'Big Bang' defined
Barnett
Bo wrote in to suggest we define 'Big Bang' and add it to the glossary. Tom agreed, and here's his def:
Big Bang: refers to the implied (and sometimes openly voiced) strategy of the Bush Administration to trigger widespread political, social, economic and ultimately security change in the Middle East through the initial spark caused by the toppling of Saddam Hussein's regime in Iraq and the hoped-for emergence of a truly market-based, democratic Arab state. Thus, the Big Bang primarily aims for a demonstration effect, but likewise is also a direct, in-your-face attempt by the Bush Administration to shake things up in the stagnant Middle East, where decades of diplomacy and military crisis response by outside forces (primarily the U.S.) had accomplished basically nothing. The implied threat of the Big Bang is, "We're not leaving the region until the region truly joins the global economy in a broadband fashion, leading to political pluralism domestically." The Big Bang was and still is a bold strategy by Bush, one that I support. All terrorism is local, so either deal with that or resort to firewalling America off from the outside world.
Grow the Core, don't firewall it
OP-ED: "Think Outside the Border: Canada and the U.S. can learn from Europe on security," by Stephen Handelman, New York Times, 12 June 2006, p. A21.
EDITORIAL: "In Foreign Territory," New York Times, 12 June 2006, p. A20.
When Joe Nye and Bob Keohane wrote "Power and Interdependence," they changed the field of international relations. The book was a bombshell to me: describing a new sort of state-to-state relationship where security no longer held the top spot and across which governmental ties were both broad and deep. It heralded a new era of globaization. That book described the U.S. and Canada. Dull as the day is long in content, but about as exciting as it gets for a grand strategist and wannabe visionary trying to figure out the future of the world.
Point of op-ed: we haven't moved the security ball forward with Canada much in the post-Cold War era, where the danger shifts from missiles over the North Pole to bad actors sneaking in across our borders. We've long had the shared airspace security regime with Canada, but for some reason we still act like our border with Canada is our border with the world, when the shared border mentality should be extant there too.
Now, as this piece points out, the EU is ahead of us. You enter the 13-member Schengen zone and you're in the system, free to roam. Point being, the EU focuses its manpower and attenton on the real border, not their internal ones.
We should be doing the same with Canada, not loading up our border with agents.
Extend the net. So basic and simple.
Correspondingly, the NYT is wrong on the notion of giving DoD money to train foreign militaries (instead of the usual disburser of such funds--State). Training other militaries around the world is exactly the business our SysAdmin forces should be in. The complaint that many of the countries we train feature authoritarian governments elicits a duh! from me. No kidding! They are all in the Gap (noted were Algeria, Cameroon, Chad, Eq Guinea, Gabon and Tunisia). This is called prepping the battlefield for the next stand in the GWOT, aka Africa.
Shortsighted and painfully moralistic for the NYT.
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