The Pentagon's new map for war and peace

[IDF_TANKER]

http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/view/id/33

Found it extremely interesting.

[Evolv5]

http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/view/id/33

Found it extremely interesting.

Wow that was a great interesting watch.
The presenter is good as well, easy to understand.
Thanks a lot for sharing!

[FelixA9]

Excellent. Makes a lot of sense and the guy is pretty humourous as well. :)

[Mu-Meson]

Awesome find. The guy makes a compelling argument. But that sysadmin force would require a much more 'exclusive' management than anything like the UN. Consensus wouldn't work.

[BugHunt]

Hes not actually saying ANYTHING new...

But damn hes a electrifying speaker - top class!

[Ordie]

I've read his book.

Good arguments overall.

[Noble713]

Excellent vid with great ideas. Not sure how successfully it could be implemented though.

[madjack]

I wonder if he's read about this proposal?

This is from Wikipedia, but I remember reading about this as an intel guy back in the 80s. We had their "manual" in the office. This was also back when General Stubblebine - we used to call him "General Spoonbender" - was around and pitching remote viewing.

First Earth Battalion

The First Earth Battalion was the name proposed by Jim Channon, an American soldier who had seen service in Vietnam, for his idea of a new US military to be organised along New Age lines. Such a battalion was never formed.

According to the book The Men Who Stare at Goats (ISBN 0-330-37548-2) by journalist Jon Ronson, Channon spent time in the seventies with many of the people credited with starting the New Age movement and subsequently wrote an operations manual for a First Earth Battalion. Rather than using bullets and munitions, Channon envisaged that this new force would attempt to conquer the hearts and minds of the enemy using positive vibrations, carrying lambs symbolic of peace and employing unconventional but non-lethal weapons to subdue others. Lethal force was to be a last resort. Members would practise meditation, use yogic cat stretches and primal screams to attain battle-readiness, and use shiatsu as battlefield first aid.

Some ideas proposed in the writings of Channon later found their way into military procedures for psychological warfare. Ronson specifically cites the First Earth Battalion manual's proposal to use music to effect "psychic mind-change" as one. ([1]) However, the American military has adopted loud sound as a psychological weapon, not to win hearts and minds. For example at Waco, Texas, the repeating the techniques used four years earlier in an attempt to drive Manuel Noriega from his sanctuary, an earsplitting cacophony of noise was played at the compound 24/7, that included the sound of rabbits being slaughtered, chanting Tibetan monks, roaring jet engines, and the Nancy Sinatra hit, "These Boots Were Made For Walking."

[Van Gogh]

I saw the video, lets hope the government is watching this guy.

[Shellshock1918]

This assumes that we can continue to maintain a world Empire.

[Laworkerbee]

An excellent post IDF_TANKER

Thank you

[tsuri]

Thanks! Fantastic find.
Reserved his book just now. Lets see how this is supposed to work in theory.

[Mastermind]

How about that?! Something that really, finally makes sense. Now, all we have to do is get rid of the the UN, the US Congress, the Lamestream media and the POTUS to get it all implemented.

All we need, as Michiavelli said, is just one good dictator.

Excellent post...I have e-mailed the link to everyone I know who actually gives a damn about saving the future for civilization.

[Captain Seato]

...all we have to do is get rid of the the UN...

I'd be happy if only that happened. :|

[BugHunt]

First Earth Battalion

The First Earth Battalion was the name proposed by Jim Channon, an American soldier who had seen service in Vietnam, for his idea of a new US military to be organised along New Age lines. Such a battalion was never formed.

http://ejmas.com/jnc/jncart_channon_0200.htm

http://www.jimchannon.com/GO_Planet.pdf


Theres a better PDF out there somewhere....


Forgot to say thanks again IDF tanker and http://www.ted.com/ a site ill be visiting often i think.....


Heres our boy Thomas Barnett if u liked the vid makes for some interesting reading -

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Barnett


http://www.thomaspmbarnett.com/weblog/

[IDF_TANKER]

You all welcome guys.:)

[Solomin]

Barnett...where do I start.

Let's just say this. I am a conservative republican in a graduate school of 90% liberal democrats. Usually not as big of an issue as you would think. I am just finishing up a class titled "National Security Policy" taught by a former member of the national security council. We read Barnett's book back in September.

I loved it. Listening to him talk about the China, the direction of the Navy, and the lack of creativity and understanding of the changes going on globally had me hooked. Generals are always armed to fight the previous war. This book however, was not well received by my classmates. I'll give you a few moments to imagine why...

"This book is racist"
"Barnett doesn't get China"
"We have no right to be the policemen of the world" (Barnett calls us the firemen of the world)
"We should be more diplomatically engaging" (WTF? does this even mean?)
"We should follow a more European strategy" (Srebenica anyone?)

I think the professor didn't expect the class to reject the book as they did. I did my best to defend it, but some people just don't get why "Giving peace a chance" is not a realistic global strategy.

The most interesting parts of "A Pentagon's New Map" are the stories of Barnett's experiences working as a briefer. He specifically targets lower ranking officers because he knows the admirals and generals are too often set in their ways, and he might as well target the future leadership. He talks about rooms where the admirals and generals have interrupted him, yelled at him, and left the room, while LTs and Captains stand in the back and nod the entire presentation.

If you go to youtube and search "pentagon's new map" Barnett gives a 1 hour 20 minute speech on this. It's broken up into 13 parts. It's more in depth than the video posted here.

[angry cow]

His argument about setting up a system to fix corrupt world states is compelling. We very well may not need other nations help to take down these regimes, but we will need other nations help in establishing new ones.

Let's take Myanmar as an example

1) (G-20 or other group) Build international consensus that the regime has failed to observe even basic human rights. The problem is that non-Democratic states are going to fear that they are next on a slippery slope, as well as these regimes often holding onto a vital resource to maintain the control that they currently enjoy. Why would Russia and China stand practically alone in supporting such an obviously corrupt regime? Oil supplies and fear of ending up on the hit list someday.

Solutions: Build a very basic list of what Barnett calls minimum standards which will allow Russia and China to feel secure. Maybe in the UN, maybe not. We're talking 4 Freedoms or less, otherwise they won't sign it. Get them on board by assuring continued supplies of strategic resources, even if other nations like the EU and US have to chip in. This will protect their strategic interests and assure them they aren't next.

2) Proportional response - Not all regimes will require direct military intervention, sometimes actions can be corrected through sanctions. In the case of Myanmar, lets say that the relevant heads of state, Russia, China, EU, Commonwealth states, US, possibly ASEAN, have decided it is, in fact, time to swap out that regime for another.

Solutions: Leviathan force seizes strategic facilities, bombs the ones we can't seize, takes government officials into custody and then immediately turns them over to . . .

3) SysAdmin Force, which has been building a coalition of partners to prosecute, clean up, and build up the nation post-war.

Solutions: These partners include peacekeeping forces from other nations, banking organizations, contractors, and most importantly, internal partners to rapidly repair damaged infrastructure, and administer government while the vacuum in power is filled.