Thomas P.M. Barnett

ARTICLE: "Oh God, am I just being neurotic? An author with an end-of-the-world tome due out suddenly finds himself panicking," by Mark Steyn, Macleans.com, 5 October 2006

Mark Steyn should shtick to the Chuck Klosterman-stuff. He's a very funny guy who comes to geopolitics from the the-ah-ter, just like Frank Rich. But where Frank's caustic with a purpose, I don't pick that up from Steyn, who seems more given to his inner Klosterman (whom I like a lot in Esquire; he just doesn't suffer the grand ambitions of Steyn to explain the world).

Plus, he's basically a one-note johnny with his decline-of-Europe-and-the-dark-hordes-from-Islam-threatening argument. Like most inclined to see Europe as the center of the universe, he believes its inability to deal with anything beyond their borders effectively marks the West's essential demise in the Long War. There is no East apparently worth mentioning in Steyn's world view, so my vision of Shrinking the Gap is cast aside as delusional. Why? We'll never talk Europe into it.

Poor Steyn thrusts without locating his target beforehand. If he had read beyond the clippings, he'd know I've never based my thinking regarding the SysAdmin force on winning over Europe--just the opposite. Hell, I've been calling on people to forget Europe and embrace the New Core going back to the spring of 2004 when PNM came out (my piece in WAPO). In BFA, I openly call for strategic alliance with China for exactly this purpose, pushing the argument in Esquire about as starkly as one can.

But Steyn misses all this in his apparent anger that I consider him a "racist buffoon." Racist, yes, but only in a sad, frightened sort of white-man way (What do these savages know of musical the-ah-ter?). I mean, as soon as I hear the "we're not having enough babies" argument, I just wince inside because I know where this line of reasoning is going. I guess if it's not French-on-French action, then you're technically running out of French. But then again, maybe Spanaird-on-French is still good, because then you're still cranking out baby Euros. But French-on-African (Or worse! African on top of French!), then I think you still must be losing the demographic battle right?

Feeling queasy yet? A bit titilated? Somewhat ashamed?

Relax. Steyn's delivery is much smoother and more seductive. It's racial solidarity designed to ennoble--hopefully to make you feel horny for the right kind of sexual partner.

"The seeds of our victory lie in the wombs of our mothers" ---Hamas.

So I guess all Steyn's doing is asking us white folk to go horizontal in order to get symmetrical with the threat.

Bring it on, mother-f--ker!

(Hey, that's not a bad slogan when you think of it: pithy and right to the point.)

Buffoon? Man, you gotta read him to make that call. I mean, Klosterman's not a buffoon because he's so in on the joke that he wears it like a skin, whereas Steyn has serious pretensions, as in, he wants to be taken very seriously but just can't bring himself to the point of staying serious. Perhaps that's just the show biz side he just can't shake.

I prefer to demonize demons, not entire races or religions (in Afghanistan, do you demonize just the Taliban, or do you recognize the thirst for knowledge and advancement as well?). Steyn's voice is important in that he plays nicely to European fears and the continent's preference for inaction. He so eloquently fatalizes every option, hence his new book is so very TEOTWAWKI (the end of the world as we know it)--seriously, he trots out that tired old phrase from the Y2K era!

I say, God bless the fear mongers and the racists. They give me a market niche.

Here's Steyn dagger-to-the-imagined-soft-underbelly of my argument.

At the other end of the spectrum is a hard-headed strategist like Thomas P. M. Barnett, author of The Pentagon's New Map: War and Peace in the Twenty-First Century and Blueprint for Action: A Future Worth Creating. Mr. Barnett divides the world into a functioning "Core" and a "Non-Integrating Gap" and favours using a "SysAdmin" force -- a "pistol-packin' Peace Corps" -- to transform the "Gap" countries and bring them within the "Core." He doesn't have a high opinion of yours truly -- he regards me as a racist buffoon -- and one is naturally tempted to respond in similar fashion. But, in fact, he talks a lot of sense -- up to a point. The trouble is, like many chaps who swan about dispensing high-end advice to international A-listers, he views the world's problems as something to be sorted out by more effective elites -- better armed forces, international agencies, that sort of thing. The common herd are noticeable by their absence in his pages. If he did give them any thought, he'd realize that his vision of a "SysAdmin" force -- European allies that would go into countries after American hard power has liberated them -- is simply deluded. Whatever the defects of the Continent's elites, the real problem isn't the lack of leaders but the lack of followers. The demographic reality is that Europe is running out of Europeans -- the deathbed fertility rates of the French, Italians, Germans, Spaniards, etc. is a continent-wide suicide bomb, a kind of auto-genocide in which one population is gradually yielding to a successor population unlikely to share American foreign policy goals in any parts of the world likely to catch Washington's eye in the next decade or three. Rather than the Continent's leadership class helping move countries from the Non-Integrating Gap to the Core, it's more likely that parts of Europe will be doing a Bosnia and moving from the Core to the Non-Integrating Gap.

Much like Bill Lind's lighting into me way back when, I keep wondering when these guys are actually going to read the books they reference. If Steyn did, he'd be embarrassed that his perceived critique of my concepts WRT to a reliance on European allies actually simply mimics the very same arguments I've made for years now on why we need to look to Asia and not to Europe for help in shrinking the Gap.

A possible explanation for the cultural blinders? Steyn is apparently Canadian, and like many Canadians, his world outlook begins with Europe and ends with those crazy Americans.

A forgivable but utterly irrelevant mindset for someone wading into geopolitics from the the-ah-ter, although I love Steyn's "everyman" references. It's such a short journey from "Broadway Babies" to blue collar, and he manages it with such un-self-conscious aplomb. Most proles I know didn't grow up on Jule Styne. Then again, I hail from the thriving metropolis of Boscobel WI, where Farmer's Day was the cultural highlight of the summer (tractor pulls are the NASCAR of the Midwest), so I should know better than go toe-to-toe with a master of the American songbook.

I guess we just have to blame Reagan for this sort of stuff. Once he turned politics into showbiz, it was inevitable that showbiz types invaded politics--even geopolitics.

Don't get me wrong. I don't advocate not reading the man, any more than I'd say never eat candy under any circumstances. Indulging in empty calories is fine in modest amounts. Just remember to get some real food in your diet now and then.

On a less snarky note: I would advocate reading David Brooks if you're looking for someone with that ability to explain culture and society plus a very realistic take on what this Long War is all about. Brooks is just as funny without being jokey. To me, he's the best broadband columnist out there right now--meaning most clippable.