Ratification of agreement between the U.S. and Iraq

There has been a major controversy between the peace lobby and the administration over Iraq. Much of the controversy is over points that seem irrelevant, but obviously weren't to some interests. What it seems to me is that the West has a army in Iraq with the intent on stabilizing the country. Apparently a well educated populace has been wrestling with building the institution and values that will support a democratic republic. Although many have ridiculed this and openly predicted disaster at every opportunity, the opposite has occurred.

Iraq has a framework where different sects of Islam and a non-Arab population work in concert and solve important issues. The West provides the stability and energy to build an Iraqi police force and army. Both the civilian and the military infrastructure seem to be developing in concert. So, the integration that Saddam and the 'bullet' had sown together historically is now done with the 'ballot box.' All this has been done despite the consternation of Iran and Syria. Their own peoples will begin to wonder about the possibilities as Iraq matures.

During Thanksgiving week, 2008 another milestone happened. It didn't receive the attention it deserved because of the holiday and the action around the financial crisis. The U.S. and Iraq ratified a military and strategic cooperation agreement effective for years into the future. There were many issues for the Iraqis to deal with and the negotiators to deal with. Unlike the detractors depiction, these agreements don't happen unless there is trust involved. And the implications for stability well into the future are historic.

The U.N. patrolled the skies of Iraq for 10 years at the U.N.s behest. In 2002, an army was unleashed in the country to remove Saddam. This happened just 5 years ago. After easily conquering the country, the U.S. had to experiment with how to build a country. Realigning army leadership and building the appropriate skills for country-building took 2-3 years for the U.S. army. But learn they did and a complex strategy simplified to the name "the surge" stabilized the society and paved the way to this agreement. As we look back the 5-6 years takent to do this will be judged to be record time. President Bush took the brunt of the criticism from the world and the U.S. public. He persevered while pushing steadfastly to 'win' in Iraq.

Baghdad is the geopolitical center of the Middle East. All paths in the region go through Baghdad. To have a stable democratic state and have America as a friend and ally already has and will propel huge changes in the region. Iraq is still 'messy' and will still have issues into the future. But the potential for a stable Middle East that is a partner in dealing with world problems and a participant in world globalism is likely to be judged an epic achievement.

The success in Iraq not only assures oil for the next phase of globalism, but it clearly will start discussion within the Islamic religion and Arab society about how to deal with the West and its values. Liberty and humane values toward race and gender are a couple of this issues. This will perhaps start a reformation that diminishes the sharp differences between Islam and the West.

Iran has tried every tactic it knows to stop progress on the agreement. Its failure to stop the Iraqi success will have many ramifications in Iran and in other Middle Eastern countries as they and their citizens contemplate democratic action next door. Like Christianity several hundred years ago, Islam hasn't put aspects of the religion in a modern context and this will stimulate more discussion.

Globalism is still today a force that won't be stopped. The rest of the world has gotten a taste of wealth that capitalism and global connections make possible. The pacifists and leftists in the U.S. are so concerned about the morality of U.S, that they engage in subversion of that influence. The world order is changing naturally but there is no replacing American dynamism in the process both as a participant and protector. There is no replacing the sheer power of a GDP that is at least 10 times the next biggest single economy. It's just not on the smart scale to think otherwise.

The massive infrastructure involved in sustaining something as complex as globalism is overwhelming for man. Fighting a war to keep the Middle East and its oil in the globalism game and simultaneously taming Muslim aggession, is just one dimension of the globalism issue. Another crisis was the crumbling of the international financial network this Fall. There are many analyses of inadequacies that paved the way to this catastrophe (see accompanying blog). A more general angle, though, is that the legacy systems and processes that were used to build the now destroyed infrastructure were totally inadequate to meet the demands of many more 'players' that recently joined in the international world. The U.S. and a few more players were the drivers of globalism. New countries and wealth centers like India, China and Brazil added to the complexity.

So, the crisis was the 'breaking' of this system and the interregnum now is the 'timeout' required to gear up for the demands of the 21st Century. The old system was a gussied up time-warp 1960s system. This is like adding some electronics to a 1969 Cadillac and think you have a modern racer. Now is the time to challenge prior logic while building a new international framework from the process level up. The resulting framework should support the needs of nations in facing the dynamism and complexity of the 21st Century.

The challenge of 2008-9 can be pictured as the world rethinking of the framework while trying to address the immediate recession issues. This is like changing tires on a car while going 60 miles per hour.

Fire Back

Fire Back-- The perfect storm or a product of greed?

In response to the financial storm abrupting throughout the world, a colleague of mine wrote:

"I'm afraid the American dream has been destroyed by corporate and union greed. Looking over the economic war torn landscape there doesn't appear to be anyone that believes in doing whats good for the country. Congress is even worse than the worst of the corporations everything they touch turns to garbage and worse, they have rotted from the head. Looking back it all started with the socialist programs of F.D.R. Now, the chickens are coming home to roost."

This seems pretty harsh. I don't agree. As they say "when the going gets tough, the tough get going." Why wouldn't the U.S. respond to the issues of the day like they have many times over as this country went from 13 colonies a couple of hundred years ago to a continental and now a world leader and through domestic and world conflagrations.

Some people are very discouraged by what is going on. The traditional Big 3 auto makers are the latest to be on the edge of bankruptcy in this country. This is a result of a lack of credit based on the caution of financial institutions as they invoke survival policies. The U.S. Treasury and Federal Reserve have input over a trillion dollars trying to restore confidence. Congress is about to stimulate the economy with another trillion or so. We already have replaced the moneys that could be lost in the financial collapse. An order can release the money but you can't 'order' people to have confidence and behave like nothing has happened.

As we untangle the dynamics that seemed to converge on this 'perfect storm,' it gets more and more mysterious and complex-- at least to many of us. The 'talking heads' and pundits have this boiled down to some simplistic situation -- the running joke is that it is all President Bush's fault.

The challenges today are exceedingly complex due essentially to our and now the world's success. We've had a run of 60 years of unparalleled prosperity and the world's participation and wealth has increased dramatically. This is terrific. Business cycles occur naturally and contractions wring excesses out of the economy after which another expansion naturally starts.

That is essentially the way it will happen this time. Time will have to pass before an expansion, as institutions and man try to figure out where they stand and how to get started again. However, there is something special this time. Too much risk was taken by normally smart managers as they developed esoteric financial markets and bet on what seemed to them reasonable risks. These risks in retrospect were outrageous and the markets suspect. The elaborate modeling for risk was permeated with limited perception and inadequate for the task. 'Progressive' congresses throughout the world built expensive infrastructure to take care of people's needs. Technology expanded supply chains and made information and finances fly around the world.

At base, the problem can be generalized to say the way we are organized now clearly isn't sufficient to manage the international dynamics of trade, financial system and diplomatic relations.

Management theory is racing to catch up with the dynamics of the local and world marketplaces. Government is far behind playing a constructive and appropriate role in supporting the market and constitutional liberties. The inertia of past practices, now-dated infrastructure and the norms of private and government institutions mounted up to confound the world progress. Archaic top down command and control governments and corporations resulted in the inability to fight a 21st Century 'battle' with a time-warp 1980s capability.

There is work going on in governments, corporations, think tanks and universities, as we speak, on how to organize for this complexity of the new age. The failures we are experiencing now are of the old systems and consequent thought patterns relevant to the industrial age and not to the demands of the new service or information age.

The age of the ideological union is past. They are living off the companies they organized in the 1930s. The Toyotas and Wal-Marts with huge unorganized workforces adopt modern management advances which replaces any value added by unions. Its passing, though, is likely to be messy and lingering. Unions survive because of the laws imposed by politicians. Laws will continue to sustain them for awhile until the political climate changes. There will be need for worker organizations in the future for one reason or another-- just not an ideologically based union.

Another of my colleagues comments was about 'greed.' I always had trouble with the notion of 'corporate greed.' It is a simple stereotype, I think. Too simple. You probably agree that greed is not greed is not greed. Inventing, building, producing and managing enterprises are efforts that society wants to reward. Having a win-lose attitude is as valuable in a company, an army, as nearly anywhere. Is 'win-lose' a necessary ingredient to greed? Are huge returns to a select group managers of successful enterprise mean they are greedy?

Is a 'corporation' greedy as has been said recently? The government made a judgement that the Andersen auditing firm was unethical and brought charges against it in 2001. This was a 'death sentence' to an audit firm. As a result 30,000 auditors world wide were out of a job and a firm with over 100 years history went out of existence. This is too simple. The Supreme Court later said the government was wrong. Too late.

The entire reason for business and the total focus of business school is satisfying customers and managing an ethical organization.... not testing the limits of the law but driving the company down the 'middle of the road.' All my success turning around businesses was based on building successful enterprises on ethical bases-- not an easy task to maintain this ethical base. P&G, MMM, Intel, Wal-Mart, Toyota and others are strongly ethical and very win-lose oriented. Some individuals and companies do very well in this environment. Are they greedy? Is a corporation that calculates to 'cut off the air" of a competitor greedy? Is this part of greed a 'bad' greed?

Some people organize to exploit others and don't add organizational or societal value. Are they greedy? Of course. I posit these situations don't last long. Sustaining success in the marketplace takes too much focus and discipline. Dishonest and greedy behaviors disrupts those behaviors. Eventually, these situations beget failed companies and nearly always drag down individuals. These situations, when they fail, are headline getters. Many of the mortgage businesses apparently engaged in these marginal behaviors, recently.

These dysfunctional situations are what people 'see.' Every media outlet highlights the negative and pounds you with 24x7 with preferably sordid stories and shallow analyses. You can get discouraged by letting this limited, but blatantly loud, view of greed color your view and make you miss the dominance of just plain old hard work that captures the life of most of the world's population. This is the essence of capitalism, its values and why wealth accumulates.

So... is the American dream dead? No. Is the world going through a transformation from the industrial to the information age? Is this transition tough and complex and messy? Yes.

Fire Back!!!

Bill Vroman