Barnett is optimistic about the blessings of globalization; he believes it can create prosperity anywhere only if it creates prosperity everywhere. Indeed one of the book’s weaknesses is that it is too optimistic, discounting the likelihood of great-power conflict: Barnett repeatedly ridicules the Bush administration’s pre-9/11 focus on China. Sounding very much like a latter-day Norman Angell, whose 1910 book, The Great Illusion, published to great acclaim, argued that war was unthinkable since economically interdependent states had so much to lose from it, Barnett argues that China has nothing to gain and everything to lose from war with the U.S. This is reminiscent of the political atmosphere surrounding the 1911 Agadir crisis, as Winston Churchill described it in his memoir, The World Crisis: “[War] is too foolish, too fantastic, to be thought of in the 20th Century… Civilization has climbed above such perils. The interdependence of nations in trade [and other developments were thought to have] rendered such nightmares impossible.”
The optimists, it turned out, were wrong. So while Barnett is right to notice that the U.S. paid too little attention to the Gap, it would be a mistake now to reverse the error and focus exclusively on the Gap to the exclusion of the Core. As Barnett himself points out, there are looming fissures within the Core that could lead to serious problems. But in the Core, the old rules can continue; in the Gap, new ones based on preemption and counterterrorism are necessary. If policymakers fail to realize this, the rule misalignment of the 1990s will persist—and the terrorists will only get stronger.
Comments