While re-reading the Nietzsche canon this summer I missed a big event in the practical persuasion world:  a proposed name change for PSYOPS to MISO.  Even for an ununiformed fool like me the term, PSYOPS, is immediately meaningful and descriptive:  Opérations de Psychologique!  You can’t miss it.

Which means that the name, PSYOPS, is pretty sincere, right?  If everyone gets it at a glance the thing is obvious, plain, direct, authentic, deeply felt, sincere.  And, since All Bad Persuasion Is Sincere, then the name, PSYOPS, is . . .

Of course, I’m effete intellectual poof who uses Google translators to check my high school French while contending with God’s assassin in my beach reading.  What do I know?

You were there, kids, when It Happened.

China, powered by years of rapid economic growth, is now the world’s biggest energy consumer, knocking the U.S. off a perch it held for more than a century, according to new data from the International Energy Agency.

The US was by far the largest consumer of energy since the early 1900s.  Ten years ago, US energy use was twice as large as China’s.

So what?

“The fact that China overtook the U.S. as the world’s largest energy consumer symbolizes the start of a new age in the history of energy,” IEA chief economist Fatih Birol said in an interview.

History of energy?  It’s much larger than that, my influential friends.  Energy drives economics and economics drives Power, National Power.  And we understand Power and Persuasion, right?

Consider, too, what’s likely to happen in the near term.

The U.S. is still by far the biggest energy consumer per capita, with the average American burning five times as much energy annually as the average Chinese citizen, said Mr. Birol, who has been in his current role for six years.

China has just passed the US in total, but per capita the US uses five times as much.  China, obviously, isn’t going to stop its energy demand simply because it consumes as much as a nation.  It will keep going until its energy demand gets closer to the per capita US rate.

I believe that persuasion principles are universal and eternal; they apply for all faces and places, all times and rhymes.  Cultural differences change only the interface, but not the process.  Thus, the ELM works in Beijing, but it better speak with a Mandarin accent.  Or . . .

Zhè shì duì lìng yīgè rén, yúchǔn de!

Hey, the top secret affairs of state are at stake here and who gets top billing?

The attractive one.  Anna Chapman.

When in doubt, take the Peripheral Route.

What to do?  Use a Cue!

Fouad Ajami observes the change in our Afghan commanders from McChrystal to Petraeus and notes . . .

We have a peerless commander on his way to the Afghan theater of war. He knows the ways of the East, and he has mastered them the hard way. In his time in Iraq he was fond of a maxim of T.E. Lawrence: “Do not try to do too much with your own hands. Better the Arabs do it tolerably than you do it perfectly. It is their war, and you are there to help them, not win it for them.”

Nice observation, but we said this a long time ago with ‘Awrence of Attribution.

Assuming the quotation is apt for this war, then we’re in a state of confusion.

It’s about the Other Guy, Stupid.

Leaders should avoid criticizing other leaders publicly.  If you don’t get that as both a leader or as a persuader, you can stop reading this post and move on.

Mr. Obama publicly doubted Hamid Karzai following Karzai’s disputed election which led to predictable counter-reactions from Mr. Karzai.

Today, Mr. Karzai paid back.

He told Mr. Obama to not fire General McChrystal over the General’s offensive comments on Team Obama’s War policy.  Such actions would seriously harm the war effort at a sensitive moment in the campaign.

So, Mr. Obama offended another leader and now when he confronts an insubordinate subordinate that other leader promises punishment if Obama moves against that subordinate.

If You Cannot Succeed, Don’t Try.

All Bad Persuasion Is Sincere.

Persuaders Can Either Be Famous or Effective, But Not Both.

Persuasion Is Strategic or It Is Not.