“China’s Oil Sector: Trends and Uncertainties” is Dr. Alan Troner’s review of the misconceptions about how China uses oil and gas, and his effort to rectify those erroneous beliefs.
The Misty Poets: An introduction
This great guest post comes from my friend Hannah Lincoln. Over the next few days she’ll be introducing her research on the Misty Poets. If you are a grad student working on a China related topic please contact Tom about the possibility of introducing here. “Misty”is the title conferred upon a group of poets known during the Democracy Movement （1976-1980）for their unique style. Some, such as Ai Qing, Ai Weiwei’s father, called their work “obscure” (古怪), even poisonous.[1] At the very …
Read this superb introduction to one of the first literary movements to emerge in China in the wake of the Cultural Revolution.
Asian Security in the Year of the Dragon
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Each year, Japan’s National Institute for Defense Studies conducts an exchange program that invites national security scholars from around the world to take a collective look at the Asian security environment and offer their points of view on the issues the region faces. This year they have produced another excellent collection, and it is available at the link above.
What I enjoy about this series is the often unexpected perspectives thes authors offer. My favorites from this collection are H.J.S. Kraft’s chapter on “The Continuing Malaise of National Security in the Philippines,” which strikes me as particularly fascinating given the evolving situation in the South China Sea; You Ji’s perspective on how China’s defense posture is evolving in response to America’s “Strategic Shift” away from Europe, Iraq, and Pakistan and toward the Pacific; and, of course, Andrew Erickson’s superb review of U.S. security concerns in the region.
As we ease into Chinese New Year, this would be an excellent time to peruse this collection. The Year of the Dragon promises much change, but a read through these chapters should minimize the surprises.
Related articles
- ASEAN Defense: China co-host ASEAN defense education meet to “Seamlessly integrate national security knowledge across society” (thaiintelligentnews.wordpress.com)
Indigenous Innovation and Globalization
Much ink has been spilled over the correct path to turn China from the world’s contract manufacturer into an innovator on a par with the United States. Indeed, there are those who suggest that such an evolution is probably impossible given the straightjacket of Chinese culture.
As tempting as it is to go with the skeptics, there is mounting evidence that Chinese can and do innovate, and that innovation can happen with the backing of the government. (If you disagree, it would be worthwhile to review the funding source for many of America’s storied postwar innovations: if you follow the money, you wind up on Capitol Hill or the Pentagon as often as Wall Street or Sand Hill Road.)
The authors of this short book, Liu Xielin and Peng Cheng, argue that China is indeed beginning to innovate in part because the government is underwriting China’s effort to close the technical gap between its enterprises and engineers and those of the west. If they stopped there, it would be easy to dismiss both as government stooges.
They are not: once they have acknowledged the merit of government involvement, they then assess its limitations. Specifically, they note that in addition to putting China into policy conflict with nations that should be customers for Chinese innovations, government involvement (read “micromanagement”) of the innovation process closes it off from the overseas markets that are the real target of the indigenous innovation policy in the first place.
Turning China into an innovation powerhouse is neither a matter of letting markets do their thing, nor of government control: it is a matter of striking a careful balance between the two. Ascribing the best possible motives to China’s policymakers, the Party and government are looking for the best way to strike that balance. But old habits die hard: the received myth in Beijing is that the government that has brought a half-dozen major industries to near-parity with their global counterparts through vigorous funding and protective policies. Why, then, should things be done differently going forward?
Liu and Cheng do an admirable job at answering that challenge, but the problem is in the received myth. China’s homegrown industries succeed in the marketplace (both at abroad and at home) in inverse proportion to government involvement, not as its result. It is only when the government alters the rules of the market that local companies in innovative industries achieve success. Such heresy may be too dangerous for the authors: Liu is at the Chinese Academy of Sciences; Cheng at the Beijing University of Forestry. Nonetheless, their analysis hints in the right direction, and hopefully their thinking will enter the political discussion in Beijing.
Related articles
- U.S., China begin talks on innovation trade dispute (reuters.com)
- China launches its own indigenous satellite navigation system to end reliance on the US (itehaad.wordpress.com)
Holding Burma Together
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Sitting as it does at the geographic crossroads between India, China, and Southeast Asia, Burma (Myanmar) plays a role in the stability of the region that goes overlooked outside of a small circle of Asia wonks. Most of us have forgotten that Burma broke the back of the Imperial Japanese Army in World War II, made up one corner of the infamous Golden Triangle in the opiate trade, and, as a relic of a colonial era, houses ethnic separatism that often erupts into violence. In some ways, Burma is the Iraq of Southeast Asia.
Most of us see the challenge of Burma as a a matter of easing the Military Junta from power and allowing free elections. It is, apparently, not that simple, and Beyond Armed Resistance gives us a glimpse into the complexities of Burma’s politics via a review of the aspirations of the Kachin, Karen, Mon, and Shan ethnic groups.
Deliberately setting aside armed ethnic uprising, including the Karen people‘s longstanding resistance to the Burmese government, Dr. Thawnghmung argues that the non-violent political activity of these groups is more important to the evolution of the Burmese state than civil conflict. Reading her book also offers an unintended insight into why the military feels obliged to keep such tight control over the country: dormant ethnic tensions could easily sunder the nation. What is more, we begin to see how Aung San Suu Kyi and the National League for Democracy would face formidable challenges simply holding the country together if they were to come to power. No doubt, this prospect troubles the leaders of India, China, and Thailand: it should trouble Americans as well.
The junta has become the entire focus of western policy toward Burma. That focus, however correct, has masked the deeper challenges and rifts that plague the country. It must be no longer. Instead, our focus must become the fundamental challenges the country faces on its path to stability and development. Dr. Thawnghmung has argued in other venues that the first focus must be on establishing a national identity under-girded by a shared ideology and vision.
As Asia’s nations begin to expand their influence beyond their borders, weak states will become political and diplomatic (if not military) battlegrounds among the region’s powers. If Burma is to avoid this fate, it must emerge from its current transitional phase as a united, independent, and prosperous country. The well-meaning people around the world campaigning for the NLD would do well to heed the warning implicit in Dr. Thawnghmung’s writings: think beyond liberation, and do so now.
Related articles
- Historic Burma trip for Hillary Clinton: Enough focus on human rights? (csmonitor.com)
- “Burma’s New Hope” (ravcasleygera.wordpress.com)
- What will happen to China as Burma (Myanmar) gets closer with Vietnam, US? (csmonitor.com)
- Oppression, Torture and Gender-Based Violence against Karen Women in Burma (clockwards.wordpress.com)
Presentation – Skills Policy Framework for the Next Decade in PRC
Skills Policy Framework for the Next Decade in PRC. Where China sees the challenges in expanding its skilled workforce in over the next ten years. A presentation by Dong Jing of the China Association of Worker’s Education and Vocational Training.
Fixing Chinese Investment in the U.S.
Image by kevindean via Flickr
Over the last four months I’ve been involved in a research project that delves into the nature of one of China’s most important industries. What set off this somewhat Quixotic effort was the question of whether Chinese investment abroad, and in particular in the United States, was a good thing or a bad thing.
As I pursue the question on an industry-specific level, the authors of China’s Expanding Role in Global Mergers and Acquisitions Markets take a different approach to the question. Rather than evaluate Chinese outward foreign-direct investment through based on corporate merit, they propose a framework for evaluating the desirability and risk implicit in Chinese investment.
Whether you agree with their conclusions or not, their book comes at a propitious time. The Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States (CFIUS), for all of its strengths, has some glaring weaknesses, not least that its processes are unnecessarily opaque. What Wolf, Chow et. al. offer the CFIUS and Congress is the first draft of a more transparent set of criterion by which to evaluate investment.
As close as RAND is to the US government, its conclusions are not a cipher for US policy. This book, therefore, should be seen as the starting point of a larger debate about where and how Chinese investment in the US should be welcomed, and where it should be restricted. As such, the book is a welcome and much-needed addition to the wider debate.
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- Cambodia: China is largest, Japan second largest Investor. (livinginpp.wordpress.com)
- Analysis: ‘We’re Not Going To See China Buying Europe’ (huffingtonpost.com)
What about Indonesia?
“Developing Trust in Asia Amidst New US Military Deployments: An Indonesian Perspective,” by Maria Monica Wihardja, Asia Pacific Bulletin No. 142, East-West Center, Washington, D.C., December 8, 2011. If we think the Chinese were upset about the announcement that 2,500 U.S. Marines would soon be station on Australia’s north coast, the Indonesians were much more upset. As the US makes more use of Australia as a part of its Pacific defense system, it will need to turn up the public diplomacy in Southeast Asia to counteract the Jihadist agitprop that is certain to be an unwelcome byproduct.
eBlame
In a provocative essay, Ting Xu makes the important point that both China and the US are turning cyber warfare into a lever to divide the two nations, a means to heighten tension and conflict. Ting thinks this is the wrong approach.
Rather than turn the internet into a new battlefield for superpowers, strategists on both sides should use the issue as a means to bring the two countries together in an effort to manage a species of violence that neither government truly controls. Ting suggests that it is time to end the mistrust and start chasing miscreants: neither side can afford for this issue to sunder the world’s most important relationship. Equally important, however, is that unless the world’s powers coordinate strategy, tools, and tactics to respond to cyber warfare, eventually it will be used as the ultimate asymmetric weapon against all human institutions.
You may not fully agree, but Ting’s viewpoint is an important addition to the discussion of both cyberwar and Sino-US relations.
Related articles
- US Congress Goes Offensive on Cyber Warfare, Authorizes “Military Activities in Cyberspace” (techie-buzz.com)
- Is China Feeling Contained? (pekingreview.com)
- Hidden Dragon: The Chinese cyber menace (go.theregister.com)
- Chinese Hackers and Cyber Realpolitik (circleid.com)
- Feds Cite Chinese Cyber Army Capability (informationweek.com)
Not Ready for World Domination
“China Still has a Long Way to Go” by Jonn Lee; Asia Pacific Bulletin No. 134; East-West Center, Washington, D.C. October 24, 2011
The University of Sydney’s Lee offers us a number of reasons why we should not be worried about China taking on America for the world…yet.
ASEAN’s Dilemma: Courting Washington without Hurting Beijing | East-West Center | www.eastwestcenter.org
Amitav Acharya, “ASEAN’s Dilemma: Courting Washington without Hurting Beijing,” Washington, DC: East-West Center, October 18, 2011 Some good advice on how ASEAN needs to be careful to walk its precarious path between the two Pacific Superpowers, China and the US.
Is China Feeling Contained?
Cai Penghong, “Obama’s APEC Summit Does Not Dispel China’s Misgivings” Asia Pacific Bulletin, No. 138, Washington D.C. East-West Center, November 18, 2011 Whatever the virtues of President Obama’s “Asia Pivot” and his high profile at the recent APEC summit, Cai Penghong explains that China is starting to feel surrounded by a growing coterie of countries that seem to be forming a NATO-like military coalition designed to contain China.
China’s Rough Edges
Managing Instability on China’s Periphery – Council on Foreign Relations.
A fair amount of attention has gone in recent years to China’s growing influence far from its shores, in particular in Africa and Latin America. The western powers are predisposed to hypersensitivity in these areas. Africa is no longer the southern extension of European empires, but the EU is not anxious to allow the continent to fall under the influence of any other power. In the Americas, the Monroe Doctrine is much changed but it is not dead: witness the reactions to Russian or Chinese warship visits to Venezuela or Cuba.
But as five scholars from the Council on Foreign Relations remind us, we would be foolish to forget that where China’s influence is felt strongest is in the Middle Kingdom’s near abroad, in the nations lining China’s extensive borders. What is more, China’s borderlands house some of the world’s most volatile hot spots: North Korea, Myanmar, Pakistan, Kazakhstan, and Turkmenistan.
The authors of Managing Instability on China’s Periphery seek policy options to try and prevent crises from emerging in those countries and potentially undermining the US-China relationship. The publication, released in September, is timely not simply because of the recent death of Kim Jong-Il and the resultant uncertainty over the Korean peninsula, but because many of us watching China (myself included) underweight the instability in China’s borderlands when analyzing how and why China thinking about the drivers shaping the PRC’s foreign and security policy.
That’s a significant oversight, and this book is a forceful reminder that we must change our calculus. China’s credible ascent to global power depends on the PRC first securing its own borders: if it cannot, the nation will have to focus its arms and treasure on keeping instability out rather than extending influence far from its shores. If, on the other hand, China can arbitrate peaceful transitions for each of these weak states, the nation will gain prestige and influence worldwide.
China understands what is at stake, and will thus view American initiatives in this de facto sphere of Chinese influence with suspicion. This is the minefield the authors seek to navigate for us, and as such their book is an essential read.
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- Japan, S.Korea, China discuss Korean Peninsula + Related Article (laaska.wordpress.com)
- Analysis: North Korea after Kim (globalpublicsquare.blogs.cnn.com)
Formosa in Limbo
Biding Time: The Challenge of Taiwan’s International Status – Brookings Institution.
Sigrid Winkler at the Brookings Institution suggests that while Taiwan has relied on an ambiguous status for decades, the time is coming where it must address the issue. Winkler suggests that Taiwan begin to argue with the world’s powers that they must push China to play fair with Taiwan.
The point is well-argued, and it offers Taiwan an important policy strategy. For the argument to be convincing, however, Winkler must also explain exactly how the United States, the European Union, Japan, ASEAN, the United Nations or any other body is to convince China of the value of “playing fair” with Taiwan.
Winkler acknowledges that the EU and US are functionally debtor nations to China, and thus enjoy limited leverage. What is unmentioned is the lengthening list of priorities in those international relationships whose urgency is forcing Taiwan further and further down in priority, as is the question of whether the US has the means to stop China from taking over Taiwan, even if it has the will.
Indeed, China’s own challenges will likely postpone a reckoning with Taiwan unless Taiwan provokes it. All of which suggests that time may not be running out, and that Taiwan would be foolish to shake, much less rock, the boat.
Winkler’s analysis belongs as a part of the wider discussion about the Taiwan issue. But the distinguished scholar overstates the urgency to seek a change in the status quo.
Bipolarity, Proxy Wars, and the Rise of China
In the new Strategic Studies Quarterly from the U.S. Air Force Air University: “Bipolarity, Proxy Wars, and the Rise of China,” by Lieutenant. Colonel Mark Yeisley, USAF. Colonel Yeisley is an assistant professor at the School of Advanced Air and Space Studies at Maxwell Air Force Base.
China and Proliferation of Weapons of Mass Destruction and Missiles
China and Proliferation of Weapons of Mass Destruction and Missiles: Policy Issues – Open CRS. A Congressional Research Service report looks at China’s role in WMD proliferation around the world and evaluates the effectiveness of the US policy response.
An Alternative to Clausewitz and Sun Tzu
Colonel J.F.C. Fuller (Image via Wikipedia)
The Foundations of the Science of War, by Major General J.F.C. Fuller
Fuller was a British officer during the Boer War, the First World War, and the 1920s, but he is one of the most controversial figures in the firmament of 20th century strategy. He was brilliant but arrogant, inquisitive but opinionated, and had rotten political instincts.
Yet despite all of that, he was learned in the conduct of battle and sought to create a unified theory of war in this compilation of his lectures from the British Army’s Staff College at Camberly.
Fuller never quite reaches the level of the great strategists like Sun Tzu, Clausewitz, Mahan, and Boyd, but the book serves as an excellent foil against which to pit other theories of war.
Why Culture Matters for Strategists
The words “pithy” and “easy to read” do not always attach themselves to writing coming out of government institutions, but Jiyul Kim’s Cultural Dimensions of Strategy and Policy is the exception that proves the rule. Kim is an engaging writer and has a point to make: in international relations it is not just political and economic power that matter, but culture as well.
To those untouched by the debates among the various schools of political thought, this makes incredible sense. But there are those, alas, who think that culture plays such a secondary or tertiary role in relations between states that it merits little consideration. In many cases, these scholars are the same ones who deride the ideas of Joseph Nye (“Soft Power“) and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton (“Smart Power“) as insufferably idealistic. As a longtime skeptic of all of the standing schools of foreign policy, I am as yet undecided. But Kim makes a persuasive point, and his paper is an important addition to the literature that argues for the importance of factors beyond guns and butter in international politics.
In fact, I would argue that Kim’s points are more relevant to executives and students of business than it is to political economists. The issue of where national culture and corporate culture create or destroy opportunity as businesses venture abroad is not trivial, but it remains underrated and insufficiently discussed among those of us actually making decisions or advising those who do. Kim’s paper should helps spark your thinking.
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China’s Uneven Rise
Tip of the hat to Andrew Erickson for catching this excellent essay in Jane Golley and Ligang Song’s new Rising China: Global Challenges and Opportunities (PDF). Kennedy’s chapter focuses on the China’s growing dependence on imported energy, and stands out in this excellent compendium.
As for the book, Golley and Song have made it downloadable, and it is well worth it. Arguably, the most vexing challenges China faces are domestic, but Rising China focuses on the international points of friction that are likely to be exacerbated by domestic politics.
The list of international challenges generated by this work is by no means comprehensive: such an inventory would require a bookshelf, and a full review of China’s security challenges would occupy a wall. Nonetheless, the authors – both Chinese and foreign – have created a catalog of the most critical issues, and one that lacks the demagoguery and angst of less scholarly studies.
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- For Chinas wealthy, their fondest wish is to leave (theglobeandmail.com)
China Gropes for Energy Security
Former Brookings Visiting Fellow Zhang Jian believes that the biggest obstacle between China and its energy security is Beijing’s implicit belief that energy security is a domestic policy question. Zhang disagrees, pointing out that when you are on track to import 60-70% of your petroleum from abroad by 2015, it is time for a rethink.
As a major consumer of a high-demand global resource in an integrated world, Zhang suggests, China can no longer approach energy security on a unilateral basis. Doing so not only puts China and other nations of the world on a collision course, it also threatens a rift in the government.
Zhang is right, of course, but I suspect his imprecations will fall upon unhearing ears. China s not yet at the point where it is ready to trust other countries to have a say in its energy future, and you could make an argument that it should not have to. The challenge is how the world will deal with a China that will be increasingly assertive – if not aggressive – about acquiring the petroleum that it needs.
In truth, this makes China’s energy security our problem as well as China’s. If you approach it from that angle, Zhang’s book is especially valuable.
The Tao of Bill, the Te of Dave
by Michael S. Malone
Portfolio, 438pp
Cognizant that saying this may well sound ungracious, if not heretical, the recent well-deserved paeans to Steve Jobs tactfully omit the fact that in all he accomplished, he stood on the shoulders of giants. This is not to belittle what he accomplished. He created one industry, disrupted several others, created products that inspired the fierce loyalty of millions of consumers (myself included), and set in motion careers, companies, and trends that will define the foreseeable future. But Steve Jobs did not spontaneously self-generate. Everything he became, everything he accomplished, he was able to do because other men and women had passed that way before. The Apple II, the Macintosh, NEXT, Pixar, OS X, the iPod, the iPhone, the iPad, and iTunes were his products.
But Jobs himself was the product of Silicon Valley: the place, the ecosystem, and the attitudes that combined to give this powerful, unique, and ultimately fragile wizard the place to create electronic magic.
As supporting evidence for my heresy I offer Michael Malone’s engaging biography of the founders of Hewlett-Packard, Bill & Dave: How Hewlett and Packard Built the World’s Greatest Company. It is hard for most of us to recall the days when HP was the glowing heart of Silicon Valley, especially as the latest in a long string of outsiders attempts to save the company from the consequences of misguided leadership. But in telling the story of the two proto-geeks-cum-billionaires, Malone reminds us why Hewlett and Packard deserve to stand above the Silicon Valley milieu as both icons and role models.
To be sure, the environs south of San Francisco have been engineering hotbeds since just after Governor and Mrs. Leland Stanford turned their Palo Alto farm into a college. Stanford Professor Fred Terman and entrepreneurs like Charlie Litton and Ed Varian were the early shoots of the Valley’s transmogrification into the global capital of electronic engineering. But Malone’s narrative suggests that the Valley’s destiny was no given: the region was such a backwater when Bill and Dave graduated from Stanford in the mid ’30s that there was no company in the region capable of hiring either of the talented young engineers: Packard went to work for GE in its test lab Schenectady, New York, and Hewlett, a year behind, stayed in Stanford to work with his mentor Terman. The only way for the two men to get a job that suited them was to start a company. But when they did, right on the eve of World War II, established an enterprise that brought to the region and to the industry an ethos that mixed engineering talent, opportunistic flexibility, and Depression-tempered business sense. That ethos, suggests Malone, was the fertilizer that allowed Silicon Valley as we know it to take root.
After a time as a freelance electrical engineering firm, the two men produced their 1st unique product: an audio oscillator, a product that seems prosaic now but at the time was a revelation: the men had figured out a way to use an overlooked principle of electronics to create a device that cost a tenth of the competition’s product, and was easier to use to boot. The result, the Hewlett-Packard 200A Audio Oscillator, not only set the company on its path, it also set the mold for the way the company would do business for the next five decades: tinker, innovate, disrupt, reap, repeat. In the process, Hewlett and Packard established a legacy that the young Turks of the PC revolution could only envy.
For those younger entrepreneurs…many had already failed at least once. And all of that combined to make their respect for Hewlett and Packard ever greater. Those two guys, they realized, had not only already negotiated every step of the career path they intended to follow, often doing so first, but they had done so with breathtaking grace…Even in the virulently competitive world of high technology, even as people measured their own careers against those of Hewlett and Packard, many privately admitted that matching Bill and Dave was beyond their reach. No amount of revenue or percentage of market share would ever match a company that had invented a dozen entirely new industries; no amount of laudatory BusinessWeek cover stories would ever match a company whose employees set historic records for loyalty and commitment’ and no number of trips to Washington would ever equal having a medal for quality named after you.
What is more, Hewlett and Packard had created a series of business innovations that altered forever the world of work. Flex-time, coffee breaks, casual Fridays, beer and pizza busts, open plan offices, profit-sharing, flattened organizational charts, managing-by-walking-around, and the open-door policy are but a few of the practices that HP’s founders created, championed, or popularized. Then they crafted all of these into a form of enlightened management that reinvented work for much of the developed world, and turned conventional labor-management relations on its ear.
Malone began his career as a public relations guy for Hewlett-Packard, which is perhaps why he treads lightly on the shortcomings of HP’s founders. He skims past allegations of Packard’s marital infidelities, soft-pedals HP’s defense work, and lamely excuses HP’s failure to start the personal computer revolution by suggesting that the company was “just too busy” when Steve Wozniak presented his Apple I computer to HP management. These and other tells leave Malone open to accusations of hagiography.
One could argue in Malone’s defense that his treatment of Hewlett and Packard is far less breathless than the fawning prose that too often passes for business journalism. In an age when men of commerce with far less impressive legacies than HP’s founders are lionized and deified by the business-as-a-spectator-sport crowd, Malone’s tribute to his idols is perhaps a measured effort to restore some perspective.
Which brings us back to Mr. Jobs.
A friend and I were lunching in these willow-shaded precincts last week, shivering slightly as the Beijing fall worked its way into our bones. The topic turned to Walter Isaacson’s biography of the late Apple CEO, and my friend asked if I would be reading it. “No,” I replied, “but not because I’m not interested.”
For an aspiring historian, Isaacson’s study has come out a decade or more too soon. I was a teenager when Apple was born, and I grew up watching Steve Jobs, so I don’t need a rehash of his remarkable life or career. What I want to know is whether history will treat him like a Morgan, Edison, Westinghouse, Pullman, Ford, or Watson; or whether, perhaps, he was a transitional figure setting the stage for someone or something even greater.
As for me I believe the former. But as Bill & Dave illustrates, our importance to history, to the bigger picture, is not always what we think it is at the time.
Related articles
- Hewlett Packard is the old Apple. Innovation anyone $HPQ $AAPL (financialskeptic.wordpress.com)
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- Steve Jobs: HP Implosion was an iTragedy (wired.com)
Hunter is Laughing Somewhere Tonight
Hunter S. Thompson, Miami, 1988 (Image via Wikipedia}}
Book Review: Fear and Loathing at Rolling Stone – WSJ.com.
In what has to be one of the most enjoyable book reviews I have ever read – and without question the best book review I have ever read in The Wall Street Journal – Matt Labash explains why Fear and Loathing at Rolling Stone deserves a spot on the bookshelf of anyone who appreciates new journalism.
Labash is no fanboy. He, too, shakes his head at the self-caricature that Thompson became not long after Ronald Reagan took office, when his antics and legend outshone his writing. But Labash reminds us that underneath all that was a man who, from about 1965 to 1980, was one of the best writers in America.
Thompson was a musician in prose, his words his rhythm section. He was Buddy Rich and Tito Puente and John Bonham rolled into one. His paragraphs kept perfect time—never laying a false beat. He often wrote to music, which he called “fuel.” “Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas” was written entirely to a live version of the Rolling Stones’s “Sympathy for the Devil.” Thompson felt writing should resemble a great song, that, like music, it should move people through the ear. Frequently, he would have guests at his Woody Creek, Colo., compound read passages aloud, telling them to slow down and just how to punch the emphasis, as he enjoyed the sound of his sentences hitting like blunt rocks. As a young writer, he’d gone so far as to re-type the works of Dos Passos and Fitzgerald, just to feel their cadences vibrate through his fingers.
I won’t take a stance either way. I’m biased, as Thompson more than any other writer inspired me to write.
Before I go and put the book in my Amazon shopping cart (for delivery when I make it back to my own writer’s retreat in December), though, I cannot help but imagine The Good Doctor’s mirth if he could only read the plaudits written about his Rolling Stone writing in the Wall Street Journal of all places.
Selah.
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America’s Cyberspace Strategy
Defense.gov News Release: DOD Announces First Strategy for Operating in Cyberspace. This is the first unified strategy that brings together Army, Navy, Marine Corps, and Air Force doctrine for cyberwar. The strategy will govern the operations of the U.S. Cyber Command. Click on the link for the document.
China and International Norms
China’s International Norms – Australian Strategic Policy Institute.
One of the issues I’ve been researching lately is the extent to which we can expect China’s corporations to play by global rules if and when they begin leading in international markets.
Six of the leading experts on China at the Australian Strategic Policy Institute debate the matter, focusing more on international relations and global security. Nonetheless, the debate is worth reading through.
Related articles
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Watching the Wall
US Army Border Operations in Germany, 1945-1983, by William E. Stacy. This superb, detailed history offers an interesting retrospective on the people who patrolled the Iron Curtain, and why they did it for over four decades.
