Thomas P.M. Barnett
The Pentagon's New Map | Blueprint for Action

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Esquire Articles

The Man Between War and Peace
Esquire, March 2008
If, in the dying light of the Bush administration, we go to war with Iran, it'll all come down to one man. If we do not go to war with Iran, it'll come down to the same man. He is that rarest of creatures in the Bush universe: the good cop on Iran, and a man of strategic brilliance. His name is William Fallon, although all of his friends call him "Fox," which was his fighter-pilot call sign decades ago.

John Robb: Keeping up with Terrorists
Esquire, December 2007
John Robb's "Global Guerrillas" of the twenty-first century don't aspire to defeat our militaries nor topple our governments, but merely to bankrupt both, hollowing out the West's institutions to the point where Osama bin Laden's vision of the future -- that is, his feudal order -- carries the day.

Tom's 6 of the 2007 Esquire 100
Esquire, September 2007
Nos. 5 Through 9: The Next Five States
No. 40: Sea-Traffic Control

The Americans Have Landed
Esquire, July 2007
A few years ago, with little fanfare, the United States opened a base in the horn of Africa to kill or capture Al Qaeda fighters. By 2012, the Pentagon will have two dozen such forts. The story of Africa Command, the American military's new frontier outpost.

[And be sure to check out our Americans Have Landed page with many resources related to this article.]

The State of the World: Author's Commentary Track: In this exclusive post, writer Thomas P.M. Barnett reassesses and updates his overview of the global geopolitical situation.
Esquire, May 2007
Mark Warren, my editor at Esquire asked me to write a blog post on "The State of the World" in order to extend or update it a bit. So... This behemoth weighs in at roughly 6,500 words -- 500 longer than the actual piece. Oh well, Marty Scorsese always out-blabs his own movies when he does commentary, but that’s the whole idea, is it not?

The State of the World: A special, in-depth examination of a post-Bush world, covering the good, the bad, and the unknown.
Esquire, May 2007
Now that the Bush presidency is over, it's time those of us left behind assess the damage and seize the opportunities. There's plenty of both. But there's no time to waste, so let's get started: the good news, the bad news, and the news that could change everything.

No. 042: The Country to Watch
Esquire, October 2006, p. 177
Let me give you the four scariest words I can't pronounce in Arabic: Egypt after Hosni Mubarak.

Osama picked the time (9/11), and Bush picked the venue (Iraq), but this fight between radical Islam and globalization's integrating forces was preordained the day Deng Xiaoping set in motion China's economic rise almost three decades ago. You can't rapidly add billions of new capitalists to the global economy and pretend the Islamic Middle East will remain queerly disconnected forever, somehow fire-walled from that borglike assimilation.

The Monks of War.  If official Washington has trouble learning from its mistakes, the generals fighting the war in Iraq have no such luxury. And there are many lessons to learn.
Esquire, March 2006
Of all the lessons he's learned in this war, the most important one to marine lieutenant general James Mattis is this: winning this war is mostly about not losing friends along the way.  In the run-up to the invasion of Afghanistan in the fall of 2001, General Mattis was charged with setting up an air base in Pakistan to make the movement of marines into the theater possible...

The Chinese Are Our Friends. . . despite everything you hear from the fearmongers at the Pentagon. Don't listen to them. The Sino-American partnership will define the twenty-first century
Esquire, November 2005
The greatest threat to America's success in its war on terrorism sits inside the Pentagon. The proponents of Big War (that cold-war gift that keeps on giving), found overwhelmingly in the Air Force and Navy, will go to any length to demonize China in their quest to justify high-tech weaponry (space wars for the flyboys) and super- expensive platforms (submarines and ships for the admirals, and bomber jets for both) in the budget struggles triggered by our costly wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.

Donald Rumsfeld: Old Man in a Hurry (The inside story of how Donald H. Rumsfeld transformed the Pentagon, in which we learn about wire-brushing, deep diving, and a secret society called the Slurg)
Esquire
, July 2005

Complete interview transcript
THE SECRETARY OF DEFENSE'S suite of offices in the Pentagon is on the third deck, outermost, or E-ring of the five-sided building, in the wedge between corridors eight and nine. It's one of the older wedges, on the far side of where the new ones are to be found or are being renovated, and on the opposite side of the building, one thousand feet away, from the section that was destroyed on September 11, 2001 ...
Esquire's "The Sound and the Fury" (This Month, Extra Fury!)  letters to the editor

Dear Mr. President, Here's How to Make Sense of Your Second Term, Secure Your Legacy, and, oh yeah, Create a Future Worth Living
Esquire
, February 2005

So you say you have no concern for your legacy. That some historian eighty years from now will figure out if you were a good president or not. Fair enough, but let's review so far. Your big-bang strategy to reform the Middle East took down Saddam, which was good; you've completely screwed up the Iraq occupation, which is bad; and now you don't seem to know exactly where you're going, which is not so great. This brings me to the bad news. The two players with the greatest potential for hog-tying your second term and derailing your big-bang strategy don't even live in the Middle East. Instead, they're located on little islands of unreality much like Washington, D.C.: Taiwan and North Korea.  
Esquire's "The Sound and the Fury" letters to the editor

Mr. President, Here's How To Make Sense Of Our Iraq Strategy
Esquire, June 2004
One of the architects of the Pentagon's New Map of the world offers a most important guide to a) why the boys will never be coming home and b) why this is the first step toward a world without war. 
Esquire's "The Sound and the Fury" letters to the editor (Sept)
Esquire's "The Sound and the Fury" letters to the editor (Aug)

The Pentagon's New Map (Russian translation)  (German translation)  (Chinese Translation)
Esquire
, March 2003
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.  
Esquire's "The Sound and the Fury" letters to the editor (June)

Esquire's "The Sound and the Fury" letters to the editor (May)



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