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

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Ten Reasons Why China Matters To You

GOOD Magazine, April 9th, 2008

Africa has always been a backwater as far as the US military is concerned, a place where we once sought to counter Soviet influence but where little intrinsic strategic interest was discerned. Today, the situation is different.

African Ambitions

Comment is free (Guardian Unlimited), December 20th, 2007

Africa has always been a backwater as far as the US military is concerned, a place where we once sought to counter Soviet influence but where little intrinsic strategic interest was discerned. Today, the situation is different.

Recasting the Long War as a Joint Sino-American Venture

Baker Center Journal of Applied Public Policy, Fall 2007

In this so-called long war against the global jihadist movement, the Bush administration’s greatest failure has been its lack of strategic imagination. It has added the right enemies to our to-do list, but failed to enlist the necessary new allies, giving our people the misperception that it’s America against the world.

Managing China's Ascent

US News and World Report, July 29th, 2007

Realists insist the U.S. and China are slated for military conflict in the decades ahead. America cannot peacefully accommodate China's rise because it subverts our role as the world's lone superpower. Let me offer a different vision.

Securing the Middle East with a Nuclear Iran? Excerpts from Blueprint for Action

The Globalist's Book of the Week, January 24, 2006

Even as the United States, the EU and others work to stop it, Iran's acquisition of nuclear weapons seems inevitable. But is this such a bad outcome? In "Blueprint for Action," Thomas P.M. Barnett explores the security implications involved from a U.S. point of view of Iran acquiring nuclear weapons and why it may be the best thing for the United States and the wider Middle East.

The New Magnum Force: What Dirty Harry can teach the new Geneva conventions
Wired, February 2005
Ass kickers. Rule breakers. Lone riders. The United States may be founded on individual rights and the rule of law, but Americans love Dirty Harry and his literary and cinematic brethren. These hard-nosed heroes dispatch evildoers without remorse, going outside the law when necessary. The Man With No Name doesn't explain, he simply acts.

"The Pentagon's Debate Over What Iraq Means"
The Command Post, 22 January 2005
We've been linking to the work of Tom Barnett for some time, including his two Esquire articles, "The Pentagon's New Map" and "Mr. President, Here's How To Make Sense Of Our Iraq Strategy," and just yesterday, the CSPAN stream of his famous Defense Dept. brief on a grand military strategy for the United States.  He's a heavy hitter.  And here's the really great part: Tom has agreed to author an exclusive perspective piece for the Command Post's Op/Ed page, which you may find below. We're thrilled to have his contribution, and we hope you find the content enjoyable and provocative. --The Command Post

Commission On Review Of Overseas Military Facility Structure Of The United States (pdf) [blog entry here]
Testimony delivered at Public Meeting held on 9 November 2004, Dirksen Senate Office Building, Washington DC
"First, let me thank the Commission on Overseas Basing for inviting me to testify here today. Second, let me emphasize right from the start that I'm not an expert per se on the U.S. military's global basing structure. I am essentially a grand strategist who spends his time contemplating the long-term objectives of U.S. foreign policy with a particular focus on how the employment of military force around the world can bring about not just increased security for our country, but improve the global security environment as a whole. I have written extensively on this subject, and I know that it is primarily on the basis of my recent book, The Pentagon's New Map, that I was asked to testify today, so many of my comments here will involve describing how I think this new map informs future planning for U.S. overseas basing realignment ..."

Does the U.S. Face a Future of Never-ending Subnational & Transnational Violence?
Conference Paper: National Intelligence Council 2020 Project (May 2004)
The short answer is yes. But the more important answers are that: 1) This future is worth pursuing because it represents genuine historical progress in the de-escalation of mass violence; 2) This problem-set is boundable and easily described as a grand historical arc of ever-retreating resistance to the spread of the global economy; and 3) The sequencing of the regional tasks involved is of our own choosing.

Gaming War in the Context of Everything Else
Fire and Movement, Issue 134 (2004)
Thomas P.M. Barnett wrote an article for Esquire magazine last year entitled "The Pentagon's New Map," in which he described what he believes is the new security environment that the U.S. finds itself in today. His recent book of the same title more deeply explores his thoughts on the matter. I asked Prof. Barnett what he thought the role of the commercial board wargame industry might be in the new world war in which we find ourselves. His response is included in this issue. It's definitely worth a close read.

Adam B. Ulam, Understanding the Cold War: A Historian's Personal Reflections, reviewed by Thomas P.M. Barnett, U.S. Naval War College
Journal of Cold War Studies, Summer 2004
There is only one really legitimate measure of an autobiography, and that is its ability to bring the author to life for the reader, giving a sense of who the person was and what it must have been like to have known him or her.  On that score, Adam Ulam's "personal reflections" succeed on every level.

System Perturbation: Conflict in the Age of Globalization
With Bradd C. Hayes in Raymond W. Westphal Jr, ed, War and Virtual War: The Challenges to Communities (Oxford: Inter-Disciplinary Press, 2003), pp. 5-18.
Aperiodically, the international system reorders itself — normally in the aftermath of a major conflict. This reordering is accompanied by the implementation of new rule sets in an attempt to firewall states from the causes of the conflict. Policymakers have openly enquired whether the end of the Cold War and the birth of the information age require a new firebreak and the implementation of a new set of rules. Because "great power war" has been the proximate cause of past restructuring, great power war has been the ordering the principle for international (and national) rules and institutions. Recent events (from so-called the Asian Economic Flu, to the Mexican peso crisis, to the Love Bug computer virus, to the heinous events of 11 September 2001) indicate that a new ordering principle is required (one in which great power war is but one possible outcome).

The Global Transaction Strategy
WITH HENRY H. GAFFNEY, JR.
Military Officer, May 2003
Operation Iraqi Freedom could be a first step toward a larger goal: true globalization.

No Retaliation at Home
Mary Suh, editor, of Week-in-Review expert roundtable "Strategy, With the Benefit of Hindsight"
New York Times, 30 March 2003
Given all the months of planning for — and talking about — the war in Iraq, it appeared that every possible contingency had been accounted for, if not by the military itself, then by the platoon of retired officers that seems to populate television news. But as with everything else, there is no substitute for hindsight. The Week in Review asked several prominent experts on war and on Iraq to explain what has surprised them, or not, about the war thus far.

Asia's Energy Future: The Military-Market Link
In Sam J. Tangredi, ed, Globalization and Maritime Power (National Defense University Press, 2003)
Continuing the “Economic Issues and Maritime Strategy” part, chapter 10 returns to the question of the economic impact (and necessity) of naval forward presence in a region of current concern, Asia-Pacific. The 2001 DOD Quadrennial Defense Review Report identifies a policy shift in American defense policy, from a Eurocentric focus to increased emphasis on potential security threats in Asia-Pacific. Chapter 10 explains the need for such a shift through its examination of the energy needs of the existing and emerging Asian economic powers—notably China. According to forecasts, perhaps more than 50 percent of Mideast oil production will be directed to the Asia-Pacific region, much of it traveling by tankers through such chokepoints as the Strait of Hormuz (between Iran and Oman) and the Strait of Malacca (between Indonesia, Thailand, Malaysia, and Singapore). This and the potential for interstate and intrastate conflict in an “arc of crises” running from the Middle East to Northwest Asia suggest a continuing and increasing role for the U.S. Navy—the world’s last global navy—and the U.S. Marine Corps and other maritime forces in maintaining the peace and stability if that region is to share in the benefits of economic globalization.

Romanian and East German Policies in the Third World: Comparing the Strategies of Ceausescu and Honecker (Westport CT: Praeger Publishers, 1992)
This book is a unique comparison of the Third World policies of the two East European regimes that were most active in the South during the 1970s and 1980s. The study examines why Romania's and East Germany's high activity levels in the South cannot be explained away as mere surrogacy for Moscow, and shows that those attempts represented the particular agendas of Honecker and Ceausescu in their efforts to alter their ties with the Soviet Union. Barnett concludes that Romania and East Germany saw opportunities in the Third World in the 1970s to forge strong diplomatic and security profiles within the Warsaw Pact's overall presence. 

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