Thinking About Trends and Changes

There is a clear information and political perception war taking place in the Middle East. The current trend in the war can be framed quoting from this Esquire magazine article by Thomas Barnett, who I believe has captured the essence of the trends very effectively for violent extremism.

Radical Islam has overplayed its hand again, creating popular resentment escalating to political backlash. We're the ones winning this struggle across the board, and not only should Obama ignore the offer of a truce as we press forward in Afghanistan and Pakistan (it would only allow Asia to step in for the oil money) — he should make explicitly clear to Al Qaeda that we'll never acquiesce to their desire for civilizational apartheid between the West and the Arab world, even as isolationists and defeatists on our side would just as soon erect a fence around the whole Islamic world to let them fight it out amongst themselves. Why? Because the penetrating embrace of globalization is doing the truly profound damage to Al Qaeda, and we are globalization's bodyguard. The flow of proliferating networks that offer ideas and conversations and products and expressions of individualistic ambition — especially with regard to women — offer radical Islamic groups no hope of gaining permanent political control.

This is an example why I believe an Arabic MTV network acts as a force multiplier against Al Qaeda more than several brigades in Afghanistan. Al Qaeda has been so shattered over recent years that they are struggling to win hearts and minds in one of the most isolated places in the world, Northern Pakistan and disconnected southern Afghanistan. The disconnected places of the world, whether it be Iran, North Korea, Afghanistan, or even the increasingly disconnected Venezuela seems to be where the trouble is usually coming from. This is not coincidence.

As Tom Barnett notes, "We're the ones winning this struggle across the board" and are doing so by connecting opportunity to places where opportunity has rarely existed in any form, much less on a global scale. While there is a hint in the truth that by fighting them over there we aren't fighting them over here, there is also a bit of truth in suggesting that fighting the soft war is more important, and achieves a more attainable containment strategy than fighting the hard war in those disconnected places ever will.

I don't want to give the impression I am celebrating globalization as a saving grace, because globalization has a whole set of challenges that needs fixing beginning with very few meaningful global rule sets that are consistently effective. What can be celebrated though is that even in the anarchy of what is globalization today, that chaos of inconsistency is better than what the disconnected despots are selling as an alternative, and more nations (which can easily include just about every major economic power) can claim it as an official political position. Contrary to popular conventional wisdom, I do not see military action in the Middle East under the 21st century tactical application of people centric strategies 'creating more enemies to fight' as the 20th century military actions in the Middle East did.

Ultra conservatives crying for brutal violence have it as wrong as ultra liberals who reject the need for violence against extremist, because in the broader Middle Eastern society violence in some form is as much a part of society as free speech is in American democracy. These aspects of society cannot be stomped out, but they can be molded and channeled, and used effectively to produce broader norms that improve a society. While people reject any infringements of free speech as a violation of rights, most Americans support infringements of free speech against hate speech against minorities, and that anti-free speech has become a government policy, to the benefit of American society I think many of us would agree.

The same is true of violence in the Middle East. Careless, meaningless vengeance and cruelty is eroding as an attractive appeal to Islamic culture, particularly when 'some' emerging national military forces in places like Iraq represent a positive object when they fight, the positive object being protection of family and security for community.

Due to political bias, popular opinion often omits the macro level side effects of events even when those side effects carry powerful consequences to the course of history. In the case of the Middle East, the side effect of a clumsy invasion of Iraq was a massive swelling of economic growth in the greater Middle East, an almost overlooked evolution of greater opportunity that has broad positive long term consequences both economically and politically for the greater Islamic society and peoples. When opportunity exists, the natural flow includes choices other than violent vengeance or cruelty.

The economic growth in the Middle East, most of which is a direct result from military engagement by US and coalition members over the last many years, has combined with greater connectivity to the rest of the world and hurt the extremist movements much more than it has helped. Given the choice of violence and death or a job and a family, job and family apparently wins the vast majority of the time. This is why whatever our military goals are in the Middle East, they must be towards a positive object from the point of view of the Middle East citizen that promotes job and family. When our military goals no longer favor these positive objects for the Iraqi or Afghan citizen, it is time to leave.