Thomas P.M. Barnett :: Weblog

ARTICLE: "In Indonesia, War on Terror Shows Both Gains and Worrisome Trends: Since 9/11, Big Islamic Nation Has Caught Bomb Suspects But Seen Militancy Grow; Anger Over American Politics," by Jay Solomon and James Hookway, Wall Street Journal, 8 September 2006, p. A1.

Indonesia's working harder to deal with violent extremists.

By tackling that subject, the militancy on the opposite side naturally grows (I give you a poke and guess what? You get pissed.)

Meanwhile, there's anger above and below with American policies. We lecture too often and help out when we see fit. We want progress but get nervous whenever rough tactics are used.

I wrote basically the same bit about such Seam States on the "front lines" in BFA:

If the Core is going to be successful in shrinking the Gap over time, we can’t settle into permanent “frontier outpost” mentalities with Seam States such as these, or others like Egypt and Thailand. If a country is important enough for the United States to lavish on it a certain amount of military cooperation or even substantial amounts of aid, like Egypt, then we need to go out of our way to reward such countries with far greater amounts of economic connectivity over time, in effect signaling not just the utility of such cooperation but the progressive advance of globalization itself. The European Union seems to be able to make this sort of dual-package approach work with the former socialist states of Eastern Europe, but anywhere we’re talking about essentially non-European cultures, the Old Core doesn’t seem to be following up whatsoever in matching economic connectivity with military connectivity, except for the U.S. decision to bring drug-war ally Mexico into the North American Free Trade Area (NAFTA) in the 1990s.

In effect we need to put our money where our mouths are in this global war on terrorism as we did during the Cold War, where we not only defended Japan, South Korea, and Western Europe but also went out of our way to establish broadband economic connectivity between these states and ourselves. In the current situation, we need to do more than just hold the line; we need to keep growing globalization by extending the military-market nexus through Seam States and into the Gap.

Otherwise, what are we really selling to Seam States in this global war on terrorism? “You keep holding the line militarily so we here in the Core can keep on integrating our markets and living the good life?”

Of course, when Seam States, who seem permanently trapped in this unenviable situation, go overboard now and then in their military prosecution of whatever war we ask them to wage (e.g., drugs, rebels, terrorists), the United States tends to point fingers rather quickly, even when it can seem awfully hypocritical for us to do so. So as far as we’re concerned, Mexico never seems to do enough in the drug war, and Pakistan should be able to root out the terrorists in its northwest territories after years of supporting such activities against the Soviets in Afghanistan at our request, and Thailand should be careful not to crack down too indiscriminately on Islamic terrorists within its borders even as we wage fierce battles on a city-by-city basis in Iraq or suffer the embarrassment of the Abu Ghraib or Guantánamo prisoner-abuse scandals. But where is the much-improved economic connectivity that should accompany these great security efforts, and if they’re not coming fast enough—or deep enough, as in the case of Mexico—then should the United States be surprised that our security aid to and cooperation with these regimes often lead to unsatisfactory outcomes? If you’re Turkey and you’re still looking in at the EU after all these years of asking, why should you feel a special obligation to help the United States transform the Middle East?

The reward for serving on the front line of the global economy’s advance into the Gap has to be getting off that front line over time, otherwise what’s the point? For example, Mexico joined NAFTA over a decade ago and the war on drugs is still being fought primarily at the U.S.-Mexican border, not farther south. We need to be generating the reverse of the domino effect we once feared in Southeast Asia with the Communists: to make the effort to shrink the Gap at America’s side means you’re not only invited into the Core, but the Core makes a special effort to trigger similar integration for the countries around you.

It sure hasn't come in the Doha round yet, and I don't see the U.S. leading any beneficial economic integration of Asia. Instead, we work to "contain" China too much.

When your own military gives you that 20% kinetic/80% non-kinetic argument on any successful COIN strategy, that's a big hint at not just the logical solution set for any one country, but for the Gap as a whole.

We simply are not providing the upside in this Long War. We're asking for sacrifice without delivering the gain. We're pursuing a one-fifth strategy and ignoring the other four-fifths of responsibility--not to mention the potential profit of markets made instead of delayed.

We have run the limits of this administration's strategic imagination. I wanted Kerry in '04 because anybody could have done better than this. We stuck with this team one term too long, and many will pay the price.