In The Zeitgeist

In my most recent posts I looked at the strategic theories of two different authors. The first was Thomas P. M. Barnett, who divided the world into functioning, integrated Core states, and their danger-producing opposites, the Gap states. His mantra was “disconnectedness defines danger.” The second was Philip Bobbitt, who divided history into epochs in which different forms of the state ruled. He taught us that the nation state is on its way out, and the new market state is taking its place.

John Robb is an author who actually references both of the previous authors, in his book Brave New War. He springboards off of Bobbitt’s concept of the market state to argue that the nature of warfare has changed, becoming network-focused, and refutes Barnett’s mantra. Basically, in the globally networked world, connectedness defines danger, so good luck finding peace through integration. Better to develop doctrines of fighting networked war.

A war fought between social networks is exactly how Robb portrays the current Crisis Era in American politics. He calls this “open source warfare” in that anyone can participate in an era when the Internet gives individuals powers of surveillance and intelligence gathering that were once reserved for governments. You can follow more of John Robb’s analysis of current events here at his blog.

Although the books were published around the same time, it wasn’t until some time after reading The Pentagon’s New Map that I discovered The Shield of Achilles, by Philip Bobbitt. Bobbitt is a constitutional law expert, and this very long book (usually described as “magisterial”) formulates a theory of the evolution of the state as proceeding through periodic “epochal wars” which redefine the constitutional order. As each new form of the state is legitimized, the seeds are planted for the growth of the form which will come to replace it. Thus he describes a kind of historical cycle, to join many others which have been postulated.

Bobbitt traces the emergence of the state to Renaissance Italy and the philosophy of Niccolò Machiavelli. He then describes an evolutionary sequence from the first “Princely states” of the Renaissance to the modern nation state. Each time the state transforms, it is because after a constitutional order is legitimized by victory in the epochal war, the very factors which led to that victory proceed to undermine and delegitimize it as future events unfold. In the case of the “nation state” order, Bobbitt identifies its legitimization with the West’s Cold War victory, the culmination of a Long War against first Fascism, and then Communism, both constitutional orders competing with the Liberal Democratic Western order. It was advancements in high-speed computing and telecommunications which eventually secured this victory.

In the 21st century, these very advancements have empowered individuals, diminished the state’s ability to influence the economy, and generated new security threats which are immune to the nation state’s conventional means of deterrence. Now delegitimized, the familiar nation state of the 20th century is giving way to what Bobbitt calls the “market state.” A key difference between the two orders is that whereas the nation state serves the welfare of the nation through public services and social safety nets, the market state maximizes economic opportunity for its citizens, while protecting them from environmental degradation and network-infiltrating dangers such as infectious disease and terrorism. The state’s role has evolved from managing the system for the benefit of the people, in competition with other states with different ideologies (the Cold War status quo), to protecting the system’s perimeters while allowing the people to manage themselves in a loosely controlled consumer marketplace of global extent (the Washington Consensus and the “End of History.”)

There is even more to this work, as it covers not just constitutional orders but also theories about international law, which necessarily transform in accordance with the evolving forms of the state. Bobbitt identifies a boundary or membrane between the realm of law, which orders society within the state’s purview, and that of strategy, which orders the interactions among states. The victory which legitimizes an order of the state amounts to the successful application of strategy, but with it comes an alteration of the international milieu, which renders that strategy untenable. In competing for the new strategy which ensures survival and dominance, states must necessarily evolve their own internal orders.

So, for example, the nation state strategy of massive conventional armed forces became obsolete in an era of WMDs (which can take out massed forces) and advanced computers (which make smaller forces much more effective). The United States responded by switching to a volunteer armed force, and developing theories of network-centric warfare.

Bobbitt sees the 21st century War on Terror as the epochal war driving the transition from nation state to market state. Presumably one of the Great Power civilizations will discover a successful strategic response to the security threat created by network-exploiting “bad actors,” one which has eluded the world so far. Whichever power does so will determine the ideal model of the market state.

The Shield of Achilles was followed by the equally magisterial Terror and Consent, which elaborates on the interplay between strategy and law in the case of the challenge of combating global networked terrorism. Bobbitt’s opinion is always worth seeking, because of his erudition and legal expertise, so I always look for his latest opinion pieces and interview. He has no regular column or web site that I know of, but here is a recent interview. As the world order continues to transform radically, I will keep searching for more of his insights.

Some time in the early 2000s I became acquainted with the thinking of Thomas P. M. Barnett, author of the book The Pentagon’s New Map. In this book he outlined a new paradigm for the deployment of U.S. military power in the post-Cold War era. Barnett was a strategist working for the Naval War College, and his geopolitical theory was radical, even – from the Pentagon’s perspective – apostate.

Basically, Barnett took a look at the post-Cold War military conflicts in which the United States had engaged, from the invasion of Panama in the waning years of the Soviet Union, up to the post-9/11 wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. His titular “New Map” divided the world into a “Functioning Core” of developed nations which were successfully integrated into the global economy, and a “Non-Integrated Gap” of failed nations where bad actors ran rampant and the U.S. was compelled to intervene militarily. From this simple concept a theory emerged of a new era of globalization in which the security threats to which the United States was responding arose from the disconnected status of the Gap nations – as he put it, “disconnectedness defines danger.”

The primary strategic goal for this new age was integrating the Gap with the Core, and as sole superpower America had a natural role to play in this process. Her conventional military force with its overwhelming power was what Barnett deemed a “Leviathan” force, and in conventional warfare the U.S. had no equal, as the recent invasion of Iraq had demonstrated. But what was also needed was a “Sys Admin” force for post-conflict stabilization (winning the peace); this is where allies with strong traditions of peacekeeping might come into play. With the right rule set for military intervention in the Gap, the end result would be increased connectivity with the Core. The military would just be kick starting this process; once the umbrella of security was provided, the private sector could take over. Globalization would spread, the Gap would shrink, and the world would be safer.

Barnett gives great presentations, and his “New Map” Brief is a classic. It was made in the early 2000s, at the heyday of his theory. The post-9/11 mind set was still fresh, and the U.S. security establishment was energized, as it struggled with the problems unleashed by the shock of 9/11 and subsequent U.S. response. In the brief Barnett preaches against the urge to throw up barriers to immigration and travel, to “firewall the Core against the Gap,” as he puts it, and encourages embracing globalization. As the 2000s continued, two sequels to the book followed which further developed his ideas.

Meanwhile, the Iraq War fiasco played out, and post-conflict stability proved elusive. I think Barnett’s theory lost its luster as a result, even though it never supported the careless invasion with no follow-up strategy practiced by the Bush administration (what he called “drive-by regime change”). Barnett never advocated that the U.S. become a “global cop” or act unilaterally (I remember him supporting Kerry in 2004), but rather that, with her preponderance of military power, the U.S. would inevitably end up shouldering much of the burden of conventional military action when it was necessary. But to shoulder that burden requires will, and after the long drawn-out suffering of the Iraq post-War, America lost that will, and through the Obama era and into the Trump era has withdrawn from the world.

At heart, Barnett’s theory is not militarily but economically deterministic, as he confirms in a blog post about a historian’s review of the third book in the trilogy. America as the victor of the Cold War had gifted the world with a free-market system which was elevating the bulk of humanity in the formerly impoverished Third World into a global middle class. In a world leadership role, presumably natural for a superpower hegemon, she could guide the development of that system and reap the most benefit from it. But after withdrawing into isolationism (“navel-gazing”), which is the choice the country has made, the system will continue to develop without her, its rules determined more and more by the new rising powers.

It’s nice to see that Barnett is still thinking strategically and creating briefs; there are links to a 2015 presentation up on his site. I recommend checking them out, because he is brilliant, a frank and humorous speaker, and he always makes you see things in a new light, or points out a trend or relationship that you weren’t aware existed before. Just the sort of thinking we need for the 21st century.