Blueprint for Action; A Future Worth Creating

New York: G. P. Putnam's Sons, 2005. First Printing [Stated]. Hardcover. Very good/Very good. Elizabeth Connor (Jacket design). xix, [3], 440, [2] pages. Glossary of Key Terms from The Pentagon's New Map. Notes. Index. Thomas P.M. Barnett (born 1962) is an American military geostrategist. He developed a geopolitical theory that divided the world into "the Functioning Core" and the "Non-Integrating Gap" that made him particularly notable prior to the 2003 U.S. Invasion of Iraq when he wrote an article for Esquire in support of the military action entitled "The Pentagon's New Map" (which would later become the title of a book that would elaborate on his geopolitical theories). The central thesis of his geopolitical theory is that the connections the globalization brings between countries are synonymous with those countries with stable governments and rising standards of living. These countries form the Functioning Core. These regions contrast with those where globalization has not yet penetrated, which is synonymous with political repression, poverty, disease, and conflict. These areas make up the Non-Integrating Gap. Key to Barnett's geostrategic ideas is that the United States should "export security" to the Gap in order to connect those regions with the Core, even if this means long periods of nation-building. Derived from a Kirkus review: Geopolitical wizard and military insider Barnett returns with more prescriptions to make the world safe for the Empire. That world comprises regions that are not to be found in any atlas: the Old Core of the West, embracing the U.S., Europe, Japan and Australia; the rising New Core, made up of progressive states in Asia and Latin America; Seam States "lying on the edge of the global economy," including Mexico, Turkey, Indonesia and Algeria; and the Gap-the rest of the world, a belt of sick and failing nations. Trouble is, to shrink it will require military action, and before that can effectively happen, the military will need to be reorganized. The break-things-and-kill-people military can number only a few exceptional fighters these days, but the make-the-peace military, the one Barnett calls SysAdmin, needs all the help it can get. Barnett notes that the fight will be in places that America has dabbled in but then abandoned, and he asserts that "the Department of Homeland Security was the one great strategic mistake we've committed so far in the global war on terrorism," which is unlikely to win him friends in the White House. Provocative reading for the interventionist, expansionist and policy-wonk.