Barnett Transcript - 10

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What do I mean by the exporting of security? Pretty simple stuff for this audience:

Train their military leaders
Exhibit presents
Cooperate with their militaries
You respond to crisis over there
You do Joint Exercises
Pre-position equipment over there
You have permanent bases, alliances - sometimes you go all the way to an occupation

My point is that you don’t measure it in terms of bombs dropped, you measure in terms of the attention we pay regions because that is what it really costs.

I’m going to start wrapping this up. I’m going to make an argument about how we interact or transact with the outside world. 

The United States is a mere 5% of the world’s population. 95% over there. Somehow we manage to expel a quarter of the world’s pollution and garbage on the planet. Somehow we manage to burn a quarter of the world’s energy. 5% of the world’s population. I call that living large.

My friend’s on Wall Street say this is perfectly fair.  We generate a quarter of the world’s wealth.  Another way to look at it.  Economic footprint. We are experts at exporting our sovereign debt.  We do it better than anybody in the world.  It allows us to live beyond our means.  Of course, if you took $350 billion dollars out of the U.S. federal budget and stop paying for security around the planet, you’d have a different economy I would argue and a different world unfortunately.  My friends on Wall Street say, why do you bring this up in public?    Do you know what it costs to print those little pieces of paper we send around the world?  Nothing.  They are just promises.  What we get in return computers, cars, it’s tremendous deal.  I think the real transaction is that we export security and we import connectivity.  Global stability is a COLLECTIVE good.  Why do we pay more for it than anybody else?  Because we enjoy it more than anybody else.  So how I view those major flows as transactions.  We’ve got to let their youth in.  We’ve got to give them opportunity cause we are going to age.  That is an essential transaction that we have to pursue.   You put in the Patriot Act, you divert the flow of Latinos coming to the United States that are supposed to account for 2/3 of our population growth between now and 2050 and you’re changing human history because they are going to the Iberian peninsula now - in Europe because they feel more welcome there in far larger numbers than we anticipated since 9/11.  Unanticipated consequence.  We’re exchanging our security for their instability.  So we are going to firewall ourselves from some of the worst things inside the gap.  You can’t grow the core unless you protect the core.  Their energy matters to us - even if it is in an extended fashion.  The price of energy goes up in China, the price of goods goes up in Walmart.  That’s how it works.  With our money, we exchange for their development and we buy off the only long term threat that really matters - China. 


So think about those four flows Core-Gap. What has to happen? Essentially, people got to go from the Gap to the Core in large numbers.  Security’s got to go from the old core specifically in the first instance to the Middle East increasingly throughout the Gap. But we first focused on the Middle East because a lot of energy has to come out of here in the next twenty-five years before we move on to hydrogen. And the long-term investments have to continue to integrate this half of the world’s population over here.

That is the baby we cannot throw out with the bathwater in this global war on terrorism.  So I am concerned, very much when we don’t have Indians and Chinese and  Russians as part of the occupation force in Iraq.  It is a real problem.  It is a strategic error.  I’ll start rapping it up.

We master this new definition of crisis and instability so we understand how to wage war within the context of everything else. We screw up any one of these flows, we can screw up the system. We have destroyed globalization before and we can definitely do it again. We have to understand that when we wage war, we administer to a system. I see it as a three-pronged strategy. 

1. Strengthen the Cores ability to withstand system perturbations like 9/11
2. Firewall the core off from the Gap’s worst exports.
3. Shrink the Gap

Only a small portion of it involves military actions. The vast bulk of it is foreign direct investment. The vast bulk.

Here is the stuff that gets the most play now in the book. Frankly, I wasn’t going to put it into the book because I thought it was a little too far out there. But events in Iraq make it a lot more relevant.

I’ll make an argument now - another stretching one. Difference between defense and security. Historically defense means take care of the homeland. As Art Cebrowski likes to say, security means ‘everything else’. I could do this for $100 billion. We spend $350 billion over here. Historically we had two different forces to do that. It’s written in the Constitution. Raise an Army. Maintain a Navy. Your big stick force. Your baton stick force with the Marines. Your can of whoop ass. How you keep the system functioning.

We decide in 1947 to put those two together. Why? Because we believed - correctly, that we were going to be involved in a long-term hair-trigger standoff with the Soviets. So we merged the definition of America’s national defense and the whole world going up in flames. I won’t argue with that definition. The problem is that - that definition no longer holds. What has happened since the end of the Cold War? What has happened - basically the bifurcation that I described earlier - operating one military, buying another. It’s gets harder over time. It will get very hard in the next year in Iraq - very hard. We’ve been having these arguments ever since the end of the Cold War. Let’s go back to what we had before. As somebody at the Naval War College - we like the idea. Some people think that 9-11 really triggered the bifurcation. Home game Homeland Security. Away game Department of Defense I believe the creation Department of Homeland Security was a strategic error. I don’t think it is going to increase coordination whatsoever. I think we are going to waste a lot of money. We’re going to feel good about it, but any notion of putting up walls between us and the rest of the world is a waste of time. The shock of 9-11 should have pushed us into embracing the world, not pulling back from the world

I knew when we went into Iraq, we would defeat the Iraq army with ease, yet we’d probably screw up the occupation badly. Why? Because we don’t have a back half force and because we don’t have a back half force - we don’t get those 17,000 peace keepers from India. Which basically says, You know, I don’t think you’ve got it. I think the occupation of Iraq is transforming transformation. I think it is about time that we admit we have living uncomfortably inside the Department of Defense, both the Department of War and the Department of Everything else. I think Don Rumsfeld is an amazing Secretary of War. I don’t think we have a Secretary of Everything Else - and that is how you get an Abu Ghraib. That’s how you get all the screw ups in Iraq. We don’t have a secretary for Everything Else. Two missions fundamentally at odds.
 
We need a Leviathan force for that Hobbsian world called the gap. That force is going to win you wars. We also need a peace waging force - the back half force. What does this mean? In practical terms, divorce is unlikely any time soon. I say, we’ll stay together for the sake of the children. Nobody wants the Marines to be orphaned. What I do advocate for example - totally obliterating service identity once you become flag. Nobody joins the U.S. Military. They join the Marines, the Air Force, the Army, the Navy. I believe in that processing function. But I believe once you achieve flag rank, you’d better be able to do it all. People tell me it can’t be done. I say you haven’t been paying attention to jointness over the last 10 years. As I proceed in this discussion, I’ll talk about what I consider to be an extent situation that is only going to get more dramatic over time. I call it the sleeping in separate bedrooms arrangement. Two forces uncomfortably lodged inside the Department of Defense and every once in a while they bump into each other on the battlefield.

When an essential civilian, Jessica Lynch wanders into a fire zone. We say, How did that happen? And you get Pete Schoomaker, new Chief of Staff of the Army saying, we’re going to make everybody a rifleman in the Army. We don’t have that many rifles. We don’t have that many bullets. Two different forces. Two very different functions. We’ve been trying to do the same with one military throughout the 90’s. It’s not easy. Read all the articles. The great articles in the Times, the Post and the Journal about what it is for these guys to try and do both jobs both day and night. Some people say, the Brits do it. The Brits aren’t the U.S. Military in terms of size. What’s amazing is, when our forces get to do this stuff - they come back with very high re-enlistment rates. They feel very good about Sys Admin work. So don’t tell me you can’t find people for that right hand force. Because I know we can. But you can’t take them under the circumstances of this - especially the reserve component. Then send them over for extended duties - and oh, by the way, you might have to slip back into this because we didn’t shut down the war very effectively. Other differences. The Leviathan force has traditional partners. Who all look suspiciously the UK and their former colonies. Which is without surprise. They’re multi-national states, like an India, like a Canada, an Australia and the United States. These partners - much different. A much wider array. This is your jointness. This is so much more.

This is so much more - interagency. I call this, your Dad’s military. I call this, your Mom’s military. Your Dad’s military - Leviathan force, I want them young, male, unmarried, slightly pissed off. They like Nintendo? I say great. I’ve got a nine year old they can have right now. This is going to be older, married with children, more educated, gender balanced. This one is not coming under the purview of the International Criminal Court. This one is. This one will not move in the direction of civilian law, but remain very distinct from society in military law. This one will move in the direction of civilian law - become more like cops. This one will respect the restrictions of the Posse Comitatus - military forces operating inside the United States. This force is going to obliterate those distinctions over time. These are the ground troops for your Northern Command. Leviathan force will not hold press conferences. Sys Admin force will be open source. Different definitions of network. And then the command arrangements. This is how you make sense of Dana Priest’s work - Washington Post - they are your pro-counsels. They have been doing Sys Admin around the world for years. All we have to do is admit it. Your combatant commanders with the biggest foreign policy budgets in the U.S. government - dwarfing that estate. And then look at what the Vice Chairman, Peter Pace is doing in terms of long term war planning. You are going to see that war fighting force drawn back into these previously supporting commands. You’re going to see that force commanded increasingly by a joint forces command. And that is going to be the big stick we break out every so often. Plus this is the force that is never coming home.

And now the best slide. Who get’s the kids. This is the part in the brief where the Marines go.. GAH! This makes perfect sense historically. Small arms, small wars. This is what these guys have been doing throughout their history. This is why this is not going to be a toothless force. The Marines are like my West Highland terrior.. They get up every morning, they want to dig a hole, they want to kill something. So it is not going to be a toothless force. Absolutely not. And it returns them to their historical roots.

Now let’s talk the Navy. Submarines, strategic go over to the Leviathan force. Service combatants, Sys Admin force. We move progressively towards what I call the Smart Dust Navy. Based on our experience of tracking things with Soviet subs. We need to get global on that basis. Carriers go in both directions. Why? Because I work for the Naval War College and I’d like to have my contract picked up. No. They go in both directions because they are so darn good. Same thing with airborne - same principle. Your big armor goes towards the Leviathan. Your ground troops by and large go to Sys Admin. So I believe in the transformed force that largely wins from the air and decimates the opponent. But you’ve got to have a lot of boots on the ground for the Sys Admin work - for the peace waging. And then the Air Force. Your logistics - both directions just like carriers and airborne. You see the similarities - but your fighters and your bombers - they’re are Leviathan force. And then Special Ops - distinct from the Marine Core. They are really your assassination squad - they’re your ‘leave behind force’, your first in, last out. That’s how it breaks down.

Last slide. Definition of transformation. Art Cebrowski likes to say it is a three-headed monster. Inside the Pentagon, it is mostly about buying stuff. That’s what the Hill cares about. To hell with your vision - do you build it in my district? Inside the E Ring it is all about running the Defense Department better. The Revolution in Business Affairs. This is the one that is really changing. The role of the Defense Department in National Security. The best question I ever got in response to this brief came from Esquire staff, which after they told me to stop wearing button-down shirts with formal suits - very important rule, ask the question, In your vision of the future, what changes more? These are the answers we came up with. We think the rest of the world is going to change more than the United States. It is not about building fortress America. Its about raising security practices outside which is why I believe in building the virtual border concept. I believe in tracking containers at where they start, not where they come. Private sector is going to change a lot more than the public sector. Private sector has a hard time with security as a collective good. They consider it a sub-cost. They hate it. If you want to see a good example of private sector security? It’s called security at airports before 9-11. The U.S. government as a whole is going to change more than the Defense Department. These guys have to aggregate a lot of disparate skill sets. All I’m talking about in this bifurcation is returning to what we know throughout history. Interagency is going to change a whole lot more than jointness. Interagency is the new jointness. Peacekeeping is going to change a whole lot more than war fighting - which is still about smoking holes. And military operations are going to change a whole lot more than what we buy or how we buy it. Now we send the defense budget over to the Hill. We call it a transformation budget and the military expenditure force structure weenies come out of their little cubby holes in the think tanks around Washington and they say I’m a transformation expert. I say, how do we know you are a transformation expert? They say I’ve memorized every line of the U.S. Defense budget. That makes me a transformation expert. So they say, I’ve gone through your defense budget. I’ve looked at every line. I don’t see transformation anywhere. Show me where it is. We say, maybe you need a larger perspective. Because maybe there is all sorts of change going on throughout the system but you are not paying attention to it because you only define it in terms of programs of record - the whack list. And that has to end if we are going to understand transformation. If we are going to understand the seam between war and peace. If we are going to succeed in reaching a finishing line in this global war on terrorism which I’ll define as making globalization truly global. Connecting the disconnected. Ending the threat as we know it...

Q & A were not transcribed.

   

 

 
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