The Golden Gate

This guy is one of my favorite strategists, and as I have said before if you are not reading/seeing/listening to Dr Barnett, then you can not truly understand what is happening in the world and the Middle East today. At least your understanding will be horribly partial and incomplete without his thinking. He does regular news analysis on his blog. Here is a sample of it:

China builds a military that’s clearly designed to counter our ability to do whatever we damn well please in Asia. Hard to believe, isn’t it? Doesn’t being the world’s Leviathan mean we get to have everyone unable to stand up to us no matter what we do or where we do it? No, it just means it’s impossible to wage war successfully unless the U.S. agrees to that proposition. That’s real power all right, it’s just not unlimited with regard to our own desires. Being Leviathan doesn’t mean you’re God, just that you can prevent anyone else from assuming that role on anything significant.

When someone gets to the point of accumulating power that calls into question your ability on some specific issue, then you have to start viewing both the rising power and the issue in question differently. We are not doing this yet. We see only the danger, not the possibility. We ask, Will China “behave” in the Gulf? Hopefully not like America does! One Big Banger in the region is enough, I would say.

China’s just waking up to a world in which the Core relies on the unstable regions of the Gap for its short-term economic security via energy. You can change that dependency if you want, but it will take some time. Other route is to work the issue with military, but that’s takes a military, now doesn’t it? We’ve got one, so we work it. China doesn’t, so it’s getting one. Sound odd to you? Sounds pretty “real” to me.

I suggest checking him out on a regular basis.