Posted on 12/13/2004 9:49:00 PM PST by Mike Fieschko
It hasn't been reviewed by the New York Times or The Post, and it's little known outside the military. But the red-hot book among the nation's admirals and generals this holiday season is a work of strategy by Thomas P.M. Barnett called "The Pentagon's New Map."Imagine a combination of Tom Friedman on globalization and Karl von Clausewitz on war and you begin to get an idea of where Barnett is coming from. His book tries to rethink strategy for a post-Cold War, post-Sept. 11 world caught between order and anarchy, self-satisfaction and rage, prosperity and ruin.
Barnett's central thesis is that today's world is divided into two categories: the "Functioning Core" of nations connected to the global economy and prospering as never before, and the "Non-Integrating Gap" of nations disconnected from the matrix of wealth and progress and therefore spinning toward chaos.
[snip]
The enemy "is neither a religion (Islam) nor a place (the Middle East), but a condition -- disconnectedness," writes Barnett. "If disconnectedness is the real enemy, then the combatants we target in this war are those who promote it, enforce it and terrorize those who seek to overcome it by reaching out to the larger world." It's hard to think of a better definition of the cleavages that underlie the war in Iraq or the battle against al Qaeda.
Barnett doesn't see America's role as a neo-imperialist global centurion. Instead, he argues, the U.S. goal must be to promote "rule sets" that are shared by Core and Gap alike. "All we can offer is choice, the connectivity to escape isolation, and the safety within which freedom finds practical expression," he writes.
(Excerpt) Read more at washingtonpost.com ...
I think there is another thread on his book.
Thanks for the pings.
The Gap reminds me of the so called Bad Lands in America after the during and after the Civil War along the border of Mexico and other areas in the SW and West up to the end of that century.
Small areas, towns and some times even small cities were ruled by the bad guys with guns and their thugs with guns.
"The War on Disconnectedness." Hmm. I see a tough sell.
Click the keyword "Thomas Barnett" for more related threads.
Thanks, adding some to that keyword........
His is a silly book. From an amazon.com review that I saw a while back when I first read it:
The author is obviously a sharp guy, but he should've paid better attention to an old professor of his Richard Pipes. Pipes never assumed away inconvenient facts or scenarios, as Barnett seems to do on every page.
To cite one example, Barnett plainly holds in utter contempt those Pentagon thinkers who believe the PRC will pose a strategic problem for the US. He assumes that an improved standard of living for tens of millions of coastal Chinese will inevitably lead to China's integration into the "Core functional" group of states. But did the fact that the UK and France were Imperial Germany's largest trading partners prevent WWI? And what happens when China's bubble bursts and all those hundreds of millions of poor rural folk get restive? A diversionary war, perhaps? Wouldn't be the first time a failing state tried that tactic.
Now, to postulate a threat from the PRC in the medium-to-long term isn't the same as saying the Pentagon should plan solely for a Great Power conflict with China at the expense of attending to other force structure needs. But, in Barnett's world, his in-house rivals at the Puzzle Palace who worry China might move on Taiwan are simply trapped in a Cold War mindset.
Further, Barnett totally ignores the EU. Will it collapse? I think so, but he refrains from comment. If it doesn't, will it ever build a legit military force? Again, no comment. And what about South America? Sure, the larger economies are becoming more integrated into global capital markets. But nationalism is on the upswing, and, frankly, even the healthier economies there aren't doing too well.
Another blithe assumption Barnett makes is that migration from Gap (3rd World) states to Core states is inevitable and the US should just lie back and enjoy it. To that, I say, consult Sam Huntington's latest work.
He's correct on the primacy of the Indo-American relationship. And does bother to address Columbia's problems (albeit briefly).
Overall, though, this tome is unworthy of its author's esteemed credentials. It is little more than simplistic economic determinism coated with a thin veneer of legalistic happy-talk. Barnett often castigates his intellectual opponents in the defense establishment (to whom this book seems to be addressed, and which probably accounts for its snarky, know-it-all tone) as the irredeemable pessimists, but his "trade & modem" elixir will no more cure deep-seated cultural, geographic, religious, nationalistic, and power rivalries than two Tylenol will cure a brain tumor.
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