Robert D. Kaplan reveals how Colonel Tom Wilhelm, one of the new breed of soldier-diplomats, is doing things in Mongolia. It is a story of both good American policy, and how an American man moves through the world and does good for us (and the Mongolians). It is a story that reads better than most fiction, and Wilhelm’s work there will have large consequences for what happens to Mongolia (and China and Russia) over the next twenty or thirty years. It also explains something about why there some Mongolian soldiers in Iraq as a part of the Coalition. Sweet coffee is recommended.