Given our interventionist history, isn’t it likely that we will continue to intervene when it suits us?

Given that, isn’t it prudent to have a force structure setup to do interventions correctly? Heavy on the peace-keeping, civil affairs, and rebuilding.

Also, if we had such a force, complete with a diplomatic, and economic component, wouldn’t it be easier to offer non-military help to struggling nations?

Yes, some of what Barnett proposes can be called wishful thinking. The same could be said about a lot of strategic thinking. I don’t think he turns a blind eye to the realities of today. He is looking for a way to get everyone involved with security matters which are truly global in nature.

I didn’t say Kosovo. I said the Balkans. Kosovo, whose drive for independence is about to launch it into another war with Serbia, is a part of that. Bosnia is another. Both are not successes, though they are also not failures. But we don’t like to think that there are still over 40,000 troops in Kosovo to “keep the peace,” and that if they leave, it descends into chaos and madness again as Albanians and Serbs go at each others’ throats.

The gist of it is that his ideas aren’t all that bad, and there are some really good nuggets – I particularly like his thoughts on force transformation. It is his world view, the way he interprets the core and gap, and the policy prescriptions that flow (and his total ignorance of the UNSC, pretending China, Russia, and the U.S. will ever see eye to eye on the majority of security issues), taken so seriously by senior policy-makers, that gives me deep pause.

Also, you seem to think that Barnett was pointing to Kosovo and Afghanistan as wholly successful ventures, whereas I read him as concentrating on particular aspects that were done well within those ventures. His point, as I recall, was to identify nation-building exercises that serve as examples of what could be done if those skills were enhanced and actively planned for pre-op.

In short, the point to BPFA was to advocate for an interventionist foreign policy, but instead to shape US military actions by employing the full set of our capabilities (i.e. military, diplomatic, economic, etc.) when we do get involved in foreign wars. He assumes, whether rightly or wrongly, that an interventionist foreign policy will be the norm in a single superpower world that is characterized by ever increasing economic globalization.

Hehehe, that’s the sort of thing I was complaining about — both the annoying self-promotion, and the insouciance with which he simply asserts things.

I’ll say the self promotion aspect is part of his style (though it is his career) and certainly both criticisms are part and parcel of almost anyone who holds themselves out as expert. In fact, that is a criticism that could be made of a great many people;^)

On to what he’s writing, I can say those blog posts are almost the opposite of what he wrote in his books. I’ll confess to having been turned off by his books (read those reviews), and thus never bother to read his blog. If he’s changed his tune this much, I’d like to know why he’s dropped the rhetoric of invading and toppling “disconnected” regimes, or why he suddenly is redefining the idea not to include states like Iran, or why the need to forcibly reconnect them on our terms is a lesser concern.

Similarly, his stance about not worshipping “the soldier” is a new one to me too, as that is certainly not the feeling you get reading him crow about how much the military licks his boots after his powerpoints. If he’s changed, great, I’ll give the man a fresh consideration. If he (which, given he was still referencing “both books” in the second post) is simply writing about reality on his blog but ignoring that in his more formal writing… well, then I’d still have my doubts.

The post I linked above argues specifically against “refusing to engage with governments who oppose us simply because we have the capability to bomb them with impunity.”

Unless his book is 180 degrees from his work on the web and his essays I find your description hard to understand.

In other words, it’s a great idea to want to fix broken countries, even if it’s not your place as a national government. How you go about doing it, however, is another matter entirely, and this is where Barnett (and a lot of interventionists) falls way flat. Militarizing the Peace Corps would not help things, aside from getting them kicked out of the remaining countries they’re allowed to operate in; similarly, salivating over the stability you can sow by bombing countries and hoping Europe is willing to pony up the occupation forces (he also points to Afghanistan as a roaring success of this model) isn’t really workable, or even, I would argue, very responsible. North Korea? Forget it—he thinks it’s totally awesome to have Japan and China team up to occupy and rebuild it.

Rather, looking at why countries like Zimbabwe fall off the deep end might help some—in that case, the enabling of fellow African nations. Why do they support him? The most reasoned arguments I’ve read tie it back to anti-colonialism, which is where and how Mugabe can say the right things at conferences to generate sympathy. The military, even the “pistol-packing peace corps,” isn’t the right solution to that.

Otherwise, it’s a really thin line between appropriate power projection and outright imperialism. The Philippine Insurgency was us brutally crushing a purchased colony, and a lot of those conflicts were of questionable value to our total national security.

So what IS the appropriate line? I honestly can’t say. I’m not an isolationist who thinks we have no legitimate actions outside our own borders unless specifically attacked. But I’m not comfortable with the idea of us toppling any government we don’t like, or refusing to engage with governments who oppose us simply because we have the capability to bomb them with impunity. Lining up in a Barnettian framework is not the way to achieve more global stability, it is how you achieve war without end.