The Pentagon's New Map: War and Peace in the Twenty-first Century [Anglais] [Broché]

This bold and important book strives to be a practical "strategy for a Second American Century." In this brilliantly argued work, Thomas Barnett calls globalization "this country’s gift to history" and explains why its wide dissemination is critical to the security of not only America but the entire world. As a senior military analyst for the U.S. Naval War College, Barnett is intimately familiar with the culture of the Pentagon and the State Department (both of which he believes are due for significant overhauls). He explains how the Pentagon, still in shock at the rapid dissolution of the once evil empire, spent the 1990s grasping for a long-term strategy to replace containment. The terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, Barnett argues, revealed the gap between an outdated Cold War-era military and a radically different one needed to deal with emerging threats. He believes that America is the prime mover in developing a "future worth creating" not because of its unrivaled capacity to wage war, but due to its ability to ensure security around the world. Further, he believes that the U.S. has a moral responsibility to create a better world and the way he proposes to do that is by bringing all nations into the fold of globalization, or what he calls connectedness. Eradicating disconnectedness, therefore, is "the defining security task of our age." His stunning predictions of a U.S. annexation of much of Latin America and Canada within 50 years as well as an end to war in the foreseeable future guarantee that the book will be controversial. And that's good. The Pentagon's New Map deserves to be widely discussed. Ultimately, however, the most impressive aspects of the book is not its revolutionary ideas but its overwhelming optimism. Barnett wants the U.S. to pursue the dream of global peace with the same zeal that was applied to preventing global nuclear war with the former Soviet Union. High-level civilian policy makers and top military leaders are already familiar with his vision of the future—this book is a briefing for the rest of us and it cannot be ignored. --Shawn Carkonen --Ce texte fait référence à l'édition Relié .

Barnett, professor at the U.S. Naval War College, takes a global perspective that integrates political, economic and military elements in a model for the postâ€"September 11 world. Barnett argues that terrorism and globalization have combined to end the great-power model of war that has developed over 400 years, since the Thirty Years War. Instead, he divides the world along binary lines. An increasingly expanding "Functioning Core" of economically developed, politically stable states integrated into global systems is juxtaposed to a "Non-Integrating Gap," the most likely source of threats to U.S. and international security. The "gap" incorporates Andean South America, the Caribbean, sub-Saharan Africa, the Middle East, Central Asia and much of southwest Asia. According to Barnett, these regions are dangerous because they are not yet integrated into globalism's "core." Until that process is complete, they will continue to lash out. Barnett calls for a division of the U.S. armed forces into two separate parts. One will be a quick-strike military, focused on suppressing hostile governments and nongovernment entities. The other will be administratively oriented and assume responsibility for facilitating the transition of "gap" systems into the "core." Barnett takes pains to deny that implementing the new policy will establish America either as a global policeman or an imperial power. Instead, he says the policy reflects that the U.S. is the source of, and model for, globalization. We cannot, he argues, abandon our creation without risking chaos. Barnett writes well, and one of the book's most compelling aspects is its description of the negotiating, infighting and backbiting required to get a hearing for unconventional ideas in the national security establishment. Unfortunately, marketing the concepts generates a certain tunnel vision. In particular, Barnett, like his intellectual models Thomas Friedman and Francis Fukuyama, tends to accept the universality of rational-actor models constructed on Western lines. There is little room in Barnett's structures for the apocalyptic religious enthusiasm that has been contemporary terrorism's driving wheel and that to date has been indifferent to economic and political factors. That makes his analytical structure incomplete and more useful as an intellectual exercise than as the guide to policy described in the book's promotional literature.
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It has been generally recognized that the end of the cold war and the emerging threat of international terrorism presented new challenges in planning American diplomatic and military strategy. What has often been lacking is a coherent, integrated vision that assesses the new threats to American interests and provides a comprehensive plan for coping with them. Barnett, a senior strategic researcher and professor at the U.S. Naval War College, presents his operating theory, which sees the principal threat to American security arising from dysfunctional or so-called failed states, which provide fertile ground for the recruitment and sustenance of terrorists. On the other hand, as such past adversaries as Russia and China are integrated into global economic and political systems, they are less threatening. To counter these threats, Barnett suggests some bold, even revolutionary, changes in our military structure and in the dispersion and utilization of our forces. Of course, both his analyses and remedies are open to debate, but Barnett's compelling assertions are worthy of strong consideration and are sure to provoke controversy. Jay Freeman
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved --Ce texte fait référence à l'édition Relié .

Thomas Barnett is one of the most thoughtful and original thinkers that this generation of national security analysts has produced. --Ce texte fait référence à l'édition Relié .

[Barnett's] work should be required reading for those actively concerned with international security and world order. --Ce texte fait référence à l'édition Relié .

...a must read, not only for policy analysts...and every American, but for every citizen of the world... --Ce texte fait référence à l'édition Relié .

Building upon the works of Thomas Friedman, Samuel Huntington, and Francis Fukuyama, The Pentagon's New Map describes recent U.S. military history and strategy, discusses where America's forces will likely be heading in the near future, outlines the crucial role the nation needs to play in establishing international stability, and provides much needed hope at one of the most difficult times in American history.

Thomas P.M. Barnett is a senior strategic researcher and professor at the U.S. Naval War College. From October 2001 to June 2003, he served as Assistant for Strategic Futures, Office of Force Transformation, Office of the Secretary of Defense. Barnett has written for publications including New York Times and Washington Post. A Harvard Ph.D. in political science, he lives in Portsmouth, Rhode Island.