Find the LinkedIn post announcing my joining Throughline here. I could not be more grateful and excited for this opportunity ..read more

Just settled on the title with publisher BenBella. It will come out in Sept of 2023. Will be about 55,000 words with 50 or so illustrations (hand-drawn) and about two dozen data diagrams ..read more

Collaborating with a design/strategy firm out of DC. Almost done with the book proposal now. Looking at about 80,000 words with custom illustrations (think AlphaChimp-style) and sophisticated data diagrams.  Tentative title is "America's New Map," but initial titles rarely survive the publication process.  As for why it took my so long to write another book? I simply needed down time and think time to accumulate enough material for one. I was never good at commenting on current events and found that to be a mind-drain, especially during the Trump years (What point to be the 1,342nd t ..read more

I’m a professional writer with over 500 publications spread over four decades, and yet, in this digital age, I can’t get my hands on electronic copies of probably 90 percent of them.  All of them were originally created in digital form, but many found publication solely in print while others now live behind firewalls. I tried my darnedest to keep electronic copies of them all, but just try maintaining that kluged database over a dozen or so computers I’ve had over the years, the conflicting operating systems, the various websites, the hard drives that failed, and the file versions or pro ..read more

Delivered 31 July 2021 at Immaculate Conception Parish, Boscobel Wisconsin. On behalf of my family, I want to thank you all for joining us here to celebrate Colleen Ann Clifford Barnett. This space is - without a doubt - the spiritual center of gravity for our family, and you, her family and friends, are all she would have asked for today. Our mother was born in Green Bay and grew up as Packer royalty thanks to her father’s seminal role in that franchise. The Packers were everything to Mom and, on that basis, remain everything to her family. An example: my wife Vonne and I switched faiths for ..read more

Kagan has consistently been the best analyst on the Global War on Terror. Find his lengthy WAPO op-ed here: https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2021/08/26/robert-kagan-afghanistan-americans-forget Nothing for me to add, except to highlight finall three grafs: In fact, the “war on terror” has been successful — astoundingly so. If you had told anyone after 9/11 that there would not be another major attack on the U.S. homeland for 20 years, few would have believed it possible. The prevailing wisdom at the time was that not only would there be other attacks, but they would be more severe. In ..read more

Entitled "Biden Pulled Troops Out of Afghanistan. He Didn't End the 'Forever War': Presidents since George W. Bush have fashioned a military strategy that knows no borders - and isn't dependent on boots on the ground" Author is Samuel Moyn, Yale prof. Found here. Years ago in The Pentagon's New Map I wrote that the "boys are never coming home." And they still aren't. Yes, their numbers will be much smaller because we'll fight very differently than in the past.  We started the Global War on Terror with a Leviathan force but we're continuing it - forever - with the SysAdmin force that does ..read more

Photo credit: Nadya Chikurova& Pablo FernandezEntitled, "Biden Must Clean Up the Trump Pardons," the gist is that the Constitution prohibts presidential pardons during an impeachment process because those acts are easily construed as buying-off jurors. With the battle building over the filibuster, there’s another area that cries out for Senate reform: the impeachment process that led to the recent acquittal of Donald Trump.  No senator should be allowed to serve as a “juror” if they’ve benefited from a pardon issued by an impeached president. In this case 12 senators, including 10 Re ..read more

On May 1st, the nation’s war colleges received a brutal – if pre-emptive – failing grade from the Joint Chiefs, who declared that Joint Professional Military Education schools are not producing military commanders “who can achieve intellectual overmatch against adversaries.” Because China increasingly matches our “mass” and “best technology,” the Joint Chiefs argue that America will prevail in future conflicts primarily by having more capable officers. As for those “emerging requirements” that “have not been the focus of our current leadership development enterprise” (e.g., integrating nati ..read more

COVID-19 Outbreak World Map per Capita (Wikipedia)Some simple back-of-the-envelope calculations that came to me while on a long bike ride today ... Question: which G20 members have suffered a smaller/larger percentage share of global COVID deaths relative to their share of global population? G20 encompasses 63% of world population, but it's the more economically advanced share, so we should expect the G20 as a whole to suffer less than 63% of global COVID deaths. In truth, for now, it seems that the G20 account for roughly 4/5th of global deaths, or 80%. So, as a whole, the G20 underperforms ..read more