WWIII is the Wrong Metaphor by Thomas Barnett

I had this discussion with Gingrich in Alabama earlier this year: he's pushing the Civil War metaphor, declaring 2006 to be the equivalent of 1862, and I'm pushing the far longer concept (I'm a big believer of Abizaid's Long War concept) of the settling of the Wild West.

Now, Gingrich, among others, are reviving the talk of WWIII that a lot of excited pundits were tossing about right after 9/11.

I consider this approach to be as wrongheaded as the End Times thinking: it's a form of escapism that turns the definition of war on its head.

First off, the world has never been more at peace. This is a not a claim or a vision. It's just the way it is, statistically speaking.

Second, World Wars were wars between states. We have none of those here. No State A on State B. The "war" that revives all this talk is Israel going into Lebanon against non-state actor Hezbollah. Wasn't a state-on-state war when Israel did the same to the PLO in 1982. Isn't a state-on-state war today.

Third, the road to victory in the Long War, as the new Counter-insurgency (COIN) doctrine argues, is overwhelmingly non-kinetic. A "war," however "global" in its day-to-day expression (I have freckles all over my body, but it doesn't make me a black man), that is both won or lost on the question of non-kinetics (the ultimate exit strategy in the Middle East is called JOBS!) ain't exactly a rerun of either of those two bloodbaths.

Fourth, the scale here is all wrong. Not just the tiny percentages of combatants, but the tiny amounts of death. This whole "world war" since 9/11 hasn't yielded a good week's worth of WWII dead.

Fifth, this view indulges in the myth that what Israel does against 4GW opponents actually works, when it does not. Masada-on-steroids isn't the answer. We, the Core, don't have to shoot ourselves out of this situation. Time is on our side, as all all the major dynamics that count (energy, investments, demographics, sheer firepower, enduring ingenuity, strength of our societies, our enduring resilience--none of which favor the other side). The Brits in Northern Ireland or the U.S. cavalry in the Wild West are our models. Stick to the Long War. Don't give in to quick fixes or Armageddon-like fantasies. WWIII is just the End Timers with a patina of strategic analysis, but shit on a stick still tastes bad.

But worst of all, the WWIII talk obscures the solution set, which is not destruction but construction, not disconnectedness but connectedness, not take down nets but put them up. When you call everything a war, you come up with more "war" answers, and those inevitably involve firepower.

Firepower won't get us the win here, plain and simple. WWIII is not realism, it's romanticism. It's starry-eyed, not clear-eyed. It looks for what is easy, instead of what is right.

Resist the temptation. Make your own history. Stop living in the past and embrace a future worth creating.