Barnettization

Been reading Thomas Barnettthis week. Written two incredibly important books: Pentagon's New Map and Blueprint for Action. The guy has caused a massive intellectual shakeup in the Pentagon. [I've actually taken the hitherto unheard of step of actually requesting I-Naked to interview the man].

Its the best book on politics I've read since Jim Garrison's America as Empire. It just so happens, in my opinion, that those books are the only two international policy 2nd-tier works to come out at least since the War in Iraq. I use 2nd-tier, from Spiral, to avoid the (in my view) unbalanced arguments about "integral". On both sides (see next paragraph).

Now, as all visionaries tend to be, he is giving you the grand strategy, panoramic vision, so the nuts and bolts are de-emphasized, but so be it. He is, as are all visionaries, optimistic. In this day and age, reasoned optimism is very hard to come by. The books almost singlehandedly restored my faith in the power of human reason.

Anyway, back to Barnett. The Pentagon's New Map is a vision for the 21st century, and angry liberals be warned, it actually comes down to America (and others) aggressively promoting markets and security measures (i.e. regime change where necessary) in what he terms the non-integrating gap.

The non-integrating gap consists of parts of the Carribean, Andean South America (I've been to Peru, so I can vouch for this one), Sub-Saharan Africa, Middle East (aka Southwest Asia), Central Asia, and (parts of) Southeast Asia.

The non-integrating gap, as the name suggests, is countries who are not linking up to the global economy. Barnett reviewed all the American military incursions in the post-Cold War world, and found that 95% of them occurred in this non-integrating gap.

The Core (opposite of the Gap) consists of (most of) The Americas, Europe, Australia, Japan, China, India, Israel, with Russia with a foot in both camps, but leaning in his estimation to the Core.

The Core' s mission is to shrink the Gap.

My biggest argument since day one with the entire Bush's administration's policies in Iraq, is that it would destroy the American people's willingness to involve ourselves overseas and that a renewed wave of isolationism would occur. Sadly, this is happening. That is why I have never participated and will never participate in anti-Iraq war demonstrations because I think, as well meaning such individuals are and as I sympathetically disposed to such views for a number of reasons, the criticism has never been based on the world we are living in. It has been based on an unexamined assumption that we should not be involved in the affairs of others. One man's meddling might be another's responsibility.

The Iraq War was a most dismal occassion for me, as I could neither support the naive pro-American position--I mean just at look at the people making the decisions...George Bush, Donald Rumsfield, Paul Wolfowitz, and the VP. I mean enough said. Tommy Franks once referred to Douglas Feith (NeoCon, #3 man at the DOD, 1st administration) as the dumbest f'ing person I've ever met. Tommy Franks--Gen. Tommy Franks, not exactly the Clausewitz of the American Army mind you. Feith believed that Israel was just waiting for us to ask them to invade Iran, and once they did, the students would all rise up to embrace Isreal-US. And you wonder why Colin Powell almost went into apopletic shock around these bozos.

On the other side, to simplify matters, war protesters in the street. Who would I imagine have been in favor of the continued UN-sanctioned embargo of Iraq, which managed to make some money on the slide for UNsy folk, Saddam, the French&Russians, and allowed, by their own count, half a million Iraqi children to die. Wasn't exactly successful that one.

But scratch the surface and things get very interesting.

Derrida wrote that Marx was the future of political thought. That statement, prima facie, seems ridiculous given the fall of communism and the total loss of the socialist vision. Derrida, following his philosophical premises, believes the primary is that of absence. The forgotten, the marginalized--the feminine for example. The underside in facts grounds the "overside"--without women no men. So Marx in facts grounds all capitalistic thinking.

Now, as I written before in this blog, neoconservatism traces its roots to Trotsky. Perpetual socialistic revolution is translated to perpetual democratic revolution.

And Barnett, in that sense, is a Marxist. He is, as he admits, a economic-historical determinist. Hello, who is the father of techno-economic-historical determinism (EHD)? Karl M. of course. Robert Wright, father of the Zero-Sum theory, is himself also a EHD.

So Marx is inherently tied to the future of capitalism and world economy, not by "Marxists" yelling in the streets of Rome and San Francisco simultaneously, but to the very core.

And the EHD argument, based on the evidence of world history, is that you first have to have an authoritarian regime which creates order in society, allowing for the opening of economic markeets, which eventually creates a middle class which will call for the opening up of the political structure. Only a significantly strong middle class, aligned with the rule of law (independent judiciary, no fear of a military junta takeover) is able to responsibly handle democratic procedures in a republican form of government. (Again--the US is not a democracy, and thank God for that--it is a republic with certain democratic features). For the request "color-coding" of that, only an amber wave (blue meme) governmental structure that opens up economically (orange) in the Right-Hand, eventually changing the techno-economic base which will bring a concomitant transformation in the Lower-Left (also to a modern-orange wave of development) that can handle the means of electing rule of law worldcentric governments. Otherwise democracy is opened up too early and the people vote in a dictator. History always shows that if the military-economic-technological development outpaces the political-social development, a military dictatorship is inevitable.

This stuff is amazing. So, with the initial tacit approval of political-social authoritarianism plus economic freedom (China anyone?), the current parties in the US are stymied. You would think the liberals should be the ones against the tyrants, but typically they are only against the US tyrant. So the liberals (consciously or otherwise) condone Saddam Hussein-like figures. The conservatives are now the ones with (formerly) liberal impatience. They balk at this vision of things because it requires long term strategic thinking, playing realpolitick (Barnett mentions that it is time George Bush play Richard Nixon and go to Iran and let them have a nuke--and he says that to the Pentagon!!! Talk about some nuts).

So the liberals are not "liberal" enough in a way, and Bush is actually too liberal, in all the wrong ways--at least the Dems taxed and spent, he just spends.

Barnett's injunction gives him such a widescope that he can clarify so much. Here is a typical move he pulls on the pre-war argument between Donald Rumsfield and Gen. Eric Shinseki, on the number of troops needed in the War.

Rumsfield (in)famously argued for a small fighting force. The lowst estimates were in the range of 50,000!!! Shinseki, being the old military brass, argued for 200,000. The final number ended up right in between, satisfying neither party.

Barnett says that both were right, er half-right. Rumsfield was right that a smaller invasion force could topple Saddam--it happened. What Shinseki was right about was that 200,000+ were required to secure the peace. We didn't have them, the rioting-insurgency, lack of reconstruction, and now we have New Orleans post-Katrina on a scall of 22 million. Won the war, lost the peace.

Barnett argues for a separation between The Network-Centric Military of Rumsfield (mostly Air Force, Special Ops, and Navy) and the Army as winners of the peace...Barnett terms this SysAdmin (Systems Administrators). SysAdmin consists of peacekeeeping forces, reconstruction efforts, linguists, political consultants--the State Dept. with teeth in other words.

The point at which America can re-connect with our allies is precisely this point. We are no good, to put it mildly, at SysAdmin. We are the Leviathan of militaries. There is no need to argue otherwise. Does Norway need to involve itself in War operations? No, but they are sure as hell are involved in everything afterwards.

More importantly will we be wise enough to involve China in the stabilization post-conflict process of say a country in the African Union? Will we have the foresight to have the Chinese train the African Union soldiers to protect their own citizenry? If you think that's a bit out there, check out his argument that the US will not transform the Middle East until we have a mutually-coherent military alliance with the People's Republic. Turns out most of the oil from the Middle East (2/3 of it currently) goes to East Asia. We (currently) get only about 10% of ours from our sanded brethren. That likely to change after it starts to run out in other places and 90% of what is left is over there (so says Matt Damon in Syriana, very good film by the way).

China, as I said before, is the great example of this EHD plus interiority vision. Certain liberal voices will not stomach that because of censorship and violation of human rights (certain conservative, especially Christian voices as well...doesn't get much press but if China freed everything religiously, Christianity, in different forms from Roman Catholic to Protestant Evangelical would quickly ascend to the primary faith of the country. Just like South Korea.). And the conservative foreign policy people are too hyped up about China overtaking us and being our enemy to talk strategic alliance.

So neoconservatism, in other words, was correct in that failed states and kleptocracies (usually made rich by oil) either aid and abet terrorism (Iran) and/or create breeding grounds for internecine/inter-tribal civil strife and transnational terrorism (Egypt, Saudi Arabia). Further correct, to the degree that this occurred, is the EHD-element of neoconservatism, replacing socialist proletriat future for rule of law-democracies a la Francis Fukuyama.

Where neoconservatism went haywire was in uniting with the unilateralist American empire crew--Dick Cheney and Don Rumsfield. Neoconservatism 1.0 (Wolfy, Feith, Bolton, Perle) failed in its mythic belief structure in America empire-mania. And in its total lack of perspective on the degree of difficulty involved in post-war stabilization-reconstruction.

The SysAdmin is the future for those interested in post-liberal, post-conservative political-social work.

I'm going to compose the next post on how this futuring relates in the context of post-metaphysical Christianity. As best as I can that is.