Part of a Barnett interview with Norway's version of "Reason"
1. Connectivity, not democracy
HOB: Let us start with the Gap-Core distinction: how clear is it that either the global situation or America’s challenges can be adequately summarized in the Gap-Core logic? There seems still to be some issues with the new Core-members like India, Russia China--might “old security” concerns not return at some point?
BARNETT: The point in making the distinction between the Core and the Gap is not that I am saying that there is not any possibility of security issues re-arising within the Core. But simply that with the connectivity of an expanding, ever deepening, enmeshing global economy; with that kind of interdependence naturally arising among the old Core--between the United States, the Europeans, Japan, Canada and Australia--there is not really any danger of anything happening other than name-calling. Between us and what I call the New Core, there is and will be for quite some time, the possibility for more than name-calling: that integration process requires new rules to emerge.
You cannot bring Russia sort of into NATO without changing NATO, and not as a result make that a different Rule Set. Look at China buying up our US Treasury Bonds and becoming the biggest source of the US trade deficit; or India supplying all the IT-workers and doctors to the United States plus remitting such sums of money back to India in terms of non-residential Indians who work and live in the United States. That kind of integration processes cannot help but create new Rule Sets. They always tend to come in the economic realm first.
Typically, political understanding lags greatly behind it: it can be summed up with phrases like “nationalism,” “protectionism” or that natural tendency--when you start bumping up against one another and you have not done that in the past--to assume bad things about each other. The unfamiliarity of this new interaction means that there are dangerous possibilities. So there are a lot of things that we are going to learn and adjust to as, for example, India becomes a much bigger part of not just the U.S.'s but the whole world’s economy. To understand what it is to have Russia actively involved in world affairs, when for several decades it was always on the other side of the fence. To have China develop this tremendous integration with the outside world. All that forces us into all sorts of questions and issues that have been dwelling and lingering for decades that are not easy for us to answer. There are a lot of adjustments when you open up to the outside world: America thinks we have adjustments as the global economy expands. We talk about sending jobs overseas and think it is a tough adjustment for the US workers who may have a assumed that a good economy would have allowed them to stay in the same jobs for their entire life, never have to go back to school, never switch careers: that whole ideal that we cling to comes from the 1950s, and it's very unrealistic. And we think that is a big adjustment in terms of globalization.
But having just spent three weeks in China, I can tell you: that country is undergoing so much more adjustment, so much more change, so much more synchronization of its internal Rule Sets with those of the world’s (which is what the global market economy demands from it) that it seems like such a jumping-the-gun phenomenon for us to always be looking for slippage, always be putting the worst sort of perspective on the motivations behind anything that Russia, India or China do as they deal with some significant changes. They have in recent years changed from economic policies that were very state-heavy for many decades and moved towards the embrace of markets in a very profound way. You would think we would be happier but it is almost like we look for every opportunity to say: “you are not going fast enough and far enough, and--aha!--that means you, secretly, deep down, inside, must be a threat!”
We have wished for this to happen for so many years and when it does happen we cannot believe it: we have such great suspicion towards these three big countries. I think about them a lot because they hold such a big chunk of the world’s population and if you can remove that kind fear factor within the Core a lot of things will work out pretty dramatically.
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On Russia, India and China: We have wished for this to happen for so many years and when it does happen we cannot believe it: we have such great suspicion towards these three big countries.
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But India and China do not feel like they have been invited into the corridors of power. They are part of G20, but they are not part of G8. They kind of wonder how the G8 gets to figure out what happens in Iraq. The G8 had this meeting in Sea Island [G8 Summit, June 8-10, 2004] and there decided what they were going to do about the future of the Middle East--and there was no China there.
HOB: So there is a homology between the global situation with the three big countries and the post-cold war challenge with the eastern European countries. In Europe, the Partnership for Peace was a way of letting the East in: an example of how we have to find ways to be receptive?
BARNETT: Right, the PfP is sort of a microcosm of what I am talking about with Russia, China and India--because they are such vast countries, and the cultural distance is stronger, so the distrust is stronger. We keep complaining about our change: but we have so little understanding of the kind of change that it requires for them to make this great journey. We do not signal ways that “we can make you feel comfortable about your security situation, for you to feel confident enough to deal with these wrenching, internal social changes.”
One of the reasons why I think the Core-Gap distinction is important--and which always stuns these Cold War types when they see it--is that my Core is basically what we used to call the First and the Second World together. And now it is finally time to deal with the Third World in some way other than hospice care through official development aid and selling them arms so that they can kill each other.
HOB: This is an extremely interesting thing about your analysis: the European left has been saying for 30-40 years that the North-South relation is the more important, and here comes someone from the Pentagon policy making environment saying something akin to it?
BARNETT: Right, I agree with that to a certain extent, even though I studiously avoid the “North-South” concept since I have my ABC’s in South America [Argentina, Brazil, Chile], like Australia and South Africa are in the South. I try to focus on: who’s connecting up? I studiously avoid “democracy” as some sort of bellwether. Instead I look at whether connectivity is growing between any specific society and the outside world, and whether its government in fact encouraging that? So I focus less on where they are in their historical development, and more on whether they are going in the right direction. I want to capture the integrating countries in the first, best behavior I can find, rather than having a huge standard: “a freely elected president for five times; and clean up everything!”--like the EU has been telling Turkey for how many years now? “Be perfect before we take you!”
2. The terrorists are those who do know better
HOB: It seems like you do not really distinguish between a material or economic globalization on the one hand and a cultural or ideational on the other? Is that distinction meaningless?
BARNETT: I really think it is. Consider the sheer physical connectivity of networks--you build networks so that you can do things, and when you do things economically the ideas and the content naturally flow. That gives such a tight synergy, and as long as that is happening I feel good about it. My argument on the political side--which is always slow--is that you have to be patient, and you have to let the local political scene evolve at a pace that it can manage. I argue for a lot of patience with Russia and China, because I watch them just leap-frog through decades a year at a time, and we are watching them race through our past history with such a sense of impatience of them getting to the “right now.”
We do not understand that the real world we now enjoy is not something they can achieve overnight: so let us get out of our way to assure them that they will not be targeted unnecessarily in the security realm; that they will not be forced to maintain large security hedges when they are scrambling for resources, when they are dealing with aging population--as even China is--and when they have huge infrastructure and resource requirements. If they are going to move in the direction that we hope they move--which will benefit us tremendously in economic terms – then all we need to do is step beyond old fears and take advantage of the successes of the cold war. That ideology was defeated. We just seem unwilling to move along that line and to claim the successes. But until you do move along and see the world in terms of who is integrating and who is not – then you are not going to get to the point where you are able to amass the resources to deal with this Gap, which is where all the violence is.
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If you do not want it to be a West versus Islam thing, then do not alienate the biggest players in the East.
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If you do not want it to be a West versus Islam thing, then do not alienate the biggest players in the East. Either they live closer to the problem, like Russia; or they see themselves as natural regional powers, like India; or they are going to have their energy requirements from the Persian Gulf doubling over the next 20 years like China. Compared to their interdependencies with that region, ours and even the Europeans’ are small. If you look strategically downstream they are the logical partners for us to be romancing. And how do you romance them? You tell them a story with a happy ending, and you say: “if you do these things, even if a lot of them will be hard, then this is where we can all go 20 years from now. It will be such a better world; you will have such a better country; and you will have done so many good things for your country…”
HOB: This positive vision, and optimism, is interesting coming from a strategist--because it clashes with both the classical war games-stuff of the military academies, and also with the widespread critiques of globalization from both left and right on both sides of the Atlantic. Pessimism seems to be more on the agenda anywhere else--how do you “dare” to just come along with a positive strategic vision?
BARNETT: Well, I am just looking at history. We have seen tremendous things happening when countries come together economically in what I call the Old Core--Europe, Japan, the United States. By 1980 that was one tenth of the world’s population controlling two-thirds of the wealth and productive power: a lot that can be done by that kind of cooperation. We have waited almost 50 years for the old socialist block to give up its pipedream and join us… I see our side gaining adherence in big, big chunks. The size of the problem set called mass violence around the world has been shrinking fairly dramatically. When I got into the business 15 years ago we were still concerned about nuclear war across the planet: people are not really concerned about that anymore, and they should not be--other than the issue of the rogue who is not part of the club. If Iran, for example, was part of the club, then their having the nukes would never be an issue--about as big an issue as Denmark having nukes. Nobody would care – they would say: “it’s the Danes, what’s the big deal?” Or the Canadians. If Canada wanted nukes tomorrow who would really care? They are read into the system and everybody trusts them, and there is a sense of familiarity and a common cause.
If the US was forced to switch territory with the Canadians, most Americans would just move to Canada: it is not the soil here that is sacred, it’s the concept. My book is constantly being accused of not understanding the irrational mind--but my response is: the irrational mind is the unconnected one. The irrational mind is the one that goes berserk because they do not have options for their talents and their ambitions.
That is the lawyer with three kids who straps a belt on with dynamite in the West Bank because that looks like the best option for him after going to law school: that is the best future he can come up with. But if you can give him a job a law firm somewhere I guarantee you, he does not get on that bus. The terrorists are not the ones who are so poor they do not know better: it is the ones who do know better, that have an education they are never going to use, and dreams they are never going to fulfill. Nothing kills people more than the sense of a dead-end life.
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That is the lawyer with three kids who straps a belt on with dynamite in the West Bank because that looks like the best option for him after going to law school: that is the best future he can come up with. But if you can give him a job a law firm somewhere I guarantee you, he does not get on that bus.
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I see such a huge opportunity with what has happened over the last 25 years with roughly half the world’s population on their way to be joining the world economy. Has it been a perfect ride for them? Absolutely not: look at Brazil or Argentina. This process is more an art than science. To join is to risk a lot: the process of connecting is such a brave act that we have to go out of our way to recognize, promote and protect it--and to do as much as possible to remove security impediments to it, and to send clear signals of transparency and security to these countries. The trajectory that Russia has been on for the last 15 years; China for the last 25; and India just for the last 10 is just stunning. Because their societies are exposed to these strong, external influences this is the perfect time to shower them with security.
We do it on one level when the US tries to deal with the big security issues in the system in a way that nobody else can because we have the world’s biggest military. But how we explain that action and how we solicit their approval and their cooperation is enormously important, convincing them that this is not a zero-sum outcome. That: “we are not going to the Middle East to grab your oil, China!” That we are going to secure the flow of that energy for another 20-25 years until we move on to hydrogen; and that in doing so there are certain things we need from, for example, China. in terms of economic and diplomatic support.
But in exchange for that we are hopefully creating an international security environment that allows China not to revert resources toward things like a blue water navy to make sure that their energy comes from the Middle East safely; or it does not force them to patron relationships with rogue regimes there out of necessity because they are scared to death they will not have access to energy over time.
3. You do not have to become a bad Moslem to live a good life
HOB: This is where you advocate a special role for the US where it supplies public goods on a global level?
BARNETT: I do not advocate a “one size fits all," as we have been doing for 15 years, saying as long as we have a big force that prevents war between the big powers then the system will work itself out, globalization will spread, connectivity will grow--that is sort of the benign Thomas Friedman vision...
HOB: Regarding the special role the United States must play due to the military capabilities, how would you address the ensuing division of labor? How far should the United States be able to pursue its role in terms of making decisions on behalf of the West, the “Core of the Core," including e.g. NATO?
BARNETT: The Clinton Administration put a model on the table where we go in and deal with the real nasty security stuff--and as soon as possible turn it over to the UN and everybody else, and they would do the integration process. Our niche was to be light on aid and heavy on military spending; the converse would be true for the Europeans, and the Japanese would just send money.
The problem was that the UN was not the vessel for that: it is such a Congress-like entity, a legislative branch, without a real executive function. The best you have is a group that can cite bad activity around the world, but does not have any means to deal with it. The hope is, if the UN condemns somebody that they change their ways and somehow get beyond the violence and then we can send the peacekeepers in.
But there is a huge gap between those two situations, and that gap is filled by the US, which says “Well, if you’re really serious about this we will go in, but if we do it has to be cast in such a way that we can have freedom of action, because it is our lives that are at stake. Then hopefully you will rally around once the bad guy has been taken care of.” We have been trying to negotiate those things on the fly each time the issue comes up, and it is tortuous. It took years to get anything done in Yugoslavia. That would have continued ad infinitum. Given that the global economy would have run smooth enough in its expansion then the rest would just have been scary neighborhoods far away, and we would all have talked about it, but nobody would have done anything about it. The US enabled that “we’ll do a little bit, but no more” practice across the West in the 1990s by just responding enough to crises throughout the Gap.
HOB: After Somalia, that is?
BARNETT: Well, Somalia looked like a big turning point but it really was not: we kept doing these things. But while we keep everything from boiling over in the Gap we never fix anything. There is no system for dealing with fixing these countries. The only way we could avoid getting in to some imperial nonsense was to make this rule: “As soon as we cannot find anyone to kill in a situation, we’re gone!” That is the Powell doctrine! “As soon as you cannot find anymore bad guys to kill--then leave”. The problem is that if you do not leave anything in your wake, then the bad guys will reappear and we have to go back in five years. There are some in the Pentagon who argue openly for that: “Let’s go in and kill them every once in a while: they will never change anyway.” And I keep saying: “Well, that’s not much of a solution, sir.”
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