Dateline: Faculty Club, U Cal Berkeley, Berkeley CA, 10 March 2005.
I spoke to Tolson about this story way back when. It came out in this week's online version of U.S. News.com. Tolson's an impressive writer who reminds me of Greg Jaffe in that he can tackle very large subjects and get a lot done in a short space.
Here's the opening para and the final third, where my ideas are highlighted:
Nation & World
The coming storms
Scholars and pundits trade dark prophecies--and high hopes
By Jay Tolson
Read this in full at www.usnews.com/usnews/issue/050314/usnews/14policy.htm
So how is World War IV going? With the second Bush administration well underway--and now with a new terror alert to alarm the nation--it is hardly surprising that strategic thinkers are asking the question. What is surprising, though, is that so many leading analysts still disagree over the nature of the struggle: the origins, the stakes, the objectives, the definition of the enemy, and even the aptness of the word war itself. Differing loudly in a variety of print venues, from the popular monthly Esquire to the more scholarly Wilson Quarterly, they inadvertently drive home a common point: It's a curious war indeed that makes people argue over whether they are really fighting one.
But these debates are more than curious. They are of great consequence. And the reason is one on which most analysts would (uncharacteristically) agree: If the current struggle is as much a war of and by ideas as it is a war of arms, the character of the conflict is itself an idea with crucial consequences …
In saying that military actions stemming from America's pursuit of material abundance are a major cause of World War IV, Bacevich rules out any possibility of idealism or altruism in Bush's security policies, particularly as applied to the Middle East. And that is where Thomas Barnett, author of an important article in the February issue of Esquire, offers a more nuanced--and certainly more hopeful--perspective.
Breakdown. Barnett's position extends one of the central arguments of his widely hailed book, The Pentagon's New Map: War and Peace in the Twenty-First Century. There, the former U.S. Naval War College researcher and professor argued that 9/11 signaled a major system breakdown in the U.S.-backed globalizing process. "In the process of rapid expansion," Barnett says, summarizing his analysis of the go-go '90s, "economics got way ahead of politics, technology got way ahead of security." Older structures intended to support global security, including the United Nations, were simply not up to the task, he believes. The growing disjunction between global security and economic globalization aggravated--and was aggravated by--the distance between the "Core" nations that generally play by and profit from the rules of globalization and the "Gap" nations that do not yet operate by those rules. By Barnett's analysis, 9/11 was a gesture of defiance orchestrated by a well-organized group of extremists who seek to keep the people of the Gap outside the Core--and locked into a totalitarian theocracy fundamentally opposed to the openness that comes with globalization. Those extremists, Barnett adds, rightly associate globalization with American ideals and interests. But--and here Barnett differs decisively with Bacevich--the historical uniqueness of those ideals and interests is that they benefit not just one player but all players in the non-zero-sum game of globalization.
But if Barnett earlier praised Bush's new bold security initiatives (including regime change in Iraq) for redressing a system imbalance, his Esquire article warns that bold military moves will lead to nothing if America does not now induce other Core nations--not just the obvious European ones but also India and China--to participate in new and often ad hoc security arrangements involving extensive and vigilant policing of the troubled Gap areas. In addition to transforming our own military for large peacekeeping operations, America must engage in more imaginative and persuasive diplomacy, using enticements, for example, to bring Iran into the game as a responsible regional player instead of merely threatening it not to build the bomb. "Iran's the key," he writes, urging Bush to think like Nixon on the road to detente with China. "Squeeze it now while it's scared--and while Arafat's still dead. America has played bad cop long enough with Iran. For crying out loud, Iranians are the only people in the Middle East who actually like us!" To lock China into a new security arrangement--and particularly to get it to cooperate in the effort to remove North Korea's Kim Jong Il from power--Barnett urges Bush to drop the U.S. defense guarantee to Taiwan, which will only stop Taipei from making unnecessary symbolic gestures of independence from the mainland.
"I hate all the World War IV stuff," says Barnett. "In the Middle East, the administration successfully started a big bang. Now they are in a state of planning. To lock in their gains, they are going to have to make some compromises. We have to convince the world that our security equals the world's security. We did that during the Cold War. But that's where Bush's people are stumbling now."
How's that war going, then? Maybe, if Barnett is right, the best answer is to rephrase the question: Are we finally learning how to win the peace?
COMMENTARY: Hard not to like this: compared to Podhoretz, Clarke and Bacevich, and described as the nuanced and hopeful one in sharp contrast to this gloomy trio. Plus, the book is plugged, Esquire is plugged, and he correctly notes that I've left the college. Only nit: I didn't say, "Now they are in a state of planning," but "Now they are in a state of adaptive planning." Adaptive planning means you're on the fly and adjusting to altered conditions. Dropping that word (I'm sure it came out garbled on his tape or in his notes because I tend to talk very fast on my cell phone) diminishes my meaning somewhat, but that's a tiny quibble. By and large, Tolson is very impressive and you have to like his horizontal ambition in story-telling. Sadly, this is a very rare trait right now in journalism.
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