The Pentagon's New Map

Esquire ^ | March 1, 2003 | Thomas P.M. Barnett, U.S. Naval War College

[Ernest_at_the_Beach]

He gave his Bio on the Booknotes show I saw yesterday and he considered himself not to fall under either label of Liberal or Conservative. His wife is a card carrying Liberal of the ACLU type , mother is Liberal, and father was somewhat. But the family has Republicans in its background he said.

He said his family was unhappy with the book as they considered it supportive of what President Bush is doing in Iraq.

Oh, he is Catholic also , and said that accounts for his interest in Rules. He decsribed the period after the Soviet breakup as a confusing period for US planners . However with the Sept 11 event it was plain that the world was going to be working under a new set of rules.

He says this book is an attempt to explain what he believes the new rules are. I may have to get this book , so I can understand what the new shape of the world activities may be.

[mark502inf]

Good article, thanks for posting it.

That assumption was shattered by September 11. After all, we were not attacked by a nation or even an army but by a group of—in Thomas Friedman’s vernacular—Super Empowered Individuals willing to die for their cause

What he doesn't address in the article is how globalization also serves the proliferation of both technological "know-how" and its products. If the 9-11 attackers had nukes, they would have used them. And there are plenty of Islamists willing to take their place. We have to keep a President in office who understands the real stakes and is willing to do what it takes to win.

[RussianConservative]

You are correct, he also miss a few: Venuzuala, Cuba, Zimbabwe, Lebanon-Syria, Egypt, Sudan, Turkey, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, Malasyia, Algeria, Lybia, Nigeria, Ivory Coast, Phillipines, Eritria and others.

[Ernest_at_the_Beach]

We have to keep a President in office who understands the real stakes and is willing to do what it takes to win.

Our survival depends on it.

[gitmo]

However the diagnosis presented here is only partially correct, in that the Gap states are typically fully integrated into "Globalization". It is just that the way that they are integrated is as sources of minerals, energy supplies, cheap labor, and plantation agriculture.

I think a better way of looking at it is that many of these nations do business with the core at the highest levels, but the average citizen is excluded from that relationship. In the Arab nations, the rulers sell oil, but the average Arab has no hope for making a real living. In China, there is a lot of manufacturing, but until very recently it was fueled by virtual slave labor. In Colombia, the drug lords are participating, but that leaves the rest of the country out of the loop.