ANGELL'S IN AMERICA:

A future worth creating: An interview with Dr. Thomas P.M. Barnett (Steven Martinovich, May 3, 2004, Enter Stage Right)

I know it's difficult but in a nutshell tell us what you're arguing in The Pentagon's New Map?

This book does nothing less than try to enunciate a successor to the Cold War strategy of containment -- in effect to diagnose the true source of mass violence and terrorism within the global community so as to facilitate their containment by military and diplomatic means, and ultimately their eradication by economic and social integration. Winning this global war on terrorism entails making globalization truly global and -- by doing so -- eliminating the disconnectedness that defines danger in this age. By locating the GWOT within the larger historical process of globalization and linking it explicitly to its continued expansion, I seek to move America out of the habit of waging war solely within the context of war and into the habit of thinking about, preparing for, and waging war within the context of everything else.

In hindsight your dividing of the world into basically two camps, the Functioning Core of nations that are economically developed, politically stable and integrated into the global economy, and the Gap, those disconnected from the Core, should be self-evident to most people. Why do you think that most of us are still stuck in Cold War era thinking of clash of cultures or ideologies that lead to wars you refer to as The Big One?

The Defense Department was created back in 1947 around the singular ordering principle of great power war because that's what we knew and that's what we foresaw in the years ahead. In reality, nuclear weapons killed great power war, as no two great powers have ever gone to war with one another since we've invented nukes. But until the Soviet bloc fell away, we had to honor that ordering principle because the war we deterred was the Big One for all the marbles. Since the Pentagon spent so many years in that mind-set, they naturally looked around for someone to replace the Sovs in the post-Cold War era, settling on the Chinese with the Taiwan Straits Crisis of 1996. So we continued to buy one military (high-tech for great power war) even as we spent the 1990s doing mostly low-tech Military Operations Other Than War. That yields the military we have now: able to do 2-3 Saddam-style takedowns a year but undermanned, under-equipped, and under-imagined in terms of the challenges we now face in trying to rehab Iraq. That's why the Pentagon's mindset matters: it generates the force over time that we end up using, whether it's particularly suited for the job or not. And when it's not, like in Iraq since the end of the war, it's reasonable to argue that the lives of our personnel are put unnecessarily at risk. So this vision stuff really matters in the end.

As for the breakdown of the world in the book being self-evident, I agree. Too many people with a couple of Poli Sci courses under their belt will criticize the book as simply replicating the old Have-Have Not breakdown, or -- worse -- Immanuel Wallerstein's Core-Periphery breakdown. But while similarities exist, neither is logically considered a precursor concept. I'm not talking who's simply rich or poor, but who's connecting up to the global economy or not, so it's a matter of direction, not degree. As for Wallerstein's brand of watered-down Marxism, let's remember that he posited that the Core needed to keep the Periphery down in order to stay rich. I'm making exactly the opposite argument. If anyone wants to link me to Wallerstein, they better note I turn that now outdated (it worked for a while in the 1970s) argument on its head. So it's time to move on in international relations theory as well as Pentagon's planning.

Why is globalization so necessary to the cause of peace?

Simply put, globalization spreads connectivity. Connectivity increases options and opportunities for economic transactions on all levels, but especially for individuals. Those rising transaction rates and growing levels of connectivity generate freedom of choice, information, etc. Over time, connectivity requires code, as my software friends like to say, and more rules mean less conflict and more peace. Globalization certainly shakes things up as it moves into traditional societies, and that process will generate social anguish, political changes of the strongest sort, and hostile reactions in certain societies. So there's the rub, as globalization advances, expect more conflict associated with that advance, because it tends to challenge traditional societies toward great change. But over time the lasting effect of that connectivity is peace. Does the new trump the old in the process? Yes. Does the individual trump the collective? Yes. Is this bad? Only if you think progress is (or conversely, that life was better in the old days). But in my mind, most of the resistance to globalization is not about direction, but speed of advance. The real battle cry of anti-globalization forces should be "slow down!" Not "go away!" Of course, a bin Laden and an al Qaeda are going to fight globalization's advance into the Islamic world tooth and nail, because they see their chances to hijack societies there back to their 7th century definition of paradise slipping away with each year that globalization encroaches a bit more into the region. So expect their struggle to get more desperate with time.

One criticism of The Pentagon's New Map is that you see the world in an entirely rational manner. Some cultures and even entire nations, including some in the Middle East, seem to be completely uninterested in joining this new global order despite its perceived benefits. How would you react to that criticism?

This criticism baffles me, since I define this huge resistance to globalization throughout the book, citing that resistance's willingness to engage in catastrophic acts of terrorism as the main danger to globalization's advance. All of that violent resistance is logically defined as non-rational (meaning more driven by emotion than logic), so where exactly do I fail in this model to account for it, since I make it the centerpiece of my view of global struggle? Perhaps I should have employed more obscure poli sci jargon throughout the text, but frankly, I consider this criticism to be a non-issue. I say it quite clearly in the book: everyone welcomes connectivity but not every society can handle the content flows that come with that connectivity because it challenges traditional definitions of a life well led. So will we see resistance to globalization? Definitely. Does my model seem more robust if I label such resistance "non-rational"? Maybe to egghead academics, but I didn't write this book for them.

Related to this somewhat obtuse criticism is the charge that I'm the second coming of Norman Angell, because I argue that connectivity necessary breeds the logic of cooperation among great powers. The history on this one is just stunningly bad. I'm Norman Angell with nukes, if you must know. Again, great power war died with the invention of nuclear weapons. We invent them in 1945 and no two great powers have ever gone to war with one another since. It's not woolly-headed to see this era's globalization as ultimately a source of global peace among great powers, it's simply realizing that this historical version of globalization has proceeded in the aftermath of the development of a stable nuclear deterrence among great powers. As for non-rational actors who get their hands on WMD, as I say in the book, you preempt them with all deliberate speed. So again, how I'm ignoring non-rational actors in this book is simply beyond me. [...]

The Pentagon's New Map is ultimately an optimistic manifesto since you clearly believe that not only is permanent peace possible but doable. How optimistic are you that we can actually shrink the Gap and bring the remaining 1/3 of the world's population into the Core?

Globalization will continue to advance so long as we don't screw it up. By advancing, globalization will generate a lot of tumult in traditional societies, in turn generating a lot of irrational violence that will have to be suppressed (see, I'm learning to address my critics better!). So the future I describe is rather inevitable so long as we don't lose our cool or our resolve in dealing with the tough-but-clearly-boundable security issues ahead. Just 15 years ago we still spent our days in this business worrying about global nuclear Armageddon, and now we're all about hunting down and disabling bad guys who either seek to engage in terrorism or who keep this societies cruelly isolated from the outside world (and yes, I am thinking about that mass-murdering Kim Jong Il next). It may seem like the road ahead is harder, but it isn't. All the big problems, like war among great powers, have been solved. Now we move onto the tougher nuts to crack, meaning sub-national violence and transnational terrorism, but these issues are nowhere near the problem sets we faced previously. We are on the verge of ending war as we have known it for centuries. Interstate war is going the war of the dinosaur, and globalization continues to spread around the world, lifting hundreds of millions out of poverty in the last two decades alone. All I am talking about in this book is how to invite the remaining one-third of humanity into the good life most of us already enjoy -- a life without mass violence and a life with growing economic connectivity and individual freedom. It's a future worth creating, as I say, and it is completely within our grasp.

Here's an example from today's news about how we can hasten such integration, Myanmar sanctions hurt more than help (PHILIP J. CUNNINGHAM, May 3, 2004, The Japan Times)

With the imminent release of prodemocracy leader Aung San Su Kyi from house arrest, it is not too soon to reconsider the usefulness of U.S. sanctions against Myanmar.

The traditional argument -- that economic sanctions are necessary to punish the government and force the issue of democratic change -- makes less and less sense as Myanmar is changing quite rapidly. It is experimenting with political and economic reform, benefiting from the knowhow of tens of thousands of returned overseas workers and, perhaps most important in strategic terms, is rapidly becoming an economic colony of China, its giant neighbor to the north. [...]

"The Chinese are taking over," was one pointed complaint. "We need a counterbalance to China," was another. Factories that stopped producing brand-name Western goods because of sanctions now produced knockoffs of the same for the China market.

When Su Kyi declared her support of sanctions years ago, her moral integrity made it hard to argue. But "The Lady" is not infallible, and through no fault of her own, her lengthy house arrest has prevented her from visiting her people and from keeping up to date. In the word of a supporter who secretly met her not too long ago, "she is extremely popular, she is the best hope for this country and she's wrong about sanctions."

Lifting sanctions does not exonerate well-documented human-rights abuses; nor does it guarantee the U.S. will outdo China in winning the hearts and minds of the Myanmar people. But investment and imports will give some breathing room to peasants, fishermen, petty traders and menial workers who need an economy that works to sustain life.

Myanmar's appalling public-health system, ranked among the worst in the world, badly needs investment. And the Khin Nyunt administration itself has shown a willingness to get Myanmar back on the map and back in the game, engaged and willing to open its doors to American investment at a time when a record number of countries are saying "Yankee go home."

Though reform is its own reward we'd be wise to incentivize it as well.

MORE:
-GAPOLOGY (Brothers Judd, 4/28/04)
-REVIEW: of The Pentagon's New Map: War and Peace in the Twenty-First Century (Steve Martinovich, Enter Stage Right)

Posted by Orrin Judd at May 3, 2004 9:05 AM