Thomas P.M. Barnett

[kandrathe]

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The present 'development' regime that applies the same peg to every hole is no resource to draw on as proof of past success, and should be no inspiration for future plans.
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I can't believe that the safety net of the World Bank, low interest loans, investment, development, and extensive debt relief by western nations have not been extremely helpful in SE Asia. I believe the catalyst for all that is happening there can be traced back to the nation building that occured in Japan after WWII. The point is that with economic aid, there is a long legacy and a plan, even if that plan gets rewritten, it is a basis for progress.

I don't think Dr. Barnett advocates a cookie cutter approach, but that eventually more and more nations are joining the "core", however they arrive at that level of security. If you look at the former Yugoslavia, parts of it were ready and others are working toward it. Perhaps with Iraq, the northern Kurds, and the Southern Shiites are ready, with the region around Baghdad lagging until they move through some more extensive transition to achieve security. Interestingly, one key he mentions for our success in the Middle East is a thawing or relations with Iran, where he believes we need to develop to become the economic juggernaut of the region.

Things can change drastically, if the conditions for change exist. Whoever thought 20 years ago that Russia would desire a market economy and to join NATO? Whoever thought that a thriving market economy was possible in China? How about an EU? Or, Turkey and Greece as EU partners? Or, Egypt, Jordan and Isreal as development partners in Gaza?

But rather than suppose what Dr. Barnett thinks about globalization, I found his own words more eloquent;

The bath water called al Queda

by Thomas "I'm a reductionist, and damn proud of it!" P.M. Barnett

I spend a chapter (#4, The Core and the Gap) in my book presenting what I know is a rather simplistic and clearly reductionist model of globalization as four key flows worth preserving and keeping in balance. My basic notion is that the U.S. and other great powers must do whatever it takes to allow these resources to continue flowing from those regions where they exist in abundance to those regions where they are scarce. My four flows, detailed first in my article with Hank Gaffney entitled "The Global Transaction Strategy" are as follows:

  1. People have to flow from the Gap to the Core, as the latter ages demographically.

  2. Energy has to flow from the Gap to the New Core especially (specifically, Developing Asia), where energy use will double in the next two decades.

  3. Foreign direct investment needs to flow from the Old Core (U.S., Europe, Japan) to the New Core (especially China, Russia, and India) in order to enable their further integration into the Core.

  4. Finally, security has to flow from the Old Core (especially from the system Leviathan known as the U.S.) to the Gap, with a special emphasis in the near- and mid-term on the Middle East due to its central role as breeding ground for transnational terrorism and as the major source of energy for Developing Asia.

Those are the four flows: security, money, energy, and people. Keep 'em in balance and globalization will continue to progress. Screw any one of them with this Global War on Terrorism and we can end up killing globalization just like we did back in the 1930s.
Here is the story from the Wall Street Journal (28 March): "Geopolitical Fears Hurt Stocks." It's about stock markets falling over much of the world as a result of recent events.

Here's the quote I like. It's the first paragraph in the article:
"When investors focus more on world instability than on business fundamentals, stocks tend to fall. That is what happened yesterday, as the Dow Jones Industrial Average gave up almost 122 points amid worries about terrorism, Asian stability and the price of oil."

When I go on and on in my book about the need to get off thinking about war solely within the context of war and instead start thinking about war within the context of everything else, this is exactly the sort of every-day linkage I'm talking about. I once described this linkage from A to Z in a Decalogue ("Asia: The Military-Market Link") that I update and expand to describe all of globalization at the start of Chapter 4 in the book.

Here are the "Ten Commandments" as I define them:

1. Look for resources and ye shall find, but …
2. No stability, no markets
3. No growth, no stability
4. No resources, no growth
5. No infrastructure, no resources
6. No money, no infrastructure
7. No rules, no money
8. No security, no rules
9. No Leviathan, no security
10. No will, no Leviathan.

That's what I call the Military-Market Nexus.

You get terror in the Middle East, and that spooks the oil markets. The rising oil prices destabilize economic and thus political stability in Asia, so markets respond and investment flows are curtailed. If America pulls out of Iraq, what do you think happens then? Less terror? More stability? Cheaper oil? A faster growing Asia? A better global economy? Globalization's progressive advance to those regions currently on the outside, noses pressed to the glass?

Why does it all matter to the average American? Because most of us have our retirement savings at work on Wall Street, and that money is a crucial fuel to globalization's advance. So, in effect, globalization's success is our collective future either unfolding as planned or disappearing down a rat hole, and the Pentagon and its changing role in national security since 9/11 is part and parcel of this entire process. It's not just something that kicks end when diplomacy fails or when markets are shut down. This is a very iterative and interactive feedback loop, where everything affects everything else.

For example, who do you think buys all that public debt we float to pay for the war in Iraq? That would be our Asian friends primarily, and China and Japan in particular. Guess what happens when they have to pay more for oil, have to hedge more against regional instability, and put up more firewalls due to terrorism fears? They become less willing to pay for our "exporting of security" in this global war on terrorism.

My point: there is no such thing as a "war president" or "unilateral war" or any of that other nonsense about America doing whatever it pleases and to hell with the rest of the world. It all comes back to haunt us on some level, whether we realize it or not. In this war, we fight a networked opponent whose operating domain encompasses all the complexity that is globalization. Either we fight this war with such complexity in mind or we do more damage than good to globalization's future. That's the baby we don't want to throw out with the bath water called al Qaeda.

And yes, you'll feel the pulses of this "distant war" in your market portfolio on a daily basis. That's nothing new. We're just becoming more aware of such connectivity after 9/11.