zenpundit.com

DECLINE OF THE EDITORIAL STATE OF FOREIGN AFFAIRS ?

This guy is either a major admirer of Martin van Creveld, William Lind and John Robb or he owes somebody some serious royalties. This article could be Cliffs Notes for The Rise and Decline of the State. Yet not a word of acknowledgment. For good measure, he also borrows the term ” Gap” from Tom Barnett but mostly he just cribs from the 4GW school.

Uncool. Attribution is important.

EMERGENCE IN COMPLEX SYSTEMS

Had the pleasure of extended discussion over coffee with Dr. Von last night. A good part of our exchange revolved around the recent posts over the resilience of networked civilizations and complexity inspired by the Bar-Yam paper. A subject which in turn brought us to considering emergence and phase transitions and how that might apply to social networks.

Von made reference to an old post of his that I missed the first time around- “Our Universe:Continual Emergence“- that I think might be helpful to the bloggers who have been mulling over this topic. An excerpt that sums up the problem with a collective knowledge base built on the legacy of reductionism being applied to analyze systemic complexity:

“In other words, we know a lot about the basic rules and principles that govern individual components for each individual step of the evolution of the universe and life on earth. However, what we don’t understand very well is how steps make the transition to the next step. We don’t understand the organizational principles or the rules that govern the phase transitions between steps, which means we don’t understand the emergence of complexity in our universe. This is where we are now and, in my opinion, such studies will dominate whole fields of physical science, biological science, mathematics, economics, social science, behavioral science, technology, and even philosophy, for decades to come. To those who have suggested the end of science is near, think again.”

Read the post in full here.

LINK:

Dave at Thoughts Illustrated has a link to a podcast with Valdis Krebs

THE GREATEST HISTORIAN?

Clio, Muse of History

Rare question post….

Who might the greatest historian be ? A great dead white male like Herodotus ? Gibbon ? Thucydides ? Ranke ? A modern like Frederick Jackson Turner, Charles Beard or Richard Hofstadter ? A ” popular” historian like Stephen Ambrose, Howard Zinn or David McCullough ? Venerable and prolific men of letters like Bernard Lewis, C. Vann Woodward or Robert Conquest ? A non-Westerner like Ibn Khaldun ?

Who has most influenced us in terms of what we think history is, and should be ?

SYRIANA

Hmmm…these video reviews are becoming a trend here…

I liked Syriana a lot but then I think anybody in the blogosphere who is deeply immersed into foreign affairs would like it far more than someone who is not. The staccato shifting from one character to the next, each from fairly complicated contexts, demands a fairly high level of background knowledge to catch, much less critique, all of the fast-moving nuances.

For example, Matt Damon’s energy analyst character, starstruck by the ambitious, reformist, Arab prince who befriends him, in one scene is babbling on his cell about the prince whom he said “…could be like another Ataturk or a Faisal “. Well, I’m not certain if the screenwriter was portraying Damon’s character as a naive, young, American buffoon ( if so, it worked) or if he did not know himself, but the juxtaposition would probably have irritated Kemal Ataturk and certainly horrified King Faisal.

There is a large number of little details along those lines in many contexts which creates a fair degree of realism and kept me engaged. Mrs. Zenpundit, whose interest in such political matters is less pronounced, found the story somewhat hard to follow. You must also allow, of course, for some archetypal Hollywood hype regarding the CIA and Big Oil, including a few bits of gratuitously irrelevant, somewhat moronic, leftism relating to supply-side economics and Milton Friedman. However there is not enough of this silliness to detract from the rest of the film. Three and a half stars ( Why not four ? My objection relates to part of the ending scene which is bad form to give away for those who have yet to see the film).

Collounsbury, who has his pulse on the MENA side of things, also reviewed Syriana when it came out, at some length.

THE JOYS OF GUEST POSTING

My friend Bruce Kesler was kind enough to extend an invitation to me to guest post at Democracy Project , which I was happy to accept. As a veteran and former foreign policy analyst, Bruce was intrigued by my recent post on The Small Wars Council and asked for an expansion and summary of the thread, which he has entitled “Military Theory Vs. Practice in Iraq” with appropriate connections by Bruce to recent events. Feel free to email Bruce with your comments or you can do so here, if that is easier. Much thanks to Bruce Kesler and Democracy Project for the opportunity.

I will also be doing a short guest post on a “soft power” topic later this month at Paul Kretkowski’s Beacon. Stay tuned for details.