Dateline: Hyatt Regency New Orleans, Gulf Coast Military Expo 2004, 6 May

I delivered the following opening statement as a member of a panel discussion entitled, ìHow Do We Protect Our BordersóAnd Not Choke Trade?î Other panelists were Rear Admiral Robert Duncan, Commander, 8th Coast Guard District and Brigadier General John A. Yingling (US Army), Commander, Joint Task Force Six. The moderator was Dr. Scott Truver, Group Vice President, National Security Studies, Anteon Corporation.

Other than participating in this panel, I was at the expo to sign books and collect as many of those cool, retractable, security badge clip-on devices because my last one just broke and itís been a long time since Iíve been to a military expo where all the vendors give them away as souvenirs.

Oh, and it was cool to be in New Orleans, site of the last Green Bay Packer Super Bowl victory (January 1997), for the first time in my life. Too bad it came after virtually ten straight days of travel . . ..

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Since Iím fundamentally a grand strategist, Iím going to stick with what I know on this subject. So Iím going to keep my talk big picture and seemingly wildly off-topic for the vast majority of my allotted time.

Let me start off first by saying that Iím not a great believer that significant efforts should be made to secure our borders, certainly not to the extent that the U.S. Navy would divert any resources to the issue. I think the creation of the Department of Homeland Security was a mistakeóand by that I mean a strategic mistake. While I favor, like anybody else with half a brain, the notion that all the agencies involved in border control and similar efforts and infrastructure protection and nation-wide first responses should cooperate more extensively in the aftermath of 9/11, I think that the creation of the Department of Homeland Security was strictly a feel-good measure that really attacked the true problem set from the wrong angleómeaning geographically instead of functionally. I do believe our national security establishment is poorly arranged for the security tasks of the 21st century, a subject I explore at great length in my book, but I think cleaving the notion of security at our borders is pathetically old-fashionedóa perfect answer for the 19th century but just plain wrong for today. Instead, the bifurcation of security that we need to pursue is not one that partitions our concept of national security at our borders, but one that addresses the compellingly different tasks associated with waging wars and waging peace across the 21st century.

Let me tell you why I say that.

I see three fundamental responses to the threat of global terrorism, which I view as fundamentally linked to the expansion of the global economy over time, or what we call the historical processóas well as the historical conditionóof globalization. These three fundamental responses correspond to my favorite way of viewing any security issueóthat of breaking the problem set down to three different perspectives derived from Kenneth Waltzís masterpiece of international relations theory, Man, the State and War:

You look at the issue in terms of the role of individuals

You look at the issue in terms of state-based responses, or

You look at the issue in terms of the global community.

Three perspectives from bottom to top: individual, state, system.

On the level of individuals, you can seek to defeat terrorism by simply tracking these people down and killing them as quickly as possible, disrupting their networks wherever possible. This approach has limited utility, but obviously must be pursued with some vigor, for these constitute the individual skirmishes in a global war on terror, and warfare today is largely waged against individuals. We canít find traditionally-defined armies that will fight us anymore, and global war among great powers died with nukes, so today we fundamentally wage war against individualsóto wit, we went into Iraq looking for a deck of cards. Weíre still looking for a series of individuals in northwest Pakistan.

Tracking these guys down and killing them as fast as possible will only achieve so much and no more in the global war on terrorism. Simply put, we canít kill them fast enough. They can grow them faster than we can kill them. In fact, killing them helps them to regenerate their numbers more rapidly.

On the level of state-based responses, which is where the subject of this panel is logically located, the question is one of how far are we willing to go in firewalling America off from the outside world. I have grave doubts that this can be achieved to any degree of success pertinent to a global war on terrorism, with the costs suffered in terms of Americaís economic connectivity with the outside world far outweighing any appreciable gain in overall national security.

The discussions we have about making Americaís bordersóquote unquoteótruly secure strike me as being as fantastic as the discussions we have about a secure missile defense shield protecting the nation. In the end, I see lots of money wasted and little in the way of guarantees.

Moreover, I see unintended consequences that are far more enormous. For example, as this country ages demographically over the coming decades, we need to let in at least 500,000 immigrants each year, according to UN projections, simply to keep our peak labor pool size in tact (a number weíll hit around 2015). Just maintaining that standard will not stop the continuing slide of our Potential Support Ratio, or PSR, referring to the ratio of working-age people to those over the age of 65, but it will mitigate the consequences of that slide, and, with predicted productivity gains and retirements progressively delayed until around 70, will give us enough of a demographic cushion over the next 50 or so years.

The good news is we let in roughly 750,000 to 1 million legal immigrants each year, which is why the U.S. Census Bureau predicts that two-thirds of Americaís population growth between now and 2050 will be accounted for by Latinos immigrating into this country from Central and South America. Now, understanding that that image is mighty scary to old WASPS like my old professor Sam Huntington, we all need to understand that that inflow of humanity is crucial to this countryís long-term economic health, whether you like them or not.

But whatís the story since 9/11? We have good indications, reported recently in a page one Wall Street Journal story, that a significant diversion of immigrants coming up from Latin America is already occurring as a result of our tighter security. Where are they being diverted to? Europe, landing first in the Iberian peninsula for obvious reasons.

So, to stem the threat of transnational terrorism which is overwhelmingly Middle Eastern in origin and motivations, we have chosen as a nationóunintentionallyóto reduce our ability to attract Latino labor into our economy, possibly over the long term. Tell me this is an intelligent strategic transaction that weíre conducting with the outside world. Tell me this leaves a better America to my children.

In short, I donít see this pursuit of significantly more secure borders constituting a strategic victory in any sense of the word. Yes, we should pursue logical steps. Sure, the Coast Guard should be deeply involved, as should any other assets of the Department of Homeland Security, but I donít see any usefully increased role for the U.S. military, because I believe the diversion of such resources would draw the Pentagonís efforts from where they should logically be centered.

Which brings me to what I believe is the system-level or truly strategic response. What Osama bin Laden and Al Qaeda represent at this point in history is very similar to what a Vladimir Lenin and the Bolsheviks represented at another turning point in history, roughly a century ago. Ours is not the first truly globalized economy in history. Globalization has ebbed and waned as a worldwide process going all the way back to the years immediately following the U.S. Civil War. In the first great expansive period of globalization surrounding the beginning of the 19th Century, Lenin and the Bolsheviks sought to hijack a major portion of humanity from the grasp of what they saw was a fundamentally corrupt capitalist world system. In their success, they eventually isolated roughly one-third of humanity, generating tens of millions of deaths, and defining the great security challenge to the West over the 20th Century, known best by the phrase, the Cold War.

What Osama bin Laden and al Qaeda seek to do todayóin a strategic senseóis to drive the West out of the Middle East so that the Middle East can be driven out of the world, thus escaping all the pollutive cultural influences they believe accompany globalizationís inevitable and continuing penetration of the Islamic world. Like a Lenin who targeting pre-capitalist states for immediate capture, bin Laden has sought his initial wins in such pre-globalized states as Sudan, Afghanistan, and Pakistan. His dream is an Islamic world deeply disconnected from the global economy. His dream is basically one of civilizational apartheid. Like all would-be dictators, he promises to stop killing our people if only weíll give him those people he considers to be his own, to do with as he sees fit.

When the United States decides to topple Saddam Husseinís regime in Iraq and generate a big bang of political change throughout the Middle East, weóin effectóseek to deny Osama bin Laden his strategic goal. In short, we are in a race to connect the Middle East to the world at large faster than the al Qaeda can disconnect that region from the world outside. It is in this effort that we locate the truly strategic tasks and goals of this global war on terrorism. This is where the overwhelming majority of the Defense Departmentís assets should be directed over the next several decades, for this task of connecting the Middle East to the worldófirst in terms of security, then in terms of broadband economic connectivity, and finally in terms of political communityóshould constitute the primary goal of U.S. national security strategy in the first half of the 21st century.

As such, I see little utility in discussing an ìemergingî or ìgrowingî of even ìusefulî role for the Defense Department in either homeland security or homeland defense. I believe the can of worms we have opened in finally recognizing that we are at war with transnational actors hell-bent on stemming globalizationís progressive advance into the Islamic world is logically located exactly where the center of gravity of that conflict is foundóin the Middle East.

Therefore, any diversion of Defense Department assets in the direction of significantly securing Americaís borders is fundamentally a bad strategic decision. Iíve got to admit, I have heard some seriously brain-dead ideas coming out of some offices within the Office of the Secretary of Defense regarding this allegedly strategic goal, and most of them should be squashed before they go anywhere.

Hereís why: I see the U.S. military establishment reverting to the bifurcated structure it had prior to World War II, a subject I first proposed in a May 2000 article in the U.S. Naval Instituteís Proceedings, and have resurrected both in my book, The Pentagonís New Map, and in the just-appearing June issue of Esquire in my latest article entitled, ìMr. President, Hereís How to Make Sense of Our Iraq Strategy.î

My vision of the future of U.S. national security predicts that the Defense Department will split into a Leviathan-like force focused on warfighting, or basically a resurrection of the Department of War, and what I call a System Administration force focused on the everything else, or basically a resurrection of the Department of Navy.

A point I make in my book is that the difficulties we face today in Iraq are, in many ways, the result of poor investment choices we made in the Pentagon over the past decade and a half. In effect, the Pentagon spent the 1990s buying one military while operating another. We invested heavily in warfighting capabilities designed to defeat a major military opponent, like a Chinaósay 20 years down the roadóand yet the 1990s featured a huge rise in what are derisively known through the Pentagon as Military Operations Other than War, meaning all the peacekeeping, nationbuilding, crisis response and disaster relief. That workload jumped dramatically over the past 15 years, but the Pentagon refused to rebalance the force. Those investment choices, made year after year, has yielded the force we have today: one that could perform 3 to 4 Iraq-style takedowns a year but cannot manage even one Iraq occupation. In effect, we field a first half team in a league that keeps score until the end of the game.

That deficiency has got to be eliminated if we are going to achieve truly strategic victories in this global war on terrorism.

To that end, my definition of the emerging Sys Admin force is that it will absorb the majority of the U.S. Navy and Marine Corpsí current asset poolóin effect returning the navy to its historical role as day-to-day manager of global security and out of its Cold War-era fixation on great power war with a peer competitor. Sea Basing, not Sea Strike nor Sea Shield will define this Navy in the decades ahead. In short, the Navy is going to get back in the business of being the worldís Coast Guard, meaning the U.S. Coast Guard is going to get back in the business of largely staying at home, watching our borders.

So as I look ahead, I do not see a growing role for the Defense Department in either homeland security or homeland defense. I believe any such movement would constitute a serious strategic error in our long-range planning for a global war on terrorism, generating unnecessary costs to this countryís long-term economic growth and sapping our ability to lead the world toward the only global future worth creatingóthat of making globalization truly global and eliminating the disconnectedness that defines danger in this age.

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