BOOK
REVIEW Closing the globalization
'Gap' The Pentagon's New Map:
War and Peace in the Twenty-First Century by
Thomas P M Barnett.
Reviewed by Yoel Sano
As US President George W
Bush prepares for a global redeployment of military
forces, he and his defense planners may well be advised to
read The Pentagon's New Map: War and Peace in the
Twenty-First Century by Thomas P M Barnett, a senior
strategic researcher at the US Naval War College.
Ever since the Cold War ended, political
scientists, politicians, and journalists have been
rushing to put forward a new "big idea" - a single,
unifying concept that explains everything that has
happened in the world, post-1989. So far, we have had
Francis Fukuyama's End of History, George H W
Bush's "New World Order", Samuel Huntington's Clash
of Civilizations, Robert D Kaplan's Coming
Anarchy, Thomas Friedman's Lexus and Olive
Tree, John J Mearsheimer's Tragedy of Great Power
Politics, Michael T Klare's Resource Wars,
and, of course, George W Bush's "war on terror".
Now Barnett, who has also worked in the Office
of the Secretary of Defense, as well as on projects for
Wall Street broker-dealer firm Cantor Fitzgerald, has
presented his own new global paradigm: the principal
division in the world is that between the "functioning
Core" and the "non-integrating Gap", or simply, the
"Core" and the "Gap".
The Core consists of the world's richest
and most developed countries and regions - the
United States and Canada, the European Union, Japan, South Korea,
Australia - plus newly emerging economies such as Argentina,
Brazil, Chile, Russia, China and India. Together,
they comprise roughly 4 billion of the world's 6
billion population. The Gap consists of the rest of the
world - namely Central America and the Caribbean, Andean
Latin America, virtually all of Africa except South
Africa, the entire Middle East plus Turkey and the Balkans,
Central Asia, and much of Southeast Asia. In
essence, the Gap is made up of those parts of the
world that are failing to benefit from globalization; it
is, in Barnett's words, globalization's "ozone hole".
According to Barnett, it is precisely this
"disconnectedness" between the Core and the Gap that is
the principal security threat to the US in particular,
and the rest of the Core in general. He sees the
terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, as the strongest
manifestation of the widening gulf between the global
haves and have-nots, and stresses that the Core ignores the
Gap at its peril. In essence, he interprets the
terrorists' message as being, "If I cannot enjoy your
good life, then neither will you" (p 298). The real
enemy is therefore not militant Islam, nor the Middle
East, but rather the condition of disconnectedness.
Consequently, Barnett believes that the primary
mission of the US - and therefore the US military - is
to extend connectivity between the Core and Gap as far
as possible, so that the latter can benefit from the
third wave of globalization (Globalization III), which
began around 1980. Barnett notes that virtually all
post-Cold War US military interventions - in Somalia,
Haiti, the Balkans, Afghanistan, and Iraq - have been in
the Gap. For the Core to be safe, the Gap has to become
safe too.
Furthermore, closing the Gap does not
distract from Bush's "war on terror" at all, since the
main opponent in both Bush's war and Barnett's mission
are anti-globalization forces - represented in their
most virulent form by al-Qaeda. Barnett suggests that
the US should start equating the idea of "national
defense" and "homeland defense" with the notion of "Core
security". Ultimately, the author argues, a global "war
on terrorism" must create a happy ending for the whole
world, and not just the US or the West. "Until the Bush
administration describes [that] future worth creating in
terms ordinary people and the rest of the world can
understand, we will continue to lose support at home and
abroad for the great task that lies ahead" (p 169).
At stake is nothing less than the future of
globalization itself. Indeed, by way of example, Barnett
notes that in 1917 the world lost Russia to the forces
of disconnectedness and had to spend the rest of the
20th century paying the price. With this in mind,
Barnett rails against internal Pentagon thinking that
has sought to prepare the US military for a conventional
conflict with a near peer competitor - ie, China - at
some future date. Indeed, he sees China as the greatest
opportunity on earth, rather than as a strategic threat.
For Barnett, the worst thing that could happen is for
the Core to become split between the "old Core" (US,
Europe and Japan) and the "new Core" (China, India,
Brazil). From this point of view, if US intervention in
the Gap alienates the rest of the Core, thereby
cementing a new division, then the cure becomes worse
than the disease.
Barnett acknowledges the
gargantuan task ahead in closing the Gap. Many groups or
individuals reject the idea of joining the Core, fearing
that the adoption of Western norms - which define the
Core's norms - will mean the loss of their traditional
way of life. He recognizes that globalization's advance
will trigger more nationalism, not less, noting that
what we are seeing is "not anti-Americanism per se, but
a fear of a lost identity ... Globalization empowers the
individual at the expense of the collective, and that
very American transformation of culture is quite scary
for traditional societies" (p 123). Nowhere is this more
apparent than in the gender aspect of globalization -
often overlooked by commentators. Barnett notes that
precisely because connectivity empowers women relative
to men, it will be opposed on that basis by most men in
traditional societies.
Based on his work at
Cantor Fitzgerald, where Barnett conducted "economic
security workshops" discussing how security and finance
work with one another, the author lists a set of "10
commandments of globalization":
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
growth. 6. No money, no infrastructure. 7. No
rules, no money. 8. No security, no rules. 9. No
Leviathan (US superpower), no security. 10. No will,
no Leviathan. (pages 199-205)
The reference
to "Leviathan" brings us to the author's ambitious plans
to transform the US military entirely. In order to
reconfigure the US armed forces for his new mission of
promoting global connectedness, Barnett proposes
bifurcating it into what he calls a "Leviathan Force"
and a "System Administrator". The former will be geared
almost entirely for conventional combat, go to war, and
then leave once military objectives have been achieved.
The latter force will move in after the Leviathan has
left and essentially act as peacekeepers and providers
of humanitarian and social aid in the aftermath of a
conflict.
From Barnett's point of view, the new
definition of a "just war" would be one that "leaves
affected societies more connected than when we found
them, with the potential for self-driven connectivity
either restored or left intact" (p 326). As such, he
supported the US war on Iraq on the grounds that it was
aimed at reconnecting Iraq to the global economy.
Weapons of mass destruction were therefore not the real
issue. Furthermore, the author hoped, the 2003 Iraq war
was supposed to be the trigger for a "Big Bang" that
would force the leaders of Iran, Syria and Saudi Arabia
to open up their societies to the global economy.
In view of the need to connect the Middle East
to the Core, Barnett criticizes those who call for the
West to develop alternative sources of energy for the
sole purpose of ending the Core's dependency on - and
therefore political involvement in - the Middle East. He
warns that such an outcome would further disconnect the
region from the Core and risk turning it into another
Central Africa. Indeed, he cites Africa as an example
where the West's departure, post-colonial era, has left
it more disconnected and troubled than ever before.
Should the Core abandon the Middle East, it would risk
turning the region into a "giant Taliban-like 'paradise'
that keeps the West out, the women down, and our
narcotics flowing".
In his concluding remarks, Barnett
issues another series of commandments toward closing the
Gap:
1. Re-creating and reconnecting Iraq to
the global economy. 2. Removing North Korean leader
Kim Jong-il and reunifying Korea. 3. The overthrow
of the Iranian clerical leadership by 2010. 4. The
establishment of the Free Trade Area of the Americas by
2015. 5. The transformation of the Middle East
through the rehabilitation of Iraq. 6. The emergence
of China as a peer of the United States. 7.
An Asian counterpart
to the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO)
by 2020. 8. The amalgamation of the Asian NATO
with the original NATO and NAFTA (North American Free
Trade Agreement) to create a Core-wide security
alliance. 9. The admission of as many as a dozen new
states into the US, initially from the Western
Hemisphere, by 2050. 10. The rehabilitation of
Africa into the world economy.
These are
extremely ambitious goals - something that The
Pentagon's New Map is definitely not short of.
Indeed, not only would these goals be resisted by
al-Qaeda, Kim Jong-il, and other anti-US forces, but by
significant elements within the Core, and even inside
the Pentagon itself. In this regard, Barnett devotes
much space in his book to anecdotes about the sheer
bureaucratic inertia that he faced while working in the
Department of Defense, with one frequent response from
senior officers to his proposals being "You're ruining
my military!"
Yet for all his enthusiasm,
optimism and forward-looking vision, Barnett's notion
that the world is divided into a Core and Gap is hardly
new. It is, in essence, the division between
the developed Northern Hemisphere and
underdeveloped Southern Hemisphere that has existed for
centuries. Furthermore, his map - illustrated on the inside cover
- is occasionally misleading, in that several
major emerging market states such as Turkey and Thailand -
to name a few - are included in the Gap when they are
more truthfully part of the Core - as are the Balkans, two
countries of which (Bulgaria and Romania) are already
members of NATO and candidate members of the European
Union (EU). Not only that, large swaths of new Core
countries such as China and Russia probably have more in
common with the Gap than the Core. As such, Barnett
acknowledges that his map is a 95th percentile, and
certain outliers are depicted in the wrong zone.
To many, Barnett acknowledges, the Gap resembles
the "Arc of Instability" - which runs from the Caribbean
to Africa, the Middle East, South Asia and North Korea.
However, he rejects the similarities between the Gap and
the Arc by noting that their differences lie in his
belief that the concept of the Gap should be used for
the purposes of improving these countries and societies.
By contrast, US policy toward the Arc of Instability
has been aimed mainly at "picking off bad guys" and
making the countries stable, rather than improving
economic well-being and linkages with the Core.
Barnett takes for granted that globalization is
beneficial to the Gap. As such, the book does not
address the issue of whether more globalization is
"good" or "bad". Furthermore, in his zest to close the
Gap, he seems reluctant to address the issue that
forcefully connecting societies faster than their
organic pace may actually create the backlash that will
overwhelm integration efforts. This in turn could lead
to voluntary secession from the Core and the precise
opposite of what Barnett would like to see. One obvious
example of this was the Iranian Revolution of 1979,
where the autocratic and pro-American Shah's forced
Westernization paved the way for a backlash; his project
was rejected by his successor ayatollah Ruhollah
Khomeini as "Westoxication". It has taken Iran an entire
generation to slowly edge back toward the global
economy.
Although Barnett sees al-Qaeda as among
the most extreme anti-globalization forces, he emphasizes
that Islam is not the problem per se, since all
religions in the Gap are more fundamentalist than in the
Core. Nonetheless, in view of the fact that the entire
Muslim world lies within the Gap - not so much by
design, but because of its underdevelopment - critics in
the Muslim world might interpret Barnett's book as a
being aimed mainly at intervention in their own sphere.
The author fails to recognize that al-Qaeda - or
militant Islam in general - is far from being
anti-globalization. In fact it represents an alternative
globalism; one aimed ultimately at creating a unified
Islamist state from Morocco in the west to Mindanao in
the Philippines in the east. Not only that, but
al-Qaeda's activities, and indeed the spread of militant
Islam, are greatly assisted by the globalized nature of
today's world. As such, the truth would appear to be
closer to the notion of "Jihad Via McWorld" described by
Benjamin Barber in his 1995 book, Jihad Versus
McWorld, rather than simply globalization versus
radical Islam.
While Barnett hopes that the Iraq
war will serve as the trigger for a new "Big Bang" that
will open up the Middle East, the results so far look
more like a failure, with post-Saddam Hussein Iraq
possibly even more "disconnected" from the world economy
than ever before. In this sense, the Iraq war is a sober
warning as to what could go wrong if the US were to
pursue Barnett's doctrine with the enthusiasm with which
he writes.
The Pentagon's New Map in
effect commits the US military to a never-ending
mission of intervention practically anywhere on Earth.
Although he appears to believe that the US will be
assisted by other members of the Core, realistically
there are very few countries with the manpower to carry
out such a mission. The US itself would probably have to
increase significantly the size of its military for the
troop numbers required, since it is already stretched in
Iraq and Afghanistan. Sharing the burdens with the
Chinese and Indian militaries might be one way of
addressing the troop deficit, but it is certainly
doubtful that US defense planners would really be
willing to see those two countries - China especially -
evolve into the kind of peer competitor that Barnett
envisages.
And even if China were to achieve
that goal, there is no guarantee that the Pentagon's
"new map" would not clash with any "new map" being drawn
up by the Chinese People's Liberation Army. This would
probably be true regardless of whether China becomes a
democracy in the years or decades ahead. As such, there
would be the possibility that the US (the old Core)
would be forced to counteract the new Core (China) in a
new titanic global struggle that would be bigger than
anything the US currently faces in its "war on terror".
Sadly, Barnett includes virtually nothing about
the evolution of the EU, or indeed the direction of
China, Russia and India. The last three of these giants
are racked with internal problems, with the potential
to slip away from the new Core and back into the Gap.
Overall, The Pentagon's New Map offers
some grandiose ideas about the possible direction of the
third wave of globalization, and what it might mean for
the world, and the US. Barnett is also right to look at
the security aspect of globalization, which has thus far
been comparatively neglected in earlier books on the
subject. Furthermore, the author's optimistic tone is a
welcome contrast to the pessimism of writers such as
Samuel Huntington and Robert D Kaplan. However, Barnett
may be far too confident in the United States' enthusiasm
and ability to remake the world - or indeed, for the
world to remake the United States. To this end, Barnett
poses the question, asked by one of his readers: If
his vision of the future comes about, what changes
more, the US or the world?
This book does not have all
the answers, but it is nonetheless a welcome addition
to the wave of literature on globalization, and the
future of the United States' grand strategy in the post-Cold
War, post-September 11 world.
The Pentagon's
New Map: War and Peace in the Twenty-First Century,
by Thomas P M Barnett. G P Putnam's Sons, April 2004.
ISBN 0-3991-5175-3. US$26.95, 448 pages.
Yoel Sano has worked for publishing
houses in London, providing political and economic
analysis, and has been following Northeast Asia for many
years.
(Copyright 2004 Asia Times Online
Ltd. All rights reserved. Please contact content@atimes.com for
information on our sales and syndication policies.)
may well be advised to
read The Pentagon's New Map: War and Peace in the
Twenty-First Century by Thomas P M Barnett, a senior
strategic researcher at the US Naval War College.
