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Great Powers: America and the World After Bush by Thomas P.M. Barnett

Great Powers: America and the World After Bush is a book whose influence will be deep and long. It is also a book that will be loved and reviled. Loved because in it, Barnett connects history with strategy and foreign policy and does so with unvarnished, supremely confident, optimism regarding a future of an americanized Globalization and a globalized America. It will also be bitterly reviled for exactly same reason.

In essence, Great Powers is an intellectual-political rorschach test.

This will not be a traditional book review. By way of disclaimer, I was one of the people who read the earliest draft version of Great Powers as Tom Barnett was writing it ( at times Tom was writing faster than any of us could keep up reading it!) and offered comments and advice. I have seen various iterations of different parts of Great Powers as it was shaped by Dr. Barnett, Mark Warren and Neil Nyren and discussed the book during this time with others in Tom’s circle who were also readers. As a result I cannot possibly be considered an objective or impartial reviewer but what I am, however, is a well informed one.

What I will offer instead of a traditional review is my thoughts on why Great Powers should be read whether you admire Thomas Barnett’s philosophy or not.

First, Great Powers represents the first attempt to critically distill the meaning and the context of the historical mark of the George W. Bush presidency in a way that is not beholden to the needs of domestic partisans, Right or Left. As a result, some of these people will go absolutely ape in Chapter One and will be riding their hobby horse to the uptopian horizon of choice and never really read anything else in the book except through heavily rose colored glasses.  For everyone else, Barnett’s handling of Bush-Cheney is a needed step back from presentism and into analysis of causes and effects, risks and opportunities, which make up the global legacy of President Bush.

Secondly, Barnett is enunciating a theory of historical evolution heavily influenced by economic determinism but not only economic determinism. Very few reviewers have picked up on this element ( John Robb was a notable exception) but Tom has revived and synthesized the “Frontier Thesis” of Frederick Jackson Turner into postmodern, 21st century,  transnational terms. “The frontier” is not just an economic margin but a verge for deep but decisive conflicts of personal identity and cultural renewal. Frontiers are dynamic and psychological, not fixed entities and the momentum is usually running toward civilizational expansion or collapse. We can find the frontier at home in “feral” neighborhoods mere miles from our houses or thousands of miles distant in far off Pushtunistan and the Fergana valley. There is no maginot line we can build, no place to “bring the boys home” to when the frontier exists as much in cyberspace as on the ground.

Thirdly, Barnett articultes the strategic macro-choices (“Realignment”) that we face in the first decades of the 21st century based on the framework that our past choices have created. This last part of the book is where he generates enormous amounts of friction with more traditional policy wonk experts by de-compartmentalizing their pet issues into the agonizingly interrelated gordian knot that they represent in reality while re-buffing the idea that they add up to a collection of worst-case scenarios fusing into a mega-apocalypse. The integrated perspective pushed by Barnett also denies the likelihood of securing neat little zero-sum policy “wins” just for America (or Russia, or China or the EU). Tom gets bashed for simplifying in his briefs but briefs are not books and the problem his critics have is not his simplicity but the complexity that Barnett chooses to put on the table for debate.

That approach makes a lot of people whose education and experience is in selling or consuming the inch-wide, mile-long, tunnel -vision perspectives very uncomfortable. It is a repudiation not of their policies but of their whole mode of thinking about policy.

That brings me to why I think Great Powers should be read. An old mentor of mine used to warn his grad students of books that made them feel good by confirming their prejudices and dulling their thinking with smug superiority. Good books cause you to scrawl furiously in the margin. Despite the fact that I am in sync with many of Tom Barnett’s strategic ideas, there are parts of Great Powers that caused me to grit my teeth (case in point, his entertaining the faddish, Left-Fem polemicist, Susan Faludi as a serious thinker) or take a second look at my previously held opinions. This is what good books do and great books are the ones that do so for many people and thereby become potential game-changers.

Great Powers is one of those books.

John Robb has been thinking about tribes. So has David Ronfeldt. So has Seth Godin.

Why?

John Robb  writes:

If you are like most people in the ‘developed world,’ you don’t have any experience in a true tribal organization.  Tribal organizations were crushed in the last couple of Centuries due to pressures from the nation-state that saw them as competitors and the marketplace that saw them as impediments.  All we have now it is a moderately strong nuclear family (weakened via modern economics that forces familial diasporas), a weak extended family, a loose collection of friends (a social circle), a tenuous corporate affiliation, and a tangential relationship with a remote nation-state.  That, for many of us, is proving to be insufficient as a means of withstanding the pressures of the chaotic and harsh modern environment.

The advantage of tribal structures in my view, compared to hierarchies, markets and networks discussed by Ronfeldt revolves around the certainty of mutual trust as a psychological motivator, especially vis-a-vis “outsiders”.  Loyalty to all members of the tribe ( primary loyalty) is paramount which is not the case in hierarchies ( loyalty flows upward, downward not so much), markets ( nonexistent) or networks (potentially  non-reciprocal loyalty to hub). As such, tribes function very well at the base of Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs which means they are good insurance for physical survival. It does not matter if the tribe is one of blood or cultural heritage or artificial political, religious or military brotherhood. Militiaman, monk or gang member is irrelevant; what matters is the establishment of unreserved mutual trust as a core of personal identity.

The implicit trust present within the tribe and the flexible sense of authority gives individual tribesmen room for individual initiative to react, knowing “the tribe has their back”. They are a more centralized unit of power than a network but more fluid and mobile than a hierarchy. A tribe is a safety net or a bodyguard. Great enterprises require something else as an organizational form but behind a great enterprise should be at least some kind of life preserver.

Addendum:

Col. Pat Lang – “ How to Work With Tribesmen“

I feel this one will be a weird mix.

Top Billing! Col. Dr. Kilcullen vs. Col. Dr. Bacevich over Dave Kilcullen’s new book,  The Accidental Guerrilla: Fighting Small Wars in the Midst of a Big One (Dual hat tip SWJ Blog and BJ at Newshoggers.com).

Bacevich Review: Raising Jihad .  Killcullen Rebuttal: Accidental Guerrilla: Read Before Burning

I have not read Accidental Guerilla yet but it seems obvious that Andrew Bacevich begins from a position longstanding and very strong, non-interventionist, anti-COIN, pro- “Big Army/Near Peer Competitior” policy views. I suspect that may have influenced his take on Dave’s argument just a bit, thus leading to Dave to speculate that Bacevich may have not read the final book or read it in full. A possibility; about 80% of the books I review here are advance copies sent by publishers, authors or their agents.

Outside the Beltway ( Dave Schuler) – Negotiating With Iran

Dave’s reasoned and reasonable take on the Obama administration’s opening moves with Iran.

Coming Anarchy – Financial Warfare and Idea: The Dictionary of Modern Ideas

Liked both of these posts – phrase of the day – “argotic arms race”.

Two for One:  Whirledview (CKR) – Diplomacy Is Not What Bush Did  and Duck of Minerva (Nexon) – Haven’t they Filled the Protocol Positions Yet?

This post by Cheryl is a lucid counterpoint to my knock on Obama administration stumbles in foreign policy while subsequent events have caused Dr. Dan to move in my direction on this score.

Threatswatch.org ( Elkus, Tanji) – Legacy Futures in Cyberspace and Brave Digital World 

A cyberspecial.

Tom Barnett is on C-Span in a few hours.

John Robb indulges his dark side.

Open the Future – The End of Long-Term Thinking

A good example from Jamais on how words frame analytical thought.

NewsDaily – Who got AIG’s bailout billions?

Primarily the Brits, French and Germans it turns out – the same folks who were loudly blaming the crisis on American capitalism in public had the weaker and more poorly managed financial systems, despite heavy state regulation, and were taking enormous handouts from U.S. taxpayers in private.

Scientific American – Building a Portrait of a Lie in the Brain

SEED – Adapting to a New Economy , A Hormone to Remember and Is MIT Obsolete?

WSJ – Philanthropy and Its Enemies  (Hat tip to Instapundit and Steve Schippert)

A united Hard Left and multiculturalist Race Hustling attempt at extortion and hijacking of private foundation endowments to advance political causes of the Left through a blandly named front group that is led by extremist antiglobalization activists like Christine Ahn and “social justice” organizers such as Judy Hatcher. Ironically, most of the major philanthropic foundations like Rockefeller, Ford and MacArthur are pretty liberal in their orientation and grant giving but in the perspective of these folks, “liberal” is another name for right-wing, capitalist, crypto-patriarchy. People like this are why David Horowitz never lacks for material.

RECOMMENDED VIEWING:

Evan Williams on Twitter’s user-driven evolution…..

Humor, a take on an old optical illusion ( hat tip Dave of Thoughts Illustrated)

The Armed Forces Journal on the economic decline of America.

The author makes too many assumptions regarding China’s resiliency.  The opacity of China’s hybrid, mercantilist-driven, political economy makes estimates of it’s true strengths and weaknesses difficult. We know how many treasury bills China has bought from us but not the real extent of hidden debt, underemployment or inflation. China’s leadership did not vastly increase the size of it’s paramilitary forces in the past decade because they were confident that it would all be smooth sailing ahead.

ADDENDUM:

Chinese premier takes on politics 2.0