Thomas Barnett
Dr. Thomas P.M. Barnett is a leading American military strategist. He works as a consultant and also as a professor at the U.S. Naval War College. Some of his most influential ideas involve the relationship between the United States and the rest of the world in past, present, and future contexts, although much of the work revolves around defining possible future roles of the country in the aftermath of the Cold War and terrorist actions such as the September 11, 2001 attacks. Mr. Barnett's research actually became directly influenced by those attacks—since 2000, he has been working on NewRuleSets.Project, a program involving leading thinkers both on Wall Street and at the Pentagon which seeks to define America's future role. Some meetings in this project had involved people from Cantor Fitzgerald and took place near the top of One World Trade Center.
Barnett had grown up with the expectation that the United States and the Soviet Union would remain in the Cold War standoff indefinitely, and had followed an education path that would have been useful for that context. However, shortly after he completed his education and started to work in the public and private sectors, the Soviet Union collapsed, leaving America as the world's sole superpower. He became an early advocate of collaborating with the new Russia to smooth the nation's transition into its new role in the world. The fall of the Soviet Union was a shock to the military establishment in the U.S., leaving many to wonder what nation or group of nations would pose a significant threat in the future.
Without the Soviets to defend against, the American military establishment lost focus. Some planners were concerned that the new world order was one of chaos, which is hardly something that is easy to build war games around. Many theories were bandied about, ranging from rogue state theories involving states like Iraq and North Korea, to the rise of some unexpected country to great power, or, most predominantly, the emergence of China as a new threat. Nobody could clarify which concept was most likely, right up until the September 11 attacks essentially wiped those ideas out completely.
The New Rule Sets Project was one of many programs that the United States military has launched since the fall of the Soviet Union in order to determine what threats will emerge in the coming decades. The project is a unique collaboration between military and financial analysts. The project name comes from the idea of "rule sets," the combination of written and unwritten rules that people within a region use. It has been noted that countries that have similar rule sets tend to collaborate much more effectively than countries that have significant differences. For instance, the U.S. and Soviet Union had rule sets that were very different. Once the Soviets lost control, the country went througha "rule set reset," organizing itself to more closely align with the largely democratic and capitalist societies it had once opposed.
The group also noticed that globalization has caused a fairly common rule set to be shared between a great many countries around the world. States that have benefitted from globalization and begun to share in the wealth and prosperity associated with that are also losing interest in waging war with one another. Participants in the project noticed that once the per capita income of a country increases to about US$3000 per year, war essentially disappears. There are a few places where this hasn't exactly been the case, but it seems to largely hold true for now.
Another interesting thing to note was that, of U.S. military deployments around the world since 1990, virtually all have taken place in countries that do not meet that level of income. Examining the regions more thoroughly, it was also noted that the countries have very little flow of people, information, or investment money across their borders. This all leads to the idea of these countries being "disconnected" from the outside world, running on rule sets that are different from that of globalized societies.
Barnett has termed the globalized countries the "Functioning Core," or simply "the Core." The other countries are part of the "Non-Integrating Gap," or simply "the Gap." The Gap has been shrinking as globalization has expanded. Since most terrorists seem to come from the Gap, he believes that the American military should focus on building partnerships with "seam states," countries bordering the Gap, to stabilize those regions. Stable states would bring more investment and more connectedness with the outside world, therefore progressively shrinking the Gap. The end result of all of this, if it proves to be successful, would be nothing less than the end of interstate warfare on the planet, and probably a significant reduction in intrastate warfare and other problems like terrorism.
Barnett admits that he was not the only person at the Pentagon or elsewhere to notice these trends. He credits his superior skills at presenting information with making his point of view rise above others in his field.
In 2003, he wrote an article titled "The Pentagon's New Map" for Esquire magazine that outlined many of these ideas. Because his services became in such high demand after that, he spent some time expanding the idea and put out a book of the same name in 2004.
Bibliography
- Thomas P.M. Barnett (April 22, 2004). The Pentagon's New Map. Putnam Publishing Group. ISBN 0399151753
External links
- Thomas Barnett's personal website (http://www.thomaspmbarnett.com/)
- Barnett's weblog (http://www.thomaspmbarnett.com/weblog/)
- NewRuleSets.Project (http://www.nwc.navy.mil/newrulesets/)
Categories: American people