wordplay here was also neat in a financial sense (like defaulting on loans or debt), especially when linked to China.

I definitely get off on a rant against neo-Marxism here, but it truly represents my passionate rejection of that bullshit analysis. I got fed all manner of this junk in college in the early 1980s. It sucked then and it sucks now. And I especially like sticking it to this crowd during the current financial crisis, because it's one thing to be a fan of capitalism when it hums along and another thing to keep believing in it when it screws up royally. Yes, this ninnies have their moment now, but that's all it is.

THE GLOBAL ACCELERANT: RUSHING TO SETTLE FRONTIERS
Starts with the globalization-replication slide I still use in the brief.
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The peace dividend/grand strategic argument that now serves as the opening section of my brief.
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China gets old before it gets rich.

THE INESCAPABLE REALIGNMENT: REMAPPING FAKE STATES
Could have done some bit here on a new global financial order, but I wanted to keep the book/chapter more focused on the Gap
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Paul Collier's stuff really is brilliant. His Bottom Billion deserved every award it got.
Favorite bit extrapolated by me: only 1% of Core features landlocked, resource-deprived countries, but one-third of Africa suffers this postcolonial fate.

THE BETTER NORMAL: RACING TO THE BOTTOM OF THE PYRAMID
(202-04)
My ode to Prahalad.
(205-06)
Bit on Africa, leveraging the World Bank report. I wrote that in, and then later repurposed as tighter column. Mark cut the original out completely, but like before, I talked him into putting back at least the tighter, column version. So the columns saved two chunks of this chapter.

Read more:

Director's Commentary On Chapter Four: The Economic Realignment: Racing To The Bottom Of The Pyramid

A complete list of Tom's books The Pentagon's New Map, Blueprint For Action, and Great Powers.

Remember only five days before the release. order GP.

After Action Report: Wanat Aftghanistan

Last July I wrote a post about a small battle in the mountains of Eastern Afghanistan between a reinforced platoon size force from Company C, 2nd Battalion, 503rd Infantry Regiment (Airborne), 173rd Airborne Brigade Combat Team"Give me a second. I gotta go kill these guys first." and a large force of Taliban irregulars. Nine American soldiers were killed and 27 wounded out of the 45 men holding the outpost. The story has again broken the surface and thanks to blogger abu mugqawama who writes Learning, even when it hurts and points to Tom Ricks Foreign Policy Blog, where Ricks has two posts analysing what went wrong and how it appears the lessons are being ignored. Shades of Vietnam seem to be surfacing in this mountainous fog of war, where earlier lessons about intelligence and deployment of a small force amid indigenous people who have more loyalty to the enemy than their own government or American forces.

Ricks:

Just before dawn last July 13, Taliban fighters attacked an outpost in eastern Afghanistan being established by U.S. Army soldiers and fought a short, sharp battle that left many American dead -- and many questions. But the U.S. military establishment, I've found after reviewing the Army investigation, dozens of statements given by soldiers to investigators, and interviews with knowledgeable sources, simply has not wanted to confront some bad mistakes on this obscure Afghan battlefield -- especially tragic because, as the interviews make clear, some of the doomed soldiers knew they were headed for potential disaster.

Read more:

Inside an Afghan battle gone wrong: What happened at Wanat? (I)

Ricks continues in part II

There are many potential lessons learned from the deadly battle last summer in the remote Afghan village of Wanat that claimed nine American lives but has yet to be fully investigated and understood by the U.S. military command. One major question I have, based on extensive review of the official record and conversations with multiple sources, is this: Were the U.S. forces correctly mounting a counterinsurgency operation, or not, when they got drawn into the Wanat battle?

Read the rest:

Inside an Afghan battle gone wrong (II): Did we tip our hand to the enemy?

These two intrepid bloggers are are holding the Army accountable by tying blog buoys to the story so that it won't sink beneath the bureaucratic fog into the dark sea of "Can't remember Shit" where logic and horizontal thinking is ignored. For the sake of those who gave their lives and so that others whom we are poised to commit to those barren krags and plunging valleys will not have to utter the last words of Cpl. Matthew Phillips "Give me a second. I gotta go kill these guys first."

UPDATE:

Thomas Ricks continues his report about the battle at Wanat. Here, he highlights shortfalls.

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Another major question arising from the Wanat battle in eastern Afghanistan that left nine American soldiers dead last summer is whether the soldiers in the fight were adequately supported. And a review of the investigation and interviews with key sources suggests there's lots to be concerned about here -- from potentially insufficient troop numbers to conduct this kind of operation to insufficient supplies of basics such as potable water and concertina wire.

This is a touchy subject because it goes directly to the actions -- or lack thereof -- of senior officers. At the same time, if the lesson learned here is that more backup was required, that's easily remedied in future situations, if people speak up, so it is especially worth examination. This issue breaks down into four key questions: Were there enough troops for the task at hand? Did they have what they needed? Was there sufficient aviation support? And was there adequate command attention?

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Basic Logistics 101 was ignored in a report that in many ways would read like an after action report from Vietnam after years of combat.

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Troops: On the face of it, it would appear that there were not enough soldiers assigned for mission.

Supplies: I am told they ran out of concertina wire. Also, they lacked earth-moving machinery big enough to fill 7-foot-high Hesco barriers, so they cut them down to just over 3 feet and then filled them.

Helicopters: I am told that aviation resources were stretched, that the unit had only a handful of AH-64 Apache attack helos, and that those were mainly devoted to escorting CH-47 Chinooks carrying troops and cargo and UH-60 Black Hawks flying around commanders.

Staff and command support: The unit had been there for a year, and the brigade staff appears to have been busy with planning for redeployment and taking care of the RIP, or "relief in place," with the incoming unit. "They were distracted and didn't focus on this particular mission," said one veteran who has looked at the Army investigatory material.

Read more:
Inside an Afghan battle gone wrong (III): Did the troops have what they needed?

In Part IV, Tom Ricks describes how the senior officers in the American Army fell into the same trap that earlier commanders of past American wars tumbled into. Men like George B. McClellan who kept underestimating Robert E. Lee. Colonel George Armstrong Custer, who underestimated the Lakota-Northern Cheyenne, and General William Westmoreland, among others. The list is long and in this case those who were neglectful only caused the death of nine men. One would argue that this battle does not make a war, but it is revealing of hubris, neglect and poor planning by those charged with sending those men to hold a choke point in a valley surrounded by an unseen enemy.

Ricks begins:
It is striking that the Taliban fighters seemed to know exactly what was going on when they attacked the American outpost in Wanat, in eastern Afghanistan last summer, in a fight that the Army's chain of command doesn't seem to want to talk about, but which some of those with knowledge of the incident have encouraged me to look into.

The enemy had a battle plan ready before the Americans came on the scene. According to the military's internal investigation that I reviewed, the company commander was asked at dinner the night before the attack if there were UAVs operating in the area -- an interesting question to hear from an Afghan local.

As the Taliban began the attack, they turned on an irrigation ditch, so the sound of rushing water would cover the noise of their footsteps and whispers. Their attack was well-coordinated, "a lot of fire all at one time," according to the company commander's statement. They got close enough to locate in the dark Claymore mines meant to defend the American position, and gutsy enough to turn around the mines.

Read more:

Inside an Afghan battle gone wrong (IV): Underestimating the enemy

When I read these reports, I am sickened because I recognize accounts that if we change the location and the enemy would be interchangable with many after action reports filed during the Vietnam War. Even modern contempory films have protrayed such scenes. Siege of Firebase Gloria (atheists in a combat ... and the actual event as what happened at FSB Mary Ann.

A Quartet of Reads For Wednesday

Lead off read:


Galrahn the master of Information Dissemination has this thought provoking post up over at United States Naval Institute Blog, where he begins by writing.


In the provocative spirit of boyish charms and youthful inexperience, allow me to suggest an idea that is sure to boil your blood and sizzle your sailor soul. The Iowa class battleship is NOT the greatest battleship in American naval history.

Heresy you say? To many Americans, naval history began the day Japan attacked Pearl Harbor. Most Americans know little about Lord Nelson and to many worldly American travelers, Trafalgar is a square in London where the protesters demonstrate. Stephen Decatur has become a footnote in American history, even though forty-six communities in the United States have been named after him. History has a way of shaping perceptions, and the emphasis of WWII history in the American education system explains why the term battleship calls forth the image posted on the right in our minds.


You have to read the whole article to realize his cool logic. Then take a few moments to check out the great naval strategists he channels, Julian Corbett, Alfred Thayer Mahan and 17th century Secretary to the British Admiralty, Samuel Pepys to support his argument.


Next up is Tom Ricks Foreign Policy Blog and a post Know your world, where he offers a great link to understanding our world.


This flat-out fascinating lecture (with great graphics) on global demography may seem only tangentially related to national security. But remember that the people are one of the three elements in the secondary Clausewitizian trinity, the other two being the military and the state. And spending a few minutes with Hans Rosling's lecture will almost certainly change the way you look at trends in the peopling of the globe. Who knew that Vietnam and the United States now have about the same family sizes and life expectancies?

And lastly, this from Steve DeAngelis of Enterra Solutions who has these two posts, one brimming with optimism, Learning from Nature and another troubling in it's message. Schoolgirls in Afghanistan

A Grand Strategist's Advice to The President.

Thomas Barnett spent the past week in Washington D.C. during the inauguration. He twittered and blogged The long and winding road about his experiences as he joined the festivities in between meetings with visiting representatives from the Kurdish province of Iraq.

Tom's column this week offers up some free advice for President Obama about the importance of continuing Americas leadership in globalization.

Dour experts tell us that this is no longer our world. America is in decline, they say, and the rest of the world has caught up to us. Wars may be won, but the peace belongs to others -- we just have to get used to it.

Nothing could be further from the truth.

This is a world of our making. Neither accident nor providence, this "flat world" is fundamentally our design -- a template of networks spreading, economies integrating, and states uniting. It's hyper-competitive because that's our natural habitat; we don't know how to make it any other way.

In this world we find no strangers, just younger versions of ourselves who are prone to all the same sins and manias we once suffered, even as they teach us magnificent new ways to secure our tightly shared future. We must neither fear nor dismiss them, but encourage their pursuit of happiness. In doing so, we'll find their main goal is one very familiar to us -- the attainment of a middle-class existence.

Barnett closes with this advise for President Obama.

That the same is now true for this globalization-of-our-making should not cause us despair. We have been down this path before, taming both a wilderness and the market forces we later unleashed upon its settled lands. We are simply blessed today by a global economy whose expansion has already surpassed all past hopes and dreams for a connected, super empowered world. So many frontiers, so little time.

President Obama's opportunity to -- as he has so often put it -- "turn the page" could not be greater, for history rarely offers such made-to-order turning points. America has done a world of good to get humanity to the point where wars are disappearing and networks are proliferating. As long as we can remember what got us here, trust me, we'll recognize the shape of things to come.


Read the article.
Barnett: Obama must recognize and renew U.S. lead on globalization

Word Cloud and the Presidents.

I have recently joined the micro blogging service Twitter, and although I am just beginning to scratch the surface of it's benefits, rewards have come with every fellow twitter who signs on to follow me. Today's email brought a message that led me to return the request and follow Lewis Shepherd who hosts Shepherdspi. When I visited his blog I found this recent post, 2.0 View of President Obama’s Inaugural Speech.

A word-cloud produced (quickly) by the Los Angeles Times. Befiitting the social-media aspect, the paper published it on Twitter immediately; don’t know if it will even be published as a graphic in the day-old “newspaper” printed and distributed tomorrow. The New York Times, meanwhile, has the same for every previous presidential inaugural address as well - interesting to scroll back and forth to notice trends in presidential intentions.

The NYT's link was of particular interest to me and really got my historical juices flowing. It had produced a word-cloud for every inaugural address from Washington to Obama.

Here a brief overview of what was the most used words for a few of our most noted leaders.

Washingon.........Government, public, country, duty, citizen.

Jefferson............Government, principle, citizen, fellow, man,

Madison..............Nation, public, country, right, war.

Jackson...............Public, government, power, people.

Lincoln................Constitution, law, union, people, government.

Lincoln................War, god, offense, nation, union.

T. Roosevelt.......Nation, life, people, power, great.

F.D. Roosevelt...National, people, help, leadership.

FDR-1941..........Nation, people, spirit, life, democracy.

Kennedy.............Side, world, nation, power, pledge.

Reagan................Government, American, beleive, world.

Reagan 2nd........Government, people world, American.

Clinton................World, America, American, people.

Bush 2001.........Nation, America, citizen.

Obama...............Nation, America, people.

Take the time to visit this interesting link and make yourself familiar with the most frequent words used by our Presidents in their inaugural addresses. Note the commonality of words, that re-appear every four years to offer hope that they understood the respondsiblity placed upon then to guide our nation.

Glossary for Great Powers: America and the World After Bush

As part of the run up to the release of Great Powers: America and the World After Bush by Thomas P.M. Barnett (Hardcover - Feb 5, 2009). I have enlisted myself, and my blog as a squire in his quest to bring America a vision and a course setting towards a more connected and safer world.

Over the next three weeks, I will be cross posting material from Tom's blog, that will help to prepare the ground for the engagement of words that Great Powers will inspire. Make yourselves ready my fellow thinkers; read, ponder and reason with all the powers of your critical minds as we prepare to carry this message afar.

Glossary from Great Powers

A Glossary of terms from

GREAT POWERS: America and the World After Bush
By Thomas P. M. Barnett

Asymmetrical Warfare - A conflict between two foes of vastly different capabilities. After the Red Army dissolved in the 1990s, the U.S. military knew it was basically unbeatable, especially in a straight-up fight. But that meant that much smaller opponents would seek to negate its strengths by exploiting its weaknesses, by being clever and "dirty" in combat. On 9/11, America got a real dose of what asymmetrical warfare is going to be like in the twenty-first century.

Big Bang - Refers to the strategy (alas, seldom articulated) of the Bush administration to trigger widespread political, social, economic, and ultimately security change in the Middle East through the initial spark caused by the toppling of Saddam Hussein's regime in Iraq and the hoped-for emergence of a truly market-based, democratic Arab state. Thus, the Big Bang aimed primarily for a demonstration effect, but likewise was also a direct, in-your-face attempt by the Bush administration to shake things up in the stagnant Middle East, where decades of diplomacy and military crisis response by outside forces (primarily the United States) had accomplished basically nothing. The implied threat of the Big Bang was "We're not leaving the region until the region truly joins the global economy in a broadband fashion, leading to political pluralism domestically." The Big Bang was a bold strategic move by Bush, one that I supported. All terrorism is local, so either deal with that or resort to firewalling America off from the outside world.

Connectivity - The enormous changes being brought on by the information revolution, including the emerging financial, technological, and logistical architecture of the global economy (i.e., the movement of money, services accompanied by content, and people and materials). During the boom times of the 1990s, many thought that advances in communications such as the Internet and mobile phones would trump all, erasing the business cycle, erasing national borders, erasing the very utility of the state in managing a global security order that seemed more virtual than real, but 9/11 proved differently. That connectivity, while a profoundly transforming force, could not by itself maintain global security, primarily because a substantial rise in connectivity between any nation and the outside world typically leads to a host of tumultuous reactions, including heightened nationalism and religiosity.

Department of Everything Else - A Back-to-the-Future proposal (first offered in Blueprint for Action) to return to the past structure when the Army was the Department of War and the Navy was the "Department of Peace" (especially business continuity). This department would fill the gap between the current Departments of Defense and State, engaging in unconventional pursuits such as nation building, disaster relief, and counterinsurgency. In many ways, it could be a virtual department, bringing together various resources from the government, nongovernmental organization, and business sectors, along with foreign governments and the linchpin SysAdmin force. Compare the virtual department with the way movie companies work, coming together to make a film, then dissolving. Such a virtual department would work an Iraq one way and a Sudan very differently. In contrast with the Department of Homeland Security, our first and greatest strategic error in the long war on terror, the Department of Everything Else would realize that our American networks are only as secure as every network they are connected to. Such a department would feature many more civilian and older, wiser roles when compared with the current Defense Department.

Disconnectedness - In this century, it is disconnectedness that defines danger. Disconnectedness allows bad actors to flourish by keeping entire societies detached from the global community and under their dictatorial control, or in the case of failed states, it allows dangerous transnational actors to exploit the resulting chaos to their own dangerous ends. Eradicating disconnectedness is the defining security task of our age, as well as a supreme moral cause in the cases of those who suffer it against their will. Just as important, however, by expanding the connectivity of globalization, we increase peace and prosperity planet-wide.

Frontier Integration - Globalization has entered into an extended period of frontier integration--as in economic and network integration of previously off-grid or poorly connected societies. The historical example par excellence is the settling and taming of the American West after the Civil War. The chief activities are infrastructure building, the extension of social networks and rule of law, state building, the generation of permanent and pervasive security, the squelching of insurgencies and criminal mafias, and the formal marketization of existing and new economic activities--to include both "exploiting" the labor of and selling to the so-called bottom-of-the-pyramid population. America's frontier integration was continental-sized, involving millions. Today's project targets the globe's entire Gap, involving billions in so-called emerging or frontier economies. It also involves the impoverished rural regions of New Core pillars such as China and India. In general, neither Americans nor Europeans will lead this frontier integration effort. We price out too high. Instead, the frontier integrators of the age will be mostly Asians, who know better how to jump-start development in these harsher environments. America's role can be to mentor and enable the integrators, helping especially on security, or we can sit the whole thing out and hope for the best in terms of resulting political outcomes.

Functioning Core - Those parts of the world that are actively integrating their national economies into a global economy and that adhere to globalization's emerging security rule set. The Functioning Core at present consists of North America, Europe both "old" and "new," Russia, Japan and South Korea, China (although the interior far less so), India (in a pock-marked sense), Australia and New Zealand, South Africa, and the ABCs of South America (Argentina, Brazil, and Chile). That is roughly 4 billion out of a global population of more than 6 billion. The Functioning Core can be subdivided into the Old Core, anchored by America, Europe, and Japan; and the New Core, whose leading pillars are China, India, Brazil, and Russia. There is no substantial threat of intra-Core war among these great powers. However, there remain competing rule sets regarding what constitutes proper Core interventions inside the Gap, as recently indicated by Russia's contested intervention in Georgia's ongoing civil strife.

Globalization - The worldwide integration and increasing flows of trade, capital, ideas, and people. Until 9/11, the U.S. government tended to identify globalization primarily as an economic rule set, but thanks to the long war against violent extremism, we now understand that it likewise demands the clear enunciation and enforcement of a security rule set as well.

Grand Strategy - As far as a world power like America is concerned, a grand strategy involves first imagining some future world order within which our nation's standing, prosperity, and security are significantly enhanced, and then plotting and maintaining a course to that desired end while employing--to the fullest extent possible--all elements of our nation's power toward generating those conditions. Naturally, such grand goals typically take decades to achieve, thus the importance of having a continuous supply of grand thinkers able to maintain strategic focus.

Leviathan - The U.S. military's warfighting capacity and the high-performance combat troops, weapon systems, aircraft, armor, and ships associated with all-out war against traditionally defined opponents (i.e., other great-power militaries). This is the force America created to defend the West against the Soviet threat, now transformed from its industrial-era roots to its information-age capacity for high-speed, high-lethality, and high-precision major combat operations. The Leviathan force is without peer in the world today, and--as such--frequently finds itself fighting shorter and easier wars. This "overmatch" means, however, that current and future enemies in the long war on violent extremism will largely seek to avoid triggering the Leviathan's employment, preferring to wage asymmetrical war against the United States, focusing on its economic interests and citizenry. The Leviathan rules the "first half" of war, but it is often ill suited, by design and temperament, to the "second half" of peace, to include postconflict stabilization-and-reconstruction operations and counterinsurgency campaigns. It is thus counterposed to the System Administrators force.

Non-Integrated Gap - Regions of the world that are largely disconnected from the global economy and the rule sets that define its stability. Today, the Non-Integrated Gap is made up of the Caribbean Rim, Andean South America, virtually all of Africa, the Caucasus, Central Asia, the Middle East, and most of the Southeast Asian littoral. These regions constitute globalization's "ozone hole," where connectivity remains thin or absent in far too many cases. Of course, each region contains some countries that are very Core-like in their attributes (just as there are Gap-like pockets throughout the Core defined primarily by poverty), but these are like mansions in an otherwise seedy neighborhood, and as such are trapped by these larger Gap-defining circumstances.

Rule Set - A collection of rules (both formal and informal) that delineates how some activity normally unfolds. The Pentagon's New Map explores the new rule sets concerning conflict and violence in international affairs--or under what conditions governments decide it makes sense to switch from the rule set that defines peace to the rule set that defines war. The events of 9/11 shocked the Pentagon and the rest of the world into the realization that we needed a new rule set concerning war and peace, one that replaces the old rule set that governed America's Cold War with the Soviet Union. The book explained how the new rule set will actually work in the years ahead, not just from America's perspective but from an international one.

Rule-set Reset - When a crisis triggers your realization that your world is woefully lacking certain types of rules, you start making up those new rules with a vengeance (e.g., the Patriot Act and the doctrine of preemption following 9/11). Such a rule-set reset can be a very good thing. But it can also be a very dangerous time, because in your rush to fill in all the rule-set gaps, your cure may end up being worse than your disease. The world is currently engaged in such a reset concerning international financial flows, in response to America's subprime crisis.

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System Administrators (SysAdmin) - The "second half" blended force that wages the peace after the Leviathan force has successfully waged war. Therefore, it is a force optimized for such categories of operations as "stability and support operations" (SASO), postconflict stabilization and reconstruction operations, "humanitarian assistance/disaster relief" (HA/DR), and any and all operations associated with low-intensity conflict (LIC), counterinsurgency operations (COIN), and small-scale crisis response. Beyond such military-intensive activities, the SysAdmin force likewise provides civil security with its police component, as well as civilian personnel with expertise in rebuilding networks, infrastructure, and social and political institutions. While the core security and logistical capabilities are derived from uniformed military components, the SysAdmin force is fundamentally envisioned as a standing capacity for interagency (i.e., among various U.S. federal agencies) and international collaboration in nation-building, meaning that both the SysAdmin force and function end up being more civilian than uniform in composition, more government-wide than just Defense Department, more rest-of-the-world than just the United States, and more private-sector-invested than public-sector-funded.

System Perturbation- A system-level definition of crisis and instability in the age of globalization; a new ordering principle that has already begun to transform the military and U.S. security policy; also a particular event that forces a country or region to rethink everything. The terrorist attacks of 9/11 served as the first great "existence proof" for this concept, but there have been and will be others over time. Some are purposeful, like the Bush administration's Big Bang strategy of fomenting political change in the Middle East, but others will be accidents, like the Asian tsunamis of December 2004, or America's recent financial crises.

From GREAT POWERS, to be published by G. P. Putnam's on February 5, 2009.

Barnett Offers a Gold Mine of Grand Strategy Nuggets

I am proud to claim that I have been an unabashed supporter of Thomas Barnett and his vision of a grand strategy to achieve a better future for our children. This past week a press release announced the publication of Barnett's third and most important book to date. I have posted the entire release with emphasis on some key points.

Great Powers press release »

GREAT POWERS
By Thomas P.M. Barnett
G.P. Putnam's Sons
Pub Date: February 5, 2009

GREAT POWERS:
America and the World After Bush
By
Thomas P. M. Barnett
"The Pentagon's New Map is easily the most influential book of our time. I never dreamed that a single book would change my outlook on the United States' role in world affairs, but one has."
- Thomas Roeser, Chicago Sun-Times

"Thomas Barnett is one of the most thoughtful and original thinkers that this generation of national security analysts has produced."
- John Petersen, President, The Arlington Institute

"[Great Powers] stands out for its in-depth analysis, historical acuity and delightfully witty prose."
- Kirkus Reviews, Starred Review

Lately, we are being told this is no longer our world. America is in decline. Wars may be won, but the peace belongs to others and we have no choice but to get used to it. Others suggest it is not so much that America is in decline as that the rest of the world has caught up to us and, once again, the only thing we can do is get used to it. Taken for granted in each case is that the trends unleashed in the world today are unmanageable and chaotic and constitute a threat to our future. New York Times bestselling author and national security strategist Thomas P. M. Barnett sees things differently. "Globalization as it exists today was built by America; we're still its leader," says Barnett. "Further, the trends unleashed in this world of our making--a world modeled on our system of networks spreading, economies integrating, and states uniting--should be viewed not with foreboding but with a sense of possibilities for the future providing we have the will and strategic imagination to act in the present."

In GREAT POWERS: America and the World After Bush (G.P. Putnam's Sons; February 5, 2009; $29.95), Barnett--who has been described as "the most influential defense intellectual writing these days (The Washington Post)" and "one of the most important strategic thinkers of our time (U.S. News.com)"--presents a remarkable analysis of America and the world in the post-Bush era. He also offers a visionary grand strategy for how to proceed as we stand poised on the verge of what is arguably the greatest achievement of all time: the peaceful knitting together of a truly integrated global economy and the establishment of a truly centering middle class. Barnett believes it's up to America to shape and redefine what comes next. Now he offers a roadmap to exactly what that is and how we do it.

As our globalized system continues processing its worst financial crisis ever, Barnett sees the next few years as being the first true test of globalization. He writes, "President Barack Obama encounters an international order suffering more deep-seated strain than at any time since the Great Depression. If there was any remaining doubt that the world's great powers either all swim or sink together in this interconnected global economy, then this recent contagion has erased it. Globalization is no longer a national choice but a global condition, and at this seminal moment in history it demands from its creator renewed--and renewing--leadership. President Obama's opportunity to--as he often put it--'turn the page' could not be greater, for history rarely offers such made-to-order turning points." However Barnett also points out that the choices we've made over the past eight years have shifted the global landscape in ways that simply cannot be reversed with a new American president or even new American policies. It's not a matter simply of a course correction, but of a fundamental recalibration, and the opportunities it presents are far greater than the perils. GREAT POWERS gives us a clear understanding of both, and shows us not only how the world is now--but how it will be.
Barnett's theories and arguments are non-partisan. His supporters are both Republicans and Democrats, liberals and conservatives. Simply, he provides a way to frame the debate on how to make globalization truly global, retain great-power peace, and defeat whatever antiglobalization insurgencies may appear in the decades ahead. Above all he shows us that although there are many great powers at work in this complex world, it is America that has the greatest opportunity to extend or to sabotage globalization's stunning advances around the planet.

Highlights of GREAT POWERS include:

A look at how America went off the rails during the eight years of the Bush administration. "The Seven Deadly Sins of Bush-Cheney" cited by Barnett are Lust, leading to the quest for primacy; Anger, leading to the demonization of enemies; Greed, leading to the concentration of war powers; Pride, leading to avoidable postwar failures; Envy, leading to the misguided redirect on Iran; Sloth, leading to the U.S. military finally asserting command; and Gluttony, leading to strategic overhang cynically foisted on the next president. ("Strategic Overhang" is the time it will take successive administrations to "burn off" the "weight" of long-pursued interventions with deeply sunk costs.) Barnett shows that facing up to these sins and the problems they have caused is essential to America's successful reengagement with a world left more unnerved by our government's counterterrorism strategy than it was ever perturbed by actual terrorists.
Barnett also looks at what the Bush-Cheney administration did right including its handling of a provocatively nationalistic government in Taipei; China's rise in general; Vladimir Putin's consolidation of power in Russia and that country's reemergence as a player to be reckoned with in international affairs; steering the U.S. through rough waters in global trade without succumbing to congressional or popular pressure for trade protectionism; and displaying a real strategic imagination regarding key development issues (outside its failed reconstruction efforts in Afghanistan and Iraq).

A "Twelve-Step Recovery Program For American Grand Strategy." Barnett argues that our recovery doesn't stop with looking at what we did wrong. Fences need mending and relationships require repair. Drawing on the best traditions of self-help programs he describes the basic steps America needs to take to break out of the angry isolation in which it has remained somewhat trapped for the past eight years, regain some control over its destiny, and realign its as yet unstated grand strategy to a world transforming at an incredible speed.
A journey through America's two great historical arcs: the creation, transformation, and taming of the United States from 1776 to the start of the twentieth century; and the subsequent projection of that "states uniting" model upon the global landscape, beginning with the administration of Theodore Roosevelt. In no uncertain terms Barnett shows that globalization as it exists today is an environment of our creating--the result of a conscious grand strategy pursued from the earliest days of our republic right through Bush's decision to invade Iraq. "What we've done is spread the same competitive spirit that drove our rise to other great powers now seeking to replicate that rise," says Barnett. "The trick will be in having the patience to steer the emergence of this global middle class while allowing the political freedoms of the rising great powers time to catch up with the economic freedoms they're beginning to attain."The core of GREAT POWERS consists of a chapter devoted to each of the five major elements of U.S. grand strategy. In each domain Barnett looks at the most important long-term trend for making globalization truly global in a post-9/11 world. He then explores a serious recent disruption that prompted new thinking on our part or a retrenchment from our grand strategic vision; offers a sense of the new rules that seemed to emerge as a result of the disruption; and outlines the "new normal" into which we slowly settled as the Bush years wound down. Jumping back outside the U.S. he then shows what happened to the long-term trend as America headed off on its own toward its "new normal." Finally, he identifies the major realignment we need to make to bring us back in line with the world of our creating and then lays out the global development we should be crafting over the next five years.

The five major elements explored in this core section are:

Economic - Barnett starts with what he considers the most profound economic dynamic of the last half-century: China's historic reemergence as a worldwide market force. He looks at the impact on the American system of 3 billion new capitalists (in China, Brazil, Russia, India, and all the smaller emerging markets); unfounded fears in the West that China's stunning rise challenges the notion that economic growth triggers democracy; and the extent to which China's economy increasingly mirrors our own. He delves into the implications of Wall Street's latest meltdown and what it says about globalization's interdependency. And he shows how rising Asia could become America's primary strategic asset in making globalization truly global. Says Barnett, "You want to 'drain the swamp' preemptively and foreclose opportunities for terrorists in the backwaters of the earth? If you really want to win this long war then do whatever it takes to make globalization go faster because jobs are the only exit strategy."

Diplomatic - Barnett explores the two main problems in current American grand strategy: our unreasonable expectation for immediate success (democracy), and our obsession with terrorists. He looks at the impact of America's big bang in the Persian Gulf (the toppling of Saddam); how we dropped the ball with Iran by fixating on its peril rather than its promise; and the need to "socialize" the Middle East problem by attracting Eastern military powers into the mix there as quickly as possible. He reflects on the extent to which a universe of players have succeeded in containing America's use of power internationally over the past several years (as well as the challenges the Obama administration will face in reversing that trend); and the implications of China's "soft-power" approach on the world stage. Finally, he explains why we need to build a team of rivals made up of the world's emerging powers who are better suited to the nation building/economy-connecting role than we are.

Security - Barnett begins by looking at the U.S. military's post-Vietnam "overwhelming force" mindset and how it was largely unprepared for what came next--the rough-and-tumble politics of wars fought within the context of everything else. (In Iraq "everything else" included the economic forces at work as globalization crept into the region as well as the social blowback that penetration was creating.) He examines the impact of the so-called "lost year" in Iraq (defined by most observers as the period running from early May 2003, following President Bush's declaration of "mission accomplished," through the explosion of insurgency violence in Fallujah the following April); and he reflects on the extraordinary paradigm shifts that have occurred within the military since then. Barnett goes on to explore the impact of the privatization of American foreign policy, and the inescapable realignment we now face: the reblending of diplomacy, defense and development in the long war against violent extremism. He wraps up this chapter by looking at what comes next in the long war: a shift in the center of gravity to Central Asia or Africa.

Networks - Here the author begins by looking at globalization's ability to create superempowered individuals and a shallower but wider pool of enemies. Barnett writes, "While emerging powers are increasingly integrated economically and great power war remains off the table thanks to nuclear weapons, every pirate and smuggler and druggie and transnational terrorist/criminal now registers on our radar." He looks at how our rules in the marketplace are shifting from "know your customer" to "know your supply chain," examines the particularly worrisome vulnerabilities of the global food trade, and explores the search for strategic deterrence in the age of globalization. Barnett also delves into the extraordinary changes that have occurred in infrastructure development in emerging and developing economies, and the opportunities these changes present for Western companies. He concludes by looking at our approach to post-conflict/post-disaster situations in areas of the world largely disconnected from the global economy, and argues for the need to create a "SysAdmin-industrial complex" that is just as hungry for these types of situations as our long-standing military-industrial complex is for "big war."

Strategic Social Issues - Barnett begins by looking at our social response to 9/11; the response of traditional, off-the-grid, patriarchal cultures (in this case the Arab world) to the incursions of the global economy; and what each of these can teach us about managing the loss of identity. He reflects on the disruptions caused by Hurricane Katrina and the ways in which the fight against "global warming" became the counternarrative to President Bush's "global war on terror." (Barnett also explores the dangers of the former becoming as overhyped as the latter.) Other issues raised in this final realignment chapter include the need to link our middle-class ideology to globalization's emerging middle-class (rather than thinking in terms of erecting walls to shut out "unfair" competition); why we should consider a global economy no longer so dominated by America our greatest achievement rather than a signal of a "post-American age"; the challenges of continued economic growth in an environment of dwindling resources; the emerging competition of world religions; and the need to resurrect a progressive agenda focused on "cleaning up" globalization's many dark corners.

Barnett concludes GREAT POWERS by reminding us that although the future does have a way of happening--that it is inexorable--many of the twenty-first century's most important outcomes will be determined by the choices we make over the next dozen years. He writes, "The American System blossomed into an international liberal trade order, which in turn gave birth to the globalization we enjoy today. These are the United States' most powerful acts of creation. This world-transforming legacy created the twenty-first century environment, one marked by more pervasive poverty reduction, wealth creation, technological advance and--most important--stabilizing peace than any previous era in human history. That legacy is worth preserving, defending, and expanding to its ultimate height--a globalization made truly global."

About the Author:Thomas P. M. Barnett is a strategic planner who has worked in national security affairs since the end of the Cold War. He is the Senior Managing Director of Enterra Solutions, LLC, which advises governments on economic development, and currently serves as a Distinguished Strategist at the Oak Ridge Center for Advanced Studies at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory, and as a Visiting Scholar at the Howard W. Baker Center at the University of Tennessee. Named as "the strategist" in Esquire's first-ever "Best and Brightest" issue in December of 2002, he has been a Contributing Editor for the magazine, as well as a weekly opinion columnist for the Scripps Howard News Service since 2005.

Barnett has begun to offer excerpts from this soon to be released book on his popular blog that he has maintained since first coming onto the scene with his best selling The Pentagon's New Map and Blueprint For Action .

Here is a taste of one of my favorite excerpts.

The American Trajectory

"The harsh truth is that most developing countries that embrace markets and globalization do so as single-party states. Sure, many feature a marginal opposition party, just as the Harlem Globetrotters always play the Washington Generals, but they're still single-party states. Mexico was like this for decades, as were South Korea and Japan.

Once economic development matured enough, a real balance took hold, and power started shifting back and forth between parties. Malaysia heads for the same tipping point today.
Americans, especially experts and politicians, typically view these regimes with a certain disdain, wondering how a public can put up with a manipulative political system where elites decide who runs for high office and only a tiny fraction of the population has any real influence. We demand more competition, more suffrage, and freer elections--now!

But take a trip back with me to the beginnings of our own country, and let me try to convince you that America needs to summon more patience with such developments, because we often demand of others what we certainly didn't have ourselves as we struggled to our feet as a nation. .

Remember this: Our country was born of revolution, including a nasty guerrilla war waged by a ragtag collection of militias against the most powerful military in the world at that time. We fought dirty, even launching a surprise attack during a religious holiday. We mercilessly persecuted fellow citizens who sided with the occupational authority. The enemy branded our military leader a terrorist. In fact, its parliament was the first in history to use such terminology to describe our violent attacks against its commerce. And true to our violent extremism, we "elected" this rebel military leader our first president in 1789. I use the word "elected" loosely, because he essentially ran unopposed--by design.

Less than 2 percent of our country's population was actually able to cast votes, as roughly half of the states chose electors in their legislatures--rich landowning patricians selecting one of their own. This rebel leader ran unopposed again for reelection three years later in 1792. When the general finally stepped down in 1797, an outcome by no means certain, he was replaced by another revolutionary leader--an unlovable enforcer to whom the revolutionary elite had delegated a number of unsavory jobs over the years. Like the general, this radical lawyer wasn't associated with an organized party as such. His revolutionary credentials were beyond reproach.
Our third president, one of the world's most notorious radical ideologues, ushered in a period of single-party rule in 1800. During that election, only six of sixteen states actually allowed the "people"--white men who met certain qualifications--to vote in the presidential race. Certain racial groups were denied the right to vote, as were women.

This one-party rule, subsequently dubbed the Era of Good Feelings, extended almost a quarter-century, getting so stale at one point that an incumbent president ran unopposed.
Finally, a whopping forty-eight years after we issued our famous Declaration of Independence declaring all men equal, we conducted a presidential election in which three-quarters of the states let their citizens vote directly for electors.

Four years later, in 1828, America finally saw an "outsider," meaning someone not from the first revolutionary generation or its immediate progeny, win the White House. Naturally, he was another war hero, who, over his eight years in office, brutalized his political opponents so much that they mockingly dubbed him "King Andrew."
The "king" then displayed the Putinesque temerity to handpick his successor, earning him the equivalent of a "third term."

This was the first half-century of American political history.

It took us 89 years to free the slaves and 189 years to guarantee African-Americans the right to vote.

Women waited 144 years before earning suffrage.

If a mature, multiparty democracy was so darn easy, everybody would have one. "(pp. 73-75)

Read the whole post: Excerpts from Great Powers, part 1

And part 2 follows with these headings.

Why our grand strategy needs to be realigned with the world.

Thank God for the Whiz Kids of Wall Street

The different world America sees

A world eager to herald America's return

What comes next in the "long war"

Connectivity and the global middle-class

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The practical challenge America faces

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Read the whole post at Excerpts from Great Powers, part 2

And as an added bonus here is a link to the deleted chapters courtesy of Tom's webmaster Sean

GP: the lost chapters

I urge everyone to spend a couple of sawbucks to purchase this important read. It will inspire you as much as it will inform you.

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Buy it here: Great Powers

A Brief Lesson in Geography

Steve DeAngelis of Enterra Solutions has an interesting post discussing the importance of Geography in determining a nations destiny. Steve's post has a haunting ring of what happens when a country spurns it's destiny when it choses to ignore it's geographic advantages and wall itself off from interaction with the greater world.

Steve begins:

We have all heard someone say, "The world is getting smaller." The fact that we can witness events happening around the world in real-time or talk with someone half-way around the world using the Internet or travel to a distant location in less than a day adds credence to the proposition that the world is getting smaller. The U.S. Navy, however, has for years insisted that when it comes to moving goods or forces around the globe, geography still matters and the world remains a rather large sphere. A new book entitled Europe Between the Oceans by Barry Cunliffe highlights the notion that geography still matters. He insists, in fact, that it may be the most important thing that mattered in the past. Benjamin Schwarz wrote a glowing review of Cunliffe's book in The Atlantic ["Geography is Destiny," December 2008]. Schwarz begins by admitting that books concerning archaeology are seldom riveting.

What struck a chord for me as a historian was the unintended comparison between the two siamese's continents, Europe and Asia and how they exploited, or chose not to exploit their geographic advantages.

In an earlier post A String of 600 Year Old Pearls, I wrote about China's recent foray into the blue waters of the Indian Ocean, as it begins to excerpt some modum of blue water naval power. Six hundred years ago China was poised to dominate the oceans of the world. There seafaring technology was far advanced of any of their rivals. A teutonic shift in strategy led them to suspend that advance and wall themselves off from the sea within a decade of the death of the Emperor Yongle.

The result was to slowly decay, as emerging European naval powers expanded to the seven seas. In the four centuries that followed, China held her internal power, selling off her seed corn and aquiring vast stores of treasures in Spanish gold and silver. She became fat and bloated, unable to project her great power beyond her own borders. The plum was too ripe not to pick and in the 19th century, China went within the span of a century, from one of the richest nations to a beggar state, as her treasury was drained away by those who had taken advantage of the geography to sap her bloated dormint empire, First Opium War and Second Opium War.

Read the whole post: The Importance of Geography.

A String of 600 Year Old Pearls

Zheng He tablet Sri Lanka 1409

15th century Chinese ship compared to Santa Maria.

Chinese Admiral Zheng He

Zheng He Treasure Voyages

The Navy's New Map (Galrahn)

Intrepid blogger Galrahn, Master and Commander of Information Dissemination , which he has recently christened the HMS Shannon after a recent bloggers battle, Reloading All 38 Guns, has added map making to his many talents Navy's New Map.

The link leads to an article he wrote on the United Naval Institute Blog. USNI Blog where he notes China's latest foray into the waters of Southwest Asia and the Indian Ocean.

...One of the fascinating aspects of China’s emergence over the past three decades has been its efforts to learn from the external world. This has not represented a blatant aping nor an effort to cherry pick ideas from history or Western theoretical writings on strategy and war, but rather a contentious, open debate to examine and draw lessons from West’s experience. Two historical case studies have resonated with the Chinese: the Soviet Union’s collapse and the rise of Germany in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries....

Galrahn's comments accompany a link to an article “China uses ports to protect trade lanes”: at at CargoNewsAsia.com.

What caught my eye was the map showing the current ports that China has been building around the edges of Southern Asia. They resemble ports of call, made by the most famous seafarer and eunuch in Chinese history, Zheng He who led seven voyages to Southwest Asia and Africa beginning in 1405 and lasting until his death in 1433.

A little over 600 years ago, Zheng was dispatched by Emperor Zhu Di of the Ming Dynasty to lead a maiden voyage into the Western Ocean (present day Southeast Asia) with fellow eunuch Wang Jinghong. The The Fleet was comprised of 27,800 men and women, and consisted up to several hundred ships. The purpose of the voyage were to establish contacts and collect tribute from the nations bordering the Indian Ocean. Zheng made seven voyages reaching all the way to the eastern coast of Africa. Zheng He: A Chronology.

My observation of historical Chinese strategy has been one of a country that seemed to be primarily concerned with collecting tribute and controlling trade routes to ensure secure access to the goods they desired. Their primary objective was to open contacts and gain access to resources or markets by establishing safe ports of call along the route. This latest move seems to be an effort to restring that 600 year old necklace of Pearls.

For example, during the era of the Silk Road in the Han and later Tang Dynasties, China guarded the routes but did not attempt to invade and politically control the far flung sources of the goods they sought. Like any great power, they insisted that respect and tribute be paid to honer their status among the nations of their known world.

Today, seems to be no different regarding this strategy. Major trading nations want to ensure access to markets by securing the sea lanes and in turn get a form of tribute, money or resources from those markets. China is awakening to that prospect and is knocking on the door of the other great powers with this latest venture. Do we consider them as a threat, or a potential partner? That is the question of the day.

During the Ming Dynasty, Zheng He's voyages were designed to do the same thing via a water route. No effort at holding territory or conversion of religion or political systems were attempted. Zheng even erected a tablet that still stands today in Sri Lanka, praising Buddhism, Hinduism and Islam, side by side. On it, inscriptions in Chinese, Tamil and Persian praise Buddha, Shiva and Allah in equal measure. No colonies were established, only embassies and trading posts in countries who deferred to China's perceived power.

This past month it was announced that China Will Fight Pirates Off Somalia. In a mini replay of Zheng He's voyages, Chinese naval vessels will practically retrace his famous route. Taking a page from his voyages it is noteworthy to watch this development to see if China follows the course of their two thousand year history of always choosing trade, over political and ideological control.

For those who really want their imagination provoked about Chinese naval capabilities I direct you to 1421 a where you can make up your own mind about recent claims about Zheng He's voyages.