Better than mine
Friday, July 18, 2008 at 12:26AM Remember my post How's your Dutch? with the pdf of a review of BFA? Constantina Meis ran it by Bas C. van Fraassen who supplied the following summary. Thanks Constantina and Dr van Fraassen.
Review of Barnett, Blueprint for Action, by Caspar Veldkamp (Acting director for international financial directives, Ministry of External Affairs)
In Paris, the strategic advisers of the new French regime have this book at hand. It is an innovative work about globalization, war, peace, and much more. Barnett has been paid much attention internationally, especially after 9/11.
His work reads as a blog, full of spontaneous impressions and highly personal observations.
[On pages 2-3 this summarizes the main themes of his earlier book *The Pentagon's New Map*; starting on p. 3 what is new in *Bueprint for Action*. I'm looking for what is peculiar to this Dutch review]
p. 4 Barnett claims that the countries in the 'gap' had best become connected to the 'core' if we are to combat poverty and insecurity. But he does not explain well what makes the present gap a gap, except that it refers to places where globalization does not work. Do geography, culture, and religion play a role? He doesn't answer that. He does not have an eye for the threat people can feel from globalization.
Like most American writers he underestimates the impact of the European integration process, and the extent to which that helped the transformation of Central Europe -- or, alas, they discover that just as Europe is becoming tired of the idea of further extension.
The most important power of Barnett probably does not lie in detailed recommendations for action but in the force of his imagination which can catalyze, in contrast to the stunted, unimaginative way in which the issues are so often dealt with here in Europe.
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