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CORE THESIS: Around
the world, the “have-nots” are “disconnected”
from global commerce, and they pose a mortal threat. The U.S.
role is to lead, militarily where necessary, the “connected”
states in an effort to impose security and begin reconstruction
and development of those “disconnected” countries
and regions. This will require a radical shift in how U.S. policymakers
view their mission, leading to a completely restructured defense
establishment.
WRITING STYLE: Aside from the self-invented
jargon, this books offers an almost “There I Was”
style. It contains a good bit of biography and “insider”
stories about the Pentagon. One gets the impression that NEW
MAP is what the author almost says it is -- a book-length extension
of a heavy-duty Power Point presentation. It has some of the
feel of a typical DOD brief. Nonetheless, Barnett conveys powerful
ideas succinctly and with clear logic.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Thomas P. M. Barnett is a
senior researcher and professor at the U.S. Naval War College.
In partnership with Cantor Fitzgerald, Barnett directed the
“NewRuleSets.Project” (a multi-year effort to explore
how the spread of globalization alters the basic “rules
of the road” for international security). He also directed
the Year 2000 International Security Dimension Project and ran
projects for the Center for Naval Analysis and the Institute
for Public Research. In sum, he has gobs of experience and credentials,
but that hasn’t killed his imagination or sapped his energy.
WHO NEEDS THIS BOOK: (a) Anyone connected with
the White House who realizes that the President’s foreign
policy, while solidly designed, has been poorly described and
defended; (b) pundits who don’t have a clue about what’s
at stake in the “war on terror”; and (c) European
policymakers whose heads are not irrevocably stuck in the sand.
WHO SHOULD STEER CLEAR OF THIS BOOK: Anyone who has
a vested interest in the world one recalls from before 9/11/2001.
This means a person with economic or power positions threatened
by events and demands since then. But “vested interest”
also refers to individuals and groups that are psychologically
dependent on a bygone era and in denial about the need to change,
which by definition means trading the security of the known
for the insecurity of the unknown.
ABOUT THE REVIEWER: Don Morrissey worked on
Capitol Hill during 1980-95, where he helped fund and organize
anti-Communist counterinsurgency activities in several countries
including Afghanistan. He is now a legislative strategist with
expertise in the financial-services industry. Reactions welcome
at DonaldJMorrissey@aol.com
For those
who like traditional book evaluations, here’s a longer
take…
THE PENTAGON’S NEW MAP
by Thomas P. M. Barnett
Since an earlier Bush Administration introduced
it in 1991, the phrase “New World Order” has done
much to help conspiracy theorists. The rest of us went through
the 1990s wondering: “New World Order, huh? What is Dat?
And where does the United States fit in?” This reasoned
and sometimes brilliant book is the best single place to find
workable long-term answers. Barnett’s key contribution
is building a bridge over the torrent of today’s events
(war on terror, globalization, cross-Atlantic finger-pointing)
to what he calls “a future worth creating.”
Much of today’s debate exposes a disconnect (about the
size of the Grand Canyon) between the immediate — “global
war on terror” — and the longer term. The latter
requires defining and executing the critical role for the United
States in the new era of globalization. Some smart-alecky critics
of the Iraq war claim that terrorism is process, not a place.
Ergo, why are we in Iraq? Barnett makes the connection between
the process (terrorism) and shows us the place -- where it is;
why it is; and what we need to do about it.
But first, a slight digression. NEW MAP’s second chapter
contains a paragraph future Presidential candidates and every
pontificator on the “war on terror” need to memorize.
It is the most concise description you will find of the military
aspects of the global war on terror: “[T] his global war
on terror is simultaneously fought across all three of the levels
I cited earlier: Network war across the global system to disrupt
terrorist financing, communications, and logistics; state-based
war against rogue regimes that harbor or support such terrorist
groups; and special operations that target individuals for either
capture or -- when dictated by circumstances -- serial assassination.”
That’s it in a nutshell. We are experiencing the clarity
of a nuance-free zone. And that was only the author’s
preamble.
In the new era of globalization, according to Barnett, the fault
line is not “north vs. south” or “rich vs.
poor” or “communist vs. capitalist,” but “the
Functioning Core” and “the non-integrating Gap.”
The “Core” countries and regions live within, or
try to move towards, the mutually understood and accepted “rule-sets”
that provide global stability and prosperity. The countries
or regions in the “Gap” either can’t or won’t
do so.
Listen to Barnett define the bifurcated world. A region or a
country in the “Core” can (1) “accept the
connectivity and can handle the content flows associated with
integrating one’s national economy to the global economy”;
or (2) “seeks to harmonize its internal rule-sets with
the emerging global rule of democracy, rule of law, and free
markets”; or is (3) “administered by a single dominant
party that — in fairly technocratic style — engineers
a systematic, state-directed economic development strategy.”
The “Gap” is where none of this exists.
Okay, this time in plainer English. Security, the rule of law
and institutions not only allow you to interact with your neighbor,
but your neighbor’s neighbor, his neighbor’s neighbor,
and so on. No matter what the geographical distance, you have
commerce: Ideas, people and things all move relatively freely
and under mutually understood and accepted rules. With true
commerce, you have connectivity. If you are “connected,”
you are part of the “Core.” Without security, and
lacking laws or institutions that allow you to connect to the
middle, long, and sometimes short end of the neighbor’s-neighbor
chain, under mutually accepted rules, you fall into the “Gap.”
This is where you have mass murder, rape and pillage. (I’m
not sure in which part of the world Hollywood fits.) It’s
also where you tend to have despots, theocracies, warlords and
just plain thieves doing the “governing.” (Again,
the Hollywood question arises.)
Now for the kicker: in a post-Cold War world, virtually all
wars, terrorism, and terrorists come from the “Gap.”
Thus, the key national security and foreign-policy objective
for the United States, over the coming decades, is to systematically
shrink the “Gap.” We need policies that move individuals,
families, tribes and nations out of it. Since many will prefer
to stay where they are, this means transforming several regions
and environments.
Multilaterism Yes, Exit Strategies
Probably Not
First, Barnett wants the U.S. to educate domestic audiences
and also our “Core” allies as to why the rule-sets
of globalization are critical to global stability and prosperity.
By definition, a “functioning Core” works on a degree
of consensus. Thus the imperative to consciously expand the
“Core” (or shrink the “Gap”) needs a
degree of consensus and commitment.
Barnett lays out part of this explanation: “I think four
things need to be spelled out clearly to both our citizens and
the rest of the Core: (1) that arms control as we have known
it for decades is now dead and buried; (2) that it is not a
question of ‘when’ unilateralism makes sense, but
‘where’; (3) that while it’s okay for America
to — in most instances — get the ball rolling on
specific security threats within the Gap, eventually all jobs
there are multilateral efforts; and (4) since there is no exiting
the Gap militarily, there is no such thing as an exit strategy.”
Second and more important, the U.S., as the only power capable
of doing so, must take the lead in advancing these “rule-sets”
inside the “Gap.” This is where Barnett’s
long experience with force structure and strategy (grand as
well as military) come into play. To take the lead in a systematic
and long-term way, Barnett favors changing the U.S. military
force from its current structure to two different forces:
- The first is called “Leviathan”
and “would be a smaller, deadly military organization
with technological superiority.” Not unlike the forces
that operated in Afghanistan and Iraq (at least in Iraq from
March to May 2003). This force would tackle rogue regimes
and its special-ops component would handle the individual
cadres not defined within rogue regimes. This force would
be the spear-tip in the thrust to lay down the first security
“rule-sets” where they do not exist today.
- The second, called “Sys-Admin,”
would be civil-affairs oriented and network-centric, providing
resources and technical expertise for old or new friends in
need. They would be the follow-on resources to maintain the
security rule-sets and help initiate the reconstruction and
development activities to allow “connectivity”
to take root. Here is the force that has been, or rather should
have been, operating in Iraq from May 2003 on.
This military transformation, and all it entails,
plays to Barnett’s strong suit. He tells the tale much
better than a Web review can convey. What matters is that he
has thoroughly thought through the structure and activities
necessary to carry out his key mandate: That the U.S. role in
the New World Order is to lead the imposition of rule-set changes
in those parts of the world where today’s norms either
thwart global stability or are non-existent.
What About China, Russia, Fundamentalist Culture?
I like where Barnett has ended up (can’t you tell?) --
yet no single book with NEW MAP’s ambition could be completely
convincing. Accordingly, after appreciating the book’s
neat and clean strokes, a reader begins to wonder about…well,
“gaps” in the new scheme. Let me briefly mention
three:
First, Barnett is too sanguine about the ability of the U.S.
to “connect” the “unconnected” world
through imposition of “peace” (security rule-sets)
and support for commerce (globalization). Some people don’t
want to be connected (Al Qaeda, most Middle Eastern rulers)
and are willing to kill and die to stay disconnected. Followers
of Osama bin Laden are the most radical of those who are “resisting
change” not because globalization will squeeze their enterprises,
but because they see their sacred values as being under siege.
No matter how well we follow Barnett’s strategic imperative
to shrink the “Gap,” an irreducible number of peoples
and/or countries will hate us not for what we do, but for what
we are. How do you solve that?
Second, he is disdainful of any threats to U.S. security that
appear outside the “Gap,” including the biggest
one I see: China. It would also be wise to account for potential
tensions with a revitalized “nationalist” Russia.
Third, since his forte is military, he comes up short on saying
anything about the non-military institutions and policies that
need changing to address the world as he sees it. If anyone
thinks that institutions such as the State Department, USIA,
CIA, AID, IMF, World Bank or NATO are capable of effectively
addressing the world Barnett describes, they need to send me
whatever prescription medicine they are taking. More on the
need for widespread institutional change in the next segment.
Working the Plan Before You Have Worked
Out the Plan
Barnett is calling for a basic change in the strategic framework
of U.S. foreign policy -- akin to the changes that occurred
between 1945 and 1950. This also entails managing a change in
the structures that undergird policy.
The strategic framework that governed the following four decades
is contained in “NSC-68” (National Security Memorandum
#68), which became official on April 14, 1950. But The Truman
Administration had begun to function under some of its principles
when confronted with Soviet attempts to dominate war-torn Europe,
several years before NSC-68 became policy.
Starting in 1947, the Truman Administration delivered military
and economic support against the communists in the Greek Civil
war. It acted covertly in the Italian political and economic
environment to prevent a Communist takeover in 1948. During
1948-52, the Marshal Plan lifted Europe from wartime ashes and
allowed it to be a bulwark against Soviet expansionism. Truman
and his people also reorganized the U.S. military and national-security
apparatus with the National Security Act of 1947, which among
other things created the NSC, the CIA and a new, separate military
service, the Air Force.
Similarly, Barnett credits the Clinton Administration, in the
post-Cold War era of globalization, with actively taking “the
lead in enunciating the overarching economic rule-sets that
guided globalization’s advancing across the 1990s.”
He credits the current Administration with recognizing that
“globalization’s security rule-sets need to catch
up with its economic rule-sets.” This includes the actions
in Afghanistan and in Iraq, as well as efforts by the Pentagon
to begin “transformation” of the military.
So a rough parallel emerges. The United States in both cases,
following the end of a war, reacted to a crisis in ways that
are congruent with a strategic framework – but without
having the name. And by changing the strategic framework, it
becomes necessary to change the structure and apparatus of the
government to accomplish that new “mission.”
Barnett does a good job of describing and applauding what he
sees as the U.S. military’s efforts to initiate and manage
the change that goes along with the new strategic framework.
His book does not offer much on how the other cultures and institutions
of U.S. foreign policy will need to change, or how each set
of responsible officials will execute that change.
The “change process” we’re witnessing today,
in policy and structure, is similar to that at the start of
the Cold War. Rather than being seamless, it takes place in
fits and starts. And the lesson from 1945-50 is that the “framework”
of policy might not be fully in place before the structural
changes are accomplished -- or vice versa. Barnett appears to
believe that, if you follow the logic of his strategic framework,
then managing the structural change will become obvious. Without
mentioning Peter Drucker, he affirms the latter’s prescription
from the business world: “Structure follows strategy.”
But I think the author’s biggest contribution is implicit:
Until the U.S. understands and manages a change in its basic
strategic foreign policy outlook, the wrong questions will continue
to be asked; and the wrong measurements will continue to be
used to define the relative “success” or "failure"
of U.S. foreign policy.
From the NEW MAP perspective, media coverage of activities in
Iraq and Afghanistan has mostly dealt with the wrong things.
The author states that “the fundamental measure of effectiveness
for any U.S. military intervention inside the gap must be: Did
we end up improving the local security sufficiently to trigger
an influx of global connectivity?… Increasingly, our military
interventions will be judged by the connectivity they leave
behind, not the smoking holes.”
A last point about the “education process” advocated
by Thomas Barnett: “Until the Bush Administration describes
the future worth creating in terms ordinary people and the rest
of the world can understand, we will continue to lose support
at home and abroad for the great task that lies ahead.”
Exactly. THE PENTAGON’S NEW MAP is a stab at creating
the NSC-68 for this “era of globalization.” And
an impressive one.
_________________________________________________
Feedback is welcome by reviewer Don Morrissey
– write to
DonaldJMorrissey@aol.com
For a lively Providence Journal account (from March
2003) of author Barnett’s background and advocacy methods,
see
http://www.nwc.navy.mil/newrulesets/Projo%20profile%20of%20Barnett.htm
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