War of Terrorism

Mr. Obama’s War, (Washington Post)…Editorial, Nov 9, 2008

The president-elect must both sustain and reform the fight against terrorism. … Barack Obama made clear during the election campaign that he takes the threat of al-Qaeda and other extremist groups seriously. He’s been hawkish in proposing more troops for Afghanistan as well as unilateral strikes targeting al-Qaeda in Pakistan. He’s promised to dedicate more resources to preventing the worst-case scenario of terrorists obtaining weapons of mass destruction.

Third War: Stateless Extremist Networks

Obama To Face A Third War — Against Stateless Extremist Networks
(Los Angeles Times)…Sebastian Rotella, November 9, 2008

Amid the focus on the wars that President-elect Barack Obama will inherit in Iraq and Afghanistan, a third conflict gets less attention: the shadow war against stateless networks of Islamic extremists.

A weaker Al Qaeda, tighter U.S. borders and the apparent lack of U.S. support networks make a new strike on American soil unlikely, though not impossible, according to Western anti-terrorism officials. Instead, the foremost possible scenario is an attack on U.S. targets in Europe similar to the alleged plots against American troops in Germany last year and transatlantic flights from London in 2006.

Iran: Latin American Interests

Iran’s Latin America Push, (Los Angeles Times)…John Kiriakou, Nov 8, 2008.

Iran, the ultimate mischief maker with global reach, astounding patience, a shameless marriage to mayhem and terrorism, and interests that fall squarely in opposition to those of the United States, is making major diplomatic inroads under Washington’s nose.

The United States still has an opportunity to stop the Iranians in their tracks in Latin America. But it’s a big job. The growing Iranian influence — inconceivable a decade ago — is the result of the decision by the United States to stop paying attention to the region. And it will only be reversed if the U.S. changes its policy.

Policy: Iran., nK, Mideast

Obama To Face Big Policy Decisions On Iran, N. Korea And Mideast, (Washington Post)…Glenn Kessler, Nov 8, 2008.

…Diplomatic issues rarely begin or end cleanly with a change of administrations, but Bush will be leaving his successor an extensive list of foreign policy processes. The new administration will have to quickly evaluate them and decide whether to continue along Bush’s path, make minor modifications or forge ahead in a different direction.

“Iran’s development of a nuclear weapon, I believe, is unacceptable,” Obama said yesterday. “And we have to mount an international effort to prevent that from happening.”

Obama has not indicated that he will offer any fresh thinking on how to deal with Hamas; at one point during the campaign, he accepted the resignation of an outside adviser who met with Hamas officials as part of his job for an international mediation group. But, during a visit to Israel in July, Obama said he would not wait “until a few years into my term or my second term” to seek a peace deal. This suggests that he may appoint a high-level Middle East peace envoy, freeing his secretary of state to concentrate on other issues.

On North Korea, Obama will inherit a process that is probably in worse shape than what Clinton left for Bush. In a dramatic change in approach during his second term, Bush avidly pursued a deal to end North Korea’s nuclear weapons programs. But the effort nearly collapsed this fall before Bush agreed to remove North Korea from the State Department’s list of state sponsors of terrorism.

Obama supported the decision to delist North Korea. During the campaign, he criticized Bush for taking so long to engage with North Korea, suggesting he would be eager to find ways to keep the disarmament process alive. Li Gun, a senior North Korean official, told reporters in New York on Thursday that “we are ready to deal” with the incoming Obama administration.

nKorea: Future Stability Concerns

Beijing Spurns U.S. Effort To Prepare In Event Of Korean Leader’s Demise, (Wall Street Journal)…Jay Solomon and Jason Leow, November 7, 2008, Pg. 11

The Chinese government has largely rebuffed Bush administration attempts to discuss contingency planning should North Korean dictator Kim Jong Il die or be unable to rule, according to current and former U.S. officials.

The reluctance is partly because Chinese diplomats and military officers fear planning for a post-Kim era could unnerve North Korean leaders and feed a perception the outside world is conspiring against the isolated state, Chinese scholars said.

Washington has been trying to establish some principles to govern a coordinated response by the U.S., South Korea and China. The U.S. has sought assurances the Chinese military won’t cross the Yalu River into North Korea in response to any instability, said the officials. Washington and Seoul also want guarantees that South Korea would take the lead in overseeing any humanitarian operations for the North.

Systems of Systems: Govt and Financial Crisis

The Business Model, By Brian Friel, Government Executive Magazine, November 5, 2008

The economy is one giant system of systems with complex interconnections among all of them. Problems can travel easily across those connections from system to system. As those problems multiply, solutions become more difficult because the law of unintended consequences is so powerful in complex systems.

That fact seems obvious when you look at the snowballing financial crisis.

The government is, of course, one system in the economy’s system of systems. Its revenues represent roughly one-fifth of the nation’s gross domestic product. The system of government is extremely complex since it is subject not only to the rules of the economy but also to the rules of politics. Just witness the difficulty Congress and the executive branch had in crafting ways to deal with the economic crisis.

Outstanding points and insight regarding the systems of systems perspective.

A system can be defined as a collection of processes with a common aim. A process is the action taken to achieve a result. Everything is done via a process.

First time I can recall seeing the term “system of systems” used outside a military context. The intent of DoD’s Joint Guidance on Effect Based Operations (EBO) is to assess an adversary’s “system of systems” to identify and exploit vulnerabilities.

In a non-military application, same approach can be/is applied to improve capabilities. The systems perspective is what W. Edwards Deming introduced to the Japanese after WWII and has been successfully applied by companies such as Toyota.

A systems of systems assessment on the financial system would have easily identified the vulnerabilities. Would likely have also been fairly accurate on the time.

Systems thinking is also referred to as strategic thinking, horizontal thinking and/or macro-level thinking as opposed to vertical or stove-piped thinking. Vertical thinking incorporates a “process” or more of a micro-level perspective.

Thomas Barnett, author of the Pentagons New Map and the forthcoming book, Great Powers, contrasted the two perspectives:

There are types of people in the world: those who believe there are two types of people in the world and those who don’t. I fall into the first camp.

I believe the world is divided between vertical thinkers, or those who specialize deeply in certain skills and subject matters, and horizontal thinkers, or those whose essential skill lies in connecting the dots across various subjects and synthesizing new combinations.

The challenge for what I refer to as Quality Leadership, includes leveraging the two perspectives to achieve the highest levels of quality.

Pentagon’s Pay for Performance System (NSPS) – Potential Revision/Repeal

High Hopes For A New Friend In The White House, (Washington Post)…Joe Davidson, Nov 6, 2008.

…Gage released a series of letters from Obama that outline his positions on various federal labor related issues. The Pentagon’s pay for performance system: Obama said he was concerned about a disconnect between pay and performance, forced distribution of performance ratings and suppression of wages in the National Security Personnel System. As president, he said, he would substantially revise the system’s regulations “and strongly consider a complete repeal.”

Good news on the possible changes to NSPS. I have over 30 years in the federal civil service including 17 years at the Department of Defense Finance and Accounting Service (DFAS) in Indianapolis, IN. One of the better performance appraisal systems I’ve experienced at DFAS was in the early 1990s when we used a pass/fail option. Our performance standards identified shared goals and objectives in four areas: customer satisfaction, results, process improvements, and employee satisfaction. The bonus system was separate from the individual performance review.

W. Edwards Deming, whose work with the Japanese after WWII was recognized by the editors of Fortune magazine as one of the best calls in business history, classified most individual performance systems (to include grades in school) as deadly diseases. Rationale provided at SuccessThroughQuality.com where you can test your knowledge of variation.

A better understanding of the variation principle would help minimize and/or avoid many of the costs associated with NSPS.

Additional articles on the subject published in Quality Progress and DFAS magazine.

Our early efforts to introduce the variation principle within DFAS provided in the article: Measuring Performance in the Department of Defense (DFAS). Published in Quality Progress Magazine, American Society for Quality, January 2002.

A Transformation to Quality Government. Published in Quality Progress Magazine, American Society for Quality, May 2000.

Doing the right things, right. Article that summarize quality ‘s common ground. Published in the Department of Defense Finance and Accounting Service (DFAS) newsletter, December 1995.

Success through Quality Choices. Article that illustrates the basic principles of numerical literacy. Published in the Department of Defense Finance and Accounting Service (DFAS) newsletter, December 1995.

Winning the Peace

Stability Operations and State Building: Continuities and Contingencies. Edited by Colonel Greg Kaufmann, U.S.A., Ret, September, 2008. Strategic Studies Institute, Army War College Carlisle Barracks, PA.

The Strategic Studies Institute and Austin Peay State University conducted an academic colloquium titled, “Stability Operations
and State-Building: Continuities and Contingencies.” The purpose was to identify principles and supporting policies of state-building that will enhance America’s ability “to win the peace” while stabilizing chaotic regions. The approved list of “Principles to Win the Peace” were:

1. Ensure rule of law
2. Seek security: civil, military, economic
3. Pursue legitimacy
4. Encourage development
5. Foster self-empowerment and self-sufficiency
6. Foster communications

Thomas Barnett was one of the presenters. His session titled: How America Realigns Itself to the Current Geostrategic Landscape, identifed the following points of emphasis:

• Leave the place more connected than you found it, across all networks possible.
• romote industries that link the economy into existing and emergent production chains; any niche will do.
• Give the regime the technical and training wherewithal to secure its borders.
• Rehabilitate and/or build up air- and seaport security to meet American entry/fastpass standards, so that direct connections can be forged, giving transitioning states the software and hardware if necessary.
• Go slowly on elections and demands for democracy; most countries can only connect as single-party regimes because of the social and economic challenges involved with opening up to the global economy.
• Realize most societies have democracy within tribes and among tribal leaders, but that the decision point preference is consensus, not majority vote.
• Go with whatever traditional social hierarchal structure exists; build from that instead of transplanting.
• Do not push women’s rights so much as women’s education—especially for girls. (Remember how long it took for women to get the vote in the United States.)
• Do not feed people except for short durations and when extreme need arises; it is better to encourage agricultural development.
• Build police, not militaries.

In a previous posting, Economics, Political Change, Prediction Markets, I reference Barnett’s work in expanding economic connectivity through gloablization. His points of emphasis above reinforce the need for “phased-in variability” regarding change … go slowly on elections, concensus vs. majority vote, focus on women’s education vs women rights, build on existing instead of transplanting.

Economics, Political Change, Prediction Markets

POST: Economics Drive Political Change, November 05, 2008

On the day after elections in America, it seems like a good time to talk about democracy elsewhere. Politicians like to talk about politics and the ideologies behind their particular brand of politics. In the West, we are fond of democracy — especially representational democracy — and we try to spread the gospel about it wherever we go. Often we hear it in speeches like the one President Woodrow Wilson gave before Congress in April 1917: “The world must be made safe for democracy. Its peace must be planted upon the tested foundations of political liberty.” Over a decade and a half before that speech, Wilson had defined what he meant by democracy. “Democracy,” he wrote in a March 1901 edition of the Atlantic Monthly, “is not so much a form of government as a set of principles.” Winston Churchill, on the other hand, did see democracy as form of government. He reportedly uttered, “It has been said that democracy is the worst form of government except all the others that have been tried.”

My colleague Tom Barnett and I have preached that if you want to instill democratic principles in governments then improve the lives of the people in autocratic countries. Economic progress almost always precedes political progress.

In tracking “political” progress, Freedom House tracks trends and publishes a map of the world that identifes countries that are free, partially free and not free.

Barnett’s Pentagon’s New Map identifes the countries that are connected economically via globalization. In his map, note that Russia and China are are considered connected but are not rated as politically free by Freedom House.

Closing the gap … Prediction Markets are one approach that can be used to raise awareness and visibility and provide the feedback that may get people more involved in issues (political and economic) that they may be interested in influencing.

Strategic Shocks

Known Unknowns: Unconventional “Strategic Shocks” in Defense Strategy Development. Nathan P. Freier , Nov 2008, Strategic Studies Institute.

Historically, defense strategy demonstrates three flaws: (1) it is generally reactive, (2) it lacks sufficient strategic imagination, and (3) as a result, it is vulnerable to surprise. The current administration confronted a game-changing “strategic shock” in its first 8 months in office. The next team would be well-advised to expect the same kind of unconventional and nonmilitary shock to DoD convention early in its first term.