Non-Integrating Gap

From Hobson's Choice

A region of the world concentrated largely around the equator, which is the scene of most United States military interventions since World War II. The region includes Africa (except for South Africa), Latin America (except for Argentina, Brazil, and [Chile]], and Southern Asia (except for India). The term was coined by Thomas P.M. Barnett, an enthusiastic neoconservative, in an essay explaining the economic foundations of the neoconservative global strategy.

The basic idea is that certain nations have embraced "globalization," and become what Barnett refers to as the "Core." This includes, naturally, the entire industrialized world, including China and the Russian Federation.

Exposition

From Barnett's Esquire Magazine article:

If we map out U.S. military responses since the end of the cold war, we find an overwhelming concentration of activity in the regions of the world that are excluded from globalization’s growing Core—namely the Caribbean Rim, virtually all of Africa, the Balkans, the Caucasus, Central Asia, the Middle East and Southwest Asia, and much of Southeast Asia. That is roughly the remaining two billion of the world’s population. Most have demographics skewed very young, and most are labeled, “low income” or “low middle income” by the World Bank (i.e., less than $3,000 annual per capita). If we draw a line around the majority of those military interventions, we have basically mapped the Non-Integrating Gap. Obviously, there are outliers excluded geographically by this simple approach, such as an Israel isolated in the Gap, a North Korea adrift within the Core, or a Philippines straddling the line. But looking at the data, it is hard to deny the essential logic of the picture: If a country is either losing out to globalization or rejecting much of the content flows associated with its advance, there is a far greater chance that the U.S. will end up sending forces at some point. Conversely, if a country is largely functioning within globalization, we tend not to have to send our forces there to restore order to eradicate threats.

Barnett fails to explain why US activities accomplish the opposite of what he implies they do: operations in places such as Colombia, Vietnam, Haiti, or anywhere in Africa seem to not have made those countries "integrating." Barnett's list also has an odd distinction between "integrating," or wholesomely globalized, and "non-integrating": some of the most globally exposed economies in the world, those of Singapore and Malaysia are in the "Gap," as is Panama (certainly very high on the list). In contrast, one of the least globally integrated economies is India.

Exactly how Barnett chose his countries is not obvious. The following is also an astonishing assertion:

But think about this larger point: Ever since the end of World War II, this country has assumed that the real threats to its security resided in countries of roughly similar size, development, and wealth—in other words, other great powers like ourselves. During the cold war, that other great power was the Soviet Union. When the big Red machine evaporated in the early 1990’s, we flirted with concerns about a united Europe, a powerhouse Japan, and—most recently—a rising China. What was interesting about all those scenarios is the assumption that only an advanced state can truly threaten us. The rest of the world? Those less-developed parts of the world have long been referred to in military plans as the “Lesser Includeds,” meaning that if we built a military capable of handling a great power’s military threat, it would always be sufficient for any minor scenarios we might have to engage in the less advanced world. That assumption was shattered by September 11.

But the military engagements he lists are in weak countries, mostly in semi-colonial conditions; they're "in the Gap," as he puts it. So not only has there been a lot of military activity that accomplished less than nothing towards threat reduction, the period 1945-2001 was marked by an immense amount of attention to Indochina, Southwest Asia & North Africa, and Central America. A united Europe was not identified as an adversary, but as a natural ally; Japan, likewise, is a very close US ally, and certainly has not been a strategic threat since 1945. Neither has changed status since 1990, when the Warsaw Pact was formally dissolved. Militaristic ideologues regard China as a threat simply because it has a large population and its economy is expanding rapidly, not for any peculiarly Chinese attributes. Barnett seems to ignore the fact that Usonian political officials pressed for an expansion of NATO after the USSR was imploding, and continued to urge for the integration of Turkey into the EU (which would address that organization's shortage of military-aged personnel, were it to actively seek superpower status).

Hence, the version of history is wholly counterfactual: the USA and its allies have energetically pursued engagements in areas where economic development was lagging. As the EU economy matures, US military bases have redeployed towards the European periphery: Kosovo, Croatia, and Romania.

Significance

While Barnett's account of strategic preoccupations over the post-WWII epoch is entirely fictional, his outline of neoconservative thinking is useful for comprehending that ideology. This may be briefly summarized thus:

1. economic and governmental failure in the Gap is, indeed, an existential threat to the West (or "Core");
2. disengagement with the Gap (e.g., reduced consumption of crude oil) will not mitigate the threat;
3. the West is obligated and capable of transforming the Gap, but has failed to try in the past.

External Links

• Thomas P.M. Barnett's The Pentagon's New Map (Esquire, March 2003), and a map illustrating it.
• Peter Dale Scott, "America’s Afghanistan: The National Security and a Heroin-Ravaged State," Japan Focus (17 May 2009); see subheading, "Why One Should Think of So-Called 'Failed States' as 'Ravaged States'" as rebuttal to Barnett