HG's WORLD

West 2012-The Navy and Marines in the next decade

2012-01-28T12:56:00.000-08:00

US Navy

US Marine Corps

This past week I had the pleasure of attending the WEST 2012 Conference in San Diego, where the theme was America's Military at the Crossroads: What's Out and What's In for 2012 and Beyond. I was encouraged to attend by the involvement of the event co-sponsor, the United State Naval Institute. The USNI has been in the forefront of offering a platform where those with an interest in the Navy and all the attendant aspects of strategy, history and tactics are given a forum to express and discuss their interests. The attention to the future of the sea services became all the more important in the recent changes being described as the "Strategic Pivot" to face west into the Pacific and prepare to confront what some see as a potential adversary, China, as she builds her own blue water navy. How big is this threat? Are we building the right fleet, or are we building a fleet based on the last major war WWII? What in the light of the current economic times, can we afford to build. And finally, what kind of Sailors and Marines and leaders do we need for the next two decades and beyond? Those are some of the questions that the conference's many panels attempted to answer.

ADM Mike Mullen

I was able to attend some of the many panel discussions and was able to hear former Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, Admiral Mike Mullen (ret), as he spoke of his vision and hopes, for the future of our defence strategy and the needs to return to the traditional role of the Navy, as both an instrument of war, and diplomacy. Now retired, he gave a visionary speech, that was refreshing in the lack of boilerplate rhetoric that some still in uniform were obligated to profess in their comments.

UltimaRatioRegis

Col Merritt Edson, USMC

As noted above, I attended because of the USNI, and had the opportunity to become acquainted with several of the major contributors to their fine blog. I had know of one young petty officer, from his posts and another who wrote under the name of UltimaRatioRegis: The Last Argument of Kings . My first introduction to these two fine men, came during the question and answer part of a panel discussion on whether the Navy and Marines would "Hang together, or Hang Separately." I looked up to see a Petty officer standing behind the mike, where he proceeded to ask the two admirals about the quality of shipbuilding, using the example of the well known problems of his former ship, a class leader as the example. I instantly recognized him, as the young petty officer blogger noted above, and was impressed by his eloquence as he addressed the flags. The next question was raised by a Marine Lt. Col. who was reminiscent of famed Marine Col. Edson in his demeanor and the directness of his questions to the panel. His message to the panel was that the Marine Corp return to the fundamentals that were the same as those developed in 1943-44, that forced entry needs to breach the beaches in order to have a place to bring the supporting elements for a prolonged campaign. Later, I learned he was the one making the "Last Argument of Kings" from above. The point of mentioning these two gentlemen, is to reflect the quality of those who express their views on the USNI blog, and have the stones to stand before an esteemed panel and really speak for the thousands of sailors and marines who trust that those in the flag rank, the civilian leaders, and the suppliers of all manner of tools for the service; understand that the trust of the men and women in their equipment and leadership is in their hands. One would hope that those leaders, will heed the concerns from the rank and file, and step beyond the personal motives of managing their careers, or landing a future post-retirement job with a supplier, and step up to leave a lasting legacy that ensures those who serve and the nation, will have the leadership and tools to meet the 21st century requirements.

After watching several panels discuss topics, I noted that many of the attendees were brought to the point of being glassy eyed, stealthily texting, or playing with their iPhones or pads. Thankfully, each panel had at least one or two, who stepped up to show both leadership and and voiced an opinion that proved the Navy and Marines have real leaders who care about their men. These were the admirals and generals who talked about their men first, and used ample references to history to formulate their thoughts. I can't name them all, but a few stood out like, VADM Beaman, VADM Richard Hunt, and RDML Peter Gumataotao. from the Navy. The Marines were most vocally represented in the four panels I observed; and were best represented by BGen O'Donohue and BGen Daniel Yoo who shined brightly in their knowledge of history, and demonstration of leadership skills, as did the other attending Marine generals.

For an overview of the conference take the time to visit these links to the USNI blog where a summary of the message it conveys is discussed. Read each of them for ample food for thought.

The Navy-Marine Corps Team-the-Jointest

We have run out of money

The Naval Century and Global American Sea Power

Vital Roles and Surface Warfare

Where does this leave us in relation to the Strategic Pivot? Consider this, post from Thomas PM Barnett that examines US Debt and Petroleum, and their relationship to Obama's Pivot. As you examine the list of nations holding US public debt, note that besides China holding 8%, other counties together, hold 14.9% and are important to our global naval posture to ensure that they remain confident in our ability to protect free trade, and ensure the global sea lanes that carry 90% of all the goods across the planet, remain secure.

Hong Kong: $121.9 billion (0.9 percent)

Caribbean banking centers: $148.3 (1 percent)

Taiwan: $153.4 billion (1.1 percent)

Brazil: $211.4 billion (1.5 percent)

Oil exporting countries: $229.8 billion (1.6 percent)

Mutual funds: $300.5 billion (2 percent)

Commercial banks: $301.8 billion (2.1 percent)

State, local and federal retirement funds: $320.9 billion (2.2 percent)

Money market mutual funds: $337.7 billion (2.4 percent)

United Kingdom: $346.5 billion (2.4 percent)

Private pension funds: $504.7 billion (3.5 percent)

State and local governments: $506.1 billion (3.5 percent)

Japan: $912.4 billion (6.4 percent)

U.S. households: $959.4 billion (6.6 percent)

China: $1.16 trillion (8 percent)

The U.S. Treasury: $1.63 trillion (11.3 percent)

Social Security trust fund: $2.67 trillion (19 percent)

Read more:
Charts of the Day-US Debt and Petroleum

A River Runs Through It: The Enduring Memory of Events Long Past

2012-01-21T11:12:00.000-08:00

Bound for Vietnam 1966

The threads of a life experience begin to cling to our memories from our earliest recollections, and continue to be woven into other threads that bind us even closer to an experience until it becomes a highway that some random event, sends your thoughts careening back to recall that earlier moment. This blog has as a heading, "Bound for Vietnam 1966" with a photo, and the phrase; "..the beginning of a quest to understand our world." The experience of serving in the Vietnam War with all the attendent experiences has led to shaping my life long pursuit to study history and understand how it affects our world. A couple of things entered my life, to send me hurtling back to reflect on my experience in Vietnam and how it affects my world today. One occurred a couple of day ago, and the other, will take place next week. Both are examples of the six degrees of separation that bind us to events in one's past.

Joe Cook and the Cambodian National Baseball Team

Last Thursday evening, I had the pleasure of being invited to view a film about baseball. This was not your average "feel good" film about a bunch of young men playing baseball, but a film that captured a nation in transition as it tries to still recover decades later, from what would in any terms, be a holocaust on a national scale. The viewing was sponsored by Tom and Chris, the founders of the Pepper Project which has as it's mission statement. "... to get the word out about all the treasures that Cambodia has to offer starting with a spice that is highly regarded in many parts of Europe, but that most people have never heard of." In keeping with that pledge, they provided a platform to introduce Rice Field of Dreams a film that follows Joe Cook a Cambodian, who escaped Pol Pot's "Killing Fields" to become a chef in an Alabama Japanese steakhouse. Joe return to Cambodia in 2002, to visit his long lost sister and soon begins a quest to introduce the game of baseball to the youth of Cambodia. The film captures more than just a group of young men as they struggle to overcome the barriers of language and the rules of the game. The film captures little moments like when they queue up to try on the dozens of donated sunglasses and the smiles that those small gifts generated. I don't want to give away the plot, because it is more than watching a group of kids learn the game. Part of what it reveals, is the fault lines between the founder and the imported North American coaches who can't seem to get their minds around how to motivate the team. I would encourage everyone to make it a point to give this film a look when it is released this April. My degrees of separation comes from both the Vietnam War which in part triggered the events that led to this film's subject, and even the filmmaker being in the position to make this film; and my own personal experience with the people of Cambodia.

Maj. Charles R. Soltes Jr.

Dr. Dang and Rob's sons

Turning to the next event, that is also has it's roots in the Vietnam War, is the dedication next Wednesday January 25, 2012 of the Blind Rehabilitation Center at the Long Beach Veterans Hospital in the name of Maj. Charles Robert Soltes Jr. My connection to Major Soltes comes from being a patient of his wife, Dr. Sally Dang who tirelessly lobbied Congress to name the center after her husband as an honor to their children, and other's who had lost their lives in Iraq. Besides, the personal connection of being one of Dr. Dang's patients, the thread runs, as Norman McLean novel's title "A River Runs Through It." would attest. Major Soltes father, a career officer in the US Army, served in Vietnam as a pilot during the time of my deployment. We never crossed paths other than serving in the same area at the same time, but the comradeship remains indelible between those who served. Dr. Dang's parents, fled the fall of Vietnam and joined the thousands of refugees who made their way to our shores to begin a new life. Dr. Dang, is a product of their hopes and dreams, and in turn chanced to meet Rob at school, fell in love, and began to raise a family. Rob's life was cut short in an IED attack in Iraq in 2004, leaving Sally to carry on, and not only raise their three sons, but in turn, dedicate part of her life to helping wounded soldiers with traumatic eye injuries.
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I would invite all who could attend to make time next Wednesday January 25, 2012 at 10AM, to attend the dedication at the Long Beach VA Healthcare Center 5901 E 7th Street, Long Beach CA
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The enrichment of people like Davon Ker, the filmmaker of Rice Fields of Dreams, Joe Cook, and Dr. Sally Dang, and the countless others who have risen from the ashes of the destruction visited on Cambodia and Vietnam, add new threads to the fabric of this nation, and will insure that the United States and it's creed that all people are created equal, will endure.

West 2012: America's Military at the Crossroads Confrence

2012-01-15T11:29:00.000-08:00

West 2012, Jan 24-26, 2012

January always brings an important naval centric event that all those interested in the status of the US Navy and it's future strategy and how that affects our security and global presence should try and attend. Next week, Jan 24-26, 2012 will see West 2012: “America’s Military at the Crossroads: What’s Out and What’s In for 2012 and Beyond?” taking place at the San Diego Convention Center. Registration is free, and the morning and afternoon addresses are open to all attendees. Now one might think that this is something that would only appeal to purveyors of defense and security hardware, but it is also important to academics, public safety, law enforcement, and all those interested in the role that our Navy and Marine Corps will play as we turn from the land wars in Southwest Asia, and focus on the traditional role the Navy has played in our security, and global presence since the nation's founding.

This conference is perhaps even more important this year in the light of President Obama's recent "Strategic Pivot" towards East Asia. China itself, in their effort to invent a blue water navy is inviting scrutiny. This leads to a natural concern that even our current long time allies once had towards our launching a blue water navy. One hopes as stated in this Thomas Barnett piece that cooler heads prevail. I will have more in the coming weeks, after spending a couple of days attending and hanging out with fellow bloggers and friends.

2011, A pause to reflect on the year

2011-12-31T10:26:00.000-08:00

2012, Hong Kong

The last day of 2011 gave me time to pause and look back over the past 12 months and far beyond into the mists of decades past. The year 2011 has been marked with personal satisfaction, in my professional life as I measured the successes in introducing my students to a history they had missed learning about, or even considered relevant in todays me, myself world. Several other events occurred during the past year that have been rewarding. Being invited to become a contributing analysis for Wikistrat a "Next generation strategy" enterprise has been rewarding and provided an opportunity to join a community of analysis and experts who will provide insight on a host of global issues in the coming years.

2011, also saw a favorite project move from the planning stage to a reality, as the US Navy awarded the USS Iowa BB-61 to the Pacific Battleship Center headed by Robert Kent and supported by a volunteer task force of committed citizens. The ship is currently berthed in Richmond, CA as it is being prepared to be moved to it's new home at pier 87 in San Pedro, former home of the Pacific Fleet prior to World War II. The ship's new mission is two fold, first to provide a supplemental education for K-12 classes, and providing a "living" ship museum, recreating "at sea" experiences.

USS Iowa, Heading on a new mission

Tim Heatherington, RIP

Looking further back in time, one is immediately drawn to 2001 and the events of September 11, and how it has influenced and touched people across the globe; especially the families of those who lost their lives on that terrible day, and in conflicts that have scarred each day since. 2011 saw a film, recognized for capturing the experience of the common soldier win an Academy Award for best documentary, and a few months later, see the loss of the filmmaker, Tim Hetherington while he was covering the rebellion in Libya. A silver lining that came about because of the movie, was gaining the friendship of the film's publicist, Kanani Fong, who besides being a fellow blogger; shares many of the same world views about being involved instead of being a passenger on this big blue marble. She and her husband David, a surgeon who joined the Army after having a successful private practice for 25 years, are two outstanding examples of my fellow Americans stepping forward and being counted.

December 7, 1941

The attack on Pearl Harbor seventy years ago this month, has been compared to September 11, 2001 as a transformational event in American history. But, if we use the same measurement of time to see what changed in the decade after the event, and compare the year 1951 to 2011, we see such a difference. In 1951, we were in midst of a very bloody Korean War, unemployment was only 3.3% and people had money to spend. Communism was the major threat and the Cold War was in it's infancy, only to end in 1991 another first year of a new decade. Today, we seem at times to be struggling along, blinded by the same hubris and self-centered navel gazing that foretold the decline of other great powers. I don't hold that view to be the same for America due to our ability to re-purpose ourselves in the arena of innovation that stems from being a continental nation, filled and re-filled with people seeking new avenues to advance mankind. Conflict is natural, as is the innate human trait to find the best way forward.

Kathy Vo, Founder of Pre-health Alliance

Returning to the opening paragraph, and my reference to the students in my classes who ranged from just out of high school, to adults in their mature years. Each one had their own goals, but shared the same vision of improving their chances by furthering their education and in turn, to see a better future for their children. This is in contrast to the belief that many Americans are fearful of, given the current status of our economy, and lack of national commitment to the myths and realities that drove out nation forward. More proof that the nation is producing a new generation of people committed to a better future, can be found in the most unlikely places. I wrote earlier about a chance meeting in my dentists office of the daughter of immigrants who fled the aftermath of the fall of South Vietnam. Over the months since our chance encounter, I came to learn that this young woman had founded a club, the Pre-health Alliance at her university. The club's mission is to spread awareness in the community about health related issues by sponsoring health fairs and health awareness events across Southern California. Her commitment to being involved, doesn't end there. As she prepares for medical school, she recently told me that she has been working with a group of doctors to found a free clinic that is set to open in April 2012. She added that she hopes to take over the clinic herself, once she begins to practice medicine. I don't write this to make her seem like a superwoman, but to serve as an example of how new blood is the lifeblood of this nation and as we look forward, we can be grateful for people who strive to make a difference instead of treading water.

As 2011 ends, and 2012 opens to usher in the more of the same and many new challenges and opportunities, I am reinforced in my belief that the good of humankind will continue to raise the quality of life for billions of people around the planet. Vigilance against the forces of repression can only be met and defeated by shining the brilliant light of truth on their evil efforts. I don't fear today's social media or the Internet, as the free exchange of ideas always trumps the lie. Best wishes to all for a interesting and happy 2012.

A National Case of Stockholm Syndrome

2011-12-19T22:15:00.000-08:00

By now, about the only people who have not been deluged by the coverage of Kim Jong Il's death, would be those in comas, or lost in a remote part of the planet without access to a cell phone. I was moved to let the news settle in and observe the reactions in North Korea as well as the global speculation that seemed to treat his demise with much more attention that an absolute ruler of 24 million people deserves. That said, when one adds in nuclear weapons, and an unproven heir then prudent minds would move up the scale of preparation for the worst, and hope for the best.

Kim Jong's death moves the dynasty cycle to a point that follows the old Chinese proverb about dynasties or even successful families, that says, "Wealth only lasts three generations. The first generation builds it up, the second consolidates it, and the third squanders it."

This proverb is a metaphor for the rise and fall of dynasties down through the ages. The dynasties start when a charismatic visionary leader comes to power, and is followed by less talented and motivated leaders until the dynasty falls and chaos reins until another leader emerges to repeat the cycle. Most nations have moved beyond that cycle today. Even China, the source of the proverb, is moving forward with succeeding generations of leaders that unlike preceding dynasties, mirror institutions that have learned to seek new charismatic leadership, instead of relying on a family blood line that invites decadence to the point of being endemic.

Where does this leave people of North Korea? Listening to the mass wailing and demonstrations of grief as if each family had lost their beloved children, the thought that crossed my mind was that the entire country was a victim of the Stockholm Syndrome were the nation had their sense of esteem so suppressed that they actually came to love their masters. This seems preposterous to most people in the Western world who scoff at the idea of sacrificing their lives for government power. In casting around the web, I happened on this post from newsvine.com that took that exact line of thought and said it perfectly.

North Koreans are mass victim of the Symptoms of Stockholm Syndrome! Definitely, all this public expression of grief and howling cannot be made up. 99.99999999 percent are definitely weeping and uncontrollably lamenting!

In order for Stockholm syndrome to occur in any given situation, at least three traits must be present:

A severely uneven power relationship in which the captor dictates what the prisoner can and cannot do.

The threat of death or physical injury to the prisoner at the hands of the captor.

A self-preservation instinct on the part of the prisoner.

Read more:
Kim Jong-Un's North Korea - Le Roi est mort, vive le Roi!

To add more to this line of thought. My wife's parents now retired, were caught up in the maelstrom that was China in 1966-69 when the Cultural Revolution was in in full bloom. I learned of their experience from my wife who related that because they were professors of western languages, they were sent to work in the fields and deprived of many basic needs for three long years. My father in-law saw his health broken when he went without food so that his wife and my wife's older sister had enough. They survived, and eventually returned to teaching. When I asked my wife if they were troubled and how it shaped their lives, she replied that they never wanted to speak of those times, and to this day, remain silent on the subject. My wife learned about her father's hardship when he fell ill in his early forties, and her mother, on a promise never to ask her father, told her of his great devotion to the family. I get the same stoic reply when I ask my wife about the events of 1989 when she was a student. People faced with the three Stockholm conditions on a national scale, make mental adjustments to survive, and in turn bury the worst memories deep in their souls as long as there is any chance of it occurring again. My father and mother in-law in their silent reaction; saw both daughters educated in foreign languages, and then encouraged them to find their future outside of China.

My Six Degrees of Separation with December 7, 1941

2011-12-07T18:48:00.001-08:00

USS Arizona explodes, December 7, 1941

The date of December 7th has been a touchstone in my collective memory from my earliest recollection. My mother to her last day looked back on that day as a turning point in her life when she along with millions of Americans learned via the news bulletin that broke into the music she was listening to in front room of her parents home on that late Sunday morning in 1941 when Japan changed the world forever. The attack on Pearl Harbor jolted over 133 million Americans out of the spectators area and into the arena of war that had already engulfed Europe, and soon most of Asia. When I was young, I always believed it was because my mother and her parents had lived through the war that the significance of December 7th was passed along to my brother and I. We knew that our father had served during the war, but it was decades later that the full story of how that day that was called a "date that will live in infamy." would lead to my very existance.

I had written before about my father, beginning with this post, and continuing to write about his war experiences as they unfolded. The event that brought my mother and father together, came as a result of the war that enveloped their world and led to them meeting at a USO sponsored dance while my father's ship the was undergoing repairs after being bombed at Guadalcanal in November, 1942.

USO Dance World War II

I often reflect back on how their future was changed by the Attack on Pearl Harbor. My father Jay B. Wade went down to the navy recruiter in Eugene, Oregon, Monday morning December 8, 1941 and enlisted. He had already had a taste of the semi-regimented life as his last job had been with the 932nd Conservation Corps unit cutting trees and maintaining logging roads. He soon shipped out on the USS Zeilin AP-9 to participate in five invasions before returning to become a plankowner on the aircraft carrier Bon Home Richard. The war led to the unintended consequences of my parents meeting while the sounds of the the latest Benny Goodman tunes wafted across the dance floor back in 1942, and kindled a love that endured the war, and led to my being, and eventually this blog entry. My story is but one, of the many millions of encounters that brought people together during the worst of times. Tributes have been many today, and thankfully, they will continue into the future as others of my generation reach their elder years and not only reflect on how this day influenced their existence, and hopefully, will pass along the memory of this event to their progeny and keep the memory alive.

Thoughts on gaining a strategic balance in the Pacific

2011-11-30T18:41:00.001-08:00

U.S. Navy

Chinese Navy

A couple of day ago I discovered this opening paragraph on a blog that I read daily.

I'm going to slow down my posting as we approach the holiday season. The reason is actually two fold. First, my wife is due to have our third child at the end of December, and I still have many things to get done before then. Second, Christmas is approaching and I am absolutely committed to finish reading all the books I have purchased and not yet read this year so I can restock via a delivery from Santa.

With the budget basically being a 90 day hanging curve-ball, I figure now is as good a time as any to step back awhile.

I became resigned to the terms that Galrahn, master of the most cutting edge naval centric blog, Information Dissemination had put forth. But, as the next couple of days have shown, before he slows down or begins to fore-go sleep and free time, when joy is visited on the good master's home.

But in advance of that time and for the present, Galrahn has put up two dandy posts that exhibit his insight and ability to gin up the questions and be Socratic in his approach to posing questions about the future and utility of having a strong navy. He began with a post where he begins discussing US primacy in Asia by extensively quoting from a speech by Malcolm Turnbull, an Australian government minister.

...A humiliation that in the 20th century included the brutality of the Japanese occupation and rape of Nanjing, and in the 19th, the Opium Wars which were the equivalent of the Medellin Cartel sending a nuclear submarine up the Potomac and threatening, successfully, to destroy the Capitol and White House unless the US disbanded the Drug Enforcement Agency...

Galrahn, goes on to comment on this speech.

From a strategic perspective, I note that - finally - we see a legitimate political leader (and as expected, outside the US) at least attempting to raise the topic of policy options should US primacy not be maintained in the Pacific.

He then adds a link and quotes from an article from Hugh White in the NYT's, that supported Trunbull's views, then ends with this Socratic question.

As China builds up military resources and capabilities commensurable with their economic growth, how should the US respond? Whose strategic vision of the future includes US prosperity and security regardless of whether China is the largest economy in the world or not?

Read more:
US Primacy in Asia: Not Inevitable

Then before the day was even half over another thoughtful post appeared; based on the previous primacy post, and assumed top billing as it added another log on the great meeting fire circle that hosted the converging views that were sure to be drawn into the discussion he had stoked. Relating back to an earlier time when he was invited out to meet with his globe trotting uncle who introduced him to how global business works by bringing him along on several important meetings.

I learned a lot, no question, and many things I learned that week have stuck with me through the years, but there was one 3 hour meeting I attended where those gathered discussed the shift in the late 70s away from the gold standard towards the global economy today, and over time I have come to accept their argument as a quiet truth understood by those on the global side of big money: The Gold Standard was replaced by the proverbial F-16 Standard in 1979 to save the world during a global energy crisis. It was at that time America's debt economy was born.

Because of overwhelming US military power and because the US was willing to use force when necessary to protect interests, it was believed that no competitor to the US dollar would ever emerge until a competitor to the proverbial F-16 emerged first. Keep in mind, these are bankers and strategy consists mostly of risk management in their world. The only safe bet in the emerging global economic order that included many new players participating as resource contributors was the raw power of the United States to back the US currency by force.

After watching the banking crisis of the last few years and the war of the last decade, I frequently wonder if the proverbial F-16 standard even exists in the minds of global bankers anymore.

Basing the remainder of the post on an article by author Robert Kaplan, Galrahn ends with this analogy.

To use a simplistic and imperfect historical analogy as bloggers tend to do, I would suggest strategic balance in East Asia is achieved as long as the US emerges as Athens and China emerges as Sparta, and the global security environment and global economy is managed better than it was by the ancient and modern Greeks respectively. If that happens, the 21st century has an opportunity for a prosperous and promising future. However, if China strives to become Athens and US policy continues to be driven by the Spartans in the DoD; Australia, everyone else in the Pacific, and Washington, DC should not only be preparing for, but expecting war.

Read more:
The AEGIS Standard Towards Strategic Balance

Galrahn raises important questions that like a thread of logic draws in information from a galaxy of sources to craft important questions and provoke thought about the role that the US Navy has played and needs to play in the future.

Fast Battleships: The Aegis System of World War II

2011-11-27T12:07:00.001-08:00

USS Iowa plowing ahead on a new mission

Become a plank owner below

A month ago, I wrote about the New Mission for the USS Iowa BB-61 the lead ship of the last battleships build for the US Navy. Today, I wanted to revisit the Iowa and write a bit about the history of battleships in World War II, where their original mission to defeat the enemy fleet as decried by Alfred T. Mahan and his writings that had influenced naval doctrine since the turn of 20th century, was re-purposed to provide what we might dub the Aegis System of World War II.

World War II saw the methods of sea control move from the barrel of a 16" main gun battery to the air and under the sea. The battleships before the new classes of North Carolina and South Dakota could not keep up with the fast carriers, and consumed too much fuel to be deployed to support the early landings in the South Pacific. The newer classes arrived in the Pacific in October 1942, where they found a new mission of providing a massive platform for anti-aircraft guns to help fend off attacking planes that threatened the carriers. The Battle of Santa Cruz Islands, October 26, 1942 saw the effect of what the anti-aircraft firepower of the new battleships could do to protect a carrier. The American Order of Battle was divided into two groups; the USS Hornet, protected by two heavy cruisers, two anti-aircraft cruisers, and six destroyers, with a combined firepower of 72 5" DP guns and numerous 1.1 anti-aircraft mounts. The USS Enterprise group was protected by the USS South Dakota, one heavy, and one light cruiser and 8 destroyers with an equal battery of 1.1 anti-aircraft barrels and added 40 MM barrels on the South Dakota. The results of the battle saw the Hornet sunk, and the Enterprise damaged but surviving the onslaught of over 100 Japanese planes, with the South Dakota credited with shooting down 26 of the attacking planes by putting up 890 rounds of 5", 4,000 of 40MM, 3,000 1.1 and 52,000 rds. of 20MM.

South Dakota firing on Japanese bomber Oct 26, 1942

flak from South Dakota and San Juan

USS South Dakota Oct 26, 1942

I am not one to second guess history, but the concentration of having such a robust anti-aircraft gun platform as the South Dakota, supported by the antiaircraft cruiser USS San Juan CL-54 seemed to be the deciding factor in the Enterprise surviving to fight again. The effect of the lesser armed destroyers, in the Enterprise group was impacted when the USS Porter which carried no effective 5" guns, was accidentally torpedoed and required the assistance of another destroyer to rescue her crew in the height of the battle which potentially removed five 5" barrels from the fight. One can only surmise what would have happened it the Enterprise had been lost, or had there been no fast battleships ready to answer the call on the night of November 14-15, 1942.
As the war progressed, the six fast battleships were joined by the new Iowa Class ships, along with the their older sisters, re-floated, and re-armed with scores of anti-aircraft guns that produced such a volume of fire that when used with the new proximity fuse shells, saw no further losses of battleships or fast carriers, with only the light carrier USS Princeton being sunk during the battle of Leyte Gulf. In a time before guidance systems like the AEGIS, the battleship was the last line of air defense during the horrific final months of the Pacific War.

The Iowa class battleships brought 10 twin barrel 5" mounts, 20 Quad 40 MM mounts, and 49, 20 MM guns, which concentrated to put a wall of steel in front of any attacking foe, as the flag plot below showing five battleships surrounding four carriers will illustrate.

The effect of these great ships was also felt as they turned their main batteries to soften up every invasion beach after Guadalcanal which will be the subject of future post.

But for now, I want to pause to invite anyone reading this who has not already done so; to considering parting with a few dollars and becoming a Plank Owner on the USS Iowa as she prepares for a new mission of becoming the host of an education center and museum , devoted to preserving our naval heritage and the memory of those who served their country so valiantly. To those of you who live close to San Pedro, or in the bay area, where she currently needs volunteers to assist in painting and restoring her vast deck, I would invite you to fill out a volunteer pledge application and lend a hand in something you can tell your grandchildren about.

So in the immortal words of US Marine SGT Dan Daly, lets see if we can all step it up and join the effort to make this the finest historical center on the world, devoted to our Naval heritage.

Gorillas, Battleships and America's global presence

2011-11-20T16:49:00.001-08:00

Goma, DRC, by Pascal Maitre, Natl Geography

Mountain Gorilla, Joel Sartore-Natl Geography

Like many of the posts on this blog, the topic springs from something I read and was moved to tie them together in an effort to provide a ginned up intersection where the ideas can be perused and pondered in an effort to inform, or encourage understanding that will help foster an opinion. Today the catalyst came from an article I was reading in the November edition of National Geographic Magazine about Africa's Alberttine Rift and how an exploding population is fostering unrest and will in all probability see an extinction of the Mountain Gorilla and other species, as people impoverished by war and the highest birth rates on the planet, overrun the national game parks in a search for arable land. The article richly illustrated with photos of both paradise and human conflict, informs the reader and asks the question, "is there enough for everyone?" The conflict has been blamed on ethnic rivalries, but the competition for natural resources has led to conflict that has seen over five million people die due to disease and starvation brought on by constant tribal and ethnic war. In the short run, this part of the world is not part of the strategic interest of either the United States or any great power. That said, some unnamed great powers would be happy to see the population kill each other off, so the resources would be easier to extract for their own needs.

Read more:
Rift in Paradise

This morning, as I checked the latest posts on Facebook in what has become a sort of town meeting bulletin board, where friends and publications post the latest links to relevant articles, I was drawn to a link to an article a fellow faculty member had posted. The article questioned the ability to continue to sustain a overwhelming military presence in the face of the need to retrench our global military footprint in order to again move forward, and not end up on the ash heap along with other former great powers. The article by Joseph M Parent and Paul K MacDonald asks the reader to consider whether it is necessary or sustainable to continue the present level of military commitments across the globe. I don't agree in total with their prognosis, but it merits consideration for the valid questions it raises.

Read more:
The Wisdom of Retrenchment: America Must Cut Back to Move Forward

There are several good reasons to question the wisdom of building platforms to fight the last wars well into the future. Just as it is important to remember our past history before believing that societies don't change or challenge even their closest trading partners. One only has to read the first chapter of Ian W. Toll's new book Pacific Crucible: War at Sea in the Pacific, 1941-1942 to gain an understanding of how Japan moved from a feudal society to challenge the combined might of the United Kingdom and the United States in less than a century. However, just as then, we might be possessed to be preparing for the last war with massive building programs spending billions on a few massive platforms such as this reported by Galrahn, at Information Dissemination.

The enormous cost of this new surface combatant in the context of an emerging age of global naval power growth and more capable anti-access, area denial capabilities raises legitimate questions regarding the future force structure of the US Navy. As the high end surface combatant suffers from legitimate mission creep, now requiring capabilities towards military superiority against ballistic missiles, combined with all the other tasks found in the development of multi-mission capable warships, is the Navy properly accounting from a holistic perspective the impacts of more and more investment in sustaining multi-mission capable ships that can perform at the highest end of every mission area? How long can the Navy sustain generational growth at the high end of surface warfare at a cost of an extra ~$1 billion added cost per ship before the fleet is too small to meet the primary mission of the Navy vs the threats given primary mission focus for the Navy?

Read more:
AMDR Will bring very high fleet costs

Galrahn is not done questioning the present direction of shipbuilding, and posts this about the need for having more Amphibious Ready Groups or ARG's.

While ARG deployments in the Pacific are old hat for the Navy and Marine Corps, it is becoming increasingly rare to see an ARG deployed from either coast to spend any significant amount of time anywhere other than operating under CENTCOM command in the 5th fleet. I have heard many suggestions that the Makin Island ARG has been working overtime during deployment preparations training for activities specific to activities one might find around Somalia and Yemen - like piracy. If I was a pirate warlord, my advice is to take the best deal you can for ransom as soon as possible, and start looking for a new job with less associated risk.

All I'm saying is that I have noticed the US is giving the Horn of Africa a lot of attention lately, and if we are ever going to see a shift in US policy towards piracy, that policy change will arrive in the form of an ARG that added extra training specific to the piracy issue - and a new ARG just deployed to that region following rumors of intense anti-piracy training....

...For the record, Bataan ARG represents a visible data point regarding the need for more amphibious ships. When amphibious ship deployments start breaking modern deployment length records - which WILL happen with Bataan - that means the Navy has not built enough amphibious ships. Politicians in Washington have held many hearings on the topic of dwell time for the Army, but right about now I'm thinking the Navy and Marine Corps folks who have been on ship for over a year in training and deployment are probably wondering who the hell their dwell time advocate is in Washington DC. At what point will Congress get the message that without more amphibious ships - which consistently has by percentage the highest number of days at sea annually of any surface vessel type - the nations leaders are asking way too much of the smaller, always desired but usually-overlooked-by-big-Navy amphibious force. 10 months is a long time for a battalion of Marines at sea, but because they are Marines - no one will ever hear a single complaint about it....

Read more:
The Makin Island Deployment - Another Reminder the US Needs More Amphibs

Now one might ask what does our naval preparedness has to do with Mountain Gorillas and the conflicts in Sub-Saharan Africa? The on going greater need seems to be to field platforms that are able to both control the sea lanes in the tenor of Alfred Mahan's vision of a great power, as well as continuing to do what we have done the past decades since the end of World War II and after the Cold War; by spreading our source code of free enterprise, and encouraging a global middle-class that will ensure peaceful decades for our grandchildren. The above articles are shared in order to capture your attention to the world we live in and that we can't do everything, nor can we ignore the gorilla in the room any more than we can ignore the poverty of spirit and natural hunger. We can't intervene, but we can do as we have since the founding of the republic and the launching of the Six Frigates that founded our navy and used our naval power for the greater good.

Our own nation is resilient and over time, do as Winston Churchill used to say about us. "The Americans will always do the right thing... after they've exhausted all the alternatives."

An "Oh Sh*T" Moment or Three!

2011-11-07T19:10:00.000-08:00

I was moved to title this post with an asterisk censored exclamation borrowed from the title of a recent post by Niall Ferguson, Author and Professor of History at Harvard University. Ferguson pulls no punches in a hard hitting essay that traces the decline of civilizations to a sudden drop off a cliff than a slow gradual decline over centuries. He explains the decline in these terms.

In my view, civilizations don’t rise, fall, and then gently decline, as inevitably and predictably as the four seasons or the seven ages of man. History isn’t one smooth, parabolic curve after another. Its shape is more like an exponentially steepening slope that quite suddenly drops off like a cliff.

If you don’t know what I mean, pay a visit to Machu Picchu, the lost city of the Incas. In 1530 the Incas were the masters of all they surveyed from the heights of the Peruvian Andes. Within less than a decade, foreign invaders with horses, gunpowder, and lethal diseases had smashed their empire to smithereens. Today tourists gawp at the ruins that remain.

Note these examples of how the great civilizations of the past ended their running with the bulls.

The Roman Empire didn’t decline and fall sedately, as historians used to claim. It collapsed within a few decades in the early fifth century, tipped over the edge of chaos by barbarian invaders and internal divisions...

The Ming dynasty’s rule in China also fell apart with extraordinary speed in the mid–17th century, succumbing to internal strife and external invasion. Again, the transition from equipoise to anarchy took little more than a decade.

A more recent and familiar example of precipitous decline is, of course, the collapse of the Soviet Union. And, if you still doubt that collapse comes suddenly, just think of how the postcolonial dictatorships of North Africa and the Middle East imploded this year....Here yesterday, gone today.

Ferguson lists five institutional innovations that he dubs "killer applications" that allowed the West to surge ahead of all of the Rest, beginning in 1500.

Western Civilization's Killer Apps

COMPETITION Western societies divided into competing factions, leading to progressive improvements.

THE SCIENTIFIC REVOLUTION Breakthroughs in mathematics, astronomy, physics, chemistry, and biology.

THE RULE OF LAW Representative government based on private-property rights and democratic elections.

MODERN MEDICINE 19th- and 20th-century advances in germ theory, antibiotics, and anesthesia.

THE CONSUMER SOCIETY Leaps in productivity combined with widespread demand for more, better, and cheaper goods.

THE WORK ETHIC Combination of intensive labor with higher savings rates, permitting sustained capital accumulation.

Ferguson presents troubling statistics to back up his view that we are hurtling like the train above, towards that cliff, and our own "Oh ShiT! moment. He then turns to describe what can be done to "reboot the system" and do, what he says Americans have always done; kick start our instinctive loyalty to those "killer applications" of Western ascendancy.

The World According to Thomas PM Barnett

2011-10-29T18:12:00.000-07:00

Earlier this year I was privileged to be invited to become an contributing analysis at a new enterprise, that by it's own description is;“A Global Marketplace of Geopolitical Analysis.” Over the past ten months Wikistrat has grown to now include some of the most tuned-in group of experts and analysts ever assembled, all for the purpose of providing a real time analysis tool. Recently the CEO of Wikistrat, Joe Zamel wrote a post on Dr. Thomas PM Barnett's Blog explaining how Dr. Barnett was a major influence in founding this team. He went on to urge readers to view the series of briefs that explain the "Five Strategic Flows" that will drive the advance of globalization and connectivity into the future. As a way of sharing these briefs in full, I have embed them below for your viewing. It takes about an hour to watch all six briefs; them you are encouraged to form your own analysis of Barnett's vision of the future. You may not agree with his vision, but it will fill your mind with nuggets of pure information to chew upon as you decide if you are going to be a passenger, or step forward to be involved in building a future worthy of your children and grandchildren. Now for Dr. Barnett.

Wikistrat's "The World According to Tom Barnett" (Introduction, and the Pentagon's New Map) Pt 1

Wikistrat's "The World According to Tom Barnett" (Flow of People) Pt 2

Wikistrat's "The World According to Tom Barnett" (Flow of Money) Pt 3

Wikistrat's "The World According to Tom Barnett" (Flow of Energy) Pt 4

Wikistrat's "The World According to Tom Barnett" (Flow of Food) Pt 5

Wikistrat's "The World According to Tom Barnett" (Flow of Security) Pt 6

Finally, for those who have not seen Dr. Barnett's explanation for how Wikistrat came about.

"My Best Explanation of Wikistrat Yet."

Anchors Away: The Iowa's New Mission Begins

2011-10-26T18:57:00.000-07:00

A New Mission

Anchors Away

Tomorrow at 1200 hours the lead ship of the great Iowa class battleships USS Iowa BB-61, will be gently eased from the anchorage she has occupied for the past ten years and moved to Pier 3 in Richmond, CA were she will undergo refirbishment to make ready for one final sea passage to her new duty station, at pier 87 in community of San Pedro, in the Port of Los Angeles. The following is the offical press release.

USS IOWA to be towed to Richmond, Calif., beginning on Thursday

- Non-profit begins process to bring famed battleship back to life, transform vessel to interactive museum based in Los Angeles -

Los Angeles – October 25, 2011 – Pacific Battleship Center, the organization that is bringing the USS IOWA back to life, will begin towing the famed battleship from the Suisun Bay Reserve Fleet to Richmond, Calif., on Thursday, October 27, 2011.

In doing so, the non-profit group begins the months-long process to transform the vessel into an interactive experience permanently based at Berth 87 in Los Angeles.

“This marks a significant milestone in our dedication to create the world's last available battleship for educational, historical and recreational benefits to those who visit her,” said Robert Kent, President of Pacific Battleship Center. “Our goal is to have the USS IOWA open for visitation by July 4, 2012. There is a great deal of work that needs to be performed starting with this towing evolution. We are excited to be launching into this next phase of restoring what is a true American treasure!”

The two-day event will start at approximately Noon on Thursday where USS IOWA will be towed from Suisun Bay to the Benicia Car Dock. The ship will remain there until 9 a.m. the following morning and make its way to Richmond Pier 3 on Friday. USS IOWA will stay in Richmond for approximately three months to complete refurbishment work before making the tow to Los Angeles.

Media is invited to cover the event at the various locations where the ship will pass along the entire transit. Interviews are available by phone and in person (if feasible) upon request.

In September, Secretary of the Navy Ray Mabus announced that the United States Navy donated the USS IOWA to the Pacific Battleship Center. The decision was possible under the Navy’s ship donation program and reflects the culmination of years of work by many dedicated volunteers. The USS IOWA is the only battleship of its class that has not been saved and turned into a permanent museum and was the last battleship available for donation.

“To meet our timeline for opening the ship to visitors, we -raised more than $10 million in donations and loans,” said Jonathan Williams, Vice President of Pacific Battleship Center. “We’ve been privileged to receive generous support from so many organizations to make this happen, including the State of Iowa, Torrey Pines Bank, the USS IOWA Veteran’s Association, and civic and business leaders. However, while ten million is the minimum amount needed more funds will allow even more development of the IOWA. We need others to get involved, including the general public and have launched a membership drive to entice those to join this worthwhile cause. We are excited about the initial response and support weare getting for this call out and anticipate keeping the momentum going!”

Interested people can follow the progress of bringing USS IOWA back to life on the organization’s website, Facebook and Twitter pages. Individuals can also sign up to become “plankowners” at Pacific Battleship Center
###© 2011 Pacific Battleship Center. All rights reserved.

Anyone who has followed this blog for the past year has been aware of my interest and support of this organization that is truly motivated by the spirit of volunteerism by scores of people who answered the call from Robert Kent, and the other dedicated people who formed the cadre of this organization and were able to raise millions of dollars, and encourage others, who to date have pledged over 85,000 hours to get her ready to open on July 4, 2012. I would encourage anyone living within driving range of San Pedro, and who wants to be a part of something worthwhile that will live on in time and stand as a living memorial to the history that the ship represents; to become a vollunteer by clicking on the pledge form. I know that my wife is already prepared to see me trudging out the door every weekend beginning in January, as I join the hundreds of others who have pledged to step up and make the "Big Stick" into the best living history museum and education center in the United States.

Battle off Samar, October 25, 1944

2011-10-23T18:39:00.000-07:00

Battle off Samar Island Oct 25, 1944

Battle Map

Sixty seven years ago this October 25th, a battle that ranks among the greatest naval epics in American history took place when one small part of American Task Force 77.4 was attacked by a Japanese fleet led by their most powerful warship, IJN Yamato, two other battleships, five cruisers and three destroyers in what was called the Center Force. The battle closed when the Japanese battle fleet breached the unguarded San Bernardino Strait and attacked the northern most part of the task force know by their call sign, Taffy III consisting of six Casablanca Class escort carriers and their escort of three destroyers and four destroyer escorts.

The story of battle has been retold over the decades, perhaps never better than by James D. Hornfischer's Last Stand of the Tin Can Sailors which puts the reader aboard the ships and in the cockpit as out gunned pilots attacked the oncoming Japanese forces with every thing from depth charges to making empty strafing runs and shooting pistols fired from inverted fighters as they swept past Japanese flag bridges. Little FM-2 Wildcat fighters, and TBM Avengers, loaded for submarine patrol and close air support, kept the on-rushing Japanese warships dodging and weaving, under a constant rain of bombs, depth charges and a hail of .50 caliber bullets. The three destroyers charged into the rain of Japanese steel to launch their torpedoes and blast away with all guns until one was down, another holed and still fighting, and another hit and making smoke to cover the retreating baby carriers. alongside the destroyers, one DE, the USS Samuel B Roberts DE-413 charged into the fray and engaged the HIJN Chikuma in a gun duel that destroyed the cruisers #3 8" turret before being holed and sinking with the loss of 89 men.

IJN Chikuma under attack

Meanwhile the USS Johnston DD 557 was becoming a legend as she engaged and torpedoed a heavy cruiser before being hammered into a wreckage and sinking taking 186 lives with her as her captain won the Medal of Honor. Dogfight, USS Johnston off Samar.

USS Johnston attacking the Japanese battle line

The battle rages on and Taffy III's pilots are joined by aircraft from Taffy I and II making the Japanese believe they were engaging the Halsey's 3rd Fleet and after being pummeled for three hours turned back to the strait believing that to remain would invite destruction. As mist of time close off our memory of what took place on that balmy day off Samar Island in the Philippines, men like Hornsfischer and web sites like Battle off Samar keep the memory alive and add immortality to men, many still boys, who turned too and fought as bravely as any sailor in history.

Adding to the what if, is had the Japanese fleet charged on swatting the aircraft aside and pressing home the attack, they would have been rewarded with this sight, the landing fleet arayed before them defenseless against Kurita's guns.

probable all six carriers would be sunk

unopposed access to destroy landing fleet

A Promise to Remember a Life Lived

2011-10-09T18:14:00.000-07:00

Scott A Christofferson 1947-1967

Yesterday October 8th, marked the 44th anniversary of the death of Specialist 4th Class Scott Christofferson, in Vietnam. I did not know Scott, and only became aware of him when a co-worker and nephew of Scott's sent out a small email message to the staff commenting on the anniversary of his uncle's passing and bringing attention to a little book that was published from a collection of his letters home. I first wrote about Scott two years ago and in pausing to remember a fellow soldier I am reprinting it in full.

Something happened today to bring memories flooding back of a time that I mostly try and keep locked away only to be visited in the company of those who have also held the lance. This morning, a young man sent out an email to all the employees where he worked, asking them to take a moment and remember his uncle Scott, whom had been killed in action on this date, October 8, 1967 while serving with the United States Army in Vietnam. He asked that those who got the email to visit the a youtube link to view a tribute to his uncle.

When I opened the link and began to watch, I saw the face of not only Scott, but the faces other's who had answered the call so long ago, smiling back at me like a mirror into my past. I came face to face to the reality that I lived on, and here a talented young man, who perished in the very flower of his youth is sending a message to the generations about service and commitment.

God in in his wisdom gave Scott a special talent to be able to convey his thoughts to paper. What follows is a little background on who Scott Christofferson was and continues to be, to those who chance to read his words.

The third of eight children to be born to Frank and Barbara Christofferson, Scott Christofferson was one of the original baby-boomers, born in Baltimore, Maryland, in November of 1947, less than 2 years after his father’s return from his tour of the South Pacific as a decorated Navy fighter pilot in World War II. The family eventually settled in St. Louis, Missouri, where Scott attended high school, graduating in 1965, and moving on to the University of Missouri-Columbia, where he hoped to major in journalism. He was an aspiring writer when he dropped out of college after just one semester, choosing to see the world first-hand as an enlisted GI-turned combat reporter during the turbulent Vietnam years.

Here is what I discovered about Scott and how he met his death in Vietnam. Scott served with the PIO section of the HQ Company of the 1st Brigade 101st ABN Division. He volunteered to become a combat reporter and soon began to travel with the 2BN 327th Infantry on their missions. On October 8, 1967 he was on a mission with A Company near Tam Ky when they were hit by two reinforced companies of North Vietnamese. Scott, joined in providing covering fire to allow his fellow soldiers to withdraw and refused to leave his position until all had been safely withdrawn. Scott was killed during this time. He was awarded the Silver Star , Bronze Star and Purple Heart for his valor, forty two years ago today.

Almost fifteen years after Scotts death, his younger sister Carrie discovered a box of his letters forgotten in a closet in her mothers home. After reading them she realized that they revealed a person whom deserved to be remembered for more that being a hero. She edited those letters and published them in a book to pay tribute to her brother and as she writes.
"We believe others will be able to gain insight into that period in American history by reading these letters, to develop an appreciation for the young men and women who sacrificed their youth in the jungles of Vietnam, and perhaps most significantly, to know well one specific young man whose journey from college dropout to Army combat reporter to fallen hero is brought to vivid life through his own words."

Buy Your Hero and Mine, Scott

On passage in Scott's book written jumped out at me when I came across it as it introduced the final chapter entitled October 8, 1967. It was almost a perfect paraphrase of one of my favorite passages, written by another hero, Brigadier General Theodore Roosevelt during World War II.

Roosevelt wrote:

"The longer I live the more I think of the quality of fortitude--men who fall, pick themselves up and stumble on, fall again, and are trying to get up when they die."

Scott wrote:

"The jaded man stumbles again; for the last time. He tries with all his strength to regain his feet, But his muscles are all played out with past efforts, He dies struggling to stand once more, He dies grimacing with trial, But struggling with a faint sweet smile, For he knows he has lived."

After reading about Scott, I see how close the degrees of separation were in our paths. I too dropped out of college and joined the Army to serve my country. I was just a year older and for most of my time in Vietnam was also in and out of direct harm, in similar ways that Scott found himself. I was luck to find a small video tribute that his family had posted and share it below.

So as I sit here and watch that little clip and wipe the mist from my eyes, I say a silent prayer in the knowledge that I will remember Scott Christofferson and a promising life cut short, but given a measure of immortality in the little book he left behind.

The coming war on obesity and consumption

2011-10-02T12:24:00.000-07:00

Obesity in America

Obesity in world

Daily food consumption

This week, Thomas Barnett penned a column for the World Politics Review that predicted the coming clash over food, as the Western style diet comes under fire for obesity and it's byproduct of major health issues becomes the target of both the nanny state, and nations where food is a matter of survival. Barnett called it this way.

The real clash of civilizations in the 21st century will be not over religion, but over food. As the emerging East and surging South achieve appreciable amounts of disposable income, they're increasingly taking on a Western-style diet. This bodes poorly for the world on multiple levels, with the most-alarmist Cassandras warning about imminent resource wars. But the more immediate and realistic concern is the resulting health costs, which will inevitably trigger a rule-set clash between nanny-state types hell-bent on "reining in" a number of globalized industries -- agriculture, food and beverages, restaurants, health care and pharmaceuticals -- and those preferring a more free-market/libertarian stance.

This clash won't necessarily pit East versus West or North versus South, or even democracies versus authoritarian regimes. The core of this struggle will be about sustainability versus individual freedom of choice, because, as a recent Financial Times editorial put it, "Individuals have a right to indulge in excesses, but they also have responsibility for costs."

Read more:
The New Rules: Time to Worry About Over-Eating, not Over-Population

Barnett penned his column, just a few hours before Denmark became the first country in the world to pass what has been dubbed the "Fat Tax" to combat the growing obesity in Denmark, as they confront rising health care costs in a country with state provided cradle to the grave health care costs are predicted to rise faster than the kilos on millions of personal scales.

Denmark on Saturday became the first country in the world to impose a fat tax after a week in which consumers hoarded butter, pizza, meat and milk to avoid the immediate effects.

"We have had to stock up with tonnes of butter and margarine in order to be able to supply outlets," Soeren Joergensen of Arla Distribution told AFP.

The new tax, designed by Denmark’s outgoing government as a health issue to limit the population’s intake of fatty foods, will add 16 kroner ($2.87, 2.15 euros) per kilo (2.2 pounds) of saturated fats in a product.

Read more:
Denmark levies worlds first fat tax

It now appears other nations with state sponsored healthcare programs are considering similar taxes. Can the US be far behind? Personally, in an age where we all end up sharing the cost of programs like Medicare, and in in the future, some form a national health care system, as well as swelling personal health insurance rates, taxes on things that contribute to obesity and in turn health issues might make sense. The common sense solution would be to charge obese people more, but that would be considered discrimenatory so we all get to pay. The bigger question as raised by Thomas Barnett is how to feed a swelling population of 7 billion and growing without being labeled a pariah for consuming geometrically more than the majority of the planet.

A roadmap for dealing with Pakistan

2011-09-28T15:52:00.000-07:00

Gunmen in southwestern Pakistan attacked three NATO supply trucks on Tuesday, officials said. The New York Times reported on Tuesday evening that Pakistanis had been responsible for a 2007 ambush on U.S. soldiers.

The summer as waned and fall will soon usher in our second decade in the long war in Afghanistan. Last week troubling news about the often suspected and now confirmed involvement against our forces by Pakistan have come to light. Thomas Barnett has this excellent analysis of the situation and offers up five reasons for walking away from Pakistan and leaving her next door neighbors to checkmate her regional miss-behavior. Tom wrote this to introduce his column for Esquire's Political Blog.

In the wake of Admiral Mike Mullen offering such electrifying testimony last week, various commentators — and respectable ones, like Christopher Hitchens and Dexter Filkins — are circling the "long war" question of the moment: What to do about Pakistan? And it's clear to anybody with a brain at this point that Pakistan has abused our trust and military assistance as much as — or worse than — we have long abused that fake state in our pursuit of Al Qaeda and the Taliban. So now, as the West's fiscal crisis kicks into high gear, progressively denuding us of NATO allies while Congress finally gets serious about reining in the Pentagon's vast budget, we've come to a clear tipping point in the whole Af-Pak intervention as its tenth year of operations draws to a close.

My advice here is simple: It is time for both Afghanistan and Pakistan to stop being our problem and ours alone to solve. The Bush-Cheney unilateralism segued right into the Obama-Biden version: We simply refuse to deal with the regional powers, all of which want a far bigger say in how this whole thing settles out. Instead of working with India, China, Russia, Turkey, and Iran — and accepting that their more vigorous management of the situation would mean "victories" for them and not us — we've chosen consistently to side with Pakistan, which not only wants but is committed to keeping the region unstable.

Barnett continues by serving up five reasons, outlined below:

1. Focus on the Arab Spring instead.
2. Follow Al Qaeda elsewhere where it's really going.
3. Make new friends. And make China babysit.
5. Leave 'em be.

Now take a few minutes to read over what he is proposing and see if the logic floats?

Read More:
Pakistan America Relations

3 Million Jobs unfilled in September 2011???

2011-09-24T18:25:00.000-07:00

Shipyard workers on National Security Cutter

National Security Cutters

That headline screams out at a time that the United States languishes in what has been now dubbed the Great Recession. This past week saw the President propose spending almost half a trillion dollars on a jobs bill at at time when there are already 3 million jobs waiting to be filled. The problem in filling those jobs is examined in a two part post by Steve DeAngelis on his Enterprise Resilience Management Blob. Steve links several articles and adds his own thoughts to what needs to be done to get America back to work.

In June, two members of the President's Jobs and Competitiveness Council, Jeffrey Immelt, the Council's Chairman as well as the chairman and CEO of General Electric, and Kenneth Chenault, the CEO of American Express Co., wrote an op-ed piece explaining what the Council is doing to try and generate jobs. ["How We're Meeting the Job Creation Challenge," Wall Street Journal, 13 June 2011] They stated the obvious when they wrote that "the inescapable truth is that we have a persistent jobs challenge that demands an aggressive response." The Council, which includes 26 private-sector leaders, was established to develop "ideas that will accelerate job growth and improve America's competitiveness." The June op-ed piece was the Council's "initial 'progress report' to the president." It included "a series of steps" that Council members believe "can help spur hiring in the short term in areas like construction, manufacturing, health care and tourism." Immelt and Chenault admitted that the challenges are daunting and the solutions difficult.

Read more:
Creating Jobs in America Part 1

DeAngelis continues in a second post to expand on this thread and adds recommendations from
Robert J. Samuelson and Arthur Laffer on what it takes to get real job growth.

In yesterday's post, I discussed some of the initial recommendations offered by the President's Jobs and Competitiveness Council as well as some of the programs that the President put forward in his jobs bill. Having listened and read what is being offered on the jobs front, opinion columnist Robert J. Samuelson believes that politicians and their constituencies "need a refresher course in Job Creation 101."

Read more:
Creating Jobs in America Part 2

Continuing on the subject of jobs, comes this post courtesy of Galrahn of Information Dissemination who questions what kind of trade off we will see in replacing construction jobs with higher paying defence jobs.

An especially troubling aspect of the present situation is that the cuts mandated by the Budget Control Act to reduce deficits could grow bigger if the president’s jobs bill passes, because the special committee would need to find additional savings to cover the price-tag for its package of tax changes and targeted spending. So in the current environment where legislators are trying to cut deficits and stimulate the economy at the same time, the government could end up destroying many thousands of good jobs to create lots of not-so-good jobs in areas like construction. What kind of a tradeoff is that?

Here is the bottom line of what deep defense cuts will entail.

So let’s do the math. The number of jobs created by defense spending varies depending on the nature of the activity and how much each job pays, but it’s a safe bet that at least one direct job is created for every $200,000 in spending. Thus, the $100 billion in annual military spending cuts that might be spawned by deficit-control legislation potentially accounts for 500,000 direct jobs. But that’s just the beginning, because numerous additional jobs are created in retail, construction, education and other pursuits as defense workers spend their income. Analysts argue endlessly about what this economic multiplier effect might be, however a very conservative guess would be that each direct job leads to the creation of at least one indirect job (the real number is probably over twice that). So even a restrained analysis suggests that $100 billion in defense cuts will wipe out a million jobs.

Not pretty, even during the Great Depression, President Franklin D Roosevelt understood the logic of keeping the shipyards working by continuing to let contracts to build a small number of ships and then let a new contract for an improved version.

Read more:
FDR Shipbuilding programs 1933-45

Galrahn adds this logical argument.

Shipbuilding is always a good government investment when it comes to jobs, which is why I strongly believe the Obama administration really screwed up their stimulus spending choices. They should have invested in shipbuilding, starting with heavy investments early on with the US Coast Guard (Icebreakers and Cutters) and building up towards bigger investments in the Navy - specifically T-AKEs and Virginia class submarines, although LPD-17s would be useful and the MSC ships that made up the Sea Base would have been optimal from an economic stimulus point of view. What a fantastic failure of a missed opportunity considering that government spending would have contributed more to GDP and had far greater direct/indirect/induced spending impacts towards positive economic activity than the low-wage earning projects favored instead.

Read more:
Jobs, Jobs, Jobs, Jobs, Jobs, Jobs, Jobs!

Now I think that we can all agree that for Americans to regain our heritage of being innovators and industrious we need to step it up as a society. One related post, by Thomas Barnett addressed the United States shrinking share of global economic power that will according the the illustration, see the US in second place in 19 short years. Barnett suggests that we need to look to our own neighborhood to expand our relationships with our southern neighbors. His post spawned some interesting comments, including one that pointed out that until we curtail the drug demand in this country, we can expect little in the way of ending the downward spiral of societies below our own borders.

Read more: as well as the comments.
China slows but still grows thanks to regional gravity

9/11 A Reflection

2011-09-11T15:09:00.000-07:00

I am sharing a post from fellow American and blogger Mark Zafranski from his excellent site zenpundit.com. Mark's words reasonate with all of us who have lived through the past ten years and have seen it change our country. Read his eloquent words carefully, and then measure you own feelings and see if you don't agree.

The Nine Eleven Century?

September 11th, 2011

Ten years ago to this day, almost to the hour of which I am writing, commercial jetliners were highjacked by al Qaida teams armed with boxcutters, under the direction of Mohammed Atta, were flown into the towers of the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. A fourth plane, United Airlines Flight 93, believed to be headed to the US Capitol building, crashed in Pennsylvania when passengers led by Todd Beamer heroically attempted to stop the highjackers. The whole world watched - most with horror but some with public glee - on live television as people jumped out of smoke-engulfed windows, holding hands, to their deaths. Then, the towers fell.
From this day flowed terrible consequences that are still unfolding like the rippling shockwave of a bomb.

We look back, sometimes on the History Channel or some other educational program, at the grainy, too fast moving, sepia motion pictures of the start of World War I. The crowds wildly cheered troops with strangely antiquarian uniforms that looked reminiscent of Napoleon’s day, march proudly off to the war that gave Europe the Somme, Gallipoli, Passchendaele and Verdun. And the Russian Revolution.

After the armistice, the victors had a brief chance to reset the geopolitical, strategic and economic patterns the war had wrought and in which they were enmeshed. The statesmen could not rise to that occasion, failing so badly that it was understood even at the time, by John Maynard Keynes and many others, that things were being made worse. World War I. became the historical template for the short but infinitely bloody 20th century of 1914-1991, which historians in future centuries may simply describe as “the long war” or a “civil war of western civilization”.

There is a serious danger, in my view, of September 11 becoming such a template for the 21st century and for the United States.

On the tenth anniversary of 9/11, as we remember the fallen and the many members of the armed services of the United States who have served for ten years of war, heroically, at great sacrifice and seldom with complaint, we also need to recall that we should not move through history as sleepwalkers. We owe it to our veterans and to ourselves not to continue to blindly walk the path of the trajectory of 9/11, but to pause and reflect on what changes in the last ten years have been for the good and which require reassessment. Or repeal. To reassert ourselves, as Americans, as masters of our own destiny rather than reacting blindly to events while carelessly ceding more and more control over our lives and our livelihoods to the whims of others and a theatric quest for perfect security. America needs to regain the initiative, remember our strengths and do a much better job of minding the store at home.

The next ninety years being molded by the last ten is not a future I care to leave to my children. I can think of no better way to honor the dead and refute the current sense of decline than for America to collectively step back from immersion in moment by moment events and start to chart a course for the long term.

Now please visit the link below to read the post in full and the important embedded links.
The Nine Eleven Century

A New Mission For BB-61 USS Iowa

2011-09-06T21:45:00.000-07:00

USS IOWA BB-61

Now Here This, Now Here This! A Special Announcement from the Secretary of the Navy.

LOS ANGELES, CA – The Secretary of the Navy (SECNAV) Ray Mabus announced today that the United States Navy has donated the Battleship USS Iowa to the Pacific Battleship Center, a Los Angeles‐based nonprofit on course to turn the ship into a permanent museum and memorial at the Port of Los Angeles.

The donation of the USS Iowa to the Pacific Battleship Center, under the Navy’s ship donation program, is the culmination of years of work by many dedicated volunteers. The USS Iowa is the only Iowa‐class battleship that has not been saved and turned into a permanent museum,and was the last battleship available for donation.

“We want to thank the Secretary of the Navy, and the entire United States Navy, for the donation of the USS Iowa to the Pacific Battleship Center,” stated Robert Kent, the President of the nonprofit. “With this award, the USS Iowa will become a permanent museum, memorial and educational center. We can now move forward with the work necessary to restore the ship and to bring her to the Port of Los Angeles.

”The Pacific Battleship Center acknowledged the support and thousands of hours volunteers have contributed to this project. “Without the support of our volunteers, the people of the Los Angeles area and the people of the State of Iowa, this dream would not have become a reality,”stated Kent.

While there are too many people to thank for this great achievement, we do want to make special mention of the efforts of Congressman Buck McKeon, Los Angeles Mayor, Antonio Villaraigosa, the Los Angeles City Council and their President, Eric Garcetti, the Los AngelesHarbor Commission and their President, Cindy Miscikowski, and Craig Nelson of Torrey‐PinesBank. This award also would not have happened without the tireless support of former Los Angeles City Councilwoman and current Congresswoman Janice Hahn. “Without the persistence of Congresswoman Hahn, the USS Iowa would not be coming to the Port of LosAngeles,” remarked Kent.

The people of Iowa were also instrumental in making this day a reality. We would like to thank Governor Terry Branstad and the Iowa Legislature for their support in appropriating $3 million this year for the restoration of the USS Iowa. The entire Iowa Congressional Delegation also supported the efforts to bring the USS Iowa to Los Angeles. Robert Kent commented, “I would like to particularly thank Congressman Tom Latham and Senator Charles Grassley, for their special efforts to help ensure that the USS Iowa becomes a permanent memorial for all of our citizens.”

As the Pacific Battleship Center moves forward with the restoration and relocation of the USS Iowa, there are still numerous opportunities to be part of this historic project. You may contact the USS Iowa’s new caretakers at www.pacificbattleship.com.

I could not be more proud of the people of the non-profit organization Pacific Battleship Center who have worked so hard to make this a reality. Robert Kent and Trish Place, and hundreds of other volunteers have donated countless hours to bring this great ship back to life and deserve a huge amount credit and appreciation for a job well done. I have written before about the USS Iowa and the goal bring her to San Pedro where she will take on a new mission as a living history museum, and education center dedicated to the men and women who served in our armed forces and aboard great ships like the USS Iowa.

Three great reads to ponder over a long weekend

2011-09-03T20:39:00.000-07:00

Fall of Tripoli

September arrived with Col. Gaddafi's downfall after several months of battles that saw insurgents, supported by NATO air strikes and newly revealed US support. The blogs also seemed to take on a life of their own, in a reversal of Spring to bloom in the days preceding Fall, with posts that are filled with enough rich brain nutrition as to make an avid reader as giddy as a stallion with a bucket of fresh oats. I picked out a few of the best, to give you a tasty meal for your conscious mind to devour. First off, if you at first don't like the flavor of the article, I challenge you to not only read it but ponder the thesis of each. Then you are welcome to reject it, file it away or post your comments back on the original sites.
The first course is served up by Mark at Zenpundit who raises important points about the latest acronym R2P. No it is not a new Star Wars character, but means Responsibility to Protect the doctrine now being flaunted as the justification for Libyian intervention.

Mark gets right into discussing the doctrine with this introduction.

There has been much ado about Dr. Anne-Marie Slaughter’s ennunciation of “Responsibility to Protect” as a justification for the Obama administration’s unusually executed intervention (or assistance to primarily British and French intervention) in Libya in support of rebels seeking to oust their lunatic dictator, Colonel Moammar Gaddafi. In “R2P” the Obama administration, intentionally or not, has found it’s own Bush Doctrine, and unsurprisingly, the magnitude of such claims - essentially a declaration of jihad against what is left of the Westphalian state system by progressive elite intellectuals - are beginning to draw fire for implications that stretch far beyond Libya.

This is an outstanding post that really showcases Mark as a master thinker as he adds his own astute comments and links three rebuttal posts to Dr. Slaughter's thesis.

I highly recommend reading Mark's post in full, as well as the linked posts to give yourself a full understand how R2P might come back to do, as Mark suggests.

Who is to say that there is not, somewhere in the intellectual ether, an R2P for the the environment, to protect the life of the unborn, to mandate strict control of small arms, or safeguard the political rights of minorities by strictly regulating speech? Or whatever might be invented to suit the needs of the moment?

When we arrest a bank robber, we do not feel a need to put law enforcement and the judiciary on a different systemic basis in order to try them. Finding legal pretexts for intervention to stop genocide does not require a substantial revision of international law, merely political will. R2P could become an excellent tool for elites to institute their policy preferences without securing democratic consent and that aspect, to oligarchical elites is a feature, not a bug.

R2P will come back to haunt us sooner than we think.

US Army

US Navy

US Marines the Premier Forced Entry Team

US Air Force

Next up we visit a topic that is as old as the country itself,when one branch of the military asks the value of continued spending of the bulk of the nation's defense allocation on another branch. This comes in the light of the wind-down of our boots on the ground commitments in Southwest Asia. Chris Rawley penned this inquiring post at Information Dissemination that asks a question that might be on the minds of many, in view of the past ten years war.

A number of interesting learning points have arisen from the Libyan conflict. Foremost among them for me is the need to massively downsize the United States Army. More about that heresy in a minute… Galrahn and Robert Farley have discussed the merits and shortcomings of airpower in relation to the US/NATO/various third-party countries' campaign against the Gadhafi regime. They both make some interesting points. However, what the Libya campaign best demonstrates, or more appropriately, reiterates, is the utility of the special ops-airpower team. And by airpower, I’m referring to service-agnostic airpower in all its’ forms, although biased towards the flexibility sea-based aircraft provide.

Chris's post generated over 145 comments and prompted this update:
UPDATE: To save readers from going through 80+ postings and provide some clarity: what do I mean by "massive" cuts to USA force structure? How about at least 25% of active duty force structure? Honestly, I won't venture to put out an exact number, but I do know that 5% cuts applied to all services across the board is a disservice to national security. Designing a future force for "most likely" scenarios, as well as black swans doesn't mandate that we do things the way we always (or at least recently) have done them. And while 25% may not seem like a large number, when you put it in dollars and manpower, it's pretty "massive."

Read more.
Libya Lessons: Supremacy of the SOF-Airpower Team… Or, why do We Still Need a Huge Army?

This post led to a second post by Rawley after he received considerable feedback and personal emails regarding his raising this topic.

I’ve received significant feedback on this post , ranging from private emails calling these ideas “brilliant” to a blatant dismissal of any arguments that recommend cutting the army by a single soldier. More importantly, regardless of one's opinion on my arguments, the discourse on this topic has been energized. Since my post, a few timely articles were written discussing this debate. Looks like the Army itself is talking about eliminating 10 out of 45 active BCTs, which is just short of the 25% SWAG I recommended (no, I didn’t have inside information on this).

Was I too parochial? Guilty as charged, except that I’m also defending the Marine Corps, Air Force, and multi-service SOF community over the Army conventional force. However, I’m not sure how one can take a position on force reductions without being parochial, unless one thinks that across the board cuts make any sort of strategic sense (I don’t). I was also accused of coming to the right conclusion for the wrong reasons. Fair point, but I didn’t intend to capture all of the reasons that the army should be reduced before the other services in a single post. Those arguments have been made extensively at every draw-down, most recently during the early 1990s, post-Cold War/ODS era.

Read more:
Why Do We Still Need a Huge Army? - Round II

I am an Army guy and hold personal parochial feelings since my days in Army green. That said, we can still have the most lethal conventional force able to meet any commitment at the levels suggested by the Army itself of 35 BCT's. The waste in dollars spent the past ten years prosecuting the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan has been obscene and should never be repeated. A mean and lean Leviathan force is the best way for us to protect our interests, defend our homeland and be an influence for global good. That means a broad approach that continues to recognize that we are a maritime nation and must continue to be so in order to remain a great power. But also maintain a standing Army honed to a razor's edge so as to dissuade any opponent from trying the unthinkable.

Brain Food for a Sunday Afternoon

2011-08-28T13:40:00.000-07:00

Lt Col. David Anderson, Kanani Fong, and family

This Sunday as the Eastern seaboard begins to relax and restore power and pump out flooded basements in the wake of Hurricane Irene, an article in Southern California's Orange Country Register remind us that we are just two weeks away from pausing to remember the day modern America changed forever. The article was penned by my good friend and fellow blogger Kanani Fong, who in addition to being a gifted writer, is the wife of Lt. Col. David Anderson, an Army surgeon who just returned from his second deployment to Afghanistan. Her story told in her own words show the depth of commitment that many Americans have felt to their country and fellow citizens since September 11, 2001. She begins.

Loving someone at war is the second-worst kind of missing you will ever experience. The worst kind of missing is if they die. We don’t like to think of it, but we do.

My husband, Lt. Col. David B. Anderson, joined the Army as an active-duty surgeon when he was 52. Since then, this midlife turn of events has taken him to two areas of conflict. First was Kunar, where he was the surgeon in charge of the 759th Forward Surgical Unit. The second, from which he just returned, was in Herat. Both were in Afghanistan.

Deployments have a rhythm: Inhale, he’s here; exhale, he’s gone.

Kanani continues by explaining how she came to be an army wife in what she calls middle age and I call just reaching your plateau. In a few short paragraphs she explains how she has managed to raise their two teenage children and maintain both their home and still find time to lend her support to the troops and their families. Take the time to read the article and visit her blog the Kitchen Dispatch where she will keep you abreast on her life as an Army surgeons wife.

Read more:
An Army doctor's wife explains war at middle age

Rents in the fabric of Globalization

This next post comes by way of Steve DeAngelis who write the Enterprise Resilience Management blog. In this post Steve examines the rents in the fabric of Globalization and what America can do to mend them.

Overall globalization has been a good thing for the world. Millions (if not billions) of people have emerged from poverty's grasp as globalization washed over the shores of the better part of the world during the last several decades. Admittedly, globalization's effects have varied by region and state. Along with winners globalization has created some losers. As a result, globalization's fabric has become threadbare in spots. Jeffrey Sachs, a well-known advocate for the underprivileged and director of The Earth Institute at Columbia University, points out, for example, that unskilled labor in developed countries like the United States has been hit hard by the consequences of globalization. ["Tripped up by globalisation," Financial Times, 18 August 2011] Sachs insists, "The path to recovery now lies ... in upgraded skills, increased exports and public investments in infrastructure and low-carbon energy."

Steve continues his post by building off the original prescription by Jeffrey Sachs, where he brings much needed insight from someone who is fulfilling a calling to help develop a future worth living.

Although I agree with Sachs on the basic thrust of what is required to bring real recovery to the U.S. economy, we differ in some particulars. Sachs, for one thing, believes corporations should be taxed more heavily. I fear that would only make matters worse since corporations would likely send more of their money to tax havens overseas. Clearly, tax revenues need to increase and government spending needs to be reeled in if basic government needs and essential social services are going to be provided; but the best way to increase tax revenues is to put people back to work. Corporations that create jobs should be rewarded for their efforts rather than be penalized. I've argued since the beginning of the recession that more needed to be done to encourage entrepreneurs to start businesses and hire employees. Unfortunately, it looks like politicians are more interested in pointing fingers of blame at each other than they are about trying to work together to stimulate job creation. Getting off the soapbox, let me return to the subject of globalization.

Read more:
The Holes in Globalization's Fabric

Have we reached this point in our history?

Finally, comes this guest post over at Zenpundit written by Pundita who uses an amusing video to introduce and illustrate her point.

The title of this post refers to the punch line in a series of TV commercials in the USA for Sears Optical eyeglasses. The ads feature amusing skits of people in serious need of a pair of glasses, such as the woman who mistakes a police patrol car for a taxicab. But helped along by bravura performances from Tara L. Clark as a blind-as-a-bat cat owner and Squirty as a wild racoon who can’t believe his luck, one of the skits is so funny it’s gone viral on the internet:

Pundita notes the contribution of the master of zenpundit Mark Safranski to the discussion with this comment.

Over at ZenPundit, Mark Safranski has again expressed concern about what he calls an emerging American oligarchy, an elite that’s manipulating the rest of the American populace to accept its rule. Meanwhile, Fareed Zakaria is seriously proposing that America replace its president with a prime minister and Congress with a parliament — with an upper house, I suppose, to be stuffed with Mark’s oligarchs, duly elected of course, so that Americans will stop the troublesome habit of vehemently disagreeing with one another.

Read and watch for a final desert of brain food.
Missing Something?

Voices on Grand Strategy, or Lack There of.

2011-08-14T12:03:00.000-07:00

This past week saw China send it's first aircraft carrier out for sea trials. The reaction ranged from outright calls to a return to a Cold War footing to this inquiry from our State Department, which prompted this comment from CDR Salamander.

This is not helpful.
The PRC is a sovereign nation with legitimate maritime security requirements that are easily understood by anyone with an even rudimentary understanding of where maritime strategy and commerce come together.
The fact that the DOS would ask this in public does too things; it insults the Chinese through its patronizing tone and it makes our nation look like it is led by arrogant imperialists at best, simpletons at worst.

The good CDR goes on to suggest how the Chinese should respond.

"Here are our plans for our follow-on carrier development. Also, the Chinese people would like to know what plans the United States government has to bring its credit rating to back AAA. Our people worry about their investments. Until the Americans do that and assure worries in the investments by the Chinese people in the sovereign debt of the American government, we do not see the reason for their continued spending on such an unnecessarily large and offensively-minded military.
We have had concerns about the American ability to service their debt for some time and we've been quite open with them with regard to the lack of transparency from the Americans regarding their capabilities to ensure their own economic stability."

CDR Salamander is not one to trifle with defense issues, as having spent considerable time serving his country and continues to write astute and biting comments about the eroding state of our naval centric defense posture.

Read more:
State Dept. Makes Us All Look Stooopid

The bigger problem that looms before us, is when issuing a bumbling statement, the Dept of State, which speaks for our current leadership; reveals a dangerous lack of a grand strategy for managing the rise of a great power. Bryan McGrath offered up this next post on Information Dissemination where he argues that being prepared for war is the best way to avoid one.

I submit that while we are sometimes surprised by events (or appear to be), we have also been astoundingly and dramatically right in our prediction of the future on occasion. Put another way, if we are so bad at predicting the future, the entire concept of deterrence—conventional and otherwise—must be questioned. Because deterrence has at its heart—the animating impetus of an event or events yet to come which one does not desire to see. And I for one am not ready to make that leap. My case will be supported with only one vignette, but it is an important one. And then, it leads to a recommendation or two.

We must as a nation, face the possibility that the United States will someday fight a war with China. We must recognize that the way of human existence seems to presuppose conflict between a rising power and the status quo power where interests intersect. We must recognize that this conflict would be ruinous to China, to our nation, and potentially to much of the world. We must recognize that the central tenet of our national security strategy must be to ensure that such a war never happens. Unfortunately, this is currently not the case.

McGrath lays out a strategy that in an effort to discuss all possibilities, deserves a careful read.
On Predicting the Future

More on Chinese naval intentions can be found at.
Andrew Erickson

To put this all in prospective, here is a list of the current aircraft carriers in service in the world. China's would be joining India, South Korea and Thailand, other Asian nations who feel compelled to have an aircraft carrier.
World's Aircraft Carriers

Joining the discussion about the critical importance of having a "Grand Strategy" is Great Satan's Girlfriend Courtney Messerschmidt who posted this epistle in a style described as Dixie fried Esperanto by Carl Prine.of Line of Departure which hosted this post. Here is a teaser to encourage you to check it out as well as the links to support her astute argument.

Uniquely powerful — the only one of her kind!

Hegemonic unipolarity and the “Off Shore Balancing” act are facing off at the highest (almost) levels of Great Satan’s Academic and Actualizing apex.

As best understood, the Offshore Balancing fans are frightened that gap shrinking, global orderliness and reinforcing desired myriad nation state behavior will become more dangerous, more difficult and more expensive. Control of and over the internat’l system should shrivel as Great Satan radically redefined her interests to maintaining home turf integrity and maybe might sorta try to prevent a massive near field competitor from commanding enough resources to threaten North America.

Off Shore Balancing by def means Great Satan would ease up on military commitments to NATO, Nippon, SoKo and Taiwan in general — though there are good cases to be made that Offshore Balancing would look a lot like hyperpuissance’s overbearing preponderance in PACRIM.

Read the whole post:
Courtney's Complaint

Crossroads of Global Economy

Closing out the post today, comes this from Thomas PM Barnett who serves up this evidence that the "Grand Strategy" that has guided the United States for the past half century and in complete hindsight, going back to Theodore Roosevelt, has led to a world order that has seen the rise of a truly global middle-class. His comments are brief enough to post in full, but to get the full vision click on the link to view his parting comments and the link to the article and graphs.

It is THE amazing achievement of US grand strategy that we've created the conditions by which the chart of the direct left unfolds. If ANYBODY tells you that globalization is bad or unfair or says similar things about US "empire" since WWII, then simply show them the slide on the left, because it knocks those lies right out of the ballpark.

Or to be more succinct: the US-created and -enabled globalization process never replicated the dynamics of colonialism - i.e., kept the poor down. It did the exact opposite. The rest is just whiny bullshit propagated by little minds who refuse to accept it. We built a world order that enabled the rise of a global middle class, which means near-universal democracy is in the works (there will remain bedroom communities for the nonviolent rejectionists - we'll just ask them to put orange reflector signs on their buggies).

Why We're All Mad As Hell at Washington

2011-08-07T15:53:00.000-07:00

Cutting the credit rating

Where is it going to come from?

Summer brings the posting on most blogs to a slower pace, as some like this site slow down, or for some, a pause as the go on vacation. The news of the July was dominated by a house divided upon itself, as those we charge with leadership and the expectation to rise above the bubbling mass of goo that most Americans have come to see in Washington; played chicken with our future in order to appeal to their hardcore constituency.

Usually, I refrain from taking any political side, but a post today by blog friend, author and geo-strategist Thomas PM Barnett perfectly articulated my feelings about the current state of our economy, and the lack of visionary leadership by all who are charged with keeping the country safe, strong and prepared for the future. Barnett's post starts off by commenting on a column by Thomas Friedman in the NYT's and excerpting comments from Kenneth Rogoff, an economist from Harvard who Tom paraphrases this way.

Rogoff's point is simple but very revealing: we've all known this crisis to be a financial one versus the usual biz cycle. Recovering from biz-cycle contractions is historically a quick affair, but recovering from a financial crisis is typically more the 5-7 years horizontal scenario. Rogoff's key insight is to state the obvious (for most of us consumers): the "recovery" of the business cycle has already arrived and it changed nothing for most people, because the hangover is a long-term credit contraction - i.e., the huge deleveraging.

This led Barnett to bring the current crisis home, and describe how it affected him personally. His observation and feelings are shared by all of us Americans, who have struggled to maintain their mortgages, paid their taxes, hustled to recover income lost due to the downturn, and hold out hope that both parties will gin up some backbone to understand that we ALL, are plenty pissed off at everybody in Washington. See if his words don't sound like that angry voice in your own head?

I feel this personally in spades: built a nice big house in 05-06 at the height of the bubble (of course, I walked away from the old house with an inflated sum, so no complaints), so the house is priced in that way - as is my mortgage. At the time, no problem, because I'm getting paid in a bubblicious way.

Then the crisis. All of a sudden everyone says my labor is worth a whole lot less. Still love me and the work, just want to pay a lot less. Everybody is doing this, except my mortgage holder. He wants that to stay the same.

I'm lucky. Despite losing a ton of income over the past two years, I've scrambled and replaced the vast majority. I have to work three times as hard for 5 times as many customers, but I'm managing because I'm not reliant on any one job and I'm willing to hustle.

So I do the right thing and don't strategically default on a mortgage, which is tempting, not because I can't pay it because I can - and am. It's tempting because, geez, why should I pay off this debt honorably across this long crunch while so many others get help or simply run away? Because when I do, I subsidize all their behavior.

Tom goes on to point out, what many of us who work hard have come to feel like, the problem!

Worse, I have a White House that claims I'm the problem because I don't pay enough taxes and so it wants to soak me because that's an evil state of affairs. Funny thing is, I pay the Fed a whopping sum every year - about three times as much as my dad ever made in a year while he supported us seven kids. So naturally, when more than one out of every three dollars I make goes to the government, I feel like I'm supporting all sorts of programs for the needy, plus I'm doing the right thing by the mortgage, plus I keep up my charity donations, plus I pay 3 private grade school tuitions (saving the public schools) and two public college tuitions (eldest daughter and wife). I don't ask for any hand-outs from the government. Hell, I fund them and am glad to do so. But then I'm told I'm the reason why the government is so in debt (not enough taxes from the "rich") and yet I'm the dupe who continues honoring that mortgage from another era while paying for the bail-outs of those who can't. And you know, I don't feel like I'm the problem - or evil for doing all that.

Tom Barnett has been called many things, but the one that stands out, is of being an optimist about the future. When I read this next paragraph, it gave me pause that he glass was full and he had reached the point that he would not stand by and take it anymore.

But no, I have no optimism about the future of our economy right now. I don't how I could. I know what I know about globalization and America's long-term strengths, but I look at Washington and I see clueless politicians with no business experience spending all their time trying to tear each other down and I wonder why I must suffer these fools.

His final words ring like the battlecry from the discouraged middleclass.

But most of all, I f--king hate the government right now for being such incompetent boobs. I would be happy to see them all lose in 2012 - and will vote that way.

Read more:
Rogoff's "second great contraction" and why I'm mad as hell at Washington

With a growing number of Americans, 47% paying no federal income tax, against the shrinking 53% who do, and with the crisis at hand, raising taxes in some form is in the cards, but as Rogoff suggests, it must be on something other than personal income; like a tax on gasoline or a national sales tax. Otherwise if it is raised on those who earn over $250,000, then even the lowest should have to pay something, at least a few percentage points to give them a dog in the fight.

Water, So little to go around.

2011-07-24T18:33:00.000-07:00

Picture of Earth showing if all Earth's water (liquid, ice, freshwater, saline) was put into a sphere it would be about 860 miles (about 1,385 kilometers) in diameter. Diameter would be about the distance from Salt Lake City, Utah to Topeka, Kansas, USA.

Credit: Illustration by Jack Cook, Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution; USGS

This past week saw much of the United States sweltering under the doldrums of mid-summer, when extreme humidity and high temperatures married to launch a thousand news clips, as sweating correspondences sought out comments from the uncomfortable so their anchors could drive the global warming narrative. Little was noted that the West Coast was cool and in Southern California, June Glum was sticking around to keep the sun away until late morning in most areas near the coast. I came across this article in the Atlantic Magazine by Rebecca J. Rosen that reminds us how an invention by a gent named Willis Carrier, helped shape Modern America.

Before air conditioning, in a bygone and surely less comfortable era, people employed all sorts of strategies for keeping cool in the heat. Houses were designed with airflow in mind -- more windows, higher ceilings. A style once prevalent in the American south, the dogtrot house, was really two smaller cabins -- one for cooking and the other for living -- connected under one roof with an open-air corridor between them. In addition, many homes had porches where families could spend a hot day, and also sleeping porches with beds where they could ride out a hot night. Many home designs took passive solar design principles into account, even if they didn't name them as such.

Ms. Rosen sketches out the essential role that air conditioning has played in changing our lives for the better.

Read more
Keeping it Cool: How the air conditioner made Modern America

Air conditioning shaped our world, but one element remains at the root of life and next to planting one's self under the blowing vent of one Mr. Carrier's inventions, a glass of cool water, or any beverage that has water as the prime ingredient, will cool you down and keep you alive. Water, a resource that's supply has not grown to keep pace with the population is said to becoming more valuable than oil in the coming decades.

Two articles in Yale Global Online look at how water is challenging rising Asian powers where a scarcity of water threatens the present and the future.

Before heavy June rains ended one of the most severe droughts in the Yangtze River Basin in 60 years, farmers in Hubei Province warned of rice shortages because of late planting. Downriver, coal-fired power plants cut back electrical generation because coal-loaded barges couldn’t navigate the low waters. The Yangtze’s shallow depth and the utility industry’s weakened power output reflect both this spring’s unusual conditions and the growing resource confrontation China faces with water, energy and food.

Read more:
Water Challenges Asia Powers.

Drawing water from an Indian well.

China is not the only country facing this challenge. India is facing an even more desperate crisis.

By July this year, the monsoon has established itself vigorously over much of the subcontinent. The anxieties of the long, intense summer months, when nations hold their collective breath in anticipation of the cooling, life-giving rain, have receded. But the region’s1.6 billion people know that next summer, the worries will return.

Water is ultimately a finite resource. With all finite resources, there is a continuous need for sustainable and equitable management, by capping demand, improving efficiencies in supply and developing substitutes. This exercise is complicated by the sociocultural beliefs, values and affinities around this

800- million and Falling

2011-07-15T21:11:00.000-07:00

Number of people living on $1 a day

Global Poverty Rate

Four years ago this past May, Paul Collier's book The Bottom Billion: Why the Poorest Countries are Failing and What Can Be Done About It told of the rapid fall of poverty rates that affected about 80% of the world's population. He noted that there were about one billion people who were still living on less than $1.00 per day and all means to lower that number was defying all traditional means. He had held out little hope for change if the them current handout schemes continued.

Earlier this month, an article posted at Yale Global Online reported something that garnered almost no fan-fare, that the number of desperately poor, had not just slipped below one billion, but was dropping by 70 million a year, according to the authors, Laurence Chandy and Geoffrey Gertz. Their data flies off the pages as evidence that the world is moving towards a middleclass majority.

It is customary to bemoan the intractability of global poverty and the lack of progress against the Millennium Development Goals. But the stunning fact is that, gone unnoticed, the goal to halve global poverty was probably reached three years ago.

We are in the midst of the fastest period of poverty reduction the world has ever seen. The global poverty rate, which stood at 25 percent in 2005, is ticking downwards at one to two percentage points a year, lifting around 70 million people – the population of Turkey or Thailand – out of destitution annually. Advances in human progress on such a scale are unprecedented, yet remain almost universally unacknowledged.

This should be heartening to every living soul. What is means besides, providing new markets for developed and the fast developing countries but less conflict as noted in this observation by the authors as to the possible causes and effects.

How and why sustained high economic growth in developing countries took hold are questions likely to be debated by economic historians for many decades. Already one can point to a number of probable sources emerging or accelerating around the turn of the century: an investment boom triggered by rising commodity prices; high growth spillovers originating from large open emerging economies that utilize cross-border supply chains; diversification into novel export markets from cut flowers to call centers; spread of new technologies, in particular rapid adoption of cell phones; increased public and private investment in infrastructure; the cessation of a number of conflicts and improved political stability; and the abandonment of inferior growth strategies such as import substitution for a focus on macroeconomic health and improved competitiveness.

Read more, and the linked report below:
With Little Notice, Globalization Reduced Poverty

Poverty in Numbers:

This information is something that grand strategist and advocate of the American model of liberal free trade Thomas PM Barnett, has written and spoken about for almost a decade. He defines this moment in history as:

•Globalization IV (2001-present), is defined by the enormous structural changes wrought by the simultaneous rise of numerous great powers and the emergence of a global middle class.

Some used to find his optimistic views hard to swallow, the proof is coming in spades to show that the world is moving towards being mostly middleclass. The truth is that he has been spot-on in defining the age. It is high time that Americans get on board the boat and discover that we have to embrace those new markets and go forth like our ancestors did when the built this grand experiment that has primed the very pump leading to the world being better off than any time in history. Barnett, writes this week about what he called a must read article in the Wall Street Journal that explains how the west mis-understands the economic growth in China. Barnett excepts the best nuggets of the article and add a rich sauce to enhance the author Liu Junning's words.

Read his analysis:
What is eternal and Ephemeral about China and this modern world system we call globalization

Number of US Jobs from Exports. Map from East-West Center

Now all this might make Americans say okay, our own country is hurting, what is Globalization and free trade doing for us? This next article also from Yale Global Online, will illustrate how connected America's economy has become with Asia.

“Jobs” is now a fraught four-letter word for America. With unemployment in the United States hovering around 9 percent, the word resonates for millions of struggling individuals and families, not to mention politicians and policymakers. And no other geographical region in the world today receives more attention in that context than Asia. “Jobs lost to Asia” is a refrain of politicians and media, yet the facts tell a different story. Trade and investment with Asia creates jobs in the US.

Student Economic Impact on US. from East-West Center

In a detail rich article the author Satu Limaye relates how job growth created by Asian trade has risen to 850,000 jobs in the United States. He points out that Japanese foreign direct investment in the U.S. account for 665,000 jobs. One of the proposals Thomas Barnett has made is an increase in Chinese direct investment in American businesses to stimulate job growth, instead of buying Treasury bonds. The article goes on to note the jobs and money generated by everything from students to tourism and immigration where the contribution of the 10 million foreign born Asians are contributing to the economy, culture and politics.

Read more:
Asia Matters For America

OC Residents Remember Their Martial Spirit at Old MCAS, El Toro

2011-07-10T15:30:00.000-07:00

USS Iowa BB-61 broadside shot

MCAS El Toro,

This Saturday brought back memories of an event, only interupted by my military service, that I attended every year, from my childhood until I reached my middle years. For any young boy growing up within driving distance of the Marine Corps Air Station El Toro, late summer, meant their annual air show that ran from the 1950's to 1997 and drew up to two million visitors over a two day run. After the based closed part of the land was used to try and build what was to be the West Coast version of New York's Central Park. On apperarence, the effort has a long way to go to mirror that target, but still offers people a place to play soccer, visit an art centers and take a tethered baloon ride over the suburbs of central Orange County.

Great Park and a hint of the old runway

In an effort to honor to memory of the great air shows put on by the Marines, a small air show was part of the celebration of the opening of a new phase at the park. Billed as the MCAS El Toro Airshow it was a shadow of the old air show, but it still brought the thousands who had flocked to partake of the food and music; crowding to the edge of the flight line to check out a collection of Marine Helicopters flown in just for the program and a modest display of historic aircraft assembled to bring back memories of the base's heritage.

Pacific Battleship Center

Alongside the static aircraft displays were booths selling memorabilia and others promoting museums, like the Pacific Battleship Center a group of stalwart history lovers who have spent countless hours preparing documents and raising money in an effort to secure what is billed as a "New Mission for a Living Legend" the USS Iowa BB-61. For most who follow this blog or keep up on all things Navy, you aware that the Iowa has been waiting disposal by the Navy, and the group mentioned above, has submitted all the paper work and is awaiting the signal that the Navy has awarded the ship to the organization so it can be moved to the Port of Los Angeles for conversion to a living museum and education center.

An American Excalibur

The reason for this post is relate to you the kind of people who care about preserving this important link to what I believe is the Excalibur that helped the United States to become a Great Power and eventually the only super power on earth. My fellow volunteers are made up of men and women who come from many walks of life, educators, the law, former sailors, landlubbers, historians, model ship builders and retired professions of all stripes. We all have one thing in common, a love of preserving a piece of our heritage that more than anything else, is a symbol of something bigger than the sum of all of us. If the interest displayed by the hundreds who ventured by our booth was any kind of evidence; the interest and fascination of our naval heritage and the awesome display of power that no cruise missile can compare too, saw many new plank owners and volunteers signing up to help work on the ship when she arrives.

Great White Fleet

The battleship more than any other ship marks the transition of America from a frontier nation to a Great Power. Theodore Roosevelt understood this when he ordered the Great White Fleet to sail around the world in 1904. Later in two World Wars battleships played a role, that even with the advent of the carrier in World War II, and their domination of the air, saw the battleship still essential as it provided super accurate supporting gunfire, and such a curtain of anti-aircraft fire that it was the rare aircraft that was able to penetrate their screen to harm the vulnerable carriers. After the war, the four Iowa Class ships were retired and recalled in Korea and Vietnam, and again during the buildup in the 1980's. They ended their reign shortly after helping to break Saddam's grip on Kuwait and now all but the USS Iowa are museums. Her turn is next, and it is hoped that within a fortnight someone in the Navy Department will sign the document granting the ship a new home in San Pedro, the former home of the Pacific battle fleet from 1919 to 1940. Stay tuned for that announcement, in the mean time anyone living in driving distance of San Pedro and wanting to help get this ship ready for her next mission, click on this contact link and ask for a signup form to help get her shipshape, or even better click to become a Plank owner.

Declaration of Independence

2011-07-04T13:35:00.000-07:00

The Declaration of Independence is the reason that we Americans have paused on a hot summer day in early July for the past 235 years to re-affirm what it is to be an American. Although, during the first few years, July 4th, was only celebrated locally and by the armed forces. It did not even become a national holiday until 1870 amd a paid holiday until 1938. The date however is not as important, as the document, and that leads to the subject of this post. Two of my fellow bloggers have posted eloquent tributes about the meaning of the declaration, and they deserve to be acknowledged. Mark of Zenpundit get the lead off position with this excellent description on what an American is.

This is the core of what it America is, a civic creed, adherence to which defines the holder as possessor of the exalted title of ”American”, without regard to their origins, however humble, their condition, however mean, they can hold their heads above those of kings as a free people, jealous of their liberties and none greater than another under the law.

That was the revolutionary ideal that set the world on fire, long though in the coming to arrive as a reality. It is our greatest legacy to the history of mankind and if we ever lose our vigilance and submit to tyrants, forgetting ourselves in seeking security, Jefferson’s words may yet inspire others to take up the cause on our behalf as we have done so for others:

Read and view the whole post:
“We hold these Truths to be Self-Evident….”

Citizen soldiers

Being an American also brings with it a responsibility to ensure that our way of life is protected. This next post from CDR Salamander, provides an answer.

And so our Revolution - really a civil war - began. Those who served, fought, wounded, or died in that war understood why they left family and future to put their lives on the line.

In 2011 after a decade of undeclared war, with a leadership that cannot even call bombing another nation conflict and the reasons for these wars not even defended by those who lead us - why do we fight?

Besides following orders and doing what you can to protect and serve your band of brothers - why are we scattered around the world killing others, and for what purpose?

If our leaders cannot define or describe what we are doing with our armed forces - can we?

Read the whole post and the link within:
Why do we serve?

Major Robert Soltes 2004, Iraq

Lt. Mark Daily, Iraq 2007

Cpt. Eric F. Wood, Memorial, Belgium

Sadly for our nation, this is a question that is being asked by only a few, when less than 1% of the population answers the call to serve. For some, it is a way to find new direction, for others, the call to duty hearkened back to earlier wars when men answered the call, and preformed deeds of valor, often unrecorded, and un-seen, except, by God. We should all, understand that preserving our liberties means a willingness to serve both in the traditional sense of arms, as well as citizens who take an active part in their civic responsibilities and to follow their conscience, putting the interests of the nation first, so as to preserve the civic creed so aptly stated by Mark in the second paragraph of this post.

Facebook: Transition from Teenager to Adulthood

2011-07-02T12:55:00.000-07:00

Kampot Pepper

Daughters of Cambodia

Kampot Pepper

Facebook the social media that has swept the Internet has transitioned from a place to stay in contact with friends and share personal experiences, to a forum that now links institutions, organizations and people in what can now be best described as a global town square where with an electronic pulse, one can access the news of the day; from what your best friend did last night, to the latest articles from publications, and esteemed observers of the human condition.

Chris and Tom Gordon

It was there this morning that I learned of a new series of articles about a subject I had written about earlier this year by fellow Vietnam Veteran and Facebook friend, Tom Gordon, long time reporter for the Orange County Register. I wrote this post about Tom and his wife Chris who launched a business after an accident last May 2010. A new series of articles details the growth of what started out as an idea as small as a pepper seed, and grew into a thriving business that now helps people 8000 miles, away reach for a better life, as it also extends a helping hand to victims of the sex trade industry. In his own words Tom describes the past year.

I never thought I'd be selling pepper. Or jasmine rice and rose facial scrub. Or damask scarves.

In fact, until I Googled it, I had no idea what damask was.

Last year on May 13 my wife, Cris, had taken our black Lab, Shadow, out for a walk. While they were waiting at a stoplight on Main Street in west Orange, an SUV made an ill-timed left turn, hitting a small sedan and sending it up on the sidewalk. Cris and Shadow were both hit. Cris somehow got her foot caught under the car before rolling up on the hood. The result was not pretty: a trip to the UCI Trauma Center, six days in the hospital, more than 70 stitches, a compound fracture of her left ankle, a broken right leg and an amputated big toe.

Her recovery was long and slow. Over five months she progressed from bed-ridden to a wheelchair to a walker to crutches to a limp. We had a lot of time to talk and think and we discovered our priorities had changed.

Just a month before the accident we had visited Cambodia. We have been to Southeast Asia many times and Cambodia -- a poor nation with a tortured past -- touched us most. During our visit we toured a pepper farm in Kampot Province. The pepper was spicy and the farmers were sincere. We asked one farmer what we could do to help. His answer was simple: "Sell our pepper in your country."

This began an odyssey that led Tom back to Cambodia, where he began to make the contacts to bring the peppers back and introduce them to American palates. Along the way, he reached out to Daughters of Cambodia an organization that helps the victims of the sex trade to find employment and regain their dignity and a future worth living.

The result has been described by Tom as a "kind of wild ride" as offers of help poured in.

Read more:
Pepper to help former sex workers? How?

Daughters of Cambodia

The story does not end there. Tom recently returned to Cambodia where he donated enough proceeds from the profits from The Pepper Project to sponsor two young ladies for a year. Tom writes about it in a second article.

We have imported about 100 pounds of pepper. And on my last trip to Cambodia, in April, I handed Ruth Elliott, who runs Daughters of Cambodia, enough money to sponsor two young ladies for a year.

When we return this fall I suspect we will have made enough to sponsor another two or three.

The life of a sex worker in Cambodia is not pleasant.

Some estimate the HIV infection rate at 40 percent. There's abuse and violence at every turn. Some are tricked into a life of prostitution, some have no other choice and some are sold into it. Most of their customers are Cambodian men who pay a couple bucks for services rendered. A brothel can be small building with a mattress tossed on the floor.

Tom goes on to write about the two young women they sponsor. It costs about $80 a month to sponsor a girl. He notes."That's about the cost of a Field MVP seat at one Angels game."

Read more:
Using pepper to fight prostitution
I would urge all to ponder what Tom and Chris are doing. They are emulating what global grand strategist Thomas PM Barnett has called having an Individual foreign policy. Check out the Pepper Project for some great pepper and the recipes . know that you will be joining Tom and Chris's foreign policy team and extending a hand to people across the sea, every time the savory spice hits your tongue.

Global Cities: The Future Centers of Power

2011-06-25T17:08:00.000-07:00

Beijing skyline

Mubai skyline

Urbanization

The past two week has seen an ongoing competition sponsored by Wikistrat and judged by their chief analysis Thomas PM Barnett. Barnett provided his readers with an update on the week two results in a post this week. He begins by explaining how it is run and his responsibility.

As head judge of Wikistrat’s International Grand Strategy Competition, I wanted to update everybody on what’s emerged across the second week of the contest. As you may already know, the competition brings together approximately 30 teams comprised of PhD and masters students from elite international schools and world-renowned think tanks. Those teams, evenly distributed over a dozen or so countries (so as to encourage intra-country as well as inter-country competition), were challenged in Week 2 to come up with national and regional trajectories in relation to their country-team assignments (Brazil, China, EU, India, Iran, Israel, Japan, North Korea, Pakistan, Russia, South Africa, Turkey & US).

As head judge, I assign points to teams based on their activity throughout the week. In this second week, each team generated those two trajectories to the tune of about 10,000 words each, or close to 300,000 words across all the teams. Naturally, a ton of interesting nuggets emerged, so here’s my hit list of provocative ideas.

Those nuggets number twelve theories or visions of the future and range from seeing the U.S. re-focus on the Western Hemisphere, and the EU encouraging immigration from fellow Roman Catholic states/regions, to India and China's growing influence. One topic heading caught my eye because I had just been reading another blog that had a great post that supported the contention that:

4) The future is all about who’s got the most global cities (EU2/Oxford)

Barnett has this to add about this opinion from the Oxford team.

I’m a big believer in this, because if you add up the coastal megacities of the world, you’ve got half the planet’s population and the vast majority of its connectivity and traffic. Get the coastal megacities wired up right, and globalization can’t fail. Team Oxford brought this out in their critique of Europe’s lack of global cities, saying that, besides London, none of the capitals really qualify on the scale of such behemoths as New York, Los Angeles, Shanghai, Hong Kong, Mumbai, Istanbul, etc. EU2’s point: make the investment if you want to stay relevant in the rule setting.

Shanghai skyline

The support for the comments about global cities is found in this post from The Enterprise Resilience Management Blog where Steve DeAngelis writes this about emerging market consumers and where they will live.

In several past posts, I've made the assertion that economic progress generally precedes political transformation. The logic for that is fairly straight forward. When a population moves out of poverty and into the middle class (i.e., its members find themselves with discretionary spending money), their attention naturally turns to politics. Why? The reasons are many. To name a few: they don't want their hard-earned cash taxed too heavily; they want freedom of movement and expression; and they expect the government to provide them with services that improve their quality of life. Because economic progress has such a dramatic impact on politics, both political and economic analysts are carefully watching the emergence of the new global upper and middle classes. Fareed Zakaria told Nora Dunne, "The growth in emerging markets is not just at the economic level. It's also happening in terms of psychology. Chinese, Indians, and Koreans are feeling a much greater sense of political confidence and assertiveness. You see this on the world stage everywhere."

Zakaria's claim that economic progress is leading to political transformation "everywhere" may sound like hyperbole, but it is not far from the mark. There are only a few dark corners of the world where globalization has yet to shine its light. Most new members joining the global upper and middle classes will come from urban settings. Analysts from McKinsey & Company claim, "Over the next 15 years, 600 cities will account for more than 60 percent of global GDP growth."

The next sentence in the article has a link to interactive map that allows the viewer to see the pattern of growth. DeAngelis quotes from an article published by McKinsely.

"More than 20 of the world's top 50 cities ranked by GDP will be located in Asia by the year 2025, up from 8 in 2007. During that same time period, our research suggests, more than half of Europe's top 50 cities will drop off the list, as will 3 in North America. In this new landscape of urban economic power, Shanghai and Beijing will outrank Los Angeles and London, while Mumbai and Doha will surpass Munich and Denver. The implications—for companies' growth priorities, countries' economic relationships, and the world's sustainability strategy—are profound." ["Urban economic clout moves east," by Richard Dobbs, Jaana Remes, and Sven Smit, McKinsely Quarterly.

Read more
Emerging Market Consumers, Part 1

Here is the link to the McKinsey Quarterly site and the interactive map that is an excellent source to illustrate the effective spread of the middle class around the globe. Click on the map link and see the world of the future open to explore with the click of your mouse.
Cities: The Next Frontier for Global Growth

June: A time for Commencement

2011-06-11T23:40:00.000-07:00

UCI Commencement

For tens of thousands, June is the month that years of effort and perseverance will be rewarded by the conferring of a degree. I have written before about the significance of commencement and the importance of knowledge to the social health of this nation and the world. This year is no different, last week I attended commencement for the 2011 graduating class for the university where I teach. This is my sixth graduation ceremony and each year brings an increase in graduates, with women becoming the largest contingent in doctoral and masters, as well as bachelors degrees. This is borne out across the nation where women now hold more college degrees than men. This points to something that troubled me earlier this year when I wrote about the growing number of 20-somethings who have opted to fore go higher education or even learning a trade or getting a job. The statistics in that article did not break down the gender, but a non-scientific census of family and acquaintances seems to reveal a large number of home-bound and under-employed boys, versus daughters who for the most part are off to school or working in a career field.

The debate about higher education got some attention this past week when Larry Sanger co-founder of Wikipedia wrote a series of articles that caught the eye of Galrahn at information dissemination. Sanger offers up a defense of higher education which he begins by deconstructing an essay written by a 19 year-old who decries that "College is a waste of time." Sanger's destroys each of the nine premises with devastating accuracy. Sanger's next article addresses a question he asks:

Is there a new anti-intellectualism? I mean one that is advocated by Internet geeks and some of the digerati. I think so: more and more mavens of the Internet are coming out firmly against academic knowledge in all its forms. This might sound outrageous to say, but it is sadly true.

Read more:
Is there a new geek anti-intellectualism?

Taking this all under consideration and review, one would see by the extensive responses to Sanger's latest article that it fostered a healthy debate.

Counter to the anti-intellectual arguments and 20-somethings postponing their lives; are the many students I see in class each week who are fore going their free time and personal gratification, to study and gain the knowledge that Larry Sanger so eloquently writes about. Before I close, I would like to share a brief story of a chance encounter that reinforces Sanger's essay on the worth of a higher education and serves as a tribute to all who will graduate this year.

Last month I visited my dentist for a routine filling. I was ushered into the treatment room by a young women who after getting me prepped, explained that the dentist would be delayed for a few minutes. She remained and our talk turned from joking about it being the "fateful" afternoon of May 21, "Doomsday," to history, global events, and the state of the nation. When the dentist joined us, he jumped right in the discussion, and while waiting for the Novocaine to take effect we three talked about the fate of higher education in California. I soon learned that this young women would be graduating this month from the University of California and would be entering medical school where she intended to become a pediatrician. She related that in addition to working as a dental assistant, she also worked in a local children's doctor's office and volunteered at a local hospital, all while maintaining the grades to qualify for medical school. In the short time I was in the dentist chair, and without getting too graphic, I observed a person who for a dental assistant, was as attentive to the patient as a practicing oral surgeon. When I asked her why she did not become a dentist, she responded that she worked in both kinds of offices to learn which path in medicine would best suit her passion. I became convinced that this person was destined to accomplish what she had set out to become.

After the dentist finished, I learned that her parents had been part of the mass immigration after the fall of Vietnam. She joins a growing list of young people whom I have encountered, who by the grace of circumstances borne out of a war long ago; have joined this band of souls we call Americans and are enriching the fabric of our nation with their grit and passion to succeed. I do not write this little vignette to cast un-do attention on her, but to acknowledge an accomplishment she shares with her fellow graduates this year. I am convinced that she is well on the way to becoming a fine doctor and will make her parents, and her community proud.

How to Raise Your Awareness and Blood Pressure

2011-06-06T21:32:00.000-07:00

Leading off with something to raise your awareness is this excellent review by Dan Abbott, master of the enduring and insightful blog, tdaxp.com where he holds court on what he dubs High-minded, fanatically malthusian perspectives.

Dan reviewed Henry Kissinger's new book On China where he nailed what I think is the true role that this book will play in educating future generations about diplomacy and foreign relations. Dan begins:

Henry Kissinger is the famous American diplomat. His new book, On China, is a fine history of the “Central State” focusing on the late Qing and early Communist periods. On China is destined to be assigned reading in graduate schools for years, because of its fine application of “realist” thinking to the survival of a strong country facing a multitude of high-tech strategic rivals. On China is clearly aimed at the informed political class: professional analysts, thoughtful policy professionals, and opinion makers. The narrative of On China appears to be distorted, either because of Kissinger’s focus on his own time period, his keen insight on what to clarify on what to clarify and what to obfuscate, or both. This is most notable in his incorrect depiction of Deng Xiaoping‘s political standing, as well as the near- complete absence of discussion of the KMT or the contemporary Communist Party.

Dan continues by inserting his insight, supported by excerpts that bear witness to buttress his opinion of the books true purpose.

On China‘s a good book. Kissinger, deservedly, has a very high reputation. So I truly wonder if the problems and omissions in On China are by accident or design. For instance, in the epilogue Kissinger writes:

In all of China’s extravagant history, there was no precedent for how to participate in a global order, whether in concert with — or in opposition to — another superpower.

But this is simply wrong! China and Russia are both successor states to the Mongol Horde. Russia was the first state that China recognized as “sovereign.” Russia had a de facto embassy in Beijing for centuries before any other westerners were even allowed to live in the city. Kissinger even explicitly refers to the history of the three-way continental politics between Russia, Turkestan, and China in in a footnote:

The story of Qing expansion in “inner Asia” under a series of exceptionally able Emperors is related in rich detail in Peter Perdue, China Marches West: The Qing Conquest of Central Eurasia (Cambridge: Belknap Press, 2005).

So what’s going on?

You will have to click the link and read the whole post to find out.
On China by Henry Kissinger Review

Hand in hand with the diplomatic lessons above, comes reasons to make sure our foreign policy toolbox is fully equipped.
Tensions Rise in South China Sea-from Information Dissemination

And from Thomas PM Barnett:
The New Rules: For U.S., the Long War Shifts Back to the Persian Gulf

Now to raise your blood pressure. Good friend and fellow blogger /kanani Fong posted this on her blog Kitchen Dispatch" about a recent incident that until Friday, was kept quietly swept under the radar by handlers and what will soon be an embarrassed Houston Police Department.

Patti LaBelle

LaThug standing over cadet King (in yellow)

Kanani's post comments on the breaking story about how the aged former diva Patti LaBelle had her goons beat up a West Point cadet who had the unfortunate luck to stand to near LaBelle's luggage as he talked on a cell phone with his brother. Kanani begins with this short explanation of how it went down.

Two months ago, the man in the yellow was innocuously talking on the phone at the Bush International Airport in Houston trying to locate his ride. Unfortunately, he happened to stand too close to Patti LaBelle's luggage. According to reports, she rolled down the window and directed her bodyguards to take care of the guy.

They did. Richard King, age 23 and a West Point Cadet ended up bloodied, with a concussion and in the hospital. Immediately, while King was on the ground, staggering around and a lone valiant hero in a white cowboy hat was trying to help him, the Houston Police were asking for autographs while LaBelle appeased them with photo ops.

It seems that the young cadet left the academy, who declined to comment. However, Kanani has this observation.

While they didn't know King was a West Point Cadet, someone in their PR camp knew they could dish up enough crap and get him thrown out. Hence, King will now deploy as an enlisted soldier. He is welcome to "re-apply" after his deployment is ended, and finish out his final year. To that I say absolute Bullshit.

Read the whole post and watch the video and see what you think.
Patti LaBelle: LaThugs Beat Up West Point Cadet

Memorial Day 2011

2011-05-29T16:16:00.000-07:00

American Military Cemetery Cartage, Tunisia

Cartage,Tunisia

American Military Cemetery, Manila-16,631 at rest.

American Cemetery Luxembourg

Memorial Day is a day to remember those who have given their lives in the service of our nation. For anyone who has served, the day takes on a special meaning because we shared the same bond of service. I have written before of those we remember on this day. This year, I want to share a passage written by Rick Atkinson author of Army at Dawn: The War in North Africa, 1942-1943. This excerpt from the prologue is one of the most moving passages ever put to ink.

Twenty-seven acres of headstones fill the American military cemetery at Carthage, Tunisia. There are no obelisks, no tombs, no ostentatious monuments, just 2,841 bone-white marble markers, two feet high and arrayed in ranks as straight as gunshots. Only the chiseled names and dates of death suggest singularity. Four sets of brothers lie side by side. Some 240 stones are inscribed with the thirteen of the saddest words in our language: "Here rests in honored glory a comrade in arms known but to God." A long limestone wall contains the names of another 3,724 men still missing, and a benediction: "Into Thy hands, O Lord."

This is an ancient place, built on the ruins of Roman Carthage and a stone's throw from the even older Punic city. It is incomparably serene. The scents of eucalyptus and of the briny Mediterranean barely two miles away carry on the morning air, and the African light is flat and shimmering, as if worked by a silversmith. Tunisian lovers stroll hand in hand across the kikuyu grass or sit on benches in the bowers, framed by orangeberry and scarlet hibiscus. Cypress and Russian olive trees ring the yard, with scattered acacia and Aleppo pine and Jerusalem thorn. A carillon plays hymns on the hour, and the chimes sometimes mingle with a muezzin's call to prayer from a nearby minaret. Another wall is inscribed with the battles where these boys died in 1942 and 1943 -- Casablanca, Algiers, Oran, Kasserine, El Guettar, Sidi Nsir, Bizerte -- along with a line from Shelley's "Adonais": "He has outsoared the shadow of our night."

In the tradition of government-issue graves, the stones are devoid of epitaphs, parting endearments, even dates of birth. But visitors familiar with the American and British invasion of North Africa in November 1942, and the subsequent seven-month struggle to expel the Axis powers there, can make reasonable conjectures. We can surmise that Willett H. Wallace, a private first class in the 26th Infantry Regiment who died on November 9,1942, was killed at St. Cloud, Algeria, during the three days of hard fighting against, improbably, the French. Ward H. Osmun and his brother Wilbur W., both privates from New Jersey in the 18th Infantry and both killed on Christmas Eve 1942, surely died in the brutal battle of Longstop Hill, where the initial Allied drive in Tunisia was stopped -- for more than five months, as it turned out -- within sight of Tunis. Ignatius Glovach, a private first class in the 701st Tank Destroyer Battalion who died on Valentine's Day, 1943, certainly was killed in the opening hours of the great German counteroffensive known as the battle of Kasserine Pass. And Jacob Feinstein, a sergeant from Maryland in the 135th Infantry who died on April 29, 1943, no doubt passed during the epic battle for Hill 609, where the American Army came of age.

A visit to the Tunisian battlefields tells a bit more. For more than half a century, time and weather have purified the ground at El Guettar and Kasserine and Longstop. But the slit trenches remain, and rusty C-ration cans, and shell fragments scattered like seed corn. The lay of the land also remains -- the vulnerable low ground, the superior high ground: incessant reminders of how, in battle, topography is fate.

Yet even when the choreography of armies is understood, or the movement of this battalion or that rifle squad, we crave intimate detail, of individual men in individual foxholes. Where, precisely, was Private Anthony N. Marfione when he died on December 24,1942? What were the last conscious thoughts of Lieutenant Hill P. Cooper before he left this earth on April 9, 1943? Was Sergeant Harry K. Midkiff alone when he crossed over on November 25,1942, or did some good soul squeeze his hand and caress his forehead?

The dead resist such intimacy. The closer we try to approach, the farther they draw back, like rainbows or mirages. They have outsoared the shadow of our night, to reside in the wild uplands of the past. History can take us there, almost. Their diaries and letters, their official reports and unofficial chronicles -- including documents that, until now, have been hidden from view since the war -- reveal many moments of exquisite clarity over a distance of sixty years. Memory, too, has transcendent power, even as we swiftly move toward the day when not a single participant remains alive to tell his tale, and the epic of World War II forever slips into national mythology.

Tens of thousands of Americans lay like those above; in cemeteries, unmarked loam and jungle sand, far from the place of their birth. I can attest for every one, that in their youth, none imagined their bones would rest forever so far from home. Today, the nation goes to extraordinary measures to bring their fallen sons and daughters home. For most of the nation, the wars of the past decade have not left them wounded with the loss of a family member or even anyone they have personally known. The lives lost in earlier wars are distant and fleeting, only remembered if those lost were a parent or a relative.

Hopefully, this post and those by other unfettered hands posting scores of tributes on this medium and across the social media, will give pause to everyone to remember how much their current lives were impacted by fellow citizens who gave their lives to insure the freedom of the next generation. I am especially speaking to the millions born and those who have come to these shores in the years since World War II and the wars spawned of the Cold War. Your lives would not be the same without the sacrifice of souls like those remembered above.

So I say, lift your glass just once this long weekend, and pause and utter a small remembrance to those who made it possible for you to have the chance to live in a world of opportunity versus a world of permission. The greatest redemption for their loss, is making sure your life is worthwhile.

America's 21st Century Samuel Pepys

2011-05-28T16:39:00.000-07:00

Samuel Pepys, Admiralty Secretary, Royal Navy

Theodore Roosevelt reviewing Great White Fleet

FDR, the sailor

Raymond (Galrahn) Pritchett

At the dawn of the United Kingdom becoming a Great Power, one name Samuel Pepys, stood out as an influential voice in the creation of the Royal Navy. At the turn of the 20th Century, the United States had similar voices whose influence led to the preeminence of the United States Navy by mid-century. Men like Mahan and Corbett wrote of strategies that were interpreted by the likes of Theodore Roosevelt and cousin Franklin D. who learned the value of sea power while serving as the Assistant Secretary of the Navy. History records that both men self taught in naval affairs, went on to the presidency and incorporated the lessons learned, to guide the nation as she grew from a budding Great Power to become an unmatched Super-power at the close of the century.

The lesson learned was as a nation that spanned a continent, and for all practical purposes an island; having a strong and vibrant navy is not only essential, but absolutely critical to survival. Today, the Navy is facing new challenges as it, and the nation sets course in the 21st century. The first decade has been focused on a land war that in ten years has cost almost two times what the Vietnam War cost in current dollars. This has resulted in the Navy having to fight for diminishing dollars to maintain a fleet that some are beginning to question is right for a changing world, ripe with threats that often resemble back to the future, while others only see conflict with a Sino face. All this, leads to a discussion that goes beyond the halls of power, and must enlist minds that can call on a host of experience and knowledge to form an intersection of ideas that will spawn innovation and a visionary strategy for the coming decades.

To get to the essence of the title, America's 21st Century Samuel Pepys today's blogs have replaced to age-old diary where instead of keeping one thoughts private to be revealed later, one shares their thoughts and ideas and invites discussion. One man has come to the forefront in naval centric blogging, to assume in my opinion, the mantle of being America's Pepys. He writes under the name of Galrahn, and is founder and host of the naval centric blog information dissemination. For those who don't know, Galrahn, aka, Raymond Pritchett, is self-educated in naval matters, and comes from the world of IT development and began his naval centered blog on a whim a few years ago. Today, it is a daily read for tens of thousands. Like, Pepys, and later the two Roosevelt's, Ray has proven to be a master at raising the bar of discussion on naval strategy and gaining readers from main street to the halls of the Pentagon. I don't doubt that someday in the future we will read of Mr. Pritchett being offered the post of Assistant Secretary of the Navy, so committed is his interest and demonstrated love of the Navy and the country. I don't write this to lobby in advance, or fawn at the feet of Ray, it is because he has continued to prove in his almost daily posts, cutting edge ideas and comments that prompt a critical discussion of the Navy's future.

Here is a recent example of Galrahn's ability to pierce the fog of the unknown like the strongest radar, and bring clarity to a discussion.

What is the most effective way to achieve the missions of the US Navy: sea control, sea denial, power projection or protection of open commerce?

The Janes Defense Weekly (subscription) opinion by David W. Wise posted for discussion yesterday raised several interesting questions for community comments. I appreciate those who contributed thoughtful comments in yesterdays post. As we head into a three day weekend, I thought I would add a few of my own comments to the discussion for you guys to kick around over the holiday.

I am not convinced the large aircraft carrier is obsolete, but I do believe the currently constituted capability of a modern Carrier Strike Group is due significant innovations and as a combined arms system and concept the CSG has not sufficiently adapted to the changing strategic environment - with the focus of all adaptations being vertical upwards rather than horizontal challenges towards the increased lower end requirements.

Innovations over the last several years include AEGIS combat system improvements on the escorts, cost controls towards a single F-18 platform in the Air Wing, and the addition of submarines to the strike group. The Navy also deserves credit for operational and tactical organization changes of the CSG like dispersal, concentration, and integration at the operational level that has been mostly enabled by better technology, but these tactical and operational adaptations are reaching the limits of flexibility allowed by the existing organizational design of the CSG centered around an aircraft carrier, handful of escorts, air wing, and submarine(s). If we focus on the carrier platform itself, or any specific technology, platform, or system within the CSG and not the entire strike group as an organized capability; I think our focus becomes too narrow, too tech centric, and may in fact miss the mark completely.

I would suggest that as new technologies come online, we are still missing the combined arms information system that informs a combined operational concept for how a Navy addresses the strategic environment of the future. I think if one breaks it down into just a carrier strike group, the issues and challenges are easier to discuss directly.

Galrahn continues his post by addressing Sea Control, Sea Denial, Power Projection, and the Protection of Open Commerce. He brings to the discussion questions about force structure, manpower and tactics that in reality should be shared beyond those with vested interests in continuing the status-quo of what won the last war, but might not be the platforms of the future. He invites everyone to join in the discussion or at least spend some time pondering his logic.

Read more:
The ROI Challenges of the CSG

Galrahn has filled his blog with a bridge of able first officers who add great currency to the quality of this discussion, as shown by this example from Brian McGrath.

A Day Without U.S. Seapower

In closing, these two posts by Steve DeAngelis of Enterra Solutions illustrate the importance of ocean commerce and safe sea lanes to the well being of everyone on the planet.

Shiver me Timbers: A New Age of Piracy

Ocean Carriers and Ports forecast a Bright Future

Finally, to help flesh out the area of naval affairs and what other's might be up too.
Combat Fleets of the World

Maritime Memos

Post Rapture Reads

2011-05-23T20:13:00.000-07:00

Santa Muerte cult in Mexico

Yangtze River Traffic

from All Roads Lead to China

Now that civilization has weathered the rantings of a 89 year old wanta-be Moses, it is time to turn to more earthly issues, like economics, trade, the threats to our security. Let's get right to it by giving top billing to this post coming from the zenpundit where this next post should make anyone on our southern border pause to look at what in happening to our southern neighbor Mexico.

Mark the blogmeister at Zen introduces the post thus.

SWJ has been en fuego the last few days and this is the first of several that I recommend that readers give close attention.

Dr. Robert J. Bunker and Lt. John Sulivan are indicating that the canary in the coal mine phase of Mexico’s narco-insurgency has passed. Mexican society is entering a new and more dangerous period of accelerating cultural devolution. Nacro-insurgent violence has shifted from the economically motivated and brutally instrumental of organized crime syndicates everywhere to culturally totemic and ghastly ceremonials out of tribal prehistory:

Mark's excerpt from the linked post

…Our impression is that what is now taking place in Mexico has for some time gone way beyond secular and criminal (economic) activities as defined by traditional organized crime studies.3 In fact, the intensity of change may indeed be increasing. Not only have de facto political elements come to the fore-i.e., when a cartel takes over an entire city or town, they have no choice but to take over political functions formerly administered by the local government- but social (narcocultura) and religious/spiritual (narcocultos) characteristics are now making themselves more pronounced. What we are likely witnessing is Mexican society starting to not only unravel but to go to war with itself. The bonds and relationships that hold that society together are fraying, unraveling, and, in some instances, the polarity is reversing itself with trust being replaced by mistrust and suspicion. Traditional Mexican values and competing criminal value systems are engaged in a brutal contest over the ?hearts, minds, and souls‘ of its citizens in a street-by-street, block-by-block, and city-by-city war over the future social and political organization of Mexico.

New city on the Yangtze

Turning to look across the broad Pacific at developments in China are these two posts. First a look at the famous Yangtze River and the exploding economic activity along it's winding course. This report comes from the blog, All Roads Lead to China where the author just returned from a four day trip up the Yangtze.

While relaxing on my recent trip up middle reaches of the Yangtze, I took an opportunity to capture some of the Yangtze’s economic activities. To be honest, while I have been to a number of the ports along the lower reaches, and I have seen plenty of economic booms in my time in China, what I saw on the Yangtze was fascinating .. and at times downright scary.

The post goes on the sketch the new cities and shipping with some random observations.
Economic Activity on The Yangtze

And this from global strategist Thomas PM Barnett on China getting old before she gets rich.

China’s latest census revealed a number of accelerating demographic trends, almost all of which reflect the nation’s three-decades effort to limit population growth under the one-child policy. Elders now make up 13 percent of the population, up from 10 percent just a decade ago. Meanwhile, the number of under-14 youth declined from 23 percent to 16 percent, signaling a steep drop-off in new labor entering the marketplace.

Read and listen:
Latest Census in China Triggers Fears of Demographic Decline

Finally, this last read is worthy because it is from a retired Army officer who sees the wisdom and logic first posed by Alfred Thayer Mahan a century ago regarding control of the sea lanes to ensure a nation's security and greatness. David S. Pierson penned this essay with a provocative title, Bringing the Hurricane: The American Way of War. Published at The Small Wars Journal.

Over five years have passed since Hurricane Katrina came ashore in the Gulf Coast region and the United States is still recovering from the effects of that storm. In a matter of hours Katrina knocked out power and phone systems, destroyed levees, flooded vast areas of land, destroyed almost 300,000 homes, killed over 1500 people and even changed the political landscape of the United States. For every 20 minutes that Katrina pounded the Gulf States, it produced energy equivalent to a 10-megaton nuclear bomb exploding. Imagine if a nation had the ability to drop a storm of such destructive power on its enemies – not a nuclear storm, but a storm of enormous magnitude. Could that nation influence their enemies’ actions and behavior by using such power or even just threatening to use it? While we can’t control the weather, the United States easily possesses the ability to produce similar effects of such a storm. The effects of a storm are widespread, sometimes arbitrary, and not at all surgical in their focus. Such effects run counter to the restrained and measured operations in Iraq and Afghanistan. We currently wage war with the precision of a golf course sprinkler system as opposed to potential deluge of armaments that could bring the perfect storm.

Read more:
Bringing the Hurricane:The American Way of War

Enough brain food for now.

China Two Views of the Future

2011-05-21T13:08:00.000-07:00

Niall Ferguson

Henry Kissinger

This past week two opposing views on China emerged to stimulate the debate on Sino-American relations. One hailed from Niall Ferguson who often assumes the mantle of a dour Scotsmen with a pessimistic view of the World , and the other from Henry Kissinger who draws the experience of forty trips in forty years to China, to pen a new book, On China.

Ferguson opened first, with the publishing of the transcript of a recent address at Chatham House where he offered a more pessimistic view of future China-U.S. relations and the possibility of a return to a Cold War rivalry or worse.

Kissinger's views were published a week later and laid out a road map that in his words would see; “Relations between China and the United States,” he writes, “need not — and should not — become a zero-sum game.” This quote seems to mirror similar comments voiced by Thomas Barnett and written about by me in this post.

Both points of view have begun to stimulate discussion as noted in this from Thomas Ricks who posted this review of both pieces from Dr. Patrick Cronin.

Best Defense department of the mandate of heaven

Historian Niall Ferguson likes to think big. If most Washingtonians are satisfied wth shaping a discrete national policy issue, Niall Ferguson isn't satisfied unless he can challenge the global conventional wisdom of a generation.

Ferguson's most recent strategic expository centered on the geopolitical implications of China possibly eclipsing American and Western power, reflections he recently shared at Chatham House in London [published as, "The West and the Rest: the Changing Global Balance of Power in Historic Perspective," May 9, 2011]

His compelling if provocative analysis built not only on his latest tome, Civilization: the West and the Rest, but also the much-anticipated sweeping history, On China, written by the Henry Kissinger, and published today.

Read more:
Ferguson vs. Kissinger on the future of China, and what it means for the rest of us

On China has generated much interest and the following reviews would make it a must read book to gain the prospective of one of the great elder statesman of our time as he looks forward from his twilight years.

It’s been four decades since President Richard M. Nixon sent Henry A. Kissinger to Beijing to re-establish contact with China, an ancient civilization with which the United States, at that point, had had no high-level diplomatic contact for more than two decades. Since then the cold war has ended; the Soviet Union (a threat to both China and the United States and a spur to Sino-American cooperation) has come unwound; and economic reform in China has transformed a poverty-ridden, poorly educated nation into a great power that is playing an increasingly pivotal role in the globalized world.

Mr. Kissinger’s fascinating, shrewd and sometimes perverse new book, “On China,” not only addresses the central role he played in Nixon’s opening to China but also tries to show how the history of China, both ancient and more recent, has shaped its foreign policy and attitudes toward the West. While this volume is indebted to the pioneering scholarship of historians like Jonathan D. Spence, its portrait of China is informed by Mr. Kissinger’s intimate firsthand knowledge of several generations of Chinese leaders

New York Times Book Review By MICHIKO KAKUTANI
Published: May 9, 2011
Read more:
An Insider Views China, Past and Future

Kissinger wrote this for the Wall Street Journal last week in anticipation of the release of his book.

Societies and nations tend to think of themselves as eternal. They also cherish a tale of their origin. A special feature of Chinese civilization is that it seems to have no beginning. It appears in history less as a conventional nation-state than as a permanent natural phenomenon. In the tale of the Yellow Emperor, revered by many Chinese as the legendary founding ruler, China seems already to exist.

The Yellow Emperor has gone down in history as a founding hero; yet in the founding myth, he is re-establishing, not creating, an empire. China predated him; it strides into the historical consciousness as an established state requiring only restoration, not creation.

Kissinger ends with this.

In pursuit of understanding the nature of peace, I have studied the construction and operation of international orders ever since I was a graduate student well over half a century ago. I am aware that the cultural, historic and strategic gaps in perception will pose formidable challenges for even the best-intentioned and most far-sighted leadership on both sides. On the other hand, were history confined to the mechanical repetition of the past, no transformation would ever have occurred. Every great achievement was a vision before it became a reality.

In his essay "Perpetual Peace," the philosopher Immanuel Kant argued that perpetual peace would eventually come to the world in one of two ways: by human insight or by conflicts and catastrophes of a magnitude that left humanity no other choice. We are at such a juncture.

When Premier Zhou Enlai and I agreed on the communiqué that announced the secret visit, he said: "This will shake the world." What a culmination if, 40 years later, the U.S. and China could merge their efforts not to shake the world, but to build it.

Read more:
The China Challenge

Both views are essential to having an open debate on what will be the major foreign policy challenge of the next several decades and perhaps the century. The final words of Dr. Cronin's review are worth repeating.

Even so, predictions about the future are often mistaken. Ferguson could well be wrong about China, and Kissinger could well prove to be right. The reason why a policy of hedging remains the most compelling policy influence is that there are just far too many uncertainties about the world writ large but especially about China. For instance: Doesn't China's growing mercantilist extraction of global resources also create vulnerabilities in the form of tenuous and protracted lines of communication? While the Internet may feed Chinese nationalism, might not social media also sow the seeds of the Communist Party's own destruction? And just because China rises does not necessarily mean that the United States, Europe, ASEAN, India and other major power centers have to revert to tribute in modern manifestations.

As a good friend recently posted on his Facebook page:

"The society that separates its scholars from its warriors will have its thinking done by cowards and its fighting done by fools." ~Thucydides

The twin debate begun by Ferguson and Kissinger, beg for what blog friend Mark of Zenpundit called for the founding; Grand Strategy Board.

America is Back!

2011-05-08T13:18:00.000-07:00

Seal Team 6

Example of Osama's command post??

watching videos of the outside world.

This past week saw the demise of America's and modern world's number one nemesis Osama Bin Ladin at the hands of a score of special ops forces transported via 21st century technology to where he resided in 7th century squalor as he plotted against America while drinking coca cola and managing his harem of young wives and a brood of offspring. His influence was already dead at the hands of the Jasmine Revolution.

The immediate effect is that "American is back!" as noted by my goddaughter in a FB post from Paris, where she wrote. Love the signs in paris that says " America is Back!" This was further supported by comments and this observation from Le Figaro/Worldcrunch.

PARIS -The West is in decline. It doesn’t make it true the more you keep repeating it. And this week, three major news events in rapid succession -- the British royal wedding in London, the beatification of Pope John Paul II at the Vatican, and the elimination of Osama bin Laden in Pakistan – combine to show a culture invigorated by popular zeal.

The crowds that turned out for each event are connected. In the United States, people spontaneously filled the streets to praise the free world as the victor against terrorism; in Rome, a million faithful stood firm behind the Church, thought to be moribund in Europe; and in London, two million subjects (and two billion television viewers) applauded timeless rituals. At each event, an affection toward the civilization, memory, and the passing on of tradition was unanimously celebrated.

Read more:
Western Civilization in Decline? Not so Fast!

And more from La Figaro about the French view of America after Bin Ladin.

PARIS - The death of Osama bin Laden allows the United States to redefine crucial relationships: with itself, and with the rest of the world. But it might also represent a turning point for the Arab-Islamic world....

This wasn’t a case of America showing off its superior technology; it was neither drones nor missiles that ended the hunt for bin Laden. It was the audacity, courage and determination of its soldiers that made the difference in “avenging” the innocent victims of 9/11...

America might have entered a relative phase of decline, and its staggering debt places the nation in an undoubtedly uncomfortable situation of dependence on China. But it nonetheless still remains the only great “multi-dimensional” power. Neither China, nor India, nor Russia, and even less so the European Union, have the capacity or the will to undertake an operation like the one that led to the death of Osama bin Laden. “Democracy Strikes Back!” is how Hollywood might describe what took place in Pakistan....

Geronimo on right in 1886

Finally here at home, several Native America organizations took umbrage at using Geronimo as the code name for Osama. Thomas Barnett took some heat for mentioning the similarity . The Washington Post has joined the fray with this editorial.

Their complaints are understandable, but misguided. The code name doesn’t denigrate the Apache war captain, a hero to some students of Native American history, through comparison to the Saudi terrorist leader. The similarities are not in the men themselves but in the military campaigns that targeted them.

May Day: Time to Ponder the Future

2011-05-01T10:50:00.000-07:00

May Pole, Germany

Future cities

The First of May for most people today, is associated with socialist movements. But in this context I will adhere to the traditional meaning when May Day marks the end of the un-farmable half of the year in the Northern hemisphere and ushers in a tangible Spring.

In keeping with that theme, I thought it would be good to ponder the future. By the end of this year 2011, there will be 7 billion of us residing on this rock we call Earth. That is an increase of 5.5 billion in my lifetime. To illustrate what a world with 7 billion would be like, take a few minutes to check out this link.
7 Billion: National Geography Magazine

Now that you have an idea of how many humans will as the video notes, would if standing shoulder to shoulder, fit in the city limits of Los Angeles proving that balance, not space will be the challenge of future generations.

This century has been heralded by some as being the Pacific century when Asia rules the world. Before you get too complacent with that concept, take the time to read this next post from Thomas Barnett who comments on whetherAsia will stall or fulfill that dream.

Next comes two fascinating posts from Tom Barnett's colleague Steve DeAngelis of Enterra Solutions. In a two part post entitled "Life a Hundred Years from Now" DeAngelis chronicles predictions from noted futurists about what life would be like in 2111. Steve begins.

Earlier this year I posted a few blogs dealing with short-term predictions about the future. A few daring souls have taken the long view and predicted what life might look like some hundred years from now. The thing that always strikes me about early science fiction movies that depict the future is that completely missed miniaturization except perhaps for "ray guns." So I'm not too sanguine about anybody's ability to predict things very far into the future.

This first part makes some startling predictions about space travel and exploration and touches on the changes in the nuclear family and other social issues.

Read more:
Life a Hundred Years from Now: Part 1

Now for part two and what I found was the real meat of predictions. As you read the post and feel a level of scepticism creeping in, remember to stop and think what someone your age and living at the turn of the 20th century would feel if told of the all the advances in technology and medicine we enjoy today. Only the most esoteric dreamers would entertain such thoughts. Steve starts by quoting from Michio Kaku, author of Physics of the Future.

"If someone from 2100 could visit us now, how would we view them? Probably like the gods of mythology. They would command everything around them by wishing for it. They would have perfect and ageless bodies. And they would ride across the universe in magical chariots. In the past, we feared the gods of mythology. In the next 100 years, we will become them. Based on interviews with 300 of the world's top scientists, I've put together some predictions for what that world, 100 years in the future, will look like. This is not a work of science fiction, since prototypes of these inventions already exist, and all of them obey the laws of physics."

The post goes on to list the ten predictions about the future that seem not so far fetched in light of how far we have come in the past century.

1. The Internet will be in your contact lenses.

2. Computers will disappear, as will cell phones, clocks, watches, and MP3 players.

3. Cars will be driver-less, using GPS to navigate without the help of an alert human behind the wheel.

4. Doctors will be able to grow 'spare parts' for our organs as they wear out.

5. The human life span will be extended.

6. Molecular 'smart bombs' circulating in our blood will home in on, zap, and kill cancer cells.

7. Our toilets and bathroom mirrors will contain DNA sensors, capable of detecting proteins emitted from perhaps a hundred cancer cells in a cancer colony, 10 years before a tumor forms.

8. The robot industry will dwarf the size of the current automobile industry.

9. Tourists will soar into outer space via space elevators.

10. With advanced technology also will come advanced dangers, especially biological warfare, nuclear proliferation, and global warming.

A fascinating list that bodes of great advances and as noted in prediction 10, might be the residual of 7 or 8 billion people trying to find balance amid a growing demand for excellence, where unskilled and semi-skilled becomes as obsolete as the tools noted in prediction 2.

Read more
Life a Hundred Years from Now: Part 2

A Call for A Grand Strategy Board

2011-04-25T22:40:00.000-07:00

Combined Chiefs World War II

Star Wars Council

Mark over at Zenpundit.com has brought up the suggestion that what American needs in the worst way is a grand strategy, illustrated as we seem to bumble along, as Zen, points out in response to a commenter.

Today our institutionalized power bureaucracies cannot even handle a ragtag military run by a crazed dictator in Libya. We are overly ideological and ideologically conflicted to the point where the elite cannot agree on Ends in any given situation, seldom on Ways and squander Means.

Mark lays out his idea this way.

One thing on which most commentators, academics and former officials seem to agree is that the United States government has a difficult time planning and executing strategy. Furthermore, that since 1991 we have been without a consensus as to America’s grand strategy, which would guide our crafting of policy and strategy. This failing bridges partisan divisions and departmental bureaucracies; there are many career officials, political appointees and even a few politicians, who can explain the nuances of the Afghan War, or the Libyan intervention, the depreciatory tailspin of the US Dollar or America’s Russia policy - but none who would venture to say how these relate to one another, still less to a common vision.

Mark goes on to lay out his suggestion for settling up a small group of astute minds to craft a grand strategy as a road map for the nation in the coming years. In his words.

I’m envisioning a relatively small group composed of a core of pure strategists leavened with the most strategically oriented of our elder statesmen, flag officers, spooks and thinkers from cognate fields. A grand strategy board would be most active at the start of an administration and help in the crafting of the national strategy documents and return periodically when requested to give advice. Like the Spartan Gerousia, most of the members ( but not all) would be older and freer of the restraint of institutional imperatives and career ambitions. Like the Anglo-American joint chiefs and international conferences of WWII and the immediate postwar era, they would keep their eye on the panoramic view.

Mark goes on to lay out a hypothetical board, which can be viewed by clicking the link below. He points out that history has revealed most successful great powers found a way to craft a grand strategy by calling upon elders and the great thinkers of the nation to put their personal axes aside and collaborate to forge a national strategic road map. I would agree, that we currently seem to have lost our way, and are tilting at every windmill and letting every gust blown our way by despots to send us scurrying about looking for a reason before confronting evil. It seems since World War II and the middle years of the Cold War, the only Grand Strategy Board is the elders portrayed in Star Wars trilogy. We need to reconnect with our history and our culture.

Take the time to read his post, watch the clips and then carefully read the 20-some and growing comments that are almost all thought provoking themselves.

Read more:
Time For A Grand Strategy Board

Tim Hetherington 1970 – April 20, 2011

2011-04-20T19:53:00.000-07:00

Tim Hetherington

Quilts of Valor

Most of the world learned today of the death of Tim Hetherington, photographer, filmmaker and director of the acclaimed Oscar nominated documentary Restrepo. The tributes across the news media and the blogosphere are heartfelt and hopefully will add some measure of comfort to family and those whom loved him. I can not do justice to write about Tim. His legacy lives on on in Restrepo, and at his website where you can view a collection of his work.

Tributes to Tim
Kitchen Dispatch-Promise to a Friend Still Stands

Zenpundit's tribute to Tim

Vanity Fair reporting Tim's Death

Damien Parer

Tim's death coming shortly after his film was nominated for an Academy Award and more importantly, was received by the men and women of the service as a tribute to their dedication seems strangely ironic to this old historian. Back during the early days of the War in the Pacific, there was a young filmmaker who resembled Tim, both physically and in the craftsmanship of his work, and in the acclaim they both received for capturing the face of war on the front lines. This man was an Australian who pressed up the Kokoda Trail in 1942 to film the battles that would determine whether the Japanese would seize all of New Guinea and then be ready to cut Australia out of the war. this man, Damien Parer filmed the documentary Kokoda Front line which won Australia its first Oscar for best documentary in 1943. Parer, like Tim continued to cover the war and on September 17, 1944, was killed while covering the U.S. Marines at Peleliu. The irony that these two men both portrayed the face of the common soldier in such common purpose. May they both be getting acquainted tonight in the Valhalla for war correspondences and photographers alongside Ernie Pyle and Robert Capa.

Another Strategic Forehead Slapping Moment in Afghanistan

2011-04-15T19:11:00.000-07:00

Outpost Restrepo

Korangal Valley

Restrepo

One year ago yesterday, the United States Army closed the Korangal outpost in the Korangal Valley of northeast Afghanistan. This valley was the scene of almost constant combat after an outpost was established in April of 2006 by the U.S. Marines. Over the next four years the valley saw soldiers from the 10th Mountain Division and the 173rd Airborne Brigade duel with the the local mountain people supported by the Taliban and al Qaeda fighters slipping across the nearby Pakistan border. The valley was the scene for the Academy Award nominated documentary Restrepo and later written about by Bing West. in his best selling The Wrong War.

The main reason given for pulling back and abandoning the valley after two score and two deaths and hundreds of wounded was that the very presence of American forces was causing the locals to join the Taliban. The logic was these clannish mountain people would shun the Taliban and the Taliban would leave. Well folks, get ready for that forehead slapping moment.

The Wall Street Journal in an article last week reported that six months ago in September, 2010 that air strikes were conducted in the valley that resulted in dozens of Al Qaeda fighters and two senior leaders being killed. The article lays it out this way.

In late September, U.S. fighter jets streaked over the cedar-studded slopes of Korengal, the so-called Valley of Death, to strike a target that hadn't been seen for years in Afghanistan: an al Qaeda training camp.

Among the dozens of Arabs killed that day, the U.S.-led coalition said, were two senior al Qaeda members, one Saudi and the other Kuwaiti. Another casualty of the bombing, according to Saudi media and jihadi websites, was one of Saudi Arabia's most wanted militants. The men had come to Afghanistan to impart their skills to a new generation of Afghan and foreign fighters.

Over the past six to eight months, al Qaeda has begun setting up training camps, hideouts and operations bases in the remote mountains along Afghanistan's northeastern border with Pakistan, some U.S., Afghan and Taliban officials say. The stepped-up infiltration followed a U.S. pullback from large swatches of the region starting 18 months ago. The areas were deemed strategically irrelevant and left to Afghanistan's uneven security forces, and in some parts, abandoned entirely.

The article goes on to point out that contrary to military claims, the Taliban and in particular Al Qaeda have maintained their ties and continue to draw recruits from around the world.

Interviews with several Taliban commanders bear out that assessment. The commanders say the al Qaeda facilities in northeastern Afghanistan are tightly tied to the Afghan Taliban leadership. "In these bases, fighters from around the world get training. We are training suicide bombers, [improvised explosive device] experts and guerrilla fighters," said an insurgent commander in Nuristan who goes by the nom de guerre Agha Saib and who was reached by telephone.

The U.S. military has countered that raids by small elite units have been effective in countering the Al Qaeda presence in the valley. But they admit that those forces are stretched thin across the globe.

"We do not have an intelligence problem. We have a capacity problem. We generally know the places they are, how they are operating," said the senior U.S. military official, speaking of al Qaeda. The problem "is our ability to get there and do something."

Read more:
Al Qaeda Makes Afghan Comback!

Where do we go from here. Is this a window on the future of Afghanistan operations? Why did it take six months for this to information to surface? I can't imagine how the soldiers who fought in the valley and especially the parents of the slain feel today knowing that it appears that like the re-occurring nightmare of tactics in Vietnam it was all in vain. Does the answer lie in a Machiavellian or Curtis LeMay strategy of carpet bombing the valley or continued insertion of small forces that sooner or later will take more casualties in an never ending conflict.

April 12, 1861: The Second Most Important Day In American History

2011-04-12T21:28:00.000-07:00

The most important date in American history is July 4, 1776 Independence Day, the second most important day is April 12, 1861 , the day the Civil War began. The attention paid to this date is scant even on the 150th anniversary. Why is it important? First and foremost the war brought an end to slavery and led to citizenship being granted to all born in the United States . Beyond the monumental achievement of ending slavery, the Civil War set the legislative stage for Lincoln to start the country moving from a loose collection of states, as Lincoln called them, to becoming the United States of America as we know it today.

Homesteaders

1862 dollar

An equally lasting achievement, according to Thomas Barnett in his recent book Great Power: American and The World After Bush, was that Lincoln "front loaded" America's post-war recovery which spread people and connectivity across the continent so that within a quarter century, America was poised to become the the dominant power of the 20th Century. Using five bills passed in the 37th Congress, Lincoln set the stage that would shepherd America into the next century. The Homestead Act transferred 270 million acres of federal land to private hands. The Pacific Railroad Act began to tie the nation together and linked those far flung homesteads with the developed east. To make it easier to conduct business across the nation, Legal Tender Note made the "Greenback" bill we came to know and love. To lay the groundwork for higher education, the Morrill Act was the first federal aid to education bill by providing land for colleges in each state. Finally, the Second National Bank Act stabilized the banking institutions with the issuance of Treasury bonds and created a uniform monetary policy. Lincoln pulled this off with the 37th Congress that was seated with a Republican majority in both houses after the Southern states withdrew their members.

So When you are next casting about for something profound to say at the next social get-together remember the second most important date in American history. And for those who like counter-factual considerations, imagine how we would have fought World War I or II or contronted the Cold War if we were still a loose collection of states. We'd have looked just like NATO, made up of European Union countries, trying to organize themselves to end Gaddafi's rule or muster more that token support for Afghanistan.

USS Iowa BB-61: Update

2011-04-09T18:23:00.000-07:00

USS Iowa leading the fleet

USS Iowa training out her guns

USS Iowa in rough seas

Iowa coming home

Anyone who has visited or given this blog more than a casual glance will recognize I take a great interest in the United States Navy and especially their role in the Pacific during World War II. A few day ago I wrote about the possibility that Southern California will soon be the home port for the newest addition to a long list of navy museums that preserve and honor our naval heritage.

Scale model of USS Iowa at Pier 87

Model overview of pier 87

Today, I attended a special event at pier 87 in San Pedro , once home to the Battle Fleet before 1940 and major shipyards during World War II and after. The event was to gather support for a California Assembly Resolution to support awarding the battleship USS Iowa BB-61 to San Pedro, with a new mission of offering education programs in history, leadership, team-building, character development, and community service, as well as serving as a disaster control center. First and foremost, ship will assume a unique "Living Museum" role that will provide visitors with an "at sea" experience that will trace the Iowa's 50 year history.

Fire boat Warner L Lawrence

USS Iowa being moved

If all goes according to plan, the dog days of summer will see Los Angeles Fireboat Warner L Lawrence leading a parade that welcomes the Iowa to her new home at Berth 87 . The support for this project has been astounding and includes former President George H. W. Bush , community, state, business and veterans organizations. As things move along and the final details are worked out this blog will keep you posted and give plenty of notice to invite all to come welcome this great lady to her new home.

In the coming years, as the memory of World War II and the Cold War fade with the passing of the greying veterans amongst us, this ship will live on; to offer a hallowed space for future generations to contemplate what it was like when men steeled their hearts, to sail such ships into teeth of fascism and totalitarianism.

Two Damn Good Reads About the Future

2011-04-03T13:30:00.000-07:00

Tom Barnett answers an important question

A connected World

Profane, but concise description of the importance of these two recommended articles for the information contained within each.

The first, comes by way of Thomas P.M. Barnett in response to questions from a college student. Barnett's answers are solid gold advice for any person who interested in making a serious difference in the world. I was stimulated to pursue my current course after picking up his first book, The Pentagon's New Map back in the Spring of 2004. Barnett's horizontal thinking philosophy meshed with my own constant need to keep seeking new targets and subjects to uncover. Barnett answers three questions which pretty much chart out a pathway for any one seeking a rewarding future, where to quote Barnett's father is; "Making your natural hobby you career and getting paid for it." As a father, and teacher, I find Barnett's response perfectly suited for today's youth who have grown up on multi-tasking and used to constant change with each new technology advance. Here are the questions and a sample of Tom's answers.

How did you translate a career from being a Cold War analyst to an idea generator?

I didn't really. I wasn't really ever a "Cold War analyst," despite my training. In truth, I would have been magnificently unhappy if I had stayed a classic academic or become an intell analyst - or if the Cold War hadn't ended. I just have no staying power on subjects, defined by me as working a particular field for years and years as many people do. It just would have driven me insane. The longer I get trapped in one subject, the more depressed I become. I truly get off on drawing linkages between things versus cracking nuts on any one subject.

Is there any advice you have for students who are interested in making a serious difference in the world?

That's an inherent skill set for thinking laterally/horizontally, and since you will be changing subject matters constantly, the key is to develop your preferred tool kit of analytic approaches. There is no set way to do this, in my mind, you just want to consciously collect great analytic tricks, maneuvers, procedures as you go along. I probably have about three dozen that I use over and over again in all sorts of subject areas, because I've come to trust them in terms of the revealed output. So you think of them as tracking tricks, like stuff I always do when I'm canoeing a new river. Not the fastest route, but one that rewards you in the accumulation of impressions that lead to analysis. Being observant is everything. Analytically, my whole life feels like one big deja vu, meaning I am constantly saying to myself, "I think I've spotted this dynamic somewhere else before."

How did you develop your philosophies?

By constantly seeking out the most interesting and fear-filled work I could find, subjects where, by most accounts I had no business trying to forge new thinking (Isn't there somebody more established who can crank out an answer we all know and love - in advance?). If I don't feel over my head on some level, I don't like the work as a rule, unless the balancing factor is some insane ambition or unusually deep-in-the-future scope that allows a whacked amount of freedom in approach. One of those three factors needs to be in place.

Read the rest:
Questions from OH college student

diaper recycling plant

Someday Starbucks will be the only name?

This next article comes from Steve DeAngelis, CEO of Enterra Solutions and the fine blog Enterprise Resilience Management. Steve turns his attention in this post to the three "R's" with a twist where before they meant; reading, riting, and rithmathic, they now mean; reuse, recycle, and repurpose.

When companies think about waste, they think about shrinking profit margins. Every effort is made to reduce waste so that profit margins can be increased. I suspect that consumers won't get serious about waste reduction and recycling until they see waste in terms of dollar signs as well. Since Americans continue to increase the per capita amount of waste they generate rather than reduce it, it is apparent that generating waste has yet to hit them in their pocketbooks in a significant way. Fortunately, there are a number of entrepreneurs and established companies that do take waste seriously because they have realized that there is money to be made from recycling waste. In America, the three "R's" used to stand for: reading, 'riting, and 'rithmetic. Today the three "R's" stand for: reuse, recycle, and repurpose.

Here is an example of a few of the things being recycled.

"DIRTY DIAPERS -- A plant in Quebec turns soiled diapers into fuel. Using a method called pyrolysis, the plant heats up the diapers without oxygen. That breaks down the molecules of both the diapers and their, um, contents, yielding synthetic methane gas and diesel-like oil.

"COFFEE -- Coffee grounds can consist of up to 20 percent oil, making them an abundant source of biofuel. Researchers at the University of Nevada-Reno have separated oil from grounds and turned it into biofuel. The result even smells like your favorite java joint."

"URINE -- Ohio University's Gerardine Botte can convert urine to hydrogen, which is used to make electricity. While it's hard to collect enough human urine to make the process commercially viable, it may be a boon for hog farmers, who have trouble disposing of pig urine.

Maybe we will soon see Starbucks in competition with AM-PM where you can fuel up as you get your latte. The bottom line is this is another example of people thinking horizontally and laterally versus the vertically structured existence of the past half century where many have become slaves wearing blinders to the possibilities on the horizon.

Read more:
From Waste to Wealth
Enjoy reading, and if your a parent, pass Barnett's wisdom along to your son or daughter to consider as they plan their future path.

Reflections on History and the War in the Pacific

2011-04-02T14:26:00.000-07:00

USS Iowa BB-61

May 14, 15 2011 Chino, Ca

SS Lane Victory

Fort MacArthur Battery Osgood-Farley

Over the past couple of weeks, as my work load permits, I have been engrossed in time travel back to the waters off Guadalcanal with exotic sounding names like the Sealark Channel, Cape Esperance and the waters off Savo Island, where over a period of 116 days the United States Navy fought seven major naval battles with the Imperial Japanese Navy. The conveyance of my travel was the superb account, Neptune's Inferno by author James D Hornfischer who is turning out to be this generation's Samuel Elliot Morison for his vivid and moving accounts of the United States Navy in the Pacific.

This brings me to the subject of this post. For most Americans today, World War II is fast fading into the rearview mirror as veterans pass from our midst and history in general is thought to be treated as no longer relevant in a world where things are moving fast forward. Even the United States Army is considering closing their Army Heritage Education Center. History has been modified and marginalized in many colleges and universities where the focus is on teaching management and social skills before reflection on what history has to teach us about ourselves. My personal experiences in both teaching history and in being approached by people in my personal life has reinforced my belief that people have an innate desire to know about the events and experiences of those who came before them. It is in that vein that I want to share some of the great sites around Southern California that offer opportunities to learn about World War II.

For those wanting to experience what it was like to be a pilot in World War II, a short journey east of Los Angeles will bring one to Planes of Fame Air Museum where dozens of aircraft are on display and each May sees an excellent Air Show which this year is dedicated to 100 years of Naval Aviation.

San Pedro a community aside the Port of Los Angeles is already home to the SS Lane Victory a fully functional World War II victory ship and the Fort MacArthur Museum at Battery Osgood-Farley. It appears that this fine duo of historical sites is soon to be joined by what should be the crown jewel of World War II historical museums on the West Coast the battleship USS Iowa BB-61. Currently all is in place and awaiting the Navy's decision on where the ship will be located. The benefits to both visitors and for local schools will be a legacy to those who left these local waters and sailed into harms way. My family has a personal reason for supporting this project. My father met my mother at a USO dance when his ship the USS Zeilin AP-3 was being repaired after an encounter with a few Japanese bombers the day before Naval Battle of Guadalcanal.

Finally, across the bay on the Long Beach side lies the majestic Queen Mary who's wartime service saw her carrying whole divisions across the Atlantic in preparation of the invasion of Europe.

So if all goes according to plan, the Summer of 2011 will find San Pedro a target rich environment for learning about the history of the Pacific War. Reflecting on the war this way offers a person the opportunity to gain some insight on the experience of the sailor and soldier and what they felt as they stood at their stations or maned their guns or in the cockpit. The lessons of duty and courage are enshrined in the decks of these ships and in the sound of the engines of those planes that take to the air every May to honor those who willingly put their futures on the line so that others might live. We will always own these men and women our lives and the lives of all who come after us.