Reviewing the Reviews (Reno-Gazette Journal)

The Reno-Gazette Journal Online

Found this one thanks to a Google search. My comments follow:

Author offers new paradigm for the 21st century

R. GRANT SEALS

SPECIAL TO THE RENO GAZETTE-JOURNAL

6/5/2004 07:55 pm

Thomas P.M. Barnett is a senior military analyst at the Naval War College in Newport, R.I. He has a doctorate in political science from Harvard and has advised both the Pentagon planners and high-level civilians on war and peace, terrorism and security. His studies of the past decade or so have led him to formulate a theory that seems to explain the new post-Cold War world. It also seems to explain some of the Bush administrationís approach to Iraq.

His theory divides the world into two distinct areas: those affected by globalization and those not affected by globalization. The countries affected by globalization include Canada, Mexico, Brazil, Argentina, Europe, Russia, India, China, Japan, Australia and, of course, the United States. Countries not affected by globalization include northern and western South America, most of Africa, the Middle East, Southern Asia (excluding India), Southeast Asia, Indonesia and Malaysia.

The countries affected by globalization are termed ìconnectedî in terms of information flow, ideas, people and trade and are called the ìFunctioning Core.î The countries not affected by globalization are termed ìdisconnectedî or ìfunctioning in disconnectedness.î They fall under the ìNon-Integrating Gap.î By and large, these countries are governed by dictators or have authoritarian governments that serve to keep the populace ignorant of world trends. For instance, after the United States toppled Saddam Hussein in Iraq, one of the very first things that happened was the spread of cell phones, which Saddam had strictly prohibited. In his new book, ìThe Pentagonís New Map: War and Peace in the 21st Century,î Barnett includes a map that shows the division between the two world areas.

The Functioning Core is stable. The countries in the Non-Integrating Gap that are disconnected from globalization are unstable and allow bad actors such as Osama bin Laden ìto flourish by keeping entire societies detached from the global community and under their control,î so says Barnett. Barnett goes on to say that eradicating disconnectedness becomes the defining security task of the 21st Century.

Barnett also sees this as an opportunity. Fighting global terrorism must be subordinated to spreading economic globalism around the planet. The new strategy of preemption must be a means to the larger goal of complete globalization. ìWhen all other reasonable measures fail, we bring war pre-emptively to entities seeking weapons of mass destruction for use against us or our allies. . .. We bring war against any entities that threaten global stability by threatening or waging war against key pillars of that (global) economy, to include the Persian Gulf economies.î He believes our warfare must be directed at despots, not at people. He proposes two types of ìarmies,î the conventional type, which wins wars, and the new type, which rebuilds countries and economies. We do not now possess the new type.

Finally, Barnett says overwhelming force is our ace in the hole and is the hallmark of the American way of war. Past experience has taught us that committing forces in a piecemeal fashion puts U.S. personnel unnecessarily at risk. This seems to be a part of Barnettís theory that the U.S. Department of Defense did not follow. He bemoans going it alone and running the risk of members of the Functioning Core permanently withdrawing their support.

His book is worth reading and may become the document that defines the West or the Functioning Core in the 21st century as the philosophy of containment did for the Cold War in the 20th Century.

R. Grant Seals is emeritus professor of agricultural biochemistry and emeritus associate dean at the University of Nevada, Reno. He is a regular contributor to the Opinion page.

COMMENTARY: A very explanatory sort of review, which is interesting to me primarily because it draws so much from the section ìThe American Way of War,î a portion of Chapter 6 thatís never really been treated before in any other review. His use of the term ìaffectedî in describing my definitions of Core and Gap troubled me a little bit, because of its imprecision: every state is affected by globalization, but not all of them can handle those effects well or even desire them to occur. But since he gives such a nice plug at the end, making the direct comparison to the containment strategy of the Cold War, it would seem petty to harp too much over that one term. Overall, he takes a complex book and gives a very straightforward rendition of the main concepts. Given the limited space and his kind words at the end, you gotta like it.