Yes, I will confess to being rude in the newsletter article on Kaplan. It’s a skill set I mastered in DC years ago and I do it well. I try not to engage in such attack writing unless I feel compelled, and I felt compelled with Kaplan’s piece on China.

Read the rest.

Gotta fill those Pentagon New Map board game slots somehow ;)

Barnett says:

The saddest thing about this article is that The Atlantic published it. God, if I tried to shove anything this goofy past Mark Warren at Esquire, he’d just laugh me off and remove my name from the masthead.

I wish he had run this piece by Mark Warren.

The EU is becoming heavily dependent on Russia for its energy supplies. There are signs that the vital supplies could be easily cut off. It is reported that oil deliveries to Ukraine are being stopped, although they have been paid for: “for five days, no oil was pumped at all, even though we have all the necessary agreements.”Â?

There is a need for a refereeing system – connectivity has its limits.

Whoa! Unless Bill Clinton was back in charge, a Chinese cruise missile attacking a floating piece of American property would invite a vicious American counterattack, if not a drawn out war. That attack would be a clear act of war, just like the bombing of the USS Cole was in 2000 (which sadly nobody in charge realized).

Anyway, the Telegraph has an article about the “connectedness” (copyright Barnett) of China nowadays.

“It’s enough to make you want to slap some sense into the man.”

“Here we go from misinformed to down right dumbass.”

“Somebody pass the hash. I’m almost feeling lucid again.”

“I don’t think I’ve heard anything more stupid in my entire life.”

I commented before that Kaplan was telling us what the Navy had to say; a commander prepares for the worst and that means thinking about some far out scenarios. That’s what Kaplan wrote, and I’m certain had set out to do. Whether that’s “whoring” depends on how you see the tone of the article. I took it as “hey, some of this sounds ridiculous but I’m glad PACOM seems to be exploring all possibilities rather than assuming everything is peachy keen.” Barnett takes it as myopia that the Navy only thinks about the Navy’s relationship with China and ignores other relationships. Isn’t that what they should do, stick to the war business and not get tangled in economics or diplomacy?

One part of Kaplan’s article I definitely had an issue with, however, and so does Barnett, is when he refers to the 2001 surveillance plane incident as a “specific demonstration of China’s strength”. Barnett is right, that wasn’t strength, that was pilot error. Unless there’s some indication that the Chinese airforce plans to use kamikaze maneuvers, characterizing a crash as a targeted strike is just bad reporting. I also have to say stoking the fires with the “carrier hit by cruise missile” = 9/11 comparison seemed inappropriate. One a military action between two national armies, the other a bunch of yahoos blowing up alot of civilians. Yes, it would make us very sad and very angry – but the comparison is tenuous.

Still, somebody really should pass Barnett the hash – he needs to mellow out.

Someone else had general comments on this a few years ago. Per Henry Kissinger in his book ‘Diplomacy’: “Empires have no interest in operating within an international system; they aspire to be the international system. Empires have no need for a balance of power.”

However world wars showed the danger of laisser-faire. There was agreement that things had to change. A refereeing system was introduced by the League of Nations and then the UN Charter. K noted the shortcomings of a voluntary system: “But in the vast majority of cases – and in nearly all of the difficult ones – the nations of the world tend to disagree either about the nature of the threat or about the type of sacrifice they are prepared to make to meet it.”

New nations at the world’s top table will surely make decision-making more difficult.

So here we see him go into one of his typical moods: “He dares not agree with my theory, THE PENTAGON’S NEW MAP, hook line and sinker! Doesn’t he know it’s the best thing since George Kennan? The buffoon!” Barnett does some great stuff but he gets East Asia dangerously wrong—and his biggest advantage in the debate is that if we do what he want us to, it will be too late to reverse course if/when Kaplan and other less optimistic realists are shown to be right.