While Dan tdaxp has been re-visioning the GAP, Thomas Barnett and John Robb have been having a tussle (JR vs TB) over the significance of “connecting” Iraq, and now Chirol of Coming Anarchy has begun to postulate…well, GAPs within and/or around the Core, termed “ungoverned space.” (Not to mention the ungoverned spaces within the GAP, of course.)

How funny.

I don’t think I much like Dan’s approach, although I suppose it may be useful.  Now the question is, do we attack the nations in the GAP he has found, insert our SysAdmin, etc., or do we attack the nastiness, brutality, poverty, etc. — in some other way, as non-preemptionists would have it?  But I find the number-crunching only peripheral.  Actually, it did not tell us much we did not already know, although I suppose that some families within the Core, some neighborhoods, would score just like (or nearly like) the GAP areas he has found…

I think Chirol’s approach will prove very enlightening, once he finishes it.  I have been saying, over and over:  GAPs within the Core, GAPs within the Core….And, actually, I suppose we could combine Chirol’s and Dan’s approach and wonder why “ungoverned space” increases brutality, nastiness, poverty, etc., wherever it occurs.  But interestingly, my first thoughts when reading Chirol’s post were these:  well, er, then we must absolutely fill those ungoverned spaces with government; i.e., must assert a more, um, totalitarian governance.  Right?  Gads.  But we already see this happening in America and other places in the Core, or attempts to do this.

The Barnett - Robb brouhaha is funny, because they really do approach things in almost diametrically opposite ways.  Absolutely no solution would satisfy Robb; in fact, a solution to the future troubles now brewing would obliterate Robb’s vision of massive, decentralized upheaval and…open source Armageddon.  What a drag.  On the other hand, I also suppose that increased connectivity has led to a sense of GAPness for those in the GAP.  (Unfortunately, this began a very long time ago, before any of us were alive.)  At the same time, increased connectivity has introduced a sort of SOAish resiliency for those in the GAP: as John Robb puts it, cell phones are helping militants in Iraq and elsewhere.  Development in a Box, indeed!  How sad for the U.S., that we want to increase individual freedoms in the GAP while limiting the individual freedoms of those who oppose us in the GAP!  How frustrating it will be to build up the economies of these poor and nasty nations — only so they will have more money, resources, and connections for opposing us!

But, Chirol, what became of the old-style feudal societies?