Robb and Barnett: talking about Open Source War

Agreeing to disagree

John Robb wrote a NYT op-ed, The Open-Source War. Tom Barnett blogged a commentary:

Interesting piece on diagnosis, but implied prescription is wrong, in my mind.

In the Global War on Terrorism, the temptation, like in all other long struggles, will be to mirror image the enemy on supposition that his asymmetrical challenge must prevail. But just pushing our "open-source" proxies into wars against our enemies threatens to replicate colonial struggles in the Gap between us and rising New Core powers like China. It is the ultimate in "playing their game" if we let that struggle, which we will obviously engage as required, define our center of gravity in the GWOT.

Remember, super-empowered individuals can rule vertical scenarios temporarily, but it takes states, and all their resources, to rule horizonatal ones. In short, don't confuse disruption capacity with rule-making capacity. To believe the former rules all is to engage in what that battle-tested revolutionary, V.I. Lenin, called the child-like belief that the right bomb in the right place at the right time changes everything. Modeling ourselves on OBL's and Al Qaeda's infantilism isn't the answer. Building the bigger open-source net is. This is my A-to-Z rule set on processing politically bankrupt states.

Creating better rules is how we win. By doing so we attract good citizens and good states, slowly but surely. Killing symmetrically is gratifying, but ultimately pointless. Reformatting their world so that their cause dies is the real victory. Not a matter of making it like our own, but simply making it connective in a deep sense with the outside world, so that individuals can choose their level of connectivity no matter what the authorities say or do.

So I say, bet on numbers. Bet on bigger networks. Bet on growing the Core and, by doing so, restricting the enemy's operating domain.

Information technology analogies are great, but they do not constitute tactics, much less strategy. The winning remains the same: kill their bad guys and replace bad governments with good. Don't confuse the friction with the formatting. Don't confuse skirmishes with campaigns. Don't confuse their asymmetry with our disadvantage.

In the end, we win as we always do: with stuff. Capitalism bribes off its enemies with wealth. Worked in 1848 in Europe and it's worked ever since.

Fourth Generation Warfare is the diagnosis, and it's a good one. But it will never be the answer because it sees only about 10% of reality. We need to wage peace from the outside in, spreading connectivity, not wage war from the inside out, hoping for democracy. We will never win in Iraq. Globalization will. What we wage now in Iraq isn't war. It's a holding action for history, which isn't so much on our side as constantly on our ass. Globalization is the ultimate horizontal scenario, the ultimate open-source net. Resistance is futile, but it will remain all some people have. They will die in a form of political-military evolution: the decline and disappearance of the unconnectable.

4GW adherents believe our enemies can play the waiting game, but it's the other way around. Time is on our side. You can tell simply by the perversity on their side. It signals their nihilism, or the realization that they cannot win.

As for Robb's notion that Iraq proves the fallacy of arguing for the SysAdmin, this is the analytical equivalent of a tautology, and I was surprised he made it. Arguing a non-attempt as proof of the concept's failure is just plain weak, which is probably why he tacked it on the end of the piece with no explanation. The SysAdmin was applied in Bosnia and Kosovo. Someone please point out the civil wars still raging there.

Chins up. The gloom-and-doomers always prevail in newsprint. They don't, however, in history.

Robb writes interesting blogs, a pair of them. On a daily basis he comes off less dark and more analytically balanced, but as so often happens when dark siders have to sum up in print, this one was dark seemingly for the sake of being dark. There is no way out in this piece. Many consider this realism, but in reality there is always a way out.

And, of course, John blogs back:

Tom Barnett writes a critique of my article. Here's my rebuttal. I agree with Tom that globalization will win in Iraq, eventually. Our dispute is solely on how we get there. It isn't a contest of light (light) and dark (pessimistic) views. We are both optimistic about the future.

Where do we differ? Tom views our future through the lens of the state. I don't. I view the world as a complex network of dynamic flows that only begrudgingly heed the dictates of the state (and often treat those dictates as damage to be routed around if they are not in alignment) -- in short, Friedman's flat world. This viewpoint translates into our approach to solutions. He's sees Iraq as a non-attempt at state-sponsored nation-building and I see it as the best attempt that this approach could muster.

In the long view, everything will likely work out. However, the path we take to get there matters. A short-term, heavy-handed approach will put us into unworkable situations. This is precisely the case with Iraq. We have boxed ourselves into a very difficult situation that may end in a Pyrrhic result. It may be inconvenient to point this out, but that is the reality of the situation.

Change in the future requires a decentralized approach and success will be measured in small steps that mitigate risk and improve system function. It will not come from reckless system shocks and grand schemes of reconstruction -- these only serve to fuel the workable but sub-optimal solutions posed by our open source competitors. Remember, in this networked-world both states and guerrillas gain power through their influence on global supply chains. Let's not give them the window of opportunity to do so.

So Tom says:

I would just say, go easy on Flat World. Freidman never argues the irrelevancy of states. As Martin Wolf points out, as does every economist on globalization, the most globalized economies feature the biggest govs, highest tax rates, and most regulation. OSW flourishes, as opposed to OS software itself, in nonglobalized environments only, where govs are weak. In good states it's just crime and lone wackos and LEA a plenty. Inside my Core, OSW remains a nuisance to be managed, not a defining threat. So to win ultimately, we expand that reality while shrinking the enemy's operating domain.

Yes, fight fire with fire in the weeds (the 10k terrorists we estimate we must manage, along with thw 80-90k at-risk pop), but that struggle alone never becomes an organizing principle for DoD. Instead, reformatting the Gap does. So "no flavor of the month," but inescapable reality. C-terror remains niche, otherwise we risk losing all by engaging weaker enemies symmetrically, throwing away all the economies of scale our magnificently networked economy provides.

Of course, John responds:

Thanks for the feedback Tom.

Just a clarification, I am not saying that states are irrelevant either. I do think that they are diminished in this century and should be much more careful about how they utilize the resources they have available. Moderation is the key to long-term survival.

Your old core isn't vulnerable to OSW yet, but your new core is. It's right on its doorstep. How long before it hits? I wouldn't discount this as a nuisance.

Okay, okay. . . he, Tom, isn't discounting. . . at least not yet. He's on the road, but wants to keep this thread alive. In the meantime,comments go here.. . . . ..