Dateline: Portsmouth RI, 26 November 2004
The following lengthy review by James Pinkerton, former Reagan and Bush '41 White House aide and currently at the New American Foundation and Newsday as a columnist, was sent to me by a reader. It appears in the current (6 December) issue of The American Conservative. Like many critical reviews, it has less to do with PNM than with the reviewer, who apparently is very disturbed by the "neoconservatives" of the Bush '43 administration.
Here is the complete text, with commentary to follow:
Books
[The Pentagon's New Map: War and Peace in the Twenty-First Century, Thomas P.M. Barnett, Putnam, 385 pages]
Don't Say the (Other) N-Word
by James P. Pinkerton
IF YOU EVER find yourself wondering why Iraq has proved to be a quagmire, you might take a look at The Pentagon's New Map by Thomas P.M. Barnett.
The book's optimism is as bold as the administration's promises of Iraqi "jubilation" that we heard two years ago. Indeed, for those seeking a "new operating theory to explain how this seemingly 'chaotic' world actually works," the dust jacket assures us, "Barnett has the answers." But answers for whom? The book does not explain the world as it is; Barnett's two-variable analysisópeople are driven by economics, except when they must be kept in line by American military forceóhas already been refuted by world events. Instead, the author answers a different, sneakier, question: how does one establish neoconservativism as the dominant politico-military paradigmówithout using the word "neoconservative"? That is, how does one mainstream radical ideas, making them seem as normal and American as apple pie and PowerPoint?
Barnett's mission, seemingly, is to synthesize two strands of neoconservatism. One is the "conservative" interventionism of Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz and the Bush 43-ized Republican Party. The other strand, perhaps more important in Barnett's view, is the liberal interventionism of New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman and much of the Clintonized Democratic Party. To be sure, Friedman's economism, leading to utopianism, has been discredited in the eyes of many, even before Iraq. Yet other Americans remain susceptible to a Barnett vision of the post-Cold War worldónamely, a "grand strategy on par with the Cold War strategy of containment," a strategy in which the U.S. leads civilization against the dark forces of barbarism.
Barnett, a senior military analyst with the U.S. Naval War College, is touted on the dust jacket as having "given a constant stream of briefing over the past few years, and particularly since 9/11, to the highest of high-level civilian and military policy-makers." And now, the jacket continues, "he gives it to you."
Actually, this briefing will cost you $26.95. The U.S., meanwhile, has committed close to $200 billion for the war in Iraqówhich Barnett cites as "obviously" the first action item for his geostrategic planóso why start pinching pennies now? A few hours spent with this book will leave the reader with a better understanding of how marchers of folly first put their boots on. In Barnett case, it begins with a map of the world, a little jargon, a few factoidsóand a brash theory unalloyed by judgment or historical perspective.
Yet Barnett appears to have influence in the U.S. government. In addition to his post at the Naval War College, he has also worked in the Office of the Secretary of Defense and the Center for Naval Analyses; if the Pentagon had disapproved of Barnett's bold title, presumably the brass could have stopped him from using it. Instead, they funded his work and even blurbed his book.
Barnett's Big Idea is to draw lines across the planet delineating the "functioning Core" and the "non-integrating Gap." The Core consists of the rich countries of North America, Europe, Japan, and Australia, plus Russia, China, and India. The Gap includes most nations of Central and South America, Africa, the Middle East, and Southest Asia.
The great work of the 21st century, Barnett says, is for the "connected" Core countries to come to the rescue of the "disconnected" Gap regions. How to do this? One route is foreign aid, another is trade. Yet another is the militaryóyes, armed intervention. That is, the Core must prove its systemic superiority by invading the Gap. Paying no mind to St. Augustine, Barnett explains, "My definition of just wars is exceedingly simple: They must leave affected societies more connected than we found them." In other words, perpetual war for perpetual connectivity.
So the idea is globalization in all forms, by all means. Indeed, Barnett goes into full pompous-reverential mode to declare The Lexus and the Olive Tree is a "seminal volume." One might think of Barnett as Friedman with a security clearance. This Pentagon guru declares, "America's national interest in the era of globalization lies primarily in the extension of global economic connectivity." With that single thought in his head, restated endlessly across nearly 400 pages, he reduces all the complexity of the world down to one simplicity: whether or not countries are "connected." And like Friedman, he never doubts that the U.S.óthe worldwide history of failed colonialism notwithstandingócan reliably do the connecting.
In a weak moment, Barnett admits, "globalization's progressive advance will trigger more nationalism around the world, not less." Then he catches himselfóthe cure for measles of nationalism, he insists, is more globalism. "For each time we expand globalization's Functioning Core, we expand for all those living within it the freedom of choice, movement and expression." Prosperity, in other words, begets harmony.
But is affluence really the antidote to war? As Aristotle once observed, no tyrant ever conquered a city because he was cold and hungry. And the Stagyrite knew whereof he spoke: his pupil Alexander the Great suffered little deprivation in his Macedonian royal family. Yet Alexander's chosen form of "movement and expression" was to conquer the world.
But we haven't got to the real thrust of the book, which is that it's the mission of the Coreóall united, of course, as one big connected and integrated familyóto fill in the Gap, with treasure, blood, and the American way. This shiny, happy vision includes such unhappy Core-iors as France, Germany, and Russia. Indeed, Barnett even sees China as "a serious strategic partner in managing global stability." Do I hear the word "Taiwan"? Only by ignoring a dozen nuclear-edged feuds among the richer nations does Barnett get to the Friedman Stationóto the terminus of a certain historical view, to the place where history ends because everyone is sitting peaceful and pretty. That is, if they are on the right side of the global tracks.
Because on the wrong side of the tracks, Barnett warns, lies a world of despair and danger. So even as the Core forms its multinational condominium, it must venture forth to slay the monsters. Barnett explains, "If the Core seems to be living the dream of Immanuel Kant's perpetual peace, then the Gap remains trapped in Hobbes' far crueler reality." As a result, America's globocop destiny is manifest: "American soldiers will end up being the tip of the spear."
If some of this is starting to seem familiar, that's because those ideas that were not cribbed from Friedman were taken from Wolfowitz.
Thus we come to "The National Security Strategy of the United States," released by the White House in September 2002. That document, on which Wolfowitz had been working while serving in the Bush 41 administration a decade earlier, asserted that the world now has only "a single sustainable model for national success: freedom, democracy, and free enterprise."
But since not everyone recognizes the blessings of this single modelóaka the American Wayóthe U.S. should intervene as necessary to give history a shove. Operation Iraqi Freedom was the beta test for the new strategy. And although the war hasn't gone exactly as planned, President Bush continued to prove that theory often trumps reality, insistently describing Iraq as the first step on the long march to peace and freedom for the world.
Yet interestingly, the word "neoconservative" never appears in this book's index. In fact, Barnett goes to great lengths to disguise the neocon-y nature of his argument. At one point, he launches into a reverie in which he claims to be "the real Fox Mulder," referring to the '90s TV show "The X-Files." Continuing in his self-dramatization, Barnett describes a sinister conspiracy inside the U.S. government: "Now the ZOG [Zionist Occupation Government, a term used by Timothy McVeigh types] conspirators basically have control of the Pentagon, with the Jews Paul Wolfowitz and Doug Feith running the show." The ZOG running the military? What are we supposed to make of that? One suspects that the purpose here is for us to have a good laugh, thus chuckling away legitimate concerns that perhaps neocon world-historical utopians are careening America over a cliff top.
The suspicion Barnett is carrying heavy neocon baggage, however disguisedly, increases as he turns toward the Middle East; there he wipes away centuries of history and oceans of blood with his simplifying globalizing brush. "What makes suicide bombers possible?" he asks. The answer: "It's not the poverty, because most of the terrorists are middle class and educated. It's that they have no realistic expectations of a better life for themselves or their children." This economic-determinist dogma might amuse the late Mohammad Atta, the Egyptian-born ringleader of 9/11, who had made his way to affluent Germany before embracing al-Qaeda ideology. Nor would it explain the mysterious rise in suicide bombing in "liberated" Iraq, rising from, well, zero into the hundreds since the Connectivity invasion. In fact, as Robert Paper of the University of Chicago demonstrated, the single biggest factor in suicide bombing is the bombers' desire to drive out foreign occupiers. Pape goes unmentioned by Barnett.
Instead, Barnett plows ahead with his variable-less view of the world, leading him to dismiss all patriots everywhere as retrogrades: "When individuals cannot find opportunity in life, they are reduced to fighting over what's left over: the land and the cultural identity they attach to its history." Such nostalgic rootedness, he maintains, is only for losers. It's far better to "define a society by connectivity and the individual opportunities it provides." Then, Barnett cheers, "You will see the primordial attachment to the land disappear . . . as mobility trumps tradition." So when that Great SUV-Day arrives, patriotism will become obsolete. And as for Americans, we can build condos atop Bunker Hill and pave over Gettsbury.
Barnett ends by offering a world-fixing to-do list: "ten steps toward this world worth creating." And although the book was published just this year, it looks as though he might want to rework some of his presentation slides.
The first item on his list has already been tried: The Iraq War. Dutifiul apparatchik that he is, Barnett lauds "our efforts to recreate Iraq as a functioning, connected society within the global economy." We feel no surprise thereóalthough maybe his further prediction, that "the Middle East will be transformed over the next two decades" needs to be tweaked a bit.
Item two on the list: apply the Iraq solution to North Korea. Writing with the jingoistic breeziness of someone who has never seen combat and never understood how a war turns out, Barnett announces, "Kim Jong Il must be removed from power and Korea must be reunited." He add, "There is simply no good reason why Northeast Asia should put up with this nutcase any longer."
Of course, some might argue that the "good reasons" for negotiating with Pyongyang include its six to eight nuclear weapons. But if neoconservatism doesn't exist in Barnett's exoteric vocabulary, it's no surprise that realism doesn't feature in the text of his book.
Item three: Iran. Once again, Barnett sees regime change as a great idea. Echoing his neocon mentors, he wants to make "Iran the greatest reclamation project the world has ever seen."
Some might note that this list echoes George W. Bush's axis of evil. Indeed, Barnett is lavish in his praise of his commander in chief, even if it means trashing another Republican president: "I prefer comparing George W. Bush to Harry Truman rather than Ronald Reagan." Why is that? "Reagan didn't win the Cold War but had it handed to him on a silver platter." In other words, according to Barnett's revisionist history, the world situation that Ronald Reagan inherited from Jimmy Carter in 1981óSoviets occupying Afghanistan, NATO drifting toward defeatism, pro-Castro forces winning in Central Americaópresented nothing more than a silver-platter challenge.
So we thing again of that one group of nominally conservative thinkers who argue that the Gipper is overrated. Yup, it's the neocons, the Straussian silent partners in Barnett's book. They're the ones who lump Reagan in with the quarter-century of American presidents before Bush 43 in order to support the claim that America's Middle East policy has been weak and morally cloudy since the fall of the Shah of Iran.
And what else does Barnett recommend? Faster immigration, please. Europe, he avers, needs to "move beyond 'guest workers' and into American-style encouragement of immigration flows." Indeed, "The right-wing anti-immigrant politicians need to be shouted off the political stage and pronto." Moreover, after encouraging Europe to become more like the U.S. on immigration policy, Barnett next encourages the U.S. to become more like the United Nations. In his dream scenario, the U.S. would merge with Mexico and by 2050, a "United States" president would be elected directly from the former Mexico. As Steve Sailer has noted, the neocon vision is a two-step: first, America invades the world; then America invites the world.
America, meet Tom Barnett. Your government rates him as one of the best and brightest. He endorses the radical world-remaking foreign-policy agenda of the neocons, although he won't quite come out and say it. Yet, lest anyone mistake him for a mere stooge of the neocons, he endorses a few nation-remapping ideas that are even more radical than anything the neocons have proposed, at least in public. So this would-be Clausewitz, writing from the bosom of the military-industrial-PowerPoint complex, demonstrates that the neocon bubble has yet to burst. If his book is any indicator of the future, then we ain't seen nothing yet.
James J. Pinkerton is a columnist for Newsday and a fellow at the New American Foundation in Washington, D.C. He served in the White House under Presidents Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush.
COMMENTARY: Let me go through the text in full before some summary comments:
Instead, the author answers a different, sneakier, question: how does one establish neoconservativism as the dominant politico-military paradigmówithout using the word "neoconservative"?
This is basically the crux of the review: Pinkerton identifies me and my vision as being completely derived from the neocons. The neocons are the great big bogeyman in Pinkerton's analysis of how Bush 43 has hijacked the beloved party of Reagan, who is clearly his idol (man, does he get mad later on when I dis Ronnie about the end of the Cold War!). So, in effect, his review of my book becomes his chance to tee off on the neocons, and the fact that I don't personally "admit" to being under their sway makes my "sneaky" attempt to mainstream these dangerous ideas all the more threatening. As is pretty much always the case with Pinkerton's writing, going all the way back to his rise to prominence as the "great domestic thinker" of the first Bush administration (wow, there's an historical claim to greatness: you really have to hand it to Bush 41 as a great domestic presidentóor was that why he was a one-term president?): he is always fuming about those who are true Reaganites and those who have betrayed the party. If only I were a Republican I might give a rat's ass about that dumbass historical feud.
Barnett's mission, seemingly, is to synthesize two strands of neoconservatism. One is the "conservative" interventionism of Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz and the Bush 43-ized Republican Party. The other strand, perhaps more important in Barnett's view, is the liberal interventionism of New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman and much of the Clintonized Democratic Party.
Whoa doggy! Is Barnett a Trojan Horse of the Straussian neocons or a Trojan Horse of the do-gooding Clintonites? Man, I do sound like a radical if I'm trying to fuse Clinton and W. together into one big happy vision of the future. But if I'm even more a Clintonite-Friedmanite than a Straussian, then how can I be a neocon? Hmmm. Methinks Pinkerton has lived too long inside the Beltway. Perhaps he drank up a bit too much of Lee Atwater during his seminal years with Bush 41 that he sees the world so much in terms of "good Republicans" and "everyone else."
Perhaps an even bigger problem for me: I don't know who Strauss is other than I've heard he was a professor a while back at a school somewhere in the Midwest. Man, if I'm going to be part of this whole conspiracy thing with the neocons, I better read up on the rabbi himself!
Yet Barnett appears to have influence in the U.S. government. In addition to his post at the Naval War College, he has also worked in the Office of the Secretary of Defense and the Center for Naval Analyses; if the Pentagon had disapproved of Barnett's bold title, presumably the brass could have stopped him from using it. Instead, they funded his work and even blurbed his book.
Ah yes, the conspiracy reveals itself. Clearly, if I use the word "Pentagon" in the title, the book had to receive official clearance within the Defense Department (just like anyone using "liar" and "Bush" have to clear it with the administration before publishing). As for funding my work, yes, I received a paycheck for my thinking, and later I wrote about that thinking in a bestselling book. Something James himself did, although his book was anything but a bestseller. But clearly, if the White House "funds" your work and you later publish your ideas, that's one thing, whereas if the Pentagon does, that's quite another. And James better read my dust jacket again: no officials of the Pentagon blurb my book using their titles. In fact, only one such official even appears, Art Cebrowski, and his official title is nowhere to be seen. My guess is that James' book has a few ex- or retired (like Cebrowski) government figures blurbing it, but why call the kettle black on that one?
The great work of the 21st century, Barnett says, is for the "connected" Core countries to come to the rescue of the "disconnected" Gap regions. How to do this? One route is foreign aid, another is trade. Yet another is the militaryóyes, armed intervention. That is, the Core must prove its systemic superiority by invading the Gap. Paying no mind to St. Augustine, Barnett explains, "My definition of just wars is exceedingly simple: They must leave affected societies more connected than we found them." In other words, perpetual war for perpetual connectivity.
Pinkerton seems to miss all the arguments about foreign direct investment driving global integration, and being far more influential than trade, aid or the infrequent military interventions I predict. But that's asking too much. Pinkerton's review has all the earmarks of skipping over the "boring chapters," meaning anything that doesn't fit his critique of the neocons. So if I write an entire chapter dissecting the nonsense about "perpetual war," then that goes unmentioned in this review, because it's somewhat inconvenient to the rhetoric.
One might think of Barnett as Friedman with a security clearance. This Pentagon guru declares, "America's national interest in the era of globalization lies primarily in the extension of global economic connectivity." With that single thought in his head, restated endlessly across nearly 400 pages, he reduces all the complexity of the world down to one simplicity: whether or not countries are "connected." And like Friedman, he never doubts that the U.S.óthe worldwide history of failed colonialism notwithstandingócan reliably do the connecting.
Always neat to see a Republican arguing against global economic connectivity as a source of peace and stability, but that's what happens when you feel you're in a battle with the devil: you end up arguing against anything the man says, no matter how sensible. Then again, Pinkerton never offers anything as an alternative explanation other than to reiterate his love for the good old days when we faced off with the commies and Ronnie was our Lone Ranger. But his point is well-taken here: economic connectivity is no guide to anything in terms of war and peace, and the only way it can be encouraged (or the global economy extended) requires the U.S. to become a colonial power. So I guess the end of the Cold War was just one big heyday for colonialization? Or is it now the case that our victory there isn't real, because all it ended up doing was connecting us economically with the East? You know, all those countries we still have "nuclear feuds" with? Maybe I'm being too complex in my thinking here: real point is simply to reiterate that the neocons are bad!
In a weak moment, Barnett admits, "globalization's progressive advance will trigger more nationalism around the world, not less." Then he catches himselfóthe cure for measles of nationalism, he insists, is more globalism. "For each time we expand globalization's Functioning Core, we expand for all those living within it the freedom of choice, movement and expression." Prosperity, in other words, begets harmony.
Yes, one does expect the worlds "prosperity begets harmony" to be mocked in The American Conservative. My God! What was I thinking! Nationalism is really a good thing . . . or. . . wait a minute? What's Pinkerton's point here? Oh yes, NEOCONS ARE BAD!
But is affluence really the antidote to war? As Aristotle once observed, no tyrant ever conquered a city because he was cold and hungry. And the Stagyrite knew whereof he spoke: his pupil Alexander the Great suffered little deprivation in his Macedonian royal family. Yet Alexander's chosen form of "movement and expression" was to conquer the world.
Is it just me, or does this analysis strike you as palpably pinheaded? Because Aristotle tutored Alexander and Alexander did a lot of conquering and yet wasn't cold and hungry himself, then anybody who thinks "prosperity begets harmony" is really misguided? Follow that? Man, who can argue with a Big Brain that works like that? Wow! You're right Jim, prosperity equals war, cause Aristotle said so.
Indeed, Barnett even sees China as "a serious strategic partner in managing global stability." Do I hear the word "Taiwan"? Only by ignoring a dozen nuclear-edged feuds among the richer nations does Barnett get to the Friedman Stationóto the terminus of a certain historical view, to the place where history ends because everyone is sitting peaceful and pretty. That is, if they are on the right side of the global tracks.
So Taiwan means the U.S. and China can never be strategic partners? Despite our hugely overlapping economic interests? Man, who's lacking realism on that one?
As for the "dozen nuclear-edged feuds" inside the Core, who in hell is Pinkerton talking about? Is the US feuding with France to the point where anyone expects nukes to fly any time soon? China, to whom we're selling supercomputers? India, where much of our R&D is heading? Russia (oh, of course, we'll have always Moscow, James!)? Russia with China? India with China? Do we describe all these relationships as "nuclear-edged feuds"? Man, is Pinkerton still living in the good old days of the 1980s? Or am I just being a fuzzy-headed "globalist"?
If some of this is starting to seem familiar, that's because those ideas that were not cribbed from Friedman were taken from Wolfowitz.
This line sums up the review most of all: all Pinkerton sees in this book is Friedman and Wolfowitz, both of whom he obviously despises, and so my book is totally "cribbed" from them. When Pinkerton puts on his glasses, one lense is tinted with Wolfowitz and the other with Friedman, so guess what? He sees their influence everywhere! I have over 400 pages of material, but that's all BS compared to whenever he sees even the slightest evidence of their nefarious thinking!
Thus we come to "The National Security Strategy of the United States," released by the White House in September 2002. That document, on which Wolfowitz had been working while serving in the Bush 41 administration a decade earlier, asserted that the world now has only "a single sustainable model for national success: freedom, democracy, and free enterprise."
But since not everyone recognizes the blessings of this single modelóaka the American Wayóthe U.S. should intervene as necessary to give history a shove. Operation Iraqi Freedom was the beta test for the new strategy. And although the war hasn't gone exactly as planned, President Bush continued to prove that theory often trumps reality, insistently describing Iraq as the first step on the long march to peace and freedom for the world.
Yes, here we come to the real crux of the matter, of the National Security Strategy that I mention once in the book on page 242, referencing it as a new rule set. Clearly it lies at the heart of my book because I go on and on about it soóan entire subordinate clause, for that matter. But no matter, Pinkerton wants to write about it and this review is just a pretext for that. I mean, my book is so bereft of ideas, why not bring in the National Security Strategy and Alexander the Great while you're at it?
Yet interestingly, the word "neoconservative" never appears in this book's index. In fact, Barnett goes to great lengths to disguise the neocon-y nature of his argument. At one point, he launches into a reverie in which he claims to be "the real Fox Mulder," referring to the '90s TV show "The X-Files." Continuing in his self-dramatization, Barnett describes a sinister conspiracy inside the U.S. government: "Now the ZOG [Zionist Occupation Government, a term used by Timothy McVeigh types] conspirators basically have control of the Pentagon, with the Jews Paul Wolfowitz and Doug Feith running the show." The ZOG running the military? What are we supposed to make of that? One suspects that the purpose here is for us to have a good laugh, thus chuckling away legitimate concerns that perhaps neocon world-historical utopians are careening America over a cliff top.
Hmm, that is suspicious! So the whole X-File parody was nothing of the sort! But really an attempt to throw people off the trail!
What a minute? Didn't I admit it as such in the parody! I mean, it was a parody, right?
Or was it?
The suspicion Barnett is carrying heavy neocon baggage, however disguisedly, increases as he turns toward the Middle East; there he wipes away centuries of history and oceans of blood with his simplifying globalizing brush. "What makes suicide bombers possible?" he asks. The answer: "It's not the poverty, because most of the terrorists are middle class and educated. It's that they have no realistic expectations of a better life for themselves or their children." This economic-determinist dogma might amuse the late Mohammad Atta, the Egyptian-born ringleader of 9/11, who had made his way to affluent Germany before embracing al-Qaeda ideology. Nor would it explain the mysterious rise in suicide bombing in "liberated" Iraq, rising from, well, zero into the hundreds since the Connectivity invasion. In fact, as Robert Paper of the University of Chicago demonstrated, the single biggest factor in suicide bombing is the bombers' desire to drive out foreign occupiers. Pape goes unmentioned by Barnett.
Yes, another suspicious item! I don't mention Pape, but an entirely different terrorism expert who makes the same argument I do about "diminished expectations" being the key cause of terrorism. Weird huh?
And again, Atta would have been amused, because clearly he saw a better life for himself and his non-children in having the Middle East join the global economy. So the whole connectivity argument is specious, clearly. I mean, suicide bombers are trying to drive Westerners out of the Middle East, so their actions have nothing to do with resisting connectivity!
Instead, Barnett plows ahead with his variable-less view of the world, leading him to dismiss all patriots everywhere as retrogrades: "When individuals cannot find opportunity in life, they are reduced to fighting over what's left over: the land and the cultural identity they attach to its history." Such nostalgic rootedness, he maintains, is only for losers. It's far better to "define a society by connectivity and the individual opportunities it provides." Then, Barnett cheers, "You will see the primordial attachment to the land disappear . . . as mobility trumps tradition." So when that Great SUV-Day arrives, patriotism will become obsolete. And as for Americans, we can build condos atop Bunker Hill and pave over Gettsbury.
Yes, the crux of my vision says that to be a good American is to put condos on Bunker Hill and pave over Gettsyburg and thereby "dismiss patriots everywhere." God, Pinkerton nailed me on that one! So the insurgents in Iraq are really patriots, and if they want to behead our people and stream it over the Internet rather than accept a McDonald's on their block, then dang it, I've got to learn how to respect such losers . . . uh . . I mean "patriots."
Barnett ends by offering a world-fixing to-do list: "ten steps toward this world worth creating." And although the book was published just this year, it looks as though he might want to rework some of his presentation slides.
The first item on his list has already been tried: The Iraq War. Dutiful apparatchik that he is, Barnett lauds "our efforts to recreate Iraq as a functioning, connected society within the global economy." We feel no surprise thereóalthough maybe his further prediction, that "the Middle East will be transformed over the next two decades" needs to be tweaked a bit.
Sigh! Pinkerton's already given up on the entire Middle East changing whatsoever over the next two decades. . . But he's right, we should give up now after one good try and just admit that we'll never win this global war on terrorism. That's what Ronnie would have done in this situation, just like when he pulled out the Marines from Lebanon and basically wrote off the Middle East for the rest of his administrationóexcept for Iran-Contra, of course.
Item two on the list: apply the Iraq solution to North Korea. Writing with the jingoistic breeziness of someone who has never seen combat and never understood how a war turns out, Barnett announces, "Kim Jong Il must be removed from power and Korea must be reunited." He add, "There is simply no good reason why Northeast Asia should put up with this nutcase any longer."
I guess because Jim was never on welfare he probably never should have written about domestic policy in the first Bush administration. The fact that I've spent a career working with the military doesn't mean anything because I haven't seen combat. Then again, not that many in the military actually do see combat, so they must all be idiots about such matters as well. So the only people who should opine about war and peace should be combat vets, just like only cancer survivors should be oncologists, and only ex-cons should be judges. Education and training is completely worthless. If you haven't REALLY experienced something, you know absolutely nothing about it.
Of course, some might argue that the "good reasons" for negotiating with Pyongyang include its six to eight nuclear weapons. But if neoconservatism doesn't exist in Barnett's exoteric vocabulary, it's no surprise that realism doesn't feature in the text of his book.
Geez, wouldn't Ronnie have said, "Mr. Kim, tear down that DMZ!" Then again, Ronnie was such a dreamer . . ..
Item three: Iran. Once again, Barnett sees regime change as a great idea. Echoing his neocon mentors, he wants to make "Iran the greatest reclamation project the world has ever seen."
Actually, I wrote that line about Iraq (p. 380), not Iran, but why quibble when Pinkerton's on a roll. I mean, anyone who cites your dust-jacket that much clearly gave your book a close read. If I actually didn't call for an invasion of Iran, no matter, Jim knows what the neocons really want and that's all this review is about anyway.
"Reagan didn't win the Cold War but had it handed to him on a silver platter." In other words, according to Barnett's revisionist history, the world situation that Ronald Reagan inherited from Jimmy Carter in 1981óSoviets occupying Afghanistan, NATO drifting toward defeatism, pro-Castro forces winning in Central Americaópresented nothing more than a silver-platter challenge.
So we thing again of that one group of nominally conservative thinkers who argue that the Gipper is overrated. Yup, it's the neocons, the Straussian silent partners in Barnett's book. They're the ones who lump Reagan in with the quarter-century of American presidents before Bush 43 in order to support the claim that America's Middle East policy has been weak and morally cloudy since the fall of the Shah of Iran.
No, Jim's right on that one. Reagan's record in the Middle East was a fabulous one: success after success. America won the war in Afghanistan by giving arms to the mujahadeen and growing Osama and al-Qaeda in the process, plus setting Pakistan on the wonderful path it follows today, so no moral cloudiness there. America also got those wobbly Euros in line by giving them really big missiles. And we won in Central America in a completely non-morally cloudy way, by funneling lotsa arms to the killing squads of the Contras.
Yes, the Iran-Contra scandal and the secret foreign policy shop running arms out of the basement of the White House while Ronnie sleptónow that's a clear and morally unambiguous way to run a national security strategy!
Ah, but that's being unfair. Jim didn't have anything to do with any of that because he's not a foreign policy or national security expert whatsoever, which is why it's perfect that he's reviewing my book. It wouldn't be fair for me to lump him into some conspiracy with Oliver North. That was a completely different part of the White Houseómany doors down the hall.
Pinkerton can just lump me in with the neocons because he knows the inner workings of the Office of the Secretary of Defense like all domestic White House advisers do.
* * *
All in all, this is one of those times where your book feels like a bit player in its own review!
Pinkerton wanted to rag on the neocons, and PNM gave him the excuse. When the material fit his preferred diatribe, it was included, when not, it was simply ignored. He also went out of his way to ignore all the material on analyzing the Gap, analyzing the new form of crisis represented by 9/11, the whole argument about new rules for national security, the whole strategy of trying to shrink the Gap by using a multi-pronged approach emphasizingómost of all--stable legal rule sets leading to foreign direct investment flows. Pinkerton bypassed my model of how globalization works in terms of energy, FDI, immigration and security flows, my description of the Leviathan-SysAdmin split, and my long delineation of the American way of war. Instead, my vision is described as nothing more than a map and a few factoids and a complete disregard for history, even though the book is chocked full of history (none of which he apparently agrees withóespecially dissing Reagan!).
In the end, my book is not reviewed here. All that's reviewed is Pinkerton's unwavering hatred for those he calls the neocons. Pinkerton can't review anything beyond his dislike for neocons because he's not a foreign relations expert, not a historian of international affairs, not a warfare expert, nor he is attuned to global economics. He sounds off vehemently on immigration, which he obviously worries about, and that's it in terms of the vision. Oh, and he reminds us that prosperity doesn't lead to peace.
Why Pinkerton can't review my book other than to say it's all wrong because the occupation (not the war) in Iraq went badly and thus any Bush Administration attempt to foster change in the Middle East will clearly fail, is because he has nothing to offer instead. Clearly, he worries over globalization and "globalism" (whatever the hell that word means), but does he offer any ideas or counterpoints to any of the arguments I make, other than to say history has already judged it and found it wanting?
So his review is basically, "I hate neocons and what they've done to the GOP."
Oh . .. and "I hate this book because it's clearly influential."
Sunday, November 28, 2004 at 5:38AM 
