The Pentagon
Roadmap To Hell
Finally, here it is - the Pentagon's road map to hell and beyond which they are following right to
the letter. Remember this was written a couple years ago, so some of it has not happened as predicted or planned. This piece
taken straight from the mouthpiece of the pentagon, speaks volumes.
Below is the basic text of a two hour lecture
by Dr. Barnett, last known to be aired from the pentagon on "American Perspectives" last year. He is a political scientist
who works for the pentagon. Incredibly proud of promoting US global domination, he educates (ie., brainwashes) all areas of
the military about it.
If Barnett was born about 50 years earlier, Hitler would have hired him in an instant.
It's
all here and spelled out, straight from a pentagon run .MIL website. Finally, those Americans and countless people in other
nations who are still asleep and un-informed, will FINALLY gain a real understanding of:
* Why our
men and women are NEVER coming home from the mid-east
* Why war is planned to continue INDEFINITELY
* Why 9-11 happened and how the government gained from it
* Why ALL the
westernized countries MUST be conquered and absorbed into "the core" and much more.
This piece should be required
reading to wake anyone up. NONE of this will EVER see the light of day on FOX, CNN or any other mainstream news source. No
one can read this, and think the occasional administration's slip of the tongue about "the American Empire" is not true.
Barnett's
terminology is a bit unique. "The gap" is codespeak for "those countries who are NOT under US control." "The Core" is codespeak
for those WHO ALREADY ARE UNDER US control. Barnett all but comes out and states the government caused 9-11, as he shows how
the event will be used to promote and assist US global domination.
Without doubt, he proves that "The US has the best
enemies money can buy."
Ted Twietmeyer
Note:
Differing from the report posted at Rense.com
we prefer to mirror the following part directly from the author's website www.thomaspmbarnett.com for the additional information that is presented there.
Thomas
P.M. Barnett
The Pentagon's New Map
(Esquire, March 2003)
THE PENTAGON’S NEW MAP
IT EXPLAINS WHY WE’RE GOING TO WAR, AND
WHY WE’LL KEEP GOING TO WAR.
BY
THOMAS
P.M. BARNETT, U.S. NAVAL WAR COLLEGE
[MAPS
BY WILLIAM MCNULTY]
Read the May letters to the editor Read the June letters to the editor
Esquire,
March 2003 issue
Since the end of the cold
war, the United States has been trying to come up with an operating theory of the world—and a military strategy
to accompany it. Now there’s a leading contender. It involves identifying the problem parts of the world
and aggressively shrinking them. Since September 11, 2001, the author, a professor of warfare analysis, has been advising
the Office of the Secretary of Defense and giving this briefing continually at the Pentagon and in the intelligence community.
Now he gives it to you.
LET ME TELL YOU why military engagement
with Saddam Hussein’s regime in Baghdad is not only necessary and inevitable, but good.
When the United States finally
goes to war again in the Persian Gulf, it will not constitute a settling of old scores, or just an enforced disarmament of
illegal weapons, or a distraction in the war on terror. Our next war in the Gulf will mark a historical tipping point—the
moment when Washington takes real ownership of strategic security in the age of globalization.
That is why the public debate
about this war has been so important: It forces Americans to come to terms with I believe is
the new security paradigm that shapes this age, namely, Disconnectedness defines danger. Saddam
Hussein’s outlaw regime is dangerously disconnected from the globalizing world, from its rule sets, its norms, and all
the ties that bind countries together in mutually assured dependence.
The problem with most discussion
of globalization is that too many experts treat it as a binary outcome: Either it is great and
sweeping the planet, or it is horrid and failing humanity everywhere. Neither view really works, because globalization
as a historical process is simply too big and too complex for such summary judgments. Instead, this new world must be
defined by where globalization has truly taken root and where it has not.
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. But show me where globalization is thinning or just plain absent,
and I will show you regions plagued by politically repressive regimes, widespread poverty and disease, routine mass murder,
and—most important—the chronic conflicts that incubate the next generation of global terrorists. These parts
of the world I call the Non-Integrating Gap, or Gap.
Globalization’s “ozone
hole” may have been out of sight and out of mind prior to September 11, 2001, but it has been hard to miss ever since.
And measuring the reach of globalization is not an academic exercise to an eighteen-year-old marine sinking tent poles on
its far side. So where do we schedule the U.S. military’s next round of away games? The pattern that has
emerged since the end of the cold war suggests a simple answer: in the Gap.
The reason I support going to
war in Iraq is not simply that Saddam is a cutthroat Stalinist willing to kill anyone to stay in power, nor because that regime
has clearly supported terrorist networks over the years. The real reason I support a war like this is that the resulting
long-term military commitment will finally force America to deal with the entire Gap as a strategic threat environment.
FOR MOST COUNTRIES,
accommodating the emerging global rule set of democracy, transparency, and free trade is no mean feat, which is something
most Americans find hard to understand. We tend to forget just how hard it has been to keep the United States together
all these years, harmonizing our own, competing internal rule sets along the way—through a Civil War, a Great Depression,
and the long struggles for racial and sexual equality that continue to this day. As far as most states are concerned,
we are quite unrealistic in our expectation that they should adapt themselves quickly to globalization’s very American-looking
rule set.
But you have to be careful with
that Darwinian pessimism, because it is a short jump from apologizing for globalization-as-forced-Americanization to insinuating—along
racial or civilization lines—that “those people will simply never be like us.” Just ten years
ago, most experts were willing to write off poor Russia, declaring Slavs, in effect, genetically unfit for democracy and capitalism.
Similar arguments resonated in most China-bashing during the 1990’s, and you hear them today in the debates about the
feasibility of imposing democracy on a post-Saddam Iraq—a sort of Muslims-are-from-Mars argument.
So how do we distinguish between
who is really making it in globalization’s Core and who remains trapped in the Gap? And how permanent is this
dividing line?
Understanding that the line between
the Core and Gap is constantly shifting, let me suggest that the direction of change is more critical than the degree.
So, yes, Beijing is still ruled by a “Communist party” whose ideological formula is 30 percent Marxist-Leninist
and 70 percent Sopranos, but China just signed on to the World Trade Organization, and over the long run, that is far
more important in securing the country’s permanent Core status. Why? Because it forces China to harmonize
its internal rule set with that of globalization—banking, tariffs, copyright protection, environmental standards.
Of course, working to adjust your internal rule sets to globalization’s evolving rule set offers no guarantee of success.
As Argentina and Brazil have recently found out, following the rules (in Argentina’s case, sort of following)
does not mean you are panicproof, or bubbleproof, or even recessionproof. Trying to adapt to globalization does not
mean bad things will never happen to you. Nor does it mean all your poor will immediately morph into stable middle class.
It just means your standard of living gets better over time.
In sum, it is always possible
to fall off this bandwagon called globalization. And when you do, bloodshed will follow. If you are lucky, so
will American troops.
DISCONNECTEDNESS DEFINES DANGER
Problem areas requiring American attention (outlined) are, in the author's analysis, called the Gap. Shrinking the
Gap is possible only by stopping the ability of terrorist networks to access the Core via the "seam states" that lie along
the Gap's bloody boundaries. In this war on terrorism, the U.S. will place a special emphasis on cooperation with these
states. What are the classic seam states? Mexico, Brazil, South Africa, Morocco, Algeria, Greece, Turkey, Pakistan,
Thailand, Malaysia, the Phillipines, Indonesia. |
SO WHAT PARTS OF THE WORLD can be considered functioning right now? North America,
much of South America, the European Union, Putin’s Russia, Japan and Asia’s emerging economies (most notably China
and India), Australia and New Zealand, and South Africa, which accounts for roughly four billion out of a global population
of six billion.
Whom does that leave in the Gap? It would be easy to say “everyone else,” but
I want to offer you more proof than that and, by doing so, argue why I think the Gap is a long-term threat to more than just
your pocketbook or conscience.
If we map out U.S. military responses since the end of the cold war, (see below), we find
an overwhelming concentration of activity in the regions of the world that are excluded from globalization’s growing
Core—namely the Caribbean Rim, virtually all of Africa, the Balkans, the Caucasus, Central Asia, the Middle East and
Southwest Asia, and much of Southeast Asia. That is roughly the remaining two billion of the world’s population. Most
have demographics skewed very young, and most are labeled, “low income” or “low middle income” by
the World Bank (i.e., less than $3,000 annual per capita).
If we draw a line around the majority of those military interventions, we have basically
mapped the Non-Integrating Gap. Obviously, there are outliers excluded geographically by this simple approach, such as an
Israel isolated in the Gap, a North Korea adrift within the Core, or a Philippines straddling the line. But looking at the
data, it is hard to deny the essential logic of the picture: If a country is either losing out to globalization or rejecting
much of the content flows associated with its advance, there is a far greater chance that the U.S. will end up sending forces
at some point. Conversely, if a country is largely functioning within globalization, we tend not to have to send our forces
there to restore order to eradicate threats.
Now, that may seem like a tautology—in effect defining any place that has not attracted
U.S. military intervention in the last decade or so as “functioning within globalization” (and vice versa). But
think about this larger point: Ever since the end of World War II, this country has assumed that the real threats to its security
resided in countries of roughly similar size, development, and wealth—in other words, other great powers like ourselves.
During the cold war, that other great power was the Soviet Union. When the big Red machine evaporated in the early 1990’s,
we flirted with concerns about a united Europe, a powerhouse Japan, and—most recently—a rising China.
What was interesting about all those scenarios is the assumption that only an advanced state
can truly threaten us. The rest of the world? Those less-developed parts of the world have long been referred to in military
plans as the “Lesser Includeds,” meaning that if we built a military capable of handling a great power’s
military threat, it would always be sufficient for any minor scenarios we might have to engage in the less advanced world.
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. September 11 triggered a system perturbation that continues to reshape our government (the new Department
of Homeland Security), our economy (the de facto security tax we all pay), and even our society (Wave to the camera!). Moreover,
it launched the global war on terrorism, the prism through which our government now views every bilateral security relationship
we have across the world.
In many ways, the September 11 attacks did the U.S. national-security establishment a huge
favor by pulling us back from the abstract planning of future high-tech wars against “near peers” into the here-and-now
threats to global order. By doing so, the dividing lines between Core and Gap were highlighted, and more important, the nature
of the threat environment was thrown into stark relief.
Think about it: Bin Laden and Al Qaeda are pure products of the Gap—in effect, its
most violent feedback to the Core. They tell us how we are doing in exporting security to these lawless areas (not very well)
and which states they would like to take “off line” from globalization and return to some seventh-century definition
of the good life (any Gap state with a sizable Muslim population, especially Saudi Arabia).
If you take this message from Osama and combine it with our military-intervention record
of the last decade, a simple security rule set emerges: A country’s potential to warrant a U.S. military response is
inversely related to its globalization connectivity. There is a good reason why Al Qaeda was based first in Sudan and then
later in Afghanistan: These are two of the most disconnected countries in the world. Look at the other places U.S. Special
Operations Forces have recently zeroed in on: northwestern Pakistan, Somalia, Yemen. We are talking about the ends of the
earth as far as globalization is concerned.
But just as important as “getting them where they live” is stopping the ability
of these terrorist networks to access the Core via the “seam states” that lie along the Gap’s bloody boundaries.
It is along this seam that the Core will seek to suppress bad things coming out of the Gap. Which are some of these classic
seam states? Mexico, Brazil, South Africa, Morocco, Algeria, Greece, Turkey, Pakistan, Thailand, Malaysia, the Philippines,
and Indonesia come readily to mind. But the U.S. will not be the only Core state working this issue. For example, Russia has
its own war on terrorism in the Caucasus, China is working its western border with more vigor, and Australia was recently
energized (or was it cowed?) by the Bali bombing.
IF WE STEP BACK for a minute and consider the broader implications of this new global
map, then U.S. national-security strategy would seem to be: 1) Increase the Core’s immune system capabilities for responding
to September 11-like system perturbations; 2) Work the seam states to firewall the Core from the Gap’s worst exports,
such as terror, drugs, and pandemics; and, most important, 3) Shrink the Gap. Notice I did not just say Mind the Gap. The
knee-jerk reaction of many Americans to September 11 is to say, “Let’s get off our dependency on foreign oil,
and then we won’t have to deal with those people.” The most naïve assumption underlying that dream is that reducing
what little connectivity the Gap has with the Core will render it less dangerous to us over the long haul. Turning the Middle
East into Central Africa will not build a better world for my kids. We cannot simply will those people away.
The Middle East is the perfect place to start. Diplomacy cannot work in a region where the
biggest sources of insecurity lie not between states but within them. What is most wrong about the Middle East is the lack
of personal freedom and how that translates into dead-end lives for most of the population—especially for the young.
Some states like Qatar and Jordan are ripe for perestroika-like leaps into better political futures, thanks to younger leaders
who see the inevitability of such change. Iran is likewise waiting for the right Gorbachev to come along—if he has not
already.
What stands in the path of this change? Fear. Fear of tradition unraveling. Fear of the
mullah’s disapproval. Fear of being labeled a “bad” or “traitorous” Muslim state. Fear of becoming
a target of radical groups and terrorist networks. But most of all, fear of being attacked from all sides for being different—the
fear of becoming Israel.
The Middle East has long been a neighborhood of bullies eager to pick on the weak. Israel
is still around because it has become—sadly—one of the toughest bullies on the block. The only thing that will
change that nasty environment and open the floodgates for change is if some external power steps in and plays Leviathan full-time.
Taking down Saddam, the region’s bully-in-chief, will force the U.S. into playing that role far more fully than it has
over the past several decades, primarily because Iraq is the Yugoslavia of the Middle East—a crossroads of civilizations
that has historically required a dictatorship to keep the peace. As baby-sitting jobs go, this one will be a doozy, making
our lengthy efforts in postwar Germany and Japan look simple in retrospect.
But it is the right thing to do, and now is the right time to do it, and we are the only
country that can. Freedom cannot blossom in the Middle East without security, and security is this country’s most influential
public-sector export. By that I do not mean arms exports, but basically the attention paid by our military forces to any region’s
potential for mass violence. We are the only nation on earth capable of exporting security in a sustained fashion, and we
have a very good track record of doing it.
Show me a part of the world that is secure in its peace and I will show you strong or growing
ties between local militaries and the U.S. military. Show me regions where major war is inconceivable and I will show you
permanent U.S. military bases and long-term security alliances. Show me the strongest investment relationships in the global
economy and I will show you two postwar military occupations that remade Europe and Japan following World War II.
This country has successfully exported security to globalization’s Old Core (Western
Europe, Northeast Asia) for half a century and to its emerging New Core (Developing Asia) for a solid quarter century following
our mishandling of Vietnam. But our efforts in the Middle Ease have been inconsistent—in Africa, almost nonexistent.
Until we begin the systematic, long-term export of security to the Gap, it will increasingly export its pain to the Core in
the form of terrorism and other instabilities.
Naturally, it will take a whole lot more than the U.S. exporting security to shrink the
Gap. Africa, for example, will need far more aid than the Core has offered in the past, and the integration of the Gap will
ultimately depend more on private investment than anything the Core’s public sector can offer. But it all has to begin
with security, because free markets and democracy cannot flourish amid chronic conflict.
Making this effort means reshaping our military establishment to mirror-image the challenge
that we face. Think about it. Global war is not in the offing, primarily because our huge nuclear stockpile renders such war
unthinkable—for anyone. Meanwhile, classic state-on-state wars are becoming fairly rare. So if the United States is
in the process of “transforming” its military to meet the threats of tomorrow, what should it end up looking like?
In my mind, we fight fire with fire. If we live in a world increasingly populated by Super-Empowered Individuals, we field
a military of Super-Empowered-Individuals.
This may sound like additional responsibility for an already overburdened military, but
that is the wrong way of looking at it, for what we are dealing with here are problems of success—not failure. It is
America’s continued success in deterring global war and obsolescing state-on-state war that allows us to stick our noses
into the far more difficult subnational conflicts and the dangerous transnational actors they spawn. I know most Americans
do not want to hear this, but the real battlegrounds in the global war on terrorism are still over there. If gated communities
and rent-a-cops were enough, September 11 never would have happened.
History is full of turning points like that terrible day, but no turning-back-points. We
ignore the Gap’s existence at our own peril, because it will not go away until we as a nation respond to the challenge
of making globalization truly global.
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Western Hemisphere Map |
Eastern Hemisphere
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click map for larger image of combined
Global Map
My list of real trouble for the
world in the 1990s, today, and tomorrow, starting in our own backyard:
1) HAITI Efforts
to build a nation in 1990s were disappointing • We have been going into Haiti for about a century, and we will go back
when boat people start flowing in during the next crisis—without fail.
2) COLOMBIA Country
is broken into several lawless chunks, with private armies, rebels, narcos, and legit government all working the place over.
• Drugs still flow. • Ties between drug cartels and rebels grew over decade, and now we know of links to international
terror, too. • We get involved, keep promising more, and keep getting nowhere. Piecemeal, incremental approach is clearly
not working.
3) BRAZIL AND ARGENTINA
Both on the bubble between the Gap and the Functioning Core. Both played the globalization game to hilt in nineties and
both feel abused now. The danger of falling off the wagon and going self-destructively leftist or rightist is very real.
• No military threats to speak of, except against their own democracies (the return of the generals). • South
American alliance MERCOSUR tries to carve out its own reality while Washington pushes Free Trade of Americas, but we may have
to settle for agreements with Chile or for pulling only Chile into bigger NAFTA. Will Brazil and Argentina force themselves
to be left out and then resent it? • Amazon a large ungovernable area for Brazil, plus all that environmental damage
continues to pile up. Will the world eventually care enough to step in?
4) FORMER YUGOSLAVIA
For most of the past decade, served as shorthand for Europe's inability to get its act together even in its own backyard.
• Will be long-term baby-sitting job for the West.
5) CONGO AND RWANDA/BURUNDI
Two to three million dead in central Africa from all the fighting across the decade. How much worse can it get before
we try to do something, anything? Three million more dead? • Congo is a carrion state—not quite dead or alive,
and everyone is feeding off it. • And then there's AIDS.
6) ANGOLA Never
really has solved its ongoing civil war (1.5 million dead in past quarter century). • Basically at conflict with self
since mid-seventies, when Portuguese "empire" fell. • Life expectancy right now is under forty!
7) SOUTH AFRICA
The only functioning Core country in Africa, but it's on the bubble. Lots of concerns that South Africa is a gateway country
for terror networks trying to access Core through back door. • Endemic crime is biggest security threat. • And
then there's AIDS.
8) ISRAEL-PALESTINE
Terror will not abate—there is no next generation in the West Bank that wants anything but more violence. •
Wall going up right now will be the Berlin Wall of twenty-first century. Eventually, outside powers will end up providing
security to keep the two sides apart (this divorce is going to be very painful). • There is always the chance of somebody
(Saddam in desperation?) trying to light up Israel with weapons of mass destruction (WMD) and triggering the counterpunch
we all fear Israel is capable of.
9) SAUDI ARABIA
The let-them-eat-cake mentality of royal mafia will eventually trigger violent instability from within. • Paying
terrorists protection money to stay away will likewise eventually fail, so danger will come from outside, too. • Huge
young population with little prospects for future, and a ruling elite whose main source of income is a declining long-term
asset. And yet the oil will matter to enough of the world far enough into the future that the United States will never
let this place really tank, no matter what it takes.
10) IRAQ Question
of when and how, not if. • Then there's the huge rehab job. We will have to build a security regime for the whole region.
11) SOMALIA Chronic
lack of governance. • Chronic food problems. • Chronic problem of terrorist-network infiltration. • We went
in with Marines and Special Forces and left disillusioned—a poor man's Vietnam for the 1990s. Will be hard-pressed not
to return.
12) IRAN Counterrevolution
has already begun: This time the students want to throw the mullahs out. • Iran wants to be friends with U.S., but resurgence
of fundamentalists may be the price we pay to invade Iraq. • The mullahs support terror, and their push for WMD is real:
Does this make them inevitable target once Iraq and North Korea are settled?
13) AFGHANISTAN
Lawless, violent place even before the Taliban stepped onstage and started pulling it back toward seventh century (short
trip) • Government sold to Al Qaeda for pennies on the dollar. • Big source of narcotics (heroin). • Now
U.S. stuck there for long haul, rooting out hardcore terrorists/rebels who've chosen to stay.
14) PAKISTAN
There is always the real danger of their having the bomb and using it out of weakness in conflict with India (very close
call with December 13, 2001, New Delhi bombing). • Out of fear that Pakistan may fall to radical Muslims, we end up
backing hard-line military types we don't really trust. • Clearly infested with Al Qaeda. • Was on its way to
being declared a rogue state by U.S. until September 11 forced us to cooperate again. Simply put, Pakistan doesn't seem to
control much of its own territory.
15) NORTH KOREA
Marching toward WMD. • Bizarre recent behavior of Pyongyang (admitting kidnappings, breaking promises on nukes,
shipping weapons to places we disapprove of and getting caught, signing agreements with Japan that seem to signal new era,
talking up new economic zone next to China) suggests it is intent (like some mental patient) on provoking crises. •
We live in fear of Kim's Götterdämmerung scenario (he is nuts). • Population deteriorating—how much more can they
stand? • After Iraq, may be next.
16) INDONESIA
Usual fears about breakup and "world's largest Muslim population." • Casualty of Asian economic crisis (really got
wiped out). • Hot spot for terror networks, as we have discovered.
New/integrating members of Core I worry
may be lost in coming years:
17) CHINA Running
lots of races against itself in terms of reducing the unprofitable state-run enterprises while not triggering too much unemployment,
plus dealing with all that growth in energy demand and accompanying pollution, plus coming pension crisis as population ages.
• New generation of leaders looks suspiciously like unimaginative technocrats—big question if they are up to task.
• If none of those macro pressures trigger internal instability, there is always the fear that the Communist party won't
go quietly into the night in terms of allowing more political freedoms and that at some point, economic freedom won't be enough
for the masses. Right now the CCP is very corrupt and mostly a parasite on the country, but it still calls the big shots in
Beijing. • Army seems to be getting more disassociated from society and reality, focusing ever more myopically on countering
U.S. threat to their ability to threaten Taiwan, which remains the one flash point that could matter. • And then there's
AIDS.
18) RUSSIA Putin
has long way to go in his dictatorship of the law; the mafia and robber barons still have too much power. • Chechnya
and the near-abroad in general will drag Moscow into violence, but it will be kept within the federation by and large. •
U.S. moving into Central Asia is a testy thing—a relationship that can sour if not handled just right. • Russia
has so many internal problems (financial weakness, environmental damage, et cetera) and depends too much on energy exports
to feel safe (does bringing Iraq back online after invasion kill their golden goose?). • And then there's AIDS.
19) INDIA First,
there's always the danger of nuking it out with Pakistan. • Short of that, Kashmir pulls them into conflict with Pak,
and that involves U.S. now in way it never did before due to war on terror. • India is microcosm of globalization: the
high tech, the massive poverty, the islands of development, the tensions between cultures/civilizations/religions/et cetera.
It is too big to succeed, and too big to let fail. • Wants to be big responsible military player in region, wants to
be strong friend of U.S., and also wants desperately to catch up with China in development (the self-imposed pressure to succeed
is enormous). • And then there's AIDS. |
FROM THE CONTRIBUTORS' PAGE (p. 56):
Shortly after we wrote about military strategist
THOMAS BARNETT in last December's Best and Brightest issue, he gave the Esquire staff a presentation on his theory
of war and globalization, just as he regularly does for government leaders as an adviser to the Department of Defense.
We'll never read the news the same way again. This month, Barnett delivers the same briefing to you in "The Pentagon's
New Map (page 174), in which he maps out America's recent military encounters and predicts future ones based on patterns of
global economic development. "We're at a time period not unlike after World War II," says Barnett, who is also a professor
at the Naval War College in Newport, Rhode Island. "We're trying to ask the same great questions, like: How can a superpower
today influence history for the better? We established this overarching ideology for so long that allowed us to justify
anything, and that ideology was containment. In some ways, what I'm trying to argue is a new sort of containment—a
containment of the new bad places and the desire to shrink them."
FROM THE EDITOR'S LETTER (p. 58):
[excerpted] But there is one truly special story
in this issue—one that you'll find in no other magazine. If you remember our December issue, the one we called
the Best and Brightest, which was about people on the cutting edge, doing work that will improve our country and our world,
you might remember Thomas Barnett. Tom Barnett is a war strategist. He puts the world—especially the parts
of the world where terrorism and unrest are brewing—into context. He does this for the Secretary of Defense, and
he draws conclusions about how best to avert or engage conflicts—and thus how to keep our country secure.
On page 174, Barnett has annotated the world.
More specifically, the world's hot spots and the likelihood of war in each of those places. For the first time, someone
with a position in the government explains what we're really undertaking when we go to war in Iraq. It's not just about
disarmament. Rather, the United States is redrawing the map of the region, we are shrinking the Gap (to use Barnett's
term), we are changing the course of history by adopting a good-offense-is-the-best-defense strategy.
This is an entirely unprecedented look inside the
thinking that will guide our defense strategy over the next five to ten years. It's a fantastic and challenging story.
In November, Barnett came and presented his philosophy of global conflict to our staff. It was amazing and kind of breathtaking.
It made each of us feel as though we had a slightly better grip on some of the most frightening issues ever to face our country
and the world. I hope it has the same effect on you, making your life a little better.
—David Granger
Sources:
Rense.com
www.thomaspmbarnett.com
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