The Pentagon's New Map: Blueprint for Action (2005)
REVIEWED BY: Allan Shore
My condolences to TPM Barnett. He clearly sees "A Future Worth Creating" in his book The Pentagon's New Map: Blueprint for Action. But he starts inadvertantly with two parental disappointments he shares.
First, he concedes that his son, Kevin, envisions that "someday he wants to grow up to be just like me [his dad, that is] so he too can earn a living writing stuff and sending it over the Internet."
Obviously the boy has not discovered yet that the going rate for Internet posting zones is about .0015 cents per word. Or perhaps he doesn't realize that it can be difficult to digest "Gather.com" or "Changester.com" frequent writer points—the literary equivalent of a substitution for pay. (Though HappyNews.com does set out a Tip Jar!)
Second, here is the son of a self-confessed military peace advocate confronting his father with the fact that he, "Kevin knows more about World War II-era weaponry and tactics than I know about current U.S. military operations thanks to his having replayed virtually every major battle of that war in a variety of first-person-shooter video games of stunning complexity…."
Now to be fair, Barnett's book is hardly about peace making in the traditional sense. He is a no-holds-barred lover of the military.
"I do not offer this blueprint lightly," he says in the Preface, "because I am both sobered by the sacrifices already rendered in this conflict [the global war on terror post 9/11] and deeply cognizant of those lying ahead. I have spent my adult life living among, and working with, the U.S. military, a force for global good that I believe has no equal…."
In his eyes, globalization is the key to success on both military and nonmilitary fronts if the future is going to bode well for international/multinational social or economic success. The jihadist attack of September 11, 2001 pointed the lessons-learned finger toward peace as an extension of war:
"We learned that globalization, and all the freedom it fosters through connectivity, requires a bodyguard, because there are still numerous forces throughout the Gap [no not THAT Gap, the one between the developed and refined countries of the world and those still fomenting ugly insurgencies] and even inside the Core [the multinationally converted nations] working against it."
War is inevitable, he might be saying, which is all the more reason for us to make sure that whatever good parts must exist on the strategic combat side be balanced out by systemic-based administration elements on the peace side.
For those interested in the details, he offers a "memo" for change—his being the fourth of historical significance, as he recounts them—that literally provides an A to Z assessment of what can and should happen.
Some might argue that his step-by-step outline is better than the Plan of Attack offered by the current administration.
But I like it when he switches to his empowerment concessions that unavoidably find their home on the other side of his equation.
In his final chapter he elects not to recap his argument and draw natural conclusions but chooses instead to delineate the softer side of his duality. Here he highlights 42 societal changes that need to occur in order for his 26 (well, maybe 28) soldierly transformations to do their part for peace—though I cannot really understand why 26 refinements "for" his idea outweigh 42 ideas "against" it.
Here is an interesting sampling of the opposing ideas that keep his great teeter-totter in action:
ü America needs a "four-star military police general" with a commitment to peacemaking operations.
ü Japanese first combat casualties since World War II to show them that they have a dog in the fight for peace. (You got to think about some of these!)
ü A "father of post conflict stabilization and reconstruction ops." (Mothers need not apply.)
ü And a "Secretary of Everything Else." (Really. Check it out.)
Barnett offers many other "progressive" ideas to help his war medicine go down. He would love to see a "feminist neocon," "The first Hispanic major-party nominee for president" (though I guess we don't have to actually vote for the guy), and a "'Martin Luther King' of Islamic Europe."
I love several of these conceptualizations. His vision is clear, interesting and made of the understandable details of big-picture thinking from the viewpoint of a person committed to the military side of everything.
You might even find his writing entertaining, once you get past the camouflage-speak.
11/10/2005
rate
email
print
link to this page
