Thomas P.M. Barnett :: Weblog

A glimpse of what real victory will look like in Iraq and Afghanistan

I recently caught a glimpse of what victory will look like in this long struggle against radical extremism, and it didn't involve a trial or a corpse or a parade. Actually, it's an advertisement you've probably already run across in the back pages of the Economist or Wall Street Journal. Its message is disarmingly simple: Invest in Macedonia.

Now, I know what you're thinking: "Macedonia? Isn't that one of those lousy Balkan countries we fought in a while back?"

The answer is, sort of.

Read on at KnoxNews.
Read on at Scripps Howard.

Tom says:

Oy vey! The emails on this one: some praise me to the hilt for highlighting struggling Macedonia, while others accuse me of all sorts of lies for pretending Macedonia works at all!

The point remains the same, though: there is a category of states that is post-whatever. There are special efforts to be made in such states, and special skills to be applied. We at Enterra think our approach, called Development-in-a-Box(tm), can do some real good. We're actually doing it now in Kurdistan Iraq and are planning to take it to other threshold countries, armed with partners who are serious and experienced edge-of-globalization (Steve's term) players.

So, for us, it's not a question of "can" anymore, but "how."

And yet, as with all columns, I expect to hear from every "county" on the subject. It wouldn't be a day unless I was simultaneously called a "genius" and "complete idiot."

You do get points for being funny, though.