Speaking tonight in Leavenworth KS (open to the public)

Dateline: Kansas City International Airport Hilton, Kansas City MO, 18 November 2004

Thanks to local friend and weekend host Steffany Hedenkamp, I went on KBMZ News Radio this morning at 0640 for a 7-minute interview. She set that up to plug a local public brief I'll give tonight at the University of Saint Mary, in addition to the official brief I'll give at Fort Leavenworth to an Army school.

Here's the coverage in the local press (Kansas City Star) based on a phone interview I gave yesterday before flying out of Providence.

Posted on Thu, Nov. 18, 2004

Naval War College professor to speak

Thomas P.M. Barnett describes the world in two parts.

The professor at the Naval War College sees global ìcoreî countries ó the United States, Europe, India, China ó as too entwined economically to fight each other. He visualizes ìgapî countries ó much of Latin America, sub-Saharan Africa, Central Asia, the Middle East ó as disconnected from the rest of the world either culturally or economically.

That isolation, he argues, poses an ongoing threat to the rest of the world.

He supported the invasion of Iraq, less because he believed that Saddam Hussein posed a pressing threat to America, and more because he thinks a success there will start a shift of the Middle East from a nondemocratic and dangerous gap region to an area integrated into the modern global core.

Yet Barnett sees the Pentagon's cultural reluctance to prepare for post-combat missions as severely complicating the task.

In his new book, The Pentagon's New Map: War and Peace in the Twenty-First Century, he explores diplomatic and military challenges.

This week he answered a few questions for The Star's national correspondent Scott Canon:

You've been an advocate of the so-called military transformation pushed by Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld that calls for a smaller and fleeter military. What do you think of the results so far?

I would argue that we have a first-half team, and the score that counts comes at the end of the game. Ö No one can match us in terms of war fighting. Ö

Now we're dealing with the reality of what comes after that, what happens in the second half, and it's not going well. Ö The occupation shows you don't have that second-half force.

You write about the United States as a source of ìsecurity exportsî What do you mean by the phrase?

In terms of our wealth as a nation, it's relatively easy for us to spend 2 to 3 percent of our GDP on our military. Ö Compared to other countries, we have a very robust security system. We don't need our military to protect America. It's been half a century since we've fought a war against a direct enemy. We've got a military that's been optimized to project power around the world. Ö

We export security. We have military-to-military relations that no other country has. We train other military leaders the way no other military does. The U.S. military does eight to 10 crisis responses every year. Ö

You support the war in Iraq, but say the Bush team has done a poor job of explaining the strategy. What's the point the White House isn't getting across?



Osama bin Laden is trying to drive the West out of the Middle East so he can disconnect the Middle East from the rest of the world. Now we've got to connect the Middle East to the rest of the world and make that connection about something other than oil.

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Tonight in Leavenworth

Thomas P.M. Barnett's speech to the public at the University of St. Mary is set to begin at 7:30 p.m. at Mabee Auditorium, 4100 S. FourthSt.

Public's welcome to come, so if you're in the area, please do.