Barnett's Sequel

A Brain Pentagon Wants to Pick

Good to see the media getting in on Thomas Barnett's book early this time around. After nearly everyone outside of the foreign policy set slept through the first months of "The Pentagon's New Map" release, count this one as a pre-emptive stike:

Now Barnett is back in Washington to unveil his sequel work, "Blueprint for Action," in a closed-door speech this morning to a select group of about 500 up-and-coming military officers and defense officials at the National Defense University.

"No one ever said, 'cut it out' or 'shut up,' or ever put a squeeze on me," Barnett said in an interview. (In a typical Web log, or blog, entry yesterday, he wrote: "Iraq is doing just fine given [a] poorly planned occupation (F to the neocons, C+ to the officers doing their best in a crappy situation on the ground.")

Barnett spoke fresh from a tete-a-tete last week with the U.S. four-star general who oversees the Middle East, Gen. John Abizaid, and Abizaid's personal think tank. Col. Mant Hawkins, director of the think tank, called Barnett's ideas "significantly visionary."

Barnett, an expert on Russia and the Warsaw Pact who holds a Harvard doctorate in political science, was a professor of strategy at the Naval War College and adviser to the Pentagon's Office of Force Transformation when he devised a PowerPoint briefing that catapulted him to prominence after Sept. 11, 2001.

He says that since the end of the Cold War, the biggest threats to America and its allies come from underdeveloped, chaotic regions of the Third World -- which he terms the "Gap" -- a zone disconnected from the economic and technological advances of globalization.

To promote peace and combat terrorism, Barnett says that the U.S. military and its partners in the world's developed "Core" must take on a far more ambitious role in policing and nation-building in the Gap. This would require the U.S. military to split into two distinct forces: a high-tech military, termed the "Leviathan," capable of overthrowing rogue regimes, as well as a larger corps of follow-on troops, called the "System Administrators," specialized in peacekeeping and rebuilding.

That's as good (and yet brief) summary as I can think of for the book. The sequel is high atop my reading list, as is the November issue of Esquire. A wonk's gotta do what a wonk's gotta do.