tdaxp

While some communities prefer to celebrate this week with racist themes (whether Dia de la Raza or Native American Day), it properly is held in memory of Christophy Columbus, the Admiral of the Seas and the greatest explorer of all time. (Though a good argument can be made that it should be Ferdinand & Isabella Day, in commemoration of the granting agency.)

The success of Columbus is the success of markets and globalization. As the Mamaluke and Ottoman Sultans accelerated the decline of Islam by blockading the Silk Road connecting the Occident to the Orient, the Iberian monarchies attempted to find a new, oceanic route to the largest economies of the world. (Venice's failed strategy of negotiating via arms with the Turks to reopen the silk road ultimately becoming moot.) Christopher Columbus, granted three ships (the Nina, the Pinta, and the Santa Maria) eventually discovered the new world, though the hoped for landings in Calcutta, Nanjing, or Kyoto were not to be.

Others had crossed the oceans before. Those ex-Siberians we now call "American Indians" first of all, of course, and later Polynesians who brought chickens and endtrail readings too. The Vikings landed, fought, and died, the Basque were cathcing a lot of cod from somewhere, and there are the theories about Admiral Zheng He...

But Columbus, uniquely,ended the civilizational apartheid which had separated the Americas from the Old World since the end of the stone age migrations. Because of Columbus, and of course Ferdinand and Isabelle, the world changed. The barbarous empire of the Aztecs would soon fall, and even more importantly the English would follow in time, exporting the common law to the United States and Canada.

Thank you, Christopher Columbus.

My friend Jason of SDP emailed me yesterday, asking about genocide, globalization, and ideology. Specifically, considering that neither race nor society are going away, does globalization have a chance to end genocide?

My answer: Yes.

Genocide -- purposefully killing a large fraction of your own population -- only works when you can get away with it. This means that it has to be either profitable or at least not terribly costly. In Rwanda, for instance, the massacred Tutsis didn't just leave bodies behind -- they also had farmland that needed to be disposed of. (In parts of Rwanda where there were no Tutsis, the Hutu hordes helpfully killed fellow Hutus, accomplishing the same land reform without the ethnic overtones).

Likewise, the German attacks against the Jews in the 1930s and 1940s were enabled by the disintegrating world economy that allowed Germany to "go it alone" away from the discipline of international capital markets. In the first phase, the Nazi regime confiscated wealth from the Jewish upper-class to fund a growing welfare state. (If 1990s Rwanda was "land reform," then 1930s Germany was "capital reform.") After the War had started, Hitler's regime faced roughly equal costs in interning Jews and killing them. They chose the latter.

Certainly there are genocides -- mass butchery -- today. In Darfur, a nasty party of the nasty non-integration gap --- people kill each other as they have for the past few thousand years. In much of the western world, late-term abortion puts Herod to shame. But a Darfuri and an infant a month from birth have the same economic value to you -- zero -- so they aren't protected by the globalized order.

South Korea and U.S. reach free trade agreement. Associated Press. April 1, 2007. Available online: http://www.iht.com/articles/ap/2007/04/02/asia/AS-FIN-SKorea-US-Free-Trade.php.

Despite intense skepticism, the United States and South Korea reached an agreement on a future free trade deal. If ratified by both countries, the deal will be the largest in Korean history and the larges for America since NAFTA. Besides the obvious economic gains, this deal has very good strategic implications, as well.

A South Korea - American free trade agreement would two pillars of the core, East Asia and North America, closer together. It will be the second major free trade agreement under the Bush Administration (the first being the Central American Free Trade Agreement). Further, South Korea is greatly admired in China for being an oriental state that modernized without losing its traditional, Asian characteristics. Further connecting South Korea to America demonstrates to potentially warry Chinese that ever-increasing globalization between a Western and Oriental country can allow both to get materially richer without getting culturally worse.

Of course, stumbling blocks can still be thrown up. While most South Koreans support increased openness, left-wing factions linked to North Korean racist-isolationism have already held violation demonstrations. And in our own country, Democratic hostility to orientals is as typical of the rear-end of that party as is Republican hostility to latinos.

Definite props to President Bush for pushing things this far. Let's hope that the Democratic Congress passes the South Korea Free Trade Agreement as quickly as possible.

Update: One Free Korea has more.

Update 2: Thomas P.M. Barnett :: Weblog analyzes the deal in the context of ASEAN.

"The Book Is Flatulent: A Brief Review of Thomas L. Friedman's "The World Is Flat" Op-Ed," by Thomas Barnett, The Newsletter from Thomas P.M. Barnett, 20 June 2005, http://www.newrulesets.com/journals/barnett_20jun2005.pdf.

"Friedman’s excellent capture on why Iraq still matters--and still must be won," by Thomas Barnett, Thomas P.M. Barnett :: Weblog, 26 May 2006, http://www.thomaspmbarnett.com/weblog/archives2/003299.html.

After Tom Barnett's scortched earth review of Tom Friedman's The World is Flat, I was defensive. I had enjoyed the book, and expected Barnett (whose work is obviously influenced by Friedman's) to pen a positive review. Reading World was a wonderful vacation, and Tom Friedman and Tom Barnett are the two authors I advice my international relations students to read.

"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.

"Full Spectrum Struggle Is Not MBA Struggle," by Dan, tdaxp, 8 May 2005, http://tdaxp.blogspirit.com/archive/2005/05/08/full_spectrum_struggle_is_not_mba_struggle.html.

"QDR: China Tops Iraq, Osama?," by Noah Shachtman, Defense Tech, 23 January 2005, http://www.defensetech.org/archives/002110.html (from DNI),

"The Counterrevolution in Military Affairs ," by Ralph Peters, The Weekly Standard, 6 February 2006, http://www.weeklystandard.com/Content/Public/Articles/000/000/006/649qrsob.asp (from TPMB).

Months ago, I wrote:

Whether you are an army or a movement, you are attacked where you are weakest by someone else where they are strongest. They will exploit their advantage over you where they chose. Over and over again, this is how wars start. It's how battles start. It is how any conflict starts.

It's still true. Even if it means agreeing with the QDR and Rumsfeld. Even if it means disagreeing with Shactman and Peters

"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.

A House Divided, by Pearl S. Buck, pg 176, 1935.

Thus spake Ch'ao Tso:

Crime begins in poverty; poverty in insufficiency of food; insufficiency in neglect of tilling of the soil. Without such tilling, man has no tie to bind him to the soil. Without such a tie he readily leaves his birthplace and his home. Then he is like the birds of the air or the beasts of the field. Neither battlemented cities nor deep moats, nor harsh laws, nor cruel punishments, can subdue this roving spirit that is strong within him.

Exactly. Barnett's connectivity shares a lot with control. Horizontal connectivity -- information flow -- can open a man to the wide world or close him to his physical neighbors. Vertical connectivity -- security flow -- can provide safety or destroy social bonds.

Much of the world is being disrupted by globalization. In the short term we are seeing an ugly side of it -- horizontal connectivity destroying horizontal control (the erosion of traditional cultures), and vertical connectivity building vertical controls -- (the worse parts of neocolonialism).

Ch'ao Tsu's quote ties economics into our efforts. The Gap's blasted economies prevent strong horizontal ties and leave the region in chaos. But reckless food distribution would be just as bad. Mass welfare to a third of teh world would wreck what little horizontal control there is. A stable world requies a stable economy: globalization is the solution to the Global War on Terrorism.

Last, the philosopher reminds us that horizontal ties are stronger than vertical ties. We need to remember this, and beware of vertical measures that harm horizontal society. Health mullahs, by converting implicit horizontal rules into explicit vertical ones, weaken society and threaten to destroy our culture.