Management Consultant as Foreign Affairs Columnist?

Foreign Policy blogger and Tufts professor Daniel Drezner went to a management consultant conference and shared his top ten tips, both on his blog and Twitter. All I could think of was how it sounded just like 90% of Thomas Friedman's columns.

4) In Every Coversation with a Client, Mention Your Last Trip to China. This is tricky, as you have to be casual about it, while still drivng home the point that you are intimately familiar with the world's fastest-growing market. Here are some possible ways to get this point into casual conversation: "I was talking to one of our clients in Shenzhen On Monday, and...""I was sunbathing in Chengdu a week ago...""When I went bass-fishing in Chongqing last month...""A funny thing happened when I went to a cockfight in Harbin on Tuesday....""If, like me, you ever find yourself in Tianjin biting the head off of a live chicken...." ...

6) Use Factoids To Distract Amaze Your Audience. To drive home a point that might encounter pushback from the audience, be sure to snap off a statistic that seems related to your point. For example, if you're trying to convince your customers that Western Africa is a more promising market than Western Europe, you can say, "Did you know there are more live births in Nigeria than in W. Europe?" Some other possibilities:"Did you know that in Tokyo, a bicycle is faster than a car for any distance less than 30 miles?""Did you know that the most popular first name in the world is Muhammad?""Did you know that the first product to have a bar code was Wrigleys gum?""Did you know that Jedi is an official religion in Australia?"

7) Put a Modern Spin on Old Cliches. Example: "To paraphrase Keynes, 'In the long run, we're all liquefie-- I mean, we're all liquid.'"

Intelligence and Social Networking

The Washington Post has a great article this morning on Intellipedia, the intelligence community (IC)'s wiki. It seems like an extremely valuable tool for helping to destroy some of the "stovepipes" that plague the IC. People in the intelligence business are naturally suspicious people, so they tend not to trust even other intelligence agencies. Combining the intelligence from multiple analysts and multiple agencies can yield far better results.

The IC needs younger, more technologically savvy people who embrace new forms of communication like wikis, blogging, Twitter, and whatever comes next, or the IC will cease to be relevant. The Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Twitters (@thejointstaff), and I've heard that he read about Israel entering Gaza within seconds, yet it took the IC over a day to confirm it. I had a former colleague who was denied a job with the IC because when asked if he had ever done something illegal he replied that he had downloaded music from the Internet before that was considered illegal. Isn't that exactly the kind of person on the cutting edge of technological innovations who we should want in the IC? Of course Osama bin Ladin doesn't Tweet (at least not the real one), but more and more open source information is out there if you know how and where to look, and the IC ignores that at their own peril.

None of my IC friends Tweet (that I know of), although most of them are on Facebook. Of course open source can work both ways; you wouldn't want someone to Tweet "off to Yemen to infiltrate a jihadi group," but the IC should encourage both old and new employees to become familiar with social networking/Web 2.0 tools. Imagine how effective Intellipedia could be if everyone in the IC actually used it.

Baitullah Mehsud Dead? Now For My Second Wish... Actual Afghanistan Metrics!

I recently wished I would wake up and find out we had hit our exact target with a drone-fired missile in Pakistan. This evening I "awoke" from a Twitter slumber (a cybersecurity warning sign?) to find we actually did kill Pakistani Taliban leader Baitullah Mehsud with a drone strike yesterday--maybe. It seems we won't know for sure until we get in to South Waziristan to collect a DNA sample (quick side note: how do we possibly have another DNA sample to compare it to?), far easier said than done, since we can't do it by drone.

If we did get Mehsud that's great news of course, but before we get too cocky we should take note that militant groups in Pakistan and Afghanistan, and Mehsud's in particular, are like the hydra, and Mehsud apparently has several able deputies willing to step up and take his place.

So for my second wish, I'd like the Obama Administration to come up with actual metrics for success in Afghanistan (and Pakistan). Apparently Congress wants the same thing. After the first (or was it third) "AfPak" review the White House released a white paper promising metrics for success--and has failed not only to announce how we're doing, but what the metrics are. As I've argued repeatedly, you can't measure progress toward a goal you haven't established.

So far the White House has been better at determining what metrics not to use: enemy killed, miles of roads built, bombs defused, tips gathered, etc. Those are helpful steps, but if, according to the Times, we already have "nine broad objectives for metrics to guide the administration’s policy on Afghanistan and Pakistan" why can't we develop metrics now? We need another month or two to continue studying them? Is this a cooking-the-books plan where by the time the actual metrics are up it will be winter and things will look good because fighting is difficult for the militants?

We do need to get the metrics right, but metrics should measure progress toward a goal. Firmly and clearly state the goal, and and tell the social scientist metric creation team to get their academic butts in gear. We've wasted enough time.

CIA's Assassination Squads

I think the headline of this LA Times article on the CIA's recently-scrapped attempt to form a team to assassinate terrorist leaders says it all: "CIA was a long way from Jason Bourne." More details are still coming out, but this article has the best summary I've read so far.

According to current and former U.S. intelligence officials, the CIA spent seven years trying to assemble teams capable of killing the world's most wanted terrorists but could never find a formula that worked.

This is yet another example of the intelligence community focusing too much on technology and not enough on people. This applies not just to hit squads but also to intelligence gathering. Technology is great, and making some forms of intelligence gathering obselete (I've heard the story that the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff heard that Israel had entered the Gaza Strip via Twitter within five minutes, and it took military intelligence over a day to confirm it), but it can never tell you what somebody is thinking, or be able to stand right next to them in a cave in Waziristan. The intelligence community needs to accelerate the process of hiring more people capable of going around the world and blending in, with good language and cultural skills.

Catch-Up Thoughts

Those of you following me on Twitter will know I was out in California for a few days and not posting, so here are my brief thoughts on some of the recent events. I know you all missed my commentary.

• The CIA developed an assassination squad to go after al-Qaeda leadership... and it failed to have any successes that we know about and proved far more difficult than in James Bond movies. Neither of those facts is surprising. In fact I would be shocked if the CIA didn't still have a similar squad with similar goals. As other commenters have pointed out, the difference between firing missiles from drones and potentially firing bullets from sniper teams is mostly semantic, except that the drones seem to have a lot more collateral damage--that and the drones have actually been used. Nor is it shocking that Darth Cheney kept the program a secret from Congress. That fact bothers me more. Congress, or the Intelligence committees or the Gang of Eight at a bare minimum, should be kept appraised of all programs, especially the controversial ones. That's why we have checks and balances in our government.
• Secretary of State Clinton has ordered the first Quadrennial Development and Diplomacy Review (QDDR). Great! We need to know what we are doing, and giving, have a better idea of what is going where and why, and hopefully some oversight. I'll give you a preview of the report: 1) we need a director for USAID, 2) we don't have enough civilian experts on hand to plan much less execute a "civilian surge" in a place like Afghanistan. In the Pentagon the QDR sets the tone and direction for the Department of Defense; we'll see if the QDDR has the same weight and budget power for State and the other agencies involved with foreign aid and development.
• President Obama and Russian President Medvedev signed a Joint Understanding to a new START arms control treaty. The Joint Understanding is good progress, but it is really laying a foundation for more hard work to be done between now and December. By then hopefully the Nuclear Posture Review will be complete, satisfying certain Republican Senators, and real arms reductions can be made, hopefully down to the 1000-1200 range, although I would like to see us get even lower.

Jones Visits AfPak (+ India)

Normally I praise former President George W. Bush only slightly more often than Kieth Olbermann (deservedly so; the very thin document produced in late 2008 on "The Accomplishments of the Bush Administration" makes hilarious dramatic reading while enjoying adult beverages with a few friends), but his administration did a good job of improving relations with India. Sort of.

I often get asked my opinion of the U.S.-India nuclear deal. I tell people it depends on which half of my brain you're asking. The nonproliferation side says it's horrible; we didn't get anything, even a testing moratorium, and set a terrible precedent. The South Asia-loving side of my brain says the Bush Administration did a good job of winning Indian support by trading something now for a "player-to-be-named-later." Not a specific card to trade in, because I don't believe India is an automatic ally we have bought, but the effort we put into getting the Deal through has paid big dividends in terms of U.S. soft power in India.

Apparently the Obama Administration agrees. National Security Advisor General James Jones visited India (after a stop in Pakistan) and met with Indian National Security Advisor M.K. Narayanan, saying he hoped to build on the successes of the Bush Administration. It doesn't seem that Jones was forceful during his meetings in either Pakistan or India. He did not pressure India to re-start negotiations on Kashmir. Oddly, many Pakistani bloggers and Twitterers seem to believe that Jones' visit was designed to negotiate a massive deployment of Indian troops into Afghanistan.

Many of the best South Asia hands from the Bush Administration are still around, including Donald Camp advising on India. I'm glad the Obama Administration continues to recognize good people and build on progress made by the other party.

Twitter on Zardari

I'm new to this Twitter thing, having only joined last week, but others have clearly been around quite a bit longer. My response to Zardari's op-ed could have been as simple as these:

@AfPakChannel Summary of Zardari's op-ed in the Post: my wife was Benazir Bhutto! Dictators are bad! Pakistan needs more $$!

@kalsoom82 hahaha it seems that zardari wants to use Wash.Post as his begging pulpit of sorts.is he trying to guilt the intl. comm. to help?