The Core, The Gap and American Foreign Policy

Esquire's March 2003 issue had an article titled "The Pentagon's New Map" that had a series of maps and text arguing that the world can essentially be cut up into two spheres. Those areas of the globe who had made the leap to globalization, "The Core," which is defined as places thick with network connectivity, financial transactions, liberal media flows, and collective security that features stable governments, rising standards of living, and more deaths by suicide than murder. And places where it hasn't happened, or "The Gap."

This article, written by Thomas Barnett of the U.S. NAVAL WAR COLLEGE, posits that the real danger in the world is disconnectedness between the Core and the Gap with the Middle East as "exhibit A."

The crux of the article is this passage:

IF WE STEP BACK for a minute and consider the broader implications of this new global map, then U.S. national-security strategy would seem to be: 1) Increase the Core’s immune system capabilities for responding to September 11-like system perturbations; 2) Work the seam states to firewall the Core from the Gap’s worst exports, such as terror, drugs, and pandemics; and, most important, 3) Shrink the Gap. Notice I did not just say Mind the Gap. The knee-jerk reaction of many Americans to September 11 is to say, “Let’s get off our dependency on foreign oil, and then we won’t have to deal with those people.” The most naïve assumption underlying that dream is that reducing what little connectivity the Gap has with the Core will render it less dangerous to us over the long haul. Turning the Middle East into Central Africa will not build a better world for my kids. We cannot simply will those people away.

The Middle East is the perfect place to start. Diplomacy cannot work in a region where the biggest sources of insecurity lie not between states but within them. What is most wrong about the Middle East is the lack of personal freedom and how that translates into dead-end lives for most of the population—especially for the young. Some states like Qatar and Jordan are ripe for perestroika-like leaps into better political futures, thanks to younger leaders who see the inevitability of such change. Iran is likewise waiting for the right Gorbachev to come along—if he has not already.

What stands in the path of this change? Fear. Fear of tradition unraveling. Fear of the mullah’s disapproval. Fear of being labeled a “bad” or “traitorous” Muslim state. Fear of becoming a target of radical groups and terrorist networks. But most of all, fear of being attacked from all sides for being different—the fear of becoming Israel.

The Middle East has long been a neighborhood of bullies eager to pick on the weak. Israel is still around because it has become—sadly—one of the toughest bullies on the block. The only thing that will change that nasty environment and open the floodgates for change is if some external power steps in and plays Leviathan full-time. Taking down Saddam, the region’s bully-in-chief, will force the U.S. into playing that role far more fully than it has over the past several decades, primarily because Iraq is the Yugoslavia of the Middle East—a crossroads of civilizations that has historically required a dictatorship to keep the peace. As baby-sitting jobs go, this one will be a doozy, making our lengthy efforts in postwar Germany and Japan look simple in retrospect.

But it is the right thing to do, and now is the right time to do it, and we are the only country that can. Freedom cannot blossom in the Middle East without security, and security is this country’s most influential public-sector export. By that I do not mean arms exports, but basically the attention paid by our military forces to any region’s potential for mass violence. We are the only nation on earth capable of exporting security in a sustained fashion, and we have a very good track record of doing it.

Show me a part of the world that is secure in its peace and I will show you a strong or growing ties between local militaries and the U.S. military. Show me regions where major war is inconceivable and I will show you permanent U.S. military bases and long-term security alliances. Show me the strongest investment relationships in the global economy and I will show you two postwar military occupations that remade Europe and Japan following World War II.

This country has successfully exported security to globalization’s Old Core (Western Europe, Northeast Asia) for half a century and to its emerging New Core (Developing Asia) for a solid quarter century following our mishandling of Vietnam. But our efforts in the Middle Ease have been inconsistent—in Africa, almost nonexistent. Until we begin the systematic, long-term export of security to the Gap, it will increasingly export its pain to the Core in the form of terrorism and other instabilities.

If this sounds a great deal like recent speeches by Condoleezza Rice or the Grand Strategy that the Bush Administration has published, it is no accident. From Condoleezza Rice's August 7th 2003 Speech:

Confronting Saddam Hussein's Iraq was also essential. Let me be very clear about why we went to war against Saddam Hussein. Saddam Hussein's regime posed a threat to the security of the United States and the world. This was a regime that had pursued, had used and possessed weapons of mass destruction. The regime had links to terror, had twice invaded other nations, defied the international community and 17 United Nations resolutions for 12 years, and gave every indication that it would never disarm and never comply with the just demands of the world. That threat could not be allowed to remain.

Now that that regime is gone, the people of Iraq are more free, and people everywhere need no longer fear his weapons, his aggression and his cruelty. The war on terror will be greatly served by the removal of a source of instability in the world's most volatile region. And, ironically, Saddam Hussein's removal will provide new opportunities for a better Middle East.

But if that different future for the Middle East is to be realized, the United States and its longtime allies must make a generational commitment to helping the people of the Middle East transform their region. This has been the president's clear and consistent message.

So there you are. America has a grand strategy in the War on Terrorism. The Bush Administration is out selling it, and it has a firm theoretical basis for action. Those that deny this have a vested interest in the Bush Administration failing.

UPDATE: As usual, a fine Comments section. May of them address the relationship between the War on Terror and the War on Drugs.

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