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The Pentagon's New Map > Director's CommentaryThe Myths We MakeOVERVIEWAs I've noted elsewhere, this is the synthetic chapter, Mark's baby, and the stand-alone pamphlet (as my webmaster calls it). Does it work as a stand-alone? I think it does. Is it a nice palate-clearing exercise before the concluding chapter? Yes, so I think it works in terms of placement too (lotsa debate between Mark and I about that, but placing it here was also his good call). I guess I know this to be true (Mark's original point): this trio of myth-busters were misplaced as ending sections for the various chapters in which they were originally hatched. Each would have ended a chapter whose function was something else and thus left the reader with a slightly sour taste in the mouth. By collecting them into this vile little chapter of saucy skepticism, we quarantine this nasty side of my personality in this one space—not letting its pessimistic tone (although the content remains optimistic) infest the rest of the book. The chapter also serves as a sort of gathering place for implicit reader comebacks, and as such gives me a central place to preemptively deal with such complaints, criticisms, etc. Of course, since the book began as a brief delivered hundreds of times to thousands of people, I've already built in a lot of feedback, which is why many people describe the book as Socratic (answer and question format). If there is one article I've written that reflects this chapter, it's the one I wrote with Hank Gaffney called "Top Ten Post-Cold War Myths." Here is a slide that lists them all—including the one about terrorists not running the world (something they still don't do if we run this global war on terrorism correctly):
UNTITLED INTRO ESSAYThis one I dashed off in about 5 minutes, and it shows—not in terms of quality but in terms of bite. I can only write that fast when I'm a bit pissed off. Can't remember the trigger, but I know I was anxious to see what Mark had done with the three sections and he kept delaying their arrival in my email inbox. So, anticipating what needed to get done in the intro essay, I dashed this off. You could say, I guess, that this sequence is a bit of negative campaigning, or my trashing the competition in advance. But in many ways, what the tone here reveals is the sort of righteousness I've always carried with me in this work: I am not an academic, nor am I a media commentator. I am a practitioner of strategic planning for the military—an insider. When I walk into a vault like I did recently with the Joint Staff's long-range policy planners, I'm not somebody brought in from the "outside." I am someone already on the inside, because this is what I do for a living and these are the people I work with every day. All my career, I have made my peace with the reality that says: if you become too famous "out there," you can't really be "one of us" in here. I've traded fame for that ability to walk into rooms that are incredibly hard—in fact, usually impossible—for the academics and commentators to access. And I value that access, that knowledge, those conversations, because it keeps my material real. When I spout off against those who abuse such access to scare the average citizen, or those who use their expertise to reduce the American public's sense of hope in the future to a mind-numbing sort of cynicism, what I really channel is the faith I feel from those individuals inside those rooms, those command posts, those vaults—people who don't do this job to make money or to become famous, but because they want to serve others and leave the world better than they found it. Doesn't make them better citizens than anyone else, but it does make them more committed to the commonweal. This chapter, then, is mostly about offering testimony of that commitment, because in poking holes in these myths, what I really do is recognize the past successes, current tasks and future possibilities of this great institution—this U.S. military. THE MYTH OF GLOBAL CHAOSThis section is mostly about the fear that infects this business and is often used by those in the field who enjoy scaring others because it makes them feel both more important in their work and powerful in their lives—you know, people in the field of national insecurity. So it starts out with my favorite career riff about the role of classified information in the field, and my conscious effort throughout my career to distance myself from that stuff. Then it segues to my favorite story of spending a summer in the old Soviet Union (yeah baby—back in the day! Back in the USSR!). Then I tie it all down with a final bit about how my career began we me thinking about global nuclear war (my first unit's original job was to do just that for the Chief of Naval Operations—hence our name of SPAG, for Strategic Policy Analysis Group). All in all, a rather tripping-the-light-fantastic tour of my early years, but exactly what the section calls for. Then the back half of the section is my dismantling of the global chaos myth: five reality checks (I borrow that phrase from those cool myth-busting articles in the front of Foreign Policy magazine) and a reasonable explanation of how the myth got started (something I remember very well given my previous graduate career as a student of Soviet-Third World relations—just like Francis Fukuyama!). Other details …(1) To be "unclean" at the Center for Naval Analyses [pp. 432-43], where I began my career and got my first clearance, meant you were segregated from the rest of the staff in the so-called bullpen on the second floor (CNA owned the floors 5-14 in the building, so you were super-separated from everyone else and had to be escorted into CNA proper by someone clean each and every time you entered). I was stuck in the bullpen for 10 months, which isn't a record but is a very long time. Part of the problem was the first Iraq war (delayed processing), and part of the problem was my rather lengthy answer to the question in the application about drug use (I was at the University of Wisconsin in the early 1980s, where I met my first dorm fellow at a pot rally on the steps of the state capitol, so you do the math). Being unclean so long forced me to work unclassified for my first year, and thus the success of that work (my report on the "op-ed wars" got me a page 1 Washington Post Outlook section article; then I moved on to my let's-make-peace-with-the-Russians/Jack Ryan stuff) basically got me pegged early on as a pol-mil big-picture guy not well suited to classified work. So it was a bit of a self-fulfilling prophecy: being counterculture in the first place makes me counterculture in the final analysis. I remain that strange liberal in a world of conservatives, and that strangely optimistic thinker in a world of worst-case gloom-and-doomers. (2) "Welcome to the real world" [p. 343] is the phrase that greets the viewer when you turn on the "Matrix" DVD. It's the line Morpheus (Lawrence Fishburne) speaks to Neo when he awakens on the ship after being unplugged from the Matrix. (3) I learned about that "dirt" [p. 343] that every profession knows about sitting around the dining room table as a kid. My Dad was city attorney as well as an attorney with his own practice, and my Mom worked in the county's social services department, so the dinner conversation (which always assiduously avoided the use of actual names) tended to focus on the rather seamier side of life. But what my parents always taught me about that information was not to feel superior about knowing it, or to feel superior with regard to the people it described. Our purpose in life was to be thankful for what we had, provide for our own family first, and then do whatever we could to share the wealth of our good fortune with others. In effect, this knowledge was responsibility—nothing more and nothing less. That's how I feel about classified material—it goads me to do better about a world full of pain and fear. (4) Nice Monty Python reference on page 344. ;<) (5) I actually have a certificate in Russian Language from Leningrad State University (LSU, as I like to call it) from my time there in the summer of 1985 (very early Gorbachev—as in, the crackdown on drinking, which made scrounging for vodka all the harder). I went to Russia via Kansas University's program [pp. 344-45], even though I've never visited the campus there (Lawrence?). My teachers at LSU thought me very odd: I was the only student to get exactly the same grade on my language test at the beginning and at the end of the summer program. Veeeeeeeery suspicious! Truth be told: I did that just to piss them off. My Russian was already fluent at that point (no longer—but then again, I once ran a marathon and I ain't gonna do that today either!), but I didn't want that so well known to my minders, so I purposefully scored the same mediocre number on both tests. I blew off the classes to a great extent, always showing up hung-over and sleep deprived, because I spent almost every night out drinking with Russians I had met in my daily off-school adventures. So let's say I broke more than a few laws regarding the behavior of foreigners in the USSR at that time: like leaving the city without permission (lovely drives to the lakes and the shoreline during the "white nights"); exchanging money illegally, smuggling goods from America to dissidents inside, taking stuff back out (nothing for money, just for communications to relatives back in the States), riding in the cars of ordinary Russians (including one senior KGB officer who was a huge fan of Broadway musicals) and staying out every night way past curfew (my KGB colonel friend showed me a back door into the hotel to sneak through in exchange for my critical appraisal of "Cats," "A Chorus Line" and Bob Fosse's career in general). How could I always nail a ride at 3am when all the bridges were up? I simply held out a pack of Lucky Strikes in the pale light of the white nights. More than a few old-timers there still remembered Luckies from the Great Patriotic War—one of their favorite things from America during those hard years of WWII. (6) The actual nuclear war study that I describe on pages 345-46 was called "U.S. Nuclear Strategy: Implications for SIOP 94." I ended up performing the peer review for the final report, which I approved with certain caveats and calls for changes. (7) Actually, to have the conversation I describe on page 345, you need something higher than a Top Secret clearance, and I've held that additional level of clearance for about 12 years now. (8) The University of Maryland data I cite on page 347 (and elsewhere) is the best such research on the subject of conflict frequency and magnitude around the world that currently exists in academia. It's really fine material, reflecting solid research techniques. THE MYTH OF AMERICA AS GLOBOCOPThis section speaks to an underlying theme of the book: by realizing that the violence in the system today is located overwhelming (almost exclusively) inside the Gap, the notion that America is a global policeman only holds if you discount the reality that we don't have to "patrol" basically two-thirds of the planet. So this section is basically a de-mything with good statistics about the frequency and magnitude of conflicts in the world, which is why I rely on the U. Maryland data and Hank Gaffney's work at CNA about U.S. military crisis responses. No great oratory here; just the facts ma'am. I use the Dragnet tone purposefully, because of the three myths I cite, this one is the most virulent. Other details:(1) Almost no narrative on this one, befitting its business-like tone. Just the briefest reference to radio talk shows, which stems mostly from my experience in 2003 following the publication of the original Esquire article. (2) I got the original 5 percent statistic from Rear Admiral Ted Baker during my stint with him in the From the Sea white paper effort I describe at the beginning of Chapter 2 (The Manthorpe Curve). Talking numbers of responses, his point was that the U.S. Navy historically only spends about 5 percent of its time engaging in combat ops, and 95 percent of the time doing what I call the "everything else" stuff. Ted was one of the smartest strategic thinkers I have ever come across in the Navy. (3) This section would have been far longer, if not for Mark Warren cutting out a lengthy "rack 'em and stack 'em" rundown of the threats that I wrote for this section. You can find it on the Deleted Scenes page. THE MYTH OF AMERICAN EMPIREIn this third myth, I really get to cut loose on the rhetoric because here is a big, fat juicy target. As I say in the June 2004 article for Esquire, the whole "empire" shtick is very chic right now in literary circles, but as a concept it is so much sound and fury signifying nothing. In ideological terms, it's basically an effort to fight the last war-Vietnam-while ignoring the real challenges of this day and age. Few things piss me off more than this boneheaded concept, which is why I get so fiery in the text here. My colleague Bradd Hayes says, as do many of the readers to date, that this section is the most soaring and therefore best written in the book. I tried to write it almost like a sermon, so I think it simply cries out to be read aloud. If the book ever sells well enough to justify an audio version (fingers crossed, but I fear otherwise given the limitations on self-promotion associated with my career of working inside DoD), this will be the section I can't wait to hear performed. Other details . . .(1) You see a lot of text adapted from this section for the June 2004 Esquire article, which really is a greatest hits collection of lines from the book. (2) I did actually write this section on 11 September 2003. The memorial we have here at the college for the graduates killed contains a chunk of the damaged Pentagon wall as its centerpiece. I remain humbled by the memory; I was set to brief in the Navy Command Center in the Pentagon one week to the hour following the attack. Oddly enough, I did make the trip to DC as planned on the 18th of September, 2001, on just about the first "normal" flying day. Almost no one was on the plane with me that morning. It was very spooky—and they had taken away my Swiss Army Knife (my only protection!). Instead of visiting the Pentagon, I gave my Asian Environmental Solutions brief for the first and only time to the staff of The Arlington Institute. (3) The language on the top of page 356 ["America needs to be the one willing to rush in …] purposefully mirrors some of the descriptions of the bravery of rescue workers at the World Trade Center on 9/11. (4) My favorite line in the book: "Globalization does not come with a ruler, but with rules." If there was a list of mottos for the book, I would go with "disconnectedness defines danger," "shrink the Gap," "war within the context of everything else," "making globalization truly global," and then this line (in that order). Whew! I'm ready for my 3-minute stump speech. (5) I love the Internet as a metaphor for the rule sets we seek to extend [p. 356]; I merely remind you of the U.S. government agency that invented it—the Department of Defense (through DARPA). DoD has been a huge source of globalization's "code" over the decades—no doubt about it. (6) On the plans to shift bases around the world [pp. 361-62], this refers to the work of Andrew Hoehn in the Office of the Secretary of Defense. Hoehn is the Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense (Strategy). (7) People in the Office of Naval Intelligence [p. 362] have recently started using the phrase "ten-feet tall" when describing the Chinese Navy. This is Pentagon code for a "near-peer competitor" on par with the old Soviet Navy threat. It is complete nonsense, but it gives you a sense of how strong the undercurrents are within the defense intelligence community toward China. (8) "… there are significant institutional prices to pay for the Pentagon's tendency to stick with what it knows until history tells its otherwise." [p. 363] A good example of that is our troops in Iraq being short on UAVs and armored Humvees. Simply put, these institutional biases costs lives over time. (9) Mark my words on page 365: "When you see me trying to explain this entire book in two minutes on a TV news program, you'll know exactly what I mean." Can't wait for some journalist to ask me about that line! I got a nice crisp $20 for the first one who does * * * That's it for the Director's Commentary on Chapter 7, or what I like to call "Mark's little baby." |
Putnam, 2004 |
