Deleted Scenes

Deleted Scene #26

Chapter Seven: The Myths We Make

Section: The Myth of America as GloboCop

Commentary: This twenty-sixth "deleted scene" would have formed a back half to the section. Complimenting the previous historical data, this lengthy sequence would have served as my threat projection into the future. This typology is based on Kenneth Waltz's three-tiered perspective of system-state-individual, expanded to include cross-cutting categories. I ginned up this 6-tiered classification format in consulting work for Hank Gaffney at the Center for Naval Analyses. Here is the slide I originally developed:

Deleted Scene: Racking and Stacking the Threat Worldwide

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Having covered media-drive perceptions and conflicts by country, let me now address the issue of categories. Here I will engage in the age-old Pentagon practice of "racking and stacking the threat," but I will do so employing a variant of Kenneth Waltz's three images. Figure X lists Waltz's three basic categories of system, state and individual, and for each I have identified the main category of concern. On the system level, the U.S. worries about "emerging near-peers" and the threat of great power war they could prompt. On the state level, we worry primarily about rogue regimes, in large part because only a rogue regime would appear willing to start an inter-state war anymore. Finally, on the subnational level, our concern is primarily about failed states, because there we tend to find the endemic violence, the atrocities, and the havens for terrorists.

But since this is a complex world in which connectivity is growing, we will not be satisfied with just those three categories, and so I will add three more that explore the linkages between them. The first linkage is between great powers and rogue states—as in, are there great powers out there supporting "client" rogues? The second linkage is between rogue states and individual bad actors, such as drug traffickers or terrorists. This is the sort of question that was explored in the run-up to the toppling of Saddam Hussein's regime (e.g., was Saddam providing support of any sort to Al Qaeda or any of their allies?). Finally, there is a linkage to explore between the individual and system levels, because this is where you logically locate the actions of transnational networks that seek to challenge the system—like an Al Qaeda.

So, taking those six categories of threat, let me start at the top and work my way down.

First off, there is basically no credible threat at the system level in terms of great powers. As noted earlier, there has been no great power-on-great power war since the invention of nuclear weapons almost six decades ago. Moreover, no great power is moving in the direction of making global nuclear war any more likely. In general, the U.S.'s search for a future near-peer competitor against which it could strategize, has yielded disappointment after disappointment: Russia shows no sign of resurgence, Japan is far too internally preoccupied with its rapidly aging population, the European Union is far too happy with its ten weeks of vacation and generous government subsidies, and China has made no real moves beyond its myopic security focus on Taiwan. With defense budgets stagnating or dropping around most of the world, it is hard to view this "threat" as requiring anything more than a careful, long-term hedging effort on the part of the Pentagon. In other words, at best we reserve a small portion of our defense spending to account for maintaining our "lead" over any potential downstream near-peers. Frankly, since we spend more on research and development than virtually all countries spend on their entire militaries, this task seems to fit perfectly the definition of a lesser included.

In terms of the threat of state-on-state wars, if you wanted to be generous in your definition, you could say the 1990s featured four state-on-state conflicts: Iraq's invasion of Kuwait and three border skirmishes (Armenia-Azerbaijan, Peru-Ecuador, and Ethiopia-Eritrea). Only Iraq's invasion mattered and that is the only one to which the U.S. responded. There have been no such outright invasions since, which may say something as to the demonstration effect of Desert Storm.

Also at the level of states, we find our persistent category of rogue regimes, which, in the cases of Saddam's Iraq, Iran, and North Korea, were elevated by President George W. Bush into the special category known as the Axis of Evil. A simpler, less hyperbolic way to describe this rogue category is simply to note that, of the six typically identified as constituting this group, five are former Soviet client states (Cuba, Iraq, Libya, Syria and North Korea) and the sixth (post-Shah Iran) likewise developed strong ties in the area of technology transfer (i.e., the nuclear power plant the Russians are building at Brushehr). Security experts have been referring to these six states as the core rogues since the end of the Cold War. This category has not grown since, but actually shrank across the nineties as Cuba's external influence dwindled to nothing, Libya's Mohammar Qaddafi clearly reined in his behavior, and Syria moderated somewhat with the death of Hafez Assad—thus we were down to the Axis of Evil trio of Iraq, Iran and North Korea. Of that group, Iraq is still a mess but no longer a rogue, whereas Iran seems to draw ever closer to an inevitable explosion of popular resistance to the mullahs' rule. Still, Iran obviously still bears close watching, as does Syria because of its proximity to Iraq's tumultuous scene, and then there is always Kim Jong Il in North Korea—a genuinely disturbed leader who should be trusted to always skirt the line between rationality and just plain old crazy. Is this a threat category that seems out of control? Hardly. In fact, the long-term trends seem quite favorable.

Dropping down now to the level of failed states, I could say that this is a category "new" to the post-Cold War era, but that would be misleading. There have always been tortured societies lorded over by incompetent, brutal leaders. In the Cold War, we had more than our share of allies from among their number, as did the Soviets. Neither side was particularly picky about whom they supported. As far as the U.S. was concerned, so long as the leader of a Third World dictatorship did not show up on Lenin's Mausoleum in Red Square on May 1st to watch the tanks roll by in parade, then he was okay. Obviously, that sort of cynical approach disappeared with the Berlin Wall, and presto! All of a sudden we had this "new" category of failed state. My definition of a "failed state" is some awful dictatorship that during the Cold War could easily find a sponsor in the superpowers, but now cannot find anyone willing to put up with its nonsense. In short, they "fail" to find anyone willing to bail them out of their miserable plight, and hence they collapse into persistent internal violence. How many failed states did we have in the 1990s? You could say three dozen internal conflicts would qualify. How many did the U.S. intervene in? Really only Somalia, Haiti and the former Yugoslavia (Bosnia and Kosovo). Hardly an epidemic of nation-building.

Now for the cross-category linkages.

In terms of great powers generating mischief through their own rogues, or what we used to call "client states," here the pickings are exceedingly slim. None of the countries you can consider as great powers (fading or otherwise) really has any client rogues on their ledgers. At best you can say that a number of great powers have economic ties with rogues that we would rather they not pursue, largely because we fear technology transfers resulting in that rogue possessing weapons of mass destruction. So here we worry primarily about Russia and China with regard to such countries as North Korea, Iran, and Pakistan (a near rogue right up to 9/11, but now—naturally—a close friend of the U.S.). Again, stuff to worry about, but not exactly a lengthy list.

A better way to describe this category might be situations were great powers are "trapped" into chronic relationships with what they perceive to be their own, neighboring "rogues." Here I am thinking about Russia's situation with the would-be breakaway region of Chechnya, India's nuclear standoff with Pakistan over Kashmir, and China's long-time fixation on reuniting with Taiwan. While Russia's Chechnya quagmire is certainly a disaster for all involved, the U.S. is very unlikely to get involved in that situation, unless Moscow agreed to some international peacekeeping mission. But no one should hold their breath on that one. As for China's situation with Taiwan, I would be more worried about its long-term resolution if not for the fact that the two countries keep integrating their economies so steadily. That pretty much leaves India and Pakistan, and here I think there is plenty to worry about, but the good news is that the Pentagon is pursuing expanded security ties with each—out of desperation with Pakistan and by choice with India. Still, being able to talk frankly to the military leadership on both sides of that fragile situation is a big plus.

How about rogue regimes that facilitate transnational actors who are determined to do bad things? This is the political-military nexus of the global war on terrorism, and there are plenty of situations here to worry about and address. First there are the sloppy states who are not rogues, but whose loose rule sets facilitate the activities of dangerous people like Al Qaeda. Here I am talking about such good friends as Belgium, Germany, or South Africa. But frankly, I am also talking about the United States itself on this one, so we do not want to go around throwing any bricks at glass houses. The real point is simply to tighten up the security rule sets that allowed all this connectivity among advanced economies to be used against us on 9/11.

The states we really need to worry about in this global war on terrorism are the failed states that let transnational terrorist groups infiltrate, recruit, transit at will, and train in secret locations. Afghanistan was the classic example of this sort of state: providing poorly for its people but doing just fine by Al Qaeda. Other states we worry about along these lines are Somalia, Yemen, and Sudan—to name a few. Of course, postwar Iraq itself may soon fall into this category if we are not aggressive enough in our rebuilding of that country's security order. Trickier still are states which officially fight transnational terrorism and yet let these groups locate substantial financing within their borders from sympathetic supporters (like Saudi Arabia) or are willing to offer terrorists sanctuary in return for bribes (as Charles Taylor did in Liberia prior to being pressured out of power).¹

True state sponsors of transnational terrorism are few in number, and their linkages are—as we saw with Iraq—difficult to prove. But with Saddam Hussein's regime out of the way, the official list of "state sponsors of terrorism" dwindles to a mere six, according to the April 2003 report of the State Department: Cuba, Iran, Libya, North Korea, Sudan, and Syria. By now, you should be getting the feeling that whenever we talk about the really bad and worrisome states, we keep referring to same ten or so states out of that global total of 191 states recognized by the United Nations.

Finally, what about the threat of transnational networks that seek to challenge the global security order?

First off, let me be clear that when I talk about transnational networks in this light, I am not referring to multinational corporations like ExxonMobil, non-governmental organizations like Greenpeace, private voluntary organizations like the International Red Cross, or religious institutions like the Roman Catholic Church. One thing that has always infuriated me about Pentagon threat briefs over the past decade has been this tendency to lump all transnational actors into the same vaguely "dangerous" or "destabilizing" category. Why do Pentagon strategists engage in this nonsense? Once again, it is their myopic focus on nation-states as the be-all and end-all of order in the international security environment. Not only did this strategic near-sightedness blind them to the importance of international terrorism over the nineties, it facilitated the stupidity whereby Nike and Hamas somehow end up in the same PowerPoint bullet! That happened only because many Pentagon strategists view all transnational actors as inherently challenging global order by reducing the power and relevancy of nation-states and their governments. In other words, they make the Pentagon feel less relevant.

The reality is that the vast majority of transnational actors reinforce global rule sets and the international security order that undergirds them. That is why most of them sprang into existence in the first place: to fill in the rule set gaps that exist between nation-states and thereby build a sense of global community in which rules are acknowledged, obeyed and-if need be-enforced. These positive transnational actors increase global connectivity far more than nation-states and their governments—including their militaries.

The transnational networks we need to worry about challenging the international security environment are those who obviously transgress the global security rule set for the purposes of sowing disconnectedness either within societies or among nation-states. They are not hard to spot, because they tend to be very clear in their intentions: they want certain people and their ideas, mass media, trade, culture, and most of all their soldiers gone. They want it all gone: out of their villages, "sacred lands," countries and even the entire region. But most of all, they want the ability to control what gets left behind when all those "evil" people and their influences leave. Because once they have these people cut off from the outside world, then they can really have their way with them, whether it is to rule their minds with ideology or religion, keep them repressed politically, deprive them economically (while they grow rich, naturally), or force them into warfare on their behalf.

Of course, there are some anti-capitalist ideologues who will think I have just indicted Nike along with Al Qaeda, but my guess is those closed minds would have put down this book long before now.

[1] On Saudi Arabia, see Robert Baer, "The Fall of the House of Saud," The Atlantic, May 2003; on Charles Taylor's harboring of international terrorists, the strongest charges come from David Crane, the U.S. prosecutor for the Special Court on Sierra Leone, who is quoted in Douglas Farah, "Liberian is Accused of Harboring Al Qaeda," The Washington Post, 15 May 2003, p. A18.

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