Barnett and Robb

Short on time today and tomorrow.  Too bad, because 5GW discussion has been ratcheted up in our little neighborhood on the AllSpace.  Here are some links and a few remarks; but I will definitely be returning to these shortly, when I have the time to properly address them!

Thomas Barnett has posted his Own Personal 5GW Dream, in which he heavily references Dreaming 5GW!  So much is given in this build-it-as-you-go post, I feel almost ashamed offering only minor observations while I wait for the time (a day or two) I need to really dig into the post.  But that would be point #1:

1. So much is given in this build-it-as-you-go post.  Not very secret, is it?  Reading the post, I felt those intransigent but highly active fingertip feelings squirming within me.  This post is like Barnett throwing down the gauntlet, and it might have been too early.  The dream he gives will terrify enough people, if it were given in Congress (just imagine!  But I don’t know his readership; it might already be!), the opposition to his dream would be mobilized.  (As it has been; but that’s another blogger, whose recent activity I’ll address in a moment.)
2. I do like Barnett’s thinking, however, and he’s far more right than wrong (something I’ve been saying a lot lately, about not only Barnett.)  The biggest problem with his dream may be seen in how various commenters around the web are responding to it:  Ok, so America assumes a false ‘failing’ in order to motivate China to become more active; that sounds 5GW, but Barnett’s a little too blasé about this.  In order for America to emerge “fat, rich, and safe for the long haul,” a country named ‘America’ needs to still exist by the end of things.  We were fortunate that we had time to readjust to our disillusionment after Vietnam; I doubt we have that luxury now.  So when he says,

   all this talk of winning-while-appearing-to-lose simply won’t wash. You simply can’t manipulate people and countries like that.

   I wish he would stop thinking about other countries for a bit and think about the American psyche.  This is not to say that it cannot be done, but only that it would need to be managed a little better than that.  America must be occupied in feeling quite successful, even as other nations — China, in particular — gain motivation from America’s seeming failure in areas like the Middle East.  (Heh, side-thought that’s been bouncing around in my head:  If we were to annex Mexico, or at least some Mexican states, the introspection required to turn eyes away from ‘failure’ in the Middle East, as well as a reinvigoration and a feeling of American worth — i.e., expansion — could both be achieved.  Hmmm.)

Speaking of naturally motivating opposition… This talk of 5GW has motivated John Robb to rechristen his Global Guerrillas as 5GWarriors: “THE CHANGING FACE OF WAR: Into the 5th Generation (5GW)”.  He let slip the ‘GG as 5GW’ meme in the post before that post, which I addressed here in my last D5GW entry.  His method is disingenuous, to say the least, since he has previously:

1. Argued that GG is 4GW; because ‘Lind said so’.
2. Argued that it’s just too, too early to call 5GW.  (And this less than a week ago!)  Even worse, he usually says such things while saying, in effect, I agree with Lind: too early to call ‘er!
3. And now, he pulls a Lind, steals a title, and his destruction-oriented mythical creatures have become 5GW Warriors — because, I think, the idea of 5GW must be coopted since much 5GW discussion concerns building order, and Robb sees that such a framework will shut his forthcoming book out.  Any theory of perpetual, unstoppable chaos & violence must necessary disregard any notion of emergent order.

On that second point and link:  If you follow the comments, you can see how clearly Robb has been motivated to do #3.  After a consideration of ‘prematurity’, given by Mark Safranski of ZenPundit, Robb comments,

Zen, then we are likely seeing it in some of the evolutionary behavior I have documented on GGs.

You see the wheels turning, there.

But, as I’ve said I’ve said a lot lately, Robb may be more right than wrong, at least on some particulars; and I can see how his wheels have been greased.  I’ve addressed the GG debate before — “Lind, Robb, Dan, PurpleSlog, CGW” — and come now to the same conclusions.  Robb appears to have a fairly good grasp on a phenomenon we may face in the future, but he is describing an environment more than a generation of warfare or any coherent operational dynamic (i.e., if you take the GG in toto; however, some methods of GG are clear and coherent, if taken piecemeal.)  He may not be seeing the entire dynamic; but clearly seeing some aspects of it, he’s taking those aspects and drawing logical conclusions.

Robb actually responds directly to Barnett’s dream — by calling it “Totally unreal” — and Barnett has responded with a field of flowers and weeds.  I wrote a comment on Barnett’s response, which has not posted yet (it’s in moderation; for some reason, my Typekey login did not click from the preview page), which I’ll repost here.  After another commenter questions Barnett’s statement, that he “[doesn’t] see nonstate actors, nor their networks, becoming stronger over time,” I wrote this:

I don’t know what Barnett sees, but perhaps ‘stronger’ for these specific non-state actors is relative to the forces of stability. In GG and similar theories, there appears to be an assumption that approx. 99.9% of the world population (or more!) will just sit back and let the forces of chaos reign, that even the kind of devastation possible by a superempowered individual will outweigh any kind of potential response to such devastation. Chaos is assumed to emerge, but order is not.

The biggest problem with such a theory (of many) is this assumption of passivity for the vast majority of the human population. Whereas, every single bit of technology, from the low-tech to the futuristic high-tech, will also be available to those 99.9%. Methods of social organization (e.g., open source) will also be available to those 99.9%. In fact, many of those 99.9% will also be ‘superempowered,’ just like Robb’s mythical GG’s. So a better vision of the future would take these factors into account: From a Wild West perspective, the chaos will not only be about ‘bestial strangers’ (demons) appearing from nowhere to destroy all the hard-built homesteads, leading to perpetual wilderness, but also about the efforts of those building their livelihood amidst the chaos.

And that metaphor, btw, makes no difference whether you take a nativist or a homesteader p.o.v., since either group worked hard to establish their own particular sense of order. Despite all the chaos that came from conflict, an order emerged. So when Robb will argue on the one hand that these demons popping up all over the place will have no common motivation but destruction, and on the other hand that they will somehow manage to work together in a stable ‘bazaar of violence’ funded by a stable ‘black globalization’ and developing into ‘virtual states’ — first they are disconnected 4GWarriors he says, then when 5GW discussion kicks in, his GG are somehow suddenly 5GWarriors rather than 4GW — I think he is only trying to work around the fact that even these pseudo-demons will have tendencies toward order: i.e., establishing their own sort of order. They are not endless chaos generators.

Barnett’s far too easy on John Robb. GG, in order for it to actually become a reality, has been twisted into a self-sustaining prophesy powered by selective but obstinate ignorance — i.e., by ignoring large realities. If you believe real demons exist, and moreover that they are entirely unstoppable because no real angels exist, you’ll buy into the prophecy being given by Robb.

On the other hand: and this is important: as I’ve argued before, Robb’s outlining a phenomenon rather than a generation of warfare or any type of coherent operational methodology. When I read GG, I pay close attention to what Robb is saying, because he is in large part describing a significant aspect of the environment that will face us (who are the 99.9% he generally disregards.) There is of course the possibility, I think, that some one GG faction or handful of superempowered individuals will succeed in a major strike at order, fueled by destructive high technology, causing everything to collapse globally; a particularly vicious virus might do it. So there is that to keep in mind. Organizations like Lifeboat (and many others) are keeping that in mind, however.

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More will come, when I have more time!

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UPDATE: Corrected link to John Robb’s CHANGING FACE OF WAR post.

Also, TDAXP takes a look at GG with “5GW is Closed Source (and Global Guerillas Theory is Incoherent)”