Globalization and the war in Iraq

[Hoarmurath]

I'm reading a book right now by Thomas Barnett called <a href="http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/de ... 24165">The Pentagon's New Map</a>, and I'm finding it pretty interesting. The author also wrote an <a href="http://www.esquire.com/features/article ... l">article for Esquire</a> that sort of sums up his book.

To make a long story short, he talks a lot about globalization and how the invasion of Iraq was inevitable in order to end its threat to globalization. Obviously, not everyone is pro-globalization, but this guy certainly is, and I tend to agree with him. So I'm posting it here in an effort to get some diverse opinions.

[archeiron]

LET ME TELL YOU why military engagement with Saddam Hussein's regime in Baghdad is not only necessary and inevitable, but good. When the United States finally goes to war again in the Persian Gulf, it will not constitute a settling of old scores, or just an enforced disarmament of illegal weapons, or a distraction in the war on terror. Our next war in the Gulf will mark a historical tipping point—the moment when Washington takes real ownership of strategic security in the age of globalization.

That is why the public debate about this war has been so important: It forces Americans to come to terms with what I believe is the new security paradigm that shapes this age, namely, Disconnectedness defines danger. Saddam Hussein's outlaw regime is dangerously disconnected from the globalizing world, from its rule sets, its norms, and all the ties that bind countries together in mutually assured dependence.

The problem with most discussion of globalization is that too many experts treat it as a binary outcome: Either it is great and sweeping the planet, or it is horrid and failing humanity everywhere. Neither view really works, because globalization as a historical process is simply too big and too complex for such summary judgments. Instead, this new world must be defined by where globalization has truly taken root and where it has not.

Show me where globalization is thick with network connectivity, financial transactions, liberal media flows, and collective security, and I will show you regions featuring stable governments, rising standards of living, and more deaths by suicide than murder. These parts of the world I call the Functioning Core, or Core. But show me where globalization is thinning or just plain absent, and I will show you regions plagued by politically repressive regimes, widespread poverty and disease, routine mass murder, and—most important—the chronic conflicts that incubate the next generation of global terrorists. These parts of the world I call the Non-Integrating Gap, or Gap.

Globalization's "ozone hole" may have been out of sight and out of mind prior to September 11, 2001, but it has been hard to miss ever since. And measuring the reach of globalization is not an academic exercise to an eighteen-year-old marine sinking tent poles on its far side. So where do we schedule the U. S. military's next round of away games? The pattern that has emerged since the end of the cold war suggests a simple answer: in the Gap.

The reason I support going to war in Iraq is not simply that Saddam is a cutthroat Stalinist willing to kill anyone to stay in power, nor because that regime has clearly supported terrorist networks over the years. The real reason I support a war like this is that the resulting long-term military commitment will finally force America to deal with the entire Gap as a strategic threat environment.


FOR MOST COUNTRIES, accommodating the emerging global rule set of democracy, transparency, and free trade is no mean feat, which is something most Americans find hard to understand. We tend to forget just how hard it has been to keep the United States together all these years, harmonizing our own, competing internal rule sets along the way—through a Civil War, a Great Depression, and the long struggles for racial and sexual equality that continue to this day. As far as most states are concerned, we are quite unrealistic in our expectation that they should adapt themselves quickly to globalization's very American-looking rule set.

But you have to be careful with that Darwinian pessimism, because it is a short jump from apologizing for globalization-as-forced-Americanization to insinuating—along racial or civilization lines—that "those people will simply never be like us." Just ten years ago, most experts were willing to write off poor Russia, declaring Slavs, in effect, genetically unfit for democracy and capitalism. Similar arguments resonated in most China-bashing during the 1990s, and you hear them today in the debates about the feasibility of imposing democracy on a post-Saddam Iraq—a sort of Muslims-are-from-Mars argument.

So how do we distinguish between who is really making it in globalization's Core and who remains trapped in the Gap? And how permanent is this dividing line?

Understanding that the line between the Core and Gap is constantly shifting, let me suggest that the direction of change is more critical than the degree. So, yes, Beijing is still ruled by a "Communist party" whose ideological formula is 30 percent Marxist-Leninist and 70 percent Sopranos, but China just signed on to the World Trade Organization, and over the long run, that is far more important in securing the country's permanent Core status. Why? Because it forces China to harmonize its internal rule set with that of globalization—banking, tariffs, copyright protection, environmental standards. Of course, working to adjust your internal rule sets to globalization's evolving rule set offers no guarantee of success. As Argentina and Brazil have recently found out, following the rules (in Argentina's case, sort of following) does not mean you are panicproof, or bubbleproof, or even recessionproof. Trying to adapt to globalization does not mean bad things will never happen to you. Nor does it mean all your poor will immediately morph into a stable middle class. It just means your standard of living gets better over time.

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While this is an interesting interpretation of the new American foreign policy objectives, it isn't difficult to find flaw with the first few paragraphs of this article.

If global integration is important to the peace, then it appears to be counter-productive to impose strict sanctions and aerial no-fly zones on a rogue nation. The sanctions in Iraq decimated the more affluent middle class in Iraq, which in turn widened the schism between Iraq's people and the thriving, global economy. Globalization is, in my opinion, not something that can or should be imposed upon nations; it should be used to seduce the people of a nation into appreciating how they can benefit from the stability and wealth that can be obtained through willfull integration. Military might will not woo the people of impoverished countries into eagerly jumping at the chance to join the global economy, and the reconstructive efforts will make the transition painful, at best. Needless to say, it will also unfairly burden the American people with the cost of war and reconstruction.

[Hoarmurath]

This thread needs controversy!

The author, at the end of the book, states a few "commandments" for the near future with regard to globalization.

In his concluding remarks, Barnett issues another series of commandments toward closing the Gap:
1. Re-creating and reconnecting Iraq to the global economy.
2. Removing North Korean leader Kim Jong-il and reunifying Korea.
3. The overthrow of the Iranian clerical leadership by 2010.
4. The establishment of the Free Trade Area of the Americas by 2015.
5. The transformation of the Middle East through the rehabilitation of Iraq.
6. The emergence of China as a peer of the United States.
7. An Asian counterpart to the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) by 2020.
8. The amalgamation of the Asian NATO with the original NATO and NAFTA (North American Free Trade Agreement) to create a Core-wide security alliance.
9. The admission of as many as a dozen new states into the US, initially from the Western Hemisphere, by 2050.
10. The rehabilitation of Africa into the world economy.

[Animalor]

9. The admission of as many as a dozen new states into the US, initially from the Western Hemisphere, by 2050.

Essentially what he's saying is take over Canada and Mexico

[Marbus]

This Hawk scares me... He has obviously never studied Rome, Greece, Persian or even English history.

Marb

[archeiron]

This Hawk scares me... He has obviously never studied Rome, Greece, Persian or even English history.

Marb

Marbus, I would counter that he probably has, and considers those to be good models for globalization (i.e. American Imperialism).

[Marbus]

You are right Arch, I should have been more specific... I just don't think the read the final chapter

Marb

[Rekaar.]

I don't think sanctions and military action are equivalent. This guy appears(?) to favor resolutions that get adhered to, and the use of force when they are not. His goal is to unite (conquer?) the world one rogue state a a time.

Really I suspect all of us would like a united world (however it should happen). I also see it as a reality, and he may even have the timetable right. The chronic problem with all the old empires in history was the absolute lack of available technology to keep communication with all of its holdings. Today that barrier is removed with everything from air travel to cell phones. The world has gotten a lot smaller since Alexander the Great.

Today the main challenge we would face in a truly globalized world is the lack of competition. We always need something to strive for (or against) else we fall into chaos. The reason the earth is always united in alien movies is because we can finally battle against something other than ourselves.

[noel]

I actually read quite a bit of this article in the magazine when it came out (it came out a while ago). I understand the position the author is arguing, but I don't agree with his conclusions.

There was a fairly good article in Men's Health this month by a Brit that talks about why US citizens scare him. I'll post the article if I can find it, but it could almost be taken as a counterpoint to the article in Esquire and to globalization in general.

[Forthe]

Franklin Roosevelt is rolling over in his grave.