Thomas P.M. Barnett

BOOK REVIEW: Goliath's Burden: Josef Joffe argues America's power is crucial to global security [free registration required], by Roger Cohen, New York Times Book Review, 16 July 2006, p. 13.

Joffe's book, √úberpower (only a German could come up with that bon mot!) makes some good arguments, according to Cohen, who argues audaciously himself in this review that "there is not much daylight, after all, between Bill Clinton's 'indispensable' nation and Bush's insistence that 'the only alternative to American leadership is a dramatically more dangerous and anxious world." For to me, Bush is just Clinton plus 9/11 and a lot less personal charm.

But Joffe loses me with his preferred East-West divide between a Belgrade-Baghdad-Beijing Belt and a Berlin-Berkeley Belt (now that's Friedman envy of the worst sort!).

Europe keeps expecting America to "come home" and it just ain't gonna happen. We're living in the vast rule-set reset that is globalization's advance around the planet. Europe and Japan, the classic West other than America, wants largely to sit this process out, instead arguing over cheese standards and ag subsidies and UN Security Council resolutions.

That is not how the Long War will be waged, much less won. Frankly, nobody's putting either Berkeley or Berlin in charge of anything. In those soft, protected enclaves, all is protected and connected. There are no incentives to wage this fight, to build those markets, to extend that connectivity.

Again, our main allies in this Long War/shrink-the-Gap effort will be New Core, not Old Core.

Joffe, as smart as he is, has outlived his era.