Review of: Barnett, Thomas M. P. The Pentagon’s New Map: War and Peace in the Twenty-first             Century. New York: Berkley Books, 2004.

            Grand strategy in national security policy is realm of political leaders. It is the formulation of a guiding theme, a template for action that fits almost any parallelogram into a pentagon hole. Without grand strategy, moral influence, limited resources, and precious lives are wasted, dissipated, eroded, and consumed in ways that fundamentally endanger a nation and its people. From 1991 to the present, the United States has drifted in haphazard diplomatic and military action across the globe from combat and peace enforcement, to natural catastrophe response and humanitarian disaster intervention. Even with coalitions, the United States has found itself burdened as the only superpower capable and willing to make decisions and take action in every corner of the world where some need for the good of humanity or the requirements of national interest demand attention.

            In the Cold War, George Kennan is rightly credited with conceiving a political grand strategy called containment to confront the Soviet Union. Containment was useful and effective for the entire span of the Cold War from 1946 to the dissolution of the Soviet empire in 1991. Since that time, scores if not hundreds of eager scholars and politicians have attempted to write the needed new equivalent of containment for American grand strategy in the post-Cold War era. The era of the war on the terrorist has made the need for new template of action even more necessary.

            In the attempts at formulating a new grand strategy for the United States, Thomas M. P. Barnett makes a great attempt. If his prescription for the illness of strategic drift is somewhat severe, his diagnosis of the disease of world conflict in the 21^st Century is at least the most convincing and comprehensive.

            Barnett at the close of the Cold War was a Ph.D. in Soviet Studies working in the Pentagon and in the private world of think tanks on naval policy and the issues surrounding the new reality of U.S./post-Soviet Russian relations. With the extinction of the Soviet government in 1991, Sovietology (it was a real career field) became an unmarketable skill. In the need for adapting to the new job market of the Globalization Era, Barnett worked with the think tank Office of Naval Analysis, Wall Street firms, and visionary leaders in the Department of Defense on the Revolution in Military Affairs (RMA) brought about by new technologies. In his spare time, Barnett was looking at the world of the late 1990s early 2000s and seeing a pattern of what was causing stability in some parts of the globe and the factors contributing to conflict, poverty, disease, and even genocide in others. Barnett put the pattern in context and hence the New Map was born.

            Barnett divides the world into a contemporary version of the old international relations theory of “haves” and “have-nots.” In sum, the areas of the world with relative peace, burgeoning prosperity, and even budding and potential liberty were “connected” both internally and externally, with themselves and with other “connected” nations. Internally, there is communications, even dialogue, between different groups of the majorities and minorities. There are institutions that even if they did not represent pure democracy, are stabilizing, non-violent, and understandable to the people within the nations. There is economic opportunity and access to information (via the web) through the multi-lines provided by globalization, third generation business development. And there are institutions for multi-lateral security and cooperation. These countries, found mostly in the northern hemisphere, but including southern South America, the nation of South Africa, and Australia and New Zealand, Barnett identifies as the “Integrated Core” of the new international system.

            The nations outside of this expanse of stability, prosperity, and dialogue (which excluded the Balkans in southeast Europe) were the countries of the rest of South and Central America, Africa, the Middle East, and Central and Southeast Asia where the promise of peace and prosperity do exist. These countries Barnett calls the “Non-Integrating Gap.” They lack “connectivity” like the Core nations, and they lack technology, enterprise, education, dialogue, and institutions that provide the Integrated Core with a stable, relatively non-violent system of politics within and between those nations. As a result of deficient connections within and without, the Non-Integrating Gap is consumed by turmoil, poverty, violence, hatred and intolerance.

            In The Pentagon’s New Map, Barnett sees the challenge of these Gap nations: They need to be connected in the same way that the Integrated Core is, both within their societies and between their indigenous cultures, and to the Core nations through the international system of dialogue, economic opportunity, education, and institutions that permeated the Core through the globalized economy and technology.

            To end the conflicts in the Gap nations that often draw in other countries, especially the United States, Barnett is taking the leap to “shrink” the Gap. This is where his prescription may be controversial and problematic. Barnett sees military intervention by the U.S. and its friends from the Core as the only way to bring all countries the benefits of connectivity. Barnett prioritizes the regions and countries, beginning with the Middle East and Horn of Africa, that most present current security threats to the world and U.S. interest. Eventually, he would have every country invaded, occupied, and reconstructed, willingly or unwillingly, into the image of the Integrated Core. It is a prescription for crusade by the sword. While it is action, better described in Barnett’s 2005 sequel, it may be an all-consuming, expensive, and deadly job. What is the alternative to the intervention Barnett prescribes? That is not an easy question. If connectivity happened naturally in the Integrated Core, would it not be more lasting and better for all if the Non-Integrating Gap chose to connect themselves where possible, and have as much natural development, with a some push from the Core? As a grand strategy, Barnett suggests something provocative that demands consideration. It all comes down to “How much treasure and how many lives is it worth to try and do something to help bring peace and prosperity to regions that lack it?” That is difficult to answer. Answering will determine U.S. grand strategy for the next 100 years.