War
between major industrialized nations is a thing of the past. In the next
50 years the United States will annex new states, some outside Western
Hemisphere. Within 10 years the new Iraq will be a beacon of freedom to
a Middle East swept up in democratic reform that started when America
swept Saddam aside. The US military will split into two distinct forces,
one that wins wars quickly and efficiently and the other built to
establish peace after conflict. Economic globalization will make the
world more like America—open, capitalist and free. If America fights
the war properly on all fronts, the age of terrorism can end in an age
of global peace.
These
predictions and more come from U. S. Naval War College Professor and
Strategic Researcher Thomas Barnett, whose book The Pentagon's New
Map: War and Peace in the Twenty-First Century lays out a strategic
vision for the global war against terrorists. Set for release in April, The
Pentagon's New Map offers a sweeping view of the world from the end
of the Cold War through the 1990s “vacation from history,” past 9-11
and into the future.
Barnett’s
centerpiece is a geostrategic map he developed while studying how
America should approach the post-Cold War world as the sole superpower.
He developed the map and the philosophy behind it while working on
futurist studies for the Center for Naval Analyses and for the firm
Cantor Fitzgerald during the 1990s, and first aired it publicly in an Esquire
article in 2003. That byline earned him mountains of hate mail from left
and right, with the left “praying for his soul” (for supporting the
Iraq war) and the right wanting to “kick his ass” (for conspiring in
the latest one-world government scheme). But the map is neither
soul-searing monstrosity nor one-world goo-goo mantra. It is a road map
from our terror-ridden time to what Barnett calls a “future worth
creating” by predicting where conflict where arise next.
This
new map (it replaces the Pentagon's Cold War map that once divided East
from West) classifies the world along three lines called the Core, Gap
and Seam. The Core includes the industrialized and industrializing
nations across North America, Europe, most of Asia and South America and
outliers Israel and South Africa. The Gap denotes failed and failing
states from the Caribbean to Africa to the Middle East and Central Asia,
with the name suggesting their disconnected state, economically,
politically and culturally, from the Core. The Seam is the boundary
between Core and Gap. Life in the Gap is nasty, brutish, and short, an
ideal environment for spawning terrorists and their ideology. Gap
citizens are more likely to listen to join jihad and wage holy war
against the Western cultural forces that seem so ubiquitous. For the
Core to retain its way of life, the key to stabilizing and ultimately
shrinking the Gap is economic globalization—the more Core trade rules
influence trade rules in the Gap, the better for everyone. The Gap’s
dictators have to go one way or another, because they make the Gap
unlivable.
The
The Pentagon's New Map is part
autobiography and part exploration of Big Ideas with a serious yet
amiable mind. It is history from a grand perspective, taking into
account the gigantic forces of economics, demographics and politics.
Barnett can throw around macroeconomic statistics and Planet of the
Apes references with equal ease. He connects the seemingly disparate
issues of 9-11 and President Bush’s African AIDS initiative in a
forehead slapping “Why didn’t I think of that?” way. The book does
tend toward repetition near the end, a minor quibble against an
otherwise solid work.
Liberals
and conservatives alike can find things to love and hate in Barnett’s
ideas, which probably means he is on to something. Conservatives will
like his full-throated support for the Iraq war, which Barnett believes
is a “Big Bang” that will usher in vital reform throughout the
Middle East. Conservatives will latch on to Barnett’s view that
economic globalization is America’s way of ensuring peace and is
therefore a force for good, as is America itself. In Barnett’s
thinking America is not the problem and our system of law may well be
the cure for the plague of death cults infesting the Middle East.
Conservatives may also appreciate Barnett’s unblinking view of war,
which he says is necessary to combat terrorism in particular and
economic and social disconnectedness in general. But liberals will
probably agree with Barnett’s insistence that war is not the
answer (though it certainly is an answer) to terrorism. They will
probably support his view that the Core must shrink the Gap with
kindness and law enforcement as often as warfare. Liberals will mostly
agree with his excessive (in my view) criticisms of the
“frightening” Patriot Act. And they will enjoy his jabs at the Bush
administration for failing to articulate a war vision that can rally the
world to our side. Both left and right will approach his moral arguments
for shrinking the Gap with some trepidation because the implications are
staggering.
In
The Pentagon's New Map Dr. Barnett presents the most
comprehensive view of the post-Cold War world yet written, delivering a
hopeful view of how the world can look a few decades from now if we
seize the moment and govern it properly. Barnett’s ideas have made
their way into the upper reaches of numerous corporations, the Pentagon
and the Bush administration, influencing the way many personalities in
White House and the Pentagon understand the war. His non-partisan
delivery frames the global war on terrorism as a necessary and noble
American enterprise, the mission of our time.
The
Pentagon's New Map: War and Peace in the Twenty-First Century lays
out the terms upon which the coming presidential election should be
decided—war versus peace, risk versus security, and honesty versus
wishful thinking. We can have peace, according to Thomas Barnett, if we
choose our battles wisely and fight them as skillfully as we have proven
we can, if we are able to pick up the pieces after war, and if we
understand war in the context of everything else—economics, culture,
and the whole shebang. If you want to get some handle on the future
shape and scale of the global war on terrorism, you owe it to yourself
to read this book.
