zenpundit.com

Members of the Grand Army of the Republic, 1892

An estimated 2, 333, 972 Americans have been deployed to Afghanistan and Iraq since September 2001. Of these, 977, 542 were deployed more than once. When final combat operations end in Afghanistan and the numbers from peripheral theater operations against al Qaida are counted, these figures will be somewhat larger.  It must also be remembered, that among these volunteers were 4,683 men and women who did not return, except in a flag draped coffin. This grim statistic too, will increase before the end.

Wars continue to shape the fate of nations long after the guns fall silent.  Mrs. Florence Green, who served in Great Britain’s embryonic Royal Air Force and was the last living veteran of the First World War, died the other day at 110, but we are still grappling with the terrible consequences of the Great War. One of the ways in which wars shape society are through the collective memories and internalized lessons, expressed by it’s veterans.

Not every war produces a great riptide across a national psyche. The Korean War was as silent as the generation that fought it, despite being comparable in some ways to the war in Vietnam, whose images and memories are bitterly iconic.  Other wars loom large. The culture of the trenches and the bloody debacles of the Somme and Verdun produced ex-soldiers who contributed much to revolutionary upheaval and the mass militarization of European politics. In a more benign vein, the Civil War veterans, the “generation whose hearts were touched by fire” and “the greatest generation” of WWII did much to shape the character of  subsequent eras of peace, moderation, stability, social reform and economic growth.

What will the veterans of the wars of 9/11 come to personify?

They are different.  Volunteers in a small professional military, these veterans are far fewer in number and less strictly “generational” than their mass-mobilized predecessors of the world wars, Korea and Vietnam. Every man on D-Day or on Okinawa had “Pearl Harbor” as a common experience, but in 2011, an 18  year old Marine in Afghanistan was only in third grade when planes hit the World Trade Center and the Pentagon.  Their close comrades in combat may include reservists a decade and a half their senior, married and with families. The United States fought it’s wars but not with your grandfather’s army.

They are held in high esteem by a public from which many feel isolated. They have committed suicide at three times the rate of the general population, to a studied indifference from a stultified and mismanaged military personnel bureaucracy. They receive public accolades and parades that eluded those who served in Vietnam but some veterans of Iraq and Afghanistan have had trouble getting the medical attention their injuries required.

These veterans have not yet found their collective “voice” but the early rumblings have been about broken faith in leaders who have let them down.

I suspect we will be hearing that voice soon and it may change our politics for the better.

[ by Charles Cameron — complex problems and a future with drones graphically depicted ]
.
.

.
.
A couple of interesting, arresting and relevant signs here…

The top one is a perennial favorite, and is far too simple to represent genuine complexity with any accuracy — but still gets something of the point across.

The lower of the two comes from a post by blog-friend Shlok Vaida today — I’ve cropped the original because the lettering would be illegible in my “specs” format if I hadn’t, but I encourage you to click through and see it — and also to visit John Robb‘s very recent post Drone Swarms are Here: 1 Minute to Midnight?

Shloky is an enterprising fellow — is he already printing up large quantities of those “Authorized Drone Strike Zone” notices, or (more likely because more efficient) waiting a year or four before printing them on a just-in-time basis?

*

Are we wearing our time-crash helmets yet?

[by J. Scott Shipman]

To Be or To Do, the blog

For the last couple of years I’ve wanted to start a blog, and feel very fortunate to have had the opportunity to get my feet wet here at Zenpundit, and then a little later at Fear, Honor, and Interest. Last year, I engaged a graphic designer to come up with a logo for “to be or to do” (TBTD) which I use in presentations, and essentially decided to build a site around the logo. The result is about 95% complete. 95% because my wife plans to also begin sharing with clients the TBTD material that I’ve developed—with tweaks where she deems appropriate.

While the purpose of the blog portion of the site is primarily as an outlet to share my interpretations of John Boyd’s work, I’ve already wandered into a compelling navy issue less than a week in. With luck, order will emerge, but I’m making no promises.

In my business, I’ve been using what I call Boyd’s scaffold to help organizations create cultures of excellence. Most Boydian thinkers use his strategies for competition and maneuver; I have focused on his notions of teamwork and cultural harmony. I’ve also taken a synthesis of Boyd as a man and derived five principles that, for me, define the man: honesty, courage, curiosity, conviction, and persistence. Two distinctly non-Boydian attributes, humility and optimism have been added because it seems like the right thing to do based on my life experience. As a matter of fact, optimism almost didn’t make the list, but my late mother-in-law impressed upon me the importance of optimism as a force in life—she did this as one suffering from, and eventually succumbing to breast cancer in 2010. She lived what she said; she was a Doer. Her life example was enough to make me a believer.

The TBTD site is primarily geared towards clients and potential clients, with a blog thrown in. The blog is not intended to be limited to business pursuits, but rather topics of interest that may also be interesting to readers.

As for the future, I’ve linked to many blogs Zenpundit readers either read or own. My introduction to and participation with this unique group has been a pleasure and a privilege beyond words. The book recommendations alone have made a substantial dent in my bottom line, but my library is exponentially better! So keep those title recommendations coming!

With any luck, my postings here will pick up in 2012; I have a series on patterns still under construction and two book reviews still in draft form (the books are old:))

Many thanks to Zen and Charles, and to the readership! I hope to see you here and at the new place just around the corner.

Cordially, JSS

Strategist and military analyst Frank Hoffman, now Director of National Defense University Press, takes a warm view of the new strategic guidance from DoD as a risk balancer in line with a dire fiscal and political reality. A “Pivot and Partner” strategy:

DefenseNews – Pentagon’s New Guidance: Sound Strategy Intricately Linked to Policies 

….Despite the fact that the Pentagon’s guidance represents the essence of “good strategy,” it was immediately panned by numerous pundits and several serious commentators who should know better.

What my critical colleagues have a problem with is not this document’s long-overdue need to reconcile our interests, priorities and resources. No, the real problem is that this guidance reflects a policy decision to sacrifice nearly $500 billion of planned increases to the defense budget over the next decade. Rather than resolve the strategic solvency gap between America’s goals and funding, the guidance’s critics want to continue to borrow money to maintain an unsustainable agenda.

The most common criticism is that the guidance is risky. There is little doubt that reductions in defense spending of the size now contemplated will increase risk. Such risks would be even more severe if sequestration is triggered by political gridlock.

However, the critics have no concern for the risk of fiscal collapse or the risks borne by the lack of renewal in the foundation of America’s power. Nor can they find fault with the increased risk borne by the $2 trillion already spent to prosecute two wars and build up America’s military budget to its current high of $550 billion, which exceeds Cold War-era spending levels. That’s the sort of thinking that partially got us into our economic crunch in the first place.

I have been reading about the potential of 3-D printing here and there, particularly at John Robb’s   Global Guerrillas site. It looked hopeful as a technology vector, but not having a tech background myself, it was harder to envision the parameters of potential application and their possible economic impact.

The following short TED talk by Lisa Harouni I found to be a useful intro for the non-engineer. Much of it is illustrated by specific examples:

My first thought, given the low and descending cost of these devices, coupled with increasing sophistication and power is the boon it will be to small to medium sized manufacturers locked into competition with low-cost foreign producers. Transcontinental transport costs are instantly axed from the price while maintaining quality control (something most Chinese manufacturers, for example, have trouble attaining to level demanded by high end customers). It also revolutionizes the “high end” market for customers demanding unusual or specifically customized products.

The second thought is Harouni’s remark that 3-D printing makes possible devices that could not be manufactured in any other way. That’s an affordable, economically transformative, technology put in the hands of a new generation of “garage tinkerers” – the next Steve Wozniak and Steve Jobs are out there, somewhere.

My third thought is, that our present elite, who are deeply vested in a crony capitalist ethos, gatekeeping and policies that create economic stagnation while “locking in” their comparative socioeconomic advantage and power as a political class, will eventually look askance at ordinary people having access to this technology.

When lobbyists from fortune 500 companies or foreign countries(!) begin squealing about losing market share to small-fry manufacturers, expect efforts to create regulatory barriers to market entry with 3-D printing in the same spirit that politicians today want to legislatively “roll back” the disruptive effects of unregulated internet access at the behest of the copyright cartel.

3-D printing technology needs to become as widely dispersed as computing itself, in order that not happen.