Barnett - When security gets solved, economic connectivity can begin
¦"W.T.O. To Consider Iraq And Afghanistan," by Fiona Fleck, New York Times, 14 December 2004, p. W8.
¦"Melting Icy Egypt-Israel Relations Through a Trade Pact: The inseparability of politics and economics leads pragmatists to join forces," by Neil MacFarquhar, New York Times, 16 December 2004, p. A3.
The WTO agrees to start membership talks with both Afghanistan and Iraq. This is the beginning of economic and political connectivity for both countries after decades of isolation resulting from security issues. Did it take a U.S.-led coalition war to topple both regimes before these states could even begin the conversation of joining the Core economically? Sure. For some Gap states, that will be the first required step.
But does that mean it’s the required first step for all in the Gap? Hardly. Even an Axis of Evil state like Iran, which is close to gaining acceptance by enough WTO members to start similar negotiations, could being this integration process simply by acceding to the Core's major security rule sets regarding WMD.
Notice I don't say "major security rule set," because there's more than one. For some states, the rule must be, "the Core can't trust you with WMD under any conditions," but for others, it's "you need to see nukes are for having in a mutually-assured destruction balance, not for using." When you're talking a North Korea, there is no balance and there is great suspicion that Kim Jong Il doesn't get the whole "having, not using" argument. But is the same true for Iran? Is there no balance in the region that could be usefully manipulated to increase regional security? And has Iran exhibited the gamesmanship on its pursuit of nukes that suggests it buys into the logic that nukes are for having, not using?
Until we reach the security rule set for the Middle East that allows Iran to become a major diplomatic and economic player there, it's hard to see how we can be successful in transforming the region for the better. Egypt and Israel began a security dialogue over two decades ago that now allows for something like this very interesting trade pact just signed between the two and the United States. In this agreement, the U.S. offers duty-free imports from Egypt of certain goods so long as those goods contain Israeli inputs.
Yes, there were a host of recent events and calculations by all parties involved that allowed this specific agreement to happen right now, but if there's no Begin-Sadat effort way back when, this doesn't happen.
So guess what? If there isn't some U.S.-Iran-Israel effort today on security, there's virtually no chance that we'll see any real movement in the region toward similar confidence-enhancing trade pacts that involve a wide array of players, and without such agreements, it's hard to imagine how a Mideast will be transformed in coming years.
Posted by Thomas P.M. Barnett at 10:17 PM
The Hard Right is wrong on military strategy—as usual
¦"Grumbling Swells on Rumsfeld's Right Flank," by Todd S. Purdum, New York Times, 16 December 2004, p. A20.
¦"Defense Missile for U.S. System Fails to Launch: Setback for Interceptor," by David Stout and John H. Cushman, Jr., New York Times, 16 December 2004, p. A1.
I give the neocons credit in pushing the U.S. toward accepting the reality that a Global War on Terrorism is meaningless unless it involves transforming the Middle East, but when it comes to military strategy questions, the hard Right is hardly ever right.
Yes, everyone should bitch about the lack of armor for our troops in Iraq, and we should hold the Pentagon's feet to the fire on this issue. But let's remember where this problem began, with the hard Right's refusal to deal with the world as they found it across the 1990s. The Powell Doctrine is a Republican creation, and its essence was the desire to avoid nation-building and peacekeeping at all costs. That bias created the armor problems we have today in the Army in Iraq, because you don't buy for what you're unwilling to do.
So when the hard Right goes after Rumsfeld on the issue today, as though it sprang out of his office one afternoon, they're kidding themselves—and essentially getting the debate all wrong.
Listen to Bill Kristol, who's really one helluva jackass whenever he opens his mouth on military matters (specifically here, Rumsfeld's poor reply to the soldier about "up-armoring"):
"For me, it's the combination of the arrogance and the buck-passing manifested in that statement, with the fundamental error he's made for a year and a half now," Mr. Kristol said. "That error, from my point of view, is that his theory about the military is at odds with the president's geopolitical strategy. He wants this light, transformed military, but we've got to win a real war, which involves using a lot of troops and building a nation, and that's at the core of the president's strategy for rebuilding the Middle East."
How stupid is this logic? Let me count the ways.
First, the error isn't about attitude, and it sure as hell goes back a lot longer than a year and a half. It's about a vision of the future of war, which is what determines what the Pentagon buys year after year, which is what gets you the force we have today.
Second, it ain't a theory of war, it's a proven capability. We have a transformed force and it just took down both the Taliban in rugged Afghanistan and Saddam in Iraq using its agile speed and overwhelming maneuver—not "lightness" you pinhead! That force won a "real war."
Third, what we face today is exactly nation-building and peacekeeping, but guess what? That's not a "real war" but the reality of generating a real peace. That force does need to be big in size, but guess what? You can only get that sized peacekeeping force when you transform the warfighting one. So again, it ain't a theory, it's a practical reality. Rumsfeld's transformed military is what makes possible Bush's grand strategy of trying to transform the region, first by ably dismantling the biggest military threat there, and then by freeing up the resources within the Defense Department for reallocation to a major nation-building effort. But guess what? That switchover goes badly after 15 years of the Powell Doctrine's dismissal of all those kinds of activities as military-operations-other-than-war crap that "real militaries" that fight "real wars" don't do! And guess who pushed that dogma like crazy across the 1990s? Well, that was hard Right neocons like Kristol, who's either just the stupidest pundit on record regarding military matters or a man with no long-term memory.
Meanwhile, another dreamchild of the hard Right is looking more stupid—both militarily and economically—by the minute. Yes, I'm talking about another complete failure of the missile defense system. There's close to $100b spent by the neocons over several administrations (going back to Reagan when they collectively hatched this asinine dream—thus cementing their historical legacy as pinheads on military strategy).
The shame about the neocons is that they—by and large—know best when, and for what reasons, to wage war, but when you give them any sort of operational control over the Pentagon, they tend to buy the wrong stuff and employ it badly. The funny thing is, these are the guys who always go on and on about letting the military leadership do its own thing when needed—a rule they themselves routinely break on both acquisitions and operations.
Posted by Thomas P.M. Barnett at 10:16 PM
Saving more lives, but still losing too many souls
¦"Iraq Combat Fatality Rates Lowest Ever: Technology and Surgical Care at the Front Lines Is Credited With Saving Lives," by Ceci Connolly, Washington Post, 9 December 2004, p. A24.
¦"A Flood of Troubled Soldiers Is in the Offing, Experts Predict," by Scott Shane, New York Times, 16 December 2004, p. A1.
The good news on Iraq is: if your serve, you're less likely to die than in any U.S. war previous. The bad news is: that means more soldiers survive to come home with a certain amount of psychological baggage from combat.
In both Vietnam and Desert Storm, 24% of those wounded ended up dying. In Operation Iraqi Freedom and the Afghanistan operation, that percentage drops to 10%. That is not just impressive, that's amazing.
The U.S. military features the best battlefield medicine the world has ever seen, and we spend plenty for it. But when you wage wars of choice in a global struggle against terrorism, that expenditure not only makes sense, it's the right thing to do.
The downside to that saving of lives is that we now have to plus up extensively our commitment to dealing with the psychological late effects that emerge from combat duty. The Army says it's seeing a traumatization rate of roughly one out of every six soldiers, and experts say the ultimate rate may be one in three, or roughly what we saw in Vietnam.
This is the reality of modern warfare (much like modern police work): you are more likely to be psychologically damaged than killed or maimed, but the responsibility of the government remains the same.
Posted by Thomas P.M. Barnett at 10:16 PM
Rising China = rising hype on threat
¦"China's Splurge on Resources May Not Be a Sign of Strength," by Howard W. French, New York Times, 12 December 2004, p. WK5.
¦"China Tries Its Wings as a Global Investor," op-ed by George Melloan, Wall Street Journal, 14 December 2004, p. A15.
¦"Beijing, Moscow Plan Joint Military Exercise," by Times Wire Reports, Los Angeles Times, 14 December 2004, pulled from DoD Early Bird.
China is scouring the word for oil, and that's a national security threat to us, right?
The reality is, the U.S./West dominate all the easily accessible sources, pushing China to overpay for access to the more remote/less stable/politically isolated sources like Sudan and Iran.
Here's some brilliant analysis:
"China can be competitive in markets where they face the junior varsity, but not with the varsity," said Andrew Thompson, a China expert at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington. "Paranoia is one way to describe their behavior. I would call it an acute awareness of their vulnerability. The new kids on the block who lack faith in the rule of law because they don't have it themselves, they don't see the international system as being in their favor, and engage in a constant quest for vertical integration in their business dealings, wanting to control every aspect of whatever it is they need."
China is connecting up to the outside world like crazy, but wherever they can, they seek to isolate themselves from the vagaries of international markets by seeking vertical integration. It is an illusion, of course, but the Chinese seek it nonetheless. It is an illusion because if they seek such vertical integration at exorbitant costs, the global marketplace will discount their efforts by other means (currency pressures/speculation) because unless China lets the true price emerge, currency exchanges will be distorted and ultimately seek self-correction one way or the other.
"Wanting to go out and buy equity in natural resources is not inherently wrongheaded, but you have to travel pretty far down the road, in terms of conspiratorial views of the world, in order to justify the way they are going about it," Mr. [Jason] Kindopp [a China analyst a the Eurasia Group, a New York-based political-risk consulting firm]. "China's economy is grossly imbalanced at this point, with an overwhelming dependence on investment versus consumption—possibly the most imbalanced country in human history," he said, adding that "China is paying peak prices for commodities today, and if their economy stumbles in any significant way, we are going to see really significant declines in the prices and some very serious pain as a result."
And guess who's gonna feel that pain along with China? How about anyone who shops at Walmart?
This is why America needs to realize that China have safe access to reasonably priced Middle Eastern energy is in our economic interest. When China runs around the world seeking oil from rogues and an "axis of evil" state like Iran, it's not thumbing its nose at our national security policy, but rather demonstrating how dependent it's become on that national security policy—for good or ill.
The same is true for U.S. monetary policy, upon which China has also become significantly dependent—albeit by choice by refusing to let the yuan float. So all those insourced dollars get recycled back to America, first just to buy our public debt and then to buy our private debt (secondary mortgage markets) and—increasingly—to buy our economic assets, like the recent sale by IBM to a Chinese electronics company, Lenovo, of a majority stake in its PC business. Will China end up "owning" America someday?
Did Japan? Or have you forgotten all that talk in the late 1980s?
Again, is this strength or a sign of growing dependency?
I see Russia and China planning their first joint military exercise and I see two countries nervous about America's apparent domination of the Middle East, a region in which both countries have significant economic interests. Again, strength or the perception of weakness and an attempt to do something about it.
Posted by Thomas P.M. Barnett at 10:15 PM
Insourcing = incoring for Russia
¦"Modest Now, Russian Outsourcing Has Big Hopes," by Erin E. Arvedlund, New York Times, 15 December 2004, p. W1.
When did Russia get its first outsourcing deal from American IT companies? It was in 1991, and the U.S. company involved was Hewlett Packard
Listen to this bit of globalization analysis from the guy who pulled off that deal 13 years ago, and has been pulling them off ever since, Alexis Sukharev:
I had a meeting recently with the U.S. deputy secretary of comer, and he said offshoring is good for the United States. I think it's bad for small groups of people who suffer a lot, particularly outsourcing of white-collar jobs. But the Democrats made it a major campaign pillar, which was simply populist. The world is too simply about globalization now. Outsourcing is unstoppable.
Russia is gunning, not unlike China, to become the next India in IT services outsourcing. The government is backing giant software programming centers much like they did "science cities" during the Soviet phase. Russia's take for now is small compared to India's, or only $500m to India's $11b, but Russia hopes to be up to $2b in two years time.
To insource high-end jobs from the Old Core is to "incore" Russia; it's to make Russia indispensable in something besides natural gas. Cybernetics is another venue where Russia could become a key Core-wide player, given its large talent pool on that subject, but it needs to connect that labor with companies and money that can do something with it.
Education is not the hold-up for Russia on outsourcing: lack of infrastructure and English speakers is. To solve both is to see Russia connect up to the Old Core in a bigger way.
And this will happen.
Posted by Thomas P.M. Barnett at 10:15 PM |
