Category: Strategy

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Review: Public Philosophy–Essays on Morality in Politics

5 Star, Intelligence (Public), Philosophy, Politics, Public Administration, Strategy

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Brilliant Work, Foundation for the Future of the Republic,

December 10, 2006
Michael J. Sandel
I picked this lovely book up on a whim while visiting the Harvard bookstore, and let it lie fallow for months. It was not until I read Paul Hawken's “Ecology of Commerce,” that this book demanded to be read. I had no idea how well the two would go together.

Published in 2005, it is a balanced collection of essays written over the previous decade, and I found it to be better than any textbook or more labored treatise. This book really worked for me. Here are the highlights that made this book vital reading for any adult concerned about where we are going in the aftermath of the Bush-Cheney debacles.

Liberalism–root word liberty–has lost its moral voice. It has no compelling vision just when public philosophy is most needed. The author is quietly passionate about how values–enduring values–both enable localized self-governance and come from localized communities where everyone knows one another.

According to the author, individual knowledge of public affairs, and a sense of belonging to a larger commonwealth, are the underlying foundation for the Republic as our Founding Fathers bequeathed to us–“a Republic, if you can keep it,” as Benjamin Franklin told us all.

This author is most powerful in making the case that “laissez faire” on values is to NOT have national values. The author uses the early portion of the book to make the case that the larger question on anything is this: what strategy or policy will most support the nurturing of self-governance at the local and state levels? This connects DIRECTLY to the current focus in Ecotopia (British Columbia, Oregon, and Washington State) on resilience and on the equivalent focus by the global public health intelligence network on the same word: resilience!

I was moved, almost to tears, to read this author quoting and discussing Thomas Jefferson and Justice Brandeis, who were both certain that concentrated power is threatening to liberty and self-governance. Think Wall Street–Goldman Sachs, Carlyle, Wal-Mart, Exxon.

The rise of big government, led by Teddy Roosevelt, was intended to be an answer to big business, but it did not work. Of course, carried to its logical conclusion, global business demands big government (that will not work).

The author tells us that we went astray in the 1960's. We focused on economic growth and federal justice instead of the larger issue of what “political economy” would reinforce rather than diminish citizenship. We focused on economic outputs rather than either the cost of inputs (see Herman Daly and Paul Hawken) or the goal of nurturing community.

This is really quite a brilliant thoughtful book. In the middle section it explores the conflict between the concepts of rights of individuals versus the common good being imposed. One has to ask (see George Will) should soulcraft be imposed or nurtured?

The book/author also drives a stake in the heart of globalization and corporations–it's about the economy, stupid, BUT not as Bill Clinton used it. It's about decentralizing economic power, the collision between capitalism and community.

The author touches on impeachment (which is on the minds of many as citizens rally all over America today to demand that Congress impeach Bush-Cheney) and can not be more explicit: impeachment is warranted when the President (or the Vice President in his name) undermines the system of government–the separation of powers. [I would note, as an estranged moderate Republican, that we should at the same time impeach every Republican serving in Congress for abdicating their role as the FIRST branch of government (see Coburn).

From this book we are reinforced in our belief that corporate money is impacting on the political system in ways absolutely not anticipated by our Founding Fathers. Money has supplanted reasoned dialogue.

The book closes with a marvelous review of Dewey as the greatest American philosopher, focusing on pragmatism as well as an openness to experimentation, a love of tolerance, and an avoidance of the absolute. For Dewey, democracy was not about giving every individual what they wanted but rather about drawing the greatest good from the greatest number of diverse individuals.

In passing the author notes that the use of nuclear weapons, genocide (and one might add, ecocide) are global wrongs, for they destroy entire multi-generational cultures in all their history and diversity.

The author chooses to end with a salute to Rabbi David Hartman's interpretative pluralism (room for varied interpretations) and ethical pluralism (room for varied faiths). The author and Hartman conceive of religion as a means of making sense of the world and of one another.

The last bit focuses on John Rawls, and the three debates he inspired: utilitarian versus rights; what rights? and should the government be neutral?

There is a breath-taking finish, describing how a judge approved Martin Luther King's march on public highways, despite George Wallace's objections, because the enormity of the wrongs being protested warranted such a significant granting of privilege.

I am in awe of this author, of this book, and of the Republic for which it stands.

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Review: The American Way of Strategy–U.S. Foreign Policy and the American Way of Life

3 Star, Diplomacy, Strategy

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Primer on Liberal Internationalism, Nothing More,

November 16, 2006
Michael Lind
This work reflects the liberal internationalist perspective of the author, a fairly comprehensive reading of first-person and related materials from past presidents, along with Op-Ed types of materials, and a somewhat stunningly naive and delusiional view that the American way of strategy exists to “protect the American way of life.”

The author is clearly lacking in military experience or understanding, in strategic understanding, in contextual understanding such as can be found in books such as Derek Leebaert's The Fifty-Year Wound: How America's Cold War Victory Has Shaped Our World; Chalmers Johnson's The Sorrows of Empire: Militarism, Secrecy, and the End of the Republic (The American Empire Project); Jonathan Schell's The Unconquerable World: Power, Nonviolence, and the Will of the People; or any of the hundreds of non-fiction books I have reviewed here at Amazon pertinent to devising and executing holistic national security and national competitiveness strategies.

Among other things, he naively assumes that most national security decisions have actually been intended to serve the public interest; he does not calculate in full measure the costs of unnecessary wars or unnecessarily oppressive wars; and he accepts at face value–for lack of broader reading–the conventional wisdom on why America entered specific wars. The author is, for example, sharply at odds with Gore Vidal, author of Perpetual War for Perpetual Peace among many other works, and Vidal's documentation of the many undeclared wars that America has undertaken in the pursuit of empire. General Smedley Butler, USMC (Ret) agrees that War Is a Racket: The Anti-War Classic by America's Most Decorated General, Two Other Anti=Interventionist Tracts, and Photographs from the Horror of It. For a really comprehensive understanding of the varied reasons Why We Fight see the DVD by that name, and first read the many many reviews of its content and meaning.

Among many subtle but telling errors, the author confuses the cost, size, and weight of the U.S. military with strength. The reality is that today we have a hollow military, and our heavy-metal military is relevant to only ten percent of the high-level threats to our security, and completely irrelevant to our more profound vulnerabilities with respect to national competitiveness and sustainability.

He makes a pass at including trade with security, and cites one book by my fellow moderate Republican, Clyde Prestowitz Three Billion New Capitalists: The Great Shift of Wealth And Power to the East but neglects the more important work, Rogue Nation: American Unilateralism and the Failure of Good Intentions. This book (“The American Way of Strategy”) is a review of history desperate to find good intentions and leverage them for the future, but so lacking in coherent detail about the substance of reality and strategy as to fail to be truly useful–and it is most certainly not even close actual reality, at least at the strategic level.

There are some gems and I certainly recommend the book for purchase and reading, but on balance I put it down as too replete with idealistic platitudes.

The four jacket blurbs (Nye, Hart, Kupchan, and Walt) would certainly carry weight with me if I were buying the book in a bookstore, but after actually reading it, I find that each praises the book for the one or two sentences that stand out (e.g. nurture democracy by example, not force). These are platitudes. Saying that we consistently fight for “the American way of life” is about as moronic as young Bush's saying that billions around the world hate us for our ideals and our morality and our “way of life.” Get real. This may be used to mobilize our youth and it may be why THEY fight, but it most certainly is NOT why our political and financial elites PICK fights.

Grand strategy, which Colin Gray discusses so ably in Modern Strategy requires a realistic appraisal of both domestic and foreign factors; it requires a balanced and transpartisan establishment of a national agenda, national goals, ways and means, and an explicit identification of desired outcomes. Its implementation requires a coherent inter-agency policy that is heard by both the public and the White House; endorsed by an activist Congress with the power of both the purse and the law, and executed by inter-agency leaders skilled at dealing with coalition leaders and at keeping the public informed, educated, and engaged.

This book is, in short, an appetizer, not the main course. The main course would require a full appraisal of the ten high-level threats identified by the High-Level Threat Panel of the United Nations (LtGen Dr. Brent Scowcroft as the US member); a coherent and reality-based budget plan for the next ten years across the twelve policies; and a deeply insightful understanding of the eight challengers (Brazil, China, India, Indonesia, India, Russia, Venezuela, Wild Cards) such that our national security & competitiveness policies, budgets, and behaviors can both protect America in isolation, and also help those challengers avoid our grotesque mistakes that today consume one third of the world's energy and create one third of the world's waste. That level of strategic thinking is not to be found in this book.

I would endorse this book as a starting point, but urge the interested reader to consider using my lists (which Amazon does allow us to organize) and my reviews (which sadly can only be viewed chronologically) as a map to the thoughts of others. The next President does not need and will not benefit from a single advisor full of platitudes–the next President not only needs a robust team light on egos and armed with global rolodexes, but they need a team that can brief tradeoff decisions among the <ten threats, twelve policies, and eight challengers>.

The American way of strategy is yet to be defined at the strategic level (at the operational level it has tended to be about mass, at the tactical level hey diddle diddle up the middle). When it is defined, at a proper strategic plane, it will combine access to all information in all languages all the time; serious games for change that can project alternative scenarios based on real-budgets in relation to one another; and coherent inter-agency and coalition campaign plans that wage peace rather than war, with war being the exception. Intelligence & Information Operations (I2O) will be the foundation for that strategy, which will have three objectives:

1) The restoration of the middle class and unionized blue-collar labor;
2) The revitalization of civic duty, infrastructure, and English; and
3) The provision of free universal access to education in all languages, as the fastest means to elevate and harness both our own working poor (see the book by that title), and to elevate and energize the five billion poor at the bottom of the pyramid–each of whom we could have given a free cell phone to, for the cost of the Iraq war to date.

The war metaphor DOES NOT WORK. We must wage peace, coherently, affordably, morally, and constantly.

On creating stabilizing wealth:
The Fortune at the Bottom of the Pyramid: Eradicating Poverty Through Profits (Wharton School Publishing Paperbacks)
Revolutionary Wealth: How it will be created and how it will change our lives
The Wealth of Networks: How Social Production Transforms Markets and Freedom
The Wealth of Knowledge: Intellectual Capital and the Twenty-first Century Organization

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Review: Hard Power–The New Politics of National Security

5 Star, Military & Pentagon Power, Strategy

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Great Minds, Good Intentions, *Very* Incomplete,

November 9, 2006
Kurt Campbell
I know Michael O'Hanlon, whom I consider to be one of the most insightful and honest policy analysts in America–his one line in “A Half Penny on the Federal Dollar” pointing out that the single best investment in foreign assistance is in the education of women, is a benchmark for all that ails US foreign policy–we simply do not know how to wage peace. He's the best. I do not know Kurt Campbell, but I respect the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS). I give this book five stars instead of four because of the caliber of the authors and the terribly difficult task they took on. The book is, however, *very* incomplete.

The authors are strongest on the politics of national security–there is nothing wrong with the substance where they address it, but I will end with my observation on how incomplete the book it.

The book can be summed up–and questioned–on the basis of its eight chapter headings–the book's focus is in capital letters, my alternative focus in lower case:

NATIONAL SECURITY AS PRIMARY ELECTORAL ISSUE–not so, electoral reform and the integrity and legitimacy of government is the primary issue

MYTH OF REPUBLICAN SUPERIORITY–quite so, but what about Peter Peterson's view in “Running on Empty,” to wit, BOTH political parties are inept and two sides of the same coin–they represent corporations, not the people.

MANAGING THE MILITARY–is not enough. Must manage ways and means, must manage the inter-agency matrix (Cheney ignores the policy bureaucracy, and the only agency actually fighting in Iraq is the military–everyone else is going through the motions).

HOMELAND SECURITY–TAKING IT TO THE NEXT LEVEL–physical security is not enough, even if private sector is willing to cooperate. The next level is about immigration control, tracking non-citizens, revoking citizenship as appropriate for those who do not adopt our values, tracking sermons by hostile imans, and rejecting visitors who are not bonded by their home government.

WINNING THE LONG WAR–strong on understanding next generation, weak on how to actually stabilize and reconstruct the world. The authors are too focused on terrorism, which is a tactic, not an enemy, and while they boldly propose approaches to stabilizing the Islamic nations, with a positive emphasis on education, they do not address the fundamentals of virtual colonialism, unilateral militarism, and predatory immoral “bandit” capitalism–our greatest enemy is within, not without.

THE REAL TRIPLE THREAT; ENERGY & SECURITY, GLOBAL CLIMATE CHANGE, AND TERRORIST FINANCING. Simplistic, conventional wisdom. Sure, we have to have energy independence, start doing real-time science and climate stabilization (changes that used to take 10,000 years now take three), and focus on terrorism financing, but these are a *fraction* of the national security challenge, and out of context, they are not realistically achievable.

COPING WITH CHINA–all well and good, but what about Brazil, India, Indonesia, Iran, Russia, Venezuela, and Wild Cards such as Turkey and South Africa?

PROLIFERATION–fine on the bio-chem and nuclear weapons, what about small arms, the real weapons of mass destruction that make the 17 genocides real (I am sick and tired of hearing about Darfur in isolation–it is ONE of 17 genocides now on-going).

Most useful to me was the authors' knowledgeable identification of four competing Democratic constituencies focused on national security: the “hard power” elite; the “soft power” globalists; the “modest power” Democrats seeking a partial pull back; and the labor-environmental Democrats profoundly troubled by global capitalism (which I and William Greider and Clyde Prestowitz among others have found to be pathologically predatory and our own worst enemy in terms of long-term global stability).

In short, this is a book that is excellent in its narrow focus–getting the Democrats some traction in the national security arena, growing beyond Iraq, and setting the stage for an expanded dialog.

Now here is what is NOT in this book:

1) The ten high-level threats identified by the United Nations High-Level Threat Panel, Dr. LtGen Brent Scowcroft participating, and taken *together*: poverty, infectious disease, environmental degradation, inter-state conflict, civil war, genocide, other atrocities (kidnapping starlets for Saudi debauchery, kidnapping others for body parts), proliferation, terrorism, and transnational crime.

2) The twelve policies that must be balanced in a transpartisan fashion: Agriculture, Diplomacy, Economy, Education, Energy, Family, Health,Immigration, Justice, Security, Social Security, and Water–using scarce water to produce subsidized agriculture or to flush heavy tar oil is nuts–but no one is managing the country across the board; and finally

3) The eight challengers or challenges that *must* be enlightened and assisted in avoiding our mistakes while we also learn from them: Brazil, China, India, Indonesia, Iran, Russia, Venezuela, and Wild Cards.

One final note: Jock Gill, who served President Clinton as a communications specialist, taught me this: we have to abandon the war metaphor–war on drugs, war on poverty, war on terrorism. IT DOES NOT WORK! I would add that we have to abandon the secrecy practice as well. In my view, the next government must be a Coalition Government because neither the Republicans nor the Democrats can govern competently without the common sense of the Libertarians, Greens, Reforms, Independents, and others; and the next government must redirect half the secret intelligence budget toward national and global education free in all languages, and half the heavy-metal military budget toward waging peace in all possible forms, to include using residual capabilities in abandoned DoD communications satellites to provide free Internet connectivity to Africa and Latin America.

O'Hanlon and Campbell are as good as it gets inside the beltway. I praise them as being the first step in a long march back to sanity, but only the first step. We cannot proceed nor succeed without them, but they need a dirty dozen iconoclastic outsiders to actually get us to an AFFORDABLE implementable Grand Srategy for a sustainable prosperous peaceful future going out seven generations.

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Review: Triumph Forsaken–The Vietnam War, 1954-1965 (v. 1)

5 Star, Asymmetric, Cyber, Hacking, Odd War, Insurgency & Revolution, Intelligence (Government/Secret), Military & Pentagon Power, Misinformation & Propaganda, Power (Pathologies & Utilization), Strategy, War & Face of Battle

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Revisionist, Questionable, Valuable, and a Starting Point,

October 20, 2006

Mark Moyar

I write this in Lubbock, Texas where historian Mark Moyar presented his conclusions in very summary form to one of the most extraordinary collection of individuals to ever gather on the topic of “Intelligence in the Vietnam War,” an event co-sponsored by the Center for the Study of Intelligence (Central Intelligence Agency) and the Vietnam Center (Texas Tech University).

While I came to hear authors like George Allen, whose 50 years of on-the-ground experience are presented in NONE SO BLIND, the definitive work on intelligence in the Viet-Nam war, and C. Michael Hiam, first time author who has done an utterly amazing job in describing, defending, and honoring Sam Adams in Who the Hell are We Fighting?, I have to credit this author, graduate of Harvard, student of Christopher Andrew the singular at Cambridge, with ripping me out of my chair and forcing me to think about the relative merits of documentation versus oral histories versus personal observation (I was there from August 1963 to late 1967).

Here are three bottom lines on the book:

1) It is some of the most erudite, earnest, well-intentioned, and potentially explosive revisionist history directly relevant to the intelligence-policy relationship as well as relations among nations.

2) It is lacking in an understanding of how the veterans of the war actually perceive it, taking both secondary sources and original documents from varied governments including China and Viet-Nam, at face value.

3) It merits the benefit of the doubt, a serious reading by those that were actually there, and inputs, in the form of oral histories, to the Oral History Project Head at the Vietnam Archive (Texas Tech University). If you have substantive comment to make on this book, don't stop here at Amazon–call them at 806.742.9010 and schedule a short telephone interview to add your oral history to the collection.

I read a lot and have had a fortunate life. I have always known that governments lie in the documents and their public statements, that secondary sources are all too happy to bend the truth to make a case, but it was not until this moment that I realized just how very urgent it is to dramatically increase our oral history and direct understanding of every aspect of the Viet-Nam debacle, one we repeat today in Iraq and Afghanistan, where those fighting have no memory of both the successes and failures of the past.

My gravest concern with this important and worthy book is that it plays to what the extremist unilateral militants–including the chicken hawks now serving–want to hear: that imperial adventurism can succeed if one just intervenes a little more harshly, a little sooner, with a bit more cleverness.

I have been an iconoclast, and I now find myself defending and praising an individual for having produced a work that conflicts sharply with my narrow understanding of the reality as I lived it, and that of the many others attending this conference.

I regard this book as a very courageous and intelligent offering, one that must be regarded as a work in progress, and one that will add substantially to our understanding once the author has a chance to write an epilogue that factors in the comments of those now living who were actually there.

Five stars for brave brains. This author must be reckoned with.

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2006 State of the Future

6 Star Top 10%, Complexity & Resilience, Environment (Solutions), Future, Games, Models, & Simulations, Intelligence (Public), Strategy, Survival & Sustainment

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Clear Map of the Future and What We Do Wrong Now,

September 8, 2006
Jerome C. Glenn and Theodore J. Gordon
I have been much taken with the integrity and wisdom of the Honorable David Walker, Comptroller General of the United States, who has been telling Congress that they are not providing for the future and that today's budget is inconsistent with sustainable national security and enduring national prosperity. He is right. This is the book he should buy and give to every Senator and every Representative, along with E. O. Wilson's “The Future of Life” and J. F. Richard's “HIGH NOON: 20 Global Problems, 20 Years to Solve Them.”

The book is actually in two pieces. 129 black and white pages that is comprised of an Executive Summary, a section on Global Challenges, a State of the Future Index, 40 pages on four global energy scenarios, a separate chapter on emerging environmental security issues (see my review of Max Manwaring's “Environmental Security and Global Stability”), and a final chapter on reflections as the project achieves its tenth anniversary.

The printed book also includes a table of contents for the CD-ROM of 5,400 pages with color graphics and global maps that are quite good, and the publishers are to be complemented for providing the CD material in both PDF form and Document form, the latter for ease of extraction of pictures and text for repurposing.

As I get ready to publish a book by Thomas J. Buckholtz entitled “INFORMATION METRICS: The GIST (Gain Impact, Save Time) of Successful Intelligence,” I cannot help but admire the manner in which the authors have leveraged the measurement of political, social, economic, and other indicators of quality and sustainability, a process that was first pioneered by Professors Banks and Textor in the 1970's.

The day will come when this book and the CD are available in a Serious Game that is both receiving near-real-time information feeds from all open sources in all languages, AND is connected to the real-world budgets of all governments and non-governmental organizations and private sector parties so that any individual can type in their zip code and their issue, and see the color-coded “threat condition” corresponding to whether or not their level of government or their organization is spending wisely, what I call “reality-based budgeting.”

The authors have done a superb job of documenting reality, and as I went through the book, I could not help but feel that we need a second book that evaluated national-level budgets in detail, to publicize the erroneous trade-offs that are being made without the public's real understanding or approval–too much money for a heavy-metal military and corporate tax loopholes, not enough for a global educational Marshall Plan and free telecommunications for the five billion poor (easily affordable for the half trillion the USA has wasted on the elective invasion and sustained heavy-handed occupation of Iraq).

In brief, this book, the CD, this project, are a *cornerstone* for building our future. Worth every penny, and worth several hours of a good read and reflection.

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Review: With All Our Might–A Progressive Strategy for Defeating Jihadism and Defending Liberty (Paperback)

4 Star, Strategy, Survival & Sustainment, Terrorism & Jihad, Values, Ethics, Sustainable Evolution

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Super on Law and Accountability, Read with “The Transparent Society”,

July 8, 2006
Daniel Solove
4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars Super on Law and Accountability, Read with “The Transparent Society”, July 8, 2006
There are some great reviews below, so I will not repeat them. Amazon is getting to the point now where it is almost essential to read all of the reviews as a pre-cursor to buying and reading the book.

This book was instrumental, after I bought it, in pointing me to the preceding work by David Brin, “The Transparent Society,” and I found it useful to read that book first.

The two key points in this book that make it a notable contribution are:

1. Best available review of applicable laws; and

2. Superb expansive discussion of privacy violation that emerge not just for deliberate abuse and invasion, but from “careless unconcerned bureaucracies” with little judgement or accountability.

IDEA for Amazon: connect with the Institute of Scientific Information, and start showing us new books that cite existing books. I would love to be able to “fast forward” from this book to the “best in class” books that cite this book so that I could buy the best most recent book (I buy and read in threes on most topics). Amazon has become a major intellectual force, and is my starting point for every issue (Google is for fast looks, Amazon is for deep looks; I hope that one day they merge with Wikipedia).

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Review: The Battle for Peace–A Frontline Vision of America’s Power and Purpose (Hardcover)

5 Star, Diplomacy, Strategy

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5.0 out of 5 stars

THE Common Sense “Primer” for Everyone Including Bozo,

April 14, 2006
Tony Zinni
I was initially inclined to give this book four stars because it does not “name names” and have footnotes or a bibliography, but as I got deeper into the book I realized that what Tony Zinni has produced is a world-saving “primer” that ANYONE can appreciate, including Bozo the Clown. This is not a dumbed down book as much as it is “straight talk” with no gobbly-gook.

I have known over fifty flag officers in my time, and only a handful have actually been world-class, including Zinni, Gray, Stackpole in the USMC, Clapper and O'Lear in the USAF, Studeman in the Navy, and of course Schoomaker in the Army. No doubt there are others, but in my experience most flag officers have simply won a beauty/etiquette contest, and they do not acquire any additional strategic vision upon being promoted from the lower ranks. Zinni is incontestably the one general we have that has done three things brilliantly:

1) been a foxhole Marine with grievous wounds and innovative leadership at the company and field grade levels (see my review of his book “Battle Ready”);

2) been a general deeply experienced in Operations Other than War (OOTW–what a stupid former Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff once said of “Real men don't do OOTW–which is about as stupid as the DNI still saying (we paraphrase) “we're in the business of secrets for the President, the hell with open sources and everyone else”); and

3) been a true inter-agency Commander-in-Chief (CINC) able to make full use of *all* the inter-agency capabilities, not just the military, and done so diplomatically and personally. He is the George Shultz (himself a former Marine) of the current warrior class.

With that as pre-amble, here are the highlights of the book that demand its reading by every citizen in time to challenge their light-weight (and generally corrupt) Members of Congress prior to casting a vote in November 2006:

1) Chapters 1-7 are essentially an overview of reality and why global reality impacts on America's security and fortune. This is required reading for all but a handful, and needs to be read very slowly and carefully by those encumbered with ideological filters. As the author notes, very often perception is reality, and when an ideologically-biased perception conflicts with actual multi-cultural reality, what you get is a catastrophe such as Iraq.

2) The heart of the book is the author's prescription for achieving both an unbiased view of the real world, and the ability to fully plan for and leverage all the sources of national power as represented by the varied agencies, through three simple and elegant “hubs”:

2a) At the national level, a National Monitoring and Planning Center (NMPC) that is able to integrate both intelligence (less than 20% of the relevant information) and operational inter-agency information (the other 80%), and to then plan, coordinate, and guide the execution of long-term inter-agency campaign plans.

2b) At the operational level, the modification of the currently planned Joint Intelligence Operations Commands or Centers (JIOC) to turn them into more of a Joint Inter-Agency Collaboration Center (JICC) such as SOCOM has developed in concept. Although JFCOM's Joint Inter-Agency Coordination Group (JIACG) is the example used by the author, I believe that we actually need to bring together the JFCOM and SOCOM concepts with those emerging in the NORTHCOM inter-agency directorate under Bear McConnell, and the Global Innovation and Strategy Center (GISC) at STRATCOM, which not coincidentally also has the lead for getting a grip on all open source information in all languages all the time, something the DNI cannot provide.

2c) At the tactical level the author is right on target when he proposes the civil affairs model (as does Congressman Rob Simmons, R-CT-02 from the HASC and Homeland Security Committees) as the focal point for inter-agency application of resources in-country. The author does not dismiss the U.S. Embassy, which was supposed to play that role, but his book is a clear demarche with respect to the incapacity of the Department of State to provide a leadership role, a planning role, or an inter-agency management role in-country. The Embassies are simply not working the way they are supposed to our could be made to work.

3) The author concludes his work with an analogy of cobras being killed by the death of a thousand stings from bees. Exactly right. The threat to America is NOT Iranian nuclear power (just as it was NOT Iraqi Weapons of Mass Destruction) but rather a global concerted effort to destroy Americas economy through the simple expedient of putting oil prices up to $300 a barrel, something that can be achieved very inexpensively with tiny but potent attacks on key oil pipelines and pumping stations in Nigeria, Venezuela, and Saudi Arabia.

Tony Zinni is one of my heroes. He not only understands asymmetric warfare and the urgency of getting serious (that is to say, professional, which we are not at this time) about global instability in the intangible non-military dimensions, but he is a clear-headed diplomat and warrior-philosopher who knows how to make big bureaucracies do his bidding.

I hope the day comes when we have a chance to work together to save this great Republic from the morons that have broken the piggy bank, cost us all moral legitimacy in the eyes of the world, and started a 100 year six front war we did not need and were not ready for.

BRAVO ZULU and GUNG HO.

Admin Note: If you select “see my other reviews” and bookmark that page, you can, over the course of several hours, receive a free graduate education in reality and non-fiction about global issues. If Zinni *had* had footnotes, most of the books I have reviewed would have been in his book as supporting elements for his personal and professional essay.

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