[Dialogue] A washingtonpost.com article from: davidson@pobox.com]

[David Walters]

Thomas Barnett was on C-Span today lecvturing a group on the contents
of his book he later was interveiwed by a C-Span staffer. He shawed
various charts from his book. I was amazed with his charts for their
striking resemlance to the charts that used to be drwn during the
collegiums of years past. Thi guy seems to embody our our dictum
about "charting as a life method".

David
 
> Winning a War For the Disconnected
>
> By David Ignatius
>
>   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. Most of America's military interventions in
>recent
>years have been in the Gap, notes Barnett, but we have failed to
>understand
>that we face a common enemy there.
>
>  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. "None of this can be imposed, only offered.
>Globalization does not come with a ruler, but with rules."
>
>  Barnett has been tinkering with these ideas since the late 1990s,
>but they
>came into focus, not surprisingly, after Sept. 11, 2001. Three months
>later,
>he was giving the first versions of a briefing that has now been
>heard by
>hundreds of senior military officers. His concepts have spread so
>fast among
>the military brass that when I was in Bahrain two weeks ago, I heard
>a
>Barnett-style briefing from the commander of U.S. naval forces in the
>Persian Gulf, Vice Adm. David Nichols. He outlined a strategy of
>encouraging
>countries in the Middle East to move toward "connected" economies,
>orderly
>"rule sets" and democratic political reform.
>
>  Barnett's ideas have been taken up by other military commands that
>must
>reckon with disorder in the Gap, including those responsible for the
>Pacific
>and Latin America. The Air Force has asked him to brief every new
>roster of
>one-star generals, and the Navy has him lecture each year at the
>Naval War
>College. And Barnett was the featured speaker last week at a meeting
>of the
>Pentagon's high-level technology group, the Highlands Forum. With so
>many
>officers buying books, "The Pentagon's New Map" has managed to sell
>more
>than 50,000 copies.
>
>  So what does Barnett's strategy imply for the vexing problems of
>today,
>such as Iraq and Iran? Barnett argued in his book that linking Iraq
>to the
>Core is job No. 1. "Show me an Iraq that is as globally connected as
>an
>Israel in 10 years and I will show you a Middle East that can never
>go back
>to what it has been these past two decades -- overwhelmingly
>disconnected,
>populated with dispirited youth, and enraged beyond our capacity for
>understanding." Barnett would still like to see such an Iraq emerge
>as a
>stabilizing local pillar, but he told me this week that the U.S.
>occupation
>there has been so "totally snafu-ed" that Iraq may not be able to
>play that
>role.
>
>  Barnett sees Iran as the potential bridge between Core and Gap in
>the
>Middle East. He will argue in an article in the next issue of Esquire
>that
>the United States should try to make Iran its local security partner
>in the
>region, accepting its hegemony over a future Shiite-led Iraq and the
>Persian
>Gulf. The alternative is a new Yalta-style fault line between East
>and West
>-- one that could divide the West from emerging Core countries such
>as India
>and China.
>
>  Visiting Iraq, as I did this month, you can see that the United
>States has
>gotten itself into a heck of a mess in that part of the world.
>Reading
>Barnett's book gave me a rare moment of hope that perhaps we can
>still think
>ourselves out of these problems, rather than just shoot our way out.
>
>davidignatius at washpost.com
>
>
>
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