June 06, 2004
More on the New Map...
Phil Fraering posted this comment on my post about The Pentagon's New Map, by Thomas P. M. Barnett.
I have not read the book, but I find some of the author's reported conclusions to be unlikely; the major threats of the twentieth century came from modernized, "core" nations: Japan, Germany, (and to a lesser extent) Russia.It wasn't modernization that changed things, but globalization. The first blooming of globalization was squelched in the 1930's by economic nationalism, by the high tariffs thrown up to protect against the Depression. If the developed nations had lowered tariffs after 1929, the Stock Market Crash probably would have been just another business cycle, and Naziism would have fizzled out. Russia was cut off from the flows that globalization brings until the 1990's.Also, many of the 9/11 hijackers were from the more "connected," educated, and wealthy parts of their societies. Take Mohammed Atta, for example; he had a degree in urban planning from a German college.
The modern world still provides as fertile soil for the true-believer fanatic as it ever did; if it didn't, Berkeley would look a lot different.
The big by-product of our involvement in the world during the Cold War was to allow globalization to happen. In fact that's probably the real story. First Europe and Japan, then a variety of other nations grew strong economically because we shouldered most of the defense burden. (It was our best investment ever. No need to thank us; globalization is really America's Operating System adopted by the world, and we profit the most out of it.)
Think of what happens today when a country gets into a financial crisis. Remember Mexico in 1994? A large part of a country's wealth can evaporate in HOURS as traders around the world dump their stocks and bonds. (And the money can flow back to a place like Mexico just as fast. Make reforms and you get instant gratification. Very educational.) Any threat of war would be much worse. Or imagine a US vs Mexico war. A huge chunk of "our" industry is across the border. A big portion of "their" population lives here. Because of NAFTA, Mexican trucks roll freely on our highways. We are entangled with them. And either country would be economically crippled if its ports were mined or airports shut down. Or communications lines were cut or satellite access blocked.
War would be ridiculous. But more important to our current situation, a terrorist movement (or a war-mongering nationalist movement) in Mexico will never grow big enough to really threaten us, because it would be squelched as soon as the threat to Mexico's wealth and trade became obvious. Most Mexicans are now well aware of how important trade and stability are to their hopes of buying a new car or wide-screen TV. Same goes for Berkeley. There are lots of wackos there, but they trek to gourmet natural foods restaurants, not to terrorist training camps. And they probably have jobs in the next-door capitalist haven of Emeryville. Any slow-down in the world's economy would be felt painfully in Berkeley too.
Almost all our military interventions during the 1990's were in places with a per-capita income less than $3,000. That seems to be a threshold. Above there the crazy violence mostly stops. (But it needs to be real wealth—not just having a lot of oil.) Mohammed Atta was "modernized," but the Arab region is not. They still have monarchies! Ludicrous. The desire of wealthy Saudis to fund terrorists was never counterbalanced by cabinet ministers worried about foreign investment drying up if there was a climate of disorder. Developed countries worry intensely about their bond ratings, and if those are threatened, action is taken. Corrupt left-leaning sleaze-ball demagogues are tossed out in favor of reformers who promise a favorable business climate. (Think Schwarzenegger!)
Phil, read the book! Then tell me if I'm on the wrong track.
Actually, the "monarchies" in the Middle East are themselves modernizations imposed by Europe in an attempt to turn that region into an area of nations somewhat like Europe, in order to make it easier to deal with (and in order to keep it carved up into smaller, more easily managed bite-sized pieces). The nationhood idea has really not taken off all that well, and the Middle East is still for the most part Arabia, a huge, vague-bordered area of tribal associations with a nationalist veneer. The "kings" in Saudi Arabia are actually just the chiefs of the most powerful tribe with a fancy new name. Monarchies are not necessarily backwards, not if they are constitutional monarchies like the United Kingdom, Sweden, and so on.
Posted by: Andrea Harris at June 6, 2004 09:43 AMI'm afraid I'm with Phil on this one. Having argues before that "If nations reach a certain point of prosperity and 'connectedness,' they don't slip back", you can't very well wave away the totalitarian counterexamples by saying "That was different. They slipped back."
Posted by: Paul Zrimsek at June 6, 2004 03:36 PMI'll add it to the Great Stack Of Books.
My main concern is that all the social factors that cause fanaticism or give it strength won't just go away just because the people in question can watch MTV.
(In fact watching MTV via satellite dish might just make the situation worse.)
For every person the New Technology is giving contact to the outside world, there may be twenty people in that same country who are listening to their totalitarian governments' half-truths, and believing eighty percent of it, and thinking they're being critical-minded at the same time.
Paul, I mean they don't seem to slip back NOW. Maybe it's a temporary historical aberation, but that seems to be the trend. Countries like Turkey, Mexico, Chile, India, Taiwan, S Korea, Portugal, Spain, Greece, seem to have gotten over a threshhold, and we don't have to worry about them falling back into chaos, dictatorship, or genocide.
It's not that they don't have lots of problems and shortcomings, and yes, terrorists and fanatics. But they have functioning immune systems that keep the problems from spinning out of control, and requiring American military intervention. And their economies are all growing, which is moving them to even safer ground.
Posted by: John Weidner at June 7, 2004 08:45 AMDon't assume that examples of slippage in the 20th century prove anything about the 21st. The globalization we have today is vastly different from the one they fell out of in the 1930s. Plus, nukes change everything: no great power on great power war since their invention in 1945. Peace through trade yes, but with nukes on top to make sure no great powers go to war.
Watching MTV doesn't equal modernization or a desire for democracy; it just signals connectivity blooming. With connectivity comes content flows that are typically hugely confrontive for traditional societies (especially about sex and gender issues). Where globalization is currently encroaching on traditional societies unable to handle the flow, there you find the violence in the system. Where the connectivity already thick, you don't. My Gap contains all the wars, civil wars, ethnic clensing, genocide, raping of women as a tool of mass terror, children forced into combat, etc. We can ignore all that and spend the bulk of our military R&D getting ready for China/Taiwan/2025, or we can deal with the world as we find it. I'm pretty sure preparing for the former scenario won't win the global war on terrorism, so I advocate some serious changes in the military.
But you have to read the book to get the whole story . . .
Posted by: Tom Barnett at June 9, 2004 06:54 AM
