The rapid rise of my global guerrillas -- the open source, system disrupting, transnational crime fueled, sons of global fragmentation -- is a cautionary warning on the limits of western power. As a result, my work is often placed in opposition to the work of the best selling author, Thomas Barnett (The Pentagon's New Map and Blueprint for Action -- well worth reading).
Barnett strongly advocates that the Pentagon should be reorganized into a factory for rapidly "processing" failed states into useful global participants (for which he provides an A to Z plan). The objective of this new capability would be to shrink the global "gap" of failed and rogue states to accelerate the end of history (in Fukuyama's sense). Unfortunately, Barnett's thesis has become increasingly central to the Pentagon's (Rumsfeld) and the Department of State's (Rice) planning for the future.
In my view, Barnett's formula would not only accelerate the exhaustion of the US (morally and financially), it would also be a catalyst for radically accelerating the development of global guerrillas. Fortunately, I am not alone in my opposition to Barnett's view. The father of fourth generation warfare (and a prominent influence of mine), Bill Lind, has put his wicked pen to a critique of Barnett's work (see Chet Richards' excellent DNI site for the full text). Bill steps into the breach and doesn't pull punches:What Barnett advocates is bad in two senses: first, that it won’t work, and second, that if it did work the result would be evil.
A critical assumption dismissed:
In both books, Barnett divides the world into two parts, the Functioning Core and the Non-Integrating Gap. This is parallel to what I call centers of order and centers or sources of disorder, and I agree that this will be the fundamental fault line of the 21st Century. Barnett’s error is that he assumes the Functioning Core will be the stronger party, able to restore order in places where it has broken down. In fact, the forces of disorder will be stronger, because they are driven by a factor Barnett dismisses, the spreading crisis of legitimacy of the state. By ignoring Martin van Creveld’s work on the rise and decline of the state, Barnett’s books end up anchoring their foundations on sand.The fuel it would provide to opposition movements:
What Barnett’s books end up revealing is the combination of moral blindness and international political hubris that characterizes the whole quest for American world empire, a quest initiated by the neo-cons. Like the (other?) neo-cons, Barnett sees the world and its cultures in Jacobin terms, as a combination of Rousseau’s natural goodness of man and Newtonian clockwork mechanism. Just twist a few dials here, throw a couple of levers there and presto!, Switzerlands spring up from Ouagadougou to the Hindu Kush....there is no surer way of making someone your enemy than to announce you will remake him in your image for his own good. To many of the world’s peoples, what Barnett argues for in such blithe simplicity represents Hell, and they will fight it literally to their dying breath.He sums:
It’s piffle, pure and all too simple. Unfortunately, it is dangerous piffle, both in the evil that would result if it worked and the catastrophes that will come when it doesn’t. Real Fourth Generation theory (JR: as well as my own) counsels caution, prudence and a clear grasp on the limits of American power in a world where the state itself is in decline. Regrettably, in the uneducated and nostrum-hungry powerhouse that is Washington, Barnett’s piffle is just the sort of patent medicine that sells. The more widely it sells, the more Iraqs America will have to endure.