Dateline: Amtrak train from Kingstown RI to New York Penn Station, 18 July
I used to employ this joke at the beginning of my mega-brief. I heard it from Phil Hartman during his last appearance on the Tonight Show with Jay Leno. He claimed to have made it up on the drive to the show, but a lot of people say it’s a much older joke than that. You just never knew with Phil . . ..
When I used the joke in the brief, I would simply throw up the question against a black background and wait and wait . . and wait . . . until the audience got a little uncomfortable. Then I’d click the remote and the screen would fill with a shot of the Earth from space (the one Al Gore liked so much) and as it would appear the sound effect from the old movie promos for Dolby Sound would blare and the punch line would materialize below:
Make me one with everything!
Cheesy I know, but it often got a big laugh. Always bigger on the Left Coast than the East Coast, and a great laugh overseas everywhere save one country—India. Gotta be careful with Buddha jokes there.
The point of the delivery was to tell the audience that I was going to cover an insane amount of ground in the brief: not just the 20th century, the Cold War, and the post-Cold War era, but also 9/11, system perturbations as a new model of crisis, a new ordering principle for DoD, a model for how globalization works, the emerging American way of war (and peace), and a grand strategy for the U.S. in the 21st century (making globalization truly global). All that in 90 minutes!
So it made sense to joke about the brief’s insanely ambitious scope.
But I liked the joke on another level. As I have said earlier, I see my material and vision as fundamentally one of peace and balance and a sense of global justice—albeit one informed with a realist’s perspective of war and the role of security in making all that happen. I purposely seek the middle ground, where both the right and the left either find themselves attracted or find me impossible to dismiss casually.
I think both sides seek that middle ground right now. The right, in many ways, needs something to be “conservative” against, meaning it needs an enemy of sorts, and just bitching about diversity, or multiculturalism seems awfully sad as an ideology (Keep the world safe from gay marriage!).
A good article in the Saturday Times looks at this trend: “Young Right Tries to Define Post-Buckley Future,” by David Kirkpatrick, New York Times, 17 July, p. A1. Many young conservatives are wary of Bush’s attempt to transform the Middle East, and yet polls show that young conservatives trust the government in general far more than their parents did a generation earlier. So they’re often meandering somewhere in between a desire to deal with global terrorism in a strong way while not trying to take too much on in terms of government intervention. One brand of logic, marketed by a group of theological conservatives, is summed up by the word “sustainability,” a phrase familiar to anyone—like myself—who worked in the development community in the 1990s, when it became the rage in foreign aid circles. At its most basic, sustainability is about seeing all the connections and having a healthy, almost conservative respect for balance over “great leaps forward.” But the overlap is even stronger than that, because both theological conservatives and the development community in general have a strong focus on community institutions or the general notion of “capacity building.” What makes the ideological approach both compassionate and conservative is that it focuses on private-sector institutions, like churches, as it believes fundamentally that minimal governmental control is the key to empowering people and their communities to look after themselves as much as possible without creating dependencies on the government, aid organizations, etc.
Internally, the conservative approach yields one type of social programs, but externally, it begins to sound an awful lot like nation-building in search of an operating theory of the world, as in, “Where do we put our nation-building dollars so as to have the biggest positive impact on the world?”
And that’s when you begin to see the tie-ins with my work on security—you begin to become “one with the world” by recognizing the imperative of making globalization truly global. You see the flows and you naturally want balance. You want no one left on the outside, noses pressed to the glass. The Global War on Terror, then, quickly starts looking like a very poor stand-in for a grand strategy, as if simply killing the most violent extremists in the way would make this outcome come about all on its own, when you know instinctively that only killing the bad guys in a GWOT is the individual-level version of the Pentagon’s Cold War tendency to think of and define war solely within the context of war, and not within the context of everything else.
Make me one with everything!
So, when I get lumped in with the neoconservatives, I don’t mind so much so long as the vision isn’t simply ghettoized by that distinction. I want my grand strategy to make sense to the neocons, because if it doesn’t, it won’t go anywhere. But I also want it to make sense to the lefties of the left—the serious anything-but-war crowd who’ve been living too long in the dreamworld that says the right mix of foreign aid and trade will bring development to regions suffering serious deficits of security and freedom.
So when the conservative journals review the book, I’m happy, but I’m even happier when the liberal end of the spectrum finds the essential truth in the material, and doesn’t simply write me off as an apologist for the Bush Administration (as I believe the Post and Times have done in not reviewing the book).
So imagine my delight when I’m turned on by my webmaster to the writings of the ZenPundit, who’s taken more than a passing interest in the book. Now remember, more than once I’ve received reviews or emails from people accusing me less of being a warmonger and more of being a closet Buddhist with a dreamy belief in the end of war as we know it (hell, I basically predict it in the book!).
Who is ZenPundit? Just a guy named Mark with a blog.
But more than that, what he does with PNM is what every writer dreams of: he sees so much more in it than other readers—so much so that he can actually elevate above the material and pull more out of it that even I had previously realized.
But enough preamble, let’s dive in with his first post:
ZENPUNDIT @ http://zenpundit.blogspot.com/2004/07/pentagons-new-map-handy-guide-to-must.html
Tuesday, July 06, 2004
THE PENTAGON'S NEW MAP - A HANDY GUIDE TO THE MUST-READ FOREIGN POLICY BOOK of 2004
Tom Barnett has written an exemplary book that enunciates something you very seldom see in American public debate—a long-term strategic vision for the United States that gets beyond the crisis de jure. Moreover, it's a strikingly positive vision that can politically connect with the American public across party lines—“Shrinking the Gap" is a clarion call that can supported from liberal humanitarian interventionists to neocons to cold-hearted realists. As a paradigm, this is the Convergence of Civilizations, not the Clash.
Moreover, the PNM builds on the historic American commitment since FDR to freeing markets that every administration has supported since WWII. The Pentagon's New Map, as a concept, represents both innovation for the post-9/11 world and reassuring continuity. Ted Rall and Michael Moore are going to hate it. So will Pat Buchanan. Everyone else however will be willing to give Barnett's ideas at least a serious look.
A Quick and Dirty Guide to PNM Terminology:
The Core: The industrialized, connected to the information economy, mostly peaceful, rule of law abiding, liberal democratic world.
The Old Core: The heart of the core, the old G-7/NATO/Japan states led by the United States.
The New Core: Those modernizing states that decided to join the Core in the 1980's and 1990's - these are not always as liberal, democratic and law-abiding as the Old Core but they have more or less irreversibly committed to moving in that direction—China, India, South Korea, Mexico, Brazil and the like.
The Gap: The Third World regions mostly disconnected economically and politically from the Core. Hobbesian in character, ridden by violence, oppression, poverty and anarchy. Ruled by despots—when ruled by anyone—committed to keeping their nations disconnected as a political survival strategy.
Rule Sets: The explicit and implicit rules that provide the framework by which nations interact and function internally. There is a clash of rule sets between the Gap and the Core and within the Core between Europe which mostly cannot and will not intervene in the Gap to enforce rules and the United states which can and sometimes must.
Connectivity: The degree of acceptance of globalization's many effects and the ability of a nation's individuals to access choices for themselves. Most international hotspots are in the most disconnected parts of the Gap.
Global Transaction Strategy: Barnett's equivalent to "Containment"—a national and Core strategy to "Shrink the Gap" by connecting and integrating into the rule sets of the Core.
I am going to discuss some of Dr. Barnett's more specific observations and recommendations—and where I see caveats—in a subsequent post but overall the PNM is a book that will have an intellectual impact that will be both broad and deep.
What I liked about this initial post was that the ZenPundit actually came up with better definitions of the key terminology than I did in the book. Not different ones, just more elegant and direct. As I said to Mark in a post I left on his blog site:
That's one of the best definitions of connectivity I've ever come across. Wish I used it in the book.
I await your detailed analysis. The convergence of civilizations concept I actually covet. I can't imagine why I never came up with that, especially since Sam is an old professor of mine, and probably the first guy who ever seemed to get me at Harvard.
To say the least, I am fascinated by your review so far. What really makes me feel like I've writen a good book is when I come across something like this and realize that readers can make more of the ideas than I did myself in putting them on paper.
Keep up the good work.
Mark the ZenPundit returns the favor in a follow-on comment:
Thank you very much. I found your book to be extremely stimulating intellectually and I've recommended it to a lot of my friends and colleagues—in fact the delay in my further review is partly due to loaning out my copy of PNM to a friend. You also solved a problem for me regarding the charges of "Empire" against US policy—I knew that was incorrect but I couldn't articulate it very well in the simple way critics like Chalmers Johnson or Paul Schroeder make the accusation. You did & my hat is off to you.
Feel free to use the "Convergence " metaphor. I think cultures quite naturally tend to bleed over into one another memetically with until you get to the mutually incompatible core values—Huntington is looking at that aspect while you are looking at the merging element (Is the glass half-empty or half full?). Islam, which has "bloody borders" has a very limited set of principles but they are unfortunately currently non-negotiable in a way concepts like "democracy" are not.
In a later email exchange, Mark joked about how odd it must be for me to get a positive response from such a lefty Buddhist!
But it isn’t really. As one previous review pointed out, my effort to seek the balance of everything is very Buddhist (or, as I would point out, very Christ-like in his more Buddha-like moments). That’s how so many critical reviewers can laud me for my naïve desire to save the world while simultaneously condemning me as a war-monger and dangerous idealist. I don’t just want war, man, I want it all!
But to want it all is to see it all, which gets me to ZenPundit’s second post on the book:
ZenPundit
Saturday, July 17, 2004
THINKING ABOUT THE PENTAGON’S NEW MAP—CONNECTIVITY AND THE FOUR FLOWS OF GLOBALIZATION
Tom Barnett’s book , The Pentagon’s New Map: War and Peace in the Twenty-First Century is hip deep in concepts which makes it both an intriguing read and a difficult review. But since this is a blog I’m free to tackle the book in parts and today I’d like to look at Barnett’s key concepts of Connectivity and his four flows of globalization that "connect" societies and nation-states into an interdependent whole. If you have a copy of PNM handy I strongly recommend you take a look at Chapter 4 "The Core and the Gap.” It’s the one where Dr. Barnett lays out the war on terror in "the context of everything else"—which is the essence of strategic thinking.
Context is important because it’s what usually gets dropped in these types of discussions because most government experts and academics are by definition niche specialists. They resist moving their arguments and ideas into the realm of everything else because it messes up their crisp clean models with real-world complications in fields where they do not feel nearly so expert. This is a major reason why American national security, foreign policy and even military planning seldom rises above the level of tactical thinking…that is when we are not stuck in crisis management, ad hoc, muddle through mode. American strategic thinkers have been so few—Brooks Adams, Alfred T. Mahan, Woodrow Wilson, Walter Lippmann, George Kennan, Paul Nitze, Herman Kahn, Richard Nixon—that a book like PNM, like Kennan’s " X" article, fills a crucial intellectual gap at the policy planning level of our government.
Dr. Barnett advocates a Global Transaction Strategy to "shrink the Gap" and promote Connectivity to integrate disconnected states into the Core, advancing the process of globalization—and in so doing extending the benefits provided by the "Rule Sets" associated with liberal democratic capitalism and the rule of law, broadly defined. Barnett further refines the enormous historical phenomenon of globalization to "four flows" between the Core and the Gap (p. 192).
PNM MODEL OF GLOBALIZATION
"…four essential elements, or flows, that I believe define its basic functioning from the perspective of international stability. These four flows are (1) the movement of people from the Gap to the Core; (2) the movement of energy from the Gap to the New Core; (3) the movement of money from the Old Core to the New Core; (4) the exporting of security that only America can provide to the Gap."
In other words, Barnett is defining globalization as a dynamic exchange relationship involving migration, resources, money and power.
He further elaborates on his model with "the Ten Commandments of Globalization" (p.199-204):
1. Look for resources, and ye shall find
2. No stability, no markets
3. No growth, no stability
4. No resources, no growth
5. No infrastructure, no resources
6. No money, no infrastructure
7. No rules, no money
8. No security, no rules
9. No Leviathan, no security
10. No will, no Leviathan
"Leviathan" is the enforcer of rule sets, in all practical purposes the United States acting alone, with an ad hoc coalition or through international organizations where we have a preponderant influence.
Dr. Barnett concludes his chapter with a superbly insightful (i.e., I agree with him here 100 %) explanation that conceptually ties together rogue state dictators and non-state actor terrorists into the Gordian Knot of menace that they truly are in reality (p. 205):
" A bin Laden engineers a 9/11 with the expressed goal of forcing the Core to clamp down on it’s borders, seek its energy elsewhere, take it’s investments elsewhere and ‘ bring the boys back home". He wants all of that connectivity gone, because its absence will afford him the chance for power over those left disconnected."
… an explanation that applies equally well to Kim Jong-Il as to the erstwhile master of al Qaida. I'm just wondering why the hell the Bush administration hasn't grabbed this one since they've been struggling to convince their critics (who are invested at treating rogue states, terrorism and WMD as disparate unrelated problems in order to do little about any of them) that the dots that they know in fact to be connected, connect in a comprehensible way.
MY COMMENTS:
My first reaction to the section on the PNM Model of Globalization was that, while Barnett has described the major categorical relationships of globalization, the idea could still face some further refinement in terms of defining globalization (and what connectivity really is) as an action. What exactly is it?
Jude Wanniski once made the brilliant observation in his book, The Way The World Works, that there is and always has been only one market in existence—the global market. Wanniski’s statement implied, correctly in my view, that the term "Globalization" is really describing something other than a new connecting of markets and cultures because they have always been connected to some degree however small. Even North Korea, in its self-imposed lunatic isolation, was never an autarky. The DPRK always had foreign goods, people and ideas—starting with Communism itself—flowing across its borders—the difference was in terms of degree.
Tariffs, immigration quotas, censorship, banking regulations, propaganda, environmental rules, cultural preferences or aversions, borders, police, armies, bureaucratic paperwork and all the other man-made obstacles to Tom Barnett’s "four flows" do not stop the transactions and interactions—they slow them down and limit them to an artificially narrow, politically chosen, rate.
I would therefore define globalization as "the general acceleration of the rate and widening of the parameters of exchange." When we discuss globalization’s effects we are looking at the results of a recent global increase in the speed and the range of human interactions compared to the past, thanks to trade liberalization, the internet, the fall of Communism and the other systemic changes of the last twenty years.
"Connectivity" might be a good way to express the degree to which a nation has maximized their possible rate and range of exchange—the UK is more "connected" than Russia, which in turn is more "connected” than Kazakhstan. If I was more able at quantitative analysis I could probably bat out a reasonably valid, rough and ready 100 point scale to measure a nation’s connectivity in terms of "the four flows" (Unfortunately "…this is a job for…Brad DeLong !" or at least somebody with a Ph.D in Econ). It could be plotted out on a bell curve and at a certain tipping point a nation could be considered "disconnected," which is where you would expect to find many states of the Gap. I would also include the movement of ideas as a "fifth flow" of globalization, particularly scientific ideas but Dr. Barnett was looking at globalization the prism of strategic American and Core interests—hence the movement of people, energy, money and security.
Next post I want to examine the PNM strategy as it relates to China’s connectivity as part of "The New Core". Four years ago, on the H-Diplo listserv, in a post called "The Coming of the Global Hypereconomy," I posited some observations regarding the potentially centrifugal effects of an uneven spread of connectivity with high rates of speed in a nation of the size of China. I'm not certain if I would be as pessimistic today but the post does retain a great deal of congruence.
All I can say is, this guy’s analysis really makes me overtly jealous! Like I was taking a nap or something when I wrote the book!
Again, ZenPundit extends the material, which is enormously exciting to any writer, but especially so to me, given my ambitions. To replace containment as a grand strategy, I needed to enunciate something so all-encompassing and yet fundamentally direct to people’s understanding of how the world works in this age that it could be both readily understood by layman while retaining its coherence under the sort of microscopic analytical deconstruction of the sort that ZenPundit offers. In short, it needs to be both very robust and very flexible, which is hard, because robustness in theory is usually bought at the price of rigidity (great theory, until the crucial flaw is discovered and then it all comes tumbling down). That is why I purposely chose the language of information technology, proving yet again that PNM really began as a serious theorizing effort when I got involved with the Y2K debate (see, Star Trek didn’t teach me everything!).
Other than his fundamental sloppiness with certain aspects of punctuation, I really don’t have any critical comments to offer here on ZenPundit’s exploration of the book. It is quite thrilling to watch someone locate so much “room” inside your thinking, especially when he arrives from the left versus the usual right. Simply put, Mark made my entire weekend during a period in my life when tension is rising.
Which gets me to the reason for this trip: going to NYC to get the visas for myself and Vonne for our upcoming trip to China (so you can imagine how interested I am in ZenPundit’s next post!). The whole adoption process is really just as tense and draining as a pregnancy. I don’t offer that from a women’s perspective, because I don’t have any, but from the prospective of the dad who has lived through both methods now—biological and adoption.
I know, I know, I have a long way to go on this one still—literally. But I have to say, the process provides “both pain and delight” (another ST reference) in measures approaches even the difficult biological pregnancy (as our third one was).
So dad is off to NYC to go through the expedited, same-day visa service at the Chinese Consulate on 12th Street in Manhattan. Meanwhile, back at the ranch, Mom sweats out the final notice from our agency about our actual travel dates (so many summer camps to cancel, so little time).
Here’s the weekend catch:
Iraq: the real transformation begins
“Reporting And Surviving, Iraq’s Dangers: Only when Iraq calms down will it become clear how well its most critical moments were covered,” by Ian Fisher, New York Times, 18 July, p. WK1.
“Two Bombings Aimed at the New Government Kill at Least 6 Iraqis,” by Ian Fisher, NYT, 18 July, p. A10.
“U.S. Diplomat Starts New Job By Deferring to the Iraqis,” by Somini Sengupta, NYT, 18 July, p. A10.
“In Slow Steps, Iraqis Take Their Places in the Ranks of Security Forces,” by Somini Sengupta, NYT, 18 July, p. A11.
“An Elite Squad of Iraqi Soldiers Tests Its Newfound Autonomy,” by Ian Fisher, NYT, 18 July, p. A11.
“In Iraq War, Death Also Comes To Soldiers in Autumn of Life,” by Edward Wyatt, NYT, 18 July, p. A1.
How about a Department for the Gap?
“Never Again, No Longer? Post-9/11, humanitarian intervention has gone out of fashion, and the people of Darfur are paying the price,” by James Traub, New York Times Magazine, 18 July, p. 17.
“Despite Appeals, Chaos Still Stalks the Sudanese,” by Marc Lacey, NYT, 18 July, p. A1.
“9/11 Report Is Said to Urge New Post For Intelligence: C.I.A. and Other Agencies Likely to Fight Idea of Cabinet Job,” by Philip Shenon, NYT, 17 July, p. A1.
The great race between India and China
“A Young American Outsources Himself to India,” by Amy Waldman, NYT, 17 July, p. A4.
“How a Technology Gap Helped China Win Jobs: Beijing moves quickly to overcome India’s advantages in software development,” by William J. Holstein, NYT, 18 July, p. BU9.
“In Fire, Striving India Town Finds Dangers on Path to Modernization,” by David Rohde, NYT, 18 July, p. A1.
“Editor’s Death Raises Questions About Change in Russia,” by C. J. Chiver, Erin E. Arvedlund and Sophia Kishkovsky, NYT, 18 July, p. A3.
Nicholas Kristof at his best
“Jesus and Jihad: Massacres of non-Christians draw a crowd,” by Nicholas D. Kristof, NYT, 17 July, p. A25.