(Thomas Barnett on Booknotes, Part 3) BARNETT: So I write the article for "Esquire," and it does -- you know, it`s passed around the Pentagon. It`s passed all over the world. I get foreign military secretaries of defense calling me up saying, Wow, this is -- you know, we were looking for this kind of -- this vision of the future coming out of DoD because this is one we recognize. This is one a Brazil or an Australia can understand, and it makes sense to us, because the usual way the Pentagon talks about war, some gigantic war with another great power 20 years from now, we can`t even play in that venue. But when you talk about globalization and these small conflicts, that`s something we can marry up to. So you realize it`s not just the American public that`s looking for this, there are a lot of allies out there who want this message.
At that point, the agents start coming after you, and they say you`ve got to take this message to the American public. And I say, you know, I`m a weird guy, mostly I do this briefing, I can`t translate that to the outside world. And they say, well, you did it in the "Esquire" article. So write a book like the "Esquire" article and explain your industry, explain who you are and what you do and the role you play.
So I cut a deal with Mark Warren, who`s the executive editor of "Esquire," and I say, you come and be my personal editor on this book, let`s see who we can we sell it to. We sell it to GP Putnam & Sons, the (UNINTELLIGIBLE). I got Neil Nyren, the editor in chief, who`s Tom Clancy`s editor, which, you know, has a certain cache in the national security community, and we say, you know, we`re going to write this book. It`s going to be part high concept, it`s going to be part an autobiography of the vision and how this has come about. Because I`m a nobody as far as the world is concerned. I have a certain stature inside the national security community, but nobody knows who I am outside.
So I have to explain who I am and how I came up with all of these things for it to be a sellable concept, for people to say I not only believe it, but I trust you as a source.
So we write this book. We spent a lot of time thinking about how we`re going to make it translatable to a mass audience, and what we`re getting so far in terms of the response we`re getting from readers is it is understandable. They can follow it. They can track it, and it gives them a sense of some comfort and optimism. It`s fundamentally a very optimistic book.
LAMB: But in the end, you actually probably reach more people through "Esquire" magazine than you do through the book sales, right?
BARNETT: Well, it`s hard to say. "Esquire" is big. I mean, I hope the book will reach a large audience, and GP Putnam & Sons certainly helps. I mean, they`re not in this business to produce copies that only the elite read, or even worse, one of those books that everybody talks about but nobody actually reads. They want to push this as a book the average citizens can read that will give them a sense of empowerment with regard to how they can interpret, you know, all these buzz phrases, all this global war on terrorism.
LAMB: George Bush.
BARNETT: George Bush. You know, what I basically say in the book is, I think the way to think of him historically is much like -- not a Woodrow Wilson, certainly not a Ronald Reagan, and certainly not some sort of reaction to his dad.
The way I look at it, George Bush is, I say he`s very much like a Harry Truman. He`s at a point much like after the second world war, where we`re confronting what looks like a very different international security environment. One we haven`t seen before. And so he is in a very difficult spot of having to put together, in effect, a new national security vision, strategy, and a foreign policy establishment that supports that. OK?
And to build something that will outlive his presidency, to create strategic concepts that other administrations, Democrat and Republican, can pursue over time.
I try to deliver that in this book. I mean, I sell it quite openly as a successor to the Cold War strategy of containment. Like they did back then, define the bad areas in the world, the things that have to be contained, and try to shrink them over time. I`m doing the same thing here with this "Pentagon`s New Map."
LAMB: Do you find that what he did in Iraq was right?
BARNETT: I make the argument that if you want to deal with terrorism, I mean, there are like three ways you can deal with terrorism, roughly. You can put a firewall off of America as much as possible to keep it secure against bad things coming in from the outside. I don`t think you can stop bad things coming in from the outside. OK? So I think there are limits to that.
You can try to kill terrorists as quickly as possible. But my argument would be, they`re going to grow them faster than you can kill them.
I think what you have to do is you have to deny terrorists and terrorist networks the outcomes they seek. And I would argue that the outcomes they seek, like a bin Laden, is basically to take a chunk of humanity and disconnect it from the rest of the world, that they find so corrupt and pollutive in terms of its cultural influences.
So bin Laden, I would argue, historically is not unlike a Lenin and the Bolsheviks a century earlier, in a different era of globalization, who said, I am going to break off a chuck of humanity away from the capitalist world, and to do that, I have to find pre-capitalist societies, like a Russia, get in there early, hijack them from history, and take them down a different rule set path, where our rules are very different from your rules, and there`s going to be a lot of disconnect between our bloc and your bloc.
And when I see that kind of disconnectedness develop between large chunks of humanity, invariably they start looking at each other as enemies. And there`s danger, and there`s conflict, and there`s insecurity.
So when I see a bin Laden saying, in effect, I want to grab the Middle East and pull it out of the world because I think this globalizing world is going to destroy the Middle East that I know and love, and I refuse to see those cultural influences change a Saudi Arabia, or an Iraq or something like that, he`s trying to do the same thing that Lenin did a century earlier.
Now, how do you tie an Iraq situation into that? The only way you`re going to deny the terrorists the outcomes they seek in the Middle East is to connect the Middle East to the world. And the only way you can connect what is today a very poorly connected Middle East to the world -- basically, all they trade is oil and all they take in is money, and other than that they don`t really have much interaction with the outside world, compared to other regions. I mean, in terms of percentage of trade, the foreign direct investment it attracts, the travel, the communication networks. It is stunted in terms of connectivity. And getting more stunted over time, I would argue.
The only way you`re going to stop a bin Laden from trying to pull off what he`s going to try to pull off in the Middle East is to connect a Middle East faster than he can seek to disconnect a Middle East from the outside world.
Now, to do that you have to take out those entities or those agents within that security community there, which is very insecure, I would argue, who stand in the way of that.
And Saddam Hussein was a tremendous force of disconnectedness. He created insecurity throughout the region. He kept the Iraqi people tremendously disconnected from the outside world, so disconnected that when we took down Saddam there was almost a global mini boom in the satellite telephone industry, because that was the only way you could get a call out of Iraq, because there was almost, you know, no cell phone industry there. It was that amazingly disconnected.
So when we take down an Iraq and try to connect an Iraqi society to the outside world, we create, and I would argue what the Bush administration argues is, they seek to create a big bang, a transformative kind of moment that says, look, this is the connectivity that`s possible. We`re going to bring you into our world, and by bringing you into our world, we`re going to deny the outcomes that a bin Laden would seek, which is a very isolated, authoritarian rule for the Middle East, that probably has very, very little interaction with the outside world. And as a long-term pathway for that region, I see only danger and repression and terrorism coming out of it, just like we saw between us and the Soviets.
LAMB: So it was a good idea?
BARNETT: I think it`s a good idea. I think it`s a long term idea, and I think the way it was sold to the American public was probably not so good. And I think it reflects the fact that in effect, in the global community we don`t have a rule set, if I can use that term, we don`t have a rule set A to Z, you know, from the beginning to the end, that says this is how you process, rehabilitate a politically bankrupt state.
What`s an example of such a rule set? I would say we have one for economically bankrupt states. It`s called the International Monetary Fund`s sovereign debt, Chapter 11. OK? You can be Argentina and have a debt crisis. You will go into that IMF process at point A, come out at point Z; you`re rehabilitated, with no bias against you at that point.
We do not have one for processing a bad, politically bankrupt leadership that nobody wants, that everybody wants to see gone. OK? So the world wanted to see a Saddam Hussein gone, but we didn`t have a system for getting Iraq from A to Z. What we have is the U.N. Security Council that goes the first few steps by saying, we indict you with this resolution, we indict you with that resolution. Then they turn it over to who? There is no executive function in the international system that says, OK, I will act on those indictments, I will take him down for you. OK? We sort of have one called the U.S. military. But there, you only have a military that gets you to the point of the removal of power.
We don`t have an international organization or a rule set that says this is how we build your nation back up after we take down your leadership, and this is how we reintegrate you into the global community.
LAMB: Let me read a quote from your book, to see if you remember this quote. "Don`t those idiots in the White House realize they`re destroying the concept of deterrence? For heaven`s sakes, does this mean we`re supposed to attack China tomorrow because they have nukes and might use them against us?" Who said that?
BARNETT: My mother said that. My mother said that after she saw the speech, the historic speech where George Bush enunciated the concept of preemptive war as a new cornerstone of U.S. national security strategy. And what I say in response to that argument is that you have to understand, there is one rule set on security that exists within those globalized parts of the world. OK? That says, in effect, there is transparency among states in terms of security issues. There is collective security. There`s mutual assured destruction as a concept to avoid nuclear war among great powers.
That`s a fairly stable rule set. OK? There has been no war among great powers since we invented nuclear weapons well over half a century ago. OK?
None of that changes with this new enunciation of preemptive war, because that enunciation of this new concept of preemptive war has nothing to do with that functioning core of globalization. We`re not talking about China, we`re not talking about Russia, we`re not talking about any of the great powers with nuclear weapons going at it. What we are talking about are actors and rogue regimes inside those non-integrating parts, where the rule sets on security have not yet extended, where globalization hasn`t taken deep root. It`s in those situations where we don`t believe we can deter people, where the rule sets on mutual assured destruction and those kinds of things that keep us secure in our nuclear arsenals and strategic balances don`t apply.
So when Bush and this administration effectively enunciate the concept of preemptive war, what I say is, you got to understand, there are two different security rule sets. One that governs the part of the world that are integrating, and one that governs the part of the world that is not integrating. In effect, there is a lack of rule sets there. And in that more scary environment, I think it is reasonable to say if we find a Saddam Hussein or a Kim Jong Il or an al Qaeda and we don`t believe they can be deterred, it makes sense to preemptively wage war against them, if we suspect they`re getting weapons of mass destruction.
LAMB: Is your mother still in Wisconsin?
BARNETT: Yes, she is.
LAMB: Where?
BARNETT: She lives in Boscobel.
LAMB: Where is that?
BARNETT: Small town, southwest Wisconsin. She has just published the third volume of her compendium, which examines the history of female protagonists in English and American mystery literature. She`s up for an Edgar later this week.
LAMB: What`s an Edgar?
BARNETT: An Edgar is the award for mystery writers.
LAMB: What does she do?
BARNETT: She has -- she met my dad in law school in the mid-1940s, after the second world war. My dad was in the Navy. She quit law school. Had nine children. At the end of nine children, worked in social services for about 20 years. Retired. Went back. Took her LSAT. Went back to law school in her 60s. Became a lawyer, had a career in that. Retired, and then started writing this great historical compendium examining the role of female protagonists in English and American mystery literature, which is almost kind of a "Lord of the Rings" breadth of work, and she`s up for several awards this year from the mystery writers and mystery fans of America.
LAMB: I take it she`s a Democrat.
BARNETT: She is very much a Democrat.
LAMB: And what about your father?
BARNETT: My father just passed away about a month ago.
LAMB: A month ago?
BARNETT: Yes.
LAMB: How old was he?
BARNETT: He was 81. He was a small-town attorney for about 45 years. He was -- he was Atticus Finch.
LAMB: And he`s another Democrat?
BARNETT: Yes, he was. He was a Kennedy delegate. A lot of Republicans go on further back. His dad was a staunch Republican. Always blamed my mother for turning him into a Democrat. We joke inside my family, the seven siblings, as to which of us, as we get older, is kind of turning Republican.
And again, I tend to vote Democrat. I`m a registered Democrat. I don`t have any problem working with Republicans at all. I mean, my job as a government worker and working in the national security community is to make sure that America has the best possible defense. So I`m interested in George Bush succeeding, or Bill Clinton before him, or whoever follows George Bush, because I`m interested in America being secure.
LAMB: And your wife is a Democrat?
BARNETT: My wife is an ACLU, card-carrying member. She`s very much a Democrat.
LAMB: So by -- did they get mad at you for supplying this document here that -- it reinforces what George Bush is doing.
BARNETT: Well, there`s a certain amount of concern in my family that what I`m doing is helping reelect George Bush. But you know, I see that the challenge of explaining where we are in history and what we really need to accomplish in this global war on terrorism and how we need to link national security issues to a larger understanding of how the world works economically, and this process of globalization`s historical unfolding, I see all those things as far more important than whether George Bush gets a second term or not.
So, I see a lot of good things in this administration in terms of the responses they`ve made to change the Defense Department and to change national security strategy since 9/11. I think they`ve done a poor job of explaining that to people. I think they leave a lot of things unsaid. And so there is this fear of, where are you going exactly with this? How do we know, you know, what`s progress? Where`s the happy ending?
And so I want to see those holes filled. I want to offer that vision to America. I think it`s a tremendously optimistic vision. If it helps explain a Bush administration and makes it more amenable on that level and helps them get reelected, I don`t care one way or another.
LAMB: You tell us on a number of occasions in the book you`re a Catholic. Why is that important to know?
BARNETT: Well, I think it explains the focus on rules. The Catholic Church, very much a rule-bound sort of organization. There are rules for this and rules for that. And so I grew up in a Catholic grade school education, fundamentally interested in the rules. You know, how things work? What are the rules of thumb? What`s the conventional wisdom? What are the unspoken rules? What are the written down rules? If you master the rules, it`s mastering the system, it`s mastering the definitions of success.
So throughout my career, I`ve been very good at getting grades or promotions and those kinds of things throughout an academic research sort of a career, because throughout, I`ve been very careful and I`ve made a lot of effort to kind of figure out what the rules were everywhere I went, and to exploit those possibilities as much as possible.
So it`s been my outlook on rules that says, when you get to this point in history where things seemed like they`ve changed dramatically from a Cold War, where the rules were kind of clear and static for decades, a new situation -- DOD, the Defense Department, after the Cold War looked at the world and called it chaos. And I said no, that`s not good enough. We can`t explain the world as chaos. Because how am I going to know where to go with my troops? How am I going to know where to wage war or, you know, pursue peace? I mean, I can`t make any decisions on chaos. That just sounds like a strategy of no strategy.
So I`ve spent a career, almost a decade and a half, trying to figure out how the world works and how it makes sense to argue that America plays an important role in making that world work.
LAMB: You`re how old?
BARNETT: I`m 41.
LAMB: Daughter Emily got cancer.
BARNETT: When she was 2.
LAMB: How old is she now?
BARNETT: 12.
LAMB: What impact did that have on you?
BARNETT: Well, it impacted me a lot in the sense that, you know, I`ve come to Washington to be a political military analyst, to be a policy wonk of any sort. Fundamentally, it`s hard to be somebody as optimistic who promotes positive visions of the future because the Washington game is largely about tearing down other people`s ideas.
So the career I had up until she got cancer in 1994 was a fairly caustic, typical kind of -- I wrote negative reviews of other people`s concepts. I was a specialist as decrying why your policy, your plan, your proposal was desperately dangerous and should be stopped. I was adept at that sort of research and that sort of game.
When Emily has her cancer and it reorders your sense of priorities and what you want out of life. I decided at that point I was going to stop being somebody who wrote about why other people`s ideas were bad, and was going to start writing about a positive definition of a future, and why this positive vision was good. And so I stopped quoting other people, started quoting myself. I started -- stopped tearing down other people`s ideas and started building up my own.
And I got to a point in the work about two or three years after Emily`s cancer where I thought I can`t do anymore within the DOD community to understand how the world works in a larger sense. I have to -- I have to gain access to other people and other ideas.
And what the War College offered up in Newport was this unique research partnership with Cantor Fitzgerald, the bond trader firm, where they had asked the War College to come together with them and help think about the future of the world and how globalization and national security were coming together. That became the New Rules Sets Project that I had with Cantor Fitzgerald, and specifically with a retired four-star admiral, who was one of the senior people at that point in Cantor Fitzgerald, a guy named Bud Flanagan. And it was an amazing exploration of how the world worked, and it was in that process that I started to get a sense of the rules and started understanding there were more ways to look at China, for example, than to say this is a possible strategic competitor of the United States down the road, and we should plan war against the China. That there were other possibilities.
LAMB: Go back to the Cantor Fitzgerald. How many died in the World Trade Center?
BARNETT: Well, from Cantor Fitzgerald, I think it was upwards of -- somewhere between 650 and 700. About two-thirds of the people.
LAMB: Did you know any of them?
BARNETT: I knew quite a few of them. I mean, we did a series of workshops there. All of them were at World Trade -- World Trade Center 1, on the 107th floor, at Windows on the World restaurant. So we did a lot of planning at Cantor Fitzgerald. We met with the senior leaders there and did a lot of planning of the workshops and interpretations and analysis of the workshops. So I knew not only the people who worked at Cantor who were the stars, but I knew the people who were the security people and who cooked in the kitchen. And I mean, all the ordinary people that were there too.
And you know -- I was -- it was stunning to have all that tremendous loss of life. I don`t pretend to have anywhere near the loss of the people who actually worked there, because these were acquaintances and these were colleagues, and they meant a certain amount to me, but you know, I don`t -- I don`t pretend to have suffered as much as those people, by any measure.
LAMB: How many days had you been -- before you had been in the World Trade Center on September the 11th?
BARNETT: Been there two or three dozen times.
LAMB: But I mean, how soon before that happened had you been there?
BARNETT: Well, we met with some senior Cantor people about four days before the attacks, and I was set to meet -- I was going to be there probably on a Tuesday morning, probably about 8:30 in the morning, having breakfast with Bud Flanagan and Phil Ginsburg (ph), two of the senior people at Cantor that we worked with. Probably would have been sitting right there on the 105th floor about two weeks after 9/11. And it was just an accident, like it was for anybody who was there.
LAMB: But again, September 11 situation is a need for a new rule set?
BARNETT: Yeah. I mean, Emily`s cancer was sort of a need for a new rule set in my family. It reordered my life, my definition of what was good and worthy in my life, and I think 9/11 was sort of the same sort of shock to the system for the U.S. political system, and the national security community. It sort of said, hey, here`s a new way of thinking about crisis and instability and threats in the world, and we have got to have new rules for dealing with this.
LAMB: Have we got them yet?
BARNETT: Well, I mean, you fly on a plane, do you think we have some new rules in terms of how you fly on a plane? Yes, there has been quite a few rules there. There`s been new rules regarding the nature of how we treat information in our society, the nature of privacy. We have new rules for what`s considered criminal behavior, terrorist behavior, un-American behavior. There has been a lot of new rules, I would argue, that were put upon the American public and the system since 9/11.
The Patriot Act is a new rule set, which scares some people and makes other people feel more secure.
The preemptive war concept is a new rule set. So we have created a ton of new rules since 9/11, and, you know, all those new rules are frightening to people, I would argue, because they`re different, they change behavior, they ask new things from us, and until you provide a vision that says this is why it makes sense, this is why it represents progress, here is how I can describe a better world in 10 or 15 years, that will come from these sacrifices, that will come from having your sons and daughters and husbands and wives, you know, engaged in these activities across the world -- because it is real sacrifice. And these are, you know, important people that we lose each and every time. |
