Rise of the SysAdmin
As John Boyd was to the Persian Gulf War, Thomas Barnett is the new strategist for the War on Terror. Barnett wants to divide the military into two parts, the Leviathan for major combat operations, and the SysAdmin force for the clean up and peacekeeping afterward. According to his latest blog, the Bush administration is getting the message:
I see the SysAdmin as roughly 1/2 military and 1/2 civilian, with the latter broken into a quarter each of police and development experts. So when I see something like this, or I see the Reserves and Guards retraining 100k infantry into military police, I'm pretty certain the pieces are coming together.
And yes, they will come together no matter how well or how badly the public perceives Iraq to be going. They come together because the Pentagon sees a future it cannot escape, and so it adjusts to this unfolding reality.