Great Powers

by Thomas P. M. Barnett

  Despite today’s boom market in dark futures, the realignments in America’s grand strategy presented here will unfold—the unleashed needs of the many overwhelming the long-held prerogatives of the few. We have finally moved the world, in Woodrow Wilson’s terms, to “our way of thinking” on the economics. Now comes the harder part, but also the best part: extending that understanding to its full political implications. Such perfection, as most Americans will recognize, remains a distant objective—even for us. But as complex sculptures go, we have removed the vast majority of the stone that does not belong. Now comes the finishing work.

  Richard Nixon believed that nations aspiring to great power needed to possess great ideas. To Nixon, without great ideas, great powers ceased to be great. And that simple maxim is the reason America’s faith in itself is so crucial to the planet right now. What the rising great powers of our age present in terms of great ideas are merely successful catch-up development (e.g., the China model) or integration (e.g., the EU) strategies—basically, how best to engage the liberal international trade order of America’s creation. As such, they represent a powerful idea to those nations across the Gap that struggle to find policy handholds amid globalization’s frighteningly rapid and tumultuous churn. They say, “This is how you connect and keep your political order from crumbling under all the accompanying social and economic change.” In an age of frontier integration, that might seem like enough grand strategic direction for the planet as a whole, but it is not, because all that vision sets in motion is a worldwide acceleration of all the trends that currently set so much of humanity on edge, wondering what comes next and “How can we keep this all going without everything spinning out of control?”

  The great ideas that define great powers in coming years will center on the cluster of global challenges explored across the previous chapters, because once the EU, China, India, Russia, and others move past the “Yes, we can!” stage of their current historical trajectories, they will soon find themselves running into the “Now what?” questions. To the extent that America fails to realign itself to this changed global landscape, we will do worse than simply deny ourselves effective alliance with fellow great powers, we will predetermine their “great ideas” by default, first and foremost being containment of a “reckless” America that seems hopelessly alienated from the global order it set in motion. The longer we indulge ourselves in this regard, the more uncertainty we will create, because none of these great powers will aspire to fill that global leadership void, fearing such a strategic tack would draw America’s retaliatory response. Instead, we’ll see more of what Russia just did in the Caucasus: opportunistically working the strategic margins, ostensibly to mark spheres of influence but ultimately to enhance market domination. Indeed, the world’s rising great powers will instinctively seek to exploit such a void only to hedge against one of two possibilities: America’s progressive withdrawal from the world, or its mindless emulation of their own limited, getting-our-house-in-order strategies.

  Rather, as we see the world’s regions move, each at its best speed, toward some version of “states uniting,” America needs to be thinking through and enunciating some global vision of “great powers uniting” as a natural precursor to regions uniting. I don’t want to suggest a political primacy here. But if no vision is articulated by the world system’s largest and most important actor, then what we’re going to see is a lot of regionally idiosyncratic rule-building leading to—at best—a lot of policy jerry-rigging among competing networked commonwealths (each centered on a great power), or—at worst—a lot of policy firewalling among the same designed to protect each from the threat of cascading failures. In sum, we will collectively suffer an estrangement between a globalization process that promotes an open, service-oriented architecture and a regionalized political integration process that demands the preservation of policy autonomy.

  In a networked global economy such as the one America has set in motion, there really can’t be any “go your own way” regions. Yes, just like in America, we can and should encourage policy experimentation on shared problems, letting the best rule sets win out. As I’ve made clear throughout this book, I expect America to learn plenty from other great powers in the coming years, as you can never have enough Californias out there probing the rule-set horizon. What we can’t have are regions that proclaim, “Your rules simply don’t work here,” as the Soviet bloc once claimed and radical Islam claims today. The critical-mass reality we now face in our successful expansion of a liberal international trade order just doesn’t allow for significant opting-out, for we have hit the inflection point on globalization that our Founding Fathers once reached in their revolution, when Benjamin Franklin observed, “We must, indeed, all hang together, or most assuredly we shall all hang separately.”

  So here’s the practical challenge as I see it: America has gone so long since the last period when we had to rethink the world and how it works that we’ve basically lost the grand-strategy skill set. Worse, this is the first time in our nation’s history when our trajectory of success has led to such a clustering of rising great powers that our instinct for continued leadership could easily be overwhelmed by fears of competitive disadvantage—that is, we’re left holding the bag on global security while all our competitors catch up. The realist school would tell us to cut back on our leadership in global security to get our own economic and social house in order for the inevitable great-power conflicts to come, when, of course, doing so will most assuredly trigger a lot of fear-threat reaction on the part of those same rising great powers, thus making the outcome as “inevitable” as the realists claim—a self-fulfilling prophecy if ever there was one. So here’s where our faith in this world system of our creation comes most into play. We need enough confidence in our model of economic-development-forcing-political-pluralism that we don’t abandon our bodyguard role in protecting globalization’s continued advance and subsequent network consolidation. If we can’t muster that confidence, we’ll be unable to lead the shift from defense to security that must occur amid all this worldwide infrastructure/network construction, the result being a world afraid of the inevitable “chaos” that ensues. At that point, we’d be looking at an end-of-the-repeating-cycle, Matrix-like collapse and globalization reboot, an outcome that answers the prayers of only the survivalists among us, who’ve long preached a return to such primitive, localized communitarianism.

  Naturally, I’d like to think that America’s decades of effort in creating and spreading this international liberal trade order will end up accomplishing more than simply triggering the Great-Depression-after-next outcome that so many doom-and-gloomers anticipate with glee. This is where our need for a new generation of grand strategists becomes acute. Karl Marx believed that any great thinker’s ability to see beyond his own era was inherently limited, a notion he himself proved. That’s true because any generation, as it heads into old age, tends to view both itself and its accomplishments as unique and unrepeatable: The Greatest Generation frets that the Boomers have trashed the world order they created, and the Boomers assume the Millennials won’t have a clue about what needs to come next. In reality, of course, the Boomers, through their technological and business innovations, dramatically capitalized on the Greatest Generation’s Cold War victory to extend globalization’s reach far beyond its limited Western base. In so doing, the Boomers have set in motion an age that will demand far greater political and strategic imagination from their Millennial progeny than they themselves ever mustered from their modestly talented cohort of political leaders.

  The good news is, of course, that America’s up-and-coming Millennials will be able to draw from a global talent pool, a wellspring their predecessors could never have dreamed of tapping, in large part because, as I noted above, those rising great powers were too busy getting their own houses in order. By the time the Millennials become the major political force in America in the 2020s, they will be facing similarly talented and intrinsically networke
d knowledge elites spread across a global network of great powers never before seen in history. Each major global region will enjoy the unprecedented situation of having multiple great powers in place at the same time (for example, an Asia with a powerful China and Japan and India and Korea and . . . ), in addition to having multiple great-power-dominated regions all simultaneously rising at the same time. In sum, our children will enjoy an era of unprecedented global wealth employed to address unprecedented global challenges.

  Which brings me to H. G. Wells and his vision of the future. This book took as its guiding inspiration Wells’s minor classic from 1933, The Shape of Things to Come. In this novel, whose narrative extends from the 1930s into the start of the twenty-second century, Wells presents the historical projections of Philip Raven, a League of Nations official who, having “read” a future history in his dreams, bequeaths the recorded manuscript to Wells after his death. It is a startling book that posits that mankind’s perfection will be realized only in response to the near-destruction of modern civilization through war and pestilence. It was not in Wells’s nature to assume the worst as a precursor to the best. But from his historical perspective, in a year when Adolf Hitler’s Nazi movement swept into power in a prostrate Germany, Wells clearly felt his projection of a future perfected could follow no other path.

  I interpret the future differently. Armageddon is popular in the marketplace, and it would have been easier to threaten you with all manner of frightening scenarios to obtain your buy-in to the grand strategy laid out here, but it wouldn’t have been very American to do so. Instead, this book has been about creating a very different future—and a very different sense of the possible—through acts of great will and strategic imagination in the present. Because unlike that of the vast majority of this world, American identity has never been one of shared suffering, but of challenges embraced and opportunities exploited. As an experiment without borders, much less conclusion, America has always leaned forward, living the world’s future while shaping its present.

  The American System blossomed into an international liberal trade order, which in turn gave birth to the globalization we enjoy today. These are the United States’ most powerful acts of creation. This world-transforming legacy created the twenty-first-century environment, one marked by more pervasive poverty reduction, wealth creation, technological advance, and—most important—stabilizing peace than any previous era in human history. That legacy is worth preserving, defending, and expanding to its ultimate heights—a globalization made truly global. I have asked you to consider a globalization-centric American grand strategy for this century, believing it to be the most logical and courageous choice we can yet make as a people. But as our own history as a nation clearly shows, such courage is familiar to us. Indeed, it defines who we are.

  It is just such courage that remains this country’s—and the world’s—most precious and inexhaustible resource. Treat it with great care in the tumultuous years ahead.

  Acknowledgments

  This book began with a statement that I often make in the dozens of presentations I deliver annually around the globe: America is the source code for today’s globalization. For roughly a decade now, I’ve put that phrase out there—completely unpacked, expecting the audience to grasp it whole with the same comprehension that I feel intrinsically after contemplating it from a wide variety of angles across my career. When Robert Kagan wrote his brilliant history of America’s early decades, Dangerous Nation, I realized I needed to explore that concept in some detail if I was going to accomplish what I set out to do in this book—namely, to connect Americans to this globalization process that so many of us now fear. Once that bond was properly recognized, I knew I could place the Bush-Cheney period in historical context, in turn allowing me to argue for the realignments in American grand strategy that my advisory work—with governments and militaries and corporations around the world these past four years—had convinced me were necessary for our nation’s future success in this long war against violent extremism amid globalization’s rapid expansion.

  I drew on a large network of thinkers and practitioners—beyond the many wonderful authors cited already—to bring this volume to fruition.

  First, let me thank my colleagues at Enterra Solutions for the amazing journey of discovery afforded by our start-up’s rather meteoric rise. It is most gratifying to participate in the real-world applications of so many of my ideas, especially seeing them merge and further develop with those of my partner, Steve DeAngelis, an inventor of towering intellect and unparalleled skill in translating complex ideas into pragmatic solutions. Steve is, in the words of one director of our board, a “functioning genius.” Without Steve’s inventive mind and all the career opportunities it has afforded me, I don’t think this book would have happened. Steve is also a very dear friend.

  Next, I need to thank my part-time manager and full-time business developer, Jennifer Wang Posda. Like Steve, Jenn has become a primary mentor over the past few years, so much so that it’s hard for me to imagine my arriving at this point in my career without her strategic guidance. Simply put, I couldn’t serve as Enterra’s senior managing director without her collaboration on a daily basis, and without that vantage point, this book would not have been written. Like Steve, Jenn is a beloved member of my chosen family.

  A third chosen sibling is Mark Warren, the editor whose vision has guided my writing for more than half a decade now. What advances I’ve made as an author over the years are owed substantially to his tutelage. Collaborating with Mark is a pure joy. Besides being my favorite reason for writing, Mark is arguably the best thing that’s ever happened to my career—the undeniable inflection point from which all connectivity now flows.

  As with my previous two books, my literary agent, Jennifer Gates of Zachary Shuster Harmsworth, played a seminal role in defining this volume’s approach to the reader, as did my publisher, the legendary Neil Nyren of G. P. Putnam’s Sons. Their guidance made all the difference in the world. My mind is given to all manner of experiments, but Jenn and Neil found a way to locate the right expression consistently across this lengthy production process. It is my great privilege to continue working with both of them.

  My webmaster and research assistant, Sean Meade, has been a hugely stabilizing influence on not just my frantic schedule but my entire work over the past three years. Sean has elevated my game by allowing me to concentrate my energies where they can be best applied. He is my Drucker-in-a-Box.

  Three readers advised me on the manuscript as I produced it—all of them fellow bloggers. My thanks to Dan Abbott, Mark Safranski, and Michael Lotus for their efforts. Collectively, they constituted a vital emotional and intellectual crutch when I needed one most, filling in for my late brother-in-law, Steve, to whom this book is dedicated.

  My weblog has remained my primary workspace, along with my weekly column for Scripps Howard News Service and my periodic articles in Esquire. Among the many bloggers, readers, and frequent commentators who deserve my special thanks for connecting me to so many sources over the past few years are: 54th Bn CEF, 77grampa77, a517dogg, Al Alborn, Alicescheshirecat, Allen, Andrew in Baghdad, Andrew Sullivan, Andy Shelley, andyinsdca, ansmeister, antonymous, Arherring, Art Hutchinson, Baltimoron, bdunbar, Benjamin, Bill C, Bill Millan, Bill Nagle, bill s, blairistic, boqueronman, Brad B., Brandon Winter, Brent Grace, Brian, Brian H, Brian Rhea, BrotherCaine, Bruce Sterling, Cadet Echo Boomer, Caitlyn, Cbiggs, Chad, Chap, Charles Ganske, Charles Sheehan-Miles, Chicago Boyz, China Law Blog, Chirol, Chris Albon, Chris Janiec, Christofer Hoff, Christopher Plummer, Chuck Butcher, CitSAR, Constantina, Consul-At-Arms, Critt Jarvis, Cuffy Meigs, Curtis Gale Weeks, Curzon, cyberdyver, Czechbikr, D Blair, Dan, Dan Hare, dan tdaxp, Dave Dilegge, Dave Goldberg, David Hallowell, David Stewart, David Sutton, Desiree Fox, DHM, dipaolom, drsteph, Eddie Beaver, EJDUBYA, Elmer Humes, emjayinc, Ethan Zuckerman, Fabius Maximus, farhad, felixdzerzhinsky, Fipps, Francisco, Frank Hecker, Galrahn, Gerry, Gilbert Garza, Gunnar Pet
erson, Hansrudolf Suter, historyguy99, hof1991, Hugh, Information Dissemination, Iskendar, jake, Jarrod Myrick, Javaid Akhtar, JBAndrsn, Jeff J., Jeremiah, Jeremy A, jerseyrefugee, Jesse, JFRiley, Jim Keenan, Jimmy J., Jimmy the Dhimmi, Joe Blizzard, Joe Canepa, Joe Crawford, Joel Helgeson, John of Argghhh!, John Robb, JohnShreffler, Joshua Foust, JTM, jwbarton, Keith, Keith_Indy, Kevin in Dallas, kilngoddess, Kim McD, Lance, Larry Dunbar, Larry Y, Lexington Green, Louis Heberlein, lrb, Major B, Manny, Marcus Vitruvius, Mark in Texas, Matt R., Matthew Garcia, Michael, Michael SteelWolf, Michael Tanji, michael75we, Michal Shapiro, MountainRunner, Mystery Meat, Nate Edwards, Nathan Machula, Noah Shachtman, nykrindc, outback71, Outside the Beltway, PamC, PeteJ, Peter Kay, phil, Phil Windley, Pilgrim, Prescottrjp, Purple-slog, Ray Kimball, Robert L, Robert Langland, sailordude, Sergio, Seth, Shane Deichman, shloky, Sopwith, SR, Steve Barrera, Steve Knott, Steven, Stuart Abrams, Sturt, subadei, taka2k7, TCG, Ted O’Connor, TEJ, thaddeusphoenix, The Globalizer, Tim Lerew, Tim Roth, TM Lutas, Todd McLauchlin, Tom Mull, Tyler Durden of CENTCOM, Valdis, Vinay Gupta, VoteWithTroops.com, Wiggins, William R. Cumming, Wiredman, Younghusband, and zenpundit.

  My continued gratitude to my PowerPoint maven, Bradd Hayes. I love live theater, and Bradd is my director.

  Fellow authors and colleagues I must single out for their help and advice at various times over the past few years include: Frank Akers, Andrew Barnett, Colleen Barnett, Jerome Barnett, Gennaro Buonocore, Hoyt Canady, Robert Clark, Geoff Davis, Paul Davis, Lu Dehong, Kent Franklin, Randy Fullhart, Hank Gaffney, David Granger, Peter Griffin, Steffany Hedenkamp, Tim Heffernan, Carl Hunt, Larry Kudlow, Alan Lowe, Denise McAuliffe, Jack McElroy, Steve McKnight, Vonne Meussling, Robert Moeller, Timothy Moon, Siobhan O’Connor, Steve Oppenheim, John Phillips, Eric Prince, Chet Richards, Don Rippert, Gary Roughhead, Michael Sfraga, Mark Sharpe, Nolan Sklute, Matt Smith-Meck, Yu Tiejun, Harry Ulrich, Ding Wei, Jessica Weigmann, Robert Wright, Zhang Yue, Yan Xuetong, and Andrew Zolli.