Blueprint for Action : A Future Worth Creating

by Barnett, Thomas P.M.

• ISBN13: 9780399153129
• ISBN10: 0399153128
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2005-10-20
• Publisher: Putnam Adult

Summary

The author of the groundbreaking bestseller takes his cutting-edge analysis to the next level. In civilian and military circles alike, The Pentagon's New Mapbecame one of the most talked-about books of the year. The Pentagon's New Mapcombined security, economic, political, and cultural factors to provide a fundamental reexamination of war and peace in the post-9/11 world, and a compelling vision of the future. Now, senior adviser and military analyst Barnett tells us how we get to that future. In a book at once pragmatic, thought-provoking, and optimistic, he explores both the long- and short-term pathways for governments, institutions, and individuals alike. Paying particular attention to such nations and regions as Iran, Iraq, and the Middle East, China, North Korea, Latin America, and Africa, he outlines the strategies to pursue, the entities to create, the pitfalls to overcome. If the first book was a compelling framework for confronting twenty-first-century problems, the new book is something more-a powerful road map through a chaotic and uncertain world to "a future worth creating."

Author Biography

Thomas P. M. Barnett is a senior adviser to the Office of the Secretary of Defense, Central Command, Special Operations Command, the Joint Staff and the Joint Forces Command. He formerly served as a senior strategic researcher and professor at the U.S. Naval War College and as Assistant for Strategic Futures in the OSD's Office of Force Transformation. He is a founding partner of the New Rule Sets Project LLC, and his work has appeared in The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Christian Science Monitor, and Esquire, where he is now a contributing editor.

Table of Contents

Preface: A Future Worth Creating	xi
Glossary of Key Terms from The Pentagon's New Map	xv
1. WHAT THE WORLD NEEDS NOW	1	(70)
UNDERSTANDING THE SEAM BETWEEN WAR AND PEACE
A DEPARTMENTT FOR WHAT LIES BETWEEN WAR AND PEACE
BARNETT'S A-TO-Z R SET ON PROCESSING POLITICALLY BANKRUPT STATES
2. WINNING THE WAR THROUGH CONNECTEDNESS	71	(64)
CONNECTING THE MIDDLE EAST TO THE WORLD
CREATING THE NEW RULE SET ON GLOBAL TERRORISM
3. GROWING THE CORE BY SECURING THE EAST	135	(68)
LOCKING IN CHINA AT TODAY'S PRICES
IN THE FUTURE, AMERICA'S MOST IMPORTANT ALLIES WILL BE NEW CORE STATES
THE TRAIN'S ENGINE CAN TRAVEL NO FASTER THAN ITS CABOOSE
4. SHRINKING THE GAP BY ENDING DISCONNECTEDNESS	203	(62)
THE COMING CHOICES
TIPPING POINTS IN THE JOURNEY FROM THE GAP TO THE CORE
ESSENTIAL BUILDING BLOCKS FOR SHRINKING THE GAP FROM WITHIN
5. WE HAVE MET THE ENEMY	265	(56)
THE RESUMPTION OF HISTORY AND THE LATEST ENEMY
THE CONVERGENCE OF CIVILIZATIONS
A WORLD MADE ONE...OR JUST NONZERO
CONCLUSION: HEROES YET DISCOVERED	321	(20)
AFTERWORD: BLOGGING THE FUTURE	341	(22)
Acknowledgments	363	(4)
Notes	367	(62)
Index	429

Excerpts

Chapter One WHAT THE WORLD NEEDS NOW I supported the decision to topple Saddam Hussein's regime in Iraq. I knew our awesome warfighting force, or what I call the Leviathan, was without peer on this planet, and would handle Iraq's military with relative ease. I also knew that this war would constitute merely the first half of Iraq's transformation from authoritarian nightmare to pluralistic, connected society, and that waging that second-half effort-that peace-would be immensely hard. This second-half force of peacekeepers, which I call the System Administrators, was an army I knew many leaders in our military simply didn't want to raise, much less employ, evoking as it does painful memories of past U.S. efforts at nation building during the Cold War (read, Vietnam). Like others, I knew our military wasn't ready for this difficult task, and that its initial failures would be both acute and costly-far more than the war, in fact. But I also knew this: No public institution responds to failure better and more quickly than the U.S. military. And it has. Right now, throughout the U.S. military, but especially in its ground forces (Army and Marines), we are witnessing a new phase to the military modernization process known as "transformation." What was once just the high-tech waging of war now encompasses numerous levels of operations, from the highest forms of information sharing to the simplest rules of engagement used by our troops on the ground, all of which are now focused on the new challenge at hand: waging peace. The shift is so profound that the term itself (transformation) has largely fallen from favor because of its strong identification with certain high-tech programs. So instead of focusing on classified "black projects" to facilitate the Leviathan's lofty ambitions, the Pentagon conducts secret talks with allies on how they might better shoulder the SysAdmin's many burdens. Instead of sizing itself to fight two conventional regional wars simultaneously, the 2005 Quadrennial Defense Review proposed new definitions of both warfare and what constitutes victory. As so often is the case in military history, the occupation has transformed the occupier more than the occupied. The Iraq War will leave no lasting imprint on the U.S. military, but the Iraq Peace will redefine it from top to bottom, shifting transformation's center of gravity from the air to the ground, from major combat operations to postconflict stabilization operations, from the Leviathan to the SysAdmin. And it won't be easy. The struggles over budgetary priorities will be fierce in the coming years, as military transformation shifts from being capital-intensive (e.g., the Leviathan's hugely costly weapons systems) to labor-intensive (e.g., the SysAdmin's well-trained counterinsurgency forces and military police). The defense-industrial complex will be forced into wrenching change: from producing the few and the absurdly expensive to cranking out the many and the cheap-and increasingly the unmanned. Careers will be made and lost, industries will rise and fall, and waging peace will finally be prioritized over waging war. America will administer the system known as the global economy: policing its bad actors, engaging its failed states, and guiding the rise of its emerging pillars-all the while rooting out threats to the homeland at their points of origin. And no, I'm not talking about some distant, personal dream. I'm talking about the new national military strategy of the United States-the most significant revamping of our military in decades-recently enunciated by the Bush Administration. The current administration entered office in 2001 with an avowed disdain for everything this new strategy embodies, but it will leave office in 2009 having remade the Pentagon in the image of the post-9/11 international security environment: the Old