A biographical sketch in "Military Transformation and Modern Warfare: A Reference Handbook" (2010)

Book by Elinor Sloan, Ottawa-based IR prof and retired Canadian military officer.  Part of a regular series.

Description:

This book focuses on military transformation, including its revolution in military affairs origins, its newer special operations forces, counterinsurgency, and stabilization and reconstruction components, and its wider homeland defense, space and deterrence dimensions. It examines the militaries of the United States, China, Russia, NATO, Australia, Britain, Canada, France, and Germany.

Furthermore:

The book contains a biographical sketch of Andrew Marshall, Andrew Krepinevich, William Owens, Arthur Cebrowski, Donald Rumsfeld, and Thomas Barnett, all of whom have been involved in some aspect of military transformation.

A pretty tight formation.  I've worked for three:  Owens when Vice Chairman on a CNA study, Cebrowski at the Naval War College and then at the Pentagon under Rumsfeld.  I've met and worked side-by-side with Krepinevich for a defense contractor, and came away impressed with him as a person and thinker, even as I often disagree with him (the same was often true with Art).  Marshall I've met and spent time with at select workshops (not a big talker), and also briefed a couple of times (once in group and once alone), and have also passed several times while we both addressed conferences. Rumsfeld I personally met once, despite the two years of working one body below:  when I interviewed him for the 2006 Esquire cover story/profile.  I would, with no feigned humility, describe myself as the least important in that historic crowd, my role being primarily a function of Art and Art's being--at its apogee--a function of Rumsfeld.  But then, that's what I always said when asked. Art was also a function of Owens--as were many others.  Krepinevich, as his sketch notes, was/is a function of Marshall, although it can be argued that, with the ascendance of the AirSea Battle Concept, he has become his own force--pun intended.  I would also say I'm the only small-wars focused guy in that crowd, which doesn't speak to my "influence" (see below) so much as my predictive ability.

My biographical sketch:

Thomas P.M. Barnett

When Arthur Cebrowski took on the task of leading the office of force transformation in the fall of 2001, one of the first things he did was establish five study areas.  Although one focused specifically on the military transformation efforts of the U.S. services, others were much broader. Thomas Barnett, a Harvard educated expert on Russia and the Warsaw Pact who was a strategy professor at the U.S. Naval War College while Cebrowski was its president, was brought to Washington and asked to conduct a wide reaching study on "how the U.S. military should look at the world."  At the office of force transformation he developed a power point presentation that catapulted him to prominence in the years immediately following 9/11.  He eventually delivered the presentation over 500 times to audiences of government officials, military officers, and think tanks in and outside America.

The central idea of Barnett's presentation, and the 2004 book for which he is best know, The Pentagon's New Map, is that the world can best be understood through the lens of globalization. He divides the world into two: a "functioning core" of nations, fully plugged into the world economy, including the old core of North America, Western Europe, Japan, Australia, and New Zealand, and also the emerging core of Eastern Europe, Russia, China, South Africa, India, Brazil, Chile, and Argentina; and a "non-integrating gap" of nations comprising theocracies, dictatorships, and failed states that are unwilling or unable to participate in a globalized world economy. Barnett argues that if we want to know where future conflicts will take place we need to look at where globalization has taken root and where it has not.  Where globalization has spread we find stable governments that do not require military interventions and do not warrant consideration as threats, but where globalization has not spread we find "failed states that command our attention and rogue states that demand our vigilance."  Not only has the vast majority of the crises since the end of the Cold War taken place within the nonintegrating gap, he points out, but in his view "this gap is the expeditionary theater for U.S. military forces in the 21st century."

Barnett's contribution to the conceptual thinking surrounding military transformation lies in his particular view on the sorts of forces that will be necessary to operate in this nonintegrating gap. He argues the United States needs two militaries:  one to fight wars, a Leviathan force, and one to wage peace, a System Administrator force--and it is on the latter where he places his greatest emphasis.  While the leviathan force may occasionally be necessary, he argues, the focus should be on funding a system administrator force that can "shrink the gap" by helping failed and conquered joint the functioning core of nations.  In his view war with China is highly unlikely, given that it is part of the functioning core, and resources expended to meet this potential peer competitor would be better spent on capabilities for peacekeeping and nation-building.  These would comprise primarily ground troops and especially the marine corps--which he feels is better suited to a system administrator role--while the Leviathan force,which would grow progressively smaller as nations integrated into the global economy, would draw primarily from the air force and the navy, as well as heavy armor.  Barnett's focus on peacekeeping was consistent with ideas that emerged more generally in the office of force transformation in 2003 about stability and reconstruction divisions.  

It is unclear how much influence Barnett, who expanded his ideas in a 2005 book Blueprint for Action and is now a private consultant, had on the current course of military transformation in the United States.  Nonetheless, his ideas sparked a valuable debate on the appropriate prism through which to view the world, and on the types of forces necessary to address contemporary threats.