I’m still trying to digest the information in The Pentagon’s New Map that I posted about yesterday. I’m still coming up about a quart low. The closest thing I’ve found to a definition of the Core comes early on in the article:
Show me where globalization is thick with network connectivity, financial transactions, liberal media flows, and collective security, and I will show you regions featuring stable governments, rising standards of living, and more deaths by suicide than murder. These parts of the world I call the Functioning Core, or Core.
By implication then the Gap is composed of nations that aren’t in the Core and which, presumably, don’t have these characteristics or don’t have these characteristics in sufficient degree to be members of the Core.
The problem with this definition is that it doesn’t fit at least three of the putative members of the Core: Russia, China, and India. And these three members constitute, what, half of the human race? Commenter Mark Safranski makes an interesting distinction between New Core and Core at large. In other words, new Core members that aren’t yet fully integrated and Core members that are integrated. The implication of this is that Core and Gap aren’t distinct categories but constitute a spectrum of connectivity with differing degrees of Core-ness and Gap-ness.
I guess I still don’t find that too helpful. What I’m looking for is a decision process. I feed you a set of economic, legal, social, or whatever characteristics of an unnamed country and you tell me whether the country with those features is in the Core or the Gap. Without such a decision process all you have is a denotation of the Gap. They’re a collection of countries that are in the Gap because they’re in the Gap. And without such a decision process there’s no real way of determining how countries now part of the Gap can be incorporated into the Core.
I’m perseverating on this issue of definition for a couple of reasons. The first reason is that absent such a definition you can’t really do very much with this New Map. It’s just a couple of collections with no rhyme or reason for why this or that nation is in the Core collection or the Gap collection.
The second reason is that, if you exclude a few Western hemisphere problem areas like Haiti, the Gap appears to be a group of countries with significant Muslim populations. Is “the Gap” just Parseltongue for Islam?
Here’s my bottomline question: how is Haiti like the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia? I mean other than that they’re both in the Gap. Particularly in ways that make either one differ from China.
I think you are being much too binary about this. Barnett had to make in-or-out choices to draw a map, but it might be more useful to treat it as a spectrum. Any country that’s not solidly in the Core we want to keep nudging in that direction. The closer they get to the Core, the more subtle and advanced is the medicine we will prescribe. And the exact moment they cross the divide is not important, and probably won’t even be discerned at the time.
And I think Barnett thinks of China as a place with regions that are entering the Core, and other regions that are in the Gap. That’s another way things can be ambiguous, but we can still make decisions. I love the way he says that “China is not the enemy, it’s the prize.”
Islam? Maybe that’s just timing. A couple decades ago you would have seen a lot of East-Asian countries in the Gap. Maybe in coming decades we will now see progress with some Islamic nations, and see the Gap as mostly a Sub-Saharan Africa problem…
And I think Saudi Arabia is a special case. They have a lot of money, but no wealth. Sort of like a lazy bum who’s won the lottery. If the oil dried up, they would have none of the Core skills to create new wealth.
You may be right, John Weidner. But I’m not asking rhetorical questions. I really want to know the answers.
Any country that’s not solidly in the Core we want to keep nudging in that direction.
That’s exactly my point. I’m looking for a definition so that there’s a potential for evaluating the suitability of specific policies with respect to specific countries. If you can’t define the criteria for being in the Core, how do you know you’re nudging in the right direction?
If it’s like art i.e. “I know what it is when I see it” can you still do that?
And my point about Saudi Arabia is what makes it difference from, say, China?
One metric I’ve heard discussed to pin down the Core is per-capita income. It looks like $3k or $3.4k may be points at which countries are almost certainly moving into the core. For istance, if they are not yet democratic, they soon will be.
I think Barnett would say the adoption of Core rule sets is the thing to look for. For instance, business and accounting rules. Can you trust a company’s annual report enough to decide to invest in it? Can you get clear title to property?
Democracy is a metric. Many countries go through a stage where people can vote, but there is only one significant party. Mexico was like that until recently. Now other parties are winning elections. A clear sign that Mexico is moving into the Core.
Why did Mexico change? Probably rising incomes and more middle-class people. Plus nudging, if only by the expectations and example of more advanced countries. But we don’t have to know exactly why. almost any move towards the standards of more developed countries will help things move in the right direction. Freedom of press, for instance. Or women’s rights.
You joke about “I know it when I see it,” but the basic rule-sets of globalization and capitalism are American. You DO know it when you see it, because you are it.
Also, The difference btw Saudi and China is, that if all Chinese factories were suddenly bombed to rubble, the Chinese would immediately start building anew. (like Japan aftter WWII) If the businesses they now specialize in were forbidden to them, they would instantly start experimenting with new businesses or products. And along with wealth they are learning things that will help move them towards the Core. For instance, they are starting to suspect that impartial legal system is important in attracting foreign businesses.
Saudi oil wealth does not help move them towards the Core, at least not much. They look like a developed country, with shopping centers and freeways, but if the oil vanished they would starve.
You have to adjust for Saudi, because a lot of the usual indicators of progress are fake there.
Those are excellent answers, John Weidner, and exactly the kinds that I’m looking for. Per capita income would not seem to be a good metric. According to the World Bank China is way down on the list. Per capita income in the KSA is more than 700% that of China.
The rule-sets answer is particularly good (although of course it would require further refining to keep from begging the question). But if that’s true the prognosis for bringing majority Muslim nations into the Core would appear to be extremely poor.
You’ve given me a lot to chew on and I’m quite grateful.
I believe China has low per capita income on average, because of a billion impoverished peasants, but the developed regions are building a large middle class with good incomes. Which is probably why Barnett puts China only partly into the Core…
It seems to me that, in many respects, John’s remark about “building anew” – the initiative to innovate, to wax alliterative – is perhaps the metric to weight heaviest. The higher this value, the more likely all the rest will follow: Voting; freedoms of press, speech, trade, etc; a strong middle class; equality before the law; globalization…
Obviously it’s possible to have some, even many of these factors without the popular ethic to create opportunities where none exist, but I’d lay odds that most of those kind of nations are rigid, precariously-balanced places like Saudi. Nations with this imperative to innovate are flexible – fluid, even.
Of course, I could just be blowing smoke. And there are definately other metrics to consider – per capita and the popular availability of technology, etc – but they probably also tie fairly closely in with this.