| Tuesday, March 4, 2003 |
16:06 - Mind the Gap
http://www.nwc.navy.mil/newrulesets/ThePentagonsNewMap.htm
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Via LGF-- here's a perspective from Thomas P.M. Barnett of the US Naval War College, which appeared in this month's Esquire. It's billed as "The Pentagon's new Map of the World". Very frank and to-the-point. I don't know how "authoritative" it is, but it certainly seems to be the closest thing to the horse's mouth that I've seen when it comes to the Long View on where the WoT is taking us.
IF WE STEP BACK for a minute and consider the broader implications of this new global map, then U.S. national-security strategy would seem to be: 1) Increase the Core's immune system capabilities for responding to September 11-like system perturbations; 2) Work the seam states to firewall the Core from the Gap's worst exports, such as terror, drugs, and pandemics; and, most important, 3) Shrink the Gap. Notice I did not just say Mind the Gap. The knee-jerk reaction of many Americans to September 11 is to say, "Let's get off our dependency on foreign oil, and then we won't have to deal with those people." The most naïve assumption underlying that dream is that reducing what little connectivity the Gap has with the Core will render it less dangerous to us over the long haul. Turning the Middle East into Central Africa will not build a better world for my kids. We cannot simply will those people away.
Indeed. If it's a choice between America's seceding from the world so we don't offend (or assist) any other country, and rolling up our sleeves for a long and extraordinarily ambitious-- but potentially world-altering-for-the-better-- reconstruction project, I'm on board for the latter.
Nice maps, too.
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