<http://schema.org/articleBody>
" Mark Warren, my editor at Esquire asked me to write a blog post on &amp;quot;The State of the World&amp;quot; in order to extend or update it a bit. So... This behemoth weighs in at roughly 6,500 words -- 500 longer than the actual piece. Oh well, Marty Scorsese always out-blabs his own movies when he does commentary, but that&amp;#039;s the whole idea, is it not? What most people don&amp;#039;t realize is that, if an article appears in the May issue, it comes out in early April, which means it goes to the printers in early March, which means you edited it in February and probably wrote it in late January or early February, meaning you researched or reported it back in December. Now, when it&amp;#039;s a set piece (e.g., you interview somebody), the timeline&amp;#039;s not so crucial, but when you&amp;#039;re presenting the &amp;quot;State of the World,&amp;quot; you&amp;#039;re trapped somewhat in dealing with current events (duh!), so you&amp;#039;re not only dealing with some hedging language here and there, you risk some great intervening event ruining your whole party. I had my share of fear in that regard on this piece, in large part because it seemed like Bush was launching a number of diplomatic initiatives around the dial as the piece was &amp;quot;shipping out&amp;quot; (meaning, going to the printers in early March). So factoring in all those possibilities was crucial, and yet, I had high expectations that no serious breakthroughs would be achieved, in keeping with the tone of the piece (Bush&amp;#039;s post-presidency). I&amp;#039;m unhappy to say I wasn&amp;#039;t disappointed by the administration, which just confirms my judgment rendered long ago that Bush&amp;#039;s post-presidency basically began with Katrina (can&amp;#039;t get it done in Iraq, can&amp;#039;t get it done at home), hence the general trend of rising backtalk from the world (and the Dems), less cooperation from major allies, and more powers taking matters into their own hands (including Nancy Pelosi), seems to proceed apace. What I&amp;#039;m going to do in this post is this: 1.) Deconstruct the thinking behind each segment, providing director&amp;#039;s commentary, so to speak. 2.) Extend each segment by rendering a judgment as to how it&amp;#039;s held up over the past few weeks. 3.) Give you a sense of where my thinking is going now on each segment.  So, I&amp;#039;ll give you a sort of a past-present-future troika for each segment. I&amp;#039;ll be as blabby as I g -- damn wanna be, because that&amp;#039;s how I blog, so don&amp;#039;t wade through all this unless you&amp;#039;re naturally a &amp;quot;Disc 2&amp;quot; kind of DVD watcher and love this sort of backstory detail (like most egomaniacs, I love to deconstruct my own thinking most of all). Let me start with the extended title page and intro. The State of the-- No, screw that. Let me start with the cover! The May 2007 Cover Deconstruction: I totally approve of Halle Berry on the cover. How it holds up: Like most men my age, I&amp;#039;ve never quite gotten over Monster&amp;#039;s Ball and like to be reminded of that fact as frequently as possible. Looking further ahead: I may try to link up with fellow Hoosier Tom Chiarella on the subject. Halle &amp;quot;interviewed&amp;quot; him for the piece. As I&amp;#039;ve over said about working for Esquire, it&amp;#039;s not like I was the guy who shot Britney Spears when she wasn&amp;#039;t wearing any pants. But I have met the people who did...  Okay, back to the original plan. (Ed. Note: This is when you click to page two.)  The State of the World Deconstruction: This was the title of the piece from basically the moment Mark proposed it to me in early December. As soon as he planted that seed, I started setting aside articles from my blog collection that I thought were appropriate. Easy to do at the end of the year, because everyone&amp;#039;s writing that sort of stuff. I was excited to try the piece and wasn&amp;#039;t particularly intimidated by the scope, because it&amp;#039;s the sort of world-survey stuff I grew up on during my early years of doing strategic planning for the Navy at the Center for Naval Analyses. Seriously, we&amp;#039;d just sit around cranking this sort of stuff like we were doing daily warm-up exercises or something -- you know, sharpening-the-blade kind of activity.  About two weeks before I started brainstorming on the structure of the piece at the beginning of Feb, I interviewed my old mentor at CNA, Hank Gaffney, who&amp;#039;s famous for generating this sort of material in his sleep. I simply talked him through a tour of the world&amp;#039;s major regions and major relationship and major crises, and we calibrated our sense of what was going on. It was an up-front sanity check for me to make sure I wasn&amp;#039;t going off on any benders. I later had Hank read the piece for any boners that stuck out, because when you write at this level, you naturally step on toes and transgress reality now and then, because you&amp;#039;re compositing a lot of trends and material and bold statements like that can be poorly rendered if you&amp;#039;re not careful. Hank caught a few, gave me several parentheticals to insert, and generally validated the piece (no, he doesn&amp;#039;t agree with every take I offer here, but I don&amp;#039;t expect that from anyone). Now, the big question for me on this piece was structure. How to do the tour without being highly repetitive (I mean, everything feeds into everything else) and highly contradictory (when you&amp;#039;re whipping through things, it&amp;#039;s always appropriately ass-covering to say, &amp;quot;on the other hand&amp;quot; every other sentence)? Plus, it&amp;#039;s just the nature of the time we&amp;#039;re in now that it&amp;#039;s both pregnant with possibility and dulled by a sense of interregnum: you can see so much potential right on the horizon, you just know that most of it will wait until Bush is out of office. On the other hand \u2026 (see how easy that is!), I know from other end-of-term times that a lot of below-the-radar stuff does actually get accomplished in the waning months of a presidency, often by the most anonymous of people, so you don&amp;#039;t want to shut any doors on stuff. To that end, I kept finding myself struggling to define the governing structure of the piece. Would I just run Bush out of town on a rail? Would I give you the half-glass-full wherever possible and leave open the notion of the great foreign policy correction designed to secure the legacy?  Then I thought: I&amp;#039;ve already given Bush the two &amp;quot;Mr. President&amp;quot; pieces, and since he had his chances (as all presidents do), now was the time to take stock in that early-post-presidency sense (my argument on the blog for months now), while simultaneously setting up the conversation for what comes next, since the election&amp;#039;s preliminaries are already overshadowing this presidency. So I was tempted to offer some grading scheme, although that always seems so prosaic. I thought about thumbs-up or thumbs-down (so very Rome). I even toyed with glass-half-full or empty. None were rocking my boat.  I knew there was a host of issues I wanted to cover, so I spent the entire Friday (about ten hours straight) before the Super Bowl just sitting in my home office above the garage writing list after list on my white board, seeing what would stick. I kept struggling with a sequence for the issues, but each time I tried to craft one, I realized I was setting myself up for a particular line of argument, and I didn&amp;#039;t want to commit to any one line of reasoning. I wanted to go bang-bang through the subjects, saying what I felt was going well, where I was scared, and where I thought the next possibilities were. Now, when I&amp;#039;m trying to dissect the world like that, I often build a big matrix full of questions to organize and deconflict the material (so you don&amp;#039;t repeat too much). I tried a variety of approaches, but kept coming back to &amp;quot;the good,&amp;quot; &amp;quot;the bad,&amp;quot; and &amp;quot;the wildcard&amp;quot; (or basically, the optimistic view, the pessimistic view, and what could change either). I&amp;#039;m just anal enough to like a round number (ten, dozen, &amp;quot;sweet sixteen,&amp;quot; etc.), so I kept dicking around with the number of issues to cover, mentally deconflicting the implied components. Once I had the list down, I started to fill in the blanks on good-bad-wildcards, but I kept thinking, &amp;quot;This is going to be a waste of time because I won&amp;#039;t structure the piece like this.&amp;quot; I kept hoping that giving it this sort of structure would reveal an obvious narrative logic, but it didn&amp;#039;t. Finally, it dawned on me: just forget the narrative logic and make the piece modular. That way I didn&amp;#039;t have to choose whether I&amp;#039;d go overboard on Bush either way. Instead, I&amp;#039;d give both arguments plus the look-ahead segue. Plus, if I kept it super-modular, I could avoid a lot of bridging language that would force me to shorthand a lot of material (when you write in the essay structure, you constantly have to write yourself into and out of paragraphs, and so you spend a lot of words making all those transitions happen). So doing entries meant I could keep it bang-bang but likewise dense, plus I could go both ways on the judgment and intrigue you with the wildcards as provocative projections.  Once I started thinking this way, the piece seemed a lot easier. Plus, it felt like I was -- in many ways -- going back to the &amp;quot;map&amp;quot; article and coming full circle on the Bush administration: here I would just repeat the tight briefing style of delivery that Mark had talked me into on the hotspot survey we added to the &amp;#039;03 map. Having settled all that (and clearing it with Mark by phone), I quickly ginned out my matrix on the 16 subjects, and decided I would write them without thinking about sequence, so they&amp;#039;d need to stand alone, material-wise. I planned each segment to be about op-ed column size, or about 700-750 words, which gave me about 300 for good and 300 for bad and maybe a quick 150 for the wildcard. Pretty tight quarters. I wrote half of the entries over the next day (Saturday) and the other half on Sunday, finishing just before the kickoff of the Super Bowl. As I penned them, they felt great, so I felt pretty relaxed about how the edit would go with Mark. How it holds up: Mark wrote the expanded sub-title himself, and once I saw it, I felt a bit shocked about committing myself to the post-presidency idea. But when I thought about it more, I realized this was just Mark recognizing a major theme from my blog over the past year, and either I believed in that analysis or I didn&amp;#039;t. I did, so I got comfortable with the opening and remain so to this day. As I noted above, Bush and Co. (specifically Rice) gave me a bit of a scare in late February and early March when it seemed like he was finally getting around to the Iraq Study Group&amp;#039;s recommendation to start engaging the region as a whole in serious diplomacy (especially coming on the heels of the announced freeze deal with Kim Jong Il), but as we&amp;#039;ve seen since, all of that&amp;#039;s gone basically nowhere, in large part, I would argue, because everyone&amp;#039;s discounting this presidency pretty heavily, meaning they&amp;#039;re balancing the utility of any deal now versus waiting on possible bargains down the road in the administration&amp;#039;s last days or the successor administration&amp;#039;s first days. So when I read the title and intro today, I&amp;#039;m still very cool with it. We&amp;#039;re giving you the state of the world, so do with it what you will, America. Looking further ahead: I keep coming back to this prediction I made when I first started writing about the emerging Bush post-presidency: everyone in the world is going to reduce prices by about half whenever the new president arrives in Jan &amp;#039;09. By that I mean it&amp;#039;ll be 50 percent off the top of any implied price for renewed cooperation for America. Everyone will give the new president a massive discount because everyone will be so happy to have America-the-Normal back. Frankly, they miss us when we&amp;#039;re gone. The only guy I think who might not get that discount would be McCain, because of his stand on Iraq. Everyone else seems so clearly solutions-based in their thinking -- as in, how does America get what it wants out of the Middle East as soon as possible? -- that I don&amp;#039;t see their elevation to the presidency signaling anything but the notion that everything (and everyone) is on the table for negotiation come Jan &amp;#039;09.  No, that doesn&amp;#039;t mean any &amp;quot;selling down the river&amp;quot; stuff to any ridiculous degree. It just means flexibility and pragmatism and deal-making will be the order of the day. I think everyone around the world will welcome that new tone and that it&amp;#039;ll pay off, because -- again -- the world misses America when we go off on a bender like Bush on Iraq.  Iran: The Coming Distraction Deconstruction: To me, this was always the most animating aspect of the list: the sense that Bush is gearing up for another war. As I&amp;#039;ve written in my blog extensively, I believe Bush and Cheney were clearly setting Iran up for a major military strike/war before the end of their second term. You could just see it in the whole re-running of the WMD drama. No surprise, but Tehran didn&amp;#039;t sit on its ass waiting for the blow, using their proxies in the region to launch a pre-emptive asymmetrical strike against our proxies in the region (i.e., Hamas and Hezbollah target Israel), striking with great purpose before the midterm elections rolled around over here. By doing this, Tehran&amp;#039;s basically said, &amp;quot;You think I can&amp;#039;t conflate this mother-f -- ker anytime I want? Then you don&amp;#039;t get this whole Shiia thing, do you?&amp;quot; And no, Bush doesn&amp;#039;t get it. How it holds up: The vaunted F2F opportunity at the regional peace conference on Iraq came and went without so much as a whimper (seriously, read any press on it?). Bush continues the press on Iran with targeted sanctions and the plus-up in naval activity arrives on schedule, but since Bush is not really offering any out here, or even a serious venue to discuss such an exit for Iran, nothing seems to be happening.  Everyone got excited when the Russians seemed to yank Tehran&amp;#039;s chain on back-payments for the nuke work, but that&amp;#039;s just a contractor bitching, because Moscow really does want to protect Tehran&amp;#039;s back on this, not because of any ideological solidarity. This is strictly business, nothing personal. China continues to play along and why the hell not? If it works (the squeeze), then Iran&amp;#039;s not a hotspot anymore and China can access its oil and gas in peace. If it goes badly and the West tries to shut down Iranian oil exports, then China will just step in and steal Japan&amp;#039;s share (something Tokyo freaks about silently on the sidelines). The EU and its companies will string this out as long as possible. No one wants to lose access to Iran, because once lost, companies find it extremely hard to get back in again down the road. Frankly, it&amp;#039;s better for us if such companies don&amp;#039;t lose access, because eventually our solution set becomes reconnecting Iran to the world through business. As for the recent British hostages deal, as far as I was concerned, that was just another asymmetrical strike against our proxies in the region. We slap on some harder sanctions and start snatching Iranian operatives in Iraq, so Tehran fights back by grabbing some Brits: all designed to signal without triggering direct conflict with the U.S. What&amp;#039;s the signal? Tehran wants to deal. Hardliners on our side keep saying, &amp;quot;But we&amp;#039;ve offered Iran plenty in the past and it keeps saying no.&amp;quot; That&amp;#039;s bullshit. We&amp;#039;ve never offered Iran anything of value that it really wants. Basically, Tehran wants some sense of regime security and its place in the sun and Bush doesn&amp;#039;t want to offer either, so Iran keeps fighting back the best it can and we keep taking the pain, hoping we can drive up Iran&amp;#039;s pain in a nastier way that will bring them to the table on our terms. That won&amp;#039;t happen because Iran won&amp;#039;t roll over on the nuclear question so long as the U.S. threatens regime change. As I wrote in Esquire back in early 2004, I&amp;#039;d temporize on the nukes (Iranian nukes will change nothing) and cut what deals are necessary to get us relief on Iraq, setting up the mullahs for the soft-kill through expanded economic connectivity. I&amp;#039;d send Nixon to China (read Margaret MacMillan&amp;#039;s brilliant book, &amp;quot;Nixon and Mao&amp;quot; for all the fascinating parallels here) and finesse Iran over the longer haul. But since the Bush crowd is so impatient and so godawfully Manichean in its mindset, there&amp;#039;s just no chance that&amp;#039;ll start before Jan &amp;#039;09, when we&amp;#039;ll still be trying to figure out how to find a place for Iran in the Middle East. So Bush punts on that one. Looking further ahead: It does worry me how so many in Congress and so many of the prez candidates are mouthing hot-and-heavy on Iran, like it&amp;#039;s time to check who&amp;#039;s gone limp on this litmus test, because it&amp;#039;s all just so Rovian to fall into that trap. Sometimes when you watch lips moving you hear the House of Saud talking, sometimes you hear AIPAC, and sometimes it&amp;#039;s just the usual end-of-times crap that&amp;#039;s so popular nowadays (&amp;quot;Iran gets the bomb and our Savior returns to protect the Holy Land!&amp;quot;). The overwhelming presumption of Iranian irrationality just doesn&amp;#039;t impress me. We&amp;#039;re just not being very rational ourselves, just because both the Saudis and the Israelis are working overtime to get us hot and bothered enough to do their dirty work for them. It&amp;#039;s bad enough that we swallow our enemies&amp;#039; propaganda so willingly, but when our &amp;quot;allies&amp;quot; do it, we should know better. No one should expect the Saudis or the Israelis to look out for anybody but themselves. Our interests on Iran seem clear: we have to find a place for it in the Middle East. The revolution has failed and the society is sinking fast. It feels empowered in the region because of the Shiia revival, but that&amp;#039;s got a short half-life. The mullahs know their long-term situation is not bright, and the smart ones realize that their bargaining position will never be better than it is now (e.g., America hurting in Iraq and Afghanistan, they&amp;#039;re close to the bomb, Shiia revival, Bush&amp;#039;s post-presidency), so the time for deal-making is at hand. Would we get a fair shake from Tehran? Hell no. They&amp;#039;d try and take us for everything they could, given our difficulties in Iraq, but here is where our silly need for clear &amp;quot;victories&amp;quot; does us in. They are plenty of ways to skin this cat, but Bush seems intent on just rerunning the whole Iraq approach again on Iran, and that&amp;#039;s not going to solve Iran prior to the end of the term, and that means Iran will continue to screw us as much as possible on the subject of Iraq in the meantime. And that really sucks if you have any loved ones in Iraq right now. The Middle East: The Big Bang Theory Deconstruction: Of all the segments, this one drove me to the good-bad-wildcard approach the most, because I&amp;#039;m so clearly of two minds on the subject. Yes, it would have been better if we had done Iraq right from the start, but since we didn&amp;#039;t and we&amp;#039;re stuck with Bush through Jan &amp;#039;09, there&amp;#039;s almost the sense that the worst Iraq gets, the more it is likely to foster desperate and dangerous change in the region, and since any change beats the status quo, you have almost this perverse, pro-Bush desire to hope that Bush continues to screw up Iraq so that the follow-on regional dynamics are as profoundly upsetting as possible. Then you start getting paranoid and wondering if Bush and Cheney do that on purpose, and thus you get the tone of this segment. How it holds up: Because this is meta-analysis of region-wide possibilities, this one was going to get screwed up by current events only if Rice pulled off some magic at the regional peace conference on Iraq, which she didn&amp;#039;t even seem to try. I know it seems like Sy Hersh is going overboard on the Iran war scenario, but I honestly think it&amp;#039;s very important to sound that alarm early and often on Bush and Cheney because -- again -- left to their own devices, I do think they were targeting Iran for the end of the second term. Given the macho factor in DC on the Iran issue, I do worry that the right trolley car coming down the street will suddenly become enough for Bush to sell his next war on his way out the door, bequeathing to the next president a serious lemon just like his old man did to Clinton on Somalia (&amp;quot;Have a nice presidency, asshole!&amp;quot;). Looking further ahead: The more I think about the Middle East in grand historical terms, the more I believe that its capacity for self-destruction will do itself in. Yes, everyone will continue to buy its oil and gas, but no one will be planning to keep the region in its future requirements and everyone will slowly but deeply discount their connectivity to the place. To the extent that happens and alternative energy dependencies are pursued, the Middle East can be effectively firewalled from globalization&amp;#039;s future, making Africa&amp;#039;s future bright by default (the last great untapped labor pool). The bright spot? The smallest Gulf states seem to be pursuing the most innovative and intelligent economic connectivity with the outside world. If they can have a Singapore-like demonstration effect and pull the others along, then there&amp;#039;s reason for optimism. Again, the scarier we make Iraq look, the more these countries are incentivized to imagine a different future -- sad to say.  Then again, fear is a great motivator toward change. Globalization: Life During Wartime Deconstruction: First is simply to note the title of one of my all-time favorite Talking Heads songs. I wrote this segment first and meant it to headline the piece, because to me, it&amp;#039;s stunning to realize that despite all this terrorism and Middle East bullshit, the world has never been more at peace or thriving economically as it is today. And the future&amp;#039;s so bright for globalization that I gotta wear shades to look ahead. Most of the time I think it&amp;#039;s just me and my buddy Larry Kudlow sounding this non-alarm, because the fear mongering on CNN and Fox is just so frickin&amp;#039; out of control at this point in history, as one uses it to condemn Bush&amp;#039;s failures (CNN) while the other uses that to excuse them (Fox). How it holds up: Better than ever, I must say. Doha continues to go nowhere, but bilateral trade agreements are continuing to be cut (we&amp;#039;ve just finished our proposed free-trade pact with South Korea and Bush sends it soon to the Hill), and the Middle East continues to slowly but surely connect itself more and more to the outside world during this oil boom (unlike last boom). Yes, I expect the Dems to do a certain amount of stupid stuff on trade in Congress, and I expect Bush to stand up for free trade and fight them tooth and nail (Bush has actually been wonderfully sensible on foreign trade throughout his time). Lou Dobbs and his ilk notwithstanding, I expect cooler heads to prevail, with the best news being that, other than Edwards, none of the prez candidates are talking much protectionism. Looking further ahead: I&amp;#039;m hoping the Korean-U.S. deal, once it goes through Congress, will accelerate the movement toward a free trade agreement for Asia proper that integrates America nicely into the mix. The big fear of recent years was that the U.S. would eventually get shut out of any ASEAN-plus enlargement process, but if the Korean-U.S. deal serves as template for others to cut similar deals with us, then we might just negotiate ourselves right into some larger Pac-rim package, and that would be great. Al Qaeda: The Global Brand Deconstruction: To me, this is both the most depressing and the most over-hyped segment, meaning you can feel bad about it but you really shouldn&amp;#039;t. By sinking our teeth into Afghanistan and Sunni Iraq (where the insurgency&amp;#039;s based), we give Al Qaeda a lot of definition and structure where there wouldn&amp;#039;t otherwise be, meaning we attract them to these battlegrounds of our choosing and let our professionals duke it out with their version of professionals. All said and done, our casualties have been low and slow in coming for a &amp;quot;global war,&amp;quot; and the fight&amp;#039;s over there instead of over here. How it holds up: Just fine. I mean, you may hang on Peter Bergen&amp;#039;s every word about the whereabouts of Osama and Mullah Omar and so on and so forth, but as somebody who looks at this whole package as holistically as possible, it doesn&amp;#039;t strike me that terrorists are running anything in this world save for the tribal areas in NW Pakistan and Sunni Iraq -- and Allah bless &amp;#039;em -- they can have them both. Looking further ahead: Yes, Virginia, there will be another 9/11. But keeping things in perspective, I don&amp;#039;t think al Qaeda will ever measure up to the hype nor justify the expenses we incur. I&amp;#039;m not saying the preparations we make, the security measures we take, or the money we spend is wasted. I think all that stuff is good and necessary and important for the sheer reason that globalization is complex and demands all such efforts. I just don&amp;#039;t think that -- over time -- transnational terrorism will routinely be able to rise above the white noise level of day-to-day disruptions and disasters and snafus arising from globalization&amp;#039;s continued expansion. Iraq: The Quagmire Deconstruction: This was the trickiest one to write, given all the competing perspectives on the subject. I mean, you could spend 10k words on definitional issues alone (Civil war or not? Winning or losing? What do any of these words mean anyway?). How it holds up: The whole McCain deal on walking through a market struck me as odd (why does he choose stands like that?), although his basic take on our predicament remains sound (from America&amp;#039;s perspective, &amp;quot;victory&amp;quot; or &amp;quot;progress&amp;quot; is all about reducing U.S. casualties). I just wonder why talking about what comes next is such a third rail for so many politicians (&amp;quot;Give the surge a chance!&amp;quot;), when everyone should know that the surge will logically succeed over the short haul but get untenable over the longer haul (opponents will lay lower and simply wait us out, knowing our troops strains will grow almost exponentially). Given that Bush isn&amp;#039;t really trying any serious regional diplomacy, I can&amp;#039;t escape the feeling that the surge was never designed to succeed in the first place, but just to give Bush the excuse to broaden the conflict to include Iran down the road (again, the animating aspect to this entire piece) because then he can say, &amp;quot;I tried, but Iran screwed us over and now it&amp;#039;s payback!&amp;quot; Looking further ahead: This segment is obviously the most frustrating to contemplate, in large part because Bush continues to make our military fight under the worst possible strategic circumstances. As I look to the next prez, only Giuliani makes me think he&amp;#039;s got the go-your-own-way courage to cut the deals necessary to extricate our combat troops from harm&amp;#039;s way in a reasonable amount of time while making that transition seem less like a &amp;quot;loss&amp;quot; and more just plain common sense. I mean, you take what you can get after a while, and what we&amp;#039;ve got is a free and safe Kurdistan, and relatively stable and safe and recovering Shiite Iraq, and that hell-hole called Sunni-land. The notion that we somehow &amp;quot;lose Iraq&amp;quot; unless we fight it out in Sunni-land until all the bitter-enders have all met their bitter end is just goofy. Since Bush seems unable to define anything short of that mythical desired outcome as &amp;quot;victory,&amp;quot; we&amp;#039;re in desperate need of somebody who can. Hell, the Balkans were a piecemeal victory/stalemate/loss that slowly but surely turned into something we&amp;#039;re all relatively proud of, so why do we think we&amp;#039;re ever going to reach some magical moment where everything&amp;#039;s perfect in Iraq as a whole so we can pull out with our pride somehow completely restored? Simply put, Rudy&amp;#039;s the most Nixonian of the bunch, and we need a plain-talking hardass to make this work. He&amp;#039;s got just enough gravitas and just enough arrogance to pull it off -- unless the cast of &amp;quot;Law &amp;amp;amp; Order&amp;quot; runs as a full-slate. The Long War: The Theater-After-Next Deconstruction: This is really based off the slide in my briefing that deconstructs our efforts to lay a Big Bang on the region. The assumption is, eventually we succeed (time is simply on our side, so it&amp;#039;s all about not screwing up in the meantime). When we do, where does the fight go next? Logic says the radical Salafis will retreat to the northern half of Africa, so then the next question becomes, How do we make that continent as unattractive as possible to radical Islam over the coming years and decades? How it holds up: This is basically the subject of my next piece for Esquire, which I&amp;#039;m structuring right now as I finish up interviews back here in the States, so I&amp;#039;m passing on this one. Looking further ahead: Look no further than the July issue. Defense Department: The New Coin of the Realm Deconstruction: This one is pretty straightforward analysis of institutional change, very much in line historically with the &amp;quot;Monks of War&amp;quot; piece from March of last year. In general, I&amp;#039;m very optimistic about the scope and rate of change in the military&amp;#039;s adaptation to the Long War. Clearly, Iraq&amp;#039;s the great strain, but nobody&amp;#039;s talking about packing it all in after we wrap up Iraq, so there&amp;#039;s a clear consensus growing that the military needs to adapt itself comprehensively to this new security environment. As recently as last Quadrennial Defense Review (2005), you were seeing a lot of idiotic articles claiming the Middle East is &amp;quot;just a blip&amp;quot; and the real long-term fight is with China, but the continuing crushing reality of Iraq and Afghanistan and the rising sense of Africa&amp;#039;s importance seems to have squelched that talk -- and that&amp;#039;s both realistic and good. How it holds up: Both Fallon and Petraeus are such straight-talking, stand-up guys that no matter how the surge goes (and I expect it to go better at first but then become unsustainable over time), there won&amp;#039;t be any silly stab-in-the-back mentality among the military. Guys like Petraeus cut their teeth in the Balkans, and they&amp;#039;re simply too smart for that intellectual dodge, so again, I&amp;#039;m very confident that the learning curve flattens but we keep climbing it vigorously across the defense community. Looking further ahead: The question of how Africa Command turns out is a big indicator of the military&amp;#039;s further strategic adjustment in this Long War. Again, I beg off of that one until the July issue. Other than that, expect to hear a lot of very legitimate &amp;quot;train wreck&amp;quot; tales about personnel and some very hyperbolic ones on long-term force structure acquisition (most of the high-end stuff we&amp;#039;re buying today we could purchase in smaller future numbers and still easily remain the world&amp;#039;s strongest military without any loss in our ability to hedge on China). In industry, watch how Lockheed Martin uses its new purchase, Pacific Architects &amp;amp;amp; Engineering, to move into the &amp;quot;second half&amp;quot; or postwar/post-disaster world. PAE is the KBR of the State Department. Lock-Mart bought it to position itself better for the future, and when the world&amp;#039;s largest defense contractor makes a move like that, you pay attention. War on Terror: The Legal Underpinnings Deconstruction: This one is my favorite segment, very much an extension of the &amp;quot;Dirty Harry&amp;quot; piece I wrote for Wired way back when (Oops! Shouldn&amp;#039;t have mentioned that!). It&amp;#039;s such an obvious and clear-headed point that you&amp;#039;d think it wouldn&amp;#039;t need to be stated in print, and yet it&amp;#039;s so great to do just that and make clear that America needs to rejoin the world on this contentious subject. How it holds up: No problems here. We&amp;#039;re never going to be able to talk ourselves out of this pathway of realigning our rule set on terror with some larger, globally-accepted rule set like that being forged by the International Criminal Court, because all the secret trials and stuff will continue to embarrass ourselves no matter how they turn out.  Looking further ahead: This one is such a no-brainer for a new president, that I assume almost any of the front-runners could handle it (aren&amp;#039;t they all lawyers?). No big whoop for anybody who doesn&amp;#039;t gag on the word &amp;quot;multilateral.&amp;quot; Afghanipakistan: The Ungovernable Deconstruction: This one also leverages itself off a previous piece I wrote for my syndicated weekly column, although I expanded the logic considerably with recent intelligence reports. This segment was hard to keep balanced in that the good news ain&amp;#039;t so good and the bad news could get awfully bad if the right lucky strike gets pulled off. How it holds up: Everything on this one tracks nicely. Looking further ahead: This one scares me the most for all the obvious reasons. China: The Slated Near-Peer Deconstruction: If you read my blog, you know I write about China constantly, so this one was easy to pen. It reads like a greatest-hits list of statements from my current brief on global affairs, so it&amp;#039;s very much my mainstream thinking. How it holds up: Bush continues to be very reasonable and moderate on China, and for that I thank him. Unlike Clinton, Bush has plenty of China hawks to parry, and he&amp;#039;s remained vigilant on that subject -- probably his greatest foreign policy achievement. Looking further ahead: The big thing on China that I always mention is the swap-out of their leadership from the 4th to 5th generations, a shift that will dramatically increase our potential cooperation with China. Actually, I have a piece sitting with Esquire right now on this subject, so I&amp;#039;m hoping to have another major-league swing at this later in the year. North Korea: the Persistent Outlier Deconstruction: This one&amp;#039;s based largely on conversations I&amp;#039;ve had with the Chinese during two trips last year to Beijing. I remain consistent on the subject: I don&amp;#039;t think Beijing&amp;#039;s leaders can turn Kim into a &amp;quot;mini-me Deng Xiaoping,&amp;quot; so either they get rid of him or they risk a far riskier conflict scenario that puts them at great danger of miscalculation with the U.S. How it holds up: Chris Hill is one of those career diplomats who often rise up to become second-tier superstars at the end of an administration -- you know, when all the principles get bored with the details of foreign policy. He&amp;#039;s done a magnificent job of simply keeping the whole thing moving, even as the current envisioned outcome is totally Clintonian.  Looking further ahead: In my observation, both South Korea and China are preparing fairly realistically in military terms for North Korea&amp;#039;s collapse, so I&amp;#039;m optimistic that when the times comes it&amp;#039;ll go okay.  The White House: The Bush Imperative Deconstruction: Clearly, I tee off on Rice here, but I honestly think she deserves it. She is the classic example of the Peter Principle whereby people get promoted beyond their skills. As the consummate prot\u00E9g\u00E9, she&amp;#039;s just not genetically cut out to be a serious leader and Bush&amp;#039;s second term suffers dramatically as a result (though not Cheney&amp;#039;s ...). Mark set this one up as the &amp;quot;great ending&amp;quot; prior to the jump page. It&amp;#039;s the climax of the piece, in many ways. How it holds up: Well, since this one lays out the fear that&amp;#039;s animated my thinking on Bush and Cheney for quite some time now (the planned inevitable strike on Iran somewhere near the end off the second term), there was never any danger of it being up-staged in the meantime, unless you believe those rumors that the Bush White House offered a variety of strike packages to Blair WRT the hostage mini-crisis. Looking further ahead: I do honestly feel that if people who care about this subject don&amp;#039;t continue to attack this notion, we seriously risk its unfolding. Bush may get nostalgic near the end, but Cheney will not. The Rising East: The Degree of Compliance Deconstruction: Pretty basic stuff. Just couldn&amp;#039;t do a tour of the world and not address India and Russia on some strategic level. How it holds up: The &amp;quot;bad news&amp;quot; stuff is my most depressing take on the subject, because -- of course -- I advocate aggressive partnering with these nations. But the truth is, there will be a lot of hand-holding and strategic mentoring between here and getting these new pillars to the altar on such alliances. Each day we see plenty of evidence that all of these players are punching below their weight internationally on military affairs, and yet each sees their global economic profile continue to blossom. Looking further ahead: We desperately need a visionary on this subject in the White House in 2009. I&amp;#039;d rule out McCain and Edwards and Thompson, but Clinton, Obama, Giuliani and Romney could all make it happen. We have simply got to abandon this Bush habit of casually adding new enemies while adding no new allies. The Aging West: The State of Alliance Deconstruction: My ode to Mark Steyn, God forgive him. How it holds up: Since I ask nothing of the Europeans, they cannot disappoint me, now can they? Still, it&amp;#039;s sad to contemplate less utility over time in this alliance, because so many of these officers are really quite exceptional and can teach us a lot. But maybe that&amp;#039;s the way to look at it: not many bodies but plenty of good mentors. Looking further ahead: Actually, I take back what I said on Afghanipakistan, because this scenario is the one I truly think is inevitable, despite the new James Bond. All the Rest: Other Complications Deconstruction: Of all the titles, this one I regret the most, because, truth be told, there are very few complications out there. Actually, come to think of it, this is the one title Warren changed! The original was, &amp;quot;the complicating variance&amp;quot; (to rhyme with &amp;quot;alliance&amp;quot; and &amp;quot;compliance&amp;quot;). Of all the segments, this is the one I owe the most to Hank in terms of his inputs and guidance. How it holds up: Just fine. Again, the world&amp;#039;s much quieter and far more peaceful than people realize. In historical terms, we&amp;#039;ve never had it so good. Looking further ahead: It&amp;#039;s the most inevitable scenario (something bad this way comes to China&amp;#039;s financial markets), but after the stock bubble burst in the Middle East and Thailand&amp;#039;s currency scare passed with no real after-effect, I&amp;#039;m getting much more optimistic on this score. The Wildest Card: 2008 Deconstruction: Sharp readers will recognize this as a lift from a column I wrote on Bush months ago. No worries, as I retain copyright. Honestly, I threw in these paras to end the piece because I couldn&amp;#039;t think of any better way to terminate the first draft and the Super Bowl kickoff was just minutes away and I figured Mark would toss it and make me write something new. How it holds up: Mark didn&amp;#039;t toss it because it remains three of the coolest paras I&amp;#039;ve ever written in terms of soaring political prose. Looking further ahead: So far I&amp;#039;ve mixed it up with representatives/operatives of two Dem candidates (Clinton distantly, Obama once-removed) and two GOP guys (Brownback F2F twice on Iran and a credible candidate to be named later -- after I sit down with him this Friday and give him the full-up brief). This last possibility intrigues me most, because word is, he really loved Pentagon&amp;#039;s New Map. My wife, as always, worries I&amp;#039;m turning Republican. I keep telling her the Dems won&amp;#039;t have me! But on some level, I say, &amp;quot;F -- k &amp;#039;em all!&amp;#039; I can&amp;#039;t wait on these people to get elected. With the Bush post-presidency so moribund, I decided to pursue my own personal foreign policy a while back and it&amp;#039;s going great so far. I suggest you do the same... "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.esquire.com/news-politics/a2852/stateoftheworldblog/>