The Pentagon's New Map by Barnett Thomas P.M

Author:Barnett, Thomas P.M. [Barnett, Thomas P.M.]
Language: eng
Format: azw3
Publisher: Berkley Trade
Published: 2005-05-02T16:00:00+00:00

THE FLOW OF MONEY, OR WHY WE WON’T BE GOING TO WAR WITH CHINA

I knew my workshop series with Cantor Fitzgerald was in trouble when the spies started showing up. Not a lot of spies, mind you, just three. They weren’t going to participate in the event whatsoever—not even the meals. I was not to introduce them or refer to them in any manner as I facilitated the session. They would sit in the back in the room, interacting with no one, just…being there. When my department chairman told me in advance about this trio, he said he couldn’t say who they were, and when an eighteen-year veteran of the CIA tells you someone has no identity as far as you’re concerned, well, you just sort of have to go with it. “They just want to observe,” he said with a finality that told me my super Top Secret clearance wasn’t going to get me any insider dope on this one whatsoever. But I didn’t need any. The workshop we were putting on involved the future of foreign direct investment in Asia. These guys were “observing” because both the Pentagon and the intelligence community had developed a laserlike focus on China as the “rising near-peer competitor.” Our workshop was just giving whomever another chance to line up China’s future in their sights.

Of course, the purpose of the workshop as far as Cantor and I were concerned was to explore the inescapable reality that Developing Asia was going to need a lot of money to finance a doubling of its energy demand in a mere generation’s time. This was the second workshop in the New Rule Sets Project. The first was on energy, and we billed that one as the “motive,” as in, “Asia’s gotta have it!” This second workshop would be about “opportunity,” as in, “Who’s gonna pony up the money?” The third event would be about the “crime” of all the environmental damage that might result. Motive, opportunity, and crime all coming together in a neat little package. We made no assumptions about China’s bad intentions one way or the other, but we knew, to borrow a phrase from West Side Story, that if China ended up acting “depraved” it would be “on account of being deprived.” So nothing personal, strictly business. China had needs, and we wanted to see those needs met, because we knew how hard it might be for them—and by extension us—if those efforts fell short.

Naturally, not everyone felt the same way about China in my business as the new century dawned. In fact, the entire Pentagon strategic planning community was refocusing most of its vast energy to contemplating and preparing for war with China in some distant future scenario. We were hiring China experts by the barrelful. All our war games pretty much had to involve some unnamed large Asian land power with an unhealthy interest in a small island nation off its coast, otherwise they wouldn’t get approved. Hard thought was being given to reconfiguring our military presence in Asia to counter rising China’s influence.

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