Thanks for the heads up Joe—Barnett takes no prisoners in his latest on Kaplan. Time for a Fisking.

Kaplan’s “classic imperialism” is just “preparing the battlefield” by good SysAdmin work

...But since Kaplan pretty much doesn’t see any of that good stuff happening, he constantly paints this picture of neverending “imperialsm” that merely extends the “keep the fight over there” mentality that drove a lot of strategic rationales for crisis response activities in the early 1990s after the Sovs disappeared and the services needed to justify themselves as relevant to the seemingly “flatter” security environment (if I may be so bold to borrow Friedman’s term). Here, “flatter” would mean no peaks formed by great powers bent on military adventurism, so only small stuff is left.

I can tell that Barnett has even cracked open the book—to be expected—but could he get Imperial Grunts more wrong? Kaplan is optimistic—not PNM-style overwheling “shock and awe” optimistic, but he gives specific examples, from Mongolia to the Philippines to Colombia, where US forces are doing lots of good.

And a “flatter” security environment? Since Barnett has nothing nice to say about Friedman at all (or anyone who doesn’t think PNM is the gospel truth), what gives?

Simply put, Kaplan’s soda-straw view (which I find to be, quite frankly, much like Michael Moore’s—just from another angle), no matter how many SOF guys he hangs with on how many continents, is still a guide to nothing beyond tactics. That his work passes for strategic thought speaks to the very sad state of affairs in national security circles.

Soda straw view… like “Michael Moore”?! I think we have a new Godwin’s law: whenever someone refers to their opponent or target as Michael Moore, you know the argument’s gone old.

If Kaplan just sold himself as a great journalist, I would agree with those who praise him to the hilt within the U.S. military, but his tendency to extrapolate to the strategic from his exceedingly myopic tactical view ruins his material for me. In the end, I see his work doing more harm than good, and so I do not advise people to read it.

If Kaplan sells himself as anything it’s a classicist-journalist with a pessimistic realist perspective. If the US military appreciate his work, maybe it’s because he writes what no one else does.

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