Monday, February 28, 2005 at 10:22AM Dateline: above the garage in Portsmouth RI, 28 February 2005
Blog reader Tom Guarriello wrote me today to say that "I've been to 5 TEDs and I'll tell you the standing ovations are few and far between."
Not coincidentally, Amazone ranking drops from just over 1,000 to 558 today and paperback now sits at just over 11,000.
So TED seeming to spread some word. . ..
Monday, February 28, 2005 at 10:20AM Dateline: above the garage in Portsmouth RI, 28 February 2005
. . . in the head with a sinus headache to beat the band (too many time zones, too much flying, too big of a snowstorm heading this way so pressure dropping fast).
. . . and fed up with Hotmail. Going online with Mac right now and getting Mac account. Won't affect any of the emails that will be redirected to this new account (just like they were to my Hotmail account), but my old t_p_m_barnett@hotmail.com is going away. I will notify friends and family of new private email. What killed Hotmail for me was all the spam and the endless busy server signals. I just don't have the time for either any more.
I will seek to blog stories tomorrow. Just trying to get through son Kevin's basketball practive tonight. Got two trips coming up fast enough (one out of country), so can't push it too hard right now.
Monday, February 28, 2005 at 3:27AM Dateline: United flights from Montery to San Francisco to Chicago to Providence, 27 February 2005
Yes, yesterday was thrilling, and man would I love to get that one on DVD. The hiking in the afternoon (the final group activity of the conference (Point Lobos) was also way cool, and it gave me a nice chance to meet some people (although the people most tied into my message approached me right after I spoke). Last night in my rather nice hotel room was all about answering the build-up of email. Then a decent night's sleep and the long road back to RI begins: I start with a driver picking me up at 5:15 am PST and get home around 10:15 pm EST, in time to watch the biggest Oscars get handed out with my spouse, who's more than a little beat manning the home front all by herself the entire week (save my very brief appearance Thursday night).
Looking forward to my own bed.
Here's today's catch, stitched together by the papers I accumulated:
■ The trifurcation of Iraq has begun■ The Big Bang claims another victory in Egypt?
■ Follow the money, find your way to the Core
Monday, February 28, 2005 at 3:26AM ■"The Tipping Points: Three new stories in the Middle East," by Thomas L. Friedman, New York Times, 27 February 2005, p. A13.
■"Why Not Here? Bush changes the subject, worldwide," by David Brooks, New York Times, 26 February 2005, p. A27.
■"New Palestinian Cabinet takes office: President Abbas shows strength in selection process," by Mohammed Daraghmeh, New York Times, 25 February 2005, p. 8A.
■"Rice Calls Off Mideast Visit After Arrest Of Egyptian," by Joel Brinkley, New York Times, 26 February 2005, p. A13.
■"Mubarek Pushes Egypt To Allow Freer Elections: After 50 Years of One-Party Rule, Move to Amend the Constitution," by Neil MacFarquhar, New York Times, 27 February 2005, p. A1.
When Friedman dials down the hysteria on "World War III" and "neo-greens," you remember that he's a world-class journalist who got his start analyzing the Middle East. Here he offers three points of hope in the Middle East, three places where the issue has been reframed, in Gladwellian vernacular: Iraqi is now about an Iraqi government, freely elected, not the U.S.-led occupation; Lebanon is not about when Syria is going to leave, following the response to the assassination of the former PM; and the Israel-Palestinian conflict has shifted from Sharon-the-obstructionist to Abbas the leader of a truly technocratic leadership (nearly half have PhDs) that replaces the decades of corruption that was the Arafat-led Fatah.
David Brooks made the same basic point the day before, scooping ol' Tom a bit, but both of them were scooped by the stunning news out of Alexandria where Hosni Mubarek had a speech of his read in the parliament, calling for multiparty elections by the end of the year! Was a tipping point reached with the arrest of the opposition leader recently, followed by the obvious snub by Rice? Perhaps coincidental, perhaps meaningful. Clearly, Mubarek saw the handwriting on the wall with Saddam's fall and his own attempts to anoint a son as successor meeting growing resistance.
This is a stunning development, truly historic if it holds. Direct elections in Egypt, a country dominated by a single party quite effectively for half a century, simply do not happen without the decision to topple Saddam and trigger the Big Bang. Egypt is not just the region's most populous state, it is the center of the Arab world. This, following real elections in Iraq and Palestine, tells us all that Bush's decisionóif argued poorlyówas a good one. Not just necessary but good. Not just inevitable but good. Not just strategic but good.
Not just the good opening tag line for an article, but the inescapable logic of the Pentagon's new map. It doesn't belong to anyone, least of all America, but it's there and it must be addressed. Give Bush the credit he deserves for starting this process. The Gap will be shrunk in chunks, and we're watching a big one move right now. Not dominoes, my friends, but connectivity. Egypt will rejoin the world with this election, and Mubarek will reconnect to a legacy worth creating.
Monday, February 28, 2005 at 3:26AM ■"Kurds Vow to Retain Militia as Guardians of Autonomy: An army is 'a symbol of resistance' and an insurance policy," by Edward Wong, New York Times, 27 February 2005, p. A8.
■"Iraq's Serene South Asks, Who Needs Baghdad? Dreams of becoming an Arab Singapore, or a Shiite Kuwait" by James Glanz, New York Times, 27 February 2005, p. WK3.
■"Iraq's dispossessed Sunnis seek new strategy: The relative success of last month's elections has forced the former ruling minority now at the heart of the insurgency to rethink its tactics," by Charles Clover, Financial Times, 26-27 February 2005, p. 4.
The Kurds remind me of the early American colonies just as they were being asked to join a larger federation: a fierce desire to retain their militia. Almost a hundred years later, when the U.S. dissolved into the Civil War, most federal soldiers fought according to where they were fromóthat's how fierce the attachment was. Should we be surprised to see the same thing in Iraq? No. Does the U.S. military rely on these forces to fight the insurgents? You bet. And therein lies the trick: we have to keep just enough of an idea of Iraq going on so that the militias don't see enemies beyond the insurgents. The Kurds fought the Kurds not so long ago, so the idea of militias is a bit dicey. But we have to expect it as the price of federalism in Iraqóas sloppy and as loose as they might end up being for quite some time.
Meanwhile, down south, there are some pretty out-in-the-open dreams about breaking off from the Sunni and Kurdish north. Some of this is a desire to take their oil and leave, which is natural, and some of it is desiring to be away from the real and potential violence elsewhere in Iraq, and that's even more natural. Being built around the port of Basra, there is likewise a stronger desire to connect up with the outside world. The election showing of the Shiite coalition will dampen this some, as the article points out, but it ain't going to go away. We're watching the same dynamics, often economically driven more than by ethnicity or religion, that dismembered the false state that was Yugoslavia. Iraq is a similarly odd historical creation by outsiders (Churchill had a big hand), and it may well have to devolve into smaller bits before it can come back together in larger ones.
Meanwhile, meanwhile, the Sunnis are fighting on and thinking on the results that were the national election last month. The narrowing solution, as I called it in the Esquire piece, is becoming abundantly clear: join or be left behind, because the Kurds and the Shiites aren't going to stand still, and they're not going to wait on the violence. Yes, some Sunnis want to bargain, but as the FT article points out, you can't really do that until you have a central government in place. So the process has to keep rolling. The system has to be built.
Monday, February 28, 2005 at 3:25AM ■"Dream fulfilled helps Muslims realize theirs: Interest-free loans follow Islamic law without surrendering profit," by Elliot Blair Smith, USA Today, 25 February 2005, p. 1A.
■"Beijing eases rules for private investment," by Richard McGregor, Financial Times, 26-27 February 2005, p. 5.
■"Argentine president optimistic on debt exchange," by Adam Thomson, Financial Times, 26-27 February 2005, p. 2.
Great first article on how American Muslims have learned, over time, how to get around the Koran's rule set on interest when granting and servicing mortgages. The company profiled is American Finance House-Lariba, which is on the cutting edge of this lease-to-own-style mortgage vehicle that's expected to draw up large numbers of Muslim homeowners, both new and those refinancing, as this practice becomes more widespread.
Nothing connects you to an economic future worth creating better than a home mortgage. My guess is that America will someday feature more Muslim homeowners than any country in the world. And I'm guessing that day will come far sooner than anyone realizes.
Following the money gets easier and easier in China, and it should be, given the flow of foreign direct investment that country sucks in each year as the world's largest target (surpassing the U.S. now two years in a row). So while the defense community gets all jacked about the antisecession law, the State Council's just made it a whole lot easier to privately invest in power, rail, aviation and oil sectorsóall of which define connectivity and PNM's "four flows" of people, energy, money and security. Why does China do this? The private-sector is providing the vast bulk of job creation, and that's what matters most to the Communist Party's long-term legitimacy.
And yes, I know how oxymoronic that statement sounds . . ..
Then there's Argentina's tumultuous ride through the A-to-Z rule set for economically-bankrupt states, loosely known as the IMF's still informal sovereign bankruptcy process. A while back New Core Argentina defaulted on a world record's worth of $100 billion of sovereign debt. Argentina has restructured and done most of what the IMF has asked, and now the upshot looks like 34 cents on the dollar. With the debt-restructuring process pretty much completed, it's now believed that 75% of the defaulted securities have now entered the exchange process. This is crucial, when Argentina went under in December 2001, about half of the population was suddenly plunged below the poverty line and the state was cut off from international capital marketsóa situation that will end with this completed exchange process. Did global investors get burned? Yes. But Argentina's state coffers weren't emptied in the process, and that's crucial. Making sure Argentina stays in the Core is more important than everyone getting their money back.
Monday, February 28, 2005 at 3:25AM ■"Pentagon reports more bombs, fewer U.S. casualties: Better armor and intelligence contribute to declining rates of injury and death," by Dave Moniz, USA Today, 25 February 2005, p. 9A.
■"U.S. to Resume Training Of Some in Indonesia Military," by Agence France-Presse, New York Times, 27 February 2005, p. A13.
■"Afghans Accuse U.S. of Secret Spraying to Kill Poppies," by Carlotta Gall, New York Times, 27 February 2005, p. A3.
■"Flaws Reported in Screening Subcontractors for Iraq Prisons," by Michael Janofsky, New York Times, 26 February 2005, p. A5.
■"Within C.I.A., Growing Fears Of Prosecution," by Douglas Jehl and David Johnston, New York Times, 27 February 2005, p. A1.
The SysAdmin adjusts, because the enemy adjusts. The insurgents in Iraq change their tactics, on average, every 7 to 10 days, so we've learned to do the same. We're using computers to predict likely targets based on previous patterns, and our jamming technologies have made it harder to detonate the Improvised Explosive Devices (IEDs).
And then there's the growing use of robots to dispose of bombs.
Did we learn the hard way? Roughly 1,500 hard ways so far, with February being the best month since June of last year, but that's still almost 50 dead for us.
But the Army especially, after resisting the SysAdmin role so vehemently across the oh-so-busy 90s, is now embracing it with real vigor. The Army is having an almost Freaky Friday-sort of switch with the Navy right now: whereas the Navy was considered the premier crisis-response force (using the Marines for on-ground actions), now it's the Army that's increasingly being recast as the expeditionary big stick that looms behind the always rough-and-ready Marines. We're talking the U.S. Calvary settling the wild spots in the Gap, with the Army forming the center, the Marines forming the tip of the spear, and the Special Ops guys playing the role of scouts, assassins, and mountain men who disappear for months at a time, returning with only incredible tales.
Another good example of SysAdmin work is the U.S. getting back into the role as mil-mil mentor to Indonesia. Part of this is a long-term effort by Deputy Secretary Wolfowitz, former ambassador to the country, but the tipping point is the shared experience of responding to the Asian Tsunamis, a point I make in the essay I wrote for Issue #2 of the Rule Set Reset.
Now for the failing grades:
We have got to find something else for Afghanistan than spraying poppies. Tell me you want this passage on our collective conscience:
Abdullah, a black-turbaned shepherd, said he was watching over his sheep one night in early February when he heard a plane pass low overhead three times. By morning his eyes were so swollen he could not open them and the sheep around him were dying in convulsions.
Although farmers had noticed a white powder on their crops, they cut grass and clovere for their animals and picked spinach to eat anyway. Within hours the animals were severely ill, people here said, and the villagers complained of fevers, skin rashes and bloody diarrhea. The children were particularly affected. A week later, the cropsówheat, vegetables and poppiesówere dying, and a dozen dead animals, including newborn lambs, lay tossed in a heap.
Our narcotics experts, the article says, have been advocating this step for months to help us get control over the drug situation. This is control? This is what we want to be associated with? This is how we generate security in Afghanistan? This is how we win hearts and minds? All for illegal drugs used by our populations?
This activity burns bridges. It does not create connectivity.
Also plenty of bad examples of poor screening for private-sector personnel brought into Iraq to help run the prisons there, thanks to a Justice Department Inspector General report ordered by Sen. Schumer of NY. That report is just the tip of the iceberg, showing just how much better we need to get both in terms of contracting for this help and then overseeing its employment and integrating it better with our military forces' overall efforts.
We need to do this not only to protect our interests in these interventions, but to protect our own people. Until we get better and more clear rule sets in place regarding how we wage warfare against individuals, we'll risk not just our own people going over board but having to investigate and prosecute thoses abuses as well. That's a morale killer for everyone, so the clearer the rule sets, the more confident our people will be in their efforts.
Monday, February 28, 2005 at 3:24AM ■"West Africa Wins Again, With Twist: Togo's Neighbors Bring Pressure to Restore a Constitution," by Lydia Polgreen, New York Times, 27 February 2005, p. A10.
■"Women's Voices Rise as Rwanda Reinvents Itself: But Numbers in Office Do Not Mean an End to Their Suffering," by Marc Lacey, New York Times,
26 February 2005, p. A1.
Two very encouraging articles on Africa. First one is about Togo, where not too long ago the military tried to install the son of the long-time strongman running the country as his presidential successor, defying the constitution. Well, neighboring states made a big deal out of the move, and apparently talked the military leadership of Togo to dethrone the son.
See, not every effort requires the U.S. military and not every effort requires bloodshed. Most will leave willingly if the right pressure is applied. Of course, it helps when we're talking a smaller state, which West Africa is full of. It's those big states elsewhere in Africa where getting the Big Man to leave is much harderólike Zimbabwe.
The other story is about how women have stepped into unprecedented political roles in Rwanda as that government continues to put itself back together following the genocidal period of the early 1990s. Part of it is just sheer practicality: the killing was conducted overwhelming by males against males (in the 98-percent range), leaving a 7-to-1 ratio of females to males, according to the highest estimates. Now, women make up roughly half of the lower house of the Parliament, an unprecedented number in human history, by all accounts. It doesn't mean everything works out nicely now for Rwanda, but if there can be an upside to the ethnic killing spree that occurred, surely this is it.
Saturday, February 26, 2005 at 5:03PM Dateline: Marriott Hotel, Monterey California, 25 February 2005
Here are six reviews I've collected in recent weeks. Mark Warren made me promise not to review them in my blog while writing Vol. II, so I get to them only now.
As usual, the verdict is split: three find me quite profound and three find me rather superficial and full of nonsenseódangerous nonsense at that. Also as usual, the more "professional" and self-regarded the reviewer, the dumber I seem to be.
Here are the six posted individually:
■ Reviewing the Reviews (Chicago Sun Times)■ Reviewing the Reviews (Naval War College Review)
■ Reviewing the Reviews (Coming Anarchy)
■ Reviewing the Reviews (Global Network Space Newsletter)
■ Reviewing the Reviews (The Washington Monthly)
Saturday, February 26, 2005 at 5:02PM Find the original at www.suntimes.com/output/roeser/cst-edt-roes05.html
My commentary follows:
Chicago Sun-Times
Book lays out America's challenge in the world
February 5, 2005BY THOMAS ROESER
I never dreamed that a single book would change my outlook on the United States' role in world affairs, but one has. It's obscure but powerfully influential; easily in rank to that of naval captain Alfred Thayer Mahan who, late in the 19th century, laid out the strategy for our expansion into a great world power in a book only the military groupies had read. This one is The Pentagon's New Map: War and Peace in the 21st Century by Thomas Barnett (G. T. Putnam's Sons, 2004), easily the most influential book of our time.
It's obvious that George W. Bush is an engrossed disciple. The president's inaugural brimmed with natural law and Aquinas, but without the Barnett ballast it left me cold.
Obviously, Barnett occupies front-rank in Bush's thinking. Since the Cold War ended, we've been trying to come up with a unified theory of the world and a military strategy to fit, which Barnett has done.Barnett, former professor and senior strategist at the U.S. Naval War College (as was Mahan), wrote an Esquire magazine article, which led to the book. It was a takeoff from the famous power-point briefings he gave the Pentagon in the early days of the Bush administration.
He divides the world into three parts, the first a functioning grouping of states that have been integrated into the world economy. This includes North America, much of South America, the European Union, Russia, Japan and Asia's emerging economies (China and India), Australia and New Zealand and South Africa, a total of 4 billion people. This is what he calls the Core.
In contrast, what he calls the Gap will be the source of much of the world's problems in the 21st century: the Caribbean Rim, virtually all of Africa, the Balkans, the Caucasus, central Asia, the Middle East and Southwest Asia and much of Southeast Asia. The Gap's total population is 2 billion.
The third group consists of the ''seam states'' along the Gap's boundaries: Mexico, Brazil, South Africa, Morocco, Algeria, Greece, Turkey, Pakistan, Thailand, Malaysia and the Philippines. We and other Core nations have our work cut out to firewall these seams. China patrols its northern border against terrorists; Russia is concerned with the Caucasus.
Much of our problem since the end of the Cold War has had to do with the Gap. Bush was correct to move on Iraq because ''it is dangerously disconnected from the globalizing world . . . and all the ties that bind countries together in mutually assured dependence,'' Barnett writes.
He adds: ''Show me areas where globalization is thick with network connectivity, financial transactions . . . media flows and collective security, and I'll show you regions featuring stable governments, rising standards of living and more deaths by suicide than by murder. . . . But show me where globalization is thinning or just plain absent and I will show you regions plagued by politically repressive regimes, widespread poverty and disease, routine mass murder and, most important, the chronic conflicts that incubate the next generation of global terrorists''óthe Gap.
Barnett points out that we have successfully exported security to the old Core, but Core nations must encourage more private investment to shrink the Gap.
''Think of it,'' he writes. ''Global war is not in the offing'' because our nuclear stockpile guards against it. Supposed war with China is not in the cards but we must supply more security from the public sector and more private investment to the Gap.
''Africa . . . will need far more aid from the Core than has been offered in the past. . . . This may sound like additional responsibility for an already overburdened military but that is the wrong way to look at it for what we're dealing with are problems of success, not failure. It is America's continued success in deterring global war and obsolescing state-on-state war that allows us'' to keep the peace.
Great book, great read. Read it and tell me what you think!
COMMENTARY: Hard not to like. Clearly the guy feels empowered by the book, and that's exactly what we were going for. Mark Warren and I wanted non-expert readers to find the book very accessible, to the point of feeling like they had been read into the program big-time, because with that feeling comes a sense of awareness that's powerful. People feel like they look at the world differently, with more confidence about America's role in history, and that makes for a better citizen. Or at least it beats the hell out of scaring people from every page. Plus, making it accessible means it's translatable. This guy could render the entire book fairly simply and directly, using a minimum of jargon (really none at all besides my new lexicon of Core-Gap).
And yes, I do enjoy the comparison to Mahan, especially since my requested departure from the same college he once headed.
Saturday, February 26, 2005 at 5:01PM The book review first appeared in the Naval War College Review, Winter 2005, Vol. 58, No. 1.
My commentary follows:
A New Standard for the Use of Force?February 1, 2005
From the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 to the collapse of the twin towers in 2001 to the present, after the invasion and occupation of Iraq, the United States has not had a consistent national security policy that enjoyed the support of the American people and its allies. This situation is markedly different from the Cold War era, when our nation had a clear, coherent, widely supported strategy that focused on containing and deterring Soviet Communist expansion.
The tragic events of 9/11, the increase in terrorist attacks, and possible threats from such countries as North Korea and Iran that are capable of developing weapons of mass destruction make it imperative to develop a new national security strategy to safeguard the United States. In The Pentagon's New Map: War and Peace in the Twenty-first Century, Thomas Barnett, a senior strategic researcher and professor at the U.S. Naval War College, attempts to provide one.
Unfortunately, he does not succeed. The failure of Barnett's strategy is most vividly demonstrated by the strategic rationale he offers for the Bush administration's poorly planned invasion and occupation of Iraq.
According to Barnett, the world is divided into two parts, the Functioning Core and the Non-Integrating Gap. The Functioning Core consists of those stable countries in North America, much of South America, the European Union, Russia, Japan, China, India, Australia, New Zealand, and South Africa. There is little threat of war or widespread violence in the Core, because its members enjoy the benefits of globalization, specifically rising standards of living. The Gap, on the other hand, consists of areas such as the Caribbean Rim, most of Africa, the Balkans, the Caucasus, Central Asia, the Middle East, Southwest Asia, and much of Southeast Asia. In those areas there is a great deal of violence and turmoil, because they are not connected to the Core. This lack of connectivity results from the rejection of modernity by the elites in the Gap. Therefore, the members of the Gap do not enjoy the benefits of globalization, and hence these areas become incubators for terrorists.
If the United States wants to win the war against terrorism, Barnett argues, it must take the lead in shrinking the Gap. To do this, it must export security to the Gap until it is ready to integrate into the Core, or else the Gap will continue to export terrorism to the Core. Barnett calls this a "global transaction strategy."
His global transaction strategy makes the war against Iraq a war of necessity, not one of choice. According to Barnett, the invasion of Iraq was justified because "Saddam Hussein's outlaw regime was dangerously disconnected from the globalizing world-from our rule sets, our norms, and all the ties that bind the Core together in mutually assured dependence. He was the Demon of Disconnectedness and he deserves death for all his sins against humanity over the years." Wow!
These words are eerily reminiscent of what President George W. Bush said on board the USS Abraham Lincoln in May 2003, in his infamous "mission accomplished" speech. In remarks onboard the carrier the president claimed that "the battle of Iraq is one victory in a war on terror that began on September 11th, 2001" and that the defeat of Saddam Hussein was "a crucial advance in the campaign against terror."
It does not seem to matter to Barnett or his strategic view that the reasons the president gave for invading Iraq were spurious or that the war in Iraq represented a substantial setback in the struggle against al-Qaida. The unnecessary invasion of Iraq not only diverted attention away from Afghanistan, thus damaging the prospects for crippling al-Qaida, but created a new justification among the radical jihadists for attacking Westerners, drained the reservoir of goodwill that the United States enjoyed in the global community, and in the eyes of many Muslims transformed the war against terrorism into a war against Islam.
Instead Barnett characterizes the Bush administration's decision as "amazingly courageous," because "it has committed our nation to shrinking a major portion of the Gap in one fell swoop." This decision makes the author love and admire the U.S. government and, by extension, the Bush approach to the global war on terror.
As a consequence of the framework he has developed, Barnett is also an unabashed supporter of Bush's preemption doctrine when it comes to dealing with actors and regimes in the Gap. There are two problems with his approach. First, it confuses preemption with preventive war. It is not only legal under international law but moral for a nation to take preemptive military action when it has what Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld calls "elegant intelligence" about an imminent threat. But this is not what the United States did in Iraq. President Bush has stated repeatedly that Iraq was not an imminent threat, yet he waged a preventive war against what he claimed was "a grave and gathering danger." If this is the new standard for the use of force against members of the Gap, what is to prevent India from waging a preventive war against Pakistan? Or Russia against Georgia?
Second, while Barnett concedes that the traditional strategies of containment and deterrence will work against other Core states, he argues that it will not work against members of the Gap. Yet Barnett fails to recognize that while nonstate actors like al-Qaida cannot be deterred, even the most evil regimes in the Gap can be deterred, because their rulers wish to remain in power. The recent report of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence demonstrates that Iraq was contained and that the sanctions and American and British military pressure helped to destroy Saddam's military machine and his capacity to produce conventional weapons and weapons of mass destruction. As Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz testified, the cost of containing Saddam amounted to $2.5 billion a year. At the time of this writing the Bush administration has spent $144 billion in Iraq, without making us safer.
Unlike the Bush administration, Barnett does not appear to have learned that the doctrine of launching preemptive strikes against established states in the Gap died in Iraq. Barnett wants to launch a preventive war against North Korea. According to his analysis, Kim Jong Il has become "globalization's enemy number one following Saddam Hussein's demise and must be removed from power." He believes that Bush's reelection means that such action is inevitable.
Finally, Barnett's analysis falls into the trap of thinking that terrorists in the Gap attack the West for what it is and what it thinks. However, as demonstrated in the book Imperial Hubris: Why the West Is Losing the War on Terror by Anonymous (a twenty-three-year CIA veteran), America is hated and attacked for what it does-that is, the policies it pursues that impact the Islamic world, such as its support for apostate, corrupt, and tyrannical Muslim governments. He notes that "the Islamic World is not so offended by our democratic system of politics, guaranties of personal rights and civil liberties, and separation of church and state that it is willing to wage war against overwhelming odds to stop America from voting, speaking freely, and praying or not, as they wish."
Because of these failings, Barnett's global transaction strategy will not gain the support of the American people or its allies that containment did. Rather, the global transaction strategy is in reality an updated version of the domino theory, which led the United States to believe that if it did not intervene to prevent South Vietnam from becoming communist, all of Southeast Asia would become part of the Soviet empire. Just as the domino theory led successive American presidents to commit national blood and treasure to a peripheral cause that was not essential to the goal of containing Soviet communist expansionism, the invasion of Iraq, even though it is a member of the Gap, was not essential to winning the struggle against radical jihadists like al-Qaida.
Unfortunately, these conceptual weaknesses undermine some of the sensible recommendations that Barnett makes, particularly about U.S. force structure. Yet even the best organized and equipped military will be of little use if it is employed incorrectly.
For those looking for a twenty-first-century version of containment, I recommend Zbigniew Brzezinski's The Choice: Global Domination or Global Leadership. The "Global Balkans," which he identifies as a source of political instability, is similar to Barnett's Gap. However, Brzezinski shows how the self-defeating arrogance of the Bush administration has undermined what must be the American goal of creating a new global system based on shared interests.
Barnett, Thomas P. M. The Pentagon's New Map: War and Peace in the Twenty-first Century. New York: Putnam, 2004. 320pp. $26.95
Lawrence J. Korb is a senior advisor to the Center for Defense Information and a senior fellow at the Center for American Progress.
COMMENTARY: This is the most cursory review of the book I think I've ever seen, but considering how much the Review pays for reviews (nothing), I guess that's to be expected. But more seriously, the review is not of the book, but of the Bush administration's decision to go to war in Iraq, of which Korb, a manpower official in a Republican administration long, long ago, clearly disapproved. My entire vision is disqualified because his definition of the Global War on Terrorism matches those who argue for a solitary focus on killing bad guys, not decreasing their strategic operating domain or denying their strategic aims. You have to wonder, if the occupation went better, does my vision then work for Korb, because he clearly approves of the force structure suggestions (Leviathan v. SysAdmin)? Or does he simply not acknowledge the Gap or the dangers posed there? He likes Brezinzki's "global Balkans," so what's not to like about my Gap and wanting to shrink it (he says the two concepts are very similar)? Ah, but my analysis can be dismissed as just another example of "the self-defeating arrogance of the Bush administration."
That explanation is apparently enough for Korb to dismiss me, but we're also told that mine is another "domino theory," a criticism I find simply baffling, because Korb seems to be saying that denying al Qaeda its super-state stretching from Morocco to the Philippines isn't really doing battle with them. If that isn't thwarting their long-term aims, then tell me, what is? Ah again! We're told to check out Anonymous' analysis, which basically says we should withdraw militarily from the region and stop pissing off the terrorists there. Yes, stop pissing off the terrorists, there's a grand strategy I can embrace.
Korb's review was disappointing in the extreme. He always struck me as smarter, but his analysis here strikes me more like the bored comments of a grad student grading undergraduate papers, as though he was merely looking for the evidence to warrant my failing mark, like my apparent "confusion" over preemptive war versus preventive war. Clearly, Korb views the Iraq war as a U.S.-versus-Iraq matter only, so it's preventive because Iraq couldn't mount any serious direct threat against the U.S. But I never made that argument (again, Korb doesn't seem interested in reviewing PNM, but the Bush administration), instead making a clear argument that the U.S.-led international action against Iraq represented a preemptive war by the Core against a well-known aggressive actor inside the Gap, somebody who threatened both his neighbors and his own people. But again, this sort of academic legalese is a quaint way to justify marking down my grade, allowing Korb to instead cite the "masters." I am so humbled by his obviously disinterested effort.
Saturday, February 26, 2005 at 5:00PM Find the original at www.cominganarchy.com/archives/2005/01/27/battle-of-the-books/#more-241
My commentary follows:
Battle of the BooksOver the past month I read the two following books:
The Pentagonís New MapAmericaís Secret War
Now itís time for my hard-hitting review as the optimistic futurist takes on the old school hardened analyst in a battle that decides the fate of our world!
Let me first tackle PNM: This book is a must read for anyone interested in current events. This is some of the best ìthinking outside of the boxî that I have seen in a while. Barnettís theory of the Gap and the Core really makes sense, and he takes it one step further with his suggestion that rules change depending on which group you are in. ìDisconnectedness defines dangerî is an eloquent and well-structured argument that fleshes out the truly underlying attributes of the problematic theory that ìdemocracies donít war with one another.î The few complaints I have about this book, include the following: I found it far too repetitive, you could probably shave off about 50 pages; and it reads like a repackaged Manifest Destiny. This book is definitely written for Americans. I agree with his point that the US contains the ìsource codeî for liberal democracies, but I felt that he over-emphasized this, disregarding the numerous fully functional alternative ìcode branchesî out there, and their ability to contribute to ìa future worth building.î
Now onto Americaís Secret War. George Friedman, the founder of Stratfor, makes an analysis of the US war on terror starting prior to the 9/11 attacks and ending with Abu Ghraib. The interesting thing about this book is Friedmanís ability to guide the reader through complex geopolitics; it is almost like reading a good Clancy novel. Each event is lined up precisely with an accompanying logical explanation and analysis. Unfortunately with the lack of any references it all seems like a well-constructed fairy tale, told in 20/20 Hindsight-o-vision. If only he provided footnotesÖ Friedman is a great analyst but his ìorder of battle analysisî skills are not on par with true historians like Sir John Keegan. In any case this book is a great lesson in geopolitical analysis and sure gets you looking at events with a different lense. Although a must read for die hard armchair cold-warriors and geopoliphiles alike, I wouldnít recommend it to ìregular folkî like I would PNM.
These two books turned out to be on very different topics (future vs. the past), and are written by very different authors (new school vs. old school), but I was glad that I read them in close succession. One of the niggles of PNM is that it feels like he is calling for all Core nations to hold hands and sing from the same page together in shrinking the Gap. This, in my realist upbringing, is an impossibility, comrade. But while reading Friedmanís concise description of the geopolitical landscape, with alliances being formed and broken depending on the task, I realized the profundity of Barnettís grand strategy. For all his idealism of ending war in our world, Barnett wasnít necessarily saying that we all had to work together all the time, he does leave room for variances in foreign policy. His is truly a grand strategy, leaving the day-today geopolitics to guys like Friedman.
That is my short take on these books. So what is the fate of our world? WellÖ not necessarily the same as it has always been. But in the meantime there will be that familiar struggleÖ
COMMENTARY: Mr. Coming Anarchy gives me the usual slap-down of those who really like the book but want to offer criticism: too repetitive, too self-congratulatory (America rules!) and too long. Fine. He scores his point. Bigger point is that he gets it for what it really attempts to be: a serious attempt at grand strategy that doesn't focus on the tactics of today and isn't just a long bitch-session about what the author can't stand about the Bush administration's security and diplomatic policies. He also sees the book as accessible, which is key, and views me as new school (definitely not another Kissinger or Brzezinski). This is all good, so I take the quibbling in stride. Mr. Coming Anarchy, despite the bias of his nom-de-scare, knows his rear-end from his elbow in terms of strategic analysis, and that, my friends, is rare in this world.
Saturday, February 26, 2005 at 4:59PM Find the original at globalresearch.ca/articles/GAG501A.html
My commentary follows:
New Pentagon Vision Transforms War Agenda
by Bruce K. Gagnon
Global Network Space Newsletter 16 Winter 2005
Pentagon transformation is well underway. The U.S. military is increasingly being converted into a global oil protection service. Secretary of War Donald Rumsfeld has a "strategy guy" whose job is to teach this new way of warfare to high-level military officers from all branches of services and to top level CIA operatives. Thomas Barnett is a professor at the Navy War College in Rhode Island. He is author of the controversial book The Pentagon's New Map that identifies a "non-integrating gap" in the world that is resisting corporate globalization. Barnett defines the gap as parts of Latin America, Africa, Middle East and Central Asia all of which are key oil-producing regions of the world.
In what Barnett calls a "Grand March of History" he claims that the U.S. military must be transformed in order to preemptively take control of the gap, so the U.S. can "manage" the global distribution of resources, people, energy, and money. (It has long predicted that the gap between rich and poor around the world will continue to widen and that the Pentagon will be used to keep the boot on the necks of the people of the third world to the benefit of corporate globalization.)
Barnett predicts that U.S. unilateralism will lead to the "inevitability of war." Referring to Hitler in a recent presentation, Barnett reminded his military audience that the Nazi leader never asked for permission before invading other countries. Thus, the end to multi-lateralism.
Barnett argues that the days of arms talks and international treaties are over. "There is no secret where we are going," he says as he calls for a "new ordering principle" at the Department of Defense (DoD). Barnett maintains that as jobs move out of the U.S. the primary export product of the nation will be "security." Global energy demand will necessitate U.S. control of the oil producing regions. "We will be fighting in Central Africa in 20 years," Barnett predicts.
In order to implement this new military vision," Barnett maintains that the U.S. military must move away from its often-competing mix of Air Force-Navy-Army-Marines toward two basic military services. One he names Leviathan, which he defines as the kick ass, wage war, special ops, and not under the purview of the international criminal court. Give us your angry, video game-playing 18-19 year olds, for the Leviathan force, Barnett says. Once a country is conquered by Leviathan, Barnett says the U.S. will have to have a second military force that he calls Systems Administration. This force he describes as the "proconsul" of the empire, boots on the ground, the police force to control the local populations. This group, Barnett says, "will never come home."
Barnettπs plan is essentially underway today. New fast, flexible, and efficient projection forces with "lily pad" bases are now being developed for control of the gap. Over the next decade, the military will abandon 35% of the Cold War-era bases it uses abroad as it seeks to expand the network of bare-bones sites in the gap. The planned changes, once completed, will result in the most profound "reordering" of U.S. military forces overseas since the current global arrangements were set 50 years ago.
According to Michael Klare, professor of Peace Studies at Hampshire College, "American troops are now risking their lives on a daily basis to protect the flow of petroleum. In Colombia, Saudi Arabia, and the Republic of Georgia, U.S. personnel are spending their days and nights protecting pipelines and refineries, or supervising the local forces assigned to this mission."
Klare continues, "The DoD has stepped up its arms deliveries to military forces in Angola and Nigeria, and is helping to train their officers and enlisted personnel; meanwhile, Pentagon officials have begun to look for permanent bases in the area, focusing on Senegal, Ghana, Mali, Uganda and Kenya." The Wall Street Journal has reported that "a key mission for U.S. forces (in Africa) would be to ensure that Nigeriaπs oil fields, which in the future could account for as much as 25% of all U.S. oil imports, are secure." National Guard units across the U.S. are now being assigned the task of developing on-going basing relationships with each nation on the African continent.
Role of Space Technology
The Bush administration is also exploring the possibility of expanding the emerging missile defense system into Eastern Europe as an element in the strategic containment of Russia, China and the Middle East. The Pentagon has been negotiating with Hungary, Romania, Poland and the Czech Republic about one or more of them hosting new missile defense bases. Oil-rich Iran is to be encircled by missile defense posts in Azerbaijan, Turkmenistan, Iraq, and Afghanistan.
In order to pull all of this together the Pentagon claims it will need "a Godπs-eye view" of the world. A new "internet in the sky" is now being built for the wars of the future. Costing well over $200 billion, the new web would give war machines and military forces a common language, instantly emitting an encyclopedia of lethal information about all enemies.
According to Art Cebrowski, director of the Pentagonπs Office of Force Transformation, "What we are really talking about is a new theory of war." The military wants to know "everything of interest to us, all the time," says one Pentagon insider. Military intelligence including secret satellite surveillance covering most of the Earth will be posted on the war net and shared with troops. "The essence of net-centric warfare is our ability to deploy a war-fighting force anywhere, anytime. Information technology is the key to that."
Thus U.S. military and economic control of the gap will be dependent on a system of networked computers. Fusing weapons, secret intelligence and soldiers in a global network what the military calls net-centric warfare will, they say, change the military in a way the Internet changed business and culture.
I don't claim "that the U.S. military must be transformed in order to preemptively take control of the gap, so the U.S. can "manage" the global distribution of resources, people, energy, and money." I'm very specific about the limited role of the military inside the Gap, and my point about the flows is that no one controls them, although great powers can certainly screw them up.
The bits about the "inevitability of war" and allegedly comparing the U.S. to Nazi Germany is real fantasy. When I reference Hitler in the talk, it is to contrast it pointedly with the U.S., but that distinction apparently doesn't trouble this fellow. As for the "end of multilateralism," that's just Gagnon purposefully misrepresenting both the talk and the book, and rather deceitfully at that.
Based on subsequent "quotes," it's clear to me that this guy has never read the book, but just caught me on C-SPAN and "reviewed" the book on that basisóagain, fairly deceitful because he acts like he has read it. Instead, he starts quoting Michael Klare's book, which contains some of the most unsubstantiated fear-mongering I've yet seen in a serious book. The rest of the quasi-review goes off on the space tangent that's allegedly key to my plot to have America rule the world.
All in all, a rather hyperbolic review based on the talk, not the book.
Saturday, February 26, 2005 at 4:58PM Find the original at www.washingtonmonthly.com/archives/individual/2005_01/005506.php
My commentary follows:
Political Animal by Kevin Drum
24 Jan 05
THE PENTAGON'S NEW MAP. . ..On the recommendation of several people, I have finally finished slogging through Thomas P.M. Barnett's bestselling book, The Pentagon's New Map. It was an intensely frustrating experience.
Barnett, a military theorist and consultant formerly with the Naval War College, presents the following thesis: the primary division in the world today, he says, is between two sets of countries that he calls the Core and the Gap. The Core consists of advanced countries that play by the rules and are committed to globalization (primarily Europe, North America, and Japan) plus countries that are committed to getting there (Brazil, Russia, India, China, and some others). The Gap is everyone else: a collection of disconnected, lawless, and dangerous countries such as Colombia, Pakistan, and North Korea, plus most of the Middle East and Africa. (A detailed map of the Core and the Gap is here.) American military action since World War II has been confined almost exclusively to the Gap, which means the task of the United States over the next several decades ó and in particular the task of the United States military ó is to shrink the Gap and eventually convert the entire world to the values of the Core. Only then will America and the rest of the current Core be safe.
So why was the book so frustrating? Because normally it's not fair to summarize booklength arguments in a single paragraph this way. You really need to read the entire book and absorb all the author's evidence to understand what he's saying. In this case, though, you don't. Barnett doesn't really present supporting arguments as much as he simply relates anecdotes about the personal journey that led him to his conclusion that globalization is the key security issue of our time ó a conclusion that's eventually presented as sort of a personal epiphany. Either you buy it or you don't. (If you want a longer summary of the book anyway, Barnett's own version in the March 2003 issue of Esquire is here.)
In my case, I don't have a problem with Barnett's idea that Gap countries pose a greater danger to America than, say, China ó although apparently this is a tough sell in the military. That takes care of his first 300 pages or so. But the final hundred pages have their own problem: a sense of destiny that goes way beyond mere optimism and turns into something little short of religious faith in America's ability to be right under all circumstances. For example, here is his argument about why America should feel free to intervene in Gap countries whenever we feel like it:
What gives America the right to render judgments of right and wrong, or good versus rogue?. . ..What gives America the right is the fact that we are globalization's godfather, its source code, its original model. We restarted globalization after World War II and we have made it largely in our image. . ..This gift of global connectivity generating peace is one we must keep on giving, because to let the process stall is to risk its demise, to possibly lose all for which we have sacrificed so much in the past.This isn't an argument, it's just an assertion, and one that will convince no one aside from Americans who are already believers. Barnett spends a lot of time insisting that we need the support of the rest of the Core in our mission to eliminate the Gap, but there are damn few Core countries that are going to feel comfortable trailing along to clean up after our wars if this is the extent of our justification.And make no mistake: that's exactly what Barnett thinks the rest of the Core should do. America has the only military capable of projecting power, he says, and we should feel free to use it unilaterally whenever we feel it's necessary. But the nation building that comes afterward ó well, that's everyone's problem. In other words, America should decide where to wage war, and the rest of the world should follow our lead. The example of Iraq doesn't give me a lot of confidence that this is a workable strategy.
The book is unsatisfying in other ways as well. For starters, it suffers from a bad case of Tom Friedmanism: rah rah globalism leavened with simplistic lists and preciously named rules. For example, here's a summary of how he thinks American military power will create world peace:
America as global cop creates security. Security creates common rules. Rules attract foreign investment. Investment creates infrastructure. Infrastructure creates access to natural resources. Resources create economic growth. Growth creates stability. Stability creates markets. And once you're a growing, stable part of the global market, you're part of the Core. Mission accomplished.
But there's no analysis of even the first part of this chain: does America as global cop really create the security needed for all the rest of this to happen? I'm not sure history is kind to this notion, but in any case I'd expect at least a full chapter justifying it. But there's really nothing. Again, it's more assertion than argument.
In the end, Barnett makes two big proposals. The first, of course, is that American has to be ready and willing to enforce security everywhere within the Gap. The second is that we need two militaries: the standard one we have now, which fights and wins conventional wars, and a second one, which occupies countries and performs nation building. This is an interesting notion, but he never takes it anywhere. Could such a military force work? Would other countries really join us in this? What does it take to perform successful nation building anyway? There's a rich literature in these topics, but very little of it is reflected in Barnett's book.I feel like I'm being unfairly harsh toward Barnett, who seems like a good guy who's been thinking about this stuff for a long time. But in the end, the problem wasn't that he failed to persuade me, it was that he didn't even try. I kept waiting for the argument to start, but instead I just kept getting more and more description. Sure, the Gap is unstable and disconnected, but can American power connect it? Yes, we can wage war unilaterally if we want to, but can we also get the rest of the Core to follow our lead if we do? Maybe evangelizing globalization to the Gap is a good thing, but is it enough to stop war? It didn't stop World War I. And what's required in addition to military power anyway? Barnett never really says.
Thus my frustration. It's possible that Barnett is on the right track, but he needs to write a book that makes his case, rather than just states it. He's writing a second book now, and maybe he'll do just that. We'll have to wait and see.
If a grand strategic vision allows for Iraq, then Drum's not on board. He admits he's bitching harshly because PNM doesn't scratch his itch directly, but does he ask himself why so many people have urged him to read the book? Perhaps they're just simpletons who fall for Tom Friedmanism. Ah well, there are definitely worse authors to be compared to.
The weakest part of the piece is when he holds out for the second book, like my life should revolve around convincing the great man Kevin Drum. How much you want to bet he starts skimming that book too and then declares it "just description" as well? He should have just ignored his friends. His snotty misrepresentation of my "unilateralism" and my alleged argument for cavalierly letting the rest of the Core pick up the nation-building and peacekeeping pieces revealsóyet againóthat this reviewer's real problem is with George Bush. And when that's the case, they should simply say so and stop pretending to review PNM with such self-righteous whining.
Saturday, February 26, 2005 at 4:56PM Find the original at www.defensecentralstation.com/021105D.html
My commentary follows:
Mind the Gap: Revisiting 'The Pentagon's New Map'
By Dean Barnett
Published 02/11/2005
When Thomas P.M. Barnett's controversial book "The Pentagon's New Map" was published in April 2004, it received an odd sort of bi-polar public reception. On the one hand, former Pentagon briefer Barnett was the subject of a favorable profile on the front page of the Wall Street Journal as his book quickly attained best-seller status. On the other hand, several prominent outlets such as the New York Times Book Review opted to ignore "The Pentagon's New Map." Those who chose to ignore it chose unwisely. Whether you like Barnett's vision or loathe it, ten months after the book's publication it is clear that Barnett's prescience was stunning."The Pentagon's New Map" was and remains controversial because in part of its original way of looking at the world. Barnett suggests that the globe is basically divided into two different kinds of nations. The first, which Barnett labels the functioning Core, consists of all the places where you might buy goods from or take vacations in. The second type of country, those in what Barnett calls the Gap, are the political and economic basket cases.
Before 9/11, Gap nations were not considered much of a security problem for the United States. While Americans would have humane concerns for those forced to suffer the tender mercies of Saddam, the Taliban or Iranian Mullahs, the only threats such potential malefactors posed to our way of life typically concerned our oil supply.
But Barnett argues that the world has shrunk to such an extent that countries in the Gap have an increasing relevance to American security. As evidence of how the world has become smaller, consider that you can get a Starbucks blended lattÈ in Riyadh as you can in Raleigh, or that you can get a Big Mac not only in Kansas City but in Karachi. And consider how the internal politics and developments of a once obscure Gap nationóAfghanistanóhad an enormous impact on American soil a few years back.
What offended many about Barnett's vision was his suggestion that for their own security the Core nations, primarily the United States, urgently had to set about integrating the Gap into the Core and that the first step of said integration might come at the tip of an American bayonet.
Leviathan and System Administration
Barnett also offers guidance for how to continue the integration when the bayonet has fully completed its deadly work. As we've discovered in Iraq, once a regime is toppled there remains much to be done. Therefore, Barnett advocates breaking the military into two distinct branches: A Leviathan branch which will serve as the aforementioned bayonet, and a System Administrator branch which will be tasked with helping create a society that can join the Core group of nations.
While in the wake of the Iraq experience much of this now seems obvious, change comes slowly to enormous bureaucracies like the Pentagon. Nevertheless, Barnett was perhaps the first to fully grasp the great difficulties in transforming a Gap nation and to provide a playbook by which to do so.
Although Barnett eschews jingoism, his book evidences a faith in America that is not universally fashionable. Moreover, the enormity of the task that Barnett prescribes suggests a conflict with no immediate end in sight and where "exit strategies" are a barely relevant concept.
But there can be little doubt now that Barnett's vision is ascendant. President Bush's Inaugural Address reads as if disciples of Tom Barnett had written it. By acknowledging that spreading democracy and freedom is not only noble but actually vital to American strategic self interest, Bush endorsed the cornerstone argument of "The Pentagon's New Map": Either we'll reshape the dangerous corners of the world, or their pathologies will revisit American shores in increasingly destructive forms.
What's more, Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld was an early proponent of transforming the military to confront precisely the kinds of obstacles that Barnett outlines. As Barnett said on his blog a couple of weeks ago, Rumsfeld "gets the challenge and the need for change, and he'll push the uniformed services to get it done." In addition to putting forth an original, provocative and persuasive theory about how the world now operates, "The Pentagon's New Map" has also cracked the code of how the Bush Administration is likely to function.
Dean Barnett (no relation to Thomas P.M. Barnett) writes about politics and world affairs at Soxblog.com under his online pseudonym James Frederick Dwight.
COMMENTARY: Since I've already commented on Dean Barnett's review of PNM as Soxblog, I'll just limit myself to the additional analysis he offers here. Basically, he pushes for the book to be appreciated as a serious guide to the Bush administration's actions and policies, and that's fine, but he implies real influence on my part when it's mostly just fellow-traveling and accuracy of my description (i.e., the Bush administration finds themselves operating in the world I describe and so my prescriptions often match their actions).
My real influence isn't with this administration, but with the long-timers who populate the government and military just below the political level. They are the ones who buy into the vision most, and that's where the influence will be felt and seen over the long haul. I didn't generate a grand vision to explain the Bush administration to the world, but to explain the world to this administration and everyone that followed in the coming decades. The Pentagon's "institutional memory" gets this book, and, in the end, that's its real measure of impact.
Saturday, February 26, 2005 at 4:51PM Dateline: United flights from Providence to Chicago to San Francisco to Montery, 25 February 2005
Too little time in my own bed last night, in part because we had to take in baby and her diaper leakage necessitated some linen changing about 3 am. She is just about the cuddliest kid you could ever be forced to take in, so we forgive her the occasional lapses.
I got up around 0530 and saw that the snow was basically wrapped up at about six inches, with drifts up to a 18 inches in the yard. I can tell how much Bailey has grown by these measures, because in the last big storm he could only manage moving around in my footprints, whereas this time he blazed his own trail. He's 25 pounds, easy, now.
I managed to shovel the driveway before taking off. The six inches were awfully powdery, and the effort work me up. Driving not too bad on the roads to the airport, and amazingly, the United flight took off right on schedule. But, as expected, a two-hour delay in Chicago. I don't think I've ever flown United through Chicago without some delay. It's the only airport I dread more than LaGuardia in NYC.
The past 24 hours have seen me hustling in my pursuit of two features for Esquire: one target a complete unknown and the other about as well-known as you can get in America. The process of negotiating these things is proving interesting. Part sales, part seduction, it's pretty interesting to act as pursuer instead of the pursued. I have to use all my skills as the 8-of-9, one of the "little boys" who thrived by getting things from people more powerful than he. Both stories should be interesting if pulled off, as both will help the public understand aspects of national security that have never been adequately explained to them before. One argument is basically already in Vol. II, and I expect to use the other one as well (and have all along), so the synergy here is strong, and that's something I want across the board, just like the blog is the life and the life is the blog.
Finally got into Monterey around 8pm, just in time to go have dinner with an old friend, the man who was president of the Center for Naval Analyses when I was hired, Phil DePoy, who's now at the Naval Postgraduate School. In doing this, I skipped the party, but since I was talking early the next day, that seemed to make sense to me, plus I felt it was important to touch base with Phil. It's always good to choose friends over networking, because the latter rise and fall while the former stick around through the years.
Here's today's catch:
■ Bush shows a steady but reasoned touch with Putin■ Negroponte is the USG's "3=D Man"
■ The Big Bang looking better by the day
■ China's version of the military-market nexus
■ The New Core tries "new" things
Saturday, February 26, 2005 at 4:40PM ■"Bush and Putin Exhibit Tension Over Democracy: An Awkward Appearance; Two Sides Announce Deal to Reduce Threat of Nuclear Terrorism," by Elisabeth Bumiller and David E. Sanger, New York Times, 25 February 2005, p. A1.
■"Bush, Putin Take Cooperative Tack As WTO Beckons," by Christopher Cooper and Gregory L. White, Wall Street Journal, 25 February 2005, p. A3.
■"What About Democracy? Leaders Mute Difference, Latching On to the Affirmative: Some see Bush ceding an opportunity to challenge Putin," by C.J. Chivers, New York Times, 25 February 2005, p. A10.
■"Russian Ex-Premier May Challenge Putin in '08: Kasyanov Denounces Path Taken by Kremlin, Implores Democratic Forces to Unite," by Guy Chazan and Gregory L. White, Wall Street Journal, 25 February 2005, p. A17.
■"In Putin's Backyard, Democracy StirsóWith U.S. Help: Before Kyrgyzstan Elections, Western-Backed Groups Offer Aid to Opposition," by Philip Shishkin, Wall Street Journal, 25 February 2005, p. A1.
I'm really beginning to feel that the WSJ not only outperforms the NYT on economics, but increasingly on security as wellóespecially when the New Core is involved. The WSJ seems to contextualize security within the "everything else" of globalization much better than the NYT does, as the Grey Lady seems fixated on always making Bush look bad. The collection of stories on the summit and Russia today bear this out.
As far as the NYT is concerned, the summit was a big nothing, with just a face-saving announcement on preventing nuclear terrorism. If anything, the summit highlighted the growing tensions between the two powers, and the hypocrisy of Bush's focus on freedom. Oh yeah, and Bush missed a big opportunity to slap Putin publicly over recent retrenchment there. Of course, the NYT fields some foreign policy experts to make all these points. In the view of the NYT, this is all that happened.
The WSJ's headline cites a very different subject:
In exchange for Mr. Bush's backing of Russia's bid to join the World Trade Organization, Mr. Putin agreed to begin a cooperative program to secure his country's nuclear arsenal and "improve the transparency of the business and investment environment" in the wake of his government's seizure and sale of oil giant OAO Yukos last year ÖMr. Bush has said Russia's entry into the WTO will make the country more democratic, because it would force Moscow to adopt economic changes and strengthen its commitment to the rule of law. The agreement the two men signed calls for Russia's entrance this year. A final agreement between the two countries would be a major boost for Mr. Putin's long-running drive to join the international trading body and a chance for the Kremlin to show it isn't backing away from the open, market-oriented economic policies Mr. Putin says he supports. The U.S. is the last major trading partner Russia needs to deal with before it can enter the WTO.
This is a huge issue and this was significant movement, and amazingly the NYT doesn't mention the WTO agreement whatsoever in all its coverage. Stunning, isn't it?
Everyone knows what a huge impact China's joining the WTO in 2001 has had on its economic reform trajectory, and so getting Russia into the organization is a logical focus for the Bush administrationóespecially as it's focused on encouraging freedom and democracy there. I mean, are we supposed to demand democracy before truly free markets? Instead of seeing this larger progress, all we get from the NYT is "loose nukes."
You don't grow the Core with interdiction. You grow it with connectivity. Having Russia join the WTO is a very big step in this regard. The WSJ sees this. The NYT does not.
Two other WSJ stories show off the paper's sense of the larger picture. The first one highlights a rising former premier who's likely to challenge whomever Putin puts up to succeed him in '08 (yes, that headline is a bit weird, because Putin can't run again).
Kasyanov was premier from 2000 to 2004, and those were pretty good years economically for Russia. Yes, on his watch much of the retrenchment began, and about a year ago he was fired by Putin. Now he's firing back, making the "smooth and telegenic" Kasyanov appear to many observers as perhaps the second coming of Viktor Yushschenko, "another former prime minister who was sacked, headed the opposition, and ended up as president in neighboring Ukraine."
So, despite all the hand-wringing by all our former experts on the former Soviet Union, political analysts in Moscow are already opining that "Russia's political class feels the beast is weakening."
Meanwhile, Russia gets closer to joining the WTO.
Second story shows yet again how, if Putin is such a hard-liner imperialist, he sure does a rotten job of disconnecting the former Soviet republics from the outside world. Here the article lists how four big DC/NYC-based Non-Governmental Organizations are meddling all over the dial in the former USSR, pushing reforms and helping opposition candidates in the Baltics, Belarus, Ukraine, Moldavia, the Caucasus, and all the Central Asian statesóbasically everywhere in the former Soviet Union plus Russia itself. One of these groups is George Soros' family foundation. Behind much of this activity lies the U.S. State Department, doing something it knows well how to do (i.e., work with states that are largely stable).
So look at it from Putin's perspective: former Soviet republics with meddling Westerners messing with the political process while NATO and the EU invite several toward memberships. And we're surprised that sometimes he gets surly on camera? Or that his government retrenches here and there? Good God! Short of just dismantling all power in the Kremlin, what are we supposed to expect of the man? Sure, he's got a long way to go, but remember how far Russia has come and remember all that Russia's given up without firing a shot. The man, quite frankly, puts up with crap from us that we'd never take from anybodyóno matter what our circumstances. Here, the Europeans are correct: show some patience. Russia belongs in the Core, and Russia's in the Coreóeven if the NYT seems oblivious to all this "news."
Saturday, February 26, 2005 at 4:39PM ■"25 Killed as Insurgents in Iraq Carry Out a Wave of Attacks," by Edward Wong, New York Times, 25 February 2005, p. A1.
■"Two Enemies: Non-state actors and change in the Muslim World," by Michael Vlahos, Strategic Assessments Office, National Security Analysis Department, The Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory, January 2005, 20 pages.
■"Talking with the Enemy: Inside the Secret Dialogue Between the U.S. and Insurgents in Iraqóand What the Rebels Say They Want," by Michael Ware, Time, 28 February 2005, p. 26.
■"The Trouble with Syria: An assassination in Lebanon focuses U.S. attention on Damascus. What price will Assad pay?" by Johanna McGeary, Time, 28 February 2005, p. 30.
■"Syria Vows to Quite Lebanon But Declines to Say When," by Joel Brinkley and Hassan M. Fattah, New York Times, 25 February 2005, p. A8.
I spoke about this last summer: you get the hand-off, eventually the elections, and then at some point it just stops being about us and starts being almost exclusively about the Iraqis themselves. Two are in (Kurds, Shiites), and one remains on the outside largely. The insurgency lives, but fundamentally in Sunni land. Iraqis mostly killing Iraqis, but the state getting stronger by the day, even as its writ may not extend too well in Sunni land.
Yes, Americans still die, but in side-light situations. We're not the main focus any more. As it should be, the Big Bang gets expressed primarily as a civil war. That's Michael Vlahos' point in his latest (and always interesting) analysis of the Global War on Terrorism. He says that the Big Bang hasóin effectóempowered two groups in the Middle East: the "Wilderness Ghazi" of al Qaeda jihadists and the "Civil Militia" that arise in Iraq (based on villages and tribal structures). In Mike's view, we need to disconnect and destroy the former while connecting and building up the latter.
So we keep Special Operations Command hot on the heels of al Qaeda, but we talk to the Sunni insurgents in Iraq. The former will never be converted or negotiated with, but the latter can and must be.
Beyond Iraq, the Bush administration really has Syria moving where it wants it to go, already talking openly of leaving Lebanon (although being clever enough to mimic the White House's own words on our troops in Iraq). Bashar Assad really could be a Gorbachev there, but it'll take both time (for him to move his younger generation of supporters into power slots) and outside pressure (he needs external excuses to force him into internal reforms, but this is tricky, because if we push too hard, he is compelled to push back out of political self-preservation).
The weird part is, as Middle Eastern expert Steven Cook points out, Syria's been using Lebanon as its portal to the outside world: "It is absolutely clear that over the course of the last 15 years, Syria has used Lebanon as its outlet to the rest of the world, as its economic life-boat, and I don't see them giving that up."
The disconnected society using a far more connected one to survive, living off it like a parasite, keeping it from its own, fuller connectivity. With neighbors like that, who needs imminent threats?
What will Syria demand for its withdrawal: that which it believes its domination of Lebanon provides it? The continued survival of Bashar al-Assad's regime.
In the short run, not a bad trade. An authoritarian regime, not a totalitarian one, we kill it with connectivity, the same as Iran. Roughly 600,000 Syrians work in Lebanon today, doing the menial jobs. Their remittances back home keep the economy from collapsing from the lack of any serious outside capital. Promise Assad continued access to this market for this migrant labor.
Yet again, the military-market nexus.
Saturday, February 26, 2005 at 4:39PM ■"Bush's New Intelligence Czar: John Negroponte faces intrigue, subterfuge and shadowy fighters. And that's just in Washington," by Timothy L. Berger et. al, Time, 28 February 2005, p. 33.
■"Thrown to the Wolves: A haughty U.S. links arms with torturers," op-ed by Bob Herbert, New York Times, 25 February 2005, p. A23.
The "3-D jobs" are the ones filled mostly by migrant workers, and the term stands for dirty, dangerous and difficult. These words describe Negroponte's career: the man is willing to take very tough jobs and he always performs them with aplomb. Compare this guy to Colin Powell, media darling, who held high-profile jobs galore and basically accomplished nothing of lasting note in his career. Negroponte gets things done and doesn't draw attention to himself. His record speaks to why he gets being given such sensitive tasks.
Bush chose well for the National Intelligence Director. The first man to hold this job will go a long way to defining its essential rule set. CIA's Goss will report to him, and he'll share control over the 15 members of the Intelligence Community with a load of other cabinet secretaries, the biggest being, of course, Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld, whose department owns 80% of the IC's total budget.
But here's the real power to this position: he replaces the Director of Central Intelligence (Goss) as the daily briefer to the president.
Where I think Negroponte needs to work the process hardest and fastest is forcing the IC to define its emerging rule set on how we snatch and process terrorist suspects inside the Gap, especially in terms of how we choose to sometimes send them home to states there, like Syria, that we know will torture them. This is essentially the ground I covered in the Wired piece, and frankly, I'm becoming more enamored of the World Counter-Terrorism Organization I proposed in that article as more writers like Bob Herbert mount effective attacks on our policy of "extraordinary rendition" (sending suspects to known Gap torturing regimes). We have to come clean on this sort of stuff before we end up with some huge scandals. We have to build up the Core's rule set on this one. Negroponte needs to make this a priority.
Saturday, February 26, 2005 at 4:38PM ■"U.S.-China Tensions Resurface: Beijing Legislation on Taiwan, Defense Build-up Fuel Criticism," by Murray Herbert, Jason Dean and Charles Hutzler, Wall Street Journal, 25 February 2005, p. A16.
■"A Shell Game in the Arms Race: China sells, and the U.S. ignores," op-ed by Matthew Godsey and Gary Milhollin, New York Times, 25 February 2005, p. A33.
Another scary article about China becoming more frightening to us: as al Qaeda fades to the background, China must rise to fill its place in the imagination of threat planners. It's almost enough to make you wonder if China doesn't secretly hope for another al Qaeda strike somewhere prominent in the Core.
Of course, all the blame here is on China, for contemplating the passage of an "antisecession" law, perhaps next month. Taiwan's recent noises about similarly symbolic acts designed to piss off the Chinese notwithstanding. The U.S. coaxing Japan to declare itself part of our defense package for Taiwan notwithstanding. Our plans for missile shields both at home and in east Asia notwithstanding. Our opposition to the EU selling arms to China notwithstanding. Our long-time supplying of military technology to Taiwan notwithstanding.
No, China is the only bad guy in this process.
And yet it and Taiwan just recently agree on direct flights.
But the bigger threat is the U.S. Congress hot to go after China now that it's "fixed" U.S. national security with a Department of Homeland Security and a National Intelligence Director (don't new offices and titles fix everything?). Watch here for the most salient overreaction to any "law" passed by China.
And then there's China's reaching for new oil supplies around the world, dispensing military support as part of the process to states we don't like, like Iran.
Can you imagine the United States ever being accused of only getting involved militarily with another state simply because it has oil? Really! Who do those sneaky Chinese think they are?
