Swinging at piñatas while a tiger creeps up behind you

Asia Times

The US's geopolitical nightmare
By F William Engdahl

By drawing attention to Iraq and the obvious role oil plays in US policy today, the George W Bush-Dick Cheney administration has done just that: it has drawn the world's energy-deficit powers' attention firmly to the strategic battle over energy, and especially oil.

This is already having consequences for the global economy in terms of US$75-a-barrel crude-oil price levels. Now it is taking on the dimension of what one former US defense secretary rightly calls a "geopolitical nightmare" for the United States.

The creation by Bush and Cheney, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and company of a geopolitical nightmare is also the

backdrop to comprehend the dramatic political shift within the US establishment in the past six months, away from the Bush presidency. Simply put: Bush and Cheney and their band of neo-conservative war hawks, with their special relationship to the capacities of Israel in Iraq and across the Mideast, were given a chance...

And they blew it, bigtime. Read the whole article if the utility of ground-truth appeals to you more than boilerplate.

There are a whole bunch of ways that the last 5 years have given good reason to question the quality of leadership in this country, not the least of which, that of the business community. We are all creatures of habit and preference, and many times those patterns of choice can cause us to stand idly by as our interests are being hemmed in and eroded. For those who say "I don't care about politics" because it doesn't affect my business, you have a death wish. For those who lobby to influence the vote based on divisive emotional appeals or short run profit, you are an enemy of citizenship and a hypocrite to the ideals that enabled your success. We are a shared risk, pooled capital, common wealth success story and you and your extension cord are pirating our juice. If you or I merely keep mum as others do this, we are no better than accessories to that theft of common good and national character. We are a grand experiment. We are not, however, the lab rats of a select few. At least, that used to be true. Used to be. The next 6 months will tell.

As a global economic power, it is Rule One that you do not allow a rogue division to wander the world bullying friends and pissing off future customers while the rest of the organization is busy making and marketing products to sell to that world. This is one thrust of Engdahl's wise argument about politics, oil and opportunity lost. We have let men and women who claim to know business use their political arms to slip a noose around necessary wiggle-room and exit strategies. Their short-sightedness, their incompetence, has de-optioned us. As fiscally accountable organizations, large companies know that they must walk the line between mass and immobility; to not get so large as to become a common enemy to competitors, to not create an Army of Davids. To not allow things to come to such a pass that the only option is a fight to the death.

Shareholders frown upon such things. Voters, when they are sufficiently doused with the cold water of economic reality also come to the same state of frown.

Am I being unfair? You be the judge: In the last few weeks I have personally witnessed a Former Cabinet Secretary LIE, proveably, micro and macro, to a group of Graduate Students in a major Leadership school. When challenged, he called quicksand concrete and relied on the good manners of others to decoy his flaying of fact. For this he received praise for his words and work. I have addressed and spoken with Mid-cap business principals who fear for their companies' future under the pressures of healthcare costs and given them a blind taste test, a Pepsi-Coke Challenge on alternatives. When generically presented, they reach for a managed rather than free-market solution. When the labels "Liberal" and "Conservative" are attached, they are visibly conflicted, brows furrowed. And they re-decided against their own better judgement based on a myth and a bumper sticker.

There is something fundamentally askew when the drowning person is thrown two life preservers, one useable, one in flames, and they insist on checking the practical choice for a Union label. American Business is at a pass. Captains have stood by, some, like Jack Welch, have arm-twisted, commercially and electorally, as our comparative advantage has been narrowed by a commercial ideology shifted from divergence to convergence, from exploration to conservation and concentration of wealth, to the point that Line is abstracted from Staff. Corprate earnings are booming. Job creation is at 40 year lows. We remain connected but increasingly out of phase. They say a house divided against itself shall not stand. These men and women, compartmentalizers-extraordinaire, have a diferent view: A house divided is easier to manage, measure and leverage.

Again, time will tell but I believe they were and are wrong, and they have done nothing to prepare for the result of their conscious or unintended pruning and thumbing of the scale. Character matters and redounds to your good or ill. You don't starve the horse that's going to carry you home, nor do you kick the dog that's going to guard your baby. That, wrapped up in Jim Collins' metaphor of being on the bus, is where collectively stand.

If you're a business strategist and allow yourself to think in terms longer than Q1,2,3,4 you should read Bill Engdahl's article. It neatly covers the long strange trip of the last 5 years and the things that have been happening elsewhere as our leadership has been swinging at those pinatas. A Tiger is coming. (Several, really.) Read it. Every CEO east of Wall Street is, and every boss on Main Street will feel the snap of the tail if not the teeth.