[PT] Tom Barnett
Posted on:: October 21st, 2004
Tom is the author of The Pentagon’s New Map. I’ve been reading his stuff for a while. I don’t know enough to be able to tell if what he says is right, but it sure seems coherent and compelling.
You ought to go read his stuff.
Categories: Uncategorized dw
I saw a presentation of his on C-Span. The audience was all uniformed military and defense types. Some very slick presentational software; lots of sound effects. Sounded very sure of himself.
In the QA session, said the key was to uplift muslim women.
“In the QA session, said the key was to uplift muslim women.” (The sick but popular right-wing joke of the moment.)
David, while I respect Tom’s intelligence, I find essays such as The Pentagon’s New Map and Global Transaction Strategy profoundly disturbing. The first, I can only find it in myself to diss. The second more clearly positions Barnett as a smooth-talking neocon of the Straussian school embracing expansionist polices (the U.S. as global ‘systems administrator’) and marketing lingo.
Espousing preemption (articulated in the National Security Strategy) as essential to globalisation (ongoing, disproportionate U.S. consumption) and glibly accepting the falsehoods leading to Baghdad as being necessary, Barnett blithely coins new phrases to dress neocon ideas. “The export or flow of security from the Core to the Gap” to 2050 translates to ongoing, preemptive warfare in accordance with Bush doctrine (including the absolute lockdown of the Occupied Territories). Not that it worries me. the U.S. has been ‘exporting security’ for donkeys’ years and it’s yet to win a war.
His arguments are based on false premises. For example: Iraq was “dangerously disconnected”. Nonsense. Hussein was, despite relentless sanctions, thriving. He was attacked because he nationalised oil and was looking to the Euro. Another pillar in this article supports the flow of people from the Gap to the Core, a mere perpetuation of what I call African aid to the U.S. Most Third World professionals are already snapped up (willingly) by First World head hunters as avaricious as any found on the Amazon.
Continuing to rob us of our people and our resources is a sure-fire recipe for disaster.
Look, basically, these ideas and the results of the Office of Force Transformation have, to date, delivered Iraq. If that’s considered a viable route for the States to follow, so be it. George W. Bush is doing a good job of it. Ah, some might split hairs. He’s not doing it correctly. Doesn’t matter. Given that he’s destroyed much of that which Barnett sees as prerequisites for this horrible vision to succeed, i.e. (old alliances, cutting off drugs and disease–you had your ‘flu shot?), I can’t see any other administration doing a better job of lousing up the globe. So far, these ideas look good only on paper. Exporting security to Iraq, you’ve created a war where the occupied are not losing. That means the occupier (illegally and preemptively so) is.
Barnett might argue that Global Transaction Strategy is an old article. So is The Pentagon’s New Map. His thinking flows from these documents. In other words, he remains an ideological bagman for Bush and the neocon agenda. Other than that, he strikes me as a hell of a nice guy.
Mike, I read (and hear) Barnett differently. He’s not favoring preemption; he’s explaining the worldview. He favors globalization – which is, admittedly, controversial – but not sending in the military. He wants to pare the US military back, use it where it make sense, and build a large peacekeeping force.
I may well be either misreading him, or he may be misleading us.
Fwiw, he’s a Kerry supporter.
“Fwiw, he’s a Kerry supporter.”
Mm… Kerry too is many things to many people. I’ve great sympathy for American voters :).
In Global Transaction Strategy, Barnett leads off:
“With last year’s publication of the National Security Strategy, the White House went even further and described – rather boldly – a global future worth creating. By doing so, the Bush administration embraced the notion recently put forth by many experts: that Washington now stands at a historical “creation point” much like the immediate post-World War II years.
“When the United States finally went to war again in the Persian Gulf, it was not about settling old scores or simply enforcing U.N.-mandated disarmament of illegal weapons or a distraction in the war on terror. Instead, the Bush administration’s first application of its controversial preemption strategy marked a historical tipping point – the moment when Washington took real ownership of strategic security in the age of globalization.
“This is why the public debate about the war has been so important: It has forced Americans to come to terms with what [the authors] believe is the new security paradigm that shapes this age: Disconnectedness defines danger.”
“Disconnectedness defines danger” is Barnett’s mantra. His answer to that ‘disconnectedness’? The U.S., defining The Core, should continue to “live large” (beyond its means) by leveraging the dollar’s ‘good credit’ (most of that credit’s dissipated since 2003) to “export security”. As Barnett sees it, “…it does engender plenty of anger from some quarters, but from far more it elicits real gratitude – and allowance for our ‘living large.'”
I, and I believe, billions, beg to disagree.
And so on… These articles are pretty explicit, giving the gist and forming the thrust of Barnett’s thesis. To my mind, flannellers like Tom are the chemists producing the imperious ether presently clouding the American mind. The language is pretty but, no matter one’s reality, its implications are extraordinarily dangerous and ugly–particularly for Americans. (We South Africans know something of exporting both public and private-sector security.)
I’m not surprised Tom’s arguments would, at first, appeal to you (I find them fascinating too), but I’d urge you to read his material closely. To me, it’s a form of incipient evil that whispers “tomorrow belongs to me.” I believe, contrary to Barnett, “Washington now stands at a historical ‘creation point’ much like the immediate pre-World War II years.”