Building Peace Goes Public

Starting a blog is a scary business--especially if you're a countercultural military officer with a lot of opinions. I've wanted to run a blog for years, but it took me a while to get my confidence. The blogosphere feels like a minefield sometimes. Dangers abound: Violating OPSEC or strict military rules on blogging. Offending the wrong people. Sharing something that will endanger myself or my family while living in the Middle East. Inadvertently writing something improper that will cause my career to implode. Or simply just being wrong--a real danger when you're writing about issues as messy and complex as foreign affairs.

So why do it? Because I firmly believe in the free market of ideas. Ten thousand minds are more imaginative, insightful, and capable than a few expert minds huddled behind closed doors. Some gatekeeping is necessary to separate the wheat from the chaff, but I mostly believe in the power of the intellectual marketplace to recognize good ideas. I wanted to try making my own contribution... not just because I believe in my own ideas, but because I believe so strongly in the process. Blogging is one of many innovations the military and government can use to generate and recognize winning ideas (and stomp out the bad ones).

Still, I began my blog slowly. I did not advertise. I did not network with other bloggers. I just plodded ahead, writing for a non-existent audience, testing the waters of the blogosphere and figuring out the direction this blog would go.

That has apparently changed now. This blog has drawn the notice of some senior folks in the counterinsurgency community, and received mention in Small Wars Journal. I expect my traffic will grow, at least in the term term. I have no idea whether new visitors will stick around, but I'll keep doing what I always do: speculating on ways the US military and other organizations can make wise policy to build a better world. The big difference is that now I'm actually accountable for what I write. That's a scary prospect, but that's exactly how the free market of ideas is supposed to work.