Since this is my inaugural blog, I should introduce myself and explain what I hope to accomplish here on this new site.

My name is Tom Barnett, and I am currently a professor at the Naval War College, where I teach occasionally but mostly do research for interested "clients" within the Department of Defense. For example, for 20 months following 9/11, I served as the Assistant for Strategic Futures in the Office of Force Transformation in the Office of the Secretary of Defense, where I put together the big PowerPoint brief that generated not just the article with Esquire ("The Pentagon's New Map") that many are familiar with, but likewise my forthcoming book (The Pentagon's New Map: War and Peace in the Twenty-first Century) with G.P. Putnam's Sons.   Right now I am helping a Navy R&D lab think about its long-range strategic futures, plus helping the Office of Force Transformation plot out possible long-term evolutions of force structure (i.e., mix of ships and aircraft) for the U.S. Navy.

I also run my own consulting business on the side called Barnett Consulting.   It is a sole proprietorship where I occasionally take on contractors to facilitate my performance of certain jobs.  For example, right now Barnett Consulting is working with the United Way of Rhode Island (an old client), helping them examine their organizational response to the Station Nightclub Fire disaster of February 2003.  In this rather fascinating endeavor, I have enlisted the aid of my long-time collaborator and friend, Bradd Hayes, a fellow professor at the college.

As part of my work at the college, I maintain my own website here, based on the long-running NewRuleSets.Project that I have directed since early 2000.  That project began as a collaboration between my department at the college and the Wall Street broker-dealer firm Cantor Fitzgerald. The project, which I describe extensively in my book (and which you can read about at both this site [soon] and the college's site), revolved around a series of workshops atop World Trade Center 1 that brought together Wall Street heavyweights, national security officials, and academic subject matter experts to discuss how globalization was altering our definitions of both national security and international stability. Obviously, that series ended on 9/11, due to Cantor's catastrophic loss of life.  Within weeks, I went to work in the Office of the Secretary of Defense, where I began building and delivering the brief that has essentially changed my life.

My instructions from Art Cebrowski, director of the Office of Force Transformation, were very simple.  He said basically, "Build me a brief that will described the emerging strategic environment in such a way that defense transformation is seen not just as an opportunity, but an imperative." It was his hope that my brief would elevate the discussion of transformation beyond what I like to call the "whack list," or those weapons systems and platforms (e.g., aircraft, vehicles, ships) that were to be cut as the military moved ahead on building the force of the future.  Art's supposition matched my own: 9/11 would mark a tipping point of great change for the role of the Defense Department in U.S. national security.  We needed to describe that great change and - by doing so - provide a compelling strategic vision of the future of war and peace in the twenty-first century.  Thus the Pentagon's new map was born, although I never called the work that until Mark Warren, the executive editor of Esquire, proposed that as the name of the article he wanted me to write for the magazine. He made that proposal upon seeing the brief himself for the first time in the fall of 2002.

But I get ahead myself.

What I really want to do in these first blogs is take you through the process from stem to stern: describing how - in the space of just about a year and a half - I went from total obscurity (outside of my narrow world of national security strategic planning where I am both lauded and derided) to having Putnam gin up 100k copies of my first book. It has been a fascinating ride, and I want to get it down on paper, so to speak, before I forget it all.

I learned that lesson a long time ago, when I penned several hundred pages of emails in 1994-1996 to family and friends around the world concerning my daughter Emily's long struggle with pediatric cancer. What I later put together with my spouse Vonne in an unpublished manuscript (The

Emily Updates: A Year in the Life of a Three-Year-Old Battling Cancer) began first as a sort of blog via email to a readership of about 100 people. When I read the material now, I am amazed I ever wrote any of it, because - frankly - I remember so little of it today.  But that material, which is used as a teaching text for medical social workers at Georgetown University, will someday be a real gold mine to my daughter as she seeks to understand her tumultuous past.  If I had never had the opportunity to do that first crude blog via email, all of that would have been lost.

I feel myself in a similarly tumultuous point in my life. I have a book coming out that may well change my life dramatically. My father is suffering a very dangerous health challenge. Vonne and I are in the process of adopting a baby girl from China this year.  In short, I am experiencing some classic "sandwich generation" times: big changes in my career, big changes with my kids, and big challenges with my parents.  I don't want to lose track of any of this, because it all has such meaning for me, and so I hope to get much of it down in this blog - just as I did with Emily's cancer fight.

So here's my plan for the next days, understanding that my schedule is fairly uncertain given my Dad's state of health:

1. First I want to describe the long strange process of building the brief and how it evolved - briefing by briefing - as I spread the message throughout the defense community.
2. I also want to tell the story of my interaction with Esquire and how that led to the article that changed my life.
   



3. Then I'd like to describe the process of getting my book sold, because that is a fascinating tale in itself.   For example, Tom Clancy and I now have the same editor! I mean, just writing those nine words is a kick!  I've already asked Neil Nyren, Editor-in-Chief and Publisher of G.P. Putnam's Sons for permission to post the book proposal (30 or so pages) that won me the contract with his company. As he recently wrote me, Heck, it got me to buy the book!"  But it did more than that, it really got me to write the book, which is the tale of my conversion from essay writer to book author at the hands of my agent, Jennifer Gates of Zachary Shuster Harmsworth of Manhattan.
   



4. Next I want to describe the process of writing the book, and the special role played by Mark Warren, who signed on to become my personal editor. This has proven to be a match made in heaven for me, as Mark turns out to be my missing twin somehow born and raised (by wolves, he claims) in Texas.
   



5. Finally I want to spend a lot of time describing the process since Mark and I finished the first draft (which is out to several hundred readers right now in what I call the "butt-ugly" bound manuscript, or advance copy version), or basically all the edits and the interactions that have ensued with Putnam as we prepare collectively to launch this book on 26 April. 

The first three I hope to get done in short order, whereas the last item will be where I begin blogging in real time for real - meaning I start posting on a daily basis about stuff happening on a daily basis.   As I do that, I and my webmaster, Critt Jarvis, will begin posting material from the book. Not the text, mind you, because that I sold to Putnam fair and square, but material that I wrote that did not make it into the book for reasons of pacing, etc. (although Mark may have different explanations ). I also hope, with Putnam's permission, to post all the endnotes from the book.

Critt and I have a number of other plans for the site, hoping the book's release will turn a lot of readers onto the ideas and challenges presented within.  So we hope to create a certain amount of space on the site to capture feedback, encourage some discussion, and get the ball rolling in terms of a web-based debate about - what I like to call - a future worth creating.

I am very excited by this challenge.  I love to write on a daily basis, and hopefully this venue will work for both me and you - the reader. I am looking for interaction and feedback, because such give-and-take with the audience - via those several hundred PowerPoint presentations over the years - is basically how I gathered or generated all the material that became the book.  I have been a verbal blogger all my life, but now I hope to expand that conversation pool a whole lot.