Thomas P.M. Barnett

OP-ED: "Anyone, Anything, Anywhere," by Thomas L. Friedman, New York Times, 22 September 2006, p. A21.

For pure unadulturated economic optimism bordering on determinism, Friedman is still the gold standard. Easy to mock for his enthusiasm (I plead guilty on occasion), he remains a strong source for eye-opening bits like this one.

Basically, the piece describes how a Uruguayan named Gabriel Rozman hatched a dream to make his native country an overnight back office to that overnight back office without peer--India.

A tiny country of three million people, wedged between Brazil and Argentina, Uruguay has come from nowhere to partner with India's biggest technology company, Tata Consultancy Services, to create in just four years one of the largest outsourcing operations in Latin America.

Yes, when Tata's Indian employees in Mumbai are asleep, its 650 Uruguayan engineers and programmers now pick up the work and help run the computers and backroom operations for the likes of American Express, Procter & Gamble and some major U.S. banks--all from Montevideo.

Mountain View? Sounds so Silicon Valley, yes?

By creating an outsourcing center in Montevideo, Tata could offer its clients its best Indian engineers during India's day (America's night) and its best Uruguayan engineers during America's day (India's night).

I just love this example. For too many reasons to name, Uruguay has no business joining the global economy--and yet it does.

More to the point of the New Core setting the new rules and my oft-stated theme that it won't be America's model that shrinks the Gap economically, but that of New Core pillars like China and India, look who's doing the work of connecting disconnected Uruguay for us?

Lexington Green is right. We do tend to underappreciate India's importance.

So why do I focus on China? No one's planning war in the Pentagon against India.

[Editor's note: Steve wrote about this same Friedman column recently in Updates on the Global Commute.]