A washingtonpost.com article from: davidson () pobox com

[David Farber <dave () farber net>]

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Subject:        A washingtonpost.com article from: davidson () pobox com
Author: "Steven J. Davidson" <davidson () pobox com>
Date:           14th December 2004 2:42:30 pm

I'm not sure that I totally agree with the premise, but I'm going to read
the book. /S

 Winning a War For the Disconnected

 By David Ignatius

   It hasn't been reviewed by the New York Times or The Post, and it's
little known outside the military. But the red-hot book among the nation's
admirals and generals this holiday season is a work of strategy by Thomas
P.M. Barnett called "The Pentagon's New Map."

 Imagine a combination of Tom Friedman on globalization and Karl von
Clausewitz on war and you begin to get an idea of where Barnett is coming
from. His book tries to rethink strategy for a post-Cold War, post-Sept. 11
world caught between order and anarchy, self-satisfaction and rage,
prosperity and ruin.

  Barnett's central thesis is that today's world is divided into two
categories: the "Functioning Core" of nations connected to the global
economy and prospering as never before, and the "Non-Integrating Gap" of
nations disconnected from the matrix of wealth and progress and therefore
spinning toward chaos. Most of America's military interventions in recent
years have been in the Gap, notes Barnett, but we have failed to understand
that we face a common enemy there.

  The enemy "is neither a religion (Islam) nor a place (the Middle East),
but a condition -- disconnectedness," writes Barnett. "If disconnectedness
is the real enemy, then the combatants we target in this war are those who
promote it, enforce it and terrorize those who seek to overcome it by
reaching out to the larger world." It's hard to think of a better definition
of the cleavages that underlie the war in Iraq or the battle against al
Qaeda.

  Barnett doesn't see America's role as a neo-imperialist global centurion.
Instead, he argues, the U.S. goal must be to promote "rule sets" that are
shared by Core and Gap alike. "All we can offer is choice, the connectivity
to escape isolation, and the safety within which freedom finds practical
expression," he writes. "None of this can be imposed, only offered.
Globalization does not come with a ruler, but with rules."

  Barnett has been tinkering with these ideas since the late 1990s, but they
came into focus, not surprisingly, after Sept. 11, 2001. Three months later,
he was giving the first versions of a briefing that has now been heard by
hundreds of senior military officers. His concepts have spread so fast among
the military brass that when I was in Bahrain two weeks ago, I heard a
Barnett-style briefing from the commander of U.S. naval forces in the
Persian Gulf, Vice Adm. David Nichols. He outlined a strategy of encouraging
countries in the Middle East to move toward "connected" economies, orderly
"rule sets" and democratic political reform.

  Barnett's ideas have been taken up by other military commands that must
reckon with disorder in the Gap, including those responsible for the Pacific
and Latin America. The Air Force has asked him to brief every new roster of
one-star generals, and the Navy has him lecture each year at the Naval War
College. And Barnett was the featured speaker last week at a meeting of the
Pentagon's high-level technology group, the Highlands Forum. With so many
officers buying books, "The Pentagon's New Map" has managed to sell more
than 50,000 copies.

  So what does Barnett's strategy imply for the vexing problems of today,
such as Iraq and Iran? Barnett argued in his book that linking Iraq to the
Core is job No. 1. "Show me an Iraq that is as globally connected as an
Israel in 10 years and I will show you a Middle East that can never go back
to what it has been these past two decades -- overwhelmingly disconnected,
populated with dispirited youth, and enraged beyond our capacity for
understanding." Barnett would still like to see such an Iraq emerge as a
stabilizing local pillar, but he told me this week that the U.S. occupation
there has been so "totally snafu-ed" that Iraq may not be able to play that
role.

  Barnett sees Iran as the potential bridge between Core and Gap in the
Middle East. He will argue in an article in the next issue of Esquire that
the United States should try to make Iran its local security partner in the
region, accepting its hegemony over a future Shiite-led Iraq and the Persian
Gulf. The alternative is a new Yalta-style fault line between East and West
-- one that could divide the West from emerging Core countries such as India
and China.

  Visiting Iraq, as I did this month, you can see that the United States has
gotten itself into a heck of a mess in that part of the world. Reading
Barnett's book gave me a rare moment of hope that perhaps we can still think
ourselves out of these problems, rather than just shoot our way out.

davidignatius () washpost com



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