Page 2 of 2 BOOK REVIEW Twelve steps to a new grand strategy Great Powers: America and the World after Bush by Thomas
P M Barnett
Reviewed by Benjamin A Shobert
attempting to combine the right objective with an inadequate justification and
incomplete execution. Taken together, the argument can appear uneven. At some
level Barnett seems to accept this, wanting to focus primarily on how America
moves forward from the mistakes of its past.
In Great Powers, the main emphasis is on suggesting a new foreign policy
which is intensely pragmatic. Barnett advocates a balanced, but
forward-thinking, view of what America can accomplish, through what he calls "A
Twelve-Step Recovery
Program for American Grand Strategy". Much of Barnett's 12 steps rest on the
first, "Admit that we Americans are powerless over globalization." (pg 37) To
Barnett, this is no admission of weakness, rather a realization born of
strength, and a consequence of ideological victory.
In this regard, his thoughts on China are compelling: if China was going to set
aside its communist ways and re-enter the global economy, how else was it going
to do so other than by becoming the world's factory? Did we expect it to go
from a deeply withdrawn country, lacking industry and technology, with a
chronic need to feed itself, to a nation competing on innovation in the space
of a decade? Two? Barnett deeply wants Americans reading his book to wrestle
with their own history, specifically when the US economy had its own predatory
habits. By positioning much of his 12 steps within America's own challenges
while it developed, Barnett hopes to introduce some maturity and patience into
our expectations for China.
A number of the 12 steps show a realization of how and where America's response
to September 11, 2001, was misguided, such as number four, which asks that
Americans to "make a searching and fearless moral inventory of the ‘global war
on terror'." (pg 46) Surprisingly, much of Barnett's 12 steps involve acts of
admission, or what advocates of American generational super-power status may
see as unbecoming humility.
Number five requires that we "admit to the world and to ourselves the exact
nature of our mistakes in Iraq and Afghanistan". (pg 52) Number six is likely
to force accountability for some of these mistakes because it mandates that we
"work with the international community to remove the defects of wartime
injustice". (pg 56).
Barnett believes that only through the admission of past mistakes can we hope
to move forward, and that if we attempt and gloss over these errors, many
existing and potential allies may refuse to enter new commitments and
partnerships with us, fearing that we will ultimately reject forms of
accountability which we find unappealing.
Later in the book, Barnett writes "America needs to approach this grand
strategy with great humility, and by that I mean we need to make sure others
get the credit more than we do." (pg 250) Against the backdrop of a now-gone
president who seemed incapable of acknowledging error, the simplicity of this
aspect of Barnett's suggestion will be deeply appealing to many readers.
The 12 steps act as preparation for America and the world to develop a new
grand strategy, one Barnett believes the US still has the political capital,
military capability and cultural heritage to lead. For Barnett, this strategy
must have at its center greater cooperation between the US, China, Brazil and
India.
This is easier said than done, because the relationship Barnett envisions
between these countries would include a level of joint military activities that
goes against the grain of many in the Pentagon. Not only this, but the idea of
such integration and cooperation would negate the rationalization at the heart
of many weapons platforms like the F-22 which require Congress and the US
military to view countries including China as potential threats, instead of
partners.
The backdrop of much, if not all of Great Powers, is Barnett's belief
that globalization ultimately gets Americans what they really most desire: a
safer, more secure world, characterized by countries with healthy middle
classes that can participate in their governments through increasingly
democratic means. As he writes, "What's so scary about globalization today is
that it's triggering a global consciousness regarding the possibilities of
individual liberty, and in doing so, it places a lot of elites in nondemocratic
societies in a tough place." (pg 296)
He also believes the threat from fundamentalist Islam may not be best countered
with the military. Again, Barnett does see the need for a vibrant and
well-trained force, only that it is most politically effective when widely
seeded from different countries and capable of dealing seriously with the
aftermath of intervention. The best counter to militant Muslim extremists may
be to further enable the very forces they fear, the essence of modernizing
influences best carried by, and embodied through, international trade.
Similarly, whatever fear Americans have of China's true intentions, concerns
that Beijing harbors some latent commitment to overthrowing the world and
remaking it in Mao Zedong's image, is best addressed by bringing China more -
not less - into the fold. Doing so forces its leaders to mature and choose to
participate in the systems of global governance which define our economies.
Towards the end of his book, Barnett pulls from a somewhat surprising source of
inspiration, president Richard Nixon, when writing: "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 (eg, the China model) or integration (eg, the
EU) strategies - basically, how best to engage the liberal international trade
order of America's creation." (pg 418)
Beset by economic worries, aware of basic flaws in our economic thinking,
critical of our ability to reshape the world through judicious use of military
force or political will, Americans have forgotten that for whatever short-term
losses we are experiencing now, most of the world still traces their most
recent successes back to the American standard.
Barnett's Great Powers seeks to remind us of how much we still have to
offer the world if we can adjust and realign our own expectations. If we
believe we are the stewards of something special, something unique, something
worth protecting, now is a critical time to reconnect with these beliefs.
Great Powers: America and the World After Bush by Thomas P M Barnett,
Putnam Adult (February 5, 2009). ISBN-10: 0399155376. Price US$29.95, 496
pages.
Benjamin A Shobert is the managing director of Teleos Inc
(www.teleos-inc.com), a consulting firm dedicated to helping 'n businesses
bring innovative technologies into the North American market.
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