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The Pentagon's New Map > Director's CommentaryLesser IncludedsOVERVIEWIf the first chapter was designed to be relatively "easy," taking the reader over decades and through the Cold War, then this chapter was to be a bit harder, or more high concept. This chapter was to explain the post-Cold War era and more specifically, explain what happened inside the Pentagon in terms of long-range planning. Why this chapter is important is because all of the problems we currently face in an Iraq occupation find their origins in this decade—the 1990s. Here is the slide that is the basic inspiration for this chapter. It is one I drew for Hank Gaffney at CNA as part of a consultancy on a project in the late 1990s:
The basic notion is that a huge evolution has occurred across my very short decade-and-a-half career: when I began it was all about the evil empire, then it became all about the evil regimes, and now we are all about the evil individuals. This is a fantastic evolution to have witnessed in such a short career. Hank uses this slide on occasion. I think it is one of the best strategic insights I have ever come up with in my life. The three-tiered perspective of system-state-individual comes from Kenneth Waltz's masterpiece of 1964, Man, State and War, a theoretical analysis on the causality of war. Here is the slide I use to describe it:
UNTITLED INTRO ESSAYThe basic goal here was to introduce the major themes of the chapter:
This intro is fairly business-like, skipping personal narrative for the most part and summarizing a lot. THE MANTHORPE CURVEThis is the other great story of my early career (other than the "Jack Ryan" one): working on the Naval Force Capabilities Planning Effort that eventually begat the first Department of Navy white paper in decades (and no, I don't count the Maritime Strategy) entitled, …From the Sea. The title of this section stems from the one-slide briefing given by Deputy Director of the Office of Naval Intelligence to the admirals and generals assembled to oversee the vision-generating effort. This slide was huge for me, triggering my first major article in Proceedings of the U.S. Naval Institute ("It's Going to be a Bumpy Ride," with my mentor Hank Gaffney), later selected as one of the journal's best in its first 100 years. I actually looked up Bill Manthorpe a few weeks ago to get a copy of the original slide, which I lacked. He indicated that he was very happy to see his ideas get the credit he felt they were due. In my mind, his slide and the accompanying analysis was the first great enunciation of the concept of the "near-peer competitor" within the Pentagon—all the way back to the latter half of 1991. That's why it is so historic. Manthorpe, BTW, still believes in the slide completely, meaning he buys into the "rising China" argument in spades. This is not surprising, because "rising China" is the obsession right now of the Office of Naval Intelligence. Bill knew I always disagreed with his analysis, but that never bugged him. He said the big thing was simply starting the debate, something to which I agree marks the real significance of his brilliant work—no matter how much I personally disagree with it. Below is a copy of the original slide:
Also included is a color version of the slide that I have used in various briefs over the years, purposefully made more iconic.
What is also important about this section is that it introduces the concept of the emerging bifurcation of the military and the Pentagon across the 1990s into two separate forces: the warfighting force and the MOOTW force (or Military Operations Other Than War force). The former force favored the vision of the Cold Worriers, as I dubbed them (see "It's Going to Be a Bumpy Ride"), and the latter force really describes the reality the military faced over the 1990s as they sought to transition from one era (Cold War) to the next (Globalization Era, or Post-9/11 Era). The second group I dubbed the Transitioneers. Other details on this section:(1) I kept huge numbers of files from the entire Naval Force Capabilities Planning Effort (NFCPE), which is odd for me, because I tend to throw things away. I guess I figured this stuff really was historic. Plus, I have always wanted to write about those events openly. The "Bumpy Ride" article was really a coded version of a history of that visioneering process, whereas this chapter lays down my personal version of the truth. I know several participants will disagree with this version, believing I have not given them the credit they are certain they deserve for being the true "fathers" or "authors" of …From the Sea. But that's too damn bad. I see this section as setting the record far straighter than any other account before me. (2) Mark Warren forced me to write the whole "cult of the PowerPoint briefing" section [pp. 65-67], because he said it was essential to "let the reader in" on this world, otherwise he felt the section would have been far harder to understand. (3) My colleague, Bradd Hayes, upon reading the first draft (I gave it to him for his reality check since he was on the original scene), argued that I needed to mention Rusty Petrea if I was going to mention the infamous F Troop [p. 71], so I did. (4) I still have multiple copies of Bradd Hayes' Early Bird parody [p. 71] in my files. (5) Tom Wilkerson [p. 72] is now the head of the U.S. Naval Institute in Annapolis. (6) Here is a copy of the all-important slide with the bullet that changed everything [pp. 73-77]:
(7) The Navy White Paper … From the Sea [p. 78] is found online at: http://www.chinfo.navy.mil/navpalib/policy/fromsea/fromsea.txt. THE FRACTURING OF THE SECURITY MARKETThis is the basic expression of the chapter. It is based on my reading of the changing nature of power distribution across Ken Waltz's three-tiered perspective. Here is one version of the chart I use to describe this:
The career narrative in this section basically describes my years of working on force structure issues for the Department of Navy following …From the Sea and before I began working for USAID, so this covers the years 1992-1994. The main purpose of this section is to explain how the old rule set about most of the power in the system being held by nation states was coming apart as globalization matured and spread around the planet. This is the essential rule-set change of the last generation. Other details:(1) The article that most closely laid out this vision prior to the book was my piece for Proceedings in 2000 entitled, "Life After DoDth or: How the Evernet Changes Everything." The whole Sys Admin-Leviathan concept began here, using a different pair of names. It was this article that originally brought me to the attention of SECDEF's senior personal aides following 9/11. I guess they felt it had touched upon emerging realities that DoD would eventually have to face. THE RISE OF ASYMMETRICAL WARFAREThe whole notion on this section was to relate the fundamental rule-set change described in the previous section to the terrorist attacks of 9/11, or how 9/11 proved that rule-set shift was now complete. The basic slide I've used to explain this looks like this (this is a B&W static version created for a USG report; Bradd Hayes put it together):
This section really lacks the career narrative intro: all it has is the little bit up front about how I dealt with some bullies back in my hometown of Boscobel. Then it's right into some high-concept description of Pentagon thinking across the 1990s. I love that opening paragraph, however, because it's the one place in the book I cover my dear old Dad, recently deceased. Plus, it's a huge memory from my childhood. The guy in question (who had to lose the pigs) actually spray painted "John Barnett is a S.O.B." on the side of his car and drove it as a quasi float in a 4th of July parade one year in Boscobel WI. It is a sight I will never forget. It is within this section that I basically go through this slide (shown above and repeated here):
Other details …(1) Yet another Green Bay Packer reference [p. 89]. Go Pack! These references are to get my brother-in-law Todd Meussling off my back. When I went on CNN the first time with Wolf Blitzer following the original Esquire article, Todd promised me $50 if I yelled out "Go Pack" at the end of the interview, like some crazed frat boy. I declined. (2) I love comparing Osama to Lenin in terms of similar goals and tactics [pp. 93-94] because it really links this era's globalization to that of the globalization we experienced at the end of the 19th and the beginning of the 20th century. Books and articles that compare those two eras fascinate me to no end. HOW 9/11 SAVED THE PENTAGON FROM ITSELFThis section really describes how my view of the future of warfare and Art Cebrowski's view of the future of warfare basically came together over 9/11. This section, therefore, explains the healing of the rift that had emerged across the 1990s between the high-tech types who dreamed of distant war with China (many still do) and the MOOTW types who saw a world that needed day-to-day managing. Despite saying that 9/11 effectively heals the rift, I still argue that it makes sense to go along with the bifurcation of the U.S. military that naturally emerged once the Sovs went away. Here is a B&W static version of the slide I have used to describe this process:
This section, then, really works to sum up all the debates of the 1990s inside the Pentagon, hence I reuse the Transitioneers v. Cold Worriers debate. Hank Gaffney and I really plowed this ground for the first time in our Proceedings article entitled, "Force Structure Will Change" (October 2000). In that article, you see my first use of the Gap term. Other details …(1) The section on pages 104-105 is one of the few places in the book when I start writing traditionally, meaning I quote other people's ideas and let the text consist of reviewing their notions (other than the review of great books in Chapter One, pp. 51-53). I don't know why I lapsed into that sort of behavior right then, because you don't really see it elsewhere in the book. I guess I just happened to find a few good articles and could not resist. But generally Mark and I sought to avoid this classic academic tone. * * * That's it in terms of commentary for Chapter Two. Not a lot of back story on this one because it is easily the most heavy high-concept chapter in the book—basically strategic concepts from stem to stern. Mark and I (not to mention my agent Jennifer) did worry about this chapter and whether or not it would seem to bog the reader down. All of us were convinced that Chapter Three (the full exposition of the original Esquire article) was the heart of the book, so there was fear about "taking too long to get there." Still, I felt like the concepts I lay out in this chapter are crucial to understanding how we got to where we are today as a military power. These ideas are really the primordial soup of the book, or the concepts I spent the 1990s working over, and truly selling to no one—they simply seemed so weird at the time. But if not for these ideas and my obsession with them, there is little doubt that the main concepts of the book would have continued to elude my grasp—even after 9/11. So to me, this chapter is crucial to understanding the evolution of the vision. If the book is a sort of autobiography of the vision, then Chapter Two is the most concise expression of that personal journey. True to my manner, this most "personal" description of my career is the section of the book with the least amount of personal narrative, save for the opening section. That is because when I think of myself and my career, I don't think in terms of people or articles or accomplishments, but in terms of the ideas generated and massaged over the years. I fundamentally live in the world of ideas, and this chapter accurately captures that, hopefully not boring the reader too much in the process. But now I feel the reader is truly ready, based on the groundwork of chapters one and two, to absorb what I want to tell them in Chapter Three—the real heart of the book and, as Mark likes to describe it, the "book within the book." |
Putnam, 2004 |
