As Kissinger recently put it, Russian President Vladimir Putin is like one of Fyodor Dostoevsky's characters, for whom "the question of Russian identity is very crucial because, as a result of the collapse of communism, Russia has lost about 300 years of its history." If Russia were to try to build a state by expanding its already sprawling territory, nationalism would not be enough to hold it together. Consequently, Putin is trying to defend the areas surrounding his country and compel the West to recognize and respect that sphere of influence. 

compel：強いる・引き起こす
sphere of influence：勢力範囲

共産主義が崩壊し、ロシアの３００年の歴史を失ってしまったので、プーチンはロシア人のアイデンティティを取り戻さなければならない。今、拡大した領土を維持するためには愛国心だけではダメで、国家の防衛と西側諸国へロシアの勢力範囲を認識させなければならない。

Taking a less alarmist view of Russia's intentions, the Trump administration sees an opening to develop a new understanding with Moscow, one that could put to rest the question of Crimea and perhaps recognize Russia's influence over eastern Ukraine. Syria, a peripheral issue for both Moscow and Washington, would be recognized as such. Since sanctions are a drag on business and Russia sorely needs investment, Trump could ease the measures to get a dialogue moving on what an understanding would look like without sacrificing the U.S. military presence along Europe's eastern flank. 

alarmist：人騒がせな
rest：沈静化する
peripheral：瑣末な
 drag：経済の足手まとい
sorely：非常に
flank：側面

トランプはクリミアとウクライナの問題を棚上げにし、シリアについても同様の行動をとることによって、ロシアへの制裁を解除するだろう。それによって、ロシアは経済への制裁が解除され、投資を求めてくるだろう。

Should Tillerson be confirmed as secretary of state, Trump would rely on his knowledge of Kremlin personalities and their internal feuds to advance the negotiations. After all, if a company needs good inroads with the Kremlin to do business in Russia, the same must go for a government that wants to negotiate with Moscow. But negotiating access to Russia's Arctic shelf on ExxonMobil's behalf is not the same as conducting talks centered on Russia (or China, for that matter) trying to get the West out of its backyard. 

feuds：争い・反目
inroads：進出

トランプはロシアに近いTillersonに期待し、政経共にロシアとの関係を改善するだおう。ただ、北極海の石油hロシアだけでは解決はしない。

Russia has no illusion that a shuffle of personalities in the White House will reverse U.S. policy and cede the former Soviet sphere to it. The United States will still be compelled to keep a check on Russia's moves in Europe just as Moscow will maintain its levers across several theaters, from cybersecurity to arms control to proxy wars in the Middle East. Though Trump's administration may change the tone of the conversation and broach the topic of tactical concessions, Russia will still be driven by an unrelenting distrust of Western intentions that will keep defenses up on both sides. Nonetheless, the very notion of a private bargain developing between Washington and Moscow will inject uncertainty into long-standing collective security arrangements as the European Continent is undergoing another Machiavellian moment in history where the assertion of state interests is breaking the bonds of its flawed union. 

cede ：譲渡する
sphere：勢力範囲
compelled：せざるを得ない
broach：言いにくい話題を切り出す
concessions：譲歩
unrelenting ：手加減しない
inject：注入する
Machiavellian：狡猾な
bond：緊密な関係

ロシアはアメリカの大統領の交代による変化に対して思い違いはしていない。アメリカは依然としてヨーロッパにおけるロシアの動きをチェックするだろうし、トランプになれば今までとはそのトーンが異なってはくるが、ロシアも今まで通りに対処するだろう。ただし、米ソはEUの今までの安全保障体制に楔を入れるだろう。

An Unlikely Precedent
Despite the changes that Trump will doubtless bring to the presidency, his foreign policy is not as unprecedented as the world's pundits may claim. The bridge between President Barack Obama's foreign policy doctrine and the one evolving under Trump is not entirely sturdy, but the foundation is there. As president, Obama was a realist. He considered it his mission to rebalance the United States after the country had overextended itself fighting wars in the Islamic world. His resistance to expanding U.S. military commitments in the Middle East was deeply ingrained; as he said in an interview in The Atlantic, "it is literally in my DNA to be suspicious of tribalism." 

Precedent：前例
sturdy：しっかりとした
ingrained：深く根付いた
tribalism：部族主義

一方、トランプの外交政策は世界の評論家が言っているほど型破りではない。オバマとトランプとの橋渡しはしっかりしたものではないが、根幹にあるものは変わらない。オバマは現実主義で、中東への関与し過ぎたことに反対してきた。

He held strong convictions that the United States would once again be trampled under a sectarian horde in the Middle East if it tried to extend its ambitions beyond the more immediate and visible threat of the Islamic State. He also pressured even close U.S. allies such as the United Kingdom to pay their fair share in security commitments because, as he put it, "free riders aggravate me." Obama was a follower of 20th-century American theologian Reinhold Niebuhr, who held a rather Hobbesian view of the world as a struggle among self-interested groups. (It was Niebuhr who wrote, "God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference.") The current president built a foreign policy on extreme restraint while addressing his own set of geopolitical anachronisms: the United States' relationships with Iran and Cuba. 

convictions：信念
trampled：権利を踏みにじる
horde：一団
aggravate：悩ませる
theologian：神学者
Reinhold Niebuhr：ラインホルド・ニーバー（1892年6月21日 - 1971年6月1日）は、アメリカの自由主義神学者、政治や社会問題についてのコメンテーターである。1920年代に左派の牧師として登場し、1930年代には新正統主義へと立場を変え、どのように傲慢(英語:pride)の罪が悪をこの世に作りだすかを説明した。そして、キリスト教的リアリズムとして知られる神学に影響を受けた哲学的な考え方を作りだした。 ニーバーは、現実に取り組むことのない空想的な理想主義（ユートピアニズム）を非難し、1944年『光の子と闇の子』では以下のように書いている。 「

正義を取り扱うことのできる人間の能力が民主主義を可能にする。しかし、不正義に陥りがちな人間の傾向が民主主義を必要とする。」 1945年以降、ニーバーのリアリズムは深化したとされ、結果としてソビエト連邦と対峙するアメリカの支援に彼を導いたとされる。 キリスト教的な教義と結びつけられた、外交問題についてのリアリズム及び近代的「正しい戦争」についての提言によって、長きにわたって社会的な影響力を保持した。

Hobbesian：トマス・ホッブズは、イングランドの哲学者である。17世紀の近世哲学にあって、ルネ・デカルトなどともに機械論的世界観の先駆的哲学者の一人であり、バールーフ・デ・スピノザなどとともに唯物論の先駆的思索を行った哲学者の一人である。
serenity：平静
restraint ：自制・節度
anachronisms：時代錯誤

オバマは中東がその外に勢力を伸ばそうとするのでれば、アメリカの権利が侵害されるだろうという危機意識を持ったいた。また、同盟諸国もアメリカに協力すべきだという考えも持っている。オバマはイランとかキューバの関係に見られるように、彼自身の地政学的な時代遅れの考えを自制して、外交政策を行なってきた。

確かにトランプになったからと言って、アメリカの外交政策の基盤が全く変わるというものではない。その基本的は姿勢はオバマと変わることはないだろう。ただ、今までの制裁とか、ロシアとの経済関係は大きく変わるだろう。NATOにおけるアメリカの位置付けも変化するに違いない。３０％もアメリカが負担してきているが、それも変化するだろう。オバマと違うのは中東政策においても積極的にロシアと組んでISILを消滅させるだろう。

月曜日。昨日は１月出版の小説の校正、前書きあとがきの作成。水曜日の慰安婦の修正、追加。今日１日は来年の水曜日の海野塾のプログラムの修正。慰安婦の修正。本書き。本読み。ではまた明日。

Driving a Hard Bargain
Trump sees it as his mission to repair the social contract with the American public by bringing manufacturing jobs back to the United States. This will be easier said than done, however. Across-the-board tariffs against big trading partners, such as China, might have worked 20 years ago but not in today's globalized environment. Raising import tariffs now could cause the price of goods no longer produced domestically to skyrocket and disrupt international supply chains, turning many U.S. businesses into pawns in various overseas trade wars. 

Across-the-board tariffs：関税一括引き上げ
pawns ：人質

It could be argued that China depends more heavily on exports than the United States does and cannot afford to risk its vital supply lines in a major confrontation with the world's most powerful navy. This, in effect, leaves Washington with the upper hand in its trade tussle with Beijing. In the search for additional leverage against China, Trump has shown a willingness to expire Washington's "one-China" policy, a holdover from the Cold War that dodged the question of Taiwan's statehood to drive a wedge between the Soviets and Communist China. 

upper hand：優勢になる
tussle：取っ組み合い
leverage：影響力
holdover：残留物
dodged：避ける
statehood：国家であること
wedge：関係を悪化させる

But that's just one side of the equation. China has twin imperatives to maintain access to export markets and raw materials and to prevent an outside power from blockading its northern coast through the Taiwan Strait. If Trump's policies interfere with these objectives, Beijing has levers it can pull to retaliate. Should the United States play the Taiwan card to try to exact economic concessions from Beijing, China can strong-arm U.S. companies operating on the mainland. 

equation：難しい問題
imperatives：責務・急務
retaliate：報復する
exact：要求する
concessions：譲歩
strong-arm：に暴力を振るう

Beijing can also use its enormous economic clout over Taiwan — whose semiconductor manufacturing and assembly industry is tightly intertwined with the mainland — to threaten a disruption to the global tech supply chain. Furthermore, as its recent seizure of an unmanned U.S. naval drone illustrated, China can flex its maritime muscle, albeit cautiously, to raise the stakes in a trade dispute with the United States. Though Trump would rather leave it to regional stakeholders such as Japan and South Korea to balance against Beijing, his compulsion to correct the United States' trade relationship with China will draw him into stormy security waters in the Pacific. 

disruption：混乱・中断
flex：筋肉を動かす
stakes：緊急性を高める
compulsion：衝動

A Different Kind of Negotiation
Just as Trump regards the one-China policy as a relic of the Cold War worth revisiting, he intends to update Washington's relationship with Moscow. As Trump sees it, the United States is not fighting an existential battle with Russia deserving of Cold War-era collective security commitments. Russia is no longer preoccupied with forging an empire under an ideology that is anathema to Western capitalism. Instead, Moscow is focused on the more basic task of constructing a national identity and insulating the state and its borderlands from Western encroachment in anticipation of greater domestic turmoil to come. 

relic：遺物
existential：存在の
anathema：嫌悪の対象 
insulating：絶縁する
encroachment：侵害

トランプは中国に関税をかけると言っているが、２０年前ならともかく、現在は不可能だ。サプライチェーンもさることながら、中国からの輸入品が高騰してしまう。中国もアメリカへの輸出に依存しているので、アメリカの海軍との諍いを起こしたくない。トランプが一つの中国に対して、今までの慣習を破ってきたが、中国はアメリカとの交易が大事ではあるが、その件に関しては報復に出るだろう。トランプが南シナ海にどう対処するかと一方で、ロシアとの関係に着目する必要がある。ロシアは以前のように西側諸国に敵対してはいない。彼らは自国の国益を守ることにその基本的なスタンスを置いている。

トランプは台湾とやりとりを通じて、習近平に南シナ海での軍事基地の建設に対してフェアな交渉をしようとしている。関税の話もブラフに過ぎない。ロシアとの交渉を通じても中国に圧力をかけるだろう。米中蘇の連携とパワーバランスを図っていくだろう。

日曜日。昨日は海野塾があった。午前中は高橋講師がお休みだったので、私が慰安婦の講義を行った。今日は一日、来週の慰安婦の資料レビューと本書きだ。ではまた明日。

The Trump Doctrine: A Work in Progress
Geopolitical Weekly DECEMBER 20, 2016 | 08:02 GMT stratfor

トランプの基本方針　仕掛り中だ。




Commentators among the Washington establishment have been quick to dismiss President-elect Donald Trump's foreign policy moves outright over the past few weeks, but his actions merit deeper exploration than knee-jerk disbelief. (JEFF SWENSON/Getty Images) By Reva Goujon 

outright ：完全に
merit：注目に値する
exploration ：検討・調査
knee-jerk：とっさの
disbelief.：信じられないようなこと

The world is in a "frenzy of study," Henry Kissinger said in a recent interview. At home and abroad, strategists and pundits are trying to piece together a blueprint of American foreign policy under U.S. President-elect Donald Trump from a stream of tweets, some campaign slogans, a few eye-catching Cabinet picks, meetings at Trump Tower, and a pingpong match already underway with Beijing. Highbrow intellectualism can be a handicap in this exercise. 

frenzy：取り乱している
pundits：有識者
piece together：断片をつないで全貌を知る
picks：選択すること
Highbrow ：知的な
intellectualism：知的追及への傾倒
handicap：不利な条件

Commentators among the Washington establishment have been quick to dismiss Trump's foreign policy moves outright as erratic and self-serving over the past few weeks. In an op-ed entitled "Trump Failed His First Foreign Policy Test," for instance, columnist David Ignatius admonished the president-elect for the "hot mess" his phone call with Taiwanese President Tsai Ing-wen precipitated. Trump makes people uncomfortable. It's what he does best, in fact. But how this quality applies to foreign policy is a question that merits deeper exploration than knee-jerk displays of stricken disbelief. After all, as Kissinger noted in his Dec. 18 interview, "a president has to have some core convictions." 

erratic：気まぐれな
self-serving：私欲に走る
admonished：強く忠告する
mess：へま
precipitated：よくない結果を招く
stricken：苦悩する
convictions：自信・信念

So what are Trump's? From what we can discern so far from his upbringing, the trajectory of his career and the profiles of those who have infiltrated his inner circle, Trump prizes business acumen and a "killer" instinct for managing affairs. He has enough corporate firepower in his Cabinet to fill the next Forbes' list. By nominating ExxonMobil CEO Rex Tillerson as secretary of state, he has demonstrated his belief that tough deal-making — identifying sources of leverage and showing a willingness to use them — is the secret to running a country and presiding over the international system. 

discern：に気づく
upbringing：子供の教育
infiltrated：浸透する
prizes：大切にする
acumen：商才
presiding：先頭に立って対処する

Trump does not fear nationalism; he sees it as the natural and rightful path for every state, the United States included, to pursue in protecting its interests. He also seems to have internalized the idea that the United States is losing its competitiveness and that internationalist foreign policy is to blame. Finally, Trump apparently believes that U.S. foreign policy has become too predictable and overwrought with diplomatic formality. Better to say it like it is and call out institutions and conventions that have outlived their usefulness. 

internalized：を身につける
predictable：先が読めてしまう
overwrought ：緊張しすぎている
formality：かたぐるしさ
Better to say it like it is：率直にものを言ったほうがいいので
call out：喧嘩をうる
outlived their usefulness：それらがもはや役に立たなくなっている

This, at least, is the worldview at a distance. When we come in for a closer look, however, some of the cracks come into clearer view. In 1953, General Motors Co. CEO Charles Wilson was asked in his Senate confirmation hearing to become President Dwight D. Eisenhower's secretary of defense whether his decisions in office could end up harming his company. He answered that they might but that he could not imagine such a scenario since "for years I thought what was good for the country was good for General Motors and vice versa." In fact, what is good for a business will not always be congruent with the national interest. 

at a distance：ある距離を置いて
cracks：割れ目・欠陥
confirmation：指名承認公聴会
congruent：一致する

A company is answerable to its shareholders, just as a president is answerable to some degree to Congress and the American public. But the mission of the CEO — maximizing value for its shareholders — entails different considerations when pursuing the raison d'etat and preserving a social contract with a nation's citizenry. The latter entwines economic arguments with the social and moral obligations of the state, a nebulous territory where inefficiencies, compromise and the social consequences of massive deregulation are unavoidable. 

entails：を伴う
raison d'etat：国家的理由　通常は非難されるべき政治的または外交的行為が、国益を守るために正当化されること
entwines：絡み合っている
nebulous：漠然とした


トランプがどう外交政策を考えるのかまだ漠然としていてわからない。台湾の蔡英文に電話したことは今までの外交慣習にそぐわないという意見もあるが、彼はそれなりのビジネスマンとしての打算を考えているのかもしれない。ただ、企業の経営ミッションと国家の利益に対する対応の仕方は異なってくるだろう。そうした彼の対応に仕方がまだ見えないが、今までの外交政策を打破しようとしていることは明らかだ。

習近平は南シナ海のあちこちに軍事基地を作って、勝手に我が物顔に振舞っていることに対して、トランプはそれはおかしいと言っている。南シナ海が中国の海ではないということはUNCLOSが判決を出している。それに従わないということは善ではないと彼は思っている。そうしたアメリカの精神を彼は発揮しようとしている。日本はどうかと言うと、日本の精神が失われて久しいが、そうしたアメリカに日本はどう対処していくのだろうか？アメリカの政治はオバマから不連続線になった。日本とは違う路線になったが、日本が合わせていくような出れるではなさそうだ。

土曜日。昨日は１月出版の原稿のレビュー。午後からは研修資料のレビュー。１日多忙だった。今日は海野塾だ。明日はいちにち今週水曜日の研修のテーマであるComfort Womanの見直しを行う。スライドを５枚ほどつかしようと思っている。ではまた明日。

A second, and related, dead idea is that we live in an age of entrepreneurialism. Gurus including Peter Drucker and Tom Peters have long preached the virtues of enterprise. Governments have tried to encourage it as an offset to the anticipated decline of big companies. The evidence tells a different story. In America the rate of business creation has declined since the late 1970s. In some recent years more companies died than were born. In Europe high-growth ones are still rare and most startups stay small, in part because tax systems punish outfits that employ above a certain number of workers, and also because entrepreneurs care more about work-life balance than growth for its own sake. A large number of businesspeople who were drawn in by the cult of entrepreneurship encountered only failure and now eke out marginal existences with little provision for their old age. 

entrepreneurialism：起業家精神
virtues：美徳
offset：埋め合わせ
anticipated：予期する
outfits：組織
drawn：巻き込まれる
cult：崇拝
eke ：なんとか持たせる

経営の指導者たちは起業家精神を提唱して、企業の美徳を推奨しているが、実際には起業が減少してきているし、そうした企業の成長もだんだん停滞してきてる。

The theorists’ third ruling idea is that business is getting faster. There is some truth in this. Internet firms can acquire hundreds of millions of customers in a few years. But in some ways this is less impressive than earlier roll-outs: well over half of American households had motor cars just two decades after Henry Ford introduced the first moving assembly line in 1913. And in many respects business is slowing down. Firms often waste months or years checking decisions with various departments (audit, legal, compliance, privacy and so on) or dealing with governments’ ever-expanding bureaucracies. The internet takes away with one hand what it gives with the other. Now that it is so easy to acquire information and consult with everybody (including suppliers and customers), organisations frequently dither endlessly. 

roll-out：新製品の発表
dither：躊躇する

ビジネスはだんだん早くなっているということだが、果たしてそうであろうか。時間を無駄にしていることの方が多いのではないだろうか。インターネットは確かに情報を運んでくれるが、組織はそれらの情報の判断に躊躇している。

Flat Earth society
A fourth wrong notion is that globalisation is both inevitable and irreversible—the product of technological forces that mere human decisions cannot reverse. This has been repeated in a succession of bestselling books—most notably Thomas Friedman’s “The World is Flat” of 2005—and propagated in corporate advertising such as HSBC’s “The World’s Local Bank” campaign. But a look at history shows that it is nonsense. In 1880-1914 the world was in many ways just as globalised as it is today; it still fell victim to war and autarky. Today globalisation shows signs of going into reverse. Donald Trump preaches muscular American nationalism and threatens China with tariffs. Britain is disentangling itself from the European Union. The more far-sighted multinationals are preparing for an increasingly nationalist future. 

irreversible：後戻りできない
mere：単に
propagated：広める
autarky：自給自足国家

グローバリゼーションは後戻りできないというが、実際にはヨーロッパで百年も前にそうしたことが実現できていたが、結局、戦争になって、民族主義が浸透した。現在の世界がトランプの発言にあるように、そうした傾向のある。

The backlash against globalisation points to a glaring underlying weakness of management theory: its naivety about politics. Modern management orthodoxies were forged in the era from 1980 to 2008, when liberalism was in the ascendant and middle-of-the-road politicians were willing to sign up to global rules. But today’s world is very different. Productivity growth is dismal in the West, companies are fusing at a furious rate, entrepreneurialism is stuttering, populism is on the rise and the old rules of business are being torn up. Management theorists need to examine their church with the same clear-eyed iconoclasm with which Luther examined his. Otherwise they risk being exposed as just so many overpaid peddlers of dead ideas. 

glaring：明白な
naivety：素朴さ
orthodoxies：伝統的な考え
ascendant：支配的な
dismal：惨めな
fusing：結合する
furious：猛烈な
stuttering：つまる・どもる
iconoclasm：偶像破壊
overpaid：お金をもらいすぎの
peddlers：誤情報を言いふらす人

経営コンサルタントの考えは古い考えに基づいていて、今の時代にあっていない。そうした古い考えはMartin Lutherがカトリック教会にしたように、今まで培ってきた偶像を破壊するしかない。グローバリゼーションがいい例だ。今そうしたことが逆行しようとしている。新規事業も立ち上がりにくくなってきている。ビジネスのサイクルが早くなってきたというが、そんなことはない。そうしたことをもう一度見直す必要がある。

今、そうした偶像破壊が世界の政治に起こりつつある。ジョコウィドド、ドゥテルテ、トランプがそうだ。既存の制度としきたりを破壊しようとしている。ビジネスも一緒だ。そうした既成の事実とか、ビジネス規範とかが古くなっている。そうした歪みはどこかの時点で爆発するに違いない。私自身はもともとそうしたタイプの人間なので、コンサルタントをすることができた。今そうしたことを意図した教育事業を英語で行なっているが、こうした今まで築いてきた慣習を壊すのは容易ではいない。そうした政治家が何人も出てきたことは今の現状が相当ひどいということだろう。

金曜日。昨日は高校の忘年会があった。久しぶりに、本を書くことができた。本も読めた。昨日からHistory Warsを読んでいる。今日は朝から英語の研修資料のレビューがある。今日はComfort WomanではなくChina Disparityだ。今日一日はその資料の作成だ。ではまた明日。

Management theory is becoming a compendium of dead ideas
What Martin Luther did to the Catholic church needs to be done to business gurus
Dec 17th 2016

経営理論が死んだアイデアの概論になっている。
Martin Lutherがカトリック教会にしたことがビジネスの指導者たちにする必要がある。



NEXT year marks the 500th anniversary of the event which, more than any other, gave birth to the modern world: Martin Luther promulgated his 95 theses and called the Catholic church to account for its numerous theological errors and institutional sins. Revisionist historians have inevitably complicated the story (including questioning whether he did actually nail his proposals to the door of All Saints’ Church in Wittenberg) but the narrative remains clear. The church was ripe for change. It was sunk in corruption and divorced from the wider life of society. And by unleashing that change, Luther brought the Christian faith, including Roman Catholicism itself, a new lease of life. 

promulgated：普及する
inevitably：必然的に
complicated：難しくする
nail：釘で止める
narrative：その話
ripe：機が熟した
divorced：切り離されている
unleashing：解き放つ

The similarities between medieval Christianity and the world of management theory may not be obvious, but seek and ye shall find. Management theorists sanctify capitalism in much the same way that clergymen of yore sanctified feudalism. Business schools are the cathedrals of capitalism. Consultants are its travelling friars. Just as the clergy in the Middle Ages spoke in Latin to give their words an air of authority, management theorists speak in mumbo-jumbo. The medieval clergy’s sale of indulgences, by which believers could effectively buy forgiveness of their sins, is echoed by management theorists selling fads that will solve all your business problems. Lately, another similarity has emerged. The gurus have lost touch with the world they seek to rule. Management theory is ripe for a Reformation of its own. 

obvious：納得する
seek and ye shall find：「尋ねよ、さらば見出さん」［聖書：マタイ伝7−7］
sanctify ：神聖化する
clergymen ：聖職者
feudalism：封建制度
cathedrals：大聖堂
friars：修道士
air of authority：権威ぶって・もったいぶって
mumbo-jumbo：呪文のようなわけのわからない言葉
indulgences：寛大さ・寛恕
fads ：一時的な流行

Management theories are organised around four basic ideas, repeated ad nauseam in every business book you read or business conference you attend, that bear almost no relation to reality. The first idea is that business is more competitive than ever. Skim popular titles such as “The End of Competitive Advantage” (by Rita Gunther McGrath) or “The Attacker’s Advantage” (by Ram Charan) and you will be left with the impression of a hyper-competitive world in which established giants are constantly being felled by the forces of disruption. 

nauseam：嫌悪感
Skim：ざーと目を通す
disruption：混乱

A glance at the numbers (or indeed a trip on America’s increasingly oligopolistic airlines) should be enough to expose this as fiction. The most striking business trend today is not competition but consolidation. The years since 2008 have seen one of the biggest-ever bull markets in mergers and acquisitions, with an average of 30,000 deals a year worth 3% of GDP. Consolidation is particularly advanced in America, says a report in 2016 by the Council of Economic Advisers, which also showed how companies engaged in consolidation are enjoying record profits. Technology is high on the list of industries that are concentrating. In the 1990s Silicon Valley was a playground for startups. It is now the fief of a handful of behemoths. 

oligopolistic：寡占の
consolidation：統合・合併
fief：封建領地
behemoths：巨大で強力なもの

Martin Lutherが五百年前にした宗教改革が今のビジネスを指南する人たちに適用できるという話だ。今のそうしたビジネスでは競争がだんだん激しくなると言っているが果たしてそうだろうか。こうした話には４つの考えからなっているのでそれを解説している。最初が競争だが、それは違うと言っている。合併が今の巨大な企業を作り出しているのが、特徴だと言っている。

コンサルティングビジネスは絶えず、顧客に問題意識を喚起しないと仕事にならない。顧客もその内情はいくらでも改革の余地がある。経営者はそこに気がついていない。コンサルタントはそういうことを知っているので、ともかく顧客に取り入らなければならない。この記事はそうしたコンサルタントの言っていることがおかしいと言っているが、私から見ればセールストークを変えようと言っているだけのような気がする。３００億円を削減しますから１５０億円をくださいというのが、コンサルだが、企業側は本当の３００億円も削減できるのかということが知りたいのだ。それがここでのセールストークの入り込み方のような気がする。

木曜日。昨日は海野塾があった。なんとかComfort Womanの講義を数ページだけ終えた。というのはあまりの膨大な資料をザーッと見てきたので、情報を整理するだけでも３０分もかかってしまった。多分一週間の準備で、７０時間以上は費やしただろうか。何が正しくて、何が間違っているのかがはっきりしているものは説明した。根本的にComfort Womanそのものは日中戦争では小さい事件だということがわかった。

大きな事件は日本の敗戦につながることだが、大本営が食料調達を現地の農民から行えと言ったことで、結局、現地の農民を虐殺し、レイプしたことだ。それが日中戦争の敗因だったように思う。そうしたことは上海事変以降に起こったようだ。それまでは日本は蒋介石と和平を進めようとしていたのだが、どうも日本の側に勝てそうだという山っ気が出てしまったようだ。そして、帝国の軍規がそこらへんから乱れた。

そっちの方がもっと大きな問題なのだが、南京大虐殺も含めて、中国がそうしたことを指摘しないのは当時の戦争は蒋介石の国民党軍が戦争していたので、毛沢東の八路軍は戦っていない。だから、中国の人たちが何百万人も死んでも、何も言わないのだろう。知らないからだ。来週28日ももう一、二回行う。テーマがやはり重い。こうした重いテーマは何度か行ってきたが、今回が一番重い。範囲が広いからだ。そして、嘘の話と本当の話が混在していて、その判断が大変だった。特定の記事の中でもそうしたことが混在していた。はっきりした嘘は指摘したが、わからないものが多く、それは参加者の判断に任せることにした。さて、今日は高校の忘年会がある。なぜか年末はとても忙しい。なぜだろう。ではまた明日。

Tillerson’s appointment reflects Trump’s view of foreign policy
Dec 14th 2016, 14:24 BY LEXINGTON

Tillersonの任命はTrumpの外向方針の考え方を反映している。



FIRST reactions to the nomination of Rex Tillerson as Donald Trump’s secretary of state have focused on the specifics of the Texan oilman’s record as head of ExxonMobil, from his closeness to the Russian government to his company’s stance on climate change. Defending his decision, President-elect Trump has pointed to a different, more general side of Mr Tillerson’s record: namely, that he has the brains and negotiating smarts needed to rise to the top of a large and complex multinational corporation. Mr Trump’s pitch is straightforward: he is building a government of world-class deal-makers, who will strike bargains and make America a winner again in tough-minded transactions with foreign friends, rivals and foes. 

specifics：詳細
Defending：弁護する
pitch：投球
strike bargains ：取引をする

Mr Trump may well have a point. Some of the criticism of Mr Tillerson seems to misunderstand the role of a corporate chief executive, and to assume that every business leader is the personal incarnation of the company that he leads. As CEO Mr Tillerson is answerable to his shareholders and has a duty to put their interests and those of his firm first. If confirmed as America’s top diplomat, he will be representing Mr Trump and his government. It is surely unfair to assume, without evidence, that Mr Tillerson would inevitably be a shill for the oil industry, or reach his conclusions about, say, sanctions on Russia based on what profits his former firm. After all, Colin Powell spent most of his career as an army officer, ending up as Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. But few predicted that he would put the interests of America’s armed forces first when he was appointed to run the State Department by George W. Bush. 

incarnation：具体化
answerable：責任が問われる
confirmed：承認する
inevitably：必然的に
shill：さくらになる

Lexington wonders, however, if Mr Trump is himself missing the point by stressing how transactional America’s foreign relations will be on his watch. That certainly fits with the property tycoon’s image and personality. He is a man proud of his ruthlessness, and his willingness to twist arms, extract concessions and drive the hardest of bargains. Even before his inauguration on January 20th the president-elect has shown a willingness to treat geopolitics like a trip to buy a rug in a bazaar. Only a few days ago he told a TV interviewer that he might be willing to abandon the One China policy—diplomatic code for the decades-old policy of refusing to acknowledge Taiwan as an independent sovereign state—unless he secures better trade terms from the mainland Chinese government in Beijing. That is essentially treating Taiwan, a dynamic, noisily democratic, pro-American island that is home to 25m people, as no more than a bargaining chip. 

fits with：にふさわしい
ruthlessness：情け容赦のない
twist arms：説得させる
bargaining chip：交渉の切り札

Keep that up, and your columnist wonders if the American people will forever applaud that sort of deal-making foreign policy. Mr Trump is betting that he will be wildly popular if his brow-beating and table-thumping ways bring jobs home to America, or make allies cough up more of the costs of hosting American military bases. Political scientists call that “output legitimacy”, jargon for a government which earns public support and loyalty by showing that it can get results. (The opposite is input legitimacy, in which governments claim support because they have a fresh electoral mandate.) 

brow-beating：おどす
table-thumping：テーブルを叩く
cough：しぶしぶ金を払う

But what if a global bully-boy approach makes foreign hackles rise, and trashes Brand America? Your correspondent is writing this aboard the military version of a Boeing 747 that carries America’s defence secretary around, on the last leg of a two-week, 25,000-mile round-the-world farewell tour. Though these are the very last days of the Obama administration, at every stop the reception accorded the outgoing defence secretary, Ashton Carter in Asia, the Middle East and Europe reflects years of American commitment to upholding global rules and some inchoate idea of freedom. From Japanese government ministers to the Afghan president or an Israeli general, every speaker thanked America for a certain selflessness in the way that it handles being the strongest country on earth. 

hackles：いきり立たせる
trashes：を壊す
inchoate：未完成の
selflessness：無私無欲

It is true that the slogan America First thrilled enough voters to get Donald Trump elected. It is also true that Republican supporters of Mr Trump like to compare him to Ronald Reagan, gleefully predicting that he will use his rhetorical skills to sell a hard-edged conservative agenda to the public. But one of the reasons that Reagan was so loved by his countrymen was that he made them feel proud to be Americans. He was a master story-teller who delighted in recounting tales of American heroism and selfless virtue. Are Americans ready to stop being the shining city on the hill and become a transactional, self-first country in all circumstances? This blogger has a hunch they are not. 

thrilled：ワクワクする
gleefully：大喜びの
rhetorical：大げさな
transactional：経済活動の
self-first：自分のことを最優先に考える
hunch：でないという気がする

TrumpがTillersonを国務長官に指名したが、彼がExxonMobilのトップだったからと言って、石油のことを優先することはないだろう。そんなことよりも、今後の課題はトランプ自身の外交政策にある。例えば台湾の独立を彼は外交カードとして考えている。これは彼のビジネスマンとしての背景からだ。彼の不動産での経営を彼の外交政策に持ち出して、かなり強引なやり方で進めていくことになるだろう。そうすればそうした交渉に反発する国がでてくることになる。

ともかく、世界がどう反応するかわからない。彼自身も経営者だから、強引な駆け引きと懐柔策を双方心得ているはずだ。政治家としての経験がないが、彼の今までの慣習にとらわれない行動が注目されるだろう。今までの保守的な政治家は嫌われることになる。果たして日本はどうだろうか。答えはどうも明らかなようだ。

水曜日。　昨日は研修資料の準備をした。今日は海野塾がある。テーマはComfort Womanだ。今週は力がはいった。ではまた明日。