What an interesting search, thank you. Here are some links that came up in a broader search that we import to Phi Beta Iota with a tip of the hat to the anonymous searcher.
Phi Beta Iota: We don't make this stuff up. The Pentagon has no strategy because the U.S. Government has no strategy. The National Security Council is managed by a General who emphasized getting along with the Chief of Naval Operation, never-mind leaving Marines wounded on the battlefield for lack of Naval Gunfire Support (NFS).
Join us in savoring what passes for a strategist and nominal policy making savant with the below headlines.
Below item is full text to avoid inconvenience. It is followed by several linked headlines that make quite clear the shallowness of the Pentagon strategy-policy pool.
Executive Summary: The gentle lady has no idea what the ten high-level threats to humanity are, nor does she care. She's a place-holder for the disappointed John Hamre, and a token female at the top who goes with the flow. She has neither any grasp nor any conceptual framework for actually creating grand strategy, harmonizing Whole of Government policies nor even–this really did surprise us–how many failed states there are in the world.
PBS March 27, 2010
Interview With Michele Flournoy, Under Secretary Of Defense For Policy
Charlie Rose (PBS), 1:00 A.M.
CHARLIE ROSE: The United States military is engaged around the world. It is withdrawing combat troops from Iraq as it builds up troops in Afghanistan. It is partnering with Pakistan in an aggressive counterterrorism campaign including drone attacks in the tribal areas. It’s working with the Yemeni government to counter a resurgent al Qaeda there. And U.S. troops are still in Haiti for the humanitarian relief efforts.
But the military has to do more than respond to the conflicts of the day. It must prepare for future wars, adoptive enemies and a shifting security environment.
The person at the Pentagon who spends the most time working on these issues is Michèle Flournoy. She is under secretary of defense for policy and the highest ranking female official in the Defense Department. I am very pleased to have her with me in the night studio at the Newseum in Washington.
Tell me what it is that you do at the Pentagon, how do you define this responsibility?
ANDREW J. BACEVICH, America Magazine: The National Catholic Weekly, 29 March 2010
In American politics, deficits have suddenly become all the rage. Throughout the presidency of George W. Bush, the federal government hemorrhaged red ink, with no one paying much attention. Upon the election of Barack Obama, however, the rules abruptly changed. As if overnight, Republicans in Congress discovered that theirs is the party of fiscal conservatism. From out of nowhere came the Tea Party movement, providing at least a pretty good imitation of people who are “mad as hell” about a government unable to manage its own affairs and careening toward bankruptcy. Although the administration’s spending plans add more than a trillion dollars each year to the national debt, President Obama himself has allowed that this might not be such a good thing—for long. In Washington the sky grows dark with deficit hawks.
But the deficits that plague the United States extend well beyond the realm of fiscal policy. At least as important is a deficit in self-awareness that makes it difficult for policymakers to learn from and avoid repeating past mistakes. Continue reading…
Bojan Pancevski in Skopje, Sunday Times [UK], 28 Mar 2010
SAUDI ARABIA is pouring hundreds of millions of pounds into Islamist groups in the Balkans, some of which spread hatred of the West and recruit fighters for jihad in Afghanistan.
According to officials in Macedonia, Islamic fundamentalism threatens to destabilise the Balkans. Strict Wahhabi and Salafi factions funded by Saudi organisations are clashing with traditionally moderate local Muslim communities.
Fundamentalists have financed the construction of scores of mosques and community centres as well as handing some followers up to £225 a month. They are expected not only to grow beards but also to persuade their wives to wear the niqab, or face veil, a custom virtually unknown in the liberal Islamic tradition of the Balkans.
Panels and keynotes program schedule I was told via email from someone involved in the event that a video will be posted online.I will be posting this over a the Earth Institute blog (especially since it has zero comments for the March 25 event) as a challenge to improve the overall framework of the “State of the Planet 2012”.
State of the Planet 2010 Event Report:
Intro
I attended this bi-annual event in 2008. At that time there was not a global webcast that included panelists located in other countries. At the 2010 event, there was a V.I.P. section closer to the ‘stage' that I was not notified about. The V.I.P. section had about 3 times more people than the non V.I.P. section which was odd. Despite it being a V.I.P. section, there was never enough time given to them to ask all the questions via microphone. This is a Jeffrey Sachs event, it's his show. He's the main advisor to Ban Ki-Moon, and friends with the president of Mexico (who keynoted this event), so it seems to be more from his perspective and his friends. Therefore, it was a very narrow-visioned event that should not be entitled “State of the Planet”. People involved with the publication “State of the Future” for over a decade (www.stateofthefuture.org) were never mentioned, invited, or asked to contribute. Yet, these people have worked with the United Nations for over a decade. Collective intelligence has been written and software is being developed by those involved in the “State of the Future” (Millennium Project), yet Jeffrey Sachs was attributed to the idea of “worldwide brainstorming” for “collective invention”. And unfortunately, there was an obsession at this event on ‘climate change' and carbon. “Industrialization footprint” involves a broader range of hazards and toxins that needs more air time. More ‘fluid' thinking was lacking while an excess of a kind of cloned groupthink was prevalent (or ‘carbon copying' if you will, pun intended). The forum has great potential but as of 2008 & 2010, is too insulated and will not be respected as highly intelligent and strategically effective by a broad range of people (outside of Ivy League Columbia) concerned about serious global issues. On an interesting note, Zbigniew Brzezinski was once a Columbia professor (see Obama video on his Brezinski recognition). Continue reading “EVENT REPORT: State of the Planet 2010, Columbia Univ, New York City”
This is a dynamite op-ed written jointly by my good friend Marshall Auerback and Rob Parenteau.
Chuck
Coming to a Country Near You
Let a Dozen Latvias Bloom?
By MARSHALL AUERBACK and ROB PARENTEAU
The article's bottom line conclusion:
It is now time for the rest of us to follow the Lilliputians of Iceland: to take the rentier juggernaut down before it completes the task. Time to pry the vampire squid off our faces so we can see the light of day again and allow some semblance of humanity to flourish again. Hopefully, Iceland represents the future, not Latvia.
Full Story Online
Phi Beta Iota: Iceland has led the way. It is time to start closing down the International Monetary Fund, the World Bank, and the outrageous misbehavior of Goldman Sachs and the other banks. Nations need to start nationalizing ill-gotten gains, refusing to pay predatory loan interest, and beginning to think for themselves. We certainly encourage judicial activism in confiscating foreign-owned land and structures and in blocking both the privatization of water and other commonwealth resources, while also blocking predatory and often hazardous or poisonous importations. Top-down government has been corrupted and does not work. The only means to achieve resilience is bottom-up “home rule.” We salute Iceland for its intelligence and its integiryt.
Phi Beta Iota: We are detecting a fascinating evolutionary process within the United Nations “system” which is not a system at all, more like an archipelago with a different cat in charge of each island. Information-sharing is coming into vogue, but more importantly, the United Nations, perhaps stimulated by the report of the United Nations High-Level Panel on Threats, Challenges, and Change, A more secure world: our shared responsibility, appears to finally be realizing that all threats are connected and that poverty is the foundation for all of the other threats thriving–one cannot defeat transnational crime (threat #10) without first addressing poverty (threat #1).
With the top United Nations anti-drug official urging concerted global action to “break the vicious circle between insecurity and underdevelopment” being increasingly fuelled by criminal networks, drug smugglers and human traffickers, the Security Council today called on the world body’s Member States to increase international and regional cooperation to tackle transnational organized crime.
The Council invited Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, who opened today’s meeting, to consider transnational threats as a factor in conflict prevention strategies, conflict analysis, integrated missions’ assessment and planning and to consider including in his reports, as appropriate, analysis on the role played by those threats in situations on the Council’s agenda. [Phi Beta Iota: Emphasis Added.]
UNITED NATIONS (Reuters) – International criminal gangs and traffickers are exploiting large geographic blind spots where radar, satellite or other surveillance is minimal or nonexistent, the U.N. crime and drugs czar said on Wednesday.
Antonio Maria Costa, head of the Vienna-based U.N. Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC), told members of the 15-nation U.N. Security Council that countries must improve their systems of sharing intelligence to reduce these surveillance gaps.
“We need a change in attitude,” Costa told the council. “It is time to regard information sharing as a way of strengthening sovereignty, not surrendering it.”
