Sadr standown in Iraq: not bad agreement, but wrong one

Barnett.com ^ | May 28, 2004 | Thomas P. M. Barnett

[billorites]

I understand the deal with the devil in Najaf, and I know that temporizing situations can work in our strategic favor. But such deals only work if we spend the meantime creating the connectivity that generates strategic despair on their side, not ours.

Strategic despair is when your side surveys the environment and says to itself: “No matter how hard we try, this thing is going south—there’s just too many of them and too few of us.” I worry about strategic despair a lot right now with the U.S.-led coalition in Iraq, and even more so back here at home, where media coverage highlights only failure and never success. Why? The media’s definition of war is almost as narrow as the Pentagon’s: show us the smoking holes and dead bodies! The “everything else” is completely ignored, which is why onsite blogs like IRAQ THE MODEL are so important—they define serious ground truth.

What are the deals worth concluding right now? Our enemies in Iraq, which I dub the forces of disconnectedness because that is what they seek for both Iraq and the region as a whole, believe in the inherent weakness of Westerners, something experts have taken to calling Occidentalism (a book out on that subject now is quite good). Occidentalism basically says that too much individuality is very bad, weakening both the individual and the society—making us weak and decadent. It tends to ignore the reality that the most vibrant and creative societies in this world all stress individualism.

I know, I know, you’ll tell me about Japan. But Japan’s collectivist society was only good at taking other people’s ideas and manufacturing them intelligently—until a generation of individualists began arising in the last couple of decades. These are the Japanese who’ve given us the tremendous art and culture and fashion and design. These individualists are the ones defining Japan’s future as the global capital of cool.

America has been battling the Occidentalist outlook for a very long time. Imperial Japan thought a bloody nose, delivered at Pearl Harbor, would simply scare us off. The Viet Cong fought on—against tremendous odds and horrendous losses—because they believed America was easily scared off. In neither case was this true: we crushed the Japanese in a very bloody war, and only pulled out of Vietnam when we realized that our larger strategic rationale was empty.

But shedding blood or spilling that of others has never been a problem for America, land of glorified violence and mass media full of revenge fantasies (think of our most cherished stars and what has defined them—like Clint Eastwood or Mel Gibson). Americans are not squeamish whatsoever. In fact, we wallow in images of death and destruction.

What really defines Occidentalism, in my mind, is the assumption by male-dominated societies that American men are essentially pussy-whipped by our women. By having a reasonably balanced society in terms of women’s rights (always room for improvement …), we present an image to the outside world that not only do we treat our women badly, they treat us men even worse in terms of disrespect.

The whole 2nd-term Clinton sex scandal epitomized this sort of thing: not only did we have a leader who clearly treated women in a degrading fashion, our political system was ready to can him on that basis. Look at it from the perspective of the rest of the world: weak leader, degenerate behavior, asinine political system. We lost respect on every level on that one.

Personally, my anger with Clinton was that the man simply couldn’t jerk off whatever demon was trapped in his trousers—at least until he got out of office. Was that too much to ask given the stakes? After that he could fool around til Hillary shot him for all I cared. But you don’t put everything at risk for just that, because reputation matters. In the end, our character is all we take with us to the grave.

Kerry is starting to sound the right notes in this campaign: not taking on the central goal of a Global War on Terrorism (defeating our enemies), but arguing the method. So he’s stressing the importance of alliances and keeping old friends while adding new ones.

Would I like to see him push it farther? You bet. He needs to recast what this coalition is all about by eliminating the charge I just cited above: that it’s just the flaccid West against the tough-as-nail-willing-to-die-on-a-dime Middle East. Do we accomplish this simply by getting meaner? Becoming more like the Israelis?

Absolutely not. We accomplish it by easternizing the coalition, by shading its occidental skin tone. We accomplish it by courting the New Core powers, making the deals that bring them to Iraq and thus create strategic despair among our enemies.

Iraqi insurgents staring across the line at Indian, Russian and Chinese soldiers will have a hard time with that Occidentalist bullshit that passes for warfighting morale. All of those countries know how to kill without remorse—especially Muslims who challenge their sense of order. And there won’t be a public back home that wilts at the first sign of body bags.

Iraqi insurgents who peer across the streets at a truly global coalition—not just West but Core-wide—will inevitably start muttering to themselves: “We’re screwed. This is pointless. There are too many of them to kill. We can’t win. Let’s take this fight somewhere else.”

The best part of this strategy is that the deals we need to make are the ones most Americans will cheer: let’s reverse ourselves on Kyoto like the Russians did and get the Europeans back. Let’s push for Russia joining both the WTO and NATO. Let’s forget about missile defense shields in Asia and start talking to China and Japan about how—together—we’ll force Kim Jong-very-Ill out of power and turn Korea into the next Asian FDI-suctioning powerhouse. Let’s make India the “major, non-NATO ally” of choice in South Asia.

Do any of these deals sound that hard to make? Do you see more loss of U.S. “prestige” in these horse trades or in the deal we just cut with al-Sadr in Najaf?

Iraq has been stripped bare by looters. The only way we’re going to reconnect Iraq to the world is if we get the Core as a whole to do some major-league investments there. Do you think there are Russian oil companies looking for new sources to develop? Do you think the Chinese are interested in stable sources of energy? Do you think India wants to play a bigger security role in region?

In the end, I see loads of obviously self-serving motives on each side, which is how I know these deals can be cut.

That’s not to say the Bush Administration is doing some very good things. Pushing the free trade agenda in the Middle East is a great one. But as I said on Blitzer’s CNN show: Americans have to ask themselves who can cut the better deals that must lie ahead if we’re going to really prevail in Iraq. We cannot kill out way out of this one, nor simply withdraw. Look at your history of successful counter-insurgencies: either we offer the Iraqis a happier ending than the one al-Sadr, bin Laden and others offer, or we’ll simply pervert ourselves in the process of killing as many of them as we can. We cannot defeat these people with violence, for it’s all they know and they’ve got nowhere better to go if that’s the nature of the fight we offer. We need to overwhelm them with boots on the ground, a clear sense that this occupation is both West and East in origins, and hope that connectivity can be made both real and permanent.

Posted by Thomas P.M. Barnett at May 28, 2004 02:28 PM

[billorites]

Thomas P.M. Barnett will be featured on C-SPAN's Booknotes with Brian Lamb tonight talking about his new book, The Pentagon’s New Map: War and Peace in the Twenty-First Century

[billorites]

May 30, 2004 The Pentagon’s New Map: War and Peace in the Twenty-First Century by Thomas Barnett

• —from the publisher's website A groundbreaking reexamination of U.S. and global security, certain to be one of the most talked about books of the year. Since the end of the Cold War, America's national security establishment has been searching for a new operating theory to explain how this seemingly "chaotic" world actually works. Gone is the clash of blocs, but replaced by what? Thomas Barnett has the answers. A senior military analyst with the U.S. Naval War College, he has given a constant stream of briefings over the past few years, and particularly since 9/11, to the highest of high-level civilian and military policymakers-and now he gives it to you. The Pentagon's New Map is a cutting-edge approach to globalization that combines security, economic, political, and cultural factors to do no less than predict and explain the nature of war and peace in the twenty-first century. Building on the works of Friedman, Huntington, and Fukuyama, and then taking a leap beyond, Barnett crystallizes recent American military history and strategy, sets the parameters for where our forces will likely be headed in the future, outlines the unique role that America can and will play in establishing international stability-and provides much-needed hope at a crucial yet uncertain time in world history. For anyone seeking to understand the Iraqs, Afghanistans, and Liberias of the present and future, the intimate new links between foreign policy and national security, and the operational realities of the world as it exists today, The Pentagon's New Map is a template, a Rosetta stone. Agree with it, disagree with it, argue with it-there is no book more essential for 2004 and beyond.

The Pentagon’s New Map: War and Peace in the Twenty-First Century

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Publisher: Putnam Publishing Group
ISBN: 0399151753
Web Site

[Priorities]

This man is wrong, wrong and wrong.

First to claim that the defining characteristic of Arab society is its male dominance is a mistake. The only male female relationship that is allowed to develop is the mother son bond. The bonds that hold the family together stretches back through the generations to your clan. Bonds to your wife, children and to the future are discouraged while bonds to your ancestors and the past are accentuated. It is the mom or the matriarchal structure that holds their society together and results in the tribalism we witness in the Arab world.

Our society could be described as more male dominated. The man must win the affection of the female, a masculine endeavor. From there he forms his own family with the focus on the future because the loyalty to his nuclear family is stronger than the bond to past generations. Providing for and taking care of your own family instead of just fitting into and becoming a part of your tribe would again seem to emphasize masculine traits.

The problem with Clinton was his basic corruption. Corruption is a politician who places looking out for himself ahead of looking out for our Country as a whole. When corruption becomes systemic and is tolerated so that it becomes normal and acceptable practice then the government will serve those who hold power at the expense of the people and the Country as a whole. Clinton repeatedly placed himself first and Democrats found such behavior to be acceptable for the President of the United States as long as he was a Democrat. General corruption is the reason that republican forms of government collapse.

And third it would seem to me to be a touch delusional to believe that Kerry and Democrats in general are better at negotiating workable treaties.