A Critique of the National Defense Panel Report
By Thomas P.M. Barnett, with Henry H. Gaffney, Jr.
The CNA Corporation, 1998
I. Asymmetric Attacks
As an example of where the NDP Report gets off track, look at its projected global futures (e.g., its "Extrapolation of Today" scenario, pp. 8-9), wherein "rogue states" are viewed as virtual U.S.-equivalents in terms of being able to wreak mass destruction basically anywhere in the world (specifically, deep into the "American homeland"). In doing so, the NDP unites two broad themes in its report into one seriously inflated threat (in effect, looking for a threat connection between certain international trends and a particular subset of nation-states). The panel frets about the rapid pace of technological innovation (a frightening security threat to some, a tremendous investment opportunity to NASDAQ), noting that while it's done much to bring many sections of the world closer together in a global economy, it nonetheless allows "rogue states" and "nonstate actors" the opportunity to acquire high technology with dangerous military uses (pp. 7-8).
Thus, the NDP Report declares that, "although the United States is still the leading world power, its sustained political-economic-military dominance is uncertain" (p. 9). In short, the NDP extrapolates a global threat to U.S. political, economic, and military preeminence from the specific capacity of essentially two mid-sized regional powers—Iran and Iraq—both of whom spend approximately one-fiftieth of the U.S. figure on defense. It does so by employing the increasingly popular notion of "asymmetric attacks" to seemingly new and dizzying heights.
And yet, when you read through the NDP's "how-to" list (p. 11) of asymmetric threats (e.g., "employ imaginative tactics," "combine approaches for even greater synergy"), you realize that it all boils down to Saddam fighting the Persian Gulf War far better next time (e.g., next time he’ll "deny access to forward locations," next time he’ll "exploit WMD technology"). Indeed, the NDP basically says as much when it states, "We can safely assume that future adversaries will have learned from the Gulf War" (p. 11).
Therefore, the equation—globalization of technology + rogue states = asymmetric attacks— is effectively supposed to preclude our ability to repeat our Desert Storm success anywhere in the world. Who'd have guessed that by almost single-handedly crushing the world's fifth-largest army halfway across the world, the United States was actually setting itself up for the long-term danger of asymmetric attack? The farther we get away from that overwhelming victory, the worse our imagined impotence becomes.
II. Non-state actors
A second conflation of two disparate and often contradictory themes comes in the NDP's clear fascination with "non-state actors" (see "Geopolitical Trends," pp. 5-6), a term it uses to unite such disparate entities as multinational corporations and illegal drug traffickers (Nike = Medellín Cartel?). Here we see the tendency to cross-fertilize the categories of "rogue states" and "failed states" (to include narco-kleptocracies). The result is a mishmash of state-sponsored terrorists, drug lords, refugees, and mafia smuggler networks (the last being the linchpin, since they transport weapons, drugs, and illegal aliens—the trifecta of non-state actors).
Terrorists
The problem with mixing these individuals together in one transnational "stew" is that the sum of the parts does not add up to the presumed whole. For example, the Mideast-based rogue states clearly do play a significant role in sponsoring terrorist groups in their region, but that role is largely limited to that region. To the extent that such Islamic terrorist groups strike outside of the Middle East, or act as truly "international" terrorists vice "regional" ones, that activity is almost exclusively bound up in the U.S.'s support for Israel. To put that in perspective, more Americans die each year from lightning strikes than from international terrorism.fn#9 As for the rest of the world's terrorists, virtually all are home grown, home supported, and home focused, with the exception being the occasional attack against their own political exiles. Again, here we see the NDP implicitly buying into the tendency to extrapolate particular situations from the Middle East and transpose them on a global scale.
Drug Cartels and Mafia
Disaggregating the problem further, we recognize that drug cartels and mafia syndicates do not present direct national security threats. They do not seek to disrupt global economic or political stability, but merely to generate profits. In effect, they desire macro-stability within and among nation-states in order to create and exploit micro-instabilities, i.e., illegal markets and activities. In short, these criminals are not interested in destabilizing political institutions or even capturing them, but merely influencing them for their own ends. As one academic expert on drug cartels put it, "Drug traffickers are like interest groups, not political parties. They want to influence who gets into power and what they do when they get in power, but they do not want to be the top person in power."fn#10 So for the NDP to lump these individuals in with terrorists as transnational promoters of chaos and instability is misleading. These people thrive best in conditions of general stability.
Illegal Aliens and Refugees
The same could be said for illegal aliens, who are far more likely to succeed under conditions of the targeted state's economic prosperity than they are under its disruption. In short, they’re looking for economic opportunity, which equates to stability. Of course, too rapid a migration can destabilize, but we note that immigration is far from out of control in developed countries: seven out of eight immigrants now settled in these countries arrived legally. Moreover, as reported in a recent study, "the classic immigration countries—Australia, Canada, and the United States—currently report much lower relative proportions of immigrants in their populations than those recorded at the turn of the century."fn#11 The long-standing problem of illegal aliens is never going to go away, but elevating it to the level of a U.S. national security threat seems unwarranted.
As for true refugees, the term "actor" gives them too much credit in terms of plot and motivation. In effect, they are nothing more than by-products of local instances of chaos, with their "transnational" effects largely limited to the next country over.
Not Actors So Much As Stubborn Global Conditions
The point of all this discussion is simply to downplay the utility of the NDP conflating largely disconnected themes, or combining lists (in this instance, looking for a threat connection between certain subnational conditions and a particular category of nation-state). In effect, the equation, failed states + rogue states = non-state actors threat dresses up a litany of "here-to-stay" global conditions in a way far too suggestive of a coherent international infrastructure.
Anyway, to the extent that such infrastructure does exist in the areas of terrorism and mafia activity, the NDP once again strays into the world of national and international law enforcement. There's nothing wrong with this, and indeed, we largely applaud the panel's calls for greater interagency cooperation on such matters. We just caution readers against seeing in this presentation the rationale for a larger or even leading military role in U.S. domestic affairs. Much as in the case of complex humanitarian disasters, the military finds itself limited to an enabling role (e.g., in support of non-government and private voluntary organizations in humanitarian disasters and of law-enforcement agencies with regard to most non-state actors).
III. Urban Warfare
A third area in which the NDP mistakenly conflates two disparate or disconnected themes is in the notion of "the increasing likelihood of military operations in cities" (p. 14). Basically, the NDP combines the tendency of the global economy to encourage the development of "megatropolises," or "megacities" (by facilitating the concentration of service-economy jobs) with the notion of "failed states," "imploding states," and the like.
In effect, the NDP is looking for some threat connection between these international processes and subnational conditions, and what they come up with is "urban warfare." One imagines a recipe along these lines:
* Start with an economic base that encourages greater concentrations of people in urban areas (where the jobs are).
* Let the demographic pressures build up those numbers to unreasonable levels (anything bigger than our own, occasionally chaotic Los Angeles, one assumes).
* Toss in some "non-state actors" hell-bent on conducting high-tech "asymmetric attacks."
* Add a pinch of U.S. national security interests (the screaming protestations of some U.S. ethnic minority?).
* Voilà! A sitting U.S. president will somehow see the utility of conducting a large-scale (if it's small scale, it's not new) military operation designed to "control" (pacify?) an urban area, "defend" an urban area (against rebels?), "evict" hostile forces (see Russia's "glorious successes" in Chechnya), or "target and strike" hostile forces (sounds like cruise missiles to us).
As we stated earlier, the NDP's promotion of "urban operations" seems like an ill-advised magnification of what has been a fringe military capability for special operations, the best and most common example being non-combatant evacuation operations (NEOs). So to sum up: yes, we should have the capabilitiy to do small-scale military operations in urban environments; and yes, that capability should reside with the Marines; but no, we don’t see major urban operations becoming a significant or frequent feature of U.S. military interventions overseas.
Summing Up: The "Infernal Triangle"
In all of the "conflating" mistakes cited above, we believe the NDP essentially erred in trying to unite various largely disconnected security themes that are highly popular right now in the national security community:
* The international trends of economic globalization and the attendant spread of information and technology
* The persistent if shrinking and geographically concentrated category of nation-states identified as "rogues"
* The never-ending, although hardly "exponentially" increasing, troubling internal conditions within a relatively small collection of so-called failing states.fn#12
As the following chart portrays, when the NDP tries to link these disparate themes it comes up with three rather dubious threat definitions. We find these definitions dubious in the sense that when you add them up, you don't arrive at a very accurate picture of the international system either today or down the road.
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Citation: Thomas Barnett, "The NDP's Three Exaggerated Threat Assessments," The CNA Corporation, 1998.
Original URL: http://www.geocities.com/ResearchTriangle/Thinktank/6926/ndpthree.htm
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