tdaxp

"Force Structure Will Change," by Thomas Barnett and Henry Gaffney, Proceedings, October 2000, pp 30-34, http://www.thomaspmbarnett.com/published/forcestruc.htm

"A Hammer Looking for Nails: The Gap, the Core, and the Final Frontier," interview with Thomas Barnett, Raeson, 1 November 2004, http://www.thomaspmbarnett.com/interviews/RaesonInterview.pdf.

"Viral in-coring: Seoul to Beijing," by Thomas Barnett, Thomas P.M. Barnett :: Weblog, 4 January 2006, http://www.thomaspmbarnett.com/weblog/archives2/002774.html.

"http://www.thomaspmbarnett.com/glossary.htm," Thomas P.M. Barnett, downloaded 8 April 2006, http://www.thomaspmbarnett.com/glossary.htm.

In this post I will try to put together an operationalization and some alternate rival hypotheses for Tom Barnett's PNM Theory.



I need to finish a research design for my Scopes & Methods class. The rough draft was on traditional geopolitics, but needed considerably work. I kicked around ways to to save it, yet I had trouble focusing on writing that just doesn't matter. I learn so much more from blog writing than class writing that I find myself looking forward to typing in new posts, but assignments are drudgery.

Until the obvious hit me: write it as a blog post! It's not a good blog post -- it's actually the perfect combination that doesn't work either as a tdaxp post or as something I could hand in -- but at least it gets me motivated. So today's work discusses the Research Question, Independent Variable, Dependent Variables, and Alternate Research Hypotheses required to operationalize the Gap.

I would also like to acknowledge the work of Catholicgauze, Chicago Boys, Coming Anarchy [1, 2, 3] and The Glittering Eye in "mapping the gap." Those posts were inspirational.

"The Wave Theory of Core and Gap," by David, The Glittering Eye, 28 March 2006, http://theglitteringeye.com/?p=1870 (from ZenPundit).

"When the Chinese were our friends...," by Tom Barnett, Thomas P.M. Barnett :: Weblog, 4 April 2006, http://www.thomaspmbarnett.com/weblog/archives2/003131.html.

"In Pictures: French Protests," BBC News, 4 April 2006, http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/in_pictures/4876616.stm.

In the Second World War, China was our ally:

In this global war on terrorism, she is again.

The American horror writer Howard Phillips Lovecraft is a favorite of tdaxp. His writings has been used humorously to illustrate Chinese and American censorship, while his work is an anchor of "Dreaming 5th Generation War." So I was delighted when Catholicgauze snet me "From Beyond: H.P. Lovecraft and the Place of Horror" by Dr. James Kneale of University College London.

The article is quite good and worth reading, but makes Catholicgauze ask: "But where exactly is the between space?"

Good question!

Continue reading for a discussion on charts and hyperspace...

Note: This is part of an example political science literature review and research design. An abstract and table of contents are also available.

A useful segue between geographic and ex-Communist factors is found in Teune (1995). Teune surveys the rise of local governments relative to centralizing governments, using the declining influence of Moscow over eastern Europe and Russia as examples. In contrast to Williams who sees local differences as a cause for oppression and autocracy, Teune sees local power as very strong and democratic. Territoriality matters, says Teune, "even after the gradual opening of national borders in the second half of the twentieth century and the near encapsulation of the entire world in a single trading system." Additionally, territorially based localities lean democratic.

The linkage between local government and democracy is based on the proposition that political participation is meaningful insofar as it deals with the familiar, a tenet of the Federalist Papers. Another aspect of this argument is that the incentives for participation are stronger locally than nationally in that visible consequence are more visible and immediate on the local level. There are two supporting propositions for this part of the argument: the larger the political unit, the longer it takes to form a democratic political coalitions; and the larger the unit, the greater the diversity of the groups and individuals required for compromise, the less likely decisive action will be taken at all, frustrating the collective aspirations of the many." (Teune)

"DoD Directive 3000 put in the context of Iraq," by Thomas Barmett, Thomas P.M. Barnett :: Weblog, 4 January 2005, http://www.thomaspmbarnett.com/weblog/archives2/002778.html.

"Viral in-coring: Seoul to Beijing," by Thomas Barmett, Thomas P.M. Barnett :: Weblog, 4 January 2005, http://www.thomaspmbarnett.com/weblog/archives2/002774.html.

"The China trajectory the hawks never see," by Thomas Barnett, Thomas P.M. Barnett :: Weblog, 6 January 2005, http://www.thomaspmbarnett.com/weblog/archives2/002782.html.

In Embracing Victory, I argued that the main engine of globalization is the civilian-led reverse domino theory. A Military-Industrial-Leviathan-Complex prevents a country from spending the wealth it gains from globalization on a war which would threaten globalization. From time-to-time, however, we want to protect the innocent without having middle class people sacrifice For these times when regime change is needed, we need a Military-Industrial-SysAdmin-Complex to give us the freedom to act. Recent posts by Dr. Barnett support this view.

On the need for a Military-Industrial-Leviathan-Complex

From clothes to hairstyles, music to television dramas, South Korea has been defining the tastes of many Chinese and other Asians for the past half decade. As part of what the Chinese call the Korean Wave of pop culture, a television drama about a royal cook, "The Jewel in the Palace," is garnering record ratings throughout Asia, and Rain, a 23-year-old singer from Seoul, drew more than 40,000 fans to a sold-out concert at a sports stadium in Beijing in October.

But South Korea's "soft power" also extends to the material and spiritual spheres. Samsung's cellphones and television sets have grown into symbols of a coveted consumerism for many Chinese.

Christianity, in the evangelical form championed by South Korean missionaries deployed throughout China, is finding Chinese converts despite Beijing's efforts to rein in its spread.

For a country that traditionally received culture, especially from China but also from Japan and the United States, South Korea finds itself at a turning point in its new role as exporter.

...

You laugh, but when you're moving as fast as China, you're bringing up a whole lot more than incomes; you're raising an entire society, in effect schooling it on how to behave with its new-found wealth.

I stick with my prediction in the "Blogging the Future" afterward in BFA: we will be amazed at how religious China is within a generation. And we'll have South Korea to thank for it.

This is why the Reverse Domino Theory is Barnett's most important strategy. We must keep encourage China to grow richer and discourage China from growing more belligerent. Encouraging China to open up to her neighbors let's us do the first part of this. Maintaining a Leviathan that can easily blow the Chinese fleet out of the water is the second. And we maintain a Leviathan with a Military-Industrial-Leviathan-Complex which incentivizes politicians to keep our "big stick" strong.

Dr. Barnett correctly sees where China is going

Me, I see a clear trajectory with China: day-in and day-out it slowly but surely opens up its precious "communist" economy to outside economic influence and connectivity. Its political leadership, which is clearly autocratic, increasingly lets that process of growing connectivity drive a comprehensive and profound transformation of its internal economic rule sets, while trying desperately to keep itself insulated from the pluralistic impulses that process inevitably unleashes throughout society, but especially among the youth.

Our Leviathan is like mother's milk to peacefully rising China: the MILC of our Military-Industrial-Leviathan-Complex. Instead of trying to "shake" the greed from our system, the MILC funnels it into deterring a violent China from ever emerging.

On the Need for a Military-Industrial-SysAdmin-Complex

"In the future, there is always going to be a need for a lot of deployable civilian capacity," said Jeb Nadaner, deputy assistant secretary of defense for stability operations. "Think of all capabilities you need in stability missions." He envisions the new State Department office coordinating contributions from departments as diverse as Treasury, Commerce, Justice and Agriculture.

Almost like a virtual department? Hmm, my dream for the DoEE.

Instead of a shapeless, "virtual" Department of Everything Else, Barnett's should focus on the need and not the obvious bureaucratic solution.

The need is a lot of deployable capacity for nation-building-type work. We need networks of private sector security contracts. The Department of Defense should be the hub for this, but saying it will have "departments as diverse as Treasury, Commerce, Justice and Agriculture" is like saying "A Free Market is run by bureaucrats as diverse as Treasury Commerce, Justice, and Agriculture."

For everything else, we don't need a department. We need a MISC: A Military-Industrial-SysAdmin-Complex.

Yesterday I was describing the advantages of network theory to a horizontally-thinking scientist of American Politics who is into evolutionary psychology and game theory, when like magic Mark Safranski has the perfect post:

Something new is coming and many of the old tools for political and strategic analysis are not going to be enough. We cannot throw them out entirely - Realpolitik, Liberalism, Game Theory - all retain their uses but it is becoming evident that these traditional paradigms do not suffice to explain al Qaida 's behavior much less its next move. We need to look at the world systemically as interrelationships of dynamic networks and include concepts like "emergence", " resilience" and "consilience" on our intellectual palette. The deep methodological compartmentalization that prevails in the social sciences and between science and the humanities must be abandoned if we are to see the world more clearly. Power laws govern more widely than at just the nano level.

A new world requires, if not new eyes, at least some new vision.

Mark also mentions tdaxp's old philosopher, Jose Ortega y Gasset

The aristocratic class structure of Great Britain broke at the Somme, lingering on only in form but not in substance. The First World War ended cultural illusions about the nature of Western society as Europe followed democratic America and socialist Russia and openly entered Ortega y Gasset's new age of the Mass-man. The power of thoroughly "massified" modern societies enlisted for war dwarfed even the Great War and was carried out to its logical conclusion at Hiroshima. The twentieth century was, a root, an era of zero-sum conflict on the grand strategic scale. Philip Bobbitt terms it " The Long War" which balances the " Long Peace" that had followed Waterloo.

Mr. OyG has been on tdaxp before:

The more relations between two entities, the more quality the relationship has. A song cannot have "quality" by itself, just as a listener cannot have "quality." The song and the listener make the quality together.

Technically, our semantic network is just a more complex version of our original E-R diagram

Quality is the Relation between two Entities

but by breaking down the relation into semantic relationships, we see so much more.

Also note that your semantic network determines the quality you will experience. This is another way of saying that your relations define you. As Pirsig wrote

In a sense, he said, it's the student's choice of Quality that defines him. People differ about Quality, not because Quality is different, but because people are different in terms of experience. He speculated that if two people had identical a priori analogues they would see Quality identically every time. There was no way to test this, however, so it had to remain just speculation.

Quality makes life worth living. Quality makes life. What a dry meaningless horror the world would be if we were alone!

The Jesuit-educated Ortega y Gasset said the same thing

I am myself and my circumstance

Read more on our networked future.

In less than 24 hours I completed Freakonomics: A Rogue Economist Explains the Hidden Side of Everything. Mark Safranski already summarized Freakonomics better than I could, so my "buy this book" post will be a graphical summary of one of the chapters: Why Do Drug Dealers Still With Their Moms?

A heroic grad student named Sudhir Venkatesh worked with a crack cocaine gang -- the Black Gangster Disciple Nation -- for several years. After attempting to pass out a survey, which began

How do you feel about being black and poor?

(a) Very bad
(b) Bad
(c) Neither bad nor good
(d) Somewhat Good
(e) Very good

Which, besides displaying a lack of symmetry between (b) and (d), left off the correct answer ((f) Fuck you) and almost got young Sudhir killed.

Slowly, though, Sudhir gained their trust, and discovered the corporate structure of the street toughts.

At the top of the pinacle where the Board of Directors, whose twenty boardmen each earned half a million dollars a year. Life was good for a Director



Below the Board of Directors are the regional Franchisees. Operating like Sheiks, they grossed around $400,000 a year. However, with the Franchisee's autonomy comes fiscal responsibility. Most of the franchisee's income has to be spent on expenses, letting the franchisee net $100,000 a year.



The Franchise of the Black Gangster Disciple Nation studied then had three officers: An Enforcer, who shared acted like Barnett's SysAdmin, maintaining peace from internal threats



A treasurer who, just like in Hall Governments, kept charge of the organization's money



And a Runner, in charge of logistics.



The annual salary of three officers was $8,000 per year each.



Below the officers were 500 Foot Soldiers. But like the groundtroops of the System Administrator, their job is not violence. As the local Franchisee reported:

We try to tell these shorties that they belong to a serious organization... It ain't all about killing. They see these movies and shit, and they think it's all about running around tearing shit up. But it's not. You've got to learn to be part of an organization; you can't be fighting all the time. It's bad for business.

Like Barnett's SysAdmin, the foot soldiers are mostly "private sector" -- their true job is salesman. Each of the 50 Foot Soldiers earned $3,960 (yes, much less than minimum wage) every year.



Below the Foot Soldiers are 200 "rank and file." These interns wish to rise to the level of Foot Soldier, and pay dues for the chance to one-day rise up the corporate ladder.



To graph annual income, for an average Director, an average Franchisee, and average Officer, an average Foot Soldier, and an average Rank & File:

Graphically, we can chart the organization structure as:



Or more traditionally, looking at the organizational structure as a "flow of security"



Realizing we can look at the "hierarchy" as just one type of flow, it becomes obvious we can chart the "flow of capital" as well:



Which opens questions about the political economy of crack cocaine gangs...



However, in Black Gangster Disciple Nation's defense, foot soldiers do make up the single largest payroll expense for their gang



One might note that if the Black Gangster Disciple Nation is typical of corporate-style crime, John Robb's suggestions are dangerously wrong.

Interested in learning more? Buy the book.

Update: Stephen J. Dubner, a highly respected journalist and co-author of Freakonomics, was kind enough to link to me on the Freakonomics blog

Dr. Steven D. Levitt, Professor of Economics at the University of Chicago, as well as the other co-author of Freakonomics, was kind enough to comment below.

Update: Over at John Robb, Jamie links to this critique of this gangster of Freakonomics

They do present some anecdotal evidence that the gangsters were not well paid that doesn't depend on the notebooks, but it's if anything even weaker. The simple fact that someone lives with his mother is not actually knockdown proof that he is strapped for cash; something like thirty per cent of young Italian men do it for the simple reason that it's better than cooking and cleaning for yourself. I also think it's quite naïve to assume that when the gang members (who were, we shall remember, full-time drug dealers) asked Venkatesh to try and get them a janitorial job at the university, this showed that anything, even cleaning toilets on minimum wage, was a better life than the Gangster Disciples. I am hardly the most streetwise guy around, but even I can work out a couple of other possible reasons why a full time drug dealer might want a job which allowed him to wander round a university campus more or less at will. Students buy drugs[5].

Furthermore, even if we take the numbers in the notebooks as reliable, we are faced with the observable fact that crack dealers (even street soldiers) have expensive tastes and hobbies. Even leaving aside the question of trainers and jewelery (on which I have no hard data about ownership to argue against Levitt), it is an undeniable fact that even the most junior members of the Gangster Disciples were able to engage in the hobby of pistol shooting, a popular but expensive middle-class pastime which I would consider to normally be beyond the means of a burger-flipper at McDonalds. The non-salary compensation of JT's street dealers might be really quite high; access to guns, free admission to nightclubs, favorable deals on stolen goods and clothing, regular social events with local rappers, it all adds up and compares really quite well to the fast food trade, and as far as I can see the informal healthcare plan was also quite generous compared to most mainstream employers in that it covered family members and had substantial death-in-service benefits which would have been worth quite a lot in a neighborhood that was not exactly Hampstead even for non-gang members. I find the seeming absence of any analysis of the non-salary component of compensation quite strange, particularly since the underlying work was done working with a sociologist who would at least have some analytical framework which one might use to measure the value of the benefit to the gang member of being in a gang and thus having some degree of status in a community where status mattered.

Read the whole thing


Interested in the graphics used in this post? Inkscape, OpenClipart, OpenOffice Draw, and Paint.Net are all free -- as in speech!

Note: This is part of a series of reviews for Blueprint for Action. The introduction and table of contents are also available.

You Wanted More," by Tonic, American Pie: Music from the Motion Picture, 29 June 1999, http://tdaxp.blogspirit.com/archive/2005/11/17/lyrics-for-you-wanted-more-by-tonic-from-the-american-pie-so.html [buy the cd].

"Blueprint for Action: A Future Worth Creating," by Thomas Barnett, 20 October 2005, http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0399153128/102-4292267-8637755?v=glance [author blog].

"The Gaps in 'Globalism,'" by Curtis Gale Weeks, Phatic Communion, 15 November 2005, http://www.phaticcommunion.com/archives/2005/11/the_gaps_in_glo.php (featured on ZenPundit).

"Essentially, then, the "connectivity" is really the building of cheesecloth," by Curtis Gale Weeks, tdaxp, 16 November 2005, http://tdaxp.blogspirit.com/archive/2005/11/13/blueprint-for-divisiveness.html#c355860.

---

I don't know when I got bitter
Love is surely better when it's gone
Because you wanted more
More than I could handle
And a life that I can't live"
- Tonic, "You Wanted More"

"The train's engine can't travel any faster than the caboose."
- Thomas PM Barnett, "Blueprint for Action"

---

My previous reviews of Dr. TPM Barnett's Blueprint for Action: A Future Worth Creating have been negative. I have criticized him for questionable statements on the ICC and his blindness to the consequences of highlighting the socially liberal parts of his philosophy. It is this last review that CGW objects to

As he comments at tdaxp

As long as gaps are built in the process of globalization, it will not be globalization -- even if the gaps are made diffuse throughout the world rather than allowed to follow the "old borders" of the "old, unglobalized world" as they now do.

More technically, Curtis writes on his own blog that

A lack of connectivity, of feeling equal relevance within a system, produces opponents to that system; and, self-destructive behaviors by individuals within a system — such as drug abuse and financial insolvency — inhibit the overall economic success of the entire system.

Specifically, he is referring to homosexualists:

Dan’s reasoning is, in a nutshell, this: We can’t reasonably expect to entice homophobic nations into increased connectivity with the U.S. if we list “homosexual rights” as one of our core values.

...

for gay men and lesbians and their families, the concern is not at all petty; but the globalist designs of some would disregard it for the sake of expediency

By "homophobic nations" Curtis seems to mean "political societies without substantial pro-homosexualist elements." His prescription, while very well written, is wrong and dangerous.
First, and most worrying for Mr. Weeks, would be who such homosexualist policies would encourage in the Gap, the Seam, and the New Core. In Blueprint for Action Dr. Barnett writes of a general male preference for religious parties, and a general female preference for order parties:

While men tend to vote according to religion and ethnicity in such situations, women tend to vote for those candidates who represent law and order. (258)

But as elections in Egypt



and Iraq show, women will support religious parties in large numbers. And they will vote for reactionary parties.

You want fast, efficient, and popular "law and order" Sharia? Push homosexualism.

The danger is, of course, that the stronger forms of connectivity (economic, technological [and cultural! -- tdaxp]) will trigger disagreements and crises that overwhelm the two sides' ability to handle them, given their limited political understanding and security bonds. Here, mistakes can be made, because perceptions different greatly, no matter ow compelling the underlying economic rationales. (238)

You want the forces of good to win the Muslim Civil War? Be patient.,

Rome wasn't built in a day, and it wasn't built as a democracy [and certainly not as a "progressive" society! -- tdaxp]. (236)

at home:

There are plenty of political leaders in the Core who understand all too well that the real struggle is not between Islam and the West but with Islam regarding its convergence with the West and the historical forces of globalization. Nonetheless, plenty of these same politicians cannot exhibit the same patient at home that they might demand of American or European foreign policy in the Middle East... but again, can we show the necessary patience to let Muslims [and traditionalists generally -- tdaxp] living the West make these necessary changes on their own schedule, or must we force confrontations and showdowns? (293-294)

and abroad

The one danger that all advocates of globalization recognize as threatening its existence is merely the divergence between winners and losers, both within states and among them.
What can prevent these splits from overwhelming globalization's progress? Rules. The most important are rules within states that mandate -- in my phrase -- that the train's engine (globalization's winners) can't travel any faster than the caboose (globalization's losers). (255)

You want to win the Global War on Terrorism? Acknowledge that the world isn't perfectly built to suit your desires, and work with the powers that are, both in the New Core

[Wrong reactions to 9/11] also decrease a lot of useful social, economic, and political connectivity with New Core pillars right now when we should be drawing them closer. (231)

and the Gap

Is [the Islamic world] a civilization that just wants to be left alone or fears being left behind?

I believe it is the latter, and that, as many experts on the region point out, the revival of religiosity throughout the Gulf area reflects a population's desire not simply to resist our cultural "pollution" but to find some way to deal with undesired influences while adapting to much-needed and greatly desired economic connectivity that virtually all citizens there hope will lead to political pluralism over time. (270)

... not the imaginary homosexualist street that you might wish exists

My rage is not the type of rage that will seek outlet in instigating riots, or committing murder or acts of terrorism, or, now, in self-destructive behavior. Yet many in this American Gap might do these things, particularly self-destruct. A lack of connectivity, of feeling equal relevance within a system, produces opponents to that system; and, self-destructive behaviors by individuals within a system — such as drug abuse and financial insolvency — inhibit the overall economic success of the entire system. Current moves to ban gay marriage and continuing efforts to allow the discrimination against gays in the workforce are moves to institutionalize long-sustained gaps — a reaction against the greater connectivity of gays within American society — and are thus not terribly different in motive from the isolationist reactions of some state leaders or the terrorist groups who seek world dominance in order to avert the influences which come with globalization. They are the establishment of an exclusionary status quo which benefits most those who support that status quo. (Weeks)

Criticizing the "globalist plan that seeks increased international connectivity while disregarding internal gaps," Curtis Gale Weeks would ignore the "expediency" of disregarding homosexualist concerns in order to focus on other things. But it's not "expediency": it's the economy-of-force. Our enemy wants to alienate potential friends from us. The Weeks plan plays into that. We should stand up to al Qaeda and forge cultural connectivity.

If we eventually lose the Global War on Terrorism, an active policy homosexualism will join our support for the Saudi Tyranny and and the Drug War as...

... just another one of those crazy American obsessions that generate a lot of suffering and death distant from our shores... (Barnett 242)

Indeed, Dr. Barnett writes that the war of ideas is so problematic as to be a fight wort avoiding

Second, we should abandon efforts to create a U.S. Government-wide "strategic communication policy" designed to win the "hearts and minds" of young males inside the Gap who are perceived to be at risk for becoming terrorists. Such an approach only references the notion that somehow globalization is really all about Americanization, when it isn't. We have no more need to explain ourselves culturally or politically to the Gap than do the citizens of Brazil, China, or India, three countries whose competitive rise in the global economy increasingly presents more challenges to Gap states than do the policies of an established Core power like America. (231-232)

Attacking traditional cultures with the homosexualism is especially disastrous because, while attempts to export progressivism will fail, alienating those cultures that CGW calls "homophobic" destroys the visceral attraction that globalization should have

That sense of globalism, or a belief in the inherent goodness of connectivity, is what drives globalization's advance far more than either technology or the rare instances where military power is exerted. (254)

If homosexualists want to "connect" the world into their beliefs, they should wait as Barnett suggests...

So when a country has achieved a fairly broadband economic connectivity for its population, the discussion shifts from the quantity of connectivity (How much globalization?) to the quality of that connectivity (What mix of globalization?). (194)

Especially as efficient legal codes such as Sharia are enticing anyway...

Connectivity with the outside world generates higher transaction rates between the local economy and the global one. Those higher transaction rates demand a more efficient response from the government's legal system over time, forcing reform and maturation of the economic rule set, with the most important ones being property rights and contract law. (260)

.. as a means of society glue: connecting a society with itself.

Well, we shouldn't be surprised that an era that demands a grand strategy of shrinking the Gap would go hand in hand with a renewed focus on proselytizing global faiths.

...

Yesterday's Protestant work ethic defined capitalism's rise in the Core, providing what political scientist Robert Putnam calls "bonding social capital" that knits an existing community together, but today's Protestant evangelicalism may well define capitalism's ultimate triumph in the Gap, providing the "bridging social capital" that links faith-based communities throughout the Core to similar ones inside the Gap. So not only will the twenty-first century's religiosity far outpace that of the twentieth, to the amazement of social scientists the world over, the ultimate impact of more religion will not be sectarian violence designed to drive religious communities apart, but rather increased social and political connectivity between Core and Gap that will definitely speed up the convergence of civilizations and -- by doing so -- facilitate globalization's spread around the planet. (298-299)

Curtis Gale Weeks is concerned about international and intranational connectivity, but he focuses on secular-social-sexual connectivity. Political Religion has a real shot at being central to the new globalization, and provoking reactionaries by trying to go too fast could create a world many would not enjoy.

So perhaps all social liberals have to do is wait a generation or so before they can safely export their ideology to the Gap

If a Gap state simply hasn't developed to the point where it can handle the onslaught of connectivity that globalization provides, a Go Slow ideology makes sense; otherwise we're talking about the high likelihood that outside forces will take advantage of the lack of sufficient rule sets within a society to lock in unfair transactions [such as strict Islamic Law -- tdaxp]... (195)

and that once a country is rich, all the dreams of a progressive politics will be realized

It's only when the bulk of a society's economic development reaches a certain plateau, typically between $5,000 and $10,000 per capita GDP, that you begin to see the public start becoming more demanding of pluralism and openness from its government. (195)

Well, maybe



While I have criticized parts of Blueprint for Action before, Barnett is right that we can't expect everything now. Connectivity-fundamentalism -- forcing every society to be as "open" as every other -- isn't just a false definition of connectivity and globalization..

Should [globalization] be feared by the world for its homogenization of culture? I guess that would depend on whether you think California is a carbon copy of Alabama or that Texas and Massachusettes are indistinguishable. Convergence does not result in homogenity, but in a superficial of external similarities, much like that light brown face that will someday define the bulk of the American population. (289)

... it's a dangerous one. The Blueprint for Action is a plan for "winning" over decades, not years. Attempts to speed up the world victory of one's pet political projects are likely to end in tears. The Phatic Communion apologetic for homosexualist agitation is exactly what is not needed...

... except for the enemies of freedom, like al Qaeda, "state leaders or the terrorist groups who seek world dominance in order to avert the influences which come with globalization." They'd love us to go 200 km / h. And it would be as deadly for us as driving in the wrong lane.

Note: This is part of a series of reviews for Blueprint for Action. The introduction and table of contents are also available.

"Blueprint for Action: A Future Worth Creating," by Thomas Barnett, 20 October 2005, http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0399153128/102-4292267-8637755?v=glance [author blog]

"I am glad to see...," by Jeff, tdaxp, 13 November 2005, http://tdaxp.blogspirit.com/archive/2005/11/12/barnett-wrong-on-international-criminal-court-independence-f.html#c349284.

A comment by Jeff of Caerdroia provides a perfect segue for the second part of my Blueprint for Action multi-review

Commenting on Tom Barnett's questionable words on the International Criminal Court, Jeff wrote:

I am glad to see Dr. Barnett in PNM (I haven't read the new one yet) trying to find a positive liberal approach to the world. I disagree with him in certain aspects (his excessive optimism regarding China, and failure to see evidence that weighs against his brilliant insight of drawing a circle around the places where the US has intervened and looking for commonalities between the included and excluded parts, and so forth), but I am glad to see the attempt being made. If a muscular Left is to return in the US, this kind of effort is vital.

Indeed, Dr. Barnett doesn't hide being a liberal hawk. While Dr. Barnett's quixotic Kerryism-Rumsfeldism is a perfect defensible position (well, maybe), Dr. Barnett seems to have trouble decided whether he wants Blueprint for Action to be grand-strategy or liberal-strategy.

Take an excerpt from the best writing in the entire work: a commanding speech stretching from page 178 ("No one gets off free in this conflict...") to 180 ("...and are willing to defend what they've earned.").

Smack-dab in the middle of it, on page 179:

What I find so hilarious in this is the assumption of the Old Core types that their rejection of these ideas represents their death kneel, when nothing's further from the truth.

Here's a good example why: While Old Core Europe and Japan are more than a little bit tempted by Osama bin Laden's offer of civilizational apartheid, both the United States and the New Core pillars understand what a false promise this truly is. America instinctively rejects the offer because., as citizens of the world's free multinational economic and political union, we simply can't accept the nation of a world thus divided. As a society blended from all civilizations, the very notion of such separatism is simply repulsive to our citizenry. For if such cultural apartheid really made sense, most of American history would have unfolded in vain -- the Civil War, the suffragist movement, organized labor, civil rights, gay rights, and so on.

I read the section to each of my classes the week I read it, and got very good conversations out of it. While I had to change some phrases to match our text and their prior knowledge ("the Core" became "The Global North" or "the rich countries," "the Gap" because "the Global South" or "the poor countries," "the New Core" become "the new rising countries," etc) I was very happy with the passage.

With the exception of the last half of the last quoted sentence.

Ultimately, I replaced it with:

For if such cultural apartheid really made sense, most of American history would have unfolded in vain -- the Civil War, democracy, civil rights, and so on."

Keeping Dr. Barnett's original list, especially "gay rights," would have distracted the issue away from his vision of "shrinking the Gap" and "ending war as we know it" to divisive and petty domestic concerns.

I have used concepts from Barnett in my classes this semester, and the student reaction has been extremely positive. One student reacted by approaching tears, asking "Why weren't we just told this earlier? It make so much sense." (I remember a similar response from a CSPAN caller once.) The materialism of student reaction surprised me (most students instinctively latched on to economy growth as the reason to defend globalization), showing that they already had the "New Core" mindset Dr. Barnett predicts for America.

Tom Barnett can be a wonderful writer, and his work overlaps well with our discussions of sovereignty, international organizations, and political economy.

I decided not to allow conversation like that to be hijacked by Dr. Barnett's tone-deafness.

Worse, it is not just Nebraska undergraduates who will be reading Blueprint for Action. The people we most need to reach -- New Core citizens in pivotal states -- are the ones he is most likely to alienate.

One of my friends was an several-times-promoted officer in the Islamic Republic of Iran Air Force. He fits the stereotype of the modern Iranian: blaspheming, shaven, pork-eating, beer-drinking, dancing, etc. He was delighted when a friend still in Iran gave him this satiric picture of the "beloved" (heavy sarcasm) President Ahmednajad:



And his views on homosexualism would make Jerry Falwell blanch.

My purpose in this post is not to advocate capital punishment for sodomy. Indeed, as someone who referred to the weird, oddly-worded, and shellfish-strewn, wreckages in Leviticus" I oppose sodomy laws and "virtue" laws generally.

But the way to shrink the Gap is not to ruin your best work with domestic politics and is not to alienate the very progressive forces in New Core countries that globalization depends on.

The Barnett of Blueprint for Action is not the Barnett I first saw on CSPAN.

He still can spark a conversation, though.

"Geography and Foreign Policy, I," by Nicholar Spykman, The American Political Science Review, Vol 32 No 1, February 1938, http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=0003-0554%28193802%2932%3A1%3C28%3AGAFPI%3E2.0.CO%3B2-9.

I've always loved past predictions of the future. I remember watching shorts on the Disney Channel in the early mornings, presenting the potential of America and California in the 1950s. An article in Wired years ago with the phrease "I Remember San-San" still strikes my heart, even if I can no longer find that article, or the book it reviewed.

So imagine my delight when I came across this passage from an article by Dr. Spykman from 1938

The same lack of systems of communications, coupled in the case of China with a complete absence of industrial technique, has so far kept both Brazil and China from effectively integrating their vast territories. There is little escape from the conclusion that size means potential strength, and that with the diffusion of Western technology great size plus time and a will to power will almost inevitably mean actual strength. Unless the dreams of European Confederation should materialize, it may well be that fifty years from now the qudarumvirate of world powers will be China, India, the United States, and the U.S.S.R.

While the Russians for a time secured an Outer Empire, both that and the Russian Middle Empire have sinced faded away, while the Inner Empire dies. Still...

• An emphasis on connectivity
  
• A combination of old (US, European) and new (Indian, Chinese, Brazillian?) powers
  
• A focus on spreading technology

That was (and is) a future worth creating.

Update: Chirol goes back even further in time to the era of Prime Minister George W. Gladstone:

Remember the rights of the savage, as we call him. Remember that the happiness of his humble home, remember that the sanctity of life in the hill villages of Afghanistan among the winter snows, are as sacred in the eye of Almighty God as are your own. (Loud cheers). Remember that He who has united you together as human beings in the same flesh and blood, has bound you by the law of mutual love, that that mutual love is not limited by the shores of this island, is not limited by the boundaries of Christian civilisation, that it passes over the whole surface of the earth, and embraces the meanest along with the greatest in its wide scope