Deleted Scenes

Deleted Scene #24

Chapter Six: The Global Transaction Strategy

Section: You're Ruining My Military!

Commentary: This twenty-fourth "deleted scene" follows closely on the heel of #23. It would have gone on the bottom of page 301. Similar arguments for cutting, I imagine. I include it here because I like the list at the end -- namely, the boxes the rogue leader checks before he triggers the regime change response from the system.

Deleted Scene: More on When to Intervene Inside the Gap

[TEXT BEGINS]

But extending that benefit, that Core, that zone of peace is not some haphazard affair. You cannot extend the Core by dividing the Core, nor can you replicate globalization's source code by corrupting it. America must stay united and strong, and the Core must grow in its unity and strength, so rushing ahead to some "World War IV" is not a strategy, it is simply panic and hatred masquerading as strategy. America must lead the Core in extending security rule sets with both patience and intelligence, picking its spots while maintaining clear historical momentum. In other words, we must stay as busy as possible short of over-extending ourselves. That means -- first and foremost -- that we must prioritize how we wage war inside the Gap, balancing the need for continuous progress in globalization's advance with the need to relieve the worst cases of humanitarian suffering inside the Gap.

Advancing globalization means first advancing the Core's security rule sets, because without security there will be no Core investment leading to economic integration. Prioritizing which rogue states to deal with first is not that hard. With such bad states, we look for the following cluster: the ruler that will not leave, his corruption of the political system, his distortion of the economic system, his terrorizing of the public, his systematic efforts to keep his country isolated from the outside world, his pursuit of dangerous weapons and his profligate spending on security, his willingness to meddle in the affairs of other states or to support terrorist groups, and his reliance on criminal or nefarious transactions with the outside world to sustain his sources of power. Check enough of these boxes and you will be encouraged to check
out -- permanently -- by the United States and its posse of the moment. That active encouragement will employ all possible instruments of U.S. pressure,
and will -- if necessary -- culminate in military intervention for the purposes of regime change at the time of our choosing.

[TEXT ENDS]

Email Thomas P.M. Barnett

Biography

Putnam, 2004
The Pentagon's New Map: War and Peace in the Twenty-First Century

Esquire, March 2003
The Pentagon's New Map

Global Transaction Strategy