Most Helpful Customer Reviews
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165 of 190 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Highly recommended, but read with caution., May 20, 2004
Thomas Barnett is a remarkable and very admirable fellow who has written a book that should certainly be read by more Americans. The book is well-written and Barnett comes across as someone who sincerely wants to improve the security of the United States and the world. Barnett has a powerful and inspiring (some may say intoxicating) vision of the role of the US in the 21st century. The only problem is that his approach is not workable. Those who've read the likes of Martin Van Creveld and Thomas Friedman will find some familiar thinking in this book. The author's main contention is that "disconnected" countries, those that aren't connected via information and economic networks to the rest of the world, are a huge source of danger. Such countries are usually run by a nasty elite who essentially tyrannize their populations who are left poor and angry. Having been left poor and angry, these disconnected people are ripe for becoming terrorists and their nations ripe for the location of terrorist networks, crime syndicates, and so forth. Hence, we need to use military force to go in, defeat the nasty people running things, and enforce a new order that will give the oppressed people of these societies hope so they won't need to bomb us. In the process, we'll give them new law enforcement agencies that will crack down on criminal syndicates. Reactionary types will accuse Mr. Barnett of being some kind of neo-imperialist or perhaps a global fascist. Nevertheless, I personally think that Barnett sincerely believes that what he is proposing would be a "good thing" and that it would improve the lives of the people he seeks to liberate. I'll leave the name-calling to someone else, as there are unquestionably lots of people running around who are willing to do just that. While the moral dimension to Mr. Barnett's proposal is fascinating and worthy of serious discussion (far different from the name-calling and character assassination I've heard up until now) my primary concern is whether or not the proposals in this book are cost-effective or even feasible. I'm afraid that what Mr. Barnett is proposing is far more complicated, sophisticated, and expensive than what he leads the reader to believe. Barnett frames the issue in either doing something (what he proposes) or doing nothing. He points out that in light of September 11, 2001, we can't do nothing. And then he implies we're only left with his proposal. But he doesn't fully entertain the consequences of failure. Those consequences would be lots of dead young Americans, even higher levels of anti-American sentiment around the globe, and billions of dollars wasted. And due to the complexity of what Mr. Barnett is proposing, failure is more likely than success. The essential problem here is one of complexity. Mr. Barnett's strategy focuses on the US spending extreme amounts of resources to bring order to troubled lands to harmonize them with current global economic realities. But the universe naturally tends towards disorder. As Mr. Spock pointed out, "Logic suggests that it's easier to destroy than to create." Chaos and disorder come naturally; order takes a significant input of resources. In attempting to create order in disordered places, the United States would be left extremely vulnerable to potential rivals and enemies who would simply try to create or enhance disorder in those places. This process would cost potential rivals very little but could have extremely high costs on the US on a sustained basis. An example would be Iraq, where we are hoping a mere $100 billion will bring about some kind of order. Anyone who wanted to harm us could spend far less money just to destroy that delicate order we've struggled to create. And in looking at Iraq right now, there's no guarantee that we are anywhere close to creating an orderly society. As Mr. Barnett makes a big point about "disconnectedness defines danger" he doesn't really adequately bring the importance of this back to the home-front of American society. In an increasingly interconnected world, the US benefits not just from additional connectedness to others but to additional connectedness to ourselves. Improvements in infrastructure, a better business climate, improved efficiency, and so forth all serve to make the US a more competitive place on the international level and also serve to make the US a more attractive place for international capital and human resources. Barnett wants to put off making the US more connected in a highly dicey proposition to make dysfunctional societies more safe for international capital and human resources. Considering how intractable so many of our own various social problems have been it's rather presumptuous to assume we can go about fixing other places. And the cost/benefit analysis is lacking and, at least on the surface, not all that appealing.
For all my criticisms of Mr. Barnett's proposals I need to stress that I don't necessarily think his approach will lead to catastrophe on a nationwide scale. I just fear it will be exceptionally costly and put tremendous strain on our society, our military, and our economy. All for results that are highly improbable and quite unlikely to be successfully obtained. In short, it's a prescription for a gigantic waste of resources that even if it were successful would be possibly not worth the price. There are arguably more cost-effective and sure-fire ways of achieving a more secure future for the United States. Americans who are interested in the future of US strategy need to be familiar with this book. While I strongly disagree with Mr. Barnett's proposals I also very well realize that they are and will continue to be highly influential. If you don't know what Barnett's talking about you can't even begin to understand the future debates about the US's role in the world. If you want to be a part of the discussion, get your hands on this book and become familiar with one of the most highly influential proposals available for the future of the United States and the world.
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13 of 13 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
The new Clausewitz, October 23, 2005
I'm reading a number of books on the Middle East and our dilemmas there, and this was one I picked up almost on a whim. It apparently generated a great deal of controversy when the idea was originally put forward (as a magazine article) and it's been greeted with a lot of hostility as a book, too. Let's go over the premise of the book, and then some of the criticisms of it.
The author of the book was educated to be a Cold War analyst. Unfortunately, as he received his doctorate the Soviet Union collapsed, and he was left without anything to specialize in. He spent much of the 90s studying the Russian military (especially their navy) and after 9/11 morphed himself into a prophet looking at the world through a new perspective, at least in his mind, so that he can see what needs to be done in the next 50 years, and the goal that could be achieved.
Barnett contends that the end of the Cold War wasn't the disaster for the world that various pundits opined that it was. He makes the point that up until the day the Soviets collapsed, they were the root of all Evil as far as the Pentagon was concerned. The day after, the world without them was a much more dangerous place, because they'd held all the nationalism movements in check and kept a bunch of civil wars from happening. Barnett insists this is bunk, and examines the world in some detail, pointing out that major portions of the world now don't have insurgencies or wars at all, and haven't had since the fall of the Soviets.
The main premise of the book, however, is Barnett's new perspective, the map of the title. Instead of splitting the world up into Communist and Capitalist sectors, with a "Third World" not aligned with either, he instead now divides the world into two groups: what he calls the "Functioning Core" and the "Non-Integrating Gap". Both of these terms are rather clumsy and unfamiliar, so he spends a great deal of time discussing what exactly he means by each of them. The Gap consists of most of Andean South America and the Caribbean rim, all of Africa outside if South Africa, the Middle East, and SouthEast Asia. The Functioning Core is the rest of the world, including such newly developed countries as Argentina and India.
The main premise of the book is that we need to shrink this Gap to the point where the countries involved transform themselves into democracies with more independant economies that allow money to flow freely. The countries involved would also (with the shrinking of the Gap) improve the situation of the women in the country, and allow foreign investment and exchange of ideas. The result, optimally, would involve the end of war as we know it, and the transformation of the world into a more tranquil, stable world.
Much of the criticism of Barnett's idea comes from the hard left and the hard right. The left worries that we're imposing our society and civilization on other cultures and societies, so that other nations wind up disliking us. A corollary, of course, is that we'd be destroying all those indigenous cultures, because of little details like their abuse of women or top-down political structure. The right, in contrast, dislikes the idea of stretching ourselves all over the planet trying to control various groups of dark-skinned people, most of whom the average rightie doesn't care about one way or the other. The idea is that we should just retreat to our borders, and let them shoot one another, only emerging from our lair to respond to attacks on us.
Barnett discusses both of these scenarios (and dismisses them rather easily) as either short-sighted or just plain stupid. The ideas presented here are very far-sighted and wide-horizoned, and frankly I've been trying to say much of it for a while. Unfortunately I'm not as articulate as Dr. Barnett.
Barnett's style wanders between conversational and complex, but for the most part stays with the former than the latter. The criticisms that Barnett levels at the Bush Administration aren't what you'd expect from a Democrat (which Barnett is): he insists that Bush made the correct decision in invading Iraq, though they've done a very poor job of articulating what they're trying to do, and their vision of the world after they have succeeded. It's a wonderful idea and frankly I'm surprised that more people haven't adopted it.
The one speedbump, of course, is the willingness of the country to send troops around the world to fix the sorts of things that get countris into Barnett's Gap. Barnett thinks that if the President were to articulately and clearly elaborate on what they want to do for and with the world, the result would be acceptance, and enlistment of young men into our armed forces for the purposes of spreading peace around the world. I'm not certain that it's the case, and I know that the opposition candidates politically will turn this into a political issue.
Beyond all of this, however, the book puts forward a number of interesting facts, strategies, and conditions around the world that are very very informative. The author uses all of these to make his point that it's not impossible to perfect humanity at the national level (we basically have in Europe, outside the Balkans) and that we should at least make the attempt. I really thought this book valuable, and frankly think it the most important book at least since the fall of the Berlin Wall, if not since the end of World War II.
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26 of 31 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
People have confused a major premise of this book, September 4, 2004
Some people have commented that this book is an execellent evaluation of the direction that the strategic goals of the USA should take and what may be the framework for forming a coherent policy outlining our grand strategy for what America's role should be in the world. This is correct and true. Others have objected that the author incorrectly assumes the US should police the world. What they fail to realize is one of Barnett's points is that an extremely large military budget is one of the reasons we have a such a large deficit, which is bank-rolled by many foreign investors. Why, because they get returns on it (other economic gains in certain instances in how it can affect currency markets), and because the US government exports security which provides stability for the institutions of globalization which some of these emerging economies are plugged into. Anyone who knows what the size of the debt is, take a guess at what happens when these foreign investors don't renew their financing of the debt or pull their assets out? This is why the US has a stake in being globally active because our government is financed by the institutions of global capital which require a stable global environment (not to mention our economy's role in the global system in addition to the government). Regulating global situations is the US exporting it's military expertise as the global good of security and stability. Our country can get the debt constantly financed if our society, economy, and government can provide returns for the capital that is invested in each. People will support American institutions (not just government) financially when we provide goods in exchange. When our country is global, our government must serve global ends; just like any transnational corporation.
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