LISTEN UP FOLKS! If you haven't read Barnett's book, or seen his full "brief" on C-SPAN, this review is a "must read." I BEG all of you not to pass it by. Barnett's comments on it follow.
THE PENTAGON’S NEW MAP by Thomas P. M. Barnett.
Putnam Publishing Group, 2004, 389 pages, $26.95
CORE THESIS: Around the world, the “have-nots” are “disconnected” from global commerce, and they pose a mortal threat. The U.S. role is to lead, militarily where necessary, the “connected” states in an effort to impose security and begin reconstruction and development of those “disconnected” countries and regions. This will require a radical shift in how U.S. policymakers view their mission, leading to a completely restructured defense establishment.
WRITING STYLE: Aside from the self-invented jargon, this books offers an almost “There I Was” style. It contains a good bit of biography and “insider” stories about the Pentagon. One gets the impression that NEW MAP is what the author almost says it is -- a book-length extension of a heavy-duty Power Point presentation. It has some of the feel of a typical DOD brief. Nonetheless, Barnett conveys powerful ideas succinctly and with clear logic.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Thomas P. M. Barnett is a senior researcher and professor at the U.S. Naval War College. In partnership with Cantor Fitzgerald, Barnett directed the “NewRuleSets.Project” (a multi-year effort to explore how the spread of globalization alters the basic “rules of the road” for international security). He also directed the Year 2000 International Security Dimension Project and ran projects for the Center for Naval Analysis and the Institute for Public Research. In sum, he has gobs of experience and credentials, but that hasn’t killed his imagination or sapped his energy.
WHO NEEDS THIS BOOK: (a) Anyone connected with the White House who realizes that the President’s foreign policy, while solidly designed, has been poorly described and defended; (b) pundits who don’t have a clue about what’s at stake in the “war on terror”; and (c) European policymakers whose heads are not irrevocably stuck in the sand.
WHO SHOULD STEER CLEAR OF THIS BOOK: Anyone who has a vested interest in the world one recalls from before 9/11/2001. This means a person with economic or power positions threatened by events and demands since then. But “vested interest” also refers to individuals and groups that are psychologically dependent on a bygone era and in denial about the need to change, which by definition means trading the security of the known for the insecurity of the unknown.
ABOUT THE REVIEWER: Don Morrissey worked on Capitol Hill during 1980-95, where he helped fund and organize anti-Communist counterinsurgency activities in several countries including Afghanistan. He is now a legislative strategist with expertise in the financial-services industry. Reactions welcome at DonaldJMorrissey@aol.com
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For those who like traditional book evaluations, here’s a longer take…
THE PENTAGON’S NEW MAP
by Thomas P. M. Barnett
Since an earlier Bush Administration introduced it in 1991, the phrase “New World Order” has done much to help conspiracy theorists. The rest of us went through the 1990s wondering: “New World Order, huh? What is Dat? And where does the United States fit in?” This reasoned and sometimes brilliant book is the best single place to find workable long-term answers. Barnett’s key contribution is building a bridge over the torrent of today’s events (war on terror, globalization, cross-Atlantic finger-pointing) to what he calls “a future worth creating.”
Much of today’s debate exposes a disconnect (about the size of the Grand Canyon) between the immediate — “global war on terror” — and the longer term. The latter requires defining and executing the critical role for the United States in the new era of globalization. Some smart-alecky critics of the Iraq war claim that terrorism is process, not a place. Ergo, why are we in Iraq? Barnett makes the connection between the process (terrorism) and shows us the place -- where it is; why it is; and what we need to do about it.
But first, a slight digression. NEW MAP’s second chapter contains a paragraph future Presidential candidates and every pontificator on the “war on terror” need to memorize. It is the most concise description you will find of the military aspects of the global war on terror: “[T] his global war on terror is simultaneously fought across all three of the levels I cited earlier: Network war across the global system to disrupt terrorist financing, communications, and logistics; state-based war against rogue regimes that harbor or support such terrorist groups; and special operations that target individuals for either capture or -- when dictated by circumstances -- serial assassination.”
That’s it in a nutshell. We are experiencing the clarity of a nuance-free zone. And that was only the author’s preamble.
In the new era of globalization, according to Barnett, the fault line is not “north vs. south” or “rich vs. poor” or “communist vs. capitalist,” but “the Functioning Core” and “the non-integrating Gap.” The “Core” countries and regions live within, or try to move towards, the mutually understood and accepted “rule-sets” that provide global stability and prosperity. The countries or regions in the “Gap” either can’t or won’t do so.
Listen to Barnett define the bifurcated world. A region or a country in the “Core” can (1) “accept the connectivity and can handle the content flows associated with integrating one’s national economy to the global economy”; or (2) “seeks to harmonize its internal rule-sets with the emerging global rule of democracy, rule of law, and free markets”; or is (3) “administered by a single dominant party that — in fairly technocratic style — engineers a systematic, state-directed economic development strategy.”
The “Gap” is where none of this exists.
Okay, this time in plainer English. Security, the rule of law and institutions not only allow you to interact with your neighbor, but your neighbor’s neighbor, his neighbor’s neighbor, and so on. No matter what the geographical distance, you have commerce: Ideas, people and things all move relatively freely and under mutually understood and accepted rules. With true commerce, you have connectivity. If you are “connected,” you are part of the “Core.” Without security, and lacking laws or institutions that allow you to connect to the middle, long, and sometimes short end of the neighbor’s-neighbor chain, under mutually accepted rules, you fall into the “Gap.”
This is where you have mass murder, rape and pillage. (I’m not sure in which part of the world Hollywood fits.) It’s also where you tend to have despots, theocracies, warlords and just plain thieves doing the “governing.” (Again, the Hollywood question arises.)
Now for the kicker: in a post-Cold War world, virtually all wars, terrorism, and terrorists come from the “Gap.” Thus, the key national security and foreign-policy objective for the United States, over the coming decades, is to systematically shrink the “Gap.” We need policies that move individuals, families, tribes and nations out of it. Since many will prefer to stay where they are, this means transforming several regions and environments.
Multilaterism Yes, Exit Strategies Probably Not
First, Barnett wants the U.S. to educate domestic audiences and also our “Core” allies as to why the rule-sets of globalization are critical to global stability and prosperity. By definition, a “functioning Core” works on a degree of consensus. Thus the imperative to consciously expand the “Core” (or shrink the “Gap”) needs a degree of consensus and commitment.
Barnett lays out part of this explanation: “I think four things need to be spelled out clearly to both our citizens and the rest of the Core: (1) that arms control as we have known it for decades is now dead and buried; (2) that it is not a question of ‘when’ unilateralism makes sense, but ‘where’; (3) that while it’s okay for America to — in most instances — get the ball rolling on specific security threats within the Gap, eventually all jobs there are multilateral efforts; and (4) since there is no exiting the Gap militarily, there is no such thing as an exit strategy.”
Second and more important, the U.S., as the only power capable of doing so, must take the lead in advancing these “rule-sets” inside the “Gap.” This is where Barnett’s long experience with force structure and strategy (grand as well as military) come into play. To take the lead in a systematic and long-term way, Barnett favors changing the U.S. military force from its current structure to two different forces:
The first is called “Leviathan” and “would be a smaller, deadly military organization with technological superiority.” Not unlike the forces that operated in Afghanistan and Iraq (at least in Iraq from March to May 2003). This force would tackle rogue regimes and its special-ops component would handle the individual cadres not defined within rogue regimes. This force would be the spear-tip in the thrust to lay down the first security “rule-sets” where they do not exist today.
The second, called “Sys-Admin,” would be civil-affairs oriented and network-centric, providing resources and technical expertise for old or new friends in need. They would be the follow-on resources to maintain the security rule-sets and help initiate the reconstruction and development activities to allow “connectivity” to take root. Here is the force that has been, or rather should have been, operating in Iraq from May 2003 on.
This military transformation, and all it entails, plays to Barnett’s strong suit. He tells the tale much better than a Web review can convey. What matters is that he has thoroughly thought through the structure and activities necessary to carry out his key mandate: That the U.S. role in the New World Order is to lead the imposition of rule-set changes in those parts of the world where today’s norms either thwart global stability or are non-existent.
What About China, Russia, Fundamentalist Culture?
I like where Barnett has ended up (can’t you tell?) -- yet no single book with NEW MAP’s ambition could be completely convincing. Accordingly, after appreciating the book’s neat and clean strokes, a reader begins to wonder about…well, “gaps” in the new scheme. Let me briefly mention three:
First, Barnett is too sanguine about the ability of the U.S. to “connect” the “unconnected” world through imposition of “peace” (security rule-sets) and support for commerce (globalization). Some people don’t want to be connected (Al Qaeda, most Middle Eastern rulers) and are willing to kill and die to stay disconnected. Followers of Osama bin Laden are the most radical of those who are “resisting change” not because globalization will squeeze their enterprises, but because they see their sacred values as being under siege. No matter how well we follow Barnett’s strategic imperative to shrink the “Gap,” an irreducible number of peoples and/or countries will hate us not for what we do, but for what we are. How do you solve that?
Second, he is disdainful of any threats to U.S. security that appear outside the “Gap,” including the biggest one I see: China. It would also be wise to account for potential tensions with a revitalized “nationalist” Russia.
Third, since his forte is military, he comes up short on saying anything about the non-military institutions and policies that need changing to address the world as he sees it. If anyone thinks that institutions such as the State Department, USIA, CIA, AID, IMF, World Bank or NATO are capable of effectively addressing the world Barnett describes, they need to send me whatever prescription medicine they are taking. More on the need for widespread institutional change in the next segment.
Working the Plan Before You Have Worked Out the Plan
Barnett is calling for a basic change in the strategic framework of U.S. foreign policy -- akin to the changes that occurred between 1945 and 1950. This also entails managing a change in the structures that undergird policy.
The strategic framework that governed the following four decades is contained in “NSC-68” (National Security Memorandum #68), which became official on April 14, 1950. But The Truman Administration had begun to function under some of its principles when confronted with Soviet attempts to dominate war-torn Europe, several years before NSC-68 became policy.
Starting in 1947, the Truman Administration delivered military and economic support against the communists in the Greek Civil war. It acted covertly in the Italian political and economic environment to prevent a Communist takeover in 1948. During 1948-52, the Marshal Plan lifted Europe from wartime ashes and allowed it to be a bulwark against Soviet expansionism. Truman and his people also reorganized the U.S. military and national-security apparatus with the National Security Act of 1947, which among other things created the NSC, the CIA and a new, separate military service, the Air Force.
Similarly, Barnett credits the Clinton Administration, in the post-Cold War era of globalization, with actively taking “the lead in enunciating the overarching economic rule-sets that guided globalization’s advancing across the 1990s.”
He credits the current Administration with recognizing that “globalization’s security rule-sets need to catch up with its economic rule-sets.” This includes the actions in Afghanistan and in Iraq, as well as efforts by the Pentagon to begin “transformation” of the military.
So a rough parallel emerges. The United States in both cases, following the end of a war, reacted to a crisis in ways that are congruent with a strategic framework – but without having the name. And by changing the strategic framework, it becomes necessary to change the structure and apparatus of the government to accomplish that new “mission.”
Barnett does a good job of describing and applauding what he sees as the U.S. military’s efforts to initiate and manage the change that goes along with the new strategic framework. His book does not offer much on how the other cultures and institutions of U.S. foreign policy will need to change, or how each set of responsible officials will execute that change.
The “change process” we’re witnessing today, in policy and structure, is similar to that at the start of the Cold War. Rather than being seamless, it takes place in fits and starts. And the lesson from 1945-50 is that the “framework” of policy might not be fully in place before the structural changes are accomplished -- or vice versa. Barnett appears to believe that, if you follow the logic of his strategic framework, then managing the structural change will become obvious. Without mentioning Peter Drucker, he affirms the latter’s prescription from the business world: “Structure follows strategy.”
But I think the author’s biggest contribution is implicit: Until the U.S. understands and manages a change in its basic strategic foreign policy outlook, the wrong questions will continue to be asked; and the wrong measurements will continue to be used to define the relative “success” or failure of U.S. foreign policy.
From the NEW MAP perspective, media coverage of activities in Iraq and Afghanistan has mostly dealt with the wrong things. The author states that “the fundamental measure of effectiveness for any U.S. military intervention inside the gap must be: Did we end up improving the local security sufficiently to trigger an influx of global connectivity?… Increasingly, our military interventions will be judged by the connectivity they leave behind, not the smoking holes.”
A last point about the “education process” advocated by Thomas Barnett: “Until the Bush Administration describes the future worth creating in terms ordinary people and the rest of the world can understand, we will continue to lose support at home and abroad for the great task that lies ahead.” Exactly. THE PENTAGON’S NEW MAP is a stab at creating the NSC-68 for this “era of globalization.” And an impressive one.
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Feedback is welcome by reviewer Don Morrissey – write to
DonaldJMorrissey@aol.com
COMMENTARY: You can tell this guy worked on the Hill because he¡¯s such a smart-ass, and a clever one at that. This is simultaneously one of the best summaries of the book and the funniest review I have read to date. He probes the book¡¯s weaknesses better than any reviewer to date, but likewise is the most forgiving given its scope and stated ambitions. As a veteran of many Pentagon briefs, Morrissey knows where to poke holes, and I don¡¯t argue with his catches. Hell, I loved the review solely for the ¡°who needs this book¡± and ¡°who should avoid it¡± paras, which were not only spot-on in their analysis, but good enough for stand-up they¡¯re so funny. Overall, very sharp mind, very sharp review. Anybody who takes the book that seriously can fire at will as far as I¡¯m concerned.
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