BookView:Pentagon's New Map
BOOKVIEW
Title: The Pentagon's New Map
Author: Thomas P.M.Barnett
Recently, I completed this book subtitled "War and Peace in the Twenty-First Century".
It is the product of an analyst cocooned in the depths of the suffocating bureaucracy known as the Pentagon. He seems to have been baptized in the "military/industrial/complex mentality that Eisenhower warned about, but has a more inclusive view to where that term might now be better circulated as the "military/corporate/complex".During the development of his theories he was loaned out of the CNA to a Wall Street firm that moved into full frontal public view because of it being officed in one of the twin towers that became a target on 9/11. This liaison had its birthing due to the fact that a former high ranking officer, upon retirement, had stepped out of the cocoon into the top brass (sans insignia,)position at Cantor Fitzgerald, and he and TPMB had a previously established tight relationship so this became a "jointness" venture.
The bifurcated goals appear to be subsidizing globalization and keeping the Department of Defense "Leviathan" force profile on the shelf just in case one of the peer CORE group decides to jump ship and be really nasty.
Meanwhile, the Pentagon will continue to demand a glutton's slice of the national budget by choosing which non-core country (the GAP folks) is causing the biggest current itchiness (not likely to be one without coveted natural resources) and promoting it as the target de guerre for introducing a-W-O-W*.However, there appears to be more than the usual aversion to learning from past mistakes that keep accumulating, chiefly because, though we have the superior power and technology (smart boots), we do not have the necessities of penetration that can be characterized as languages, eyes, ears, cultural savvy, that would provide the needed "on scene" intelligence. Nor do we have the humility to acknowledge that if an opponent chooses to play primitively against our superior mod teams, it results in painful military castration.
Nevertheless, in this book, TPMB serves as the matchmaker in this proposed marriage of Wall Street and the Pentagon. Justification for the romance again, is that the country because of its position of superiority, militarily- is empowered to cure the GAP entities of their disconnectedness. Disconnectedness equates to danger --equates to basis for preemptive actions.
In this use of system theory spiced with marketing, administrations' get to peddle this as spreading democracy, freedom, etc., (sound familiar?) all in the name of globalization (read--profit) and the world will magically experience peace on earth as prescribed unilaterally by the USA. The Iraq experience should teach us not to hold our breath while waiting for this utopia.This is presented as exporting security, and is designed to take up the slack in keeping the services employed, albeit not without some proposed painful reconfiguring.
Further rationalizations are offered - deceptively packaged as "a future worth creating" and that is going to prompt the author to pen a sequel for which he could not obtain internal approval so he is by choice leaving the Naval War College nest. The author has made increasing number of personal PowerPoint presentations of his proposals in briefs that are now being given the "flavor of the day" welcome. He has inpressive PowerPoint skills and with his hyped tonal delivery it comes across with all the passion of a televangelist. This scuds about as effectively as a deflated balloon when he engages in discourse without all the staged bombastic delivery. So if you have the opportunity, catch the rebroadcasts on C-Span or look for them in the archives there.
TPMB in this curent gig doesn't really solve the Pentagon's dilemma because there is a foregone conclusion of preserving the status quo under the guise of what has been passing as "Transformation". This is supposedly what has had Rummy's attention instead of him keeping his eye on the ball in Iraq.The work is littered with the military and system theory jargon, new "rule sets" emerge and if you like variations in the game of who is going to control the world - they better not be far from the apple tree. The concepts of peaceful conflict resolution get very short shrift in this treatise, the state department gets marginalized into oblivion.
If you have read this far you may be surprised that there is a conclusion in the book that I can unreservedly support, and that is, that China is not going to be a future target of our techno-war capabilities. When I visited China in 2002, the populace was accelerating the practice of capitalism faster than the government can transmogrify its political image. Hopefully, this can continue without the dislocutions of the past.
I now think of the book as The Pentagon's New Madness and am curious about Barnett's middle initials being P.M.- strange - ; also he has a personal blog that you might be interested in following as he cranks out the next volume:
http://www.thomaspmbarnett.com/weblog/
TPMB may have a future writing for Hollywood, fantasy is a big market there.The book reads rather unevenly and I used a method I call "sipping". When interest lagged, I picked up George Soros's The Bubble of American Supremacy for a change of air, and also Brian Greene's The Elegant Universe.
Those offered a welcome contrast and later I'll offer my views of those books also.
*a-WOW, (that's American Way of War in acronymish).
Title: The Pentagon's New Map
Author: Thomas P.M.Barnett
Recently, I completed this book subtitled "War and Peace in the Twenty-First Century".
It is the product of an analyst cocooned in the depths of the suffocating bureaucracy known as the Pentagon. He seems to have been baptized in the "military/industrial/complex mentality that Eisenhower warned about, but has a more inclusive view to where that term might now be better circulated as the "military/corporate/complex".During the development of his theories he was loaned out of the CNA to a Wall Street firm that moved into full frontal public view because of it being officed in one of the twin towers that became a target on 9/11. This liaison had its birthing due to the fact that a former high ranking officer, upon retirement, had stepped out of the cocoon into the top brass (sans insignia,)position at Cantor Fitzgerald, and he and TPMB had a previously established tight relationship so this became a "jointness" venture.
The bifurcated goals appear to be subsidizing globalization and keeping the Department of Defense "Leviathan" force profile on the shelf just in case one of the peer CORE group decides to jump ship and be really nasty.
Meanwhile, the Pentagon will continue to demand a glutton's slice of the national budget by choosing which non-core country (the GAP folks) is causing the biggest current itchiness (not likely to be one without coveted natural resources) and promoting it as the target de guerre for introducing a-W-O-W*.However, there appears to be more than the usual aversion to learning from past mistakes that keep accumulating, chiefly because, though we have the superior power and technology (smart boots), we do not have the necessities of penetration that can be characterized as languages, eyes, ears, cultural savvy, that would provide the needed "on scene" intelligence. Nor do we have the humility to acknowledge that if an opponent chooses to play primitively against our superior mod teams, it results in painful military castration.
Nevertheless, in this book, TPMB serves as the matchmaker in this proposed marriage of Wall Street and the Pentagon. Justification for the romance again, is that the country because of its position of superiority, militarily- is empowered to cure the GAP entities of their disconnectedness. Disconnectedness equates to danger --equates to basis for preemptive actions.
In this use of system theory spiced with marketing, administrations' get to peddle this as spreading democracy, freedom, etc., (sound familiar?) all in the name of globalization (read--profit) and the world will magically experience peace on earth as prescribed unilaterally by the USA. The Iraq experience should teach us not to hold our breath while waiting for this utopia.This is presented as exporting security, and is designed to take up the slack in keeping the services employed, albeit not without some proposed painful reconfiguring.
Further rationalizations are offered - deceptively packaged as "a future worth creating" and that is going to prompt the author to pen a sequel for which he could not obtain internal approval so he is by choice leaving the Naval War College nest. The author has made increasing number of personal PowerPoint presentations of his proposals in briefs that are now being given the "flavor of the day" welcome. He has inpressive PowerPoint skills and with his hyped tonal delivery it comes across with all the passion of a televangelist. This scuds about as effectively as a deflated balloon when he engages in discourse without all the staged bombastic delivery. So if you have the opportunity, catch the rebroadcasts on C-Span or look for them in the archives there.
TPMB in this curent gig doesn't really solve the Pentagon's dilemma because there is a foregone conclusion of preserving the status quo under the guise of what has been passing as "Transformation". This is supposedly what has had Rummy's attention instead of him keeping his eye on the ball in Iraq.The work is littered with the military and system theory jargon, new "rule sets" emerge and if you like variations in the game of who is going to control the world - they better not be far from the apple tree. The concepts of peaceful conflict resolution get very short shrift in this treatise, the state department gets marginalized into oblivion.
If you have read this far you may be surprised that there is a conclusion in the book that I can unreservedly support, and that is, that China is not going to be a future target of our techno-war capabilities. When I visited China in 2002, the populace was accelerating the practice of capitalism faster than the government can transmogrify its political image. Hopefully, this can continue without the dislocutions of the past.
I now think of the book as The Pentagon's New Madness and am curious about Barnett's middle initials being P.M.- strange - ; also he has a personal blog that you might be interested in following as he cranks out the next volume:
http://www.thomaspmbarnett.com/weblog/
TPMB may have a future writing for Hollywood, fantasy is a big market there.The book reads rather unevenly and I used a method I call "sipping". When interest lagged, I picked up George Soros's The Bubble of American Supremacy for a change of air, and also Brian Greene's The Elegant Universe.
Those offered a welcome contrast and later I'll offer my views of those books also.
*a-WOW, (that's American Way of War in acronymish).
posted by graysmoke @ 2:27 PM
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