Man, I am so bad at this.

Blogging. Maybe I'm just not cut out to be a blogger. I have interesting thoughts, but I don't write them down. Maybe I should start blogging at work - JUST KIDDING. Like I have time to blog at work. Funny.

I am currently writing a paper on the origins of the Korean War. I need at least 20 pages...I'm at 17. I've been talking nonsense for a few pages now. The worst grade I can get and not fail is a B-. Is that bad that I'm aiming for a B-?

Yes, I know it is. Shut up.

Someone said, 'why don't you just turn in 17 1/2 pages and call it square?? Well, because I need to start at an A before he reads the blasted thing. If I start at a B because I haven't met the page requirement, then I'm fairly confident when he's done, I'll be below a B-.

Pessimism you say, well, maybe.

I prefer to call it strategery.

Word of the Day

A while ago I signed up for the Merriam-Webster's Word of the Day. I think at that point I was thinking I could learn a new word and be learned and erudite and whatever. Mostly the word of the day emails just go the way of the wind when I clear out my email box.

However, this one caught my eye. (Mostly because I had no idea how to pronounce it.)

Merriam-Webster’s
Word of the Day

triskaidekaphobia

\triss-kye-dek-uh-FOH-bee-uh\

noun

Meaning : fear of the number 13

Tell me about yourself...

So, class started again. I had very high hopes for this professor, but I think it may be a long semester. He seems like a really smart guy who has been around a lot an knows that he's talking about, but he pretty much just talks about himself as the object lesson.

I don't do well with people like this because I don't really think they are smarter than I am, just older and more experienced. I like to be taught by people who are smarter than I am (not too high of a bar) but nevertheless, I don't want to listen to you talk about how wonderful you are for 3 hours every week.

Ug. National Security Decision making through personal stories of an ex-CIA operative. Could be fun, or not.

All I need now is a Delorean

I'm learning about complex system analysis for class (tomorrow - I'm actually supposed to pinpoint a complex system to analyze).

I'm still really fuzzy on exactly what a complex system analysis is, other than a way to analyze a complex problem...

But I figured I'd see what Wikipedia had to say about the CSA...

Among other helpful things, the wikis found it important to stress that the Butterfly Effect tangentially related to complex system analysis) is not really like time travel - so that movie a few years ago really got it all wrong, as did Michael J. Fox.

Thank goodness for Wikipedia. Thanks for clearing that up guys.

Thusly,

Main article: Butterfly effect in popular culture
The term is sometimes used in popular media dealing with the idea of time travel, usually inaccurately. Most time travel depictions simply fail to address butterfly effects. According to the actual theory, if history could be "changed" at all (so that one is not invoking something like the Novikov self-consistency principle which would ensure a fixed self-consistent timeline), the mere presence of the time travelers in the past would be enough to change short-term events (such as the weather) and would also have an unpredictable impact on the distant future. Therefore, no one who travels into the past could ever return to the same version of reality he or she had come from and could have therefore not been able to travel back in time in the first place, which would create a phenomenon known as a time paradox.

Oh, school.

And school started for Summer Semester. Methods. (Whatever in the world that is - I'll let you know in 12 weeks.)

I was having a conversation with a friend the other day about insecurities and how everyone has them. It's the human condition, well, that and suffering. Although, really, they are kind of the same thing.

Me: Everyone has insecurities.
Friend: Oh yeah, what do you have to be insecure about?!

WELL, one of my insecurities is not being smart enough. Subsequently, I really like to learn things and understand them. If I don't understand something and I want to, it sort of drives me nuts. It's usually a good thing because then I buckle down and figure it out. (Good for someone who procrastinates.) But MAN if it isn't a pain to get there sometimes.

So Methods... 2nd night of class last night... I just kept thinking WTF?

Everyone is insecure in their own special way...and for me, reading this sh*t doesn't help.

Strategic evaluation is a methodology for analyzing U.S. national security policies and strategies. It is employed to help analyse how the United States can best shape its strategic conduct for managing the high politics of global security affairs and defense preparedness. As such, it has a more macroscopic focus than systems analysis or operations research.

Oh, yeah. Right. Clear as mud.

African Swallow or European Swallow

These are my 4 options for my final essay for school this semester.

1. How coherent is al Qaeda's ideology? How best can it be defeated?

2. Niall Ferguson describes the United States as an "Empire in Denial". Discuss

3. Is Michael Vlahos right in his description of the functions of war? Assess his recommendations for the US.

4. Is ideology dead?

I'm really leaning toward number 2, because I think I could make a fairly compelling argument that the US is indeed an empire able to maintain political, economic and military control over other nation states.

Now if I can just turn that last sentence into 500 words.

Brain Floss

I have to write a page and a half on the differences between Marxism and Hegelian philosophy.

If I even REMEMBERED what Hegelian philosophy was, it would be nice.

Honestly, I must have been asleep when we talked about this in class, and clearly I did not do the reading. I'm not sure I can fake a page and a half...

Thought I'd share.

Oh, and the answer to last week's brain floss is... You'd probably rather live under an authoritarian regime. Totalitarian regimes get in your underpants and tell you how to live your life (think present day North Korea). Authoritarian regimes, as long as you don't challenge their power, let you be (think Franco's Spain).

Cheers.

if not Democracy, what?

If you had your choice between living under an authoritarian regime or a totalitarianism regime, which would you choose and why?

One short paragraph should be sufficient. Feel free to pick/use your country/regime of choice as an example.

Come on, floss your brain a little.

;)

What would Karl do?

So my professor yelled at a guy tonight for checking his blackberry during class.

REALLY yelled.

As in your father is super mad at you for crashing the family car into a retaining wall, yelled.

I have never been yelled at like that before - EVER.

Turns out the guy, a hill staffer, was on call because his boss was having a town hall. His Chief of Staff emailed him a question. You CAN'T not answer an email from your boss/COS. At least not an email like that.

We were talking about Socialism, Fascism,
Communism, Marxism, Trotskyism and the Bolshevik so my professor was particularly animated generally. I thought it was part of the lecture for about 5 seconds.

But nope, he was telling the kid that 'if he had something better to do, he should do it'.

I wanted to pipe up and say, 'look man, you are pontificating about Karl Marx'. Dude is trying to do his job - you know, the job that pays his mortgage and feeds his kids???

Anyway, if he would have yelled at me, I probably would have told him to F off.

Not so good for the grade point average, me thinks.

The end of the world as we know it.

While I was sliding around the mountain last week, Samuel Huntington died. Among other things, Huntington created a political theory which has yet to replaced. Huntington's Clash of Civilizations is completely worth the time to read. Terribly interesting and relevant.

U.S. NEWS DECEMBER 28, 2008, 12:25 A.M. ET
Political Scientist Huntington Dies at 81
Associated Press

BOSTON -- Samuel Huntington -- a political scientist who argued that future conflicts would have their seeds in culture and religion rather than friction between nations -- died Wednesday on Martha's Vineyard, Harvard University announced Saturday. He was 81.
Israeli Foreign Minister Shimon Peres, left, talked with Samuel Huntington before a panel discussion at the World Economic Forum on Feb. 3, 2002.

Mr. Huntington had retired from active teaching in 2007 after 58 years at Harvard. His research and teaching focused on American government, democratization, military politics, strategy, and civil-military relations.

Mr. Huntington began teaching at Harvard at age 23. For the next half century he served as a mentor to generations of students and fellow faculty members.

Mr. Huntington was best known for his views on the clash of civilizations. He argued that in a post-Cold War world, violent conflict would come not from ideological friction between nation states, but from cultural and religious differences among the world's major civilizations.

He identified those major civilizations as Western (including the U.S. and Europe), Latin American, Islamic, African, Orthodox (with Russia as a core state), and Hindu, Japanese, and "Sinic" (including China, Korea, and Vietnam).

He made the argument in a 1993 article in the journal Foreign Affairs, and then expanded the thesis into a book, "The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order," which appeared in 1996. The book has since been translated into 39 languages.

In all, Mr. Huntington wrote 17 books including "The Soldier and the State: The Theory and Politics of Civil-Military Relations," published in 1957 and inspired by President Harry Truman's firing of Gen. Douglas MacArthur, and "Political Power: USA-USSR," a study of Cold War dynamics and how the world could be shaped by two political philosophies locked in opposition, which he co-authored in 1964 with Zbigniew Brzezinski.

His 1969 book, "Political Order in Changing Societies," analyzed political and economic development in the Third World.

"Sam was the kind of scholar that made Harvard a great university," Mr. Huntington's friend of nearly six decades, economist Henry Rosovsky, said in a statement released by the university.

Mr. Huntington was born on April 18, 1927, in New York City, the son of Richard Huntington, an editor and publisher, and Dorothy Phillips, a writer. He received his B.A. from Yale in 1946, served in the U.S. Army, earned an M.A. from the University of Chicago in 1948, and a Ph.D. from Harvard in 1951, where he had taught nearly without a break since 1950.

Mr. Huntington is survived by his wife of 51 years, Nancy Huntington and sons Nicholas Huntington and Timothy Huntington.

Copyright © 2008 Associated Press

Oh to be a fly on THAT wall.

Joint Chiefs Chairman Must Adapt to a New Boss
New York Times
By ELISABETH BUMILLER
December 15, 2008

WASHINGTON— As President-elect Barack Obama convened the first meeting of his national security advisers on Monday, there was just one person at the table that the new president did not choose to have there: Adm. Mike Mullen, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.

Admiral Mullen, who was selected by Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates for a two-year term, has been on the job for a year. Come January, he will face perhaps the biggest challenge of his career — pivoting from one commander-in-chief to another, in the middle of two wars. Friends describe him as an even-tempered, intellectually curious and politically astute presence who sees the world beyond the immediate battles of the Pentagon and White House — all skills they say will serve him well in the new administration.

“He’s not a jumper or a screamer, he looks at things to make them better for the long term,” said Adm. Dennis C. Blair, a retired Pacific Fleet commander who is expected to be named by Mr. Obama as director of national intelligence. “He’s an incredible networker, too.”

In the last year, Admiral Mullen has sought advice from the retired generals who revolted against former Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld, reached out to the former Army chief who was vilified for saying more troops were needed in Iraq and invited to dinner prominent Democrats like Gregory B. Craig, Mr. Obama’s choice for White House counsel. His efforts may have been an attempt to soothe the military after the cataclysmic Mr. Rumsfeld, or an anticipation of a change of administration — or both.

Admiral Mullen, the son of a former Hollywood press agent whose clients included Anthony Quinn and Julie Andrews, has a world view that friends say is closer to that of Mr. Obama than to Mr. Bush.

He was initially opposed to the Bush administration’s troop escalation, or “surge,” has long been in favor of diplomacy with Iran and considers Pakistan — where he traveled in early December to press military leaders to crack down on the terrorist group behind the Mumbai attacks — one of the most dangerous countries in the world. As the man in charge of training and equipping the military, Admiral Mullen’s desire to ease the strain on forces fighting on two fronts may well dovetail with Mr. Obama’s desire to draw down American troops in Iraq.

In short, Admiral Mullen, 62, could be more influential in an Obama administration than he has been in the Bush administration, where he has been overshadowed by the success and showmanship of Gen. David H. Petraeus, the commander of United States forces in the Middle East and the former top commander in Iraq. Friends say that Admiral Mullen sees an opportunity to assert himself in the traditional role of chairman, as the president’s top military adviser, particularly if General Petraeus, who joined his fortunes with President Bush to sell and oversee the surge, no longer has a direct line to the Oval Office.

So far, Mr. Obama has not met with General Petraeus, who is based at the headquarters of the United States Central Command in Tampa; Mr. Obama has met with Admiral Mullen and Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates, whom the president-elect has asked to stay on in the job.

“I’m encouraged by the fact that he said he’s going to listen to his military commanders,” Admiral Mullen said in a telephone interview this week, recounting a meeting he had with Mr. Obama in Chicago on Nov. 21. Mr. Mullen declined to discuss the substance of the conversation other than to say “it was a good initial meeting — we talked about a lot of things.” He discounted any concern on the part of senior commanders that Mr. Obama had not served in the military.

“By and large, I’ve found that those who really care about us and learn about us and are supportive of the military, having served in the military isn’t a requirement,” Admiral Mullen said.

In preparation for his new commander-in-chief, Admiral Mullen is overseeing the final stages of a comprehensive military strategy review of the border region between Afghanistan and Pakistan — one of four such studies in the government — to guide Mr. Obama in his first days as president. More quietly, he has also had initial conversations with his top commanders about potential changes in the “don’t ask, don’t tell” law that allows gay men and lesbians to serve in the military as long as they keep their sexual orientation secret.

Mr. Obama has taken a strong stand against the law as a moral issue, although his team has signaled that he will not push for repeal in the early months of his administration to avoid the kind of blowup that engulfed President Bill Clinton when he sought to lift an outright ban on gay men and lesbians in the military in his first days in office. (In a cautionary tale for Admiral Mullen, that 1993 storm raged in part because General Colin L. Powell, who was the holdover chairman of the Joint Chiefs from the first Bush administration, publicly disagreed with what became a Clinton compromise solution of “don’t ask, don’t tell.”)

Fifteen years later, Mr. Obama is of the view that “don’t ask, don’t tell” is long out of date and that it is time for gay men and lesbians to serve openly. “The president-elect’s been pretty clear that he wants to address this issue,” Admiral Mullen said in the interview. “And so I am certainly mindful that at some point in time it could come.” A friend of Admiral Mullen said that he had begun to think about practical implications like housing, but Admiral Mullen said there had been no formal planning or task forces on the issue.

In the meantime, Admiral Mullen’s supporters say that he is very different from his two predecessors, Gen. Richard B. Myers and Gen. Peter Pace, who were sometimes derided by critics within the military as “Stepford generals” because of their acquiescence to Mr. Rumsfeld.

“He’s not dogmatic or doctrinaire, and he’s also not a lap dog,” said Lt. Gen. Gregory S. Newbold of the Marine Corps, who retired in 2002 after objecting to Mr. Rumsfeld’s plans for a small Iraq invasion force and then aired his views in Time magazine as part of what became known as a “revolt of the generals” against Mr. Rumsfeld in 2006.

General Newbold is now consulted by Admiral Mullen, as is Gen. Anthony C. Zinni, who led the United States Central Command in the 1990s and was another retired general who called for Mr. Rumsfeld to step down.

“Under Myers and Pace, nobody wanted to talk to me, but I’ve heard from Mullen a lot,” General Zinni said.

Admiral Mullen’s Hollywood past would not seem to suggest a future as the nation’s top military officer — his father was also the press agent to Ann-Margret, Peter Graves and Dyan Cannon — but in the interview he said that his family taught him the importance of communications and the Fourth Estate, and that it was by and large a stable life of Catholic schools and relatively modest means. As the oldest of five children, Admiral Mullen needed a scholarship for college, and he got one when he was recruited to play basketball for the Naval Academy at Annapolis.

To the amazement of his family, he took to the life instantly. “I got there and met the best people I’ve ever been around in my life,” Admiral Mullen said. Among his acquaintances in the class of 1968 were Admiral Blair; Senator Jim Webb, Democrat of Virginia; and Oliver L. North, the Reagan-era official who secretly sold weapons to Iran to support the anti-Marxist rebels of Nicaragua.

These days Admiral Mullen throws regular dinners at his 19th-century home on a small naval compound near the State Department, where the walls are not hung with medals but framed show bills from nearly every Broadway show that he and his wife have attended. Recent guests have included Brent Scowcroft, the national security adviser to the first President Bush who enraged the second when he publicly warned against war with Iraq. Mr. Scowcroft is now advising Mr. Obama.

Admiral Mullen has also reached out in recent weeks to retired Gen. Eric K. Shinseki, who was reviled by the Bush administration for saying publicly on the eve of the Iraq war that far more troops would be needed than had been committed by Mr. Rumsfeld’s Pentagon. General Shinseki has since been named secretary of Veterans Affairs by Mr. Obama.

So how hard is it to change commanders in chief in the middle of two wars? “Not that hard,” said Admiral Blair. “I think people way overestimate that.”

Trying to stay off the Red Bull

So, this blasted paper just may be the death of me.

I've been typing, typing, typing and I couldn't get to a decent number of pages. I was about ready to just turn in 24 pages and call it good. And then I looked at my paper and thought to myself, 'man thoes margins look awfuly small, wonder if they are a full inch'.

UM, NO, THEY WERE NOT.

I was working with .36 margins!!! I just adjusted the margins to the correct settings and POOF - just bought myself 5 pages.

There is a Santa, and he likes me.

Q & A with Caspar Weinberger

Q: How many books does it take to write a 30 page paper on the National Security Council?
A: Many

The Hidden-Hand Presidency - Eisenhower as a Leader
Henry Kissinger - Doctor of Diplomacy,
American Foreign Policy
For the Record - Donald Regan
In the Arena - Weinberger
Understanding central America
Dutch - A Memoir of Ronald Reagan
Military Law 2nd Edition
Taking the Stand - Testimony of Oliver North
The Tower Commission Report
Nixon - The Rise of an American Politican
Richard Nixon - In the Arena
Nixon and Kissinger - Partners in Power
Colin Powell - My American Journey

The difference between the European Council and the Council of Europe?

Did you know...
...that in order to be on the European Commission (as a Commissioner / EUcrat)you must swear allegiance to the European Union. This means that even though you are sent to the EC from your home country, if you are caught helping your country directly you are nixed.

APPARENTLY, there was a scandal a few years ago and all the Commissioners resigned. I guess the Commissioner from France was funneling money to her dentist. How in the world did I miss this?

You just learn something new every day now don't you?!?

BBC News - EU Scandal of the day, thusly.

My Reading List for the Evening

Nuclear Posture Review Report
Nuclear Deterrence, Then and Now
Israel and Nuclear Proliferation in the Middle East
A Revolution in Warfare
The Transformation of War (Chapters 2 and 3)
On War: Lessons to Be Learned
The Utility of Force (Part One)

Want to take bets on how long I stay awake???

Well, it's officially September 11th

I'm learning about chaos theory in my geopolitics class... it's all about how small actions like a butterfly in Brazil flapping its wings can create hurricaines off the coast of Florida etc. It is nothing you can predict or anticipate. It just happens and you are left to manage the consequences as you can.

9/11 was such and event. 19 guys got on a plane and flew into some buildings. It completely changed how the current world superpower operates. It was a watershed moment. They don't come along very often.

How in the world did we all get here?

I went to one class on 9/11 before the news hit and the world changed; literature.

Appropriate, don't you think?

Baking powder???

Ok, so I printed off my first assignments for school over the weekend and started reading...

"A part of the difficulty in debating the geoploitics lies in the absence of consensus over definition. Many scholars bring a hostile attitude to the subject, so that even fairly innocous seeming definitions of geopolitics provide a thin disguise for assumptions that are not conducive to open-minded scholarship."

And as if that didn't make enough sense...

"If only the principal sources of international conflict truly were attributable in noteworthy part to obsolete thinking, including geopolitics. In that happy event we could set about constructing a global security community in the wake of the more advanced processes of globalization."

...happy event indeed.

I'm going to have to read this fabulousness twice.

Nation states, organic systems and chaos

So I'm in school trying to be all I can be and get my learn on.
I took the summer off, but tonight was my first night of class.

I was a little worried about my professor. I have had professors in the past who power pointed me to death. I actually was supposed to take a class on Thursday nights, but when I learned who the professor was, I switched to Wednesdays (which are much, much harder as far as leaving work on time goes).

So I showed up to my Geostrategy class this evening and the professor at the front of the room was wearing a navy pinstripe suit, pink tie, pocket square and a pocket watch. BLOODY HELL.

Professor G is British of Hungarian descent and has taught all over the world. He is awesome. We talked about geopolitics and strategy, the Treaty of Westphalia (I know, right?)nation states and monopolies of force.

It is going to be a very challenging 12 weeks. First on the agenda, brush up on Hedley Bull....