Turn of the dial in the Gulf region
Wednesday, October 4, 2006 at 2:48PM In many ways, it's amazing how much remains in play in the Middle East thanks to the Big Bang Bush laid upon the region.ARTICLE: "Shiite Politicians Grow More Critical of Iraq's Government," by Sabrina Tavernise, New York Times, 2 October 2006, p. A7.
ARTICLE: "In Northern Iraq, A Rebel Sanctuary Bedevils the U.S.; In Wake of Kurdish Attacks Against Turkey, Washington Is Caught Between Allies," by Philip Shishkin, Wall Street Journal, 2 October 2006, p. A1.
ARTICLE: "Fatal Clashes in Gaza Over Unpaid Salaries," by Steven Erlanger, New York Times, 2 October 2006, p. A9.
OP-ED: "The Key to Afghanistan: More Time," by Jim Hoagland, Washington Post National Weekly Edition, 2-8 October 2006, p. 5.
ARTICLE: "U.N. Force Is Treading Lightly on Lebanese Soil," by Michael Slackman, New York Times, 25 September 2006, p. A1.
ARTICLE: "Growing Unarmed Battalion in Qaeda Army Is Using Internet to Get the Message Out," by Hassan M. Fattah, New York Times, 30 September 2006, p. A6.
ARTICLE: "Report Cites Bid by Sunnis in Bahrain to Rig Elections," by Hassan M. Fattah, New York Times, 2 October 2006, p. A3.
OP-ED: "An Offer Tehran Can't Refuse," by Ted Koppel, New York Times, 2 October 2006, p. A23.
I never anticipated Iraq would be easy. When I described it in the original Esquire "Map" article, I said, "As baby-sitting jobs go, this one will be a doozy, making our lengthy efforts in postwar Germany and Japan look simple in retrospect." I also said in the later Iraq country entry: "Question of when and how, not if. Then there's the huge rehab job. We will have to build a security regime for the whole region."
For the life of me, I do not understand why there is no effort, especially from our quarrters, to create some CSCE-like (Council for Security and Cooperation in Europe that served as regional security forum for East v. West in the Cold War) entity for the region. Why is there no regional security dialogue that involves all the local players, plus the major outside powers?
You can say it happens in the UN, but that's saying almost nothing. You can say the outside powers cooperate on Iran, but that's only over one single issue (WMD).
Meanwhile, Iraq is coming apart (no big surprise, as the Sunnis are forced into accepting the same reality the Serbs were once forced to swallow--it's all gone and it's never coming back again), but that means--at a minimum--a multilateral conversation that involves the Turks, the Iranians, the Jordanians, the Saudis and the Syrians.
The West Bank and Gaza continue their downward slide, and now Israel is turning an eye once again toward settlements. Again, there is no multilateral regional security forum where that is discussed.
You have UN troops in Lebanon after Israel invaded. That also gets you Syria at the table, and probably Jordan.
Hoagland says more time is needed in Afghanistan. Hell, it's needed throughout the region, and a security forum that puts everyone around the table is a great place to buy such time.
You've got an election scandal brewing in Bahrain, where the government is apparently granting citizenship to any Sunnis it can lure from neighbors. Why? It fears the majority Shiia will be emboldened by recent events in Iran, Iraq and Lebanon. Doesn't that sound like the kind of thing a regional forum might address?
Shiia getting uppity across the dial, Sunni al Qaeda sympathizers pushing propaganda like never before across the web, Iran stepping into a MAD-like stand-off with both Israel and the U.S., both of which would definitely light the place up--with good reason--the minute some terrorist group flashed that it had a nuke and was willing to use it.
I understand that the Arab League gets together regularly and does less than nothing on every issue under the sun. I'm not talking about locals just talking to locals.
I understand the G-7 has talked this up several times. I'm not talking about outsiders just talking to outsiders.
I'm talking about locals plus the outside powers of interest in a forum where we finally get past the annual grandstanding BS we see in the UN General Assembly.
Instead, we get ass-covering foreign policies from both locals and outsiders, with the U.S. leading the pack. Bush and Rice are sitting on top of easily the most fluid and interesting and full-of-potential regional diplomatic situation we've ever faced in the Middle East, but what have we seen from them? Where are the bold strokes and stunning breakthroughs? Where are the inconceivables pulled out of hats by Rice shuttling back and forth in a jet?
Nothing. Nada. Not even an attempt. Not even a floater. Not a thing from this super-bold president and his universally acclaimed Secretary of State, who, like the previous, is racking up non-acccomplishment after non-accomplishment.
Think Kissinger or Nixon or James Baker or Bill Clinton would be sitting on their hands throughout this whole thing? Just staying the course?
I know you can find me dozens of regional experts who will tell you nothing of the sort is possible, for more reasons than I can count. The same regional types would have told you the same about all the diplomatic breakthroughs of the past right up to the moment until they happened.
I guess I just remain stunned that no one proposes anything of this sort, despite everything currently in play in the region, despite its huge importance to the global economy, despite the huge investment of military effort and the accompanying dangers of spreading jihadism.
I mean, Bush wastes his political capital on all sorts of stuff that never gets him anywhere (like loyalty to this or that person in his cabinet) and his second term is disappearing. What in God's name does the man have to lose at this time?
Reader Comments (7)
I'm not a Bush hater, but the problem to me seems to be that this guy is not remotely capable of dealing with complex issues. He's not retarded, but his intelligence is average or below average. He would not even be hired as an intern for a congressman. Consequently, he's wholly dependent on his "gut" (believing some basic Reaganesque (in his mind) tenents and then relying completely on the voices of 3 people: Condi, Cheney, and Rumsfeld. He simply can't even begin to understand the various sides to an issue so he has to stick to one thing. He then explains this away as being Churchhillian and being put in the right place by God. When the truth of the matter is that he has been in over his head since day one.
I don't believe one minute that Bush is even clear on the difference between the Sunni's and the Shiites let alone anything remotely as complex as what you are talking about. Other than education in Texas (and possibly baseball) this President has no ability to analytically look at any issues.
"What in God's name does the man have to lose at this time?"
Well that's the issue, isn't it. Once God whispers in his ear that he should maybe do something about Palestine, then he'll act. Not before.
Glad you’re not a Bush hater. Yeah right, the man graduated from Yale. Remember Christopher Hitchens’ observations about people that make these kinds of jokes.
I do think that he has a couple of problems.
1. Trouble communicating his vision and message. Consequently you get accusation of no plan and stay the course. I don't mean the way he actually speaks either just that the staff as a whole can't seem to craft a bumper sticker way of saying what he is trying to accomplish. Americans need something short, sweet and effective.
2. He has let the politics of the moment freeze him into a place of always defending why he invaded and trying to convince people that things are going ok. Let the underlings do this the President needs to focus on other things. This has also focused his attention too much on Iraq when there are other issues that need dealing with.
3. In other issues (immigration, social security etc.) he tries for the long term fixes. You can definitely see his MBA training in these areas. But no short or mid range solutions. I think that this comes off a little in his foreign policy as well.
I think Dr. Barnett is right on many of things that he says have been left undone. Then again the President has had to refocus the entire nation from its pre-9/11 status the whole time fighting off the other party.
Hello, Tom Barnett:
Since catching part of your most recent briefing covered by CSPAN a month or so ago, I've been reading a lot of your work and find it compelling and interesting. It simply resonates to me and is an excellent big picture view of the world.
Against that backdrop, I'd like to wonder what would happen if you thought differently about Mr. Bush and his response to terrorism. I was a scientific administrator in the CDC for four years (1998-2002) after a career as a university professor. While my rating was considerably below the President's (a branch chief) even my limited experience in the Fed introduced me to an entirely new set of problems that are unique to executive power. I summed this up in my mind with the line: you're always the smartest guy in the room when it's not your job. I can't tell you the number of times I'd have an interaction with a "citizen" who could tell me how I could do a better job if only I'd do Something Else. Problem was, most of the time I'd already considered that Something Else and it wouldn't work because I knew that Senator Fussbudget would raise holy hell if we did that and the good Senator sat on our Appropriations Committee. Or even past that bureaucratic self interest, I knew that the Something Else would fail because it conflicted with Federal law or regulation or some other force of nature even the lowliest Fed knew, but which was not obvious to a "citizen."
Stated another way, when it's not your job, you often don't have anything remotely approaching a good grasp of all the functional facts that are in play. You can't because it isn't your job. (And, if you had any training in social psychology, you might recall attribution theory and the actor-observer effect which demonstrates that the psychology of being either an actor or an observer strongly biases your responding.)
I'm not suggesting here that you should stop thinking or writing critical thoughts about Mr. Bush's policies, but rather try to think more like an actor instead of an observer. I know that you are not the President and that none of us can do a real good job of trying to "act" like the President, but given your incredibly creative mind, I think you might develop radically different perspectives, concepts, and operations if you pretended to be the President and approached the world from that perspective. And when I suggest "pretend" I'm not talking Hollywood here where it is just a character, but rather approach it from a life and death perspective as if your career success and ability to support your family depended upon your effectiveness as President. You've got to get re-elected. You've got to work with the House and Senate and keep all elements of your base on board.
I suspect that in your briefings you regularly get a tight smile from some poor Fed-ish executive branch guy (whether it is the big fish or just another shark in the pool). That smile probably means they really like your idea and if they tried it they know they'd get killed. If you could truly act the part, you might say things that would wipe those smiles off their faces.
In closing, I'm waiting for Amazon to deliver "Blueprint for Action." I enjoyed the heck out of the "Pentagon's New Map."
Steve: you have a point. there is much that insiders don't know and many unseen obstacles.
otoh, if institutionalized politics as usual gives us no leadership and stubbornly remains locked in partisan battles, then inspiration must come from the people, even from the grassroots. we need to break some of these political 'realities'.
part of Tom's mission is simply describing reality as it is. people ask if leaders are reading and subscribing to his vision. Tom says 'wrong question. does it accurately describe reality?'.
plus, Tom was in the civil side and (sort of) got drummed out for being *too* influential.
i dont' speak for Tom. i'm just the lowly webmaster. but i don't see big dividends from thinking more about how the President can operate from inside his box.
Hello, Sean Meade:
Your last sentence reminds me of a line from Arthur Koestler's "Darkness at Noon" where he writes, "A revolutionary should never think through the mind of another." And, to the extent that one is a revolutionary who wishes to engage in revolution, then thinking inside the box or through the mind of another is a counter-revolutionary act and to be avoided.
Revolutionary thinking, however, requires a committment to not only think about changing the world, but also actually changing the world. To be revolutionary in thought, but not in deed is to engage in the politics of the unelectable.
I get a very strong sense that Tom Barnett wants a different world and seeks action to that end. I don't get a sense, however, that Tom's model is revolutionary meant as a total overthrow of the status quo and the implementation of a new system. Everything I read strikes me as a "comparative advantages" case in debate terms. You want to maintain the structure of the status quo, but make changes in elements to obtain a comparative advantage. For example, the Department of Everything Else would have a cabinet level secretary and sit at the big table along with all the secretaries of Justice, State, Defense, Commerce, etc. in other words, the status quo. We're not talking a new form of government.
Now, if this line of reasoning is accurate, then it is vital, imperative, crucial, really damn important, that we do think inside the box or think through the mind of another (in this case the minds of the Founding Fathers and those who made a major contribution to America). We want to maintain the status quo in large measure, but make real changes in action within that status quo. I'd argue that if you try to think like a revolutionary under these circumstances, you are bound to end up in the politics of the unelectable - ideas that are fun and interesting, but wouldn't be a winning platform for a candidate running for dog catcher. Your revolutionary ideas may attract a crowd, generate commentary, and even make a living for you - and all of that is fine - but if you want change . . .
My argument depends upon how we understand the term, "revolutionary." I'm assuming that there is a large box of status quo within which Tom's model operates and thus at an important level, one must think like a President if one wants to create the possibility of real change occurring. If, however, "revolutionary" means a total overthrow of the existing order and the implementation of a new system, then my argument is long winded and misguided, criticisms of my thinking that my wife has provided to me many times.
Steve,
again, major disclaimer: i do not speak for Tom.
i think that's a pretty good assessment: much of Tom's vision would work within the status quo.
as far as 'revolutionary', it depends what one means. Tom's ideas are not 'new', mostly. but they are a unique synthesis of military, economics, demographics, etc. in that sense, Tom does want to 'revolutionize' people's thinking.
Tom often talks about how the Grand Strategist needs to be nonpartisan, pushing wherever he can. and, as we see from his posts today, he won't hold back on criticizing anyone. i see him as an 'equal opportunity' critic ;-)
Tom sometimes has a chance to brief politicians or reply to their specific inquiries, but that's about as 'political' as he gets.
however, beyond being a 'thought leader' and revolutionizing that way, Tom is bringing the revolution as one of the principles at Enterra Solutions. he always expects the private sector to get more done and move faster than the public sector, and he practices what he preaches.