From: wolda002@umn.edu
Date: Thu Nov 12 2009 - 00:05:47 EST
The New Rules: When Contractors Fill America's Foreign Policy Gap
Thomas P.M. Barnett | 02 Nov 2009
Much ink has been spilt over the question of whether or not globalization
leads to the "death" of the nation-state, or at least its eclipse by a
rising tide of super-empowered non-state actors -- especially multinational
corporations. On this score, history has been fairly clear: States that
score high on globalization connectivity typically feature governments with
extensive regulatory reach and strong enforcement capacity -- not exactly
the demise of the public sector.
And yet, it's also true that globalization's increasingly dense weave of
networks poses significant challenges to government oversight. I can think
of no credible expert who argues that today's world possesses too many
rules relative to the skyrocketing volume of cross-border transactions
(both welcome and unsavory). Indeed, conspiratorial fantasies about a world
secretly run by a powerful elite are easily brushed aside by far more
substantial fears that nobody is truly in charge of globalization's
continued expansion. The world now has too many frontiers manned by too few
sheriffs.
Into that breach has lately flowed all manner of private-sector actors
eager to establish and dominate markets that lie just on the edge of
presumed government control. This process is often incorrectly -- or
perhaps too narrowly -- described as outsourcing. After all, how can
governments really outsource that which they can only aspire to control?
Clearly, in recent years there has been a great deal of privatization
across a host of more prosaic government functions (e.g., check-writing,
mail sorting, census counting, air traffic control, computer systems
integration). As a result of such trends, today's Lockheed Martin -- the
U.S. government's preeminent contractor -- draws more federal dollars than
several federal departments, such as Justice and Energy.
But far more intriguing -- and dangerous -- has been the rapid expansion of
U.S. foreign policy responsibility overseas, achieved primarily through
sub-contracting. On this vast and complex subject, I can suggest no better
analytical survey than Allison Stanger's just-published, "One Nation Under
Contract: The Outsourcing of American Power and the Future of Foreign
Policy." In this slim but powerfully argued book, Stanger calls for a
"brand new template for thinking about how government and the private
sector should interact in the digital age." Because in this age of
increasingly complex public problems, she warns, "private actors will
continue to make their own foreign policy with or without an overt
government response."
Here's where I think Stanger's argument truly becomes provocative, even if
it leads her to employ the term "outsourcing" in too indiscriminate a
fashion: Globalization, which she describes as an "empire of the willing,"
may be codified by public-sector rules, but it's driven by private-sector
network construction.
I would take Stanger's solid logic even further: When that construction
effort brings globalization into previously off-grid locations, the result
is political-security repercussions that, when they get bad enough,
sometimes trigger military interventions by outside great powers. But that
hardly means that the governments of these external powers are in charge of
globalization's advance. This tail does not wag the dog.
Moreover, when these intervening governments find themselves turning to
private corporations to advance national interests -- such as political
stability, safer business climates and regional integration schemes -- they
are often accused of "outsourcing" their sovereign functions. But isn't it
more accurate to say that they are adapting themselves logically to new
forms of public-private partnerships in order to fill in capability gaps?
Gaps that, in the past, would have seen them resort to overt political
ownership -- namely, colonization?
(And no, I'm not just talking about America here. In my mind, the Chinese
are, by far, the most pervasive and cynical practitioners of this
soft-power craft.)
In other words, aren't we actually seeing the insourcing of sovereign
functions by weak or failed states that otherwise lack the counter-party
capacity to successfully negotiate globalization's connectivity, with the
intervening great powers simply footing the bill up front? And as such, are
we actually witnessing the "hollowing out" of state sovereignty (Stanger's
term) among the funding governments, or the emergence of new forms of
unofficial development aid?
The question is not simply one of semantics but of directional causality:
Is this stunning evolution of American foreign policy a result of a
supply-push on the part of the U.S. government or a demand-pull on the part
of developing economies and failed states? Stanger argues more for the
latter, stating that globalization "would not exist without the American
contribution, but it is not an American empire."
As Stanger aptly notes, the "militarization of American foreign policy"
coincides with the bureaucratic decline of the U.S. Agency for
International Development, which now simply serves as pass-through funder
for a small universe of government contractors. But it also corresponds to
a period marked by globalization's stunningly rapid expansion -- so much so
that foreign direct investment flows to developing markets now swamp
developmental aid flows, and are, in turn, greatly surpassed by remittances
sent back by citizens working abroad. In this brave new world, Western
Union is a bigger pass-through funder than USAID. And, one can argue,
that's a perfectly fine development.
Without fail, as Stanger admits early in her text, whenever such
rationalizations are offered, some observers will cry, "Imperialism!" But
in modern globalization, some historians note sadly, great powers do not
aspire to such responsibility. They demand the "open door" on trade but
don't want to own the problems of its maintenance (beyond, say, the Chinese
willingness for bribery). True nation-building is almost always dismissed
with the label of "quagmire."
In my most recent book, "Great Powers: America and the World After Bush," I
noted that such private-public partnerships have long been the hallmark of
the American System of network expansion -- i.e., government-sponsored
infrastructure development and follow-on nation-building -- right from our
nation's utilitarian beginning as a series of privately owned business
"startups." Over the centuries, those original 13 colonies ballooned into a
union that has absorbed not just 50 states, but numerous overseas
territories and 500-plus internal tribal nations. Its modern military
features a global command structure befitting an "empire of the willing"
that is none-too-subtly modeled on these United States, which served as the
source code for modern globalization.
Stanger's book is at its most powerful where she notes that "explosive
overseas outsourcing has gone hand in hand with gross fiscal
responsibility." The reason is simple: The average government worker today
oversees four times the spending he or she oversaw just two generations
ago. This has led, most notably in the Iraq and Afghanistan interventions,
to a plethora of embarrassing scandals -- as in, tens of billions of
dollars spent with almost nothing, not even recognizable audit trails, to
show for it. This may be "big government" spending, but there's no "big
government" behind it. Worse, we're being ripped off by our own
contractors, who, in effect, have simply stood in as middleman for the
usual, in-country suspects who typically pocket our aid!
Stanger does not pretend to offer comprehensive policy solutions in this
book. The subject is simply too vast and too rapidly changing in scope. But
by shining a light on what she calls America's "shadow government," she
does us the great favor of triggering a long overdue political debate over
how America has so far adapted its government to the challenge of playing
globalization's premier bodyguard.
And if America does not improve in this regard?
Stanger's reminder is worth bearing in mind: "The empire of the willing is
a vehicle of change that does not shrink from tearing down the very
hierarchies that helped create it."
Thomas P.M. Barnett is senior managing director of Enterra Solutions LLC
and a contributing editor/online columnist for Esquire magazine. His latest
book is "Great Powers: America and the World After Bush" (2009). His weekly
WPR column, The New Rules, appears every Monday. Reach him and his blog at
thomaspmbarnett.com.
Photo: A U.S. Forces Provincial Reconstruction Team, Kunar province,
Afghanistan, December 2008 (U.S. Army photo by Spc. Russell Gilchrest).