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BREZHNEVIAN IRAN

The Soviet Khameini ?

Dr. Barnett has often used the analogy of the Soviet Union under the long rule of Leonid Brezhnev to describe the current Iranian regime:

“This article aptly captures what I saw similarly in the USSR in the summer of 1985: most people simply opt out. They’ve figured out how to make their private lives decent through a thriving black market and off-line alternative lifestyle and in their public lives they pretend to obey so the mullahs can pretend to rule.

Then watch the real change begin.”

I’m not up to date on the details of the Iranian economy, which is ( at a minimum) riven by underemployment, a youth demographic bulge, systemic corruption and underinvestment in critical sectors. Chances are, the Iranian economy, despite it’s problems and governmental mismanagement, have not reached the craptacular proportions of decreptitude that prevailed prior to the Soviet implosion. Nevertheless, some of the Soviet-Iranian parallels are striking:

Highly factionalized, undemocratic, leadership
Trend toward gerontocratic ruling class
Opaque decision-making process for strategic problems
Power is both centralized in government hands yet diffused at top levels, creating paralysis
Increasing reliance upon (and expansion of) paramilitary security forces to secure rule
Tightening of political censorship and “public morals” campaigns to appease ideological hardliners
Public alienation from and cynicism toward official state ideology
Rising nationalism separate from state ideology that both supports and undermines the regime
Rampant corruption at all levels of society
Diplomatic isolation
Dual centers of power in foreign affairs
Ideological hardliners in key positions to control security services rather than pragmatists
Critical economic questions are repeatedly ignored in favor of factional interests or ideological concerns
Increasing reliance on raw material commodity exports for government revenue

I’d be interested to know how Iranian towns and cities in the interior compare to Teheran in terms of services, material goods, poverty and like indicators.

GLOBALIZATION’S SUPEREMPOWERED SOCIETIES

Tom brought an excellent post by Curtis Gale Weeks at 5GW to my attention and then offered his own commentary. Here are the posts:

“On the Barnettian 5GW” by Curtis Gale Weeks

“Nice post by Curtis on 5GW” by Dr. Barnett

I have to agree with Tom and Shane that Curtis really hit his stride with that post. I have a few comments of my own on their 5GW exchange.

Curtis wrote:

“—There is a term used variously and vaguely in these discussions; I myself conflated two interpretations of the term. The Robbian view seems to depend on unequal distribution of “-powerment”, in which some individuals or groups become more powerful than the general human population; whereas, at heart Thomas Barnett’s Core/Gap paradigm and strategy seem to depend upon an eventual equalization, or a relative equalization (which is a type of oxymoronic phrase), of individual empowerment across the globe”

I don’t think Curtis’ use of ” relative equalization of individual empowerment” is actually as oxymoronic as it seems. This is an astute normative economic observation on Week’s part. Instead, it illustrates the aggregate effect of Schumpeter’s creative destruction rippling across the globe as the spread of economic connectivity and information technology proceeds apace. The spread, of say, cell phone-based wifi internet access to states with sketchy (at best) landline telephone service, is a quantum leap forward for equalization of empowerment on the macro- scale even as certain small networks or individuals of those states on the micro- scale, possess the ability to leverage still greater levels of empowerment to become “more equal than others”.

This seeming dichotomy are flip sides of the same coin in any true market action and is always ongoing to some degree, provided the market is permitted to function. Unless the comparative advantage is artificially locked in by force ( this is what tyrants of disconnectivity, like Mugabe and Kim Jong-Il, do – force everyone else to remain still in order to retain their own local “super empowerment”), any individual or entity’s “super empowerment” is apt to be a fleeting condition unless constantly maintained by adaptive improvements.

Much later, Curtis opined:

“Many people seek saviors of one sort or another; many are happy to delegate responsibility for the things they themselves cannot touch or do not have the time or motivation to fix themselves — or do not understand, themselves. The crux of the Barnettian paradox involves the manner and method of assigning these delegations so that the general man-on-the-street can rest easily knowing his prosperous future is assured. Even within the Core, much doubt about this process of delegation exists; various superempowerments within and without the Core threaten to upset faith in the systems of the Core. “

Visible super empowerment within a society is a condition representing both change as well as inequality; two phenomena against which it is nearly always possible to rally anger, envy, fear and political opposition.

Tom Barnett wrote:

” Instead of trying to be all things to all individuals in Vol. III, I’ll explore the one thing I know well. I do that because I feel the knowledge is important in its own right, addressing a serious gap in our tool kit vis-a-vis other, rising societies of SEIs (especially China and India).

….The book on SEIs remaking the world in their vision–positively–is a book I could see writing with Steve a few years down the road.”

The accent on positively remaking the world by Dr. Barnett is a noteworthy point to keep in mind. Numerically speaking, most highly intelligent, energetic, creative and task persistent individuals who function as change agents are overwhelmingly positive actors. Maslow wrote of a stage of self-actualization and in a certain sense, exceeding oneself by changing society in a positive direction may be an expression of both self-actualization as well as super empowerment The Ted Kaczynskis and Osama Bin Ladens are perverse and statistically rare anomalies; exceptions that prove the rule, in a sense.

Unfortunately, the exceptionally negative super empowered individuals do and will exist and have the potential to inflict system perturbations, at least on a one-shot, ” black swan“, basis. Deep uncertainty regarding the nature of such future superempowered individuals’ actions has to be dealt with in terms of proactively engineering systemic resilience to cope with these malicious one-hit wonders. Steve’s Development-in-a Box paradigm at Enterra is one effort to begin comprehensively addressing these deficits. Tom’s Sys Admin is another. Building new, highly decentralized, “Wikinomic” mass-collaborative platforms from scratch, may be yet a third.

THE COMING OF AFRICOM: THE DEPARTMENT OF EVERYTHING ELSE VS. EMBRACING DEFEAT*

* image and title shamelessly “liberated” from the multidisciplinarily creative Dan of tdaxp who previously posted an excellent series by the same name.

Two articles with diametrically opposed worldviews of American intervention overseas.The path to error lies in the simplification of both approaches:

“Africa Command: The Americans Have Landed” in Esquire by Dr. Thomas P.M. Barnett
(This article is currently only available in dead tree format)

“Rethinking Insurgency” (PDF) at Strategic Studies Institute by Dr. Steven Metz (hat tip to Danger Room)

Tom Barnett’s Esquire article on the newly created AFRICOM is one of his best pieces in “journalist” mode and it demonstrated the dire need for establishing true ( and not primarily “kinetic”) “operational jointness” in interagency cooperation in Africa. This means accepting the inherent complexity of the Gap and answering with synergistic connectivity to globalization in order to engage in societal-building and state-building .

AFRICOM

Dr. Metz also accepts the complexity and interconnectivy of globalization but prescribes defusing conflicts by disengagement, accepting the co-option of aggrieved insurgencies into the national power structure even when they are resolutely hostile to American interests. A graceful retreat does less damage, in Metz’s view, than would sustained conflict fueled by American aid enhancing the power of states to resist insurgencies.

Unsurprisingly, I am in favor of Barnett’s approach but recognize that it is best employed judiciously, with an economy of force and minimalist platforms where aid gives the biggest bang for the buck. Likewise, while I see the Metz approach, if raised to a general rule, as a prescription for strategic erosion of American primacy and the decline of globalization, used with discretion, it is a useful “means-test” for evaluating the strategic importance of failing states and avoiding of the waste of American blood and treasure.

Malawi is not as important as Pakistan, even if al Qaida can be found in both countries. That doesn’t mean ignoring Malawi but that we engage it differently than we do Pakistan.

ADDENDUM:

Steve DeAngelis is also discussing AFRICOM at ERMB

BARNETT ON EURO-AMERICAN -SINO COMPARATIVE HISTORY

Dr. Barnett had a post that used an WSJ op-ed as a launching pad for some big picture historical analysis:

“Message in a bottle“

In turn, I want to use Tom’s post in much the same manner. Here are a couple of quotes and my kibbutzing:

“But first the Euros need to catch up with history: they are not the first multinational state or economic union. They did not invent the first unified currency. They were not the first continent to experience insane civil war and thereupon reason their way to a Kantian peace of transparency, free markets, free trade and collective security. “

Very true. Tom is pointing to America here but Europe itself experienced much the same process during the late Roman Republic. Roman citizenship was once so tightly guarded that it was denied even to the traditional Italian allies of Rome ( who played a role in the Republican empire of akin to that of the Scots in Britain’s first great expansion during the 18th century – businessmen, colonial soldiers, in rare instances, minor officials) until after the Social Wars and the civil wars of Julius and then Augustus Caesar. After that, one could find Roman citizens who were Gauls, Iberians, Greeks, Germans, Jews, Arabs and peoples more obscure. The empire in many ways proved to be more a meritocratic, ” open system” than did the insular city-state republic beloved by Cato.

China too went through not one but many periods of unification and renewal. Had the Ming dynasty and their Q’ing successors not turned toward resolutely inward, we might be talking today about the legacy of Chinese colonization of the Mideast, Africa and the Pacific rim of the Americas ( disconnection imposes heavy costs).

“America made that journey in the latter half of the 19th century, thanks to our Civil War and the bloody build-out of the American West (actually, most of the blood spilled long earlier). We got to our emergent point (much like China’s today, but along a very different path) around 1890, following a 25-year healing period after the Civil War (China reaches its emergent point around 2000, 25 years of healing after the Cultural Revolution).”

There’s a great number of historical tangents buried in this paragraph. One can draw a comparison between American dollars flowing to China today and the postbellum surge of British and Dutch investment in American railroads and corporations. Or you can look at America as the Not Quite United States from 1787-1865; not unlike China from 1911 – 1989. Or you can compare the administrations of McKinley-Roosevelt with Jiang Zemin-Hu Jintao. Are there modern Chinese intellectual equivalents to the influential role played by Frederick Jackson Turner, Brooks Adams and Alfred T. Mahan ?

“Europe had a far longer healing point, reflecting the depths to which it sank in its massive civil wars of 1914-1945. It’s main problem is that its healing occurred in a very artificial sort of civilizational separateness, which is no longer tenable due to demographics”

Underneath its culture and civilization, Europe remains atavistic. While France has a different and more open tradition because of the French Revolution, many Europeans view their national citizenship primarily in terms of ” blood and soil”. Third generation Arab and North African citizens are still considered to be “immigrants” as are Turkish descended “gast arbeiters” in Germany.

Historically, China has taken a similar ethnocentric view of citizenship ( it is rare though not impossible, for a foreigner not of Chinese ancestry to become a citizen of China); Beijing’s ability to change this and welcome Indians, Americans, Japanese, Koreans and Latins as future “Chinese” will in part, determine China’s future role in world affairs.

MIL THEORY GOES MAINSTREAM

It’s rather nice to see the esoteric theory topics I kick around here in conjunction with sites like The Small Wars Council, DNI, Tom Barnett and John Robb’s blogs and the circle of related bloggers, are penetrating the mainstream press. Some recent examples:

William Lind in UPI

Max Boot citing the Small Wars Journal

“War without limits” by Christopher Shea in the Boston Globe (hat tip to Dr.Ralph Luker)

Thomas Barnett’s frequent appearances in columns by David Ignatius going back several years

This is a good thing. While there is a healthy tendency in our online alternative defense thinking community to disagree, at times caustically, there is a shared consensus that the current structure, strategy and appropriations process for America’s armed forces are ill-suited to the challenges facing the United States.

Change is required and change will only come when the ideas that we have been batting around on blogs, discussion boards and ( in a few instances ) books, penetrates the mass media and gets into the minds of the political class and the voting public. Maximizing attention on the ideas, rather than being distracted by infighting or loose cannon comments, is the route we need to go.