When I first started reading At the Pentagon, Quirky PowerPoint Carries Big Punch, I thought, who is this guy?:
In 1998, Thomas Barnett, an obscure Defense Department analyst, teamed up with senior executives at the Wall Street firm Cantor Fitzgerald LP to study how globalization was changing national security.One scenario they studied was a meltdown caused by the Y2K computer bug followed by terrorist attacks designed to exploit the chaos. Mr. Barnett posited that Wall Street would shut down for a week. Gun violence, racially motivated attacks and sales of antidepressants would surge. The U.S. military would find itself embroiled in brushfire conflicts across the developing world.
His theories were met with skepticism. “People began referring to me as the Nostradamus of Y2K,” Mr. Barnett says.
Then came the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.
An obscure Defense Department analyst teamed up with senior executives at the Wall Street firm Cantor Fitzgerald LP to study how globalization was changing national security? How does that happen? Then I found out he’s a Harvard-educated professor of military strategy at the Naval War College (according to this Esquire profile and his own biography).
His proposed military comprises two very different forces:
Mr. Barnett’s military is a far cry from the shape of today’s armed forces. Instead of a single force to wage wars and rebuild nations, Mr. Barnett envisions two. The first, which he dubs “Leviathan,” would be hard-hitting, ready to take on conventional foes such as Saddam Hussein on a moment’s notice. The second, more unconventional force of “System Administrators” would focus on bringing dysfunctional states into the mainstream through the type of nation-building operations seen in Iraq, the Balkans and Eastern Africa. It wouldn’t only mop up after wars but would travel the world during peacetime building local security forces and infrastructure.
When I read this passage, I realized I’d read Barnett’s earlier Esquire article, The Pentagon’s New Map, and blogged on it:
In Mr. Barnett’s world, countries are divided into two categories. His “core” countries are part of a global community linked by trade, migration and capital flows. Europe, the U.S., India and China fall into this group. Then there are “gap” countries that either refuse to join the global mainstream (such as Saudi Arabia and Iran), or are unable to because they have no central government or are struggling with debilitating crises (such as Iraq, Afghanistan, Somalia, and much of sub-Saharan Africa).“The “gap” is a petri dish of grief, repression, terrorism and disease,” says Adm. Cebrowski. “And 9/11 shows we can’t wall ourselves off from it.”
I loved this mock personal ad from the Pentagon in the late 1990s:
ENEMY WANTED: Mature North American Superpower seeks hostile partner for arms racing, Third World conflicts and general antagonism. Must be sufficiently menacing to convince Congress of military financial requirements…Send note with pictures of fleet and air squadrons to CHAIRMAN JOINT CHIEFS OF STAFF/PENTAGON.