ARTICLE: The Folly of 'Asymmetric War', By Michael J. Mazarr, Washington Quarterly, Summer 2008
This is a good counter to my arguments, but the logic is hopelessly trapped within the conflict paradigm and treats globalization and its effects as ancillary, viewing change through the lens of nation-state power--hence the need for large hedging against great power war.
But it does capture the essential divide between the great war types and the small war types and suggests the stakes involved for force structure.
Still, the hedging function is not hard, given our wealth. It only seems hard because, under Bush, we've put ourselves in the position of both assuming the vast share of the Leviathan load AND the vast share of the SysAdmin role. That's where Mazarr's thinking breaks down, in my mind: he cannot see the making rising great powers part of the SysAdmin solution, primarily because he views their economic rise in zero-sum terms.
That's where the lack of economics kills such arguments. It is war within the context of war and nothing else.
The fact that Mazarr has to defend his propositions against the charge of "isolationism" is all you need to know. It is an abandonment of America's historic role in starting, defending, and spreading the international liberal trade order--arguably the single greatest force for good in human history. Remove our military from this process and let the "fires" burn, as Mazarr suggests, and you're egging the world on toward a 1930s-style conflagration.
Bad economics (none really), bad strategy.
Honestly, to read something like this that aspires to grand strategy and see it so stunningly void of economics is very discouraging. We simply don't have the profs for the job in the national security community.
(Thanks: Galrahn)
Tuesday, July 8, 2008 at 4:36AM 
