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The Pentagon's New Map > Director's CommentaryHope Without GuaranteesNotice how this "Chapter 8" is numbered like all the rest and isn't called the "conclusion"? This is purposeful, because this last chapter is not designed to be long one regurgitation of the ideas that preceded it. Instead, the chapter operates as a long-term extension of the vision, describing the main threats to its execution, along with the great tasks that define it. Then it lays out a positive global pathway of ten steps that capture its successful unfolding. We wanted the book to crescendo here, not simply sum up. We wanted this last chapter to thrill and amaze, not just remind. Here is the promise of the future worth creating laid out in some detail. I have spoken of understanding, change, and sacrifice up to now, and this constitutes the reward—the happy ending. I knew that many readers will peruse a Preface and then jump to the last chapter to see if the ending suggests an effort worth making in terms of reading everything that lies between. So I designed the Preface to promise the world and the concluding chapter to deliver it. Yes, you can read just those two and get the gist of the book alright, and that is by design. But damn it, if you plan to review it you should read the whole text! The chapter begins with a sort of career/life recap of my intellectual journey and the main influences in that narrative arc. It explains my optimism explicitly in relation to the world changes I've witnessed in four decades. Then it segues into the closest thing there is to a summary in the chapter: the quick recap of the Global Transaction Strategy, which is just another way of saying "this is how you think about, plan, and wage war within the context of everything else." So I offer the three-pronged strategy on page 369. This section is based on three slides from the brief, shown below:
Following that, I run the reader through a set of "challenges" or implied tasks of executing the strategy. In that rundown I offer a sequence about "who changes more," which is based on a slide I developed in response to a good question I received from friend Tom Junod of Esquire on that fateful day in November 2002 when I briefed the senior staff (and had my first great encounter with Mark Warren). Here's the slide:
Following that section, I run through the "main dangers" to the execution of the strategy, and then it's on to the ten steps to a future worth creating. Let me comment on the details that follow: (1) On page 374 I toss in a bit about foreign aid, speaking with some authority because I've actually consulted for a couple of years with USAID—so yes, I know my elbow from my rear-end. In that paragraph I manage to piss a lot of people off, apparently. First, by saying the U.S. should promote bioengineered crops, I think I'm only stating the obvious: it's hard—by and large—to grow crops successfully throughout much of the Gap. So making available to these economies new crop seeds that have been improved to deal with pests, drought, and diseases seems to me to be a no-brainer. Now I know plenty in the Core consider this a huge environmental question, and I'm all for being careful on this score. But I'm also aware that the environmental movement has sought to demonize this improvement process, declaring it a great leap beyond the genetic alterations in crops that mankind has made over the previous thousands of years, when in reality the difference is one of degree, not kind. Is change always riskier? Yes. Are those more desperate on this score more willing to take those risks? Yes, we've seen the spread of bioengineered crops grow quickly in numerous New Core and Gap states, like China, India, and Africa. But here's the rub: the Old Core refuses to let those crops in, in many instances. Is this concern over genetically-modified organisms, or simply agricultural protectionism wearing an anti-globalization mask? My sense is that it's far more the latter than the former, and the hypocrisy here is stunning. Second, there is the language I insert about the U.S. needing to promote and support all forms of birth control inside the Gap. Not because I want to keep the Gap down, but because I know that if birth control is unavailable in more traditional societies, the chances for young girls to stay in school and avoid pregnancies plummet. In the uncorrected manuscript, my line about promoting all forms of birth control included the phrase "including abortion." That line bugged both my Mom and my mother-in-law a lot, so I pulled that reference there and said what I really wanted to say all along in the paragraph's final sentence: that the abortion fight in the U.S. perverts our family planning aid around the world. (2) Here is my one great regret in the book; either that or my focus on selling the sequel. The bit on page 375 that leverages Sebastian Mallaby's point about needing an IMF-like international organization to deal with postwar reconstructions: I now push that thought far more extensively in the brief, basically arguing that the world needs an A-to-Z rule set (and associated international organizations) for processing politically-bankrupt states. This is a major theme of the June 2004 Esquire piece. I think it also reflects a major focus of future research and writing for me from here on out. (3) When I speak of the G-20 on page 376, I really should have been more explicit in pinning my hopes for more Core-wide cooperation on security here. When I speak of the Sys Admin force becoming highly internationalized, it's my belief that we're more likely to see that happen through the efforts of the G-20 than the UN Security Council, which is at best the "grand jury" of the A-to-Z rule set I seek on processing politically bankrupt regimes. Now on to the "ten steps toward this future worth creating": (1) Hard not to say it all starts with Iraq, because if we succeed there, it's hard to see us pulling back, but if we fail there, it's hard to see us continuing beyond in any meaningful way. (2) On Kim: this guy is so bad that I don't know why the world isn't more united in wanting to get rid of him. I almost want to throw up whenever I hear U.S. diplomats assure us (like Madeline Albright) that "he's not really crazy" and that we can do business with him. He needs to go down, unless you think that half-a-holocaust he's responsible for in the late 1990s isn't reason enough. What's more, the winning coalition of that effort (whether it involves military action or not) will logically serve as the basis for the NATO-like military alliance that northeast Asia clearly needs. So, to me, Kim's takedown is a way to move beyond today's suspicions and toward tomorrow's far better security partnership with Beijing. So solving the Koreas problem is both an end in itself and a means to something truly valuable. (3) With Iran, I don't foresee the invasion, because I think we're just so close to the overthrow of the mullahs' rule by the masses. Encouraging and enabling that should be our main focus right now. (4) This one I worry about, because if the US settles for CAFTA (Central America Free Trade Area) and Mercosur aligns with the EU, a big historical opportunity may be lost. (5) I do remain optimistic on the Middle East. There's just too much talent and ambition there to let it all go down the tubes like Central Africa. But it will get far harder before it gets better. The bin Ladens will fight harder, and so must we. (6) Yes, I am unabashedly a Sinophile. I will be accused of worse once we adopt our baby girl, I am sure. Or perhaps I will be explained away on this basis. But this is something that was inculcated in me going all the way back to the time with Cantor Fitzgerald: the integration of China in the global economy is the biggest global rule set shift of our lifetimes. We have no choice but to do it well. (7) This is the logical follow-on to 6: we integrate China economically first and then militarily. Too much to gain and too much to lose by screwing this up—even over Taiwan. I want to meet the President who will explain the thousands upon thousands of dead American soldiers that could be required to keep Taiwan "free" from China in the event of war there. Simply put, the Pentagon cannot spend the bulk of its resources and imagination on that 2025 warfighting scenario, because it would represent nothing less than the complete failure of U.S. national security strategy over the next 20 years. (8) This is something I've been writing and dreaming about for roughly a dozen years. This is basically the Vancouver-to-Vladivostok dream of Jim Baker and Eduard Shevardnadze at the end of the Cold War. I first describe such a pathway in a 1992 Center for Naval Analyses report entitled, "Tracking Russian Foreign Policy Into the 21st Century: A Bear-Watcher's Guide." (9) Here's the bit everyone loves to make fun of: my notion that America will actually grow in terms of member states over the next half century. What is so bizarre about that is beyond me. How does anyone think we grew to 50 member states in the first place? Admitting new members until the late 1950s? My point here was simply to shake up people's mental models about America being an "open society," because if the Core is going to shrink the Gap we'll need to let "them" in—in more ways than one. I want an America that is open for new members—nothing more and nothing less. My guess is we'd have some real takers if we ever resurrected this back-to-the-future option. (10) Africa is last on the list for all the obvious reasons. But one key pathway can push it up: if we drive radical Islam out of the Middle East, it will go here to roost, targeting these disconnected societies for dreams that we made (hopefully) unachievable in the Persian Gulf. Now to the closing paragraphs. My first version openly mirrored some language from John Lennon's "Imagine." Imagine the howls over that! The Pentagon war-monger quotes John Lennon! Mark Warren so reworked these last two paragraphs that they are equally considered his own as they are mine. You will notice these paragraphs end the June 2004 Esquire article as well—with good reason. They really sum up my challenge of shrinking the Gap. * * * That's it for the Director's Commentary on Chapter 8. It's my hope that these commentaries have added to your general understanding and enjoyment of the book. Further feedback is welcome. |
Putnam, 2004 |
