Tuesday, December 06, 2005

The Democratic Plan for A Stronger America (If They'll Just Listen)

Thomas P.M. Barnett

Ever since I saw a remarkable C-Span presentation of Thomas Barnett's brief called The Pentagon's New Map, I've been hooked. I bought his book, and I've read it cover to cover. This is a Democratic thinker with a fantastic idea to confront the threats to a connected and stable world today (read: the GWOT).

He sees the world divided into what he calls the Core and the Gap. Core nations are connected and trade partners. They cooperate for maximum economic benefit to all. The Gap is threatened by this cooperation and connection and returns the threat in the form of terrorism and disconnectedness. America's problem thus far has been to be only the firefighters of the world - but when we act as empowering agents of reconstruction as well, we expand economic and social opportunities for all (read: the Marshall Plan). By reshaping the US military into both firefighting function (the Leviathan force) and reconstruction function (the System Administration force), we could keep a world peace, shrink the Gap, and have everyone enjoy the prosperity.

My explanation is far too simplified. The book or the talk is where to get the best explanation. Everything I read confirms Barnett's conclusion and gets me all anxious to have his plan become a reality.

Take for example, the blog post I linked to above. It's about how the military-industrial complex is resisting the increasing need to focus away from China as a dire threat and toward the kind of weaponry we need to develop in the threats of today's world. Why do they resist? Because they make their money selling the US weapons to fight China. We fall more and more into the threats of asymetrical opponents while the Pentagon concentrates on fighting the Next Big One. It's how 9/11 happened, and still they cut brigade after brigade to pay for the next big war platform.
If you're going to be serious about a global war on terrorism, you're going to have larger numbers of ground troops, both active and reserve. There is no way to get around that. That will mean less money for acquisitions, not just asking more money from Congress for supplementals for actual operations. The reason why the cost of manpower has gone up so much is that the Defense Department has recently sought to correct a lot of low compensation and quality of life issues for the troops, fearing unacceptable losses in enlistment and reenlistment rates. This is proper and good and shouldn't then be used as an argument against keeping those troops.

The only reason why our force structure ages and gets worn out is that we insist on buying only the highest of high tech, or weapons systems and platforms whose high-end use can only be justified by very high-end warfare against high-end opponents, i.e., the Big War rationale, which isn't just alive and kicking...

The lack of a SysAdmin force is vitally illustrated in Iraq. The US took Iraq in the palm of its hand. But without a mobile coordinating force to organize a global act of reconstruction (not just a coalition of the willing deed - everyone), Iraq has reeled headlong from disaster to disaster. We still don't have electricity running all day long in the country! SysAdmin takes care of that - they rebuild the bridges, they paint the schools. They're subject to the ICC in Barnett's view. They actualize the American Dream.

I'm rambling. But I find I share Barnett's frustration with yet another round of defense spending being approved that slices the men on the ground and funds another year of pork barrel spending on a war with China that might never happen. Especially when there's a historic opportunity right here, waiting for the right leader to pick it up and march into history.

Here's hoping Wesley Clark gets a copy or two of Barnett's book.

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