NEWPORT -- In a darkened conference room at the Naval War College, Prof. Thomas Barnett stands before a glowing projection screen, a remote control in his hand. He's eager to give the talk that has grabbed the attention of the nation's military and media elite. No matter that today he has an audience of only one.

His Powerpoint presentation begins with a Phil Hartman joke, borrows a line from The Sopranos and, during one slide change, samples one of Law & Order's dramatic sound effects. The pop-culture references are sprinkled into an otherwise weighty discussion on war and geopolitics and such academic-sounding concepts as "system perturbation" and "functioning core."

When Barnett crosses in front of the screen, he is illuminated, but dark lines appear on his face and white dress shirt. They are the boundaries of the world. It's a world, he says, that has changed immensely since the Cold War and 9/11.

It's a world no longer polarized by superpowers and their respective allies, but one divided between nations desiring to interact with each other and those that can't or won't. It's the latter group that concerns him, nations so resistant to change they would harm others, or so weak that terrorists can exploit them.

It's up to the United States, the sole surviving superpower, to use its military might to stop them, he believes. We have to "stick our noses" into situations we once ignored, he says. These days, that means taking the fight to Saddam Hussein, whom he calls the Middle East's "bully-in-chief."

Barnett recently penned several articles for influential publications supporting the global war on terror and attacking Iraq. CNN has been repeatedly calling about a possible appearance on a news program hosted by Wolf Blitzer.

Barnett wouldn't be garnering so much attention today if he hadn't been so prophetic about 9/11.

SEVERAL YEARS AGO, Barnett, 40, could only envy, or dream of, such exposure. He had earned a doctorate in political science from Harvard University and had taken a job as a military analyst at the Center for Naval Analyses, a private think tank outside Washington, D.C. But after eight years, he felt he couldn't spread his wings. His supervisors didn't appreciate his attitude, his style.

"You write like you're a someone, a former something. You're not Henry Kissinger," he recalls one coworker telling him. Poking fun at himself, he adds, "I'm a former nothing."

His fancy computer presentations didn't win him any fans either.

"People at CNA told me I'd never get anywhere with my silly Powerpoint," he says. "It's not silly if there's a message in there."

Barnett was passionate about globalization -- the increasing economic, political and military bonds shared by the nations of the world. Like others, he saw both its value and its vulnerability. But many in his field grew tired of such talk, deriding it as "glo-baloney."

After coming to the Naval War College, Barnett began working on a project that would earn him a reputation as a visionary. It was a study about economic security, conducted in collaboration with the international broker-dealer firm Cantor Fitzgerald. Barnett looked into the possible consequences of Year 2000 computer glitches. He also examined another scenario: a terrorist attack on Wall Street.

The study in no way predicted the 9/11 terror attacks. In fact, he says, "I was someone who discounted international terrorism." His team focused less on the causes of such a catastrophe and more on the consequences of one.

"We talked about a lot of amazing things happening at once, like the stock market getting knocked out for four or five days, or air travel in the United States or some other country being knocked out for 10 days or two weeks, or scapegoating against ethnic minorities that are considered to be part of the problem. Crazy stuff. People buying guns. Law-enforcement agencies and the U.S. military responding to crises and potential dangerous situations simultaneously happening all over the country and all over the world.

"Y2K comes and goes," he says, "but with 9/11 it's an amazing description of the days and weeks after."

SEVERAL WEEKS after the terror attacks, Barnett was summoned to the Pentagon and installed in the Secretary of Defense's Office of Force Transformation as the assistant to retired Vice Adm. Arthur Cebrowski.

"I get to talk to him and he gets to talk to [Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul] Wolfowitz, [Secretary of Defense Donald] Rumsfeld and the joint chiefs. And that's just one step."

Since then, Barnett has had no trouble finding an audience for his ideas. He has given his presentation about 70 times, to several thousand people in and outside government. Among his most satisfying was a briefing for Rumsfeld's aides.

His diverse audiences have included the secretaries of the nation's military branches down to the private Hope Club, of Providence. Another was the editorial board of Esquire. Last fall, the magazine named him one of America's "Best and Brightest." This month, it published an article in which Barnett argues that war with Saddam Hussein "is not only necessary and inevitable, but good."

While serving as an adviser to the Defense Department, Barnett insists he is "not shilling for them. . . . It's what I believe."

Look at the map, he says. He shows a slide pinpointing the location of every U.S. military response since 1990. Virtually all of them took place in what he calls the "non-integrating gap," nations disconnected from the world because of extreme poverty, repressive regimes or virulent rejection of Western values. These nations pose the greatest threat to what he calls the "functioning core," countries that want to cooperate with one another.

Like the successful cancer treatment his daughter underwent when she was only 3, Barnett says it takes a variety of preemptive approaches to prevent rogue nations and terrorists from harming the United States and its peers. It will be up to the United States to take a lead role as "global policeman."

"We're the only country in the world that can export security," he says.

IRONICALLY, it took leaving the Beltway for Barnett to be heard in Washington.

"It's hard to get noticed in Washington as a military analyst," he says. "There's only a million of them."

In Newport, he can capitalize on the cachet of being a Naval War College professor while enjoying a laid-back quality of life.

He's getting noticed, but not everyone appreciates Barnett's presentations. His detractors, some of whom stand up and walk out on his talks, say he's "an inch deep and a mile wide." He admits that he's not a true specialist or an analyst. He's more of a futurist.

"I am the big-picture kind of guy," he says.

Like the standup philosopher Mel Brooks plays in History of the World, Part I, he says, "I coalesce the vapor of human experience into a viable and logical comprehension." Some people respond the same way Bea Arthur's character does, with an epithet.

"Most of what I do is translate a military world for non-military audiences, and translate the non-military world for military officers," he says. "So the people who love me tend to be looking the other direction. They think I'm the best thing since sliced bread."