Brother from another planet reviews PNM and BFA

Justin Logan of the Cato Institute sends me his dismissive review of my two books that will appear in the Spring issue of Orbis, a journal I will confess I haven't been forced to read since grad school (and so I haven't).
Logan's is a classic realist/great power acolyte review of my thinking, and I am naturally found wanting, as in shallow, confusing, and just plain shoddy in my scholarship.
The last accusation is easy to level: I simply don't cite the books and authors he holds dear. In fact, I dismiss his beloved realism throughout, constantly citing the very name with ironic quotation marks.
Why is that?
Let me be as clear as possible: I was forced to swallow that realist/great power view of the world throughout four years at Wisconsin and six years at Harvard, and it never took. I found it bogus and bankrupt and a poor causal explanation for basically all of history. It was just too sterile, too narrow, and--worst of all--too insular. To read a realist's book is to be impressed with his scholarship, which consists solely of citing other realist authors' works ad nauseum and endlessly repeating the canonical statements from the accepted doctrine. If you don't cite, then your research is shoddy--by definition. And if you don't repeat, then your arguments and logic are anything but--you do nothing more than assert, my good fellow.
Isn't it interesting how when people like my logic, my book is full of scholarship and sound argument but when they don't, it's all very shallow and shoddy and full of assertions?
Reading this review is like reading a summary of a complex novel in another language by someone with 101 capability in translation. It's just plain goofy.
The whole connectivity argument is tossed because Al Qaeda obviously uses connectivity to fight back (internet and what not), and that alone proves that this conflict is not about connectivity. Hell, by this logic, once the Native Americans picked up fire sticks, it was no longer a clash of civilizations with opposing views of a future.
We are also told that Saudi Arabia is clearly incorrectly located in the Gap, because it's so connected to the global economy.
Yes, yes. Saudi Arabia is different only in degree from, say, the Norwegians with their oil.
So I and my vision are summarily dismissed as warmed-over Immaneuel Wallerstein core-periphery and resurrected Norman Angell delusions of economic connectivity ending great power war. These are the same two charges the realists fling each and every time, and they crush me so!
That Wallerstein argues a neo-Marxist critique of 1970s-era economic neo-colonization (almost swallowable back then, downright comical from the 1980s onward) in which the Core must keep the Periphery poorly connected, impoverished, and abused in order to remain rich while I argue the exact opposite . . . well, that's a silly detail that mostly involves economics, and the realists don't like economics, because it confuses their elegant views of great power billiard balls bouncing off one another on a cosmic pool table. Anyway, both Wallerstein and I use the word "Core," so cased closed for this grad-student-turned-research assistant to Ted Galen Carpenter at Cato.
As for Angell, his critique is alleged to have failed to explain and anticipate WWI, when nothing of the sort is true. He explained it's logical outcome just fine, and felt the logic of his argument to be so powerful that smart men would heed it. He was wrong only about the stupidity of "realist" leadership. Angell said that the European empires were so interconnected economically that if they went to war, it would be suicide that would decimate their empires and therefore they'd all be smart enough not to engage in such war, calling such a belief that war can be survived in that interconnected environment that was Globalization I (a crude sort of globalization based on the uncompetitive movement of raw materials from colonies to great powers, in which labor was very fluid but money not nearly so) a "grand illusion" (the name of his 1910 book; Angell later, in 1933, won the Nobel Peace Prize--the fool).
And so the typical realist take on my vision is that they've seen this all before with Angell. And since that theory proved false a hundred years ago, then so must mine. I mean, the realists already checked this logic out, right? That none of the European empires survived the disastrous civil wars of the first half of the 21st century, all of them being reduced permanently to second-tier powers, well . . . that doesn't prove anything.
But the bigger problem with the second-coming-of-Angell argument (which I address directly in BFA, naturally ignored by Logan) is that it ignores two profound facts: 1) this era's globalization is not a rerun of the European colonial model (where was global integrated production, R&D, etc. in Globalization I, or was that world economy as "flat" as today's, to use Friedman's term?); and 2) nuclear weapons killed great power war, yielding the longest period (still running with no end in sight) of no great power-on-great power war that the world has ever seen.
So yes, I am the second coming of Norman Angell. I'm just Norman Angell with nukes, and that's good enough for many in the field of international relations, but not the realists. Why? It simply spoils all their fun, not to mention renders useless their pathetic attempts to explain the Cold War.
It's hard to feel bad about this review, it's just so alien (and so gloriously grad-schoolish). Logan doesn't speak my language, doesn't see the same world, doesn't read the same stuff (I confess, I read newspapers that describe the world, not academic tomes that describe theories of the world--thus my naivete and confused logic). His critique disturbs me about as much as one from the Marxists, or that queer libertarian crowd.
I was actually invited to Cato by Brink Lindsey about two years ago. He had read PNM and thought it a perfect companion to his own, truly brilliant book on globalization (Against the Dead Hand), which I ended up using plenty in BFA (it's almost PNM's economic twin). Lindsey was taking over then as the new head of research at Cato, and he wanted to infuse the foreign policy/national security crowd there with some serious understanding of economics and globalization, which he felt was amply demonstrated in PNM. Our meeting was great. I was told to expect an invite to speak at Cato and that he'd be working hard to see if he could somehow get me a status on the staff, even if just adjunct.
I walked away from the meeting a bit incredulous. After all, Carpenter runs the foreign policy at Cato, and, for example, his new book is called The Coming War with China (Logan, BTW, was his research assistant, so you can imagine how "confused" and silly my arguments on China must have seemed to this dyed-in-the-wool realist-cum-libertarian pair). So the notion of Cato ever putting up with someone like me on the staff seemed a bit fantastic, as much as I appreciated Lindsey's thinking and his desire to improve the quality of the work that goes on there.
Naturally, I never heard back from Lindsey, and I can't say that I was disappointed or surprised. I would have loved to work with him personally, but why spend your career butting heads against the coming-war-with-China crowd. I mean, could there be anything less attractive or more pointless intellectually (ah, I spent my career slaying fantasies of a bankrupt ideology passed over by history!)?
International relations is a very big field. The realists like to pretend that they represent the intellectual high ground, so that their condemnations carry weight. And they do somewhat in my world, but only in a fairly narrow crowd that craves this logic as support for their own dreams of future war, with future fantastically expensive and large platforms, against fellow great powers. That crowd remains powerful in that acquisition realm, but its grip on thinking is rapidly dissipating throughout the rest of the defense community--most notably in doctrine. The Army and Marines that Abizaid, Wallace, Petraeus and Mattis are building and fielding and deploying and operating no longer live in a world the realists can recognize (thus the name calling from another era: "Wilsonian!" Angellite!"). These generals' definitions, forged by their careers, of competition and conflict simply do not synch up whatsoever with the realists' fantasies of the 19th century being rerun in the 21st (like all fundamentalists, realists retreat to an idealized past). They face a real opponent, not an abstraction, in a Long War that will not conform to realist definitions.
Thus, my attempts to describe that Long War as one of open, connected societies against closed, disconnected ones (and those transnational elements that would generate even more) is simply to be dismissed.
And I'm more than okay with that. Hell, I'm even proud.
Reader Comments (12)
Bravo! Nicely put rebuttal. Theory is still a necessary lens from which to view the world, but not when it causes so much distortion that one's mental picture does not reflect reality.
I have had great teachers and really lousy teachers. The great ones all measured themselves by how far the students ECLIPSED them as the world CHANGED. Not by how they stayed the same in the face of a different situation. Dinosaur mentality is, well, its, oh-for-get-it, its not even worth defining.
Mr. Barnett, the thing I find so striking about your analysis is.... its new, its original, it forces me into agonizing reappraisal even if I don’t want to and most of all - ALMOST ANYONE CAN UNDERSTAND IT! It brings the situation a kind of clarity so the non-professional can actually have an understanding if not an actual voice in the future.
Don’t sweat the hyenas - besides, ever see what they get to eat?
Bravo!
Robert
"The whole connectivity argument is tossed because Al Qaeda obviously uses connectivity to fight back (internet and what not), and that alone proves that this conflict is not about connectivity. Hell, by this logic, once the Native Americans picked up fire sticks, it was no longer a clash of civilizations with opposing views of a future."
I derived much guilty pleasure from this...it was my favorite thought of the lot!
Tom,
This was one of your best rebuttals ever.
One that had resonance with me no less for having been been forcibly dragged through that Wallerstein crap in grad school.
Well Mr. Barnett, I place myself politically amongst that "queer libertarian" crowd and am obviously (I surmise from your comments) of Mr. Lindsey's bent. I haven't read his book but I will head directly to bn.com to purchase a copy after posting here.
As I respect your work immensely, I'd appreciate a 60-second-elevator-ride encapsulation of your thoughts on the Libertarian crowd if you don't mind. You see, I find that as wacked as some Libertarian's are, they simply have greater faith in individuals to self-govern themselves than either of the big parties. At election time, I find myself combing the ranks of Dems and Republicans to find anyone for whom I can vote...but 99% of the time I wind up looking elsewhere for candidates who uphold people's rights to make their own decisions and live with the results.
In my opinion, with some minor exceptions, your "realpolitik" theories of foreign policy are the best example of applying America's power in the world in which we now live (not the one we wished we inhabited) - and therefore are not unpalatable to pragmatic Libertarians. I will grant you that many Libertarians are idealogues whose fantasy views of government are simply unworkable in the world as it is...but please don't think the group is so homogenous and speak of it negatively as a collective.
If you have spoken on the failings or strangeness of Libertarian political beliefs before, please just reference me to the appropriate blog and that'll do. I respect your busy schedule.
"Realists" mostly aren't; they make a fetish of the worst aspects of "stability" and fatalistically rationalize the worst aspects of foreign policy.
None of the great changes in the global situation came from anyone following a "realist" platform (arguable exception: Nixon/Kissinger & China).
Realists would have us cut all sorts of sordid deals with disreputable regimes, surrendering our own interests to advance theirs, on fatalistic grounds. To the Realists, we're C3PO, and the Realists Han Solo telling us to "let the Wookie win".
Realism might provide some insights, of a purely technical sort, into how players interact in the international arena. But as a blueprint for foreign policy, they're much worse than the much-derided NeoCons, who at least have a positive vision and a path - albeit a bumpy one infused with still-to-be-learned-lessons - forward. Realists will just tell you endlessly why nothing can be done - except putting our better interests (by which I mean our more positive ones) on the back burner and not mentioning them because they upset various regimes that "we must deal with".
And yah it was realists following the logic of realism that brought us such wonders as the Great War. . .and yah, the same that will give us War With China. Plus la change. . .
Anyhow, realists are really unrealistic in their assumptions. They're largely snake-oil salsmen, self-deluded and deluding ones though.
well said.
(gore vidal once dismissed a critic noting that the criticism was "the sort of thing that gives mindless pedantry a bad name.")
A great rebuttal.
The line that truly hit home with me, "If you don't cite, then your research is shoddy--by definition. And if you don't repeat, then your arguments and logic are anything but--you do nothing more than assert, my good fellow."
Hmmm, Reads as ounds like some people want to stay simply locked in the past. How do you advance our understanding if all one does is simple paraphrase results and duplicate research? For anyone to think that they already have the answer to a problem as complex as human interaction (and in larger groupings humans -> Nations).
If the study of international politics/economics is likened to hard science research, then the assertions made in new theories of world order are much like solid hypotheses. The key difference between the two models is that the experimentation in international politics/economics is the world on a daily basis, not something in a test tube or computer model. Newspapers are the daily lab reports.
Dr. Barnett, your work is seen as full of scholarship by many with open minds that are seeking a better answer.
The realists just seem stuck and lost.
Philip: a little help. Tom on Libertarianism from 2004:
http://www.thomaspmbarnett.com/weblog/archives2/000957.html
http://www.thomaspmbarnett.com/weblog/archives2/000958.html
I am more libertarian than might be realized. To me, the queer libertarian crowd just goes overboard in mistrusting government. That is the scary legcy of Watergate/Vietnam for a generation.
I have worked with people in all sectors of government, at all levels. I just don't see the evil--except in the incentive structure of the system.
I believe in collective goods there. Government exists primarily to cover the spaces that individuals can't, using markets. Lindsey's book in brilliant in this way: sensibly restricting government without making it evil.
If he's libertarian, then he's the Tony Blair of libertarians--meaning I like him a lot.
But Cato reminds me of the old Groucho Marx joke about never wanting to join a group that would have me as a member!
My father is a retired English professor. He always used to tell me how glad he was that no professor could ever win the presidency. Your post is further evidence of why that is such a good thing.
You have it right too re Saudi Arabia. Saudia Arabia is not connected to the global economy. Its oil is connected and that is it. Without oil, Saudi Arabia would be Yemen or Syria; it would have no economy at all. Even with all of its oil billions, it has virtually no economy at all, other than oil.
I also think you are right about China. Unfortunately, only time will tell on that one.
I believe that the problem is the legacy of the Cold War. The Cold War led to an official rejection of Marxisim, and any analytical framework that emphasized the centrality of economic forces in shaping world history was associated with Marxism. As a result, there is an institutional bias in mainstream academia against economic analyses of social/political history. To my mind, the genius of Dr. Barnett's analysis lies in its recognition of economic forces as driving the evolution of international relations. One can derive the benefit of building upon Marx's truly important insights into the role of economics in shaping society, without buying into all of the other claptrap that goes along with the traditional Marxist canon.