Many of the people that I've had the pleasure of discussing the Global War on Terror find the purpose of this war difficult to grasp. Part of this is clearly due to President Bush's inability to articulate the necessity of this conflict in words other than a fetishizing of freedom (not that I don't have a fetish for freedom, quite the contrary, I do). But the majority of the confusion that I have encountered to date is the inability of people to understand the deeper strategic dimensions of the current war. Afghanistan made sense: Bin Laden attacked us, Bin Laden was in Afghanistan, therefore, attack Afghanistan. Iraq was a little bit of a stretch, and when combined with the disingenuous false questions and politically-motivated selective memories of the Left, explanations for why we invaded Iraq are nearly pointless.
But, explanations for how Afghanistan and Iraq are related in a strategic sense, and not just in a they're-all-Arabs-so-let's-kill-them-and-let-God-sort-them-out kinda way. That's where Thomas P.M. Barnett, Ph.D. comes in.
In his book, The Pentagon's New Map, Barnett argues that the real goal of the Global War on Terror is, in fact, spreading the benefits of globalization to every corner of the globe, but most importantly, to the most neglected and god-awful armpits-of-the-world and failed states.
A more concise version of his vision can be read here.
Flit(TM) scores a wonderful interview with Dr. Barnett. While I agree with him on a number of his points, I do believe that he is wrong when it comes to Kerry and his foriegn-policy team. While that might be a personal prejudice -- okay, it is a personal prejudice -- the fact remains that having read Barnett's book, and carefully pored over the passages where he takes about World History in a teleological sense, I can't help but conclude that he is, for the most part, left of center. This, however, is an ad hominem attack. The fact remains that Kerry does not care for either globalization or for democracy. He doesn't care for human rights. He has always reserved his praise for dictators and his scorn for democratizers. He, furthermore, has consistently shown an inability to think outside of the Vietnam box. What Barnett advocates could never actually be advanced by a Democrat president or administration, if only because their welfare statist policies and their commitments to enlargening the public sector on behalf of friendly trade unions precludes a serious, internationalist effort. I mean, fercryinoutloud, Kerry wants to renogotiate the WTO and free-trade treaties. That's not only a losing idea, but it runs counter to the predominant theme in Barnett's book -- bringing all of the nations of the world into globalization because the socio-economic flows in globalization are good for people.
Still, what you'll find from Dr. Barnett are some challenging ideas, and ideas that need to be articulated so that this coming century is a century of increasing peace and prosperity, not spiraling violence and poverty.