I loved Thomas P.M. Barnett’s “The Pentagon’s New Map”, and have had said so multiple times in public. I enthusiastically reviewed the book way back in my Soxblog days.
Tom’s one of the few authors who publicly responds to just about every review, and he loved mine. In Tom’s review of my review, he lauded not only “the elegance of my recitation” but elaborated, “What's so neat about this (review) is that undeniable sense of being completely understood by the reader, and man, that feels good!” The exclamation point was Tom’s.
Recently, sadly, we’ve come to a bit of a philosophical impasse. “The Pentagon’s New Map” is a ground breaking tract, and one of the decade’s most insightful and influential works. But a key component of Tom’s intellectual software dead-ends when it comes up against Radical Islam. Because Radical Islam is the most pressing threat of the next generation, Tom will either have to modify his theory or risk its irrelevance.
“THE PENTAGON’S NEW MAP” made two assertions that described the world as it is and how America should handle our current and future challenges Here’s how I described them a few years ago in the review that Tom so adored:
“Barnett’s theory essentially has two components which I will over-simplify only a little in the next two paragraphs. The first is that the world is divided into two parts, the Core which has all the economically functioning places and the Gap which has all the economic, cultural and political basket cases. The Core includes all the places where you might vacation or buy a good from; the Gap is comprised of the places you wouldn’t visit unless you were a contestant on Fear Factor. Barnett argues that in this era of increased global connectivity and more widely available weapons of mass destruction, an unstable and disconnected country/government anywhere poses a threat to the United States and our interests. Witness the way internal Afghanistan politics had a profound effect on our soil. The only way to mitigate this threat is to, over time, integrate these Gap countries into the Core.
“But how do you this when those Gap countries are often run by people like Saddam Hussein who don’t want to play well with others in the global sandbox? That’s going to involve military action and that’s where the second part of Barnett’s theory comes in. Barnett suggests that the military should be broken up into two distinct pieces. One he calls the Leviathan which will basically kick the ass of the Saddam types; the other will be called the System Administrator which will build the country back up after the asses have been kicked.”
For what it’s worth, I still think Barnett’s theory is brilliant stuff. Its only problem is that it doesn’t grapple with the reality that Islamic nations are a lot more intractable regarding entering the Core than we would hope. When I originally wrote that review, I praised the fact that Tom's book was “suffused with a can-do American optimism that has been the mark of this country since its birth.” I still like that about the book, but four years into Iraq and six years after 9/11, is there any doubt that we should be a little less “optimistic” and “can-do” where the Islamic world is concerned? At the very least, should we not temper our optimism with measures of skepticism and caution?
SO WHAT’S MY BEEF? In recent blog posts, Tom Barnett has refused to grapple with the threat modern Islam poses and instead blames all of our problems’ on Bush administration blunders. What’s more, he constantly operates under the assumption that our malefactors, like those in Iran, aren’t “true believers” but instead are playing some cynical geo-political game. Tom Barnett doesn’t worry about an Iranian nuke. He sees it as likely contributing to a Westphalian state of regional stability. He’s not concerned that Iran may have a completely different set of values from our own.
If the Iranian government was merely crafty and not truly unhinged, it would jibe with “The Pentagon’s New Map” over-arching theory that Gap populations everywhere hunger to enter the Core. But it’s not true. Jihad is a bottom up phenomenon. The only thing more appalling than dealing with the House of Saud is contemplating dealing with a government that a democratic Saudi Arabia would produce.
Today, Tom’s blog offers a post that is breathtaking for its raw naivete:
JOURNAL: "For Iran's Shiites, a Celebration of Faith and Waiting: Marking the birth of an imam who is said to return someday," by Michael Slackman, New York Times, 30 August 2007, p. A4.
Well written, balanced exploration of the Shiite holiday celebrating the birth of the 12th, or "hidden imam." The Shiia await his return like Christians--some more anxiously than others--await the Messiah's return.
Ahmadinejad talks like a true believer, but as we've survived two born-agains in office (Carter, now Bush), Iran seems to be weathering Ahmadinejad.
Some critics (both external and internal) make a big deal out of Ahmadiejad's professions of such faith (I maintain he's a crafty Persian Newt Gingrich who'll say anything to advance his agenda), Slackman says that in Qum, the Shiia quasi-Vatican (along with Najaf in Iraq, where Sistani presides), "no one here seems to buy that view [that Ahmadinejad so awaits the prophet he'll trigger war to achieve Armageddeon], at least publicly.
As one Tehran social psychologist (yes, they have those in Iran) says:
"[Iranians] feel at home with a prophet coming. They are comfortable waiting, waiting for salvation, waiting to be saved, waiting for good days."
Me too, despite all the threats about being "left behind."
Ahmadenijad a “crafty Persian Newt Gingrich”? Iranian “born-agains” comparable to American “born agains”? Putting aside how offensive that last notion will be to some people, the fact that no one has yet crashed an airliner into a skyscraper while screaming “Praise Jesus” seems to have escaped Tom’s attention.
I’m sure Tom will be responding to this post. Hopefully he can include in his response where he gets his information regarding Radical Islam and specifically what evidence has led him to conclude that Ahmadenijad is a crafty statesman more reminiscent of a young Newt Gingrich than a young Adolf Hitler. Because from here, Tom’s conclusions look like little more than pathetic wishful thinking.
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