PART VI -HOW DO WE DEAL WITH OTHER STATES DURING SYSTEM PERTURBATIONS ?

To continue the series on Dr. Barnett’s Deleted Scene on System Perturbations ( for previous posts go here.). As always my commentary is in regular text, Dr. Barnett’s is in bold font:

“How do we deal with other states during System Perturbations?

Rule #13: There is no statute of limitations on cultural blowback, so avoid providing future foes with chosen trauma.

Middle East experts will tell you 9/11 is twenty years of blowback from Afghanistan and the mujaheddin we supported there, half a century of blowback from the creation of the state of Israel, and even eight centuries of blowback from the Crusades. Like in your marriage, no “past sins” are ever forgotten, so it is crucial that in our responses to any System Perturbation, we do not simply plant a host of new historical grievances in the hearts of those we hope ultimately win over and integrate into the Core. This is, of course, the great danger of the Big Bang strategy of toppling Saddam Hussein’s regime. My Muslim colleagues from that part of the world have told me repeatedly that, immediately following 9/11, America had the chance to win over not just a small percentage of the Muslim world, but a very large one — depending on its response. These same friends tell me now that that share of potentially winnable Muslims is far smaller, and far more difficult to win, precisely because we have provided them with a new chosen trauma. What is our solution now? As Thomas Friedman likes to argue, America’s best hope now is to do whatever it takes to make Iraq a beacon of freedom and progressive change in the Middle East. In effect, we need to turn that chosen trauma into a chosen triumph — not ours, mind you, but the Iraqi people’s.

Earlier, commenting on Rule #8 I suggested that Blowback was not just a possibility but a range of probable outcomes from any major foreign policy event, much less a true System Perturbation, calling it the ” Law of Blowback”:

” For statesmen, every action has a probable set of opposite reactions “

This is something statesmen and geopolitical thinkers have understood intuitively since the Pelopennesian War ( reading Thucydides isn’t a bad idea to school oneself on the perils of statecraft). People will always resist the demands of power to the degree that they can do so safely ( at least) unless the incentives to yield are recognized as being measurably greater.

Those incentives include intangible variables – psychological and ideological factors. To return to our Ancient Greek example, the Melian Dialogue was a failure of the Athenians who considered only the material or practical considerations that faced the Melian leadership and not their sense of honor. Toppling Saddam Hussein certainly offended Muslims of radical Pan-Arab and Baathist sentiments but those Gatekeeper Elites were our enemies anyway and their demoralization was a desirable and intentional outcome of our post 9/11 ” Big Bang ” attack. What was not desirable was the Abu Ghraib scandal which – for whatever value in terms of interrogation and intimidation of such practices – they created a wave of horror and revulsion that extended far beyond the Arab world and discredited the entire occupation in Arab eyes and provided our enemies with decades of future propaganda.

The existence of blowback is not an argument for policy paralysis but for choosing options when we launch a System Perturbation against our enemies where we maximize our objectives while minimizing long-term costs. Horizontal systems with the highest degree of connectivity are also the ones most vulnerable to damage from a System Perturbation so they should be used sparingly and with great forethought. Choose your Blowback, do not let Blowback choose us.

Rule #14: In response to vertical scenarios, horizontal systems naturally come together, as do vertical systems.

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