Thomas P.M.
Barnett
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Thomas P.M. Barnett is a strategic planner who has worked in national security affairs since the end of the Cold War and has operated his own consulting practice (Barnett Consulting) since 1998. Tom founded a consulting partnership with two other outstanding individuals called The New Rule Sets Project LLC. The consultancy was acquired by Enterra Solutions, LLC. in August of 2005, with Dr. Barnett as Senior Managing Director.
A New York Times-bestselling author and a nationally-known public speaker who's been profiled on the front-page of the Wall Street Journal, Dr. Barnett is in high demand within government circles as a forecaster of global conflict and an expert of military transformation, as well as within corporate circles as a management consultant and conference presenter on issues relating to international security and economic globalization. An award-winning teacher, Prof. Barnett has written for Esquire, Wired, Good National Review and the Washington Post, and has been interviewed in Rolling Stone, Epoca (Brazil), and Nihon Keizai Shimbun (Japan's Nikkei News). Having granted numerous interviews since 9/11, Tom Barnett has been described by U.S. News & World Report's Michael Barone as "one of the most important strategic thinkers of our time."
Dr. Barnett is best known as the author of The Pentagon's New Map: War and Peace in the Twenty-First Century (New York: G.P. Putnam's Sons, 2004), Blueprint for Action: A Future Worth Creating (2005), and Great Powers: America and the World After Bush (2009). Described by Washington Post columnist David Ignatius as "a combination of Tom Friedman on globalization and Karl von Clausewitz on war," the wide-ranging volumes have generated an enormous amount of reaction from around the world, leading to foreign rights already being sold in Japan, Turkey and China, as well as profiles in London's Daily Telegraph, Denmark's Borsen, and Switzerland's WeltWoche. The Pentagon's New Map was the likewise the subject of a Book Notes show on C-SPAN (with Brian Lamb), an On Point show on National Public Radio, and many other national TV and radio segments.
In addition to his speaking and consulting, Tom Barnett is a prolific blogger on current global events at his website www.thomaspmbarnett.com, where he counts among his regular readers representatives from all the major U.S. military commands, virtually all U.S. federal departments, numerous foreign governments, and major research and corporate entities the world over.
Tom has been a Contributing Editor for Esquire magazine since the beginning of 2005. His latest article for the magazine was the March 2009 feature, Obama's New Map.
From 1998 through 2004, Prof. Barnett was a Senior Strategic Researcher and Professor in the Warfare Analysis & Research Department, Center for Naval Warfare Studies, U.S. Naval War College, Newport RI, where he taught and served--in a senior advisory role--with military and civilian leaders in the Office of the Secretary of Defense, the Joint Staff, Central Command, Special Operations Command, and Joint Forces Command. From November 2001 to June of 2003, Dr. Barnett was on temporary assignment as the Assistant for Strategic Futures, Office of Force Transformation (OFT), Office of the Secretary of Defense, where he worked with (then) OFT Director Vice Admiral Arthur K. Cebrowski (USN, ret.) on a cluster of strategic concepts that link change in the international security environment to the imperative of transforming U.S. military capabilities to meet future threats.
Dr. Barnett has published a number of articles explaining these strategic concepts, which he presents comprehensively in "what may be history's most famous Pentagon briefing," declared syndicated columnist Jack Kelly. As of March 2009, Prof. Barnett has delivered this brief approximately well over a thousand times to a cumulative wordwide audience of more than 100,000 government officials, military officers, industry and think tank representatives, and opinion leaders.
At the Naval War College, Dr. Barnett served as Director of the NewRuleSets.Project, an ambitious effort to draw new "maps" of power and influence in the world economy so as to expand the U.S. Military's--and specifically, the U.S. Navy's--vision of where and how it can wield maximum influence across the international security environment of the Era of Globalization. The first phase of the project (January 2000-October 2001) was conducted in partnership with the Wall Street broker-dealer firm Cantor Fitzgerald, which hosted three full-day "decision event" workshops atop World Trade Center 1 (Windows on the World). These workshops brought together elite leaders from the worlds of finance, national security, think tanks and industry to discuss the crucial "flows" of globalization, with a special emphasis on Developing Asia. Phase I yielded three briefings and two published reports: one on Asian Energy Futures and another on Foreign Direct Investment. The second phase of the project (November 2001-June 2003) consisted of Dr. Barnett's follow-on work with the Office of Force Transformation. Prior to this study, Dr. Barnett directed the Year 2000 International Security Dimension Project.
Prior to joining the College in August 1998, Dr. Barnett served as a Project Director in both the Center for Naval Analyses and the Institute for Public Research, the two major divisions of The CNA Corporation (CNAC), a private research firm located in Alexandria, VA. His two major accomplishments during his CNAC career were:
- Serving as a member of the Naval Force Capabilities Planning Effort that developed the new strategic concepts eventually published in the Navy’s White Paper . . . From The Sea, the first draft of which he co-authored along with a handful of senior naval officers
- Pioneering and managing CNAC’s contractual relationship with the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID).
While at CNAC, he published several dozen reports, essays, and annotated briefings on a wide variety of subjects. In the mid-1990s, Prof. Barnett has penned a book-length manuscript entitled, The Emily Updates: A Year in the Life of a Three-Year-Old Battling Cancer (1998), which he plans to publish eventually as a book.
Professor Barnett has a BA (Honors) from the University of Wisconsin with a double-major in Russian Language and Literature and International Relations (emphasis—U.S. Foreign Policy). At Wisconsin, he was elected to Phi Beta Kappa his junior year. Following Wisconsin, Dr. Barnett earned an AM in Regional Studies: Russia, Eastern Europe and Central Asia and a PhD in Political Science (major—International Relations; minor—Comparative Politics) from Harvard University. His dissertation was entitled, Warsaw Pact-Third World Relations, 1968-1987: Explaining the Special Roles of Romania and East Germany, was later published by Praeger as Romanian and East German Policies in the Third World. While at Harvard, he served as Research Assistant to the Director of the Russian Research Center, Professor Adam B.Ulam, and worked as a Teaching Fellow in the History and Government Departments.
Thomas Barnett is also a Green Bay Packer season ticket-holder (Gold Package), and as one of the stockholders of the franchise, he feels it is essential to check up on his investment on a regular basis. His seats are located in the historic "South End Zone" of Lambeau Field. Prof. Barnett's maternal grandfather, Gerald Clifford (1889-1952), was a 1991 inductee of the Green Bay Packer Hall of Fame.
Thomas and Vonne Barnett live in Indiana with their four children.