Exploding Heads

I got about halfway through the podcast and ran smack into it. The argument that, were it widely heard in some corners would cause heads to spontaneously explode.

In hour 5 of Hugh Hewitt's ongoing series of interviews with Thomas P.M. Barnett this week, we get a discussion of "System Pertubations." And in the course of that discussion came this:

HH: Now to the core and the controversial section of Chapter 5, your argument that the United States needs to be a perturber, that it needs to, and Bush did embrace, the big bang strategy, that the Middle East simply does not work for the vast bulk of people who live there, that that therefore, we went in and turned over all the tables as a response to 9/11. We changed the rules.

TB: Right. And you know, we have that history. I mean, the birth of our country was a rules set reset for the planet. I mean, it sort of said this is a new possibility, this kind of democracy, this kind of government, this kind of new expression of political and economic union. And so we have a history of doing that, and we really did it, I would argue, in enjoining the effort in the Second World War and coming out of it, and creating all those international organizations under Truman, and creating the whole sort of structure for the Cold War, and we were kind of called upon again by 9/11 to say you know, here’s the new package. And we’ve gotten some of the rules out there. I mean, the preemption concept with Bush, I think, is a necessary rule set change. The trick has been how do we get it acceptance among a wide enough array of countries in the world that it becomes not just a perceived unilateralist act by America, but instead becomes a sort of logical expression of the will of a majority of countries on the planet.

HH: Now I want to quote you, I’m sure it’s a line that strikes some of your audience as absurd, and others stand up and cheer. “Not only is the United States government the greatest force for good the world has ever known, but the U.S. military is the single greatest instrument of that good as well.” Now I know that as a matter of statistics, you’ve proven that, just in terms of mission days spent bringing relief to the world where suffering is occurring.

TB: Right.

HH: But nevertheless, that still posits positive good to the U.S. military’s operations in the world, and that must strike some as far-fetched.

TB: Well, I mean, I think you’ve got to look at it in terms of the grand sweep of history. When we saved Europe in terms of a very disastrous civil war in the first World War, we came back and stopped the threat of fascism in the Second World War, and basically have engaged in a long term babysitting operation in Europe that, you know, gave birth to the EU over the long haul. We stood down the threat of the communist socialist bloc, and on that basis, helped liberate 3 billion people in the direction of markets and economic freedom, and hopefully over time, political freedom. We’ve become a huge glue in Asia, and participated in that section of the world’s rise. Yes, there were things we did along the way that were great missteps, Vietnam being one of them. But you have to look at these mistakes in terms of the larger stories that don’t get told, which is when Americans come and stay with their forces, typically, stability ensues, economic integration ensues, and you get prosperity over time and lasting peace. We’re down to the tougher nuts now with sub-Saharan Africa and the announcement today by Bush that there will be an Africa command, which is something I predicted in the second book, Blueprint For Action, and we’re stuck in the Middle East for quite some time. But these are no longer challenges, and no greater challenges than what we faced in the past. We just have to remember our role in history, and I argue that that’s a very, very, very positive role that no other country has aspired to, to the degree that we have.