THE PENTAGON’S NEW MAP
IT EXPLAINS WHY WE’RE GOING TO WAR, AND WHY WE’LL KEEP GOING TO WAR.
by THOMAS P.M. BARNETT, U.S. NAVAL WAR COLLEGE
thurisa.org
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HANDICAPPING THE GAP:
My list of real trouble for the world in the 1990s, today, and tomorrow, starting in our own backyard:
1) HAITI - Efforts to build a nation in 1990s were disappointing • We have been going into Haiti for about a century, and we will go back when boat people start flowing in during the next crisis—without fail.
2) COLOMBIA - Country is broken into several lawless chunks, with private armies, rebels, narcos, and legit government all working the place over. • Drugs still flow. • Ties between drug cartels and rebels grew over decade, and now we know of links to international terror, too. • We get involved, keep promising more, and keep getting nowhere. Piecemeal, incremental approach is clearly not working.
3) BRAZIL AND ARGENTINA - Both on the bubble between the Gap and the Functioning Core. Both played the globalization game to hilt in nineties and both feel abused now. The danger of falling off the wagon and going self-destructively leftist or rightist is very real. • No military threats to speak of, except against their own democracies (the return of the generals). • South American alliance MERCOSUR tries to carve out its own reality while Washington pushes Free Trade of Americas, but we may have to settle for agreements with Chile or for pulling only Chile into bigger NAFTA. Will Brazil and Argentina force themselves to be left out and then resent it? • Amazon a large ungovernable area for Brazil, plus all that environmental damage continues to pile up. Will the world eventually care enough to step in?
4) FORMER YUGOSLAVIA - For most of the past decade, served as shorthand for Europe's inability to get its act together even in its own backyard. • Will be long-term baby-sitting job for the West.
5) CONGO AND RWANDA/BURUNDI - Two to three million dead in central Africa from all the fighting across the decade. How much worse can it get before we try to do something, anything? Three million more dead? • Congo is a carrion state—not quite dead or alive, and everyone is feeding off it. • And then there's AIDS.
6) ANGOLA - Never really has solved its ongoing civil war (1.5 million dead in past quarter century). • Basically at conflict with self since mid-seventies, when Portuguese "empire" fell. • Life expectancy right now is under forty!
7) SOUTH AFRICA - The only functioning Core country in Africa, but it's on the bubble. Lots of concerns that South Africa is a gateway country for terror networks trying to access Core through back door. • Endemic crime is biggest security threat. • And then there's AIDS.
8) ISRAEL-PALESTINE - Terror will not abate—there is no next generation in the West Bank that wants anything but more violence. • Wall going up right now will be the Berlin Wall of twenty-first century. Eventually, outside powers will end up providing security to keep the two sides apart (this divorce is going to be very painful). • There is always the chance of somebody (Saddam in desperation?) trying to light up Israel with weapons of mass destruction (WMD) and triggering the counterpunch we all fear Israel is capable of.
9) SAUDI ARABIA - The let-them-eat-cake mentality of royal mafia will eventually trigger violent instability from within. • Paying terrorists protection money to stay away will likewise eventually fail, so danger will come from outside, too. • Huge young population with little prospects for future, and a ruling elite whose main source of income is a declining long-term asset. And yet the oil will matter to enough of the world far enough into the future that the United States will never let this place really tank, no matter what it takes.
10) IRAQ - Question of when and how, not if. • Then there's the huge rehab job. We will have to build a security regime for the whole region.
11) SOMALIA - Chronic lack of governance. • Chronic food problems. • Chronic problem of terrorist-network infiltration. • We went in with Marines and Special Forces and left disillusioned—a poor man's Vietnam for the 1990s. Will be hard-pressed not to return.
12) IRAN - Counterrevolution has already begun: This time the students want to throw the mullahs out. • Iran wants to be friends with U.S., but resurgence of fundamentalists may be the price we pay to invade Iraq. • The mullahs support terror, and their push for WMD is real: Does this make them inevitable target once Iraq and North Korea are settled?
13) AFGHANISTAN - Lawless, violent place even before the Taliban stepped onstage and started pulling it back toward seventh century (short trip) • Government sold to Al Qaeda for pennies on the dollar. • Big source of narcotics (heroin). • Now U.S. stuck there for long haul, rooting out hardcore terrorists/rebels who've chosen to stay.
14) PAKISTAN - There is always the real danger of their having the bomb and using it out of weakness in conflict with India (very close call with December 13, 2001, New Delhi bombing). • Out of fear that Pakistan may fall to radical Muslims, we end up backing hard-line military types we don't really trust. • Clearly infested with Al Qaeda. • Was on its way to being declared a rogue state by U.S. until September 11 forced us to cooperate again. Simply put, Pakistan doesn't seem to control much of its own territory.
15) NORTH KOREA - Marching toward WMD. • Bizarre recent behavior of Pyongyang (admitting kidnappings, breaking promises on nukes, shipping weapons to places we disapprove of and getting caught, signing agreements with Japan that seem to signal new era, talking up new economic zone next to China) suggests it is intent (like some mental patient) on provoking crises. • We live in fear of Kim's Götterdämmerung scenario (he is nuts). • Population deteriorating—how much more can they stand? • After Iraq, may be next.
16) INDONESIA - Usual fears about breakup and "world's largest Muslim population." • Casualty of Asian economic crisis (really got wiped out). • Hot spot for terror networks, as we have discovered.
New/integrating members of Core I worry may be lost in coming year:
17) CHINA - Running lots of races against itself in terms of reducing the unprofitable state-run enterprises while not triggering too much unemployment, plus dealing with all that growth in energy demand and accompanying pollution, plus coming pension crisis as population ages. • New generation of leaders looks suspiciously like unimaginative technocrats—big question if they are up to task. • If none of those macro pressures trigger internal instability, there is always the fear that the Communist party won't go quietly into the night in terms of allowing more political freedoms and that at some point, economic freedom won't be enough for the masses. Right now the CCP is very corrupt and mostly a parasite on the country, but it still calls the big shots in Beijing. • Army seems to be getting more disassociated from society and reality, focusing ever more myopically on countering U.S. threat to their ability to threaten Taiwan, which remains the one flash point that could matter. • And then there's AIDS.
18) RUSSIA - Putin has long way to go in his dictatorship of the law; the mafia and robber barons still have too much power. • Chechnya and the near-abroad in general will drag Moscow into violence, but it will be kept within the federation by and large. • U.S. moving into Central Asia is a testy thing—a relationship that can sour if not handled just right. • Russia has so many internal problems (financial weakness, environmental damage, et cetera) and depends too much on energy exports to feel safe (does bringing Iraq back online after invasion kill their golden goose?). • And then there's AIDS.
19) INDIA - First, there's always the danger of nuking it out with Pakistan. • Short of that, Kashmir pulls them into conflict with Pak, and that involves U.S. now in way it never did before due to war on terror. • India is microcosm of globalization: the high tech, the massive poverty, the islands of development, the tensions between cultures/civilizations/religions/et cetera. It is too big to succeed, and too big to let fail. • Wants to be big responsible military player in region, wants to be strong friend of U.S., and also wants desperately to catch up with China in development (the self-imposed pressure to succeed is enormous). • And then there's AIDS. |
