The Concept of Seam

A key notion of mine with regard to the Core/Gap divide is that numerous ìseamsî mark the various divides that separate these two worlds within a world. The most straightforward expressions of this concept are Seam States that lie along the boundary between the Core and Gap. Now, admittedly, while I made a point of capturing roughly 95 percent of U.S. non-humanitarian crisis responses (1990-2003) within the Gap (meaning I drew my Gap boundary in order to keep the vast majority of those responses within the resulting shape), I did have some leeway in deciding exactly where the line fell.

Frankly, this seam was never much of an issue when I first drew the map, because that image was used solely within the context of a PowerPoint briefing designed to be seen by upwards of several hundred audience members in spaces as large as hotel ballrooms. That meant I kept both the map and the shape of the Gap itself rather bold and iconic. In other words, I would not (and really could not) say in every instance whether a country fell inside or outside the Gap. To me, the definitions of Gap and Core themselves were the key issue, not some strict roster of whoís in and whoís out.

Then William McNulty came into my life. Heís the guy who makes the vast majority of the maps for the New York Times, which is why my Core-Gap map made famous by Esquire and soon to appear in my book looks so much like a Times map. Esquire hired McNulty to create the map they used in the original article. When Mark Warren (my hired-gun editor) and I were working with Putnam in putting the book together, it seemed only natural to reuse McNultyís artwork, which I found very attractive (he, on the other hand, off-handedly remarked to me once in an email that I should basically fire the guy who did my graphics, something I tried not to take personally as the author of all my own stuff).

Of course, McNultyís stuff is so sharp and clean looking precisely because it is printed on paper and designed to be read close up, plus itís for the staid Times, so the lurid sort of colors I use in my PowerPoint brief are nowhere to be found. To say the least, though, I was very excited to have McNulty on the case, because I knew his version would give the map a whole new authority compared to my splashy, animated PPT rendition.

Then McNultyís dreaded emails started pouring in. He kept asking whether or not this or that state was inside or outside the Gap boundary. Unlike my PPT map graphic where individual country boundaries went unmarked, McNultyís map labeled each state, forcing me to decide on a case-by-case basis who belongs to the Gap and who does not. So I made some choices. In South America, I decided that everyone other than Argentina, Brazil and Chile were basically in the Gap. In southern Africa, I isolated South Africa from the rest of the continent, designating it for the Core (just barely). In Europe, I extended the line around most of the former Yugoslav republic, grabbed Romania, the Caucasus and all the Central Asian states. I did not go all the way eastward to include Mongolia though, and made a point in South Asia to include everyone but India, which, as a result extends into the Gap like the grand peninsula it is. In East Asia, I basically grabbed everyone save China, Taiwan, the Koreas (trapping North Korea in the Core) and Japan. Finally in the Pacific, I included all the island nations except Australia and New Zealand.

Not an exact science, obviously, but the resulting shape did strike me as a decent expression of globalizationís advance, or frontier. But the main point was, by encompassing 95 percent of U.S. crisis responses since the Cold Warís end, I had captured virtually all the major violence expressed across the system in the current expansive era of globalization. This is the natural global demand pattern for U.S. security exports once the Soviets had left the strategic scene.

Some of the seam that resulted from all these individual decisions was easy to define. For example, the Mediterranean itself is a key seam between Europe and Africa/Middle East. In my mind, then, several states that line this historic sea are classic Seam States, such as Morocco, Spain, Greece and Turkey.

Now one way I describe the importance of Seam States is to say that most of the terrorists we fear operate and are based within the Gap and thatóif they had their wayótheyíd bring their violence into the Core. To do that, these terrorists need to cross seams, both physical and virtual. For example, a border is a physical or geographic seam, whereas an airport and its attendant customs office is more a procedural or virtual seam. Truly virtual seams are what youíd think they are: stuff like the Internet, bank transfers, mail, etc.

Another way I like to highlight the Seam States is to say they represent the fundamental battle lines in this global war on terrorism: theyíre like the middle ground on a chess board, or the countries most likely to be either lost to the Gap or pulled into the Core. As international trade studies consistently show, proximity still determines a lot of economic transactions across the globe.

When al Qaeda struck New York and Washington on 9/11, they struck deep into the Core, pulling off a terrorist attack of great strategic depth and requiring a significant stretching of their necessarily complex logistical lines (complex because of the need to stay hidden from view). Up to that point in history, many security specialists, including me, remained relatively unimpressed with the fears voiced by some terrorism experts that eventually Middle East terrorist groups would develop the capacity to reach all the way to the U.S., because the heyday of terrorism in the 1980s saw their reach limited primarily to southern Europe, suggesting that even penetrating that shallowly into the Core was a real strain for them.

Why 9/11 was a real System Perturbation that threw the Coreís security rule sets into flux was because it destroyed that sense of strategic complacency. So the Core performed a significant rule set reset, tightening itself up, especially in terms of air travel. As a result, no significant follow-on terrorist attacks have occurred in the U.S. since 9/11, which is certainly an impressive accomplishment on our part.

But that tightening of security rule sets has forced al Qaeda to return to the Seam State focus that marked transnational terrorism in the 1980s, suggesting that once again the Mediterranean basin will be a hot spot of trouble, just in time for the 2004 Olympics in Seam State known as Greece.