In the first of his upcoming series of speeches meant to gauge the chances for a presidential campaign, Gary Hart demonstrates the remarkable insight into the world we live in today that I believe is going to make him a dangerous contender to the Republicans in 2004.

"Neither strategy nor security can be understood outside our current context. Too few of our policy-makers seem fully to appreciate the revolutionary whirlwinds that now shape our destiny. Indeed, we are swept up in at least four historic revolutions. They are: first, globalization, or the internationalization of commerce, finance, and markets; second, the information revolution, now creating a "digital divide" between computer literates and computer illiterates; third, the erosion of the sovereignty or authority of the nation-state; and fourth, a fundamental change in the nature of conflict. Without understanding the impact of these four simultaneous revolutions, a search for national security is futile. To respond to the first two revolutions requires foreign policy initiatives in the Middle East and elsewhere as bold as the Marshall Plan and as encompassing as energy security. To create a national security strategy requires an understanding of the changing nature of conflict in particular, and that requires an understanding of the erosion of the sovereignty of nation-states. "

Here is a man that obviously grasps the problems of foreign affairs in the 21st century in a way that Bush can only hope to stumble through while leaning on his father's generation of advisors.  

Our entire system of foreign policy is based on countering the Communist threat, <sarcasm for Guanubian's benefit>something which the right-leaning punditry is still attempting to combat through their opposition to the recent peace protests, which were obviously a tool of the red menace</sarcasm>. 

Soon-to-be-Candidate Hart (this particular web site and garyhart2004.org have just sprung up in the last week or so, leading me and others to believe the decision has already been made) is proposing to us that we need to stop worrying about such "red"-herrings, and instead focus on the actual dangers to our way of life: poverty, irresponsible energy policies and cultural arrogance,

"This new century requires a much clearer understanding of new threats and the causes of those threats than our leaders seem interested in pursuing. Who exactly is our enemy and why does he hate us? Unlike the clear-cut 20th century ideological struggle between democracy and communism, the role of poverty, disease, and despair becomes much more central. The role of cultural difference becomes much more crucial—"Take your filthy movies and go home," cry those who resent us and our popular culture. And the role of resentment—of our wealth, of our power, of our willful consumption of resources, of our arrogance—becomes a much greater factor.

It does not go without notice in the world, especially the impoverished world, that the United States consumes a quarter of the world's energy and produces a quarter of the world's pollution and trash. And to say that this will all be overlooked because multitudes of people would like to live in the United States is to miss the point; we are seen by many not only to be rich but also to be arrogant, arbitrary, and wholly self-interested."

...

"This new age requires, at the very least, a new definition of security and, to achieve it, a tool-box filled with more than weapons. National security in the 21st century will require economic and political tools, not simply military ones. Trade and aid programs must become more grassroots and human scale than top-down and bureaucratic. For example, micro-loan programs directed at home, land, and small business ownership have proved enormously promising in several countries in Asia and Latin America. And in the political arena, our diplomacy must once again be based on the principles underlying our Constitution and nation—principles of honor, of humanity, of respect for difference—and our diplomacy must be aimed at people not just governments. We can explain our principles and ideals much better than we have been; but we must then also be prepared to live up to them. The ideals of democracy are not marketed: they are lived.

Of the three resources required by terrorists—money, weapons, and people—the resource most vital is people. Our "war on terrorism" should aim to dry up the swamp of despair found in refugee camps, favelas, and impoverished villages throughout the world. As the writer Robert Kaplan has pointed out, for millions of young people from this swamp, barracks life and terrorist training camps are a step up. Though the first suicidal attackers did not come from refugee camps, it is a safe bet that the next wave will. "

Now, those on the right are going to read this and come to the conclusion that Gary Hart is another lefty, anti-american, PC wimp leading us to our destruction at the hands of our enemies, but they would be wrong.  He simply recognizes that the military might of the last century does us no good in a world that has almost completely changed.

"The military component, however, necessarily remains at the center of national security. But the military of the 21st century must look and perform much differently from that of the 20th. Paradoxically enough, it will be more technological but it will also be more human. Technologically, our military will expand into space. But that component must be defensive not offensive. The 21st century military will also involve more precision-guided munitions. In the Persian Gulf war 10% of munitions were precision-guided and even those were not as consistently accurate as we were led to believe. In the Afghan war, 90% of our munitions were precision-guided. But that dramatic increase did not prevent us from bombing the wrong targets. Once again, precision is an asset only if the human factor, accurate intelligence, controls.

We are indeed in a "revolution of military affairs" largely driven by technology but dependent on intelligence collected and analyzed by humans. Our fighting forces are increasingly directed by and through a complex web of command, control, and communications networks all interwoven and interrelated. The first Persian Gulf war was directed from a makeshift headquarters in Saudi Arabia. A decade later the Afghan war was directed from Central Command in Florida. We are relying on UAVs, unmanned air vehicles, and UCAVs, unmanned combat air vehicles, as fast as we can produce them. The commander-in-chief can monitor real-time pictures from these vehicles in the White House.

But high technology can be both extremely vulnerable to and dependent on the human actor. Exotic Pentagon communications networks are vulnerable to "21 year old hackers." And the precision-guided munitions onboard planes flying from Diego Garcia or aircraft carriers in the Indian Ocean were guided by Delta Force personnel wearing civilian clothes and riding mules across the hills of Afghanistan. And wedding parties are wiped out because of the failure of human intelligence.

And even in the age of terrorism and "crime/war", we will need expeditionary forces. But they must be lighter and swifter. Getting there fast is now more important than getting there big. And ultra-sophisticated, post-Cold War conventional weapons systems—ships, planes, and tanks—will have to be different. Despite our enormous wealth, we can no longer afford to integrate technology so closely to platforms that the platform must be replaced when technology changes—as it does with lightening speed. We cannot afford ships, planes, and tanks that are outdated the year they come into service. Platforms—once again, ships, planes, and tanks—must be built for durability and long-life. The weapons and sensors we place on them must be "plugged in"—that is, readily removable when new ones become available.

The two illustrations are, of course, the venerable B-52 bomber and the aircraft carrier. The B-52, now in its sixth decade of life, is still performing—even though it's older than the fathers of the pilots who fly it. And we keep aircraft carriers in service for over half a century. The platform doesn't change. But the technological sensors and weapons change almost overnight these days. Even then, human ingenuity trumps everything. Delta Force, as I mentioned, used a 3000-year-old transportation system, the mule, to direct 21st century technology.

The roots of Secretary Rumsfeld's current uneven attempts to transition from 20th century weapons and warfare to preparation for what some have called the "fourth generation of warfare" of the 21st century trace to the military reform movement of the late 1970s. Even then, we reformers were advocating unit cohesion and officer initiative, maneuver strategy and tactics, and lighter, faster, more replicable weapons. Without attention to new people policies and innovative strategy, tactics, and doctrine, cancellation of weapons such as the Crusader artillery piece will by themselves not transform the military sufficiently for a new kind of conflict.

Paradoxically, once again, the most technologically superior superpower in human history is now dependent on human ingenuity more than ever. If intelligence fails, as it did one year ago, all the technology in the world cannot save us. To know when, where, and how terrorists intend to strike, and what they intend to use to do so, is almost entirely dependent upon human intelligence collection. Electronic surveillance, intercepts and wiretaps, bugging and pursuing cannot altogether replace the human agent."

This man gets it.

It's a little early to say definitively, but if the rest of his speeches meet my expectations as this one has, Gary Hart must be our next president.

[via Political Wire]

"But while Democrats clearly have a problem when it comes to religious voters, it's not at all clear they have to abandon their core values to win these voters over. To the contrary, the teachings of most religious faiths nicely complement Democratic principles. Take the recent anti-SUV campaign by the Evangelical Environmental Network (EEN), which made headlines in November with commercials asking What Would Jesus Drive?. According to EEN, whose membership includes many of the country's major evangelical organizations, the purpose of the WWJ Drive campaign was "to help Christians and others understand that transportation choices are moral choices, and to reflect upon the problems associated with transportation from a biblically orthodox, Christ-centered perspective." EEN cites various reasons to carefully consider transportation decisions, including the harm that is caused to human health by vehicular pollution, its contribution to global warming, and the fact that gas-guzzling vehicles increase our dependence on oil from countries that threaten America's peace and security. The organization draws a connection between these issues and two basic Christian commandments: "Love your neighbor as yourself" and "Do unto others as you would have them do unto you." There's no reason religious Democrats couldn't do the same."

Shant Mesrobian with an interesting article (and apparently his first) from TNR on one of Lieberman's strengths that other Democratic candidates should consider, his appeal to religious voters.  Abandoning the religious to the Republicans is a mistake that needs to be fixed.

"Sen. John Edwards has introduced a bill that would require agencies to identify vulnerabilities in their systems and set up timetables for eliminating them.

The North Carolina Democrat’s National Cyber Security Leadership Act of 2003 would also mandate the use of IT security standards and guidelines established by the National Institute of Standards and Technology. "

A candidate that has good ideas on infosec?  I'll keep be keeping an eye out for more info on this.

[via NewsNow: Encryption/Security]

"Salon is perhaps the last great independent experiment in online journalism. Once the Web was crowded with nervy upstarts such as Suck and Feed, new media sites that disparaged their traditional rivals as dinosaurs but were actually the first to disappear. Salon was one of the most celebrated -- and, with 30 million page views a month, one of the most popular -- but the online magazine has been struggling for years to reach profitability and recently has been teetering on the edge of insolvency.

Now in what may be a last-ditch effort to stay alive, Salon is about to dramatically change its business model. The company is expected to announce this week that it will require all readers to either buy a subscription for full access to stories or agree to click through several screens of advertising to gain limited access. (Salon instituted a limited-subscription option a couple years ago that made some content available to subscribers only.)

"There's no free lunch on the Web anymore," Talbot says. "There's no viable media without developing a base of revenue.""

If you enjoy Salon and don't want it to disappear, its time to pony up.  No complaining about the media being owned by the man if you don't.  It costs money to produce content, and it has to come from somewhere.  If it doesn't come from your pocket, its going to come from special interests that may have their own agenda for media coverage.

[via DrudgeReport]