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For the 44th time in the history of our Republic, a sacred oath has been taken and history steps forward.

I have not been a supporter of President Obama but today is a day on which he is to be congratulated and welcomed as the new chief executive and commander-in-chief. His supporters will celebrate, as they well should as it is their time. Hopefully, in tackling the many problems the nation faces, the President will opt for the long view rather than the expedient one. Hopefully, the Republican leadership will use their position as the opposition party wisely in a way that limits the worst excesses of one party government to the benefit of our nation.

Good luck Mr. President, you will need it.

UPDATE:

In office for two hours, the new administration has begun blogging ( Hat tip Dr. Jay Rosen):

Change has come to WhiteHouse.gov

Welcome to the new WhiteHouse.gov. I’m Macon Phillips, the Director of New Media for the White House and one of the people who will be contributing to the blog.

The Threat Closer to Home: Hugo Chavez and the War Against America by Douglas E. Schoen and Michael Rowan

I just received a review copy of The Threat Closer to Home courtesy of FSB Associates ( hat tip to Julie H. ) and the two authors have done some spadework on the “Bolivarian” regime of crypto-Communist, plebiscitary strongman, President Hugo Chavez. Dr. Schoen is a biographer and a longtime political and communication consultant to the Democratic Party as well as a former adviser to President Bill Clinton and is a member of the Board of Trustees for the International Crisis Group. Mr. Rowan is a a regular columnist for El Universal and Veneconomia of Venezuela and is also a political consultant for the Democratic Party and an array of overseas clients ranging from politicians to economic development programs. This is Rowan’s second book on Hugo Chavez and he is currently researching political economy issues in Latin America.

I have not read the book yet but thumbing through the pages I see numerous topics of interest, including Chavez support for FARC, alliance building with rogue states, ties to Hezbollah and known terrorists on the Treasury Department’s list of figures banned from conducting business within the United States. The authors have keyed into Chavez’s autarkic strategy of state managed commodity exports (oil) to both fund his regime and leverage foreign policy advantages – a historic  economic policy for aggressive, authoritarian, regimes. The book jacket carries blurbs by heavyweights in the foreign policy establishment including Congressmen Connie Mack ( R- Florida) and Ike Skelton (D-Missouri) as well as Richard Holbrooke and CFR’s Leslie Gelb.

I’m going to give this a close read and then perhaps try to schedule a short interview with Rowan and Schoen for Pajamas Media or another platform.

Top Billing!: John Hagel – Pareto Power and Leveraged Growth and Pareto Paring – Achieving Strategic Cost Reduction

The “Pareto Curve” of Italian economist Vilfredo Pareto is bettern known in the blogosphere as “The Long Tail” due to Chris Anderson of WIRED who wrote the recent bestseller The Long Tail, (Revised and Updated) and Nassim Nicolas Taleb‘s  The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable which expounded on “Black Swan” events occuring on the “Extremistan” end of Pareto’s distribution curve.  The Pareto Curve has powerful applications, particularly well in a globalized, information economy, environment and John Hagel is, for me, always an educational read.

Scientific American – Evolution of the Mind: 4 Fallacies of Psychology and The Future of Man–How Will Evolution Change Humans?

“…Harpending and Hawks’s team estimated that over the past 10,000 years humans have evolved as much as 100 times faster than at any other time since the split of the earliest hominid from the ancestors of modern chimpanzees. The team attributed the quickening pace to the variety of environments humans moved into and the changes in living conditions brought about by agriculture and cities”

Lexington Green – Clausewitz, On War, Book I: The Enduring Value of Clausewitz’s Articulation of the Nature of War

Also courtesy of Lex….

John Robb – Fewer Teachers more Automation

I want to tackle this post in detail later.

Fabius Maximus – “Some people just want to see the world burn”

I agree with FM. Mr. Bowman does not understand the psychology of the warlord, or those who would sign up with them. From my view, the world contains no shortage of armed bohemians.

Josephfouche – The First Rule of 5GW is, You Do Not Talk About 5GW

Heh. Dan of TDAXP meets his match in the smooth, original, Open Office, color graphics for war theory department.

SWJ Blog – A Proposal for a Unifying Strategic Doctrine for National Security

A discussion starter.

The Claremont Institute – Bennett and Cribb on Post-Racial Politics

There appears to be an interesting – though warily executed by both parties – reachng out going on between the conservative intellectual establishment and the incoming administration of Barack Obama. Sort of a political detente in progress for a possible strategic triangulation on issues where common ground can be discerned. 

John Seely Brown on “Creativity”:

That’s it !

Dr. Chet Richards –Certain to Win

Dr. Grant T. Hammond – The Mind of War: John Boyd and American Security

After numerous small difficulties, I finally pulled it together:

Clausewitz, On War, Book I.: A Man of His Time or for All Times?

….It is is difficult not to be impressed with the brilliance of Clausewitz’s insights as I read Book I. His disciplined yet speculative mind was not constrained by the Newtonian paradigm that governed the 19th century’s increasingly deterministic understanding of nature; nor did he become intoxicated by the mythic Romanticism that pervaded European elite culture and abandon the rigor that can be found on every page of On War. There is ample evidence to be found in Book I. of Clausewitz surpassing his times to grasp concepts and truths that do not emerge in other fields for decades or more than a century.

Yet there are also passages that show the rootedness of the worldview of a European military officer who survived the cataclysm of the Napoleonic wars. I finished Book I. firmly convinced of Clausewitz’s genuine greatness as a philosopher but remain unconvinced that that he has discovered the eternal nature of war in all it’s varied manifestations – I am also deeply skeptical that such a thing could even be possible

Read the rest here.

The quality of the posts at The Clausewitz Roundtable has been outstanding, as have the comments.  Every participant has taught me something, some more than once or posed questions that stretched my mind. Here are the recent editions and their authors:

josephfouche – Clausewitz, On War, Book I: War is a Buffet. Eat Up. and Clausewitz, On War, Book I: Defense

Jay Manifold – Clausewitz, On War, Book 1: War as a Single Short Blow

Sam Liles – Clausewitz, On War, Book 1: Into a cavern to find the darkness of cyber space

Tim Stevens – Clausewitz, On War, Book 1, Chapter 1: the Paradoxical Trinity

Lexington Green – Clausewitz, On War, Book 1, Chapter 3: Response to Capt. Lauterbach on Clausewitz on Military Genius and Clausewitz, On War, Introductory Matter: Empiricism, Clarity of Expression, Patterns not Systems, Utility

seydlitz89 – Clausewitz, On War, Book 1 – My introduction, and comments on Chapter 1 and Clausewitz, On War, Book 1: Dialectic, but which dialectic?

Cheryl Rofer – Clausewitz, On War, Book 1: Clausewitz and Herman Kahn and Clausewitz, On War, Introductory Material: Cordesman Asks the Question

Nathaniel T. Lauterbach – Clausewitz, On War, Book 1: Clausewitz on Military Genius

Younghusband –  Clausewitz, On War, Book 1: On Wrestling and Clausewitz, On War, Book I: Solving for War

Kotare – Clausewitz “On War”, Book 1: such a dangerous business and Clausewitz, “On War”, Book 1: it all seems so simple

Shane Deichman – Clausewitz, On War, Book I: Art with Science

Critt Jarvis – Clausewitz, On War, Introductory Matter: “Hello World!” and Clausewitz, On War, Book I: What Is War?

Jonathan – A Note to Readers and Participants in the Clausewitz Roundtable