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Tom goes sine die

You can still catch Dr. Thomas P.M. Barnett’s geopolitical thinking at TIME magazine’s Battleland blog and, of course, if you subscribe to Wikistrat 

Top Billing! T. Greer –Far Right and Far Left – Two Peas in a Pod?

….There are two groups who consistently oppose this plutocratic “pragmatic” consensus: the far left and the far right. These two groups, seemingly divided, are united by their “radical” opposition to many otherwise unquestioned aspects of America’s standing political regime. To name but a few:

• The belief that the United States federal government should play a strong role in holding up the U.S. economy – particularly sectors deemed “Too Big To Fail.” 

• Strong support for subsidies or other forms of ‘corporate welfare’ for influential or strategic industries (“The Farm Lobby,” “Big Pharma,” and the energy sector – both the “Big Oil” and green energy varieties – are prominent examples).

• A commitment to America’s global hegemony and globalization writ large. The chosen instruments for this are transnational economic agreements, financial interventions (as pioneered by the IMF), or offers of substantial military assistance. 

• The use of drone strikes, special forces and other ‘limited war‘ operations as the most effective response to international terrorist movements.

• A disdain for the rule of law and governmental transparency. 

• Prioritizing national security over privacy and individual rights.

• Eclipse of the legislative branch in favor of an increasingly large, complex, and powerful executive. Outsourcing legislative policy making to congressional, think tanks, or industry wonks.  

Tea-party and Occupy members are opposed to most, if not all, of these things. However, identfying the real problem does not ensure the two sides will agree on solutions. What party program could unify the two sides? Mr. Parameswaran outlines one possible solution. He labels it “radical centrism: [….] 

An outstanding post . Hat tip to L.C. Rees 

The League of Ordinary Gentlemen – (Blaisep)Under a Field of Flowers: Captain Emil Kapaun 

….As Chinese Communist forces encircled the battalion, Kapaun moved fearlessly from foxhole to foxhole under direct enemy fire in order to provide comfort and reassurance to the outnumbered Soldiers. He repeatedly exposed himself to enemy fire to recover wounded men, dragging them to safety. When he couldn’t drag them, he dug shallow trenches to shield them from enemy fire. As Chinese forces closed in, Kapaun rejected several chances to escape, instead volunteering to stay behind and care for the wounded. He was taken as a prisoner of war by Chinese forces on Nov. 2, 1950.

After he was captured, Kapaun and other prisoners were marched for several days northward toward prisoner-of-war camps. During the march Kapaun led by example in caring for injured Soldiers, refusing to take a break from carrying the stretchers of the wounded while encouraging others to do their part.

Once inside the dismal prison camps, Kapaun risked his life by sneaking around the camp after dark, foraging for food, caring for the sick, and encouraging his fellow Soldiers to sustain their faith and their humanity. On at least one occasion, he was brutally punished for his disobedience, being forced to sit outside in subzero weather without any garments. When the Chinese instituted a mandatory re-education program, Kapaun patiently and politely rejected every theory put forth by the instructors. Later, Kapaun openly flouted his captors by conducting a sunrise service on Easter morning, 1951. 

Emil Kapaun, US Army captain, Catholic priest, Congressional Medal of Honor recipient and a martyr for religious freedom, is the American Maximilian Kolbe

SWJ – Understanding Groupthink and Aligning FM 3-24 Counterinsurgency with Reality 

….To illustrate the nuanced challenges of groupthink, we informally surveyed a small group of Intermediate Level students at one of the Defense Department’s educational institutions.  The students were junior field grade officers from joint and international services, nearing the end of their year-long education.  Our survey asked two questions:  1) Whether their education had formally addressed groupthink as a subject; and 2) What were groupthink’s causes?  A little more than half of the group responded that while groupthink had been discussed early in their education year, albeit briefly as part of a broader class topic, groupthink was not a central focus of the class.  In response to the causes of groupthink, about half of the group cited dominant personalities within a group who ignored dissenting opinions, and the inclination of group members to remain within the group’s good graces by avoiding dissention.  Less than one-fourth of the responses cited direct pressure on any member who objected to group opinions.[2]  What strikes us is not what the students said, but what they did not say.

Two excellent and – I might suggest, related – articles.

Lexington Green – Margaret Thatcher: Revolutionary, Leader

….There is always a “them” who are the current ruling group. They are the ones dealt into the existing game, its apologists and advocates. To take them on, to organize and lead an opposition movement, the leader must have extremely strong character. Such a leader must be self-assured, know how things really work, and have a very thick skin. The leader must have no regard for conventional wisdom and no respect for the often unstated limits of what can be done or, even more, what is “simply not done” or “simply not said.”

As a practical matter, such a leader must have the capacity to speak plainly and clearly to a majority of ordinary people who are quietly victimized in the existing game, to show them how certain changes will be good for them, and good generally. They do not lead by force or lies, they lead by telling hard truths and gaining assent to the hard path to better things.

Mrs. Thatcher was such a leader.  

Strategic Studies Institute – (Manwaring) Venezuela as an Exporter of 4th Generation Warfare Instability and (Bunker) Op-Ed: The Need For A “Half-Pivot to the Americas” 

Kings of War – (Betz) Kim Jong Un, We’re all gonna be like three little Fonzies here, OK? and (Egnell) Rethink, but don’t dismiss – on U.S. training of foreign troops 

The Glittering Eye – Personal Computers Aren’t Too Good 

Forbes –Nanotechnology’s Revolutionary Next Phase 

Taking Note –Michelle Rhee’s Reign of Error 

It’s easy to see how not trying to find out who had done the erasing–burying the problem–was better for Michelle Rhee personally, at least in the short term. She had just handed out over $1.5 million in bonuses in a well-publicized celebration of the test increases[9]. She had been praised by presidential candidates Obama and McCain[10] in their October debate, and she must have known that she was soon to be on the cover of Time Magazine[11]. The public spectacle of an investigation of nearly half of her schools would have tarnished her glowing reputation, especially if the investigators proved that adults cheated–which seems likely given that their jobs depended on raising test scores.

Moreover, a cheating scandal might well have implicated her own “Produce or Else” approach to reform. Early in her first year she met one-on-one with each principal and demanded a written, signed guarantee[12] of precisely how many points their DC-CAS scores would increase.

Relying on the DC-CAS[13] was not smart policy because it was designed to assess students’ strengths and weaknesses. It did not determine whether students passed or were promoted to the next grade, which meant that many students blew it off. 

Recommended Viewing:

The Strategy Bridge by Colin S. Gray

I have been eager to read this book by the eminent Anglo-American strategist Colin Gray ever since Adam Elkus sang it’s praises and now I have a hardcover copy thanks entirely to an enterprising amigo. A description from Oxford Scholarship:

The Strategy Bridge: Theory for Practice is an original contribution to the general theory of strategy. While heavily indebted to the writings of Carl von Clausewitz, Sun Tzu, and the very few other classic authors, this book presents the theory, rather than merely comments on the theory, as developed by others. Bridge explains that the purpose of strategy is to connect purposefully politics and policy with the instruments they must use. The primary focus of attention is on military strategy, but this subject is well nested in discussion of grand strategy, for which military strategy is only one strand. Bridge presents the general theory of strategy comprehensively and explains the utility of this general theory for the particular strategies that strategists need to develop in order to meet their historically unique challenges. The book argues that strategy’s general theory provides essential education for practicing strategists at all times and in all circumstances. As general theory, Bridge is as relevant to understanding strategic behaviour in the Peloponnesian War as it is for the conflicts of the twenty?first century. The book proceeds from exposition of general strategic theory to address three basic issue areas that are not at all well explained in the extant literature, let alone understood, with a view to advancing better practice. Specifically, Bridge tackles the problems that harass and imperil strategic performance; it probes deeply into the hugely under?examined subject of just what it is that the strategist produces—strategic effect; and it ‘joins up the dots’ from theory through practice to consequences, by means of a close examination of command performance. Bridge takes a holistic view of strategy, and it is rigorously attentive to the significance of the contexts within which and for which strategies are developed and applied. The book regards the strategist as a hero, charged with the feasible, but awesomely difficult, task of converting the threat and use of force (for military strategy) into desired political consequences. He seeks some control over the rival or enemy via strategic effect, the product of his instrumental labours. In order to maximize his prospects for success, the practicing strategist requires all the educational assistance that strategic theory can provide.

I am unfortunately in the midst of a large project for work, but The Strategy Bridge is now at the very top of my bookpile and I will review it when I am finished.

And as long as we are on the subject of Professor Gray, he ventured into the murky domain of cyber war recently, publishing a monograph on the subject for The Strategic Studies Institute:

Making Strategic Sense of Cyber Power: Why the Sky is not Falling

Obviously, Dr. Gray is not in the “Cyber Pearl Harbor” camp:

The revolution in military affairs (RMA) theory of the 1990s (and the transformation theory that succeeded it) was always strategy- and politics-light. It is not exactly surprising thatthe next major intellectual challenge, that of cyber, similarly should attract analysis and assessment almost entirely naked of political and strategic meaning. Presumably, many people believed that “doing it” was more important than thinking about why one should be doing it. Anyone who seeks to think strategically is obliged to ask, “So what?” of his or her subject of current concern. But the cyber revolution did not arrive with three bangs, in a manner closely analogous to the atomic fact of the summer of 1945; instead it ambled, then galloped forward over a 25-year period, with most of us adapting to it in detail. When historians in the future seek to identify a classic book or two on cyber power written in the 1990s and 2000s, they will be hard pressed to locate even the shortest of short-listable items. There are three or four books that appear to have unusual merit, but they are not conceptually impressive. Certainly they are nowhere near deserving (oxymoronic) instant classic status. It is important that cyber should be understood as just another RMA, because it is possible to make helpful sense of it in that context. Above all else, perhaps, RMA identification enables us to place cyber where it belongs, in the grand narrative of strategic history….

Read the rest here.

Margaret Thatcher, RIP 

There are leaders and then there are “Leaders” who shape and help define the spirit of their times.  Margaret Thatcher was of the latter kind.

A true friend of the United States and an indomitible Prime Minister of Britain is now gone.

Tributes Pour In for Margaret Thatcher 

….Mrs. Thatcher, 87, was Britain’s first female prime minister, serving for 11 years beginning in 1979. She was known as the Iron Lady, a stern Conservative who transformed Britain’s way of thinking about its economic and political life, broke union power and opened the way to far greater private ownership.

The daughter of a grocer, she was leader of Britain through its 1982 war in the Falklands and stamped her skepticism about European integration onto her country’s political landscape for decades.

Though Mrs. Thatcher had been in poor health for months, the news of her death still overwhelmed many. Within moments of the announcement by Lord Bell, Queen Elizabeth II and Prime Minister David Cameron offered tributes to what Mr. Cameron called “a great leader, a great prime minister, a great Briton.”

Indeed.

North Korea’s shopworn game of bluster, threaten, bully, violate international norms and eventually be rewarded with concessions and bribes has stopped working, which is why there now is a crisis. With the suckers (ROK, USA and Japan) refusing to play three card monty and with even  Pyongyang’s confederate China wearying of the scam when they have their own fish to fry, Kim Jong Eunhas few options to save face except to double down on painting himself into a smaller and tighter corner. There are some who would like to play the game of appeasement for a temporary respite but both Seoul and Washington are taking a harder line on North Korean antics.

One gets the impression that -unofficially, mind you – Beijing would not mind “Fatty the Third” getting a comeuppance that could push him from power and lead to the ascension of a more mature, more reasonable, more seasoned and more Sinicized leader of the Kim dynasty.

Here is a round up of more intelligently thought out (or at least interesting) articles and posts about the Nut of the North and possible war with North Korea:

Colonel Dave Maxwell– north Korean Leadership Assessment and The Realist Prism: North Korea Gambles on Strategic Assumptions and U.S. would seek regime change in North Korea if attack occurs

Colonel Maxwell is an area specialist on the DPRK, these are the “must read” pieces

Robert Baer –Viewpoint: North Korea’s Gaddafi Nightmare 

Gordon Chang –Is Kim Jong Un’s Bluster Really a Prelude to Reform?

Thomas PM Barnett –The Tricky Thing about Kim Jon Eun 

Patrick Cronin – Tell me How this Starts

IHT –Detecting Shift, U.S. Makes Case to China on North Korea 

Let me try my hand at reading the tea leaves. I don’t know that much, relatively speaking, about the “sovietology” of analyzing North Korean nuances which I will leave for experts like Colonel Maxwell to concentrate on other angles. Some points i no particular order:

• First, any hope of an internal coup against Eun is probably nonexistent. Not only for the the consistent ruthlessness and lavish bribery which the Kim Family regime has treated it’s military, but the fact that coups of this nature have a poor track record in Communist states, even weird ones like the DPRK. From the inception of Communist power in the USSR, Soviet leaders fretted about “Bonapartism” by counterrevolutionary generals on white horses from Kornilov to Tukhachevskii to Zhukov. That these plots were mostly imaginary did not matter and Communist rulers neutralized this threat by binding the military leadership into the Party leadership at a level subordinate to the Politburo and periodically shooting likely upstarts. The political space for successful military coups do not exist in Communist regimes even for the key insiders, just ask Lin Bao. The North Korean military does not have the will to do this except in conjunction with massive Chinese intervention. Perhaps not even then.
• For all the talk of irrationality, North Korea has been been playing this game as a survival strategy for sixty years and only miscalculated once, with the original invasion of South Korea in 1950 – which only happened, after Kim Il-Sung received the blessing of Stalin and promise of massive support from Mao ZeDong – and it was an unmitigated disaster for North Korea and China. Pointedly, the North has not initiated a war since and their subsequent violent provocations, while infuriating, have been quixotic and weird rather than existential threats that would guarantee a crushing military response.
• The “win” for the US and ROK here is in frustrating the regime’s grasp for status, however self-deluded, in extorting more material concessions by acting like the international community’s equivalent of a crazy, menacing, homeless person ranting on a street corner. We need to make this charade appear to be a diplomatic sure-fire loser this time in the eyes of Pyongyang’s elite with an endgame where the North emerges empty handed and Eun feels that pressing further risks a greater loss of face. We do this by making moves where the spillover costs of North Korean intransigence and public lunacy drift in China’s direction; a tightly constrained North Korea out of diplomatic and economic options is really Beijing’s problem.
• The strategic equation for “victory” from the North’s perspective depends heavily upon the reaction of the US and ROK governments to get drawn into tiresome negotiations before the North ceases it’s behavior, something they ultimately cannot control. Washington and Seoul cold hold firm or even (conceivably) take a harder line. If frustrated in their quest for concessions, the regime could exercise several options a) shift gears to a different propaganda campaign to distract internal audience b) engage in an act of terrorism elsewhere in the world, such as against a ROK embassy c) engage in a military demonstration that while provocative, like ballistic missile test, is not a casus belli d) all of the above e) undertake a military strike under the mistaken impression the ROK will not retaliate.

Comments welcomed.