Regions, Strategies and Empire in the Global War on Terror
Palash Biswas
Contact: Palash C Biswas, C/O Mrs Arati Roy, Gosto Kanan, Sodepur, Kolkata- 700110, India. Phone: 91-033-25659551
Email: alashbiswaskl@gmail.com">palashbiswaskl@gmail.com
Iran urges reforms in UN Security Council
Tehran: Iran called Monday for reforms in the UN Security Council as a necessary step for securing justice and global peace.
"There should be a joint and harmonious effort within Asian countries to change the status quo of the UN Security Council," President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said on the opening session of the Asian Parliamentary Assembly in Tehran.
"It is just not possible that a few countries have the right to veto world issues on their own behalf and for their own interests," he added.
Ahmadinejad had in the past demanded a permanent seat for one of the Islamic countries in the UN Security Council besides Britain, China, France, Russia and the US to strike a political equilibrium.
"Global peace cannot be achieved without justice and reforms within UN is the first necessity to enable this justice," he said.
Iran has hardened its stance towards the UN body after it faced two Security Council resolutions, due to its nuclear programme.
Regions, Strategies and Empire in the Global War on Terror
Author: Simon Dalby
Affiliation: Department of Geography, Carleton University, Ottawa,
Ontario, Canada
Published in: Geopolitics, Volume 12, Issue 4 October 2007
Abstract
The often overlooked economic dimensions of the current American
national security strategy bridge the military policies of the neo-
conservative Bush doctrine with the neo-liberal tendencies of
economic globalisation. They do so by explicitly extending control
into the "dangerous periphery" of the global economy by strategies
that attempt to integrate these regions into the global economy.
Reading recent official American defence documents in parallel with
commentaries on the war on terror by popular authors Thomas Barnett
and Robert Kaplan suggests a broad complementarity of geopolitical
categories that link imperial military action directly with neo-
liberal globalisation. Both rely on a dichotomous mapping of the
world into civilised core and dangerous periphery, categories that
reprise earlier imperial mappings of the world and replicate the
violent practices of empire.
MAPPING GLOBAL STRATEGIES
In the era of globalisation spatial political and economic
categories are frequently invented, challenged, reinvented and
discarded in the ongoing strategies used by statespersons and
business people to legitimise their actions. Neo-liberal arguments
for economic integration frequently use powerfully persuasive
geographical metaphors. In part these are a method of tying the
interests of business and state elites together in complicated
institutional manners, but they are also a vocabulary that enables
novel political arrangements and allows business people and state
functionaries to undertake new initiatives precisely by specifying
supposedly novel geographical arrangements in all sorts of regional
specifications. 1 Regional integration is happening in many places;
complex discourses of international cooperation and community
building are underway most notably in Europe.2 But they are also a
part of the emerging political landscape in the global South.
Numerous arrangements are being made to tie states together in
regional agreements relating to themes of trade and economic
development but also in terms of cultural exchanges and treaties on
such matters as environmental cooperation.
Much of this activity is related to neo-liberal discourse of
globalisation and the economic language of emerging markets, global
trading and investment opportunity where new regional arrangements
are widely touted as a vehicle of increased prosperity. As Matthew
Sparke makes clear in his analysis of the putative emergence of a
cross-border regional identity of Cascadia in Western Canada and the
Pacific Northwest of the United States, such formulations may have
considerable persuasive power in the hands of economic development
officers and business advocates where "fictional" regions, when
judged in terms of actual trade and investment patterns, are
promoted for all sorts of reasons.3 Sparke notes that regional
enthusiasms and even the most ardent neo-liberal advocacy of
deterritorialisatio n and reterritorialisatio n doesn't necessarily
mean that the much talked about entity actually emerges or functions
in the way that geopolitical dreams suggest it should. Cascadia
remains more myth than economic integration, but nonetheless
continues to shape discussions of political possibilities in the
region so long as it is a category of political aspiration that
supposedly denotes an extant entity. Sparke also notes that
journalists are especially amenable to adopting such designations to
announce the arrival of new regions onto the political scene. In
particular he cites Robert Kaplan's seduction by Cascadia boosters
in noting that he came away from his visit there convinced that
Cascadia was the way of the future.4 Novel geographical designations
thus have considerable utility in the discourses of economics,
politics and journalism. And, as this paper shows, this is also very
much the case in contemporary geopolitical texts on the Global War
on Terror, the economic dimensions of which are easily understood as
a form of enforced economic integration.
Such metageographies understood as the "spatial structures through
which people order their knowledge of the world",5 often function as
the ontological categories of political thought and both limit and
shape thinking accordingly. 6 Metageographies "graph the geo" as in
literally "writing the earth" in ways that are apparently obvious
but which are spatial specifications with very considerable power.7
By focusing on the graphings of the geo used by the Bush
administration this paper shows the intertexts between neo-liberal
economic globalisation and the neo-conservative military agenda in
the Middle East in particular, and more generally elsewhere. It
shows that the geopolitical logics used to justify war mesh neatly
with the formulations of economic integration and supports Sparke's
suggestion that in at least this sense the debate about geoeconomics
or geopolitics is moot; the geopolitical reasoning works to extend
the geoeconomic domain of Empire understood in terms of Hardt and
Negri's formulation of Empire with a capital "E".8 But the analysis
below also highlights the discrepancies between older formulations
of empire with assumptions of territorial control and national
ambition abroad, and novel formulations of Empire, where sovereignty
and economic power transcend the geopolitical constraints of
sovereign nation states. Focusing on this theme allows us to update
Sparke's analysis of the logic of contemporary American imperialism
and its graphings of the geo. Where Sparke focused on the
geopolitical logic of the Project for the New American Century and
the invasion of Iraq some years ago, the analysis in this paper
shows that his line of interpretation should now be extended to
contemporary Pentagon planning documents and the larger logics of,
and justifications for, the now indefinitely extended Global War on
Terror.
The analysis below does so by looking to contemporary American re-
mappings of the world, first briefly in its cartographic expression
in the changing patterns of the Pentagon's "Commanders Map of the
World", and then in more detail in the 2005 official statement The
Defense Strategy of the United States where the global war on terror
is increasingly worked into a larger strategic redesign of American
forces and their basing modes. Such rethinking is key to the more
popular discussions of the future of the American military and its
purpose and tasks in different parts of the world. Later sections of
this paper tackle this discussion by reading Robert Kaplan's
geopolitical imagination in his book Imperial Grunts.9 This is
supplemented by a reading of Thomas Barnett's Blueprint for Action
which appeared at the same time as Kaplan's work and which is the
published sequel to his bestselling work The Pentagon's New Map.10
Contrasting Barnett, who is in many ways a popular rendition of
themes of Empire, with Kaplan who celebrates traditional military
themes of empire, allows us to better understand the contemporary
geopolitical discourses used to prosecute the "Global War on
Terror". Because here, in these two exercises in practical
geopolitical reasoning, lies the logic of the global war on terror
and the imperial aspirations of the Bush administration to
effectively extend the remit of Empire by force. In so doing the
administration' s doctrinal statements and planning documents use the
logic spelled out in Barnett's call to global geopolitical
transformation to evade the implicit realist pessimism of Kaplan's
invocation of the inevitable perils of traditional empire.
THE PENTAGON'S NEW GEOPOLITICAL VISION
Since the "war on terror" was launched in late 2001 the Pentagon has
remapped the world into newly modified command regions in response
to the Bush administration' s plans to conduct a global war on
terror. In the process this is changing the strategic categories
involved in mapping new global regions of danger. As is especially
clear in The National Security Strategy of the United States 2002,
the document that effectively encapsulates "the Bush Doctrine", most
of these regions whence danger emanates are marked by the absence of
economic liberty understood in American terms.11 The absence of
integration into the global markets by rogue states and the Axis of
Evil is noted as something in need of correction. The subsequent
National Security Strategy of 2006 once again emphasises the
importance of economic integration in pacifying dangerous states; it
is an integral part of American national security thinking, albeit
one that is not frequently engaged directly in discussions and
criticisms of the Bush doctrine,12 not least because where economic
aspects of the doctrine are discussed they frequently focus more
narrowly on matters of petroleum in the Persian Gulf and in Iraq in
particular. In the 2006 National Security Strategy the spread of
economic globalisation, American style, is also linked to the
overarching American objective, in what is now described as a long
war, to bring an end to political tyranny.
In 2002 the Pentagon's command arrangements incorporated the
responsibilities for "homeland" defence into a newly specified
geographical command called NORTHCOM. After 11 September the
revised "Commanders Areas of Responsibility" map also incorporated
Antarctica into USPACOM finally arranging matters so that every area
of the world is now assigned to a combatant commander.13 This
initiative was taken despite a long history of, until now reasonably
successful attempts, to demilitarise the continent.14 Literally in
cartographic terms the global war on terror is now just that:
global. In early 2007 discussions of the emergence of a new Africa
command in the Pentagon showed that the regional imagination in the
Pentagon continues to evolve as both terrorism and access to raw
materials appear on the agenda. Whole new regions of potential
conflict are conjured up in the processes of specifying threats to
American interests.15 Institutional responses which extend American
presence, both state and "private sector" in the region, are thus
set in motion by this new geo-graphing. 16
In the official Defense Strategy statement of March 2005, a document
of considerable importance that passed with relatively little media
commentary when it was released, a series of innovations, and a
modified global vision for American forces is given clear
articulation. 17 This 2005 Strategy document forms the doctrinal
basis for the early 2006 Quadrennial Defense Review report, the
latest in a series of documents that provides a rationale for long-
term planning and budget allocations for the military.18 The Defense
Strategy is blunt in its assessment of the new circumstances facing
American forces. The very first statement in the executive summary,
and in the main report, simply states that "America is a nation at
war".19 On page one it states, "While the security threats of the
20th century arose from powerful states that embarked on aggressive
courses, the key dimension of the 21st century - globalization and
the potential proliferation of weapons of mass destruction - mean
great dangers may arise from relatively weak states and ungoverned
areas."20 The rest of the document and its logic follows on from
those two key geopolitical specifications.
In the face of these realities the defence of America has four
principal Strategic Objectives: to secure the US from direct attack
(extremists, WMD); to secure strategic access and freedom of action;
to strengthen alliances and partnerships; and to establish
favourable security conditions. While all these might seem obvious
and a little vague they set the scene for a specification of the
future threats that these objectives will face. In the language of
the Defense Strategy America faces both "mature" and "emerging"
challenges categorised into 1) Traditional, meaning states
presenting a potential military threat to the US, 2) Irregular,
referring to terrorist and non state actors, 3) Catastrophic, in the
form of weapons of mass destruction and 4) Disruptive in the form of
cyber weapons, and attacks on assets in space.21 What is noteworthy
here is that only one of the four itemised threats refers to threats
from other states; clearly the geopolitical map has changed
fundamentally from the Cold War preoccupations with the Soviet Union
and its military capabilities. Now instead of containment, the
Clinton administration theme of enlarging the region of democracy
has been militarised, and economic integration of the peripheral
parts of the global system is now a strategic priority. Neo-
conservative aspirations for regime change link directly with neo-
liberal polices of economic integration.
Beyond this comes an itemisation of objectives that will be
accomplished by the strategy, which include assuring allies and
friends while dissuading potential adversaries not least by
developing the US's own key military and technological advantages.
This will also work to deter aggression and counter coercion
because "rapidly deployable forces" can resolve
conflicts "decisively on favorable terms". But should such
dissuasion and deterrence fail then the strategy promises to defeat
adversaries, in the terms of an especially chilling phrase "at the
time, place, and in the manner of our choosing".22 There is little
here about international cooperation or the United Nations,
unilateral action on the basis of military superiority is all that
really matters in a defence strategy of this sort.
Forces will be continuously transformed "to meet 21st Century
challenges". 23 In the details concerning the preparation of forces
to accomplish all this the key point in the original list of
strategic objectives emerges. Strategic access turns out to mean
that American forces can go more or less anywhere they choose on
earth. Forces are specified as being available to defend the US
homeland, but also to operate in four forward regions, Europe,
Northeast Asia, the East Asian Littoral and in the Middle
East/Southwest Asia.24 There they will swiftly defeat adversaries
and conduct lesser contingencies. Clearly they will operate all over
the globe and from space too. To facilitate these activities the
American forces basing structure is to be reorganised with
facilities divided into "Main Operating Bases", "Forward Operating
Sites" and "Cooperative Security Locations".25 The latter are not
permanently staffed, being effectively prearranged staging areas for
operations mounted at short notice.
More important than the relocation of these facilities, and their
arrangements to facilitate the rapid movement of troops into trouble
spots at short notice and with a minimum of permanent presence in
sensitive political areas, is the shift to a new arrangement
of "Global Sourcing and Surge" where for the first time area
combatant commanders don't "own" units. Units are now temporarily
assigned to a regional command and military units and are to
be "sourced" on a global basis and "surged" at short notice.26 This
language of "surge" subsequently came to wider popular attention
when it was the rhetorical cornerstone of the administration' s
efforts in Iraq in early 2007. Prepositioning materials and supplies
will facilitate this, but there is no evading the clear shift in
focus from regional commands to a global understanding of military
operations. As to the legalities of all this global movement of
troops the defence strategy is quick to argue that legal
arrangements for these troops will insure that they are exempt from
any jurisdiction by the International Criminal Court.
This re-mapping of the geostrategic vision involves both a reduction
of regional concerns in favour of a global understanding of
potential conflict and a re-mapping of the whole planet as a
potential battlefield, taking the global war on terror to its
logical geographical conclusion. But more than this the Defense
Strategy implies a new security situation where highly mobile forces
respond to contingencies anywhere on the planet in short order. The
geopolitical specification of the planet as a potential battleground
suggests an imperial presence where troops are available to patrol
the wild zones and pacify the frontier zones. In such a mapping
local sovereignty is of little importance given that political
leaders can frequently be persuaded to enter into agreements for the
use of facilities and basing rights. Increasingly sovereignty is
also of less importance because long range "stand off" weapons are
an integral part of the new military technologies which allow for
long distance attacks without the need for local basing
arrangements. Likewise the use of small contingents of
airborne "special" forces and strategic airlift capabilities of the
US Air Force make long distance action more feasible than in earlier
periods.27 All of which suggests an imperial arrangement where local
leaders take care of routine security matters until a major threat
emerges whereupon imperial troops arrive to deal with the situation.
Empire is about communication, and the ability to move constabulary
forces quickly to restore order much more than it is about firm
boundaries.
Thus the specification of the Al Qaeda attacks on New York and
Washington as a "global" threat has had serious ramifications for
the discussion, if not yet the actual implementation, of major
changes to the organisation of the American military.28 On the other
hand the presence of American troops in constabulary or garrison
duties in many places accentuates the traditional imperial nature of
contemporary American activities, which is the key theme of Robert
Kaplan's book on the subject, Imperial Grunts.
ROBERT KAPLAN'S IMPERIAL GRUNTS
Kaplan's volume organises its chapter headings in terms of the new
Pentagon commander's commands, and offers the map as a frontispiece,
accentuating the geographical reach of American military power
around the globe. He places the map at the front of the book because
as he says, "After I first saw this map in the Pentagon, I stared at
it for days on and off, transfixed. How could the U.S. not
constitute a global military empire? I thought".29 Once again, in a
reprise of his earlier fascination with Cascadia, Kaplan's
understanding has been focused by geographical imagery. Once the
specification of America as a military empire has registered, the
travel writer in Kaplan comes to the fore. Leaving the grand
discussions of imperialism to the intellectuals in New York and
Washington, Kaplan set off to explore the map and how individual
members of the American forces "were interpreting policy on their
own, on the ground, in dozens upon dozens of countries every week,
oblivious to such faraway discussions. "30 He goes on to say that
he "was less concerned with war and conquest than with imperial
maintenance on the ground, and seeking a rule book for its
application. "31 But his key to all that follows is the prologue
where, once he has taken the imperial cartography of the Pentagon
commands as his interpretative template, he then compares current
American activity with the nineteenth-century pacification of the
western frontier of the United States and hence specifies much of
the contemporary world as "Injun country".
Kaplan glosses the matter of the geopolitics of empire and the
causes of their growth with the discussion of
American "isolationism" in an especially interesting manner
precisely because he equates it with the unreflective search for
security.
Imperialism is but a form of isolationism, in which the demand for
absolute, undefiled security at home leads one to conquer the world,
and in the process to become subject to all the world's anxieties.
That is why empires arise at the fringes of consciousness, half in
denial. By the time an imperial reality becomes truly manifest, it
is a sign that the apex of empire is at hand, with a gradual retreat
more likely than fresh conquests.32
Kaplan goes on to look to analogies with Rome and Britain arguing
that both had become empires largely as a result of a series of
accidents and the activities of traders and military campaigns to
pacify remote regions, the bases of bandits or pirates. Both came to
understand themselves as such only when they had reached the apex of
their power and were beginning to decline. He suggests that the
American empire, for such he now clearly understands it to be, also
transpired by a similar set of processes. Thus America became an
empire regardless of its intentions; its democratic principles, its
historical virtue in claims to isolationism doomed by the
geopolitical inevitability of conflict and the need for pacification
in the wild zones beyond civilisation.
While the fear of Spanish, French and British presence in the
interior of the continent might have been important in the
formulation of policy early in the history of the United States he
argues that subsequent incorporation of the western part of the
continent came from frontiersmen and their alliances and fights with
Indian tribes. Here Kaplan cites Bernard de Voto's 1952 account of
The Course of Empire suggesting that the "delicate balances"
and "oscillating" arrangements on the nineteenth-century American
frontier work as a description of the situation of American forces
operating in many places at the beginning of the twenty-first. 33 The
analogy continues with America getting involved in both world wars
and in particular the second with the result that it ended up with a
military presence in many parts of the world, only most obviously in
Europe. Subsequent support for rebels in Afghanistan has dragged it
into conflict with Islamic forces, who after the removal of Soviet
troops, turned their attention to their former paymasters.
By 2001 American troops from the Special Operations command were
involved in countries around the world even if many of the missions
were only small training and liaison operations.34 Guerilla
operations and constabulary functions were more important than major
combat operations. The American military had become a relatively
small professional force, one where soldiering had become a way of
life in contrast to the mass conscript forces of the Second World
War and the draft in Vietnam. Kaplan goes on to point out that the
historical analogies to current circumstances that are drawn upon
within the forces are more often the Indian wars than the great
battles against slavery in the civil war or Fascism in the Second
World War. This provides a cultural code of the warrior that shapes
professional identity in a way very different from the mass
conscript forces of the twentieth century.
Noting that Kipling and American artist Frederick Remington were
subsequently attacked for jingoism and racism Kaplan suggests that
this is ironic given that "'the white man's burden' meant only the
righteous responsibility to advance the boundaries of free society
and good government into zones of sheer chaos, a mission not unlike
that of the post-Cold War humanitarian interventionists. "35 Kaplan
then goes on to argue that the sheriff and a posse of a few good men
is the analogy that best fits American special operations in many
parts of the world where imposing order is the most important task
in the zones of chaos.36 European assumptions of balances of power
and struggles between states are, he suggests, simply irrelevant to
the situation on the ground in many places. But Kaplan's imperial
travel writer eye is also engaged here as he suggests that Remington
might, if he were alive today, have painted what he describes
as "singular individuals fronting dangerous and stupendous
landscapes". 37
Kaplan goes on to reprise parallels with Rome and with Britain.
Niall Ferguson's discussion of Empire is cited in a lengthy
footnote.38 The point is made that both Rome and Britain maintained
bases in far flung regions less to provide direct control over
adjacent territory than for purposes "of deterrence, surveillance
and reconnaissance" knowing that flexibility and the ability to move
forces rapidly was the key to imperial power. This is the key to
much of the rest of the book, Kaplan's articles in the Atlantic
Monthly since 2003, and no doubt in the promised future volumes; the
historical analogy explains American power and the role of special
forces and agents in the dangerous parts of the world where the rule
of law and operation of civilisation is absent bar their heroic
efforts of rugged individualism in forbidding circumstances.
Crucially Kaplan argues that the United States has moved from the
garrison period of the Cold War to a second expeditionary period
where rapid mobility is needed to conduct peace-keeping operations,
anti-terrorist strikes and through the 1990s used to contain Iraq
and Iran. Even more mobility may be needed in the immediate future
to contain radical Islam and China, the twin threats of the
immediate future in Kaplan's geopolitical vision39 - a vision that
is not surprisingly, given the frequent visits Kaplan makes to far
flung military outposts, mostly in line with the strategic doctrines
articulated in the 2005 Defense Strategy.
Following a visit to Yemen which stimulated reflections on the links
between Al Qaeda and the Hadhramauti traders of the region, and
quotes from Pliny, Hobbes and then French novelist Marguerite
Yourcenar's articulation of Hadrian's meditations on the reach of
Roman imperial power, Kaplan poses the question of how to manage the
imperium. Then he sets off to visit the outposts of American
military power and the managers of that imperium.40 In the process
he visits many countries and watches up close as American military
combat soldiers, the "grunts" in his book's title, tackle counter-
insurgency and pacification duties for which they are often ill
equipped and ill trained.41 Improvisation and decentralised command
are key to hearts and minds campaigns but the constant complaint in
the pages that fill the rest of the volume is that the lessons of
small wars run counter to the conventional military focus on large
combat missions with the highest of high tech weapons and
bureaucratic command structures. Technological superiority doesn't
win friends and influence people on the ground nor do predator
drones build schools and hospitals in towns in either Afghanistan or
Iraq. While Kaplan quotes the literature on small wars, and reflects
on Winston Churchill's experiences where the American forces now
operate on the Northwest frontier a century later, the apparent
necessity for imperial operations still runs up against a military
culture that is largely designed for other forms of combat, not for
small wars on the imperial frontier.42
THOMAS P. M. BARNETT'S BLUEPRINT
Its precisely this problem of inappropriately equipped military
forces that animates Thomas Barnett's writing, lecturing and
blogging on the theme of redesigning American forces to deal with
the new geopolitical realities of the global war on terror.
Barnett's volume Blueprint for Action: A Future Worth Creating
arrived in bookstores at nearly the same time as Robert Kaplan's
Imperial Grunts in late 2005, and offers an interesting parallel set
of geographical specifications of contemporary geopolitics, most
notably the key division between civilised spaces and the wild zones
on the imperial frontier. But Barnett has a different map as
interpretive template, one that divides the world into an integrated
economic core and a non-integrated gap whence the threats to
international peace and stability emerge.43 While Kaplan is
concerned about how to manage the imperium, not doubting that
eventually American power may diminish, Barnett is concerned to turn
the current American dominance into a tool to ensure the final
triumph of the processes of globalisation. Where Barnett sees
globalisation as bearing the mark of many American values, he
suggests pointedly that other major states don't wish to fight
Americans for dominance, but that they share an interest in ensuring
that the wild zones beyond the immediate impact of globalisation are
incorporated into the circuits of the global economy. The Blueprint
builds on the earlier volume The Pentagon's New Map and details how
the non-integrating gap is to be shrunk and hence the wild zones
that spread danger, terrorism, violence and instability are to be
eradicated. With this end of political instability Barnett argues
will come the end of major power warfare and the possibilities of
peace based on the globalised prosperity that modernity can finally
provide. Ultimate victory awaits the courageous. This isn't about
managing the empire as Kaplan would have it; its about forcibly
expanding it.
While its easy to read this as hubris, or indeed as the military
dimension of the expansion of Hardt and Negri's Empire, where global
neo-conservative militarism becomes the agent of Empire rather than
just an American project, the key point is that it is premised on
the geopolitical vision that bifurcates the world into a zone of
integration and the non-integrating gap that needs to be integrated,
forcefully if necessary.44 Barnett is not suggesting a repeat of the
mess in Iraq; he is scathing in his critique of the failures in
Baghdad following the very successful military operation that
defeated the Iraqi forces with remarkably few American casualties in
March and April 2003. What he argues for is precisely what American
forces did not have in the aftermath of the collapse of Saddam
Hussein's forces, i.e., a large well-armed occupation force equipped
to rapidly rebuild the infrastructure and gain the confidence of the
conquered population by making it clear that life would rapidly get
better for them under the occupation.45 These officers and troops he
calls "system administrators (SysAdmin)", a force tasked, to
continue his computer metaphor, with plugging the national economy
into the global circuits of capitalism, providing the commodities
and cultural experiences of globalisation to a population
immediately grateful for their liberation from prior isolation. This
literally is a strategy for the military integration of parts of the
wild zone into the global core, forced regional integration on the
global scale as it were.
The early pages of Barnett's book recount recent discussions of
strategy and the nature of warfare and the various doctrinal
arguments in American thinking and elsewhere about the "revolution
in military affairs" the transformation of warfare, network centric
warfare, the emergence of fourth generation counter-insurgency
warfare and so on. It is clear that both the geopolitical
circumstances have changed since 1989 and that the technological
capabilities of weapons and intelligence systems have been altered
by the digital technologies of navigation and communication. But
likewise it