The Opinionated Bastard

It is rare that I read something truly original in the realm of foreign policy. Every two months, I get a new Foreign Affairs, where the lefty academics will come out of their ivory towers to tell us the world is America's fault, the right will tell us that we're the biggest nation on earth we should take avantage of it, while others tell us in 20/20 hindsight what we should have done.

Thomas Barnett's first book was truly original, and pure genius. But its his second book I'm reviewing. The second book, while thought provoking, even world-view-realigning, is not the same thing as thought agreeing.

Yes, you read the title of this post right. The book I'm talking about is

Blueprint for Action : A Future Worth Creating

It simultaneously manages to be a work of great genius, and it makes me grit my teeth with his astounding naiveté. This book is a follow up to this previous book:

The Pentagon's New Map: War and Peace in the Twenty-first Century

a book I've read in airport bookstores but didn't bother to actually purchase (I can read fast, and often have lots of time to kill in PHX).

Barnett's fundamental thesis from the first book is that all of the U.S. military actions have involved what he calls “the Gap”, even during the Cold War, and especially since the end of the Cold War in '89. The Gap is basically all the countries mostly untouched by globalization. Meanwhile, The Core which consists of Europe, and the New Core which consists of countries like China and India.

He's not the first to make this observation, as one wag put it:

No country with a McDonald's ever invaded another country with a McDonald's.

But Barnett ties it all neatly together. I find his arguments very convincing, because they are obviously historically true. We have intervened in more countries since the Cold War then during the Cold War, and most of those countries are the ones most disconnected from the rest of the world.

The interesting thing about Barnett's books is that you'll come to realize this: Everyone is right about our foreign policy to some extent, and wrong to some extent. The neo-cons are right that liberalism is a necessary thing to spread, but wrong about the cost (it will be expensive, messy). The left is right about needing world involvement, but wrong if they think we can keep our head in the sand about dictators and other “bad actors”. The right is right that America has enemies, but wrong if they think that enemy is China; China may be our best ally. The left is wrong about globalization being a bad thing, but right about it causing problems, the right is correct about the spread of liberalization being a good thing, but wrong about the utility of America's military might. I could go on, but the thing about Barnett's books is that his observations are so obviously true that just reading them first hand will shift your foreign policy perspective.

Of course, being right makes Barnett controversial. Lefties think he's a neo-con, neo-cons think he's an internationalist, righties think he's soft on communism. He's not, he's his own beast, which is what makes him interesting.

Additionally, as a Pentagon insider, Barnett gives interesting insight on what this means not just in a foreign policy sense, but in a practical military sense. Barnett argues that we need two military forces: A Leviathan force, which basically excels in killing people; and a SysAdmin force, which can occupy, rebuilt, reconstruct.

Barnett is critical of the administration, but fair as well. He criticizes Rumsfeld for not having enough troops in the occupying force, but also points out that Rumsfeld's work in transforming the Pentagon is exactly what is needed in the modern world and talks about how difficult it is to “move” the Pentagon. I learned from Barnett that the Army purposefully moved all of their “SysAdmin” forces into the reserves after Vietnam: Iraq is the bill we're all paying as a result of that “fuck you” to their civilian leadership.

All very interesting really.

There's a good review of Barnett's first book here.

This review is of Barnett's second book. This book purports to be a blueprint for how Barnett thinks we should accomplish the issues raised in the first book.

After reading his book, Barnett has absolutely convinced me of two things:

1. He's absolutely right about what we need to do. (Genius!)

2. He's absolutely wrong about how we need to do it. (Naiveté)

That is, Barnett has successfully convinced me that we need both a Leviathan and a SysAdmin force in the US military. He has convinced me that yes, the administration has made mistakes in conducting the Iraq war; though not the mistakes everyone thinks. He has also convinced me that we need to make overtures to the new Core (India, China, Brazil) to as he puts it:

Lock in China at Today's Prices

He's convinced me that the Old Core and New Core need to work together to shrink the Gap.

But where I find Barnett hopelessly naive is in his descriptions of how he sees the SysAdmin force working. At this point, Barnett starts to sound like John Kerry. (Though not quite so bad, he points out the UN is useless; that a G8 or G20 organization makes more sense). He argues that somehow, the US would only have to provide 20% of the SysAdmin cost, with the rest being made up by the rest of the world. Now granted, we've had problems for years with NATO with them shortchanging in the high-tech weapons department. Peacekeeping on the other hand is the kind of thing where people are more important then gadgets: I'm sure the Pentagon would trade 2,000 armored Humvees for 2,000 Arabic translators in a heartbeat. We need translators more then we need Humvees. So Turkey, for instance, could provide 2,000 badly needed peacekeeping troops to the US Military, and we could probably use them pretty easily.

But I'm truly skeptical of it actually working, because it never has in the past. Just as his Core/Gap map and Leviathan/SysAdmin metaphors are convincing to me because they obviously true historically, I find his Blueprint unconvincing because they are obviously untrue.

His examples of “successful” intervention by the international community were just awful. Kosovo? We still have troops in Kosovo 10 years later? This is success? They used to export electricity, now they import it?

Even ignoring that, let's say the US does form some sort of international SysAdmin force. Is France going to participate? If France makes up 20% of the force, what happens if they don't feel like joining in? Does that mean that every single country in the G8 has a veto? Even if it is put up to a vote, couldn't a single country pull their soldiers out anyways?

Barnett argues that this just means that the US needs to be better about convincing our allies when interventions are necessary. Uh, excuse me? The only thing that can convince the French of anything is when France itself gets invaded, and then they overreact. Getting unanimous consensus on anything with Europe is impossible. Come to think of it, unanimous consensus on anything is impossible.

So from a military perspective, Thomas' “Blueprint for Action” sounds like a “Blueprint for Inaction” to me. Fundamentally, I think Thomas is missing what I call the “Kosovo Lesson”. For an intervention to be successful, one country in particular will have to take responsibility for it succeeding. Otherwise, it just degenerates into a halfhearted feel-good circle jerk by the G8. “Look everyone, the people are starving, but they aren't killing each other any more”. So if we really want interventions to work, then the US will have to play a dominant role in coalitions of the willing; because nothing else has really worked in the past.

About the only way I could see his SysAdmin force plan working would be if the US started it out as a “disaster relief” force. There are multiple natural disasters every year, and its become the US Military's role to provide relief onsite during those disasters. Perhaps if we started small, where its easy to build consensus (earthquakes are bad), it would be easier to build consensus later (genocides are bad).

Now on the diplomatic front though, I think Barnett nails it. We should have a Pacific Treaty Organization in the same way we have NATO, or rather we should regularly dialogue with the Asian countries and work out some agreements that will bring this “New Core” into the fold. If China is buying oil from Iran, they'll probably have ten times the influence then we will; so if we can get China and Russia to help us suppress the crazy mullahs, that's a good thing. But anticipating that Norway will someday help us stabilize Iran when the mullahocracy collapses? I'm pretty skeptical of Norway doing that.

Now of course, I'm debating his message, which brings me to the moral of this book review. I heartily recommend both this book and especially Barnett's previous book. This is one of the most thought-provoking, and thought-realigning books on foreign policy I've read lately. You won't necessarily agree with it, but it will make you think down some unique paths.

Those unique paths are sadly needed in our foreign policy, we need some new ideas.