THE PENTAGON'S NEW MAP
Imperial strategist reveals all: deglobalisers are the big threat
(from March 2003 Esquire)
THE PENTAGON'S NEW MAP
IT EXPLAINS WHY WE'RE GOING TO WAR,
AND WHY WE'LL KEEP GOING TO WAR.
BY
THOMAS P.M. BARNETT, U.S. NAVAL WAR COLLEGE
[MAPS BY WILLIAM MCNULTY]
Esquire, March 2003 issue
Since the end of the cold war, the United States has been trying to come up
with an operating theory of the world-and a military strategy to accompany
it. Now there's a leading contender. It involves identifying the problem
parts of the world and aggressively shrinking them. Since September 11,
2001, the author, a professor of warfare analysis, has been advising the
Office of the Secretary of Defense and giving this briefing continually at
the Pentagon and in the intelligence community. Now he gives it to you.
LET ME TELL YOU why military engagement with Saddam Hussein's regime in
Baghdad is not only necessary and inevitable, but good.
When the United States finally goes to war again in the Persian Gulf, it
will not constitute a settling of old scores, or just an enforced
disarmament of illegal weapons, or a distraction in the war on terror. Our
next war in the Gulf will mark a historical tipping point-the moment when
Washington takes real ownership of strategic security in the age of
globalization.
That is why the public debate about this war has been so important: It
forces Americans to come to terms with I believe is the new security
paradigm that shapes this age, namely, Disconnectedness defines danger.
Saddam Hussein's outlaw regime is dangerously disconnected from the
globalizing world, from its rule sets, its norms, and all the ties that bind
countries together in mutually assured dependence.
The problem with most discussion of globalization is that too many experts
treat it as a binary outcome: Either it is great and sweeping the planet,
or it is horrid and failing humanity everywhere. Neither view really works,
because globalization as a historical process is simply too big and too
complex for such summary judgments. Instead, this new world must be defined
by where globalization has truly taken root and where it has not.
Show me where globalization is thick with network connectivity, financial
transactions, liberal media flows, and collective security, and I will show
you regions featuring stable governments, rising standards of living, and
more deaths by suicide than murder. These parts of the world I call the
Functioning Core, or Core. But show me where globalization is thinning or
just plain absent, and I will show you regions plagued by politically
repressive regimes, widespread poverty and disease, routine mass murder,
and-most important-the chronic conflicts that incubate the next generation
of global terrorists. These parts of the world I call the Non-Integrating
Gap, or Gap.
Globalization's "ozone hole" may have been out of sight and out of mind
prior to September 11, 2001, but it has been hard to miss ever since. And
measuring the reach of globalization is not an academic exercise to an
eighteen-year-old marine sinking tent poles on its far side. So where do we
schedule the U.S. military's next round of away games? The pattern that has
emerged since the end of the cold war suggests a simple answer: in the Gap.
The reason I support going to war in Iraq is not simply that Saddam is a
cutthroat Stalinist willing to kill anyone to stay in power, nor because
that regime has clearly supported terrorist networks over the years. The
real reason I support a war like this is that the resulting long-term
military commitment will finally force America to deal with the entire Gap
as a strategic threat environment.
FOR MOST COUNTRIES, accommodating the emerging global rule set of democracy,
transparency, and free trade is no mean feat, which is something most
Americans find hard to understand. We tend to forget just how hard it has
been to keep the United States together all these years, harmonizing our
own, competing internal rule sets along the way-through a Civil War, a Great
Depression, and the long struggles for racial and sexual equality that
continue to this day. As far as most states are concerned, we are quite
unrealistic in our expectation that they should adapt themselves quickly to
globalization's very American-looking rule set.
But you have to be careful with that Darwinian pessimism, because it is a
short jump from apologizing for globalization-as-forced-Americanization to
insinuating-along racial or civilization lines-that "those people will
simply never be like us." Just ten years ago, most experts were willing to
write off poor Russia, declaring Slavs, in effect, genetically unfit for
democracy and capitalism. Similar arguments resonated in most China-bashing
during the 1990's, and you hear them today in the debates about the
feasibility of imposing democracy on a post-Saddam Iraq-a sort of
Muslims-are-from-Mars argument.
So how do we distinguish between who is really making it in globalization's
Core and who remains trapped in the Gap? And how permanent is this dividing
line?
Understanding that the line between the Core and Gap is constantly shifting,
let me suggest that the direction of change is more critical than the
degree. So, yes, Beijing is still ruled by a "Communist party" whose
ideological formula is 30 percent Marxist-Leninist and 70 percent Sopranos,
but China just signed on to the World Trade Organization, and over the long
run, that is far more important in securing the country's permanent Core
status. Why? Because it forces China to harmonize its internal rule set
with that of globalization-banking, tariffs, copyright protection,
environmental standards. Of course, working to adjust your internal rule
sets to globalization's evolving rule set offers no guarantee of success.
As Argentina and Brazil have recently found out, following the rules (in
Argentina's case, sort of following) does not mean you are panicproof, or
bubbleproof, or even recessionproof. Trying to adapt to globalization does
not mean bad things will never happen to you. Nor does it mean all your
poor will immediately morph into stable middle class. It just means your
standard of living gets better over time.
In sum, it is always possible to fall off this bandwagon called
globalization. And when you do, bloodshed will follow. If you are lucky,
so will American troops.
DISCONNECTEDNESS DEFINES DANGER Problem areas requiring American
attention (outlined) are, in the author's analysis, called the Gap.
Shrinking the Gap is possible only by stopping the ability of terrorist
networks to access the Core via the "seam states" that lie along the Gap's
bloody boundaries. In this war on terrorism, the U.S. will place a special
emphasis on cooperation with these states. What are the classic seam states?
Mexico, Brazil, South Africa, Morocco, Algeria, Greece, Turkey, Pakistan,
Thailand, Malaysia, the Phillipines, Indonesia.
SO WHAT PARTS OF THE WORLD can be considered functioning right now? North
America, much of South America, the European Union, Putin's Russia, Japan
and Asia's emerging economies (most notably China and India), Australia and
New Zealand, and South Africa, which accounts for roughly four billion out
of a global population of six billion.
Whom does that leave in the Gap? It would be easy to say "everyone else,"
but I want to offer you more proof than that and, by doing so, argue why I
think the Gap is a long-term threat to more than just your pocketbook or
conscience.
If we map out U.S. military responses since the end of the cold war, (see
below), we find an overwhelming concentration of activity in the regions of
the world that are excluded from globalization's growing Core-namely the
Caribbean Rim, virtually all of Africa, the Balkans, the Caucasus, Central
Asia, the Middle East and Southwest Asia, and much of Southeast Asia. That
is roughly the remaining two billion of the world's population. Most have
demographics skewed very young, and most are labeled, "low income" or "low
middle income" by the World Bank (i.e., less than $3,000 annual per capita).
If we draw a line around the majority of those military interventions, we
have basically mapped the Non-Integrating Gap. Obviously, there are
outliers excluded geographically by this simple approach, such as an Israel
isolated in the Gap, a North Korea adrift within the Core, or a Philippines
straddling the line. But looking at the data, it is hard to deny the
essential logic of the picture: If a country is either losing out to
globalization or rejecting much of the content flows associated with its
advance, there is a far greater chance that the U.S. will end up sending
forces at some point. Conversely, if a country is largely functioning
within globalization, we tend not to have to send our forces there to
restore order to eradicate threats.
Now, that may seem like a tautology-in effect defining any place that has
not attracted U.S. military intervention in the last decade or so as
"functioning within globalization" (and vice versa). But think about this
larger point: Ever since the end of World War II, this country has assumed
that the real threats to its security resided in countries of roughly
similar size, development, and wealth-in other words, other great powers
like ourselves. During the cold war, that other great power was the Soviet
Union. When the big Red machine evaporated in the early 1990's, we flirted
with concerns about a united Europe, a powerhouse Japan, and-most recently-a
rising China.
What was interesting about all those scenarios is the assumption that only
an advanced state can truly threaten us. The rest of the world? Those
less-developed parts of the world have long been referred to in military
plans as the "Lesser Includeds," meaning that if we built a military capable
of handling a great power's military threat, it would always be sufficient
for any minor scenarios we might have to engage in the less advanced world.
That assumption was shattered by September 11. After all, we were not
attacked by a nation or even an army but by a group of-in Thomas Friedman's
vernacular-Super Empowered Individuals willing to die for their cause.
September 11 triggered a system perturbation that continues to reshape our
government (the new Department of Homeland Security), our economy (the de
facto security tax we all pay), and even our society (Wave to the camera!).
Moreover, it launched the global war on terrorism, the prism through which
our government now views every bilateral security relationship we have
across the world.
In many ways, the September 11 attacks did the U.S. national-security
establishment a huge favor by pulling us back from the abstract planning of
future high-tech wars against "near peers" into the here-and-now threats to
global order. By doing so, the dividing lines between Core and Gap were
highlighted, and more important, the nature of the threat environment was
thrown into stark relief.
Think about it: Bin Laden and Al Qaeda are pure products of the Gap-in
effect, its most violent feedback to the Core. They tell us how we are
doing in exporting security to these lawless areas (not very well) and which
states they would like to take "off line" from globalization and return to
some seventh-century definition of the good life (any Gap state with a
sizable Muslim population, especially Saudi Arabia).
If you take this message from Osama and combine it with our
military-intervention record of the last decade, a simple security rule set
emerges: A country's potential to warrant a U.S. military response is
inversely related to its globalization connectivity. There is a good reason
why Al Qaeda was based first in Sudan and then later in Afghanistan: These
are two of the most disconnected countries in the world. Look at the other
places U.S. Special Operations Forces have recently zeroed in on:
northwestern Pakistan, Somalia, Yemen. We are talking about the ends of the
earth as far as globalization is concerned.
But just as important as "getting them where they live" is stopping the
ability of these terrorist networks to access the Core via the "seam states"
that lie along the Gap's bloody boundaries. It is along this seam that the
Core will seek to suppress bad things coming out of the Gap. Which are some
of these classic seam states? Mexico, Brazil, South Africa, Morocco,
Algeria, Greece, Turkey, Pakistan, Thailand, Malaysia, the Philippines, and
Indonesia come readily to mind. But the U.S. will not be the only Core
state working this issue. For example, Russia has its own war on terrorism
in the Caucasus, China is working its western border with more vigor, and
Australia was recently energized (or was it cowed?) by the Bali bombing.
IF WE STEP BACK for a minute and consider the broader implications of this
new global map, then U.S. national-security strategy would seem to be: 1)
Increase the Core's immune system capabilities for responding to September
11-like system perturbations; 2) Work the seam states to firewall the Core
from the Gap's worst exports, such as terror, drugs, and pandemics; and,
most important, 3) Shrink the Gap. Notice I did not just say Mind the Gap.
The knee-jerk reaction of many Americans to September 11 is to say, "Let's
get off our dependency on foreign oil, and then we won't have to deal with
those people." The most naïve assumption underlying that dream is that
reducing what little connectivity the Gap has with the Core will render it
less dangerous to us over the long haul. Turning the Middle East into
Central Africa will not build a better world for my kids. We cannot simply
will those people away.
The Middle East is the perfect place to start. Diplomacy cannot work in a
region where the biggest sources of insecurity lie not between states but
within them. What is most wrong about the Middle East is the lack of
personal freedom and how that translates into dead-end lives for most of the
population-especially for the young. Some states like Qatar and Jordan are
ripe for perestroika-like leaps into better political futures, thanks to
younger leaders who see the inevitability of such change. Iran is likewise
waiting for the right Gorbachev to come along-if he has not already.
What stands in the path of this change? Fear. Fear of tradition
unraveling. Fear of the mullah's disapproval. Fear of being labeled a
"bad" or "traitorous" Muslim state. Fear of becoming a target of radical
groups and terrorist networks. But most of all, fear of being attacked from
all sides for being different-the fear of becoming Israel.
The Middle East has long been a neighborhood of bullies eager to pick on the
weak. Israel is still around because it has become-sadly-one of the
toughest bullies on the block. The only thing that will change that nasty
environment and open the floodgates for change is if some external power
steps in and plays Leviathan full-time. Taking down Saddam, the region's
bully-in-chief, will force the U.S. into playing that role far more fully
than it has over the past several decades, primarily because Iraq is the
Yugoslavia of the Middle East-a crossroads of civilizations that has
historically required a dictatorship to keep the peace. As baby-sitting
jobs go, this one will be a doozy, making our lengthy efforts in postwar
Germany and Japan look simple in retrospect.
But it is the right thing to do, and now is the right time to do it, and we
are the only country that can. Freedom cannot blossom in the Middle East
without security, and security is this country's most influential
public-sector export. By that I do not mean arms exports, but basically the
attention paid by our military forces to any region's potential for mass
violence. We are the only nation on earth capable of exporting security in
a sustained fashion, and we have a very good track record of doing it.
Show me a part of the world that is secure in its peace and I will show you
a strong or growing ties between local militaries and the U.S. military.
Show me regions where major war is inconceivable and I will show you
permanent U.S. military bases and long-term security alliances. Show me the
strongest investment relationships in the global economy and I will show you
two postwar military occupations that remade Europe and Japan following
World War II.
This country has successfully exported security to globalization's Old Core
(Western Europe, Northeast Asia) for half a century and to its emerging New
Core (Developing Asia) for a solid quarter century following our mishandling
of Vietnam. But our efforts in the Middle Ease have been inconsistent-in
Africa, almost nonexistent. Until we begin the systematic, long-term export
of security to the Gap, it will increasingly export its pain to the Core in
the form of terrorism and other instabilities.
Naturally, it will take a whole lot more than the U.S. exporting security to
shrink the Gap. Africa, for example, will need far more aid than the Core
has offered in the past, and the integration of the Gap will ultimately
depend more on private investment than anything the Core's public sector can
offer. But it all has to begin with security, because free markets and
democracy cannot flourish amid chronic conflict.
Making this effort means reshaping our military establishment to
mirror-image the challenge that we face. Think about it. Global war is not
in the offing, primarily because our huge nuclear stockpile renders such war
unthinkable-for anyone. Meanwhile, classic state-on-state wars are becoming
fairly rare. So if the United States is in the process of "transforming"
its military to meet the threats of tomorrow, what should it end up looking
like? In my mind, we fight fire with fire. If we live in a world
increasingly populated by Super-Empowered Individuals, we field a military
of Super-Empowered-Individuals.
This may sound like additional responsibility for an already overburdened
military, but that is the wrong way of looking at it, for what we are
dealing with here are problems of success-not failure. It is America's
continued success in deterring global war and obsolescing state-on-state war
that allows us to stick our noses into the far more difficult subnational
conflicts and the dangerous transnational actors they spawn. I know most
Americans do not want to hear this, but the real battlegrounds in the global
war on terrorism are still over there. If gated communities and rent-a-cops
were enough, September 11 never would have happened.
History is full of turning points like that terrible day, but no
turning-back-points. We ignore the Gap's existence at our own peril,
because it will not go away until we as a nation respond to the challenge of
making globalization truly global.
Western Hemisphere Map (click to enlarge)
Eastern Hemisphere Map (click to enlarge)
---------------
HANDICAPPING THE GAP
My list of real trouble for the world in the 1990s, today,
and tomorrow, starting in our own backyard:
1) HAITI Efforts to build a nation in 1990s were disappointing . We
have been going into Haiti for about a century, and we will go back when
boat people start flowing in during the next crisis-without fail.
2) COLOMBIA Country is broken into several lawless chunks, with
private armies, rebels, narcos, and legit government all working the place
over. . Drugs still flow. . Ties between drug cartels and rebels grew over
decade, and now we know of links to international terror, too. . We get
involved, keep promising more, and keep getting nowhere. Piecemeal,
incremental approach is clearly not working.
3) BRAZIL AND ARGENTINA Both on the bubble between the Gap and the
Functioning Core. Both played the globalization game to hilt in nineties and
both feel abused now. The danger of falling off the wagon and going
self-destructively leftist or rightist is very real. . No military threats
to speak of, except against their own democracies (the return of the
generals). . South American alliance MERCOSUR tries to carve out its own
reality while Washington pushes Free Trade of Americas, but we may have to
settle for agreements with Chile or for pulling only Chile into bigger
NAFTA. Will Brazil and Argentina force themselves to be left out and then
resent it? . Amazon a large ungovernable area for Brazil, plus all that
environmental damage continues to pile up. Will the world eventually care
enough to step in?
4) FORMER YUGOSLAVIA For most of the past decade, served as shorthand
for Europe's inability to get its act together even in its own backyard. .
Will be long-term baby-sitting job for the West.
5) CONGO AND RWANDA/BURUNDI Two to three million dead in central
Africa from all the fighting across the decade. How much worse can it get
before we try to do something, anything? Three million more dead? . Congo is
a carrion state-not quite dead or alive, and everyone is feeding off it. .
And then there's AIDS.
6) ANGOLA Never really has solved its ongoing civil war (1.5 million
dead in past quarter century). . Basically at conflict with self since
mid-seventies, when Portuguese "empire" fell. . Life expectancy right now is
under forty!
7) SOUTH AFRICA The only functioning Core country in Africa, but it's
on the bubble. Lots of concerns that South Africa is a gateway country for
terror networks trying to access Core through back door. . Endemic crime is
biggest security threat. . And then there's AIDS.
8) ISRAEL-PALESTINE Terror will not abate-there is no next generation
in the West Bank that wants anything but more violence. . Wall going up
right now will be the Berlin Wall of twenty-first century. Eventually,
outside powers will end up providing security to keep the two sides apart
(this divorce is going to be very painful). . There is always the chance of
somebody (Saddam in desperation?) trying to light up Israel with weapons of
mass destruction (WMD) and triggering the counterpunch we all fear Israel is
capable of.
9) SAUDI ARABIA The let-them-eat-cake mentality of royal mafia will
eventually trigger violent instability from within. . Paying terrorists
protection money to stay away will likewise eventually fail, so danger will
come from outside, too. . Huge young population with little prospects for
future, and a ruling elite whose main source of income is a declining
long-term asset. And yet the oil will matter to enough of the world far
enough into the future that the United States will never let this place
really tank, no matter what it takes.
10) IRAQ Question of when and how, not if. . Then there's the huge
rehab job. We will have to build a security regime for the whole region.
11) SOMALIA Chronic lack of governance. . Chronic food problems. .
Chronic problem of terrorist-network infiltration. . We went in with Marines
and Special Forces and left disillusioned-a poor man's Vietnam for the
1990s. Will be hard-pressed not to return.
12) IRAN Counterrevolution has already begun: This time the students
want to throw the mullahs out. . Iran wants to be friends with U.S., but
resurgence of fundamentalists may be the price we pay to invade Iraq. . The
mullahs support terror, and their push for WMD is real: Does this make them
inevitable target once Iraq and North Korea are settled?
13) AFGHANISTAN Lawless, violent place even before the Taliban
stepped onstage and started pulling it back toward seventh century (short
trip) . Government sold to Al Qaeda for pennies on the dollar. . Big source
of narcotics (heroin). . Now U.S. stuck there for long haul, rooting out
hardcore terrorists/rebels who've chosen to stay.
14) PAKISTAN There is always the real danger of their having the bomb
and using it out of weakness in conflict with India (very close call with
December 13, 2001, New Delhi bombing). . Out of fear that Pakistan may fall
to radical Muslims, we end up backing hard-line military types we don't
really trust. . Clearly infested with Al Qaeda. . Was on its way to being
declared a rogue state by U.S. until September 11 forced us to cooperate
again. Simply put, Pakistan doesn't seem to control much of its own
territory.
15) NORTH KOREA Marching toward WMD. . Bizarre recent behavior of
Pyongyang (admitting kidnappings, breaking promises on nukes, shipping
weapons to places we disapprove of and getting caught, signing agreements
with Japan that seem to signal new era, talking up new economic zone next to
China) suggests it is intent (like some mental patient) on provoking
crises. . We live in fear of Kim's Götterdämmerung scenario (he is nuts). .
Population deteriorating-how much more can they stand? . After Iraq, may be
next.
16) INDONESIA Usual fears about breakup and "world's largest Muslim
population." . Casualty of Asian economic crisis (really got wiped out). .
Hot spot for terror networks, as we have discovered.
New/integrating members of Core I worry may be
lost in coming year:
17) CHINA Running lots of races against itself in terms of reducing
the unprofitable state-run enterprises while not triggering too much
unemployment, plus dealing with all that growth in energy demand and
accompanying pollution, plus coming pension crisis as population ages. . New
generation of leaders looks suspiciously like unimaginative technocrats-big
question if they are up to task. . If none of those macro pressures trigger
internal instability, there is always the fear that the Communist party
won't go quietly into the night in terms of allowing more political freedoms
and that at some point, economic freedom won't be enough for the masses.
Right now the CCP is very corrupt and mostly a parasite on the country, but
it still calls the big shots in Beijing. . Army seems to be getting more
disassociated from society and reality, focusing ever more myopically on
countering U.S. threat to their ability to threaten Taiwan, which remains
the one flash point that could matter. . And then there's AIDS.
18) RUSSIA Putin has long way to go in his dictatorship of the law;
the mafia and robber barons still have too much power. . Chechnya and the
near-abroad in general will drag Moscow into violence, but it will be kept
within the federation by and large. . U.S. moving into Central Asia is a
testy thing-a relationship that can sour if not handled just right. . Russia
has so many internal problems (financial weakness, environmental damage, et
cetera) and depends too much on energy exports to feel safe (does bringing
Iraq back online after invasion kill their golden goose?). . And then
there's AIDS.
19) INDIA First, there's always the danger of nuking it out with
Pakistan. . Short of that, Kashmir pulls them into conflict with Pak, and
that involves U.S. now in way it never did before due to war on terror. .
India is microcosm of globalization: the high tech, the massive poverty, the
islands of development, the tensions between
cultures/civilizations/religions/et cetera. It is too big to succeed, and
too big to let fail. . Wants to be big responsible military player in
region, wants to be strong friend of U.S., and also wants desperately to
catch up with China in development (the self-imposed pressure to succeed is
enormous). . And then there's AIDS.
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FROM THE CONTRIBUTORS' PAGE (p. 56):
Shortly after we wrote about military strategist THOMAS BARNETT in last
December's Best and Brightest issue, he gave the Esquire staff a
presentation on his theory of war and globalization, just as he regularly
does for government leaders as an adviser to the Department of Defense.
We'll never read the news the same way again. This month, Barnett delivers
the same briefing to you in "The Pentagon's New Map (page 174), in which he
maps out America's recent military encounters and predicts future ones based
on patterns of global economic development. "We're at a time period not
unlike after World War II," says Barnett, who is also a professor at the
Naval War College in Newport, Rhode Island. "We're trying to ask the same
great questions, like: How can a superpower today influence history for the
better? We established this overarching ideology for so long that allowed
us to justify anything, and that ideology was containment. In some ways,
what I'm trying to argue is a new sort of containment-a containment of the
new bad places and the desire to shrink them."
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FROM THE EDITOR'S LETTER (p. 58):
[excerpted]
But there is one truly special story in this issue-one that you'll find in
no other magazine. If you remember our December issue, the one we called
the Best and Brightest, which was about people on the cutting edge, doing
work that will improve our country and our world, you might remember Thomas
Barnett. Tom Barnett is a war strategist. He puts the world-especially the
parts of the world where terrorism and unrest are brewing-into context. He
does this for the Secretary of Defense, and he draws conclusions about how
best to avert or engage conflicts-and thus how to keep our country secure.
On page 174, Barnett has annotated the world. More specifically, the
world's hot spots and the likelihood of war in each of those places. For
the first time, someone with a position in the government explains what
we're really undertaking when we go to war in Iraq. It's not just about
disarmament. Rather, the United States is redrawing the map of the region,
we are shrinking the Gap (to use Barnett's term), we are changing the course
of history by adopting a good-offense-is-the-best-defense strategy.
This is an entirely unprecedented look inside the thinking that will guide
our defense strategy over the next five to ten years. It's a fantastic and
challenging story. In November, Barnett came and presented his philosophy
of global conflict to our staff. It was amazing and kind of breathtaking.
It made each of us feel as though we had a slightly better grip on some of
the most frightening issues ever to face our country and the world. I hope
it has the same effect on you, making your life a little better.
-David Granger
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