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WHAT’S UP WITH BLOGROLLING ?

They appear to have been severely hacked.

Hope they recover soon. Not looking forward to having to code my giagantic blogroll into the template if they do not.

HISTORICALLY RECOMMENDED READING

Some posts by or about historians or history. Most of them are, like myself, veterans of H-Diplo.

Bruce Kesler – Democracy Project ” Did France Cave to “Jewish Fundamentalists”?“

My friend Bruce takes issue with a historian who uses her careful documentation of Nazi collaborationist crimes against Jews by Vichy officials to equate Israeli policies toward Palestinians with Nazism.

David Kaiser – History Unfolding ” Kissinger then and now“

Kaiser and I have had many differences of opinion ( a situation I imagine will continue) but he is always an interesting read; moreover, his criticism of the evolution of the historical profession is spot on. Kaiser’s use of FRUS in this post demonstrates the strengths that professional historians can bring to blogging as a medium.

Judith Apter Klinghoffer – HNN -“The Geneva Conventions Are Dead“

Controversial but logically correct. Geneva has been undermined by an international refusal to tolerate severe punishment of those, terrorists or rogue state officials, who habitually break its rules ( before people go berserk in the comment section: I think the Bush administration policy on illegal combatants is wrong. The captives should have been giving fairly speedy hearings to adjudicate their status; those who were not paroled immediately or granted POW status should have face a traditional court-martial or military tribunal modelled on Nuremburg and been tried for war crimes, with those found guilty being sentenced to death).

Ralph Luker – Cliopatria “KC Johnson, Blogger Extraordinaire“

Agreed. KC has shown a demonstrated commitment to following the evidence wherever it leads as a historian, blogger and public intellectual.

That’s it.

ON MY READING TABLE

Winning The War: Advanced Weapons, Strategies And Concepts For The Post-9/11 World
Colonel John B. Alexander

Global Brain
Howard Bloom

Still reading:

The Third Reich in Power
Richard J. Evans

Just ordered tonight:

Networks, Terrorism and Global Insurgency
Robert J. Bunker

I suppose it is too ambitious to promise to review all of these books, but I will commit to Global Brain ( which Dan of tdaxp has reviewed) and the Bunker book ( hat tip to John Robb). If I can muster the energy for the other two as well, fine.

READER COMMENTARY ON 5GW

This must be short as I am multitasking my way to amusement while attenpting to do mindless administrivia, but there were some excellent bursts of feedback from the 5Gw discussion initiated by Tom and continued by John, myself, Dan, Curtis, Purpleslog and perhaps others (will check later and update).

From Phil:

“Yes. The contest over globalization is more than just about laying fiber optic cable, building power plants and adopting certain financial and political institutional structures, it is at a very fundamental level, about people’s attitudes, beliefs, identities and aspirations. Shrinking the Gap needs to be accompanied by an effort to export and foster the kinds of beliefs, attitudes, ideas etc. that are necessary to sustain a successfully connected society. As you mention, the foot soldiers of Islamic extremism are connected, but are suffering from status anxiety, alienation and loss or absence of a viable identity, etc. The fundamentalists swoop in and fill that vacuum with their ideology. The Long War will be won or lost in the minds of millions of people. So what ideas do we export to counter those of the extremists?

Well, a few days ago Tigerhawk posted a comment by a young Saudi blogger:

“Looking forward to the future, I wonder: do we dare to dream? I, for one, do. I dare. And I don’t have only one dream; I have many dreams actually: I want to live to see the day when this country becomes a real democracy with a fully elected parliament; when freedom of expression is guaranteed to all, and no one is afraid to speak his mind no more; when women have their full rights and stand on equal foot with men. This was to name a few. Call me a dreamer. Maybe I am. I know one thing for sure, however: change is coming. This country is changing, not as quickly as I wish maybe, but it is changing nevertheless. Probably I’m just a young lad who can’t wait for this to happen, but who can blame me? If it wasn’t for the young to push change then who would?”

This young Saudi dreamer, and many more like him around the Muslim world, is the antidote to Islamist extremism. His dream is the alternative to the Islamist’s Caliphate. What needs to happen is that he and his fellow dreamers throughout the Muslim world need to create the kinds of networks amongst each other that the Islamists have used so successfully. They need to share ideas, inspire and support each other, and just know that there are others out there who feel the same way. Any pro-Globalization campaign will have to include these kinds of networks. We also need to connect with them to disseminate ideas based on our experience. Development in a Box allows us to combine the aspirations of the dreamer with practical steps to achieving the dream.”

From Purpleslog:

“The strategic choice isn’t globalization or statism so much as globalization vs. anarchy – and even that failed state chaos contains a a corrupt strand of connectivity to the Core.”

I am not so sure about this. The third force out there is a sort of global-islamofication force that is different then anarchy or globalization as we think of it in the West. Imagine a PNM theory variant for Global-islamafication that has it building connection among itself (the G-islam core) and the gap. There is a war of ideas that PNM theory does not seem to address directly or recognize.

The same shows up in Bobbit state evolution model that has the nation-state giving way to the market state (with 3 three variants). It is really giving way to a post-nationalism state. The postnat-state has as variations the globalization friendly market-state, the somewhat globalization friendly prosperous-autocracy-state. It also has the globalization unfriendly (global-islamoficiation friendly) Caliphate-state (note: I swiped the term from an old post of yours). The world of course will still have nation-state or partial-nation states for awhile (along with the odd state-nation like North Korea).”

ADDENDUM:

“Blogospheric 5GW, with short comments” –tdaxp

“Lots of Fifth Generation Warfare Posting” – Purpleslog

More later…..

UPDATE:

“Developing a Strategy for Fifth Generation Warfare” – Mitchell Langbert

ITERATIONS OF 5GW

John Robb – ” Lot’s of discussion of what 5GW is“
Thomas P.M. Barnett -“Fifth Generation (political) warfare“

Notice how in these two posts how both Tom and John link 5GW on the expanding potential of individual actors, whether it is political conflict (Tom) or military conflict ( John), to achieve a systemic effect.

The vulnerability of individual actors vis-a-vis groups or the state puts a premium on secrecy for 5GW actors, as previously noted by Dan. The state in turn, is vulnerable to a proliferation of such superempowered individuals and will have to defend itself with a combination of surveillance and active cultivation of primary loyalties ( reducing the motivation for such individuals to act out in antisocial ways).

UPDATE:

Shloky mates the 5GW superempowered individual with Ray Kurzweil’s Singularity.

Curtis asks if Thomas Barnett is a 5GW Warrior ?.