BARNETT - Judging the GWOT
¦"The Real 'October Surprise,'" op-ed by David Ignatius, Washington Post, 2 November 2004, p. A21.
¦"French Push Limits in Fight On Terrorism: Wide Prosecutorial Powers Draw Scant Public Dissent," by Craig Whitlock, Washington Post, 2 November 2004, p. A1.
¦"Ethnic Fighting Flares in China: Authorities Declare Martial Law in Rural Henan Province," by Philip P. Pan, Washington Post, 2 November 2004, p. A18.
¦"Bin Laden Lauds Costs Of War to U.S.: Recent Videotape Boasts of Inflicting Economic Damage," by John Mintz, Washington Post, 2 November 2004, p. A3.
On this election day, it's worth some time to think about terrorism and how successful we've been in this Global War on Terorrism and what costs we've paid, both in terms of people and lost civil liberties.
Ignatius makes a point that I've made in other posts many times before: the success of the GWOT can be seen in the lack of attacks on America's homeland since 9/11 (to include this election). The pattern of terror strikes we've seen since 9/11 is back to being very similar to the pattern we endured in the 1970s and early 1980s: they can blow things up in their own neighborhood (Middle East), and on occasion, they can reach into the areas surrounding their own—but no farther.
That pattern tell you that the GWOT is successful in keeping Al Qaeda on its heels, despite the recent boasting by Osama in the video. His most damning boasts actually aren't indicative of what he made us do, but what we ourselves decided to do: namely create the behemoth of DHS, throwing tons of money at homeland security in general (a vast overkill) and deciding to not just invade Afghanistan and Iraq in the classic Powell Doctrine manner of kill-the-bad-guys-and-then-simply-leave-the-scene but in the "transformation" of the Middle East mode that requires a huge SysAdmin follow-on effort from us (for which we were woefully unprepared).
Yes, OBL and Al Qaeda put the System Perturbation of 9/11 on us, but we decided how to run down the horizontal waves of disruption that ensued, and that's a basic rule set of System Perturbations: super-empowered individuals can trigger vertical scenarios, but only governments have the massive resources necessary to engineer long-term horizontal scenarios in response—like creating DHS or seeking to transform the Middle East. We don't get to choose the vertical scenarios, they choose us. But we do get to choose the horizontal ones we pursue in response to the vertical ones, and so long as those choices are wise, then we're really in control. My verdict is then: DHS, bad choice, transforming Middle East, good choice but so far bad execution. DHS only perverts America and wastes money, whereas transforming the Middle East is a solid, realistic, strategic choice that requires our defense establish to dramatically alter itself for the challenge.
On the up side, we remain a country of great civil liberties, unlike a far scarier France, where I think Richard Clarke would feel quite at home. Moreover, we can handle real disaster without martial law, whereas a far more fragile country like China suffers an incident very similar to one that turned NYC upside down a few years back, and they have to put a province in the penalty box to get a grip on things.
Overall then, the GWOT goes fairly well. Yes, we have lost far too many souls. But keep some perspective. What we've lost in combat deaths since 1975 doesn't equal what we lost on the beaches of Normandy on one morning in 1944, nor what we lost in NYC on 9/11. It's important to have professionals fight and die in this war, and it's important to keep it an away game, not a home game.
But yes, we can and will do better in terms of organizing ourselves for the tasks that lie ahead, and that's why I continue to push the Leviathan-SysAdmin arguments.
Posted by Thomas P.M. Barnett at 09:32 AM
Everybody take a deep breath and relax on election day
¦"No Matter What Happens, Relax," op-ed by George F. Will, Washington Post, 2 November 2004, p. A21.
¦"One bright spot amid dirty tricks, paranoia: Early voting went well," by Laura Parker, USA Today, 2 November 2004, p. 5A.
Will's op-ed reminds me why I still like to read the man: he's a great historian on America's past. Here's the key bits:
If, for the fourth consecutive election, neither candidate wins a popular vote majority, relax. There were four consecutive such elections from 1860 to 1892 . . .
If today's election produces vast consequences from slender margins, relax. This is not unusual . . . In 1968 a switch of 53,034 votes in New Jersey, New Hampshire and Missouri would have denied Richard Nixon an electoral vote majority and, because George Wallace won 46 electoral votes, the House probably would have awarded the presidency to Hubert Humphrey.
If George W. Bush loses, relax. Turbulence is normal. Since 1900, not including Bush, there have been 18 presidents, of whom only five served a full eight years or more. Only 11 of the 42 presidents before Bush served two consecutive terms.
At the dinner I attended last night to discuss PNM, a lot of angst was raised about the red state/blue state polarization of American politics. My answer was that this was not that unusual if you look back over the length of American political history. Plus, when you look at what we are so jacked up about concerning the Supreme Court, that cluster of issues is awfully narrow and removed from much of daily life (the nexus of abortion, stem cells, etc.). This is not so much a hugely divided electorate but one that squabbles incessantly over relatively small issues (historically speaking) on the margin.
Yes, this is probably a fairly dirty election, but I, like Laura Parker of USA Today see that bright spot being the great success of early voting. I think that's the future: something more like a month-long voting period during which half vote, leaving the other half (the same people who turn in their tax forms on 15 April) to conduct the idiotic mad scramble on election day.
This is a real improvement that helps more to vote, so I choose focus on that today.
Posted by Thomas P.M. Barnett at 09:31 AM
The Leviathan wants to keep its defense intelligence agencies
¦"Pentagon's objections block overhaul of U.S. intelligence: Wide support not enough to overcome military concerns,"," by John Diamond, USA Today, 2 November 2004, p. 12A.
Eighty percent of the Intelligence Community's budget is taken up by the defense intelligence and service agencies plus the 600-pound gorillas of the highly technical "overhead" agencies that use vast amounts of technology to look down upon and listen to the rest of the world. Guess what? The Pentagon will fight to not lose budgetary control over those assets, and I don't blame them.
The vast bulk of the IC's budget does go to agencies that essentially serve the Leviathan (aka, combat support agencies), when in reality the desire to have a National Intelligence Director isn't so much about reining in the Leviathan-related intell agencies as it is gathering up the rest of them, most notably the CIA. So a struggle naturally ensues that could be avoided if we admitted that the Leviathan needs its own version of intell, but so does the everything else of the U.S. government.
That's why I have stated in the past that we need to bifurcate the intelligence community just like the Pentagon: one group of agencies to serve the Leviathan in secrecy and whose budget should be under its firm grip, and another to serve the System Administrator force (which, frankly, the Department of Homeland Security should serve as well with its many disaster-relief skill sets—as a colleague of mine Bruce Elleman recently observed). Pretending that a NID ruling over all these intell agencies is the answer is just plain stupid and goes against the bureaucratic reality that says we already have a warfighting force, but what we really need is a peacekeeping force to augment it if we're ever going to get serious about winning real and permanent victories in this war on terror.
Fighting the Pentagon over the budgetary control over the Leviathan's intell agencies is a waste of time and effort. But just watch it drag on for months. |
