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BLOGGING FOR RESILIENCE

Sean Meade, Dr. Barnett’s webmaster, proofreader and troubleshooter, helpfully alerted me today to Enterprise Resilience Management Blog, the blog of Enterra Solutions founder and chief scientist, Stephen F. DeAngelis. Steve had previously had some kind words for my post on “Consilience” and had linked to Zenpundit in early March – which I didn’t catch at the time, unfortunately, as March proved to be only slightly less unnerving for me than it once was for Julius Caesar.

Steve is a theorist as well as an entrepreneur of “Resilience“, a concept with widespread application in network theory, organizational leadership, psychology and economics to name just a few fields. I consider it to be one of the new “meta-principles” of the world being created by globalization, most of which are rooted in evolution and complexity theory ( some of the others are networks, emergence, consilience, nonzero sum logic , entropy and modularity) thus ERMB will be a good addition to your blogroll if you appreciate systemic thinking.

A sample of Steve’s prose from his article “Development in a Box” at TechCentral Station:

“The platforms for globalization — operating within and between modern states – increasingly are private-sector institutions. The modern, globalized state could not function without critical infrastructure industries, such as financial services, telecommunications, energy, healthcare, and food supply — all of which meet public needs, but are held in private hands. Essential talent and assets reside within those entities. And the private sector is the primary engine of innovation.

….Network architectures and standards-based programming languages now make it possible to capture business best practices and encode them as automated rules that respond to complex, changing circumstances. Rules can be made contingent on a variety of conditions, which means that automated processes are equal to the challenges of real-world business — or of a post-conflict region.

In this new convergence of people, processes and technology, there is the heart of an entirely new opportunity for post-conflict reconstruction. To realize the potential, it’s necessary to create a flexible framework — one that brings together private- and public-sector capabilities for the post-conflict task. Tom Barnett, author of The Pentagon’s New Map and I have been at work on such a framework, which we call “Development in a Box.”

Whar follows in the article by DeAngelis is Enterra’s project for building what I would call “State Resilience” – a critical strategic goal the U.S. has yet to master a method for accomplishing

ERMB is going to be a regular read for me.

“OH, BLACKWATER…KEEP ON ROLLIN’…”

An excellent discussion on the uses and dangers of Mercs over at the Small Wars Council sparked by the recent press release by the Blackwater PMC. The learned poster is Dr. Tom Odom, a former career defense analyst who specialized in the Middle East and Africa, as well as an author and a scholar.

ARE PRESBYTERIANS AND MISSOURI SYNOD LUTHERANS RED STATERS?

Outside of the colonial and antebellum America period I’m not much up on social history since my academic research was entirely in economic and diplomatic subfields. Having thus qualified my remarks, I will say that religion has always played a looming role in American history and political movements, particularly those aiming at reform or renewal.

Most readers are familiar with the connection between the Deism of many Founding Fathers and their preference for religious freedom and sectarian tolerance, the religious motivation of Abolitionists and the evangelism of Temperance advocates and both sides of the 19th century debate over imperialism. Therefore I took great interest in the latest post by Geitner Simmons that maps the United States by religious denominations from mainstreeam Methodists to charismatic Pentacostalist Christians to Muslims:

“Consider the degree of religious adherence — acknowledging one’s membership in a particular religious grouping. According to this map, developed by the Cincinnati-based Glenmary Research Center, religious adherence is greatest in the middle of the country — from Texas and Louisiana up through the Dakotas. Religious adherence in the Southeast, long dubbed the “Bible Belt,” is more spotty that one might expect. The American West, with the exception of Utah, has long been described by scholars of the region as an area with weak religious intensity, and the map buttresses that conclusion. Religious adherence is generally strong in the Mid-Atlantic region. Of course, while North Dakota stands out on the map as an area of particular intensity, the population of that state is quite small compared to the populations of, say, Oregon or Florida, where religious enthusiasm is noticeably weaker.

Differences within a region are particular interesting. Consider Wisconsin and Michigan. Both are populous states in the Upper Midwest. Yet, the degree of religious adherence is strikingly different between the two. Wisconsin clearly is part of a cultural pattern that includes its regional neighbors such as Miinnesota, Iowa and the eastern portion of the Dakotas. Michigan, in contrast, stands out for a markedly low degree of religious intensity, a trait it has in common with large sections of its neighbors Ohio and Indiana.“

The graphics for the maps are highly detailed ( attention cartographiles Curzon, Younghusband & Chirol) and, as always, Geitner’s commentary enlightens. Check it out.

TIP O’ THE HAT

To Lexington Green and the rest of the Chicago Boyz for adding Zenpundit to their blogroll. Much appreciated !

THE COURT OF THE RED TSAR

Simon Sebag Montefiore’s biography of Joseph Stalin more than managed to live up to the praise heaped upon it – and considering those throwing bouquets included such eminent figures as Robert Conquest, Robert Service and Richard Pipes, that’s saying a lot. I give it five stars.

Despite having read about the great dictator almost ad nauseum, I can honestly say there was something new for me in every chapter including research just recently unearthed from the shadowy Soviet archives. For example we learn from material originally deleted from Stalin’s official doctor’s report that he may have possibly been poisoned by Warfarin, a blood thinner that would have brought on the massive stroke that debilitated Stalin on the eve launching another massive purge of the nomenklatura that would have certainly finished off Beria, Molotov, Malenkov, Voroshilov and perhaps what was left of Soviet Jewry.

We read the unvarnished brutality of the deaths Stalin dealt out to victims, high and low, in minute detail as well as his maudlin sentimentality, icy callousness, sociopathic charm and gallows humor. Montefiore sheds light on the rythm and nuances of power relations that swirled and eddied even in the moments of Stalin’s most absolute tyranny and is at pains to show Stalin at the times when he was left checked and frustrated by circumstance or by his underlings.

One of the best books in the field of Soviet history that I have read in years.