While Hasan serves warning the threat still exists, does Hasan's act forward al-Qaeda's political goals? Indeed, what are al-Qaida's prospects for victory eight years after the Sept. 11 terror attack on America?

Analysts, and for that matter, political leaders rarely address this question, at least publicly. That's unfortunate. Napoleon understood the importance of assessing his opposition's position. He wrote in 1809, "In war one sees his own troubles, not those of the enemy." Focusing on one's own...]]> Wed, 11 Nov 2009 00:00:00 -0600 One word aptly describes Ft. Hood mass murderer Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan: traitor.

Traitor is a tough word. It doesn't smudge and squish. "Traitor" draws a hard line, one that sharply divides essential life-determining values and marks a defining personal choice between the profound and the profane.

There is no question that the accusation of treason, like accusations involving its kin terms sedition and betrayal, has been grossly abused.

Self-styled mainstream journalists with no regard for the awful moral weight and terrible consequences of the actual act of sedition heedlessly employ the accusation as a word weapon to thwart discomfiting political...]]> Wed, 04 Nov 2009 00:00:00 -0600 On Nov. 9, 1989, large crowds of German citizens from both East and West Berlin approached the Berlin Wall. At several border crossing points, East Berliners began shouting at the armed communist guards, demanding they open the gates and shove aside barbed wire obstacles.

The confused guards yielded and disappeared. The gleeful crowds from the communist East and the free West mingled and mixed, occasionally waving at television cameras. Young men whacked at the wall's hideous concrete with pick axes and sledge hammers, then passed the tools to other eager hands.

Make no mistake. The Berlin Wall was a prison wall, an ugly urban segment of Soviet Russia's Iron Curtain...]]> Wed, 28 Oct 2009 00:00:00 -0500 Maintaining a competent military organization is a challenge for wealthy nations, even in times of relative peace. Bureaucrats and politicians hijack budgets as politically connected officers wrangle promotions at the expense of creative, forward-thinking war-fighters. War reveals the organizational corruption, stagnation and decay, and this institutional decline exacts a stiff price in soldiers' sweat and blood.

The "rich man's security challenge," however, pales when compared to the multidimensional security problems of the impoverished, fractured and terrorized. Afghanistan is a pertinent case, but only one of many on the planet. Africa has at least a score of...]]> Wed, 14 Oct 2009 00:00:00 -0500 Action in the world ought to trump worlds evoked by words, especially when awarding a global prize allegedly recognizing sustained, courageous effort on behalf of peace in our world's deeply conflicted corners.

We live in an age when the farce of history precedes the tragedy, however, and even a few left-wing media and academic elites realize giving President Barack Obama a Nobel Peace Prize is utter, rollicking balderdash.

Over a lifetime of esthetic agony and ecstasy, a well-wrought world of words might deserve a Nobel Prize for Literature. Literary laureate William Faulkner made that point in his 1949 Nobel acceptance speech: "I feel that this award was not made to me as...]]> Wed, 07 Oct 2009 00:00:00 -0500 Eliminate commercial jet transports connecting continents, and the tangled tribal, economic, anarchic and ideological problems vexing Afghanistan become more localized torments afflicting Afghanis and their neighbors.

What? The jets aren't going away? Has Barack Obama failed to apologize for American Airlines, Southwest and United? What an uncomfortable fact: swift jet transportation shrinking oceans to a matter of hours places your home within commuting distance of chaos, murder, mass terror and the kind of blighted men who use deadly anarchy and crime to build their version of earthly Paradise.

Of course the terrorists and tyrants, the blighted men, are the culprits here,...]]> Wed, 30 Sep 2009 00:00:00 -0500 Sudan's genocidal Darfur war still attracts international attention, and though large battles pitting national government troops against Darfur rebels are less frequent there, violent anarchy still afflicts that sad region.

A much larger and more dangerous war haunts Sudan, however: a re-ignition of the "North versus South" civil war. This reviving horror has ominous implications not only for East Africa but all nations straddling sub-Saharan Africa's "Arab-Black" ethnic and "Muslim-Christian" divides.

The last North-South war (the Second Sudan Civil War) lasted for two decades, left approximately 2 million dead, created millions of refugees and -- despite ritual denials by...]]> Wed, 23 Sep 2009 00:00:00 -0500 When it came to acting on behalf of peace in the 21st century, the Obama administration weighed "sphere of influence" against "sphere of security" and came down solidly on the side of the Russian czars.

I am referring to the administration's refusal to deploy long-range defensive ground-based interceptor (GBI) missiles in Poland. For an administration that insistently congratulates itself on "smart diplomacy," this is a shortsighted decision that sets back 21st century collective defense (sphere of security) at least five critical years and likely longer.

Moreover, President Barack Obama's personal announcement of the policy decision was disastrously timed, an utter tin ear...]]> Wed, 09 Sep 2009 00:00:00 -0500 Morale matters -- especially in a time of war.

Morale even matters in an "overseas contingency operation," the hazy bureaucratic phrase the Obama administration sought to substitute for "The Global War on Terror." The GWOT is a poor name in my opinion (terror is a tactic), but at least it sketched the wicked problem al-Qaida's 9-11 attack posed -- a war fought on a global scale, where transportation, weapons and communications technologies had shrunk the planet. Sept. 11 demonstrated that the distance between "over there" (overseas) and "over here" could be easily bridged by a terrorist organization.

Knowledge is the first line of defense in any conflict, and by knowledge I...]]> Wed, 02 Sep 2009 00:00:00 -0500 Unleashed in the early hours of Sept. 1, 1939, Germany's "lightning war" -- the blitzkrieg -- quickly pierced Poland's border forces and sliced through the Danzig Corridor. As the German Luftwaffe hammered Poland's air force, panzer divisions smashed Poland's army, leaving its units scattered and surrounded.

Yet Poland continued to resist. Britain and France joined the war on Sept. 3. Sept. 17, however, sealed Poland's fate, as Russian forces invaded eastern Poland -- the "stab in the back" by Joseph Stalin. Poland collapsed.

The sensation, however, that Poland had succumbed to a "new kind of war" shocked a world still mired in World War I, where bunkers, trenches and...]]> Wed, 19 Aug 2009 00:00:00 -0500 Credit Mexico's president, Felipe Calderon, with vision and guts.

In the midst of the Cartel War's vicious bloodletting, Calderon continues to pursue his "systemic revolution" on multiple fronts, and he's doing so with an enviable cool and steadiness.

Despite his National Action Party's (PAN) political losses in the July Chamber of Deputies election, Calderon's postelection statesmanship indicates he intends to pursue his liberalizing, reformist agenda during his remaining three years in office.

The Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI), which for decades dominated Mexico, gained clout in the elections. The PRI's track record of debilitating corruption is...]]> Wed, 12 Aug 2009 00:00:00 -0500 Iran's Information Age demonstrators, exploiting the capabilities of the social networking and "micro-blogging" service Twitter, surprised then threatened Iran's tyrannical mullahs. Tehran's thugs in robes suddenly discovered they could not control information within Iran. Kicking out BBC reporters used to separate dissidents from the global megaphone, but no longer. Now that mobile phones are essentially small computers, instant Internet access is widely distributed. Men, women and children hold a global link with audio- and video-recording capability in their palm.

Twitter is the latest in a line of "social media" phenomena spawned by the digital communications revolution....]]> Wed, 05 Aug 2009 00:00:00 -0500 Is it reset or repeat?

This past week's rhetorical exchanges between Russia and the Republic of Georgia is a definite reminder that the complex political, historical and geographic issues at play in the Russo-Georgia War of August 2008 still plague both nations and affect Russia's relations throughout Europe.

Likewise, the "reset" of U.S.-Russian relations, touted by the Obama administration as a demonstrable change from Bush administration diplomacy, is, well, quite unsettled.

Take the U.S.-Russia "reset" first. The alleged "reset" of bilateral relations began last March with Secretary of State Hillary Clinton's disastrous photo op, involving a large button that...]]> Wed, 29 Jul 2009 00:00:00 -0500 "I am now only an American professor," Gen. Bela Kiraly said with a grin.

His grin was a survivor's grin -- a charming, elegant East European survivor with a sense of humor about himself and perhaps the end-of-1984 Christmas party. Smile and sip the holiday brew, for we were about to survive George Orwell's ominous year in which The Party prohibits free thought and exerts total control over Oceania -- Orwell's fictional masks for communism crushing Great Britain.

We were in non-fictional Brooklyn, however, in a real friend's home, and we were quite free to speak and think. I suggested the courage of freedom fighters like Kiraly was one reason we had liberty in lieu of Big...]]> Wed, 22 Jul 2009 00:00:00 -0500 In November 2008, a terrorist assault team recruited and trained by the Islamist Lashkar-e-Taiba (LET) terror organization attacked Mumbai, India, and murdered 166 people. The attack -- which featured the random slaying of hotel guests, street vendors, and businesspeople by hand-grenade- and assault-rifle-armed killers -- was a political and media gamble by the Pakistan-based terrorists, a violent act whose aftereffects continue to play out in the courtroom, on the battlefield and in the strategic calculus of the War on Terror.

In an Indian court this week, the lone surviving terrorist, 21-year-old Pakistani Ajmal Qasab, pled guilty to murder. Video cameras caught Qasab in the...]]> Wed, 15 Jul 2009 00:00:00 -0500 Rioting last week between ethnic Han Chinese and ethnic Uighurs in China's Xinjiang Province left 180 people dead and 1,000 injured. Chinese police and paramilitary forces arrested 1,500.

The Beijing government insistently weighs media coverage of China. The ethnic clashes so troubled Chinese President Hu Jintao that he left the G-8 economic summit. Hu's hasty departure, in front of the cameras of every global news organization, indicates how serious the Chinese government views the violence in its far northwestern province.

Though officially designated the Xinjiang Uighur Autonomous Region, the region is not autonomous and, as time passes, less Uighur. Beijing dominates...]]> Wed, 01 Jul 2009 00:00:00 -0500 As Americans celebrate the Fourth of July, Iran enters limbo, an uncertain yet perilous period of time separating anger-driven demonstrations from either bloody tyrannical repression or sustained popular struggle producing a liberalizing revolution.

Frustration, righteous anger and bitterness powered Iran's post-election demonstrations. These emotions are also fuel for revolution. Toppling Iran's corrupt Khomeinist regime, however, requires leadership, organization and time -- in other words, calculated assessments and cool political war-fighting skills disciplining the emotional fires of outrage and disaffection.

American independence required a field army, ragtag force...]]> Wed, 24 Jun 2009 00:00:00 -0500 Call this coming July Fourth Dependence Day -- the day marking prudent and responsible America's realization that we do indeed depend on the diplomatic power and technological capability of anti-missile defensive systems.

North Korean dictator Kim Jong Il is threatening to fire a ballistic missile "test shot" at Hawaii on July Fourth. Kim's hyperbolic bombast and paranoid theatrics likely engage Pyongyang's opaque domestic intrigues. Still, the missile and the moment are dangerous -- and instructive.

The first decade of the 21st century has made it clear that we are engaged in a global battle between the constructive and the destructive -- constructive nations desiring...]]> Wed, 27 May 2009 00:00:00 -0500 It took a couple of awkward weeks, but Department of Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano finally issued a real apology to American military veterans. Recall in early April, at her direction, DHS issued a sloppy, politically slanted "warning" about potential domestic terrorism. Insulting language fingered "disgruntled" military veterans as potential recruits for violent (likely "right-wing") organizations.

Napolitano's taxpayer-subsidized smear warned that citizens upset by high taxes might also gravitate toward violent, armed, anti-government organizations. Of course, she shoveled the report to the press just before April 15 -- the biggest day on the Internal Revenue...]]> Wed, 20 May 2009 00:00:00 -0500 The gray zone separating "cyber attacks" by hackers on computer and communications networks from war waged with bayonet, bomb or missile attacks is narrowing, and narrowing dramatically.

Last week, the head of U.S. Strategic Command (STRATCOM), U.S. Air Force Gen. Kevin Chilton, noted that American leaders cannot rule out using "real world" military force (e.g., air strikes and ground attacks) against an enemy who attacks and disrupts critical cyber networks.

On May 8, The Stars and Stripes quoted Chilton as saying, "I don't think you take anything off the table when you provide options" to senior civilian leaders following an attack on the United States -- including cyber...]]> Wed, 13 May 2009 00:00:00 -0500 Every day, rebel-controlled territory shrinks. The space for diplomacy is even smaller.

After 26 years of vicious civil war on the island of Sri Lanka (known as Ceylon in the British colonial era), the Sri Lankan government has decided to do what it once sought to avoid: destroy the fanatical Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) uprising in a relentless offensive. If the result is an ethnic and sectarian bloodbath, so be it. After all, "suicide attacks" are a Liberation Tiger trademark.

In 1983, Liberation Tiger fanatics began a separatist insurgency against the Sinhalese-dominated Sri Lankan government. The LTTE's leaders demanded a separate state for Sri Lanka's Tamil...]]> Wed, 06 May 2009 00:00:00 -0500 Hope. Bloodshed. Perseverance. Change.

These powerful words provide a sketch of the Cold War, which in May 1989, when Hungary began opening the Austria-Hungarian border, entered a decisive phase marked by accelerating change.

Hope was crushed then imprisoned -- that was Eastern Europe's experience in the aftermath of World War II, as Russia's communists forged an iron curtain empire.

Revolts -- violent attempts to shed communist chains -- were smashed. In June 1953, Eastern Germans, demanding free elections, threw stones at Soviet tanks -- and were brutally suppressed. In late 1956, the Hungarians used rifles and anti-tank grenades.

The Hungarians fought...]]> Thu, 30 Apr 2009 00:00:00 -0500 The devastating epidemic is spread by dread, of course -- dread powered by distortion, gossip and sensationalist greed.

The swine flu of 2009 is a threat, but another plague immediately associated with this genuine viral killer deserves to be slammed and canned for the manipulative and exploitative corn it is.

I refer to the Epidemic of Fear, a plague insistently poised to infect the entire planet.

This completely human-transmitted pox twists or ignores facts and seeds individual, institutional and international distrust. It stunts rational decision-making and promotes panic. When it strikes and persists, entire populations become vulnerable to the absurd but deadly...]]> Wed, 22 Apr 2009 00:00:00 -0500 Pirates, Iran's corrupt tyranny of mullahs and now international cyber attackers all seek to exploit economic and psychological choke points.

Geography provides Somalia's pirates with a throat to choke. Somali pirates pursue a strategy of attacking vulnerable cargo ships as they approach or exit a global maritime bottleneck, in this case Egypt's Suez Canal, which connects the Red and Mediterranean seas.

The Gulf of Aden, where the majority of Somali pirate attacks occur, lies between the Horn of Africa and the Arabian Peninsula. Sea lanes to and from the Indian Ocean meet and narrow in the Gulf of Aden, making it a grand geographic funnel for the Red Sea and...]]> Wed, 15 Apr 2009 00:00:00 -0500 Richard Phillips, captain of the Maersk-Alabama, combines discipline and courage with a cool and calculating mind. Likewise the three U.S. Navy SEAL snipers who -- firing from a destroyer's fantail in rolling seas -- killed the three Somali pirates who attacked Phillips' ship, held him hostage and were prepared to murder him.

This dramatic American operation ends with three dead thief-kidnappers (criminals employing terror as a business tactic) and a freed American hostage. We are fortunate. Skill, courage, experience, vastly superior military forces and fortunate circumstances produce a satisfactory denouement -- at least satisfactory for the sensible who know pirates and, yes,...]]> Wed, 08 Apr 2009 00:00:00 -0500 The answer is no.

Gates understands the importance of perseverance in war -- the weapon of spine, determination, will.

Osama bin Laden committed many strategic blunders, but one of his greatest was underestimating American will. References to America "fleeing" from Somalia litter captured al-Qaida documents.

Credibility of commitment -- the will to win -- is the psychological backbone of deterrence. A determined foe will scorn advanced weapons with near-magic capabilities if he believes you won't use them or that he can force you to fight on a battlefield where the weapons are not decisive. He wagers his will to win far...]]> Wed, 01 Apr 2009 00:00:00 -0500 Elements of the outline are so formulaic they reduce to a bully's checklist. Close the North Korea-South Korea border with an angry huff? Check. Arrest foreigners, preferably journalists, since that guarantees big-league media headlines? Check. Imply the communist regime has or will obtain nuclear weapons? Yes, thuggish hints galore. Brandish ballistic missiles? Indeed, but this time embellish the brandish by touting a launch window (April 4 to April 8), which signals to diplomats that tyrant Kim Jong-Il is confident his Taepodong-2 missile will work.

Aim missiles at Japan? Check again, with a plus. If the missile demonstrates extended-range capabilities,...]]> Wed, 18 Mar 2009 00:00:00 -0500 A flash mob organizer might send four accomplices a message like this: Paint yourself blue and show up at Sixth and Congress in two hours. In concept, the ability to communicate quickly and virally (think exponents -- each friend contacts four more friends, and those friends four more) quickly multiplies the number of blue-painted crazies unexpectedly crowding a downtown sidewalk.

A couple of years ago, I overheard two mothers discussing a high school party that included a "flash mob-like" activity. A text message provided the insta-mob location. Alas, one of the moms had to drive her son to and from the mob scene. That's an old lesson reinforced: Even...]]> Wed, 11 Mar 2009 00:00:00 -0500 Kim presides over a criminal state and an economic disaster. Exporting missile technology to thugocracies like Iran earns Kim some hard cash. Rumors circulate that North Korean embassies occasionally sell heroin in order to pay their bills. Counterfeiting U.S. currency is another source of income that keeps Kim in caviar.

North Korea's major export, however, is the threat of war magnified by potential nuclear holocaust. It's an international version of an alley bully's extortion game. Pay me off, the punk waving the pistol says, or I'll burn down your store. The analogy, however, only goes so far. North Korea's Kim waves a nuclear weapon, and if he uses it,...]]> Wed, 04 Mar 2009 00:00:00 -0600 Bush administration plans called for a phased transition from "more coalition security operations" to "fewer" based on the continuing, demonstrated improvement in the capabilities of Iraq's own military and police forces -- "rheostat" warfare is the term. Stabilizing, securing and extending the authority of Iraq's national government was an integral part of the process. As "fewer" combat operations nudged toward "zero," U.S. logistics and training support units would continue to assist Iraqi forces.

"No" combat operations was qualified. U.S. forces in the region would remain on "strategic overwatch" -- a "night light" for the Iraqi government, particularly...]]> Wed, 25 Feb 2009 00:00:00 -0600 "Sumer and Ur, home of Abraham ... Ninevah ... Mesopotamia -- perhaps the southern marshes -- as the source of the Agricultural Revolution? ... Alexander at Gaugamela ..."

Covering five or six millennia in a conversation over coffee is impossible, but with Iraqi history as the topic, that's roughly the time span available for comment and speculation -- and we gave it a go, fully aware I'd soon join yet another army operating in history's cradle.

Then he said: "Iraq should not make money by only selling oil. Agricultural Revolution? We grow food. We've water. And the country should be filled with tourists. There is so much to see, so much...]]> Wed, 18 Feb 2009 00:00:00 -0600 But it didn't, not quite, not yet. For almost nine years, the phrase "resolving Kosovo's final status" served as diplomatic shorthand for determining if Kosovo would become a separate nation, remain part of Serbia or linger as a U.N.-EU-NATO protectorate. Cynics said it really meant "buy time and hope" because Kosovo is in the Balkans, where "final" often means "maybe, until the next bloodletting."

In the wake of the Clinton administration's 1999 Kosovo War, an evident divide in Europe emerged between nations that considered Kosovo independence a foregone conclusion and those who feared the consequences of redrawing Balkan borders. Intervention to prevent genocide --...]]> Wed, 11 Feb 2009 00:00:00 -0600 "Wicked" problems are dynamic and multidimensional -- intricate, constantly changing challenges that frustrate precise definition. As a wicked problem evolves, we can learn a lot about it -- useful knowledge informing constructive action. But the problem will still change in unforeseen and unexpected ways, seeding "unknown unknowns" that produce surprise. In a wicked problem like a war, surprise may be fatal.

A strategic planner I know says all problems involving human psychology have "wicked" elements. Here's the gist of a complex argument: as basic needs (food and shelter) are met, new needs (pension plans) arise. To paraphrase the Rolling Stones, we...]]> Wed, 04 Feb 2009 00:00:00 -0600 But voters traipsing to the polls offer terrorists particularly easy targets ripe for mass murder, which in turn generates the sensational headlines terrorists seek. Protecting civilians on sidewalks entering and exiting easily accessible locations (i.e., polling places) was one of the biggest problems confronting U.S., coalition and Iraqi forces during 2004 as they prepared for Iraq's historic January 2005 elections.

I know from personal experience -- the plans team I served with in Iraq struggled with this complex problem. The courage of the Iraqi people won that election, as ink-stained fingers became the symbol of democratic will in the face of personal danger....]]> Wed, 28 Jan 2009 00:00:00 -0600 The Obama administration has revived the subject -- after a fashion. Check the White House Website on the page detailing defense-related campaign promises. The new administration opposes "weaponizing space" and will "restore American leadership on space issues ... ." Restoration means seeking "a worldwide ban on weapons that interfere with military and commercial satellites" and includes "thoroughly" assessing "possible threats to U.S. space assets and the best options, military and diplomatic, for countering them ... ." Obama promises to accelerate "programs to harden U.S. satellites against attack."

Though the fervent language implicitly suggests this is a...]]> Wed, 21 Jan 2009 00:00:00 -0600 But fear sells. Sensationalists latched onto the comments in the document that cited Pakistan and Mexico worst-case "rapid collapse" scenarios, which -- if they occurred -- would damage U.S. interests. Fearmongers missed (or ignored) the scenarios, which were "what ifs?" designed to spur creative planning and policies that would avoid them altogether.

JFCOM's planners were merely doing their job. "Worst-case scenarios" provide fodder for war-gaming and planning "excursions." This intellectual preparation may or may not have organizational and technological consequences, but the intellectual exploration has value. Classicists understand.

In...]]> Wed, 14 Jan 2009 00:00:00 -0600 Hezbollah and Hamas also build "meshed, networked static defense systems" comprised of bunkers and tunnels in their human shields' neighborhoods and selectively booby-trap houses with high explosives. They then dare Israel to counter-attack and, in the process, kill thousands of Arabs while losing several score Israeli soldiers in close combat with guerrillas.

Video cameras, television talk shows, native human sympathy for harmed innocents and, yes, democratic values play major roles in "involuntary martyrdom."

As the body count rises, Hezbollah and Hamas provide global media with heart-rending video featuring dead bodies and wounded...]]> Wed, 07 Jan 2009 00:00:00 -0600 The future, however, is another matter. The future is big business.

Doom makes money. The doom end of the future business -- both imminent doom and eventual doom -- blossomed when first radio then television programmers discovered that sensational, scary stories riveted an audience.

Biblical prophets predicting doom faced stones thrown by mobs. Contemporary prophets predicting doom face network cameras. Stones hurt. Network cameras sell books. Pity Jeremiah -- he was born too soon.

Bright, positive futures ("bloom and boom futures") are a tougher sell than doom, unless you're in the cosmetic business and can eliminate...]]> Wed, 24 Dec 2008 00:00:00 -0600 Avarice, ambition, envy, anger, pride: Shakespeare made villains of them all. They reappear every 30 minutes on all news television. Indeed, they are at the root of Sept. 11 and the War on Terror, Sudan, Congo, Somalia, Mumbai, Beslan, Georgia, Kosovo, Bosnia, Rwanda, Burma, Tibet -- a list proceeding ad infinitum.

For the past five years, I've taught a strategy seminar in the University of Texas' Plan 2 undergraduate honors program. I sometimes kid the students and tell then that the course title ought to be "Big Plans." We do consider a few rather large-scale planning problems, like Alexander the Great tackling the Persian Empire, Hannibal challenging...]]> Wed, 17 Dec 2008 00:00:00 -0600 Iraq's body count does serve, however, as a crude gauge of comparative ferocity. This week, StrategyPage.com editor James F. Dunnigan noted that on an "average day" (in Iraq) 26 Iraqis are killed in criminal and terrorist-related violence. With the warning that the Mexican statistics are based on reported and investigated murders -- which means that the actual number of murders is probably higher -- November 2008 was the Cartel War's deadliest month, with over 700 people slain.

Do the math. In November, Mexico averaged 23 deaths a day from "crime and terror" incidents. Estimates for the total number killed from January through November 2008 run from 4,900 to 5,100....]]> Wed, 10 Dec 2008 00:00:00 -0600 Put both books on Barack Obama's Christmas reading lists -- put them in the stocking marked "Strategic Guidance Regarding Change."

Winkler's book provides a lesson in the evolutionary nature of technological change. Winkler explores the first global Internet -- the international telegraph cable system that began shrinking Planet Earth at the end of the 19th century.

Winkler illustrates that the "new" is rarely a radical break with the past. Undersea cables broke the great silence of strategic distance, establishing the first near-instantaneous global communications network. The hackers on this Internet literally hacked cables.

As...]]> Wed, 03 Dec 2008 00:00:00 -0600 India's outrage has deep roots. Islamist terrorists likely connected to Pakistan have struck Mumbai many times, with attacks in 1993 and 2006 particularly notable. The July 2006 attack mimicked al-Qaida's March 2004 bombing of commuter trains in Madrid. 2008's massacre-by-gunfire tactically and strategically echoes the December 2001 assault by Islamist gunmen on India's parliament building in New Delhi. That attack killed 12 and chilled prospects for a 9-11-inspired India-Pakistan rapprochement based on combating terrorism.

With anger seizing India and fear of Indian attack gripping Pakistan, rhetorical belligerency is inevitable. Indian and Pakistani media...]]> Wed, 26 Nov 2008 00:00:00 -0600 From a sea crook's perspective, a freighter fleet and $30 million in cash isn't a problem, it's success. The cash roll may seem small by Wall Street bailout stands, but $30 million goes a long way in Puntland.

Remember the Land of Punt? Egyptian Queen Hapshetsut sent an expedition to Punt in the 15th century B.C. This A.D. 21st century "Puntland" is north of Mogadishu on the "elbow" of the Horn of Africa. Puntland claimed independence from "Mogadishu control" in 1998 -- which makes Puntland a separatist "state-let" of a sort.

Puntland, however, like most of anarchy-plagued Somalia, has no real government except gangsters with guns, making...]]> Wed, 19 Nov 2008 00:00:00 -0600 The second event occurred in spring 2008: the Iraqi Army's Operation Charge of the Knights. Declared an immediate failure by an overwhelming majority of the talk show and editorial elites, Knights Charge smashed Shia gangs in Basra and hit Iranian-financed "special groups" throughout southern Iraq.

Knights Charge was a carefully integrated political-military operation. Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki made it clear Knights Charge was planned and executed by the Iraqis themselves. Maliki and his government know they are waging a political war, and Knights Charge was a military operation with major political objectives. One was to further isolate Muqtada...]]> Wed, 12 Nov 2008 00:00:00 -0600 In 2002, the New Sudan Council of Churches published a handbook titled "The Story of People to People Peacemaking in Southern Sudan." I picked up a copy in a Kenyan church in fall 2002 and use it in a strategy class I teach at the University of Texas, in a course section asking, "What is peace?" The handbook is quite practical, the product of wisdom informed by facts and suffering -- suffering through Sudan's decades-long "North-South" civil war pitting the northern Islamist government (the "Arab" Sudanese) against the predominantly Christian and animist ("black African") south. It is also unblinkingly frank when discussing divisions within southern communities.

...]]>