Handicapping the Gap - Again

In addition to the series of entries I want to pursue between now and the release of my book, or what I'll call "The Back Story of the Pentagon's New Map," I want to start another product line that's more current events focused. This one will see me returning to my infamous "list" of troubled states around the world, which I first generated with the PNM article for Esquire roughly a year ago.

When I wrote "The Pentagon's New Map" for Esquire in March 2003, Mark Warren, the executive editor of the magazine, had me gin up a list of trouble-spots around the world ("Handicapping the Gap"). It was fairly easy to do, because I write such lists up and send them as emails to colleagues on a regular basis. I often trade such lists with my old mentor at the Center for Naval Analyses, Hank Gaffney, simply as a way of keeping sharp on the full range of global events.

When I generated the first draft of the list, I just cranked it out like any old email and sent it to Warren, telling him it was just an outline of sentence fragments, and that he could use it as raw material to create genuine paragraphs. I did that because I assumed that was what he wanted in the end, and I thought I'd give him first crack at generating just the right tone for the article, since it was his idea in the first place. Well, he tried to do just that several times, but ultimately gave up, saying he was never happy with the style once the terse bullets were refashioned into paragraphs. So he simply went with the raw email text I sent him in the first place. I was sort of shocked by this at first, because the tone was so unexpurgated and blunt, but Mark decided that was exactly what the piece needed.

Anyway, the list almost got as much attention as the article. I received emails from all over the world going on and on about this or that line in each entry, often from interested parties living in the country itself. Two German newspapers (Freitag und Die Zeit) both ran op-eds that took their cue from individual lines. Freitag's story (23 May 2003) was entitled, "And then there's AIDS" ("Und ausserdem gibt es da AIDS"), which was a tag line I stuck on to my entries for Congo, South Africa, Russia, China and India. Die Zeit's piece (22 May 2003) was entitled "Der Babysitter kommt im Kampfanzug" ("The Babysitter Comes in Khakis/Military Uniform"), referencing my line that the former Yugoslavia republics would continue to constitute a "long-term babysitting job for the West."

Those were the two stories I know about from abroad. Most of the emails I got presented arguments for why one country or another should be considered part of the Gap or not. That was the touchiest subject for the Office of the Secretary of Defense. Esquire's first thought was to have me identified in the byline as Assistant for Strategic Futures, Office of Force Transformation, OSD. But when my boss in OFT, Art Cebrowski read through the world round-up list of comments, and saw that line about Saudi Arabia ("The let-them-eat-cake mentality of royal mafia will eventually trigger violent instability from within."), we quickly decided amongst ourselves that I would just go with my Naval War College byline. That made me feel instantly better. I knew Mark Warren liked the bluntness of the tone, like it was a raw intell feed (it was reprinted in several such Internet list-serves), but I could just see me defending myself over every little line if the OSD byline was used, and I didn't want the headache. As I said at the time, "It's good to be double-hatted."

Another problem with the handicapping list was that many in the world took it as proof that the Bush Administration actually has a list of countries to invade as part of the Global War on Terrorism (as if!). When the German intellectual magazine 'Blaetter fur deutsche und internationale Politik' reprinted the article translated into German (May 2003 - thus triggering the newspaper coverage in Germany), the editors introduced it by basically saying that the "Handicapping the Gap" list answered the burning questions of "Who's next?" and "Where next?" They also noted that Colin Powell, when interviewed previously, vigorously denied the existence of any such "list" ("Nein, es gibt keine Liste.") It was both hilarious and sad to me that German intellectual circles felt themselves so desperately in the dark that they grabbed for my "handicapping" list as "proof" that the Bush White House had a roadmap of military invasions hidden away somewhere ("Oh, but if you, lowly OSD functionary, care to publish it in Esquire, be my guest!"). But all that was said was that this administration was doing a poor job in explaining the reality of the world as we find it today - that fundamental difference I describe as the Core versus the Gap, or where globalization has taken root and where it has not.

Of course, the legend of the "list" has only grown with America's decision to re-intervene (yet again) in Haiti, because (as many email senders have pointed out to me in recent days), Haiti was at the top of my list. My original entry for Haiti read as follows:

"Efforts to build a nation in 1990s were disappointing - We have been going into Haiti for about a century, and we will go back when boat people start flowing in during the next crisis - without fail."

Wow, that was a bold prediction that saw me really sticking my neck out! Like prognosticating that somehow the Red Sox would once again find a way to lose a play-off series to the Yankees!

Thus, having reminded you of my unwavering capacity to see into the future, let me start another review of the planet and recent events. Consider it an updating of the "Handicapping" list. I will start with Haiti today and move onto to other states from the original list in subsequent posts, although I won't confine myself to just those states (next up - one of my Seam States to watch, Spain).