USS Missouri

Plaque marking surrender signing location on USS Missouri.

Shot of Surrender Deck on Missouri

Note the plaque location.

Shot of Missouri's big guns from stem.

Shot of replica of Commodore Perry's flag on Missouri

Nimitz had Perry's flag brought from mainland to be on deck when Japanese surrendered. Flag so old that Annapolis curators sewed linen backing on it to keep it together. But that made it impossible to hang any way other than backward.

This flag is replica of Perry flag that museum had made.

Shot of Arizona Memorial from Missouri deck.

Getting PACFLT's VIP tour of Pearl/Arizona

Fascinating fact to me: Japanese launched 2 waves of aircraft attacks on Pearl on 7 December. Because of losses of AC in first two attacks, planned 3rd attack on oil depot and ship repair facilities is abandoned by Japanese. If it had happened, US Navy would have been far more harmed.

Result? Midway made possible in 1942.

My lesson? You're getting your ass kicked and there seems little reason to keep fighting: don't give up! That seemingly pointless resistance made a huge difference within a year.

Small brave efforts turn the tide.

Tom's home at KnoxNews

Tom's columnist page, with links to all of his columns (4 so far), is up at KnoxNews.

Editor Jack McElroy writes:

Thanks for your attention to effort. We are getting very positive, if not voluminous, response, and I think interest will continue to grow.

Kevin lucks out

Our Hawaiian airlines flight is sold out, so we're pushed to first class on a United flight from LAX to Honolulu.

Nice way to spend your birthday and a great way to start our Hawaiian adventure.

Taylor finally nabbed

Good to see Charles Taylor, former corrupt strongman of Liberia, finally caught fleeing his Nigerian sanctuary.

This is a great victory for the UN's Sierra Leone war crimes tribunal, which, along with the Yugoslav version, served as precursor to the International Criminal Court, the permanent court to try bad actors creating mischief in the Gap.

Score one for the emerging global rule set on enforcing Core rules on war and peace inside the Gap.

Can't We All Just Get Along?

Nice piece by David Brooks today on immigration ("Immigrants to Be Proud Of," NYT, 30 March 2006). All sorts of arguments about how Hispanic families tend to be--relatively speaking--paragons of family values.

My arguments tend to be more grubby. Hispanic immigrants do the 3D jobs a lot--as in, dirty, dangerous and difficult. They earn every year upwards of a half trillion in wages. They spend over 90 percent here in the States and sent a mere fraction to families back home, yielding a cash flow that, in Latin America alone, is roughly ten times what America sends the entire Gap annually in Official Developmental Aid.

How's that for connectivity? And "families to warm a conservative's heart."

Brooks' hidden agenda? "To persuade the evangelical leaders in the tall grass to stop hiding on this issue," to "believe what Senator Sam Brownback of Kansas believes: that a balanced immigration bill is consistent with conservative values."

Thanks to an assist from Larry Kudlow, Steve DeAngelis and I are schedued to sit down with the senator during one of my upcoming trips to DC. We'll be talking about economic connetivity, shrinking the Gap, and how to make Development-in-a-Box real.

Exciting stuff, intriguing guy I find myself standing alongside on a few big issues near to my heart.

Tom on David Allen

David Allen's interview with Tom is now available online. You can also check out Tom's guest page over there. Allen writes:

It was one of my favorite interviews. Tell Dr. Barnett thank you for us.

Tom in the Hindustan Times

In keeping with Tom's new resolution to not spend a lot of time critiquing others, I'll just point out that his view of the world is held forward as basically official US foreign policy in the article The new solar system.

According to Thomas P.M. Barnett (The Pentagon’s New Map) the world has a ‘functioning core’, which is integrating into the world of globalisation. This includes India, China, Japan, Russia, the EU, North America, Chile, Brazil, Argentina, South Africa, Australia and New Zealand. The rest of the world — the entire Islamic world, Africa, parts of Latin America and Central Asia — is a ‘non-integrating gap’ disconnected from the rest and subject to instabilities. The thesis is that decreasing this disconnectedness and increasing connectivity in the functioning core of globalisation would ensure lasting peace.

Then Sood critiques that foreign policy and (sort of) says India (and Brazil, Russia, China, and Japan) doesn't have to revolve around US.

Tom would agree with that part...

Tom on VOA

VOA had a cool piece that prominently featured clips of Tom: Iran Seeks Greater Role in Middle East. This link includes a link to the mp3 of the piece that ran on VOA as well as a transcript. The main parts with Tom:

Political analyst Thomas Barnett, author of the book Blueprint for Action: A Future Worth Creating, in which he offers his vision for U.S. military strategy, says that for many years Iraq helped divert international attention from Iran's nuclear program. “Saddam was the big counterbalance to Iran for the last 25 years and he had a significant force. And as long as Saddam was around, not only was he a potential counterbalance to Iran's ambitions in the region, but he also attracted the vast majority of outside interest because of his actions. So what we basically did was we got rid of Saddam and we got rid of the Taleban, the two entities that were easily Iran's worst enemies in the region,” says Barnett.

Iran's Nuclear Ambitions

The removal of Saddam Hussein's regime in Iraq resulted in a shift of power from the Sunnis who had waged the 1980's war against Iran to the Shiites who make up the majority of the population in Iran as well as Iraq. Thomas Barnett says that by removing Iran's adversaries the U.S. helped Iran become the biggest military power in the region after Israel. However, he adds, Iran's fear of an attack from Israel or an invasion from the West has also increased. This has made Tehran determined to become a nuclear power. But Thomas Barnett says Tehran is more interested in creating a strong deterrent than in producing nuclear weapons.

“I think what they want to achieve, first and most obviously, is some sort of guarantee - however achieved - whether it's through negotiations over an entire array of possible security regimes connected to the weapons themselves, or their facilities themselves, or whether it just forces some sense of alliance between Iran and enough countries to include possibly the United States itself. They want some insurance that we are not going to invade them,“ says Barnett...

Alternative U.S. Strategies for Iran

Many analysts say bombing Iran would not eliminate its nuclear program because most of the facilities are deep underground and scattered around the country. And they warn that a U.S. attack could produce some unwanted results.

“It won't have much effect other than it will make us feel good. It will knock their program back a bit. They can always jack it up at that point. It will unite the Iranian people against us, which will be a shame because this is the population that actually likes us. It's the government that we have problems with. But the population overwhelmingly likes America, wants connectivity with America, does not want violence with America and really wants to engage the outside world,” says political analyst and author Thomas Barnett . He adds that instead of trying to isolate Iran, the United States should tap into the desire of young Iranians to be connected with the rest of the world. The majority of Iran's population, about 70 percent, is under the age of 30.

Barnett says, for example, the United States might accommodate Iran on its nuclear ambitions if Tehran recognized Israel's right to exist and renounced its support of terrorist groups.

The piece closes with fear. Am I reading this right that VOA, as an official mouthpiece of American foreign policy, has to be sure to leave us with the party line?

Logistics as connectivity

Faithful reader and commenter Shawn Beilfuss has written a post combining his vocation with Tom's vision: The Role of Supply Chain Logistics in Shrinking the Gap. Check it out.

Where is Waldo?

Not particularly hard...

If I go to hell... [updated again]

DATELINE: Concourse G, Dulles Airport, 29 March 2006, too late

I am convinced that if I go to hell (always a possibility for this sloppy Catholic), it will look and feel a lot like Concourse G at Dulles: always crammed with crabby people with the look of the dead about them, rotten food, no place to sit, lotsa pointless waiting and incessant barking of unintelligible announcments over the radio.

I am feeling fried, and don't want to blog in such a crabby mood. Anyway, I feel I've earned the break. I had U Tenn rocking today, with Kissinger and Howard Baker in the front row!

Criminy! I need to learn to enjoy a bit.

And I need to stop commenting on others' work. I know people send me stuff like crazy and want comments all the time, but I'm finding that whole approach too destructive, too DC, too vacuous punditry.

Because, in the end, I don't care what anyone else writes. I don't write for that, or push a vision for that. That indifference makes me a shitty academic and an even worse public intellectual. But I don't care.

I write to write, not to be heard or approved, and when I get in the business of bitching on others (Peters, Kaplan, Friedman), it just feels pointless. I need to push what I know and believe in and blow the rest--except when I agree with them in their--and my--positive best. Wasting my energy on things like that TNR piece is just dumb.

I'm just going to try and avoid that destructive crap, so stop sending me stuff except in a positive way. I want to follow the good, not fixate on the bad. I want to focus on solutions, not criticism. I want to think more horizontally and skip the drill down.

And I want in my new house now!

Later that night...

I am somewhat chilled by a Dulles-to-Indy flight on one of those wonderful (I believe Brazilian) Embraer 170s, which really are God's gift to the flying commuter.

And I think about what compelled the previous post, realizing that it easily comes off sounding like some whacked-out Joel Osteen sermon on personal growth through grand strategy.

But then I think: I like Osteen why? Because when I'm challenged to do better, I feel better, and when I'm given to condemning others--no matter how justified--it wears me out in the worst way.

I know I'm relentlessly optimistic, and that my optimism strikes many as naive--or worse-dangerous. But I don't know how to do it any other way. I can't discuss issues without actively working out the solution set in my head--otherwise, why discuss?

And yes, I know that's a very guy perspective and a very American one. But you know what? I think being a guy in America is about as good as it gets on this planet, so if that perspective and life experience doesn't generate that sort of positive ambition, then where in God's name is it supposed to appear?

You only get what you give.

I owe it to the solution set, to the vision, to the grand strategy, to my two nephews in Iraq, to my son Kevin who dreams of being a FBI agent, to all the people inside the Gap who will suffer pointless deaths this year because the Core just couldn't get its shit together and preferred to entertain dreams of conflict among themselves rather than deal with all that nasty subnational and transnational down there.

I just need to focus on the answer, the way ahead, and stop steering by my rear view mirror.

I need to be more like Art Cebrowski was--and so effortlessly. I need to get above the pointless fray more. I need to keep myself inspired (and healthier) if I expect to inspire anybody else.

I need to treat my wife and family better, because when I let the fear--that little mind-killer--pervade my thinking, it becomes less about what I'm doing to make things better (or to make them feel better) and it's more my obsessing over the faults of others.

And I say these things and I know them to be true and I think I'm moving closer to what I know I want to write in a Vol. III.

I mean, I know there will always be the hell-in-a-hand-basket crowd (geez, I heard from several over last Sunday's column--some people just prefer fear like some insecurity blanket), but there are so many throughout my various universes (gov, private sector, IT, foreign aid, military, intell, legislature, etc.) who are busting their asses day after day to make the world a better place.

I love going to Oak Ridge National Lab in that way: so many smart people trying to make the world better. You feel so much responsibility after a day of meetings like yesterday: you just want your life to count more.

And I just don't see that through tearing down the ideas of others, even when I think they're very bad and harmful. Some people can do that and retain themselves in the process, but it just costs me too much, and frankly, I think it's a complete waste of my God-given talents.

I had that auditorium rocking today because I was offering hope--that sense of thinking our way out instead of just shooting our way out (as Ignatius put it so well).

I do believe in the rational man. I've met this guy and gal the world over, and I find this individual has no ethnic identity worth mentioning. He or she just sees the logic of nonzero, to use Wright's phrase, and the essential humanity in us all.

So I do this Hawaii thing with my son and I get us into this new house, and I tackle the blog better. I tackle everything better. I re-commit. I recommend. I re-think.

My mother-in-law Vonne, the PhD prof in communications, gave me this New Yorker cartoon recently. It features two Labs sitting on the ground, with one saying to the other: "I had my own blog for a while, but I decided to go back to just pointless, incessant barking."

Nona has a strange wisdom, so I don't doubt some message was intended.

I want to get rid of the pointless, incessant barking in my life. I need to disappoint more readers in this way. I need to trash more emails. I need to ignore more authors. I need to regain my focus on what really matters.

I need to connect to all that electricity in that auditorium today, because that's what counts with successful vision.

What connects is what counts.

Still later...

Or to put it more bluntly...

I want to make people smart enough to recognize crap on their own when they encounter it. What I don't want to be about is telling them what's crap.

I explain the shinola. You figure out the shit on your own.

Tom at the Baker Center Churchill Conference

All the opening statements are celebrating the "special relationship" between the US and the UK.

My talk is titled: "The Special Relationship and The Pentagon's New Map." My somewhat shocking subtitle, to be revealed only on stage, is "Special Relationship? Yes, just not with the UK."

Guess where I'm going with that?

Sen. Howard Baker opening the conference.

From the back of the auditorium, speaker before me.

Unfortunately, as close as I got to HK on stage after I signed books and gave a TV interview following my talk, which was well-received.

HK's talk about historical UK-US rels in 20th mirrored my own, which was pretty exciting.

Sorry for blur. Best I could do after he started talking. Naturally, it was SRO.

My favorite line: "We live in a period in which most of what we know from history is inapplicable or applicable in limited ways."

Then he says, Asia today is like 19th C. Europe and the Middle East is like the 17th C. Then there's globalization which both integrates economically and fragments politically. And somehow we need to synthesize this all in a way the public can understand.

Hmm. HAK was in the first-row for my speech. I would be interested in his feedback, but fear I won't get near him in the post-talk crush. Plus I need to bug out for the airport.

HI awaits, as does my son.

Still, very cool to see him speak in person.

Opening for Kissinger

DATELINE: hotel, Knoxville TN, 29 March 2006

Great day yesterday at Oak Ridge National Lab. Briefed PNM and BFA and Development-in-a-Box to the National Security division there across the morning, and then a Thought Leadership meeting across the afternoon.

Then took my pickup (yes, a big-ass rental pickup!) to Knoxville and attended a very nice dinner for speakers and associated luminaries with this Churchill conference I'm speaking at today.

Had Bradd Hayes gin up about 10 new slides for me for this brief, which really allows me to explore the transAtlantic alliance like I've never done before in my presentations, so I'm giving a radically different brief this time, although 15 slides are classics and another 10 are just other Bradd slides from BFA that I only rarely use. Still, not a one-off brief, as I will be using these slides in the future, I know.

But always exciting to give a brief that's dramatically different. Puts some butterflies in the stomach.

My great thanks to Bradd for the sweet new slides generated so fast (overnight, two nights in a row) Do I have a cool set-up or what?

This is why I stole Bradd from the Naval War College to come work for Steve and I at Enterra. It's like having an extra brain in my head.

The mad dash begins...

DATELINE: hotel, Oak Ridge TN, 28 March 2006

Entering the home stretch on this strange existence called "no house." It was approximately one year ago that we decided to sell the homestead in RI and make our pilgrimmage to Indiana, going from blue to red (now, instead of enduring taunts for being Packer fans, my kids are chided for having parents who vote Democrat!).

It has been one strange ride to have the vast bulk of our posessions in storage all this time, eating off disposable dishware and more take-out than I care to remember, digging for clean clothes in a giant Tupperware bin, etc.

In short, it's really sucked.

But now the house is ours, the punching out of the punch list begins, the final faux painting ensues, and we are within ten days of moving in.

But as my wife points out, if there is some huge event looming over the family, my usual thing is to bug out for extensive travel. Strange how that works, but when you make your money on the road, you have to hit the road to make money.

So last night, while the others navigated around the maze of boxes we've been packing for about three weeks now, I hopped two commuter jets to Knoxville TN. Today's a day with Oak Ridge National Lab, tomorrow's a day with the Baker Center at U Tenn and their big Churchill Conference.

Then a pit stop at home Wednesday night to grab one child and head to Hawaii for two talks (one regular, one "special"). Yes, we'll hit some beaches and trails while we can, but it won't be the 20th anniversary present I promised my wife (she'll take the house instead), because she felt it was too much to cart the entire family to HI just before the move (the crush of small details is stunning), plus we still have one child in a cast.

So as soon as the second talk is done, Kevin and I will head back east over a couple of days, swap out my car with my father-in-law's pickup, and then the moving will begin: first from apartment and then the PODS begin arriving in sequence.

This will be my April, and I can't wait. Funny to have a trip to Hawaii feel like a pointless delay to something you've been waiting on for a year.

I have a huge pile of stories I want to blog, and I will do my best to do so, but between the travel and the moving and the ongoing column responsibilities, the volume will definitely suffer.

The good news is, though, this is the last month like that, after 11 previous (or really 16 previous if you go all the way back to when I plunged into writing BFA just as the Naval War College let me go).

In terms of stress, the losing-your-job-writing-a-sequel-selling-your-house-starting-a-new-

business-looking-for-a-new-house-but-building-one-instead-and-still-having-to-find-a-rental-

while-you're-profiling-the-Secretary-of-Defense-for-a-national-magazine-then-moving-your-family-

back-to-the-Midwest-then-having-your-new-business-acquired-then-adjusting-to-a-new-

state/schools-then-starting-a-new-job-with-a-new-company-then-making-a-million-decisions-on-a-

new-home-construction-then-having-a-new-book-come-out-then-starting-a-newspaper-column-

and-having-your-start-up-company-chased-by-numerous-potential-acquirers-then-moving-into-your-

new-house-and-switching-schools-and-parish-in-the-process has been just this side of amazing, comparable only to the sixteen months of chemotherapy with our first-born back in 1994-1995.

Having said all that, I can't wait!

Globalization, religion, and the family

Kelly Hall sends in this email:

Dr. Barnett,



Like many others, I'm a regular reader of your blog. I never miss an entry, and find your analyses of the economic and social evolution of humanity very accurate and insightful. You have caused a sea change in my thinking about such issues, and helped me call into question that which many so-called pundits have always considered to be gospel.



I also find it instructive and enjoyable that you share with us facets of your personal life as well. It seems you have a wonderful family (Mrs. Barnett must be a saint), and despite your lofty and sometimes controversial worldview, you live your life with both feet firmly planted on the ground.



My question is this: how do you feel globalization going to affect religion and the family as we have come to know it? Despite your progressive thinking in the professional realm, you seem to be quite traditional in the personal arena. As a devoted husband and father, and a devout Catholic, do you feel the values you espouse will be radically altered as the world becomes increasingly interconected?



Keep up the great work, and don't lose either your passion or humility.



Kelly C. Hall

York, PA

Tom's reply:

If you read BFA, you see my argument that religion connects far more for the good (evangelical) than disconnects for the bad (extremist fundamental). I see more religion, not less in the 21st century, but also more reformation to mirror globalization (i.e., more acceptance of diversity and more gender equality). But more abundance generally makes people want more spirituality, not less.

Still, on average, more religiousity (faith) and less religion (churches and hierarchies). In short, it gets ever more personal and intense as we shrink the Gap. To me, good stuff.

More of this in planned Vol. III.

Thanks, Kelly. And y'all keep those emails coming in!

Latest Knoxville News Sentinel column: "Feeling insecure about global security? No need."

Tom's latest column is up over at the KNS:

Feel insecure about global security? No need

By THOMAS P.M. BARNETT

March 26, 2006

We have never lived in a more peaceful world than we do today — never.

I know that statement goes against everything you've been told by the mass media, and I realize it contradicts the amazing climate of fear that's gripped this country since 9/11.



But it's absolutely true.

Our world today is more crowded than it's ever been, and yet we've never had a smaller percentage of humanity either engaging in or preparing for mass violence. We're not entering an age of perpetual war, as some would have it. Instead, we're moving into the century that will feature more peace than any before it...

Tom's comment:

This was my first attempt at doing a data-heavy piece, and the typical columnist trick of essentially blogging somebody else's cool report. Most of the work came in reading the report. Writing the piece was pretty easy.

I expanded the byline a bit this time by listing the blog as well. Not sure how the hard copy read, but hard to beat the hot links to this site.

Eventually, China comes to the table on North Korea

And we hope Bob Zoellick has them ready for the right conversation...

ARTICLE: "China Warns Lenders on Influx of Fake $100 Bills," by Gordon Fairclough, Wall Street Journal, 24 March 2006, p. B4.

The supernotes are coming! The supernotes are coming!

North Korea's efforts on top-flight counterfeiting of U.S. currency is starting to ring some warning bells even in China, the main target, quick frankly, of such activities. Why? Easiest system to penetrate and fool.

Beijing will continue to get screwed by Pyongyang until it grows up on the subject and begins to realize that what Kim costs them financially is not outweighed by what tidbits he may offer them diplomatically.

Meanwhile the U.S. lays the groundwork for criminal proceedings against Kim. To hell with waiting on the UN and let's get off the WMD fixation. We didn't nail Capone on his guns and murder, but on his tax evasion. So let's begin the U.S. legal proceedings on Kim right now, so when we eventually bring that freakish little monster to trial we've amassed all the right evidence.

You know, they hang economic criminals of this sort in Beijing--regularly.

Indifference is not an option

EDITORIAL: "What If We Lose? The consequences of U.S. defeat in Iraq," Wall Street Journal, 22 March 2006, p. A16.

EDITORIAL: "Hobbes in Sudan: What a world without U.S. power looks like," Wall Street Journal, 23 March 2006, p. A16.

OP-ED: "Speak Softly and Carry a Smaller Stick: Americans aren't isolationist, just more cautious," by Andrew Kohut, New York Times, 24 March 2006, p. A21.

Great pair of editorials from the WSJ, which is firing on all cylinders for me lately.

They're great because they make you challenge your assumptions, especially on the far better second one.

In the first editorial, the staff reaches in the right direction, but they cite symptoms, not the disease. If we lost in Iraq, we'd lose credibility on non-proliferation (no, the deal with India did that--and good riddance to that chimera, say I), we'd lose all credibility with Muslim reformers (also a bit weak, since the reality we face is figuring out how to tame the Islamists, not the secular reformists), and we'd invite attacks on the U.S. (dead to right, there).

I don't deny the truth of these statements, I just say they would only be symptoms of a far larger problem: the forces of disconnectedness inside the Middle East would see a great victory in pushing Iraq into the abyss. What they cannot achieve by popular acceptance (civilizational apartheid), they would at least achieve through fomenting chaos locally. And in doing so, they'd trigger more rigid authoritarianism throughout the region, thus playing into the hands of those who prefer violence as the pathway to power. Money would stay away, the youth bulge could not be served, and the West would think much harder about speeding up their own pathway down the carbon chain to hybrids, fuel cells and hydrogen. Africa would not be next. Instead, it's chaotic violence would be replicated in the Middle East, eventually encompassing it. And the two-thousand combat deaths we've suffered to date would be expanded dramatically in coming years, with many of those deaths happening on our shores.

Sitting on the Gap and trying to firewall ourselves off from its consequences will not work. Other nations will have to settle this situation if we cannot lead some larger, collective effort than the sort our strangely myopic fixation on WMDs got us in Iraq. You want some real colonialism? This is the fastest route: making it every great power for itself in the Gap.

All that becomes eminently possible and highly probable if we lose in Iraq.

Having said all that, our expectations of what constitutes victory needs to get a whole lot more realistic. Everyone with any experience or expertise on the subject of counter-insurgencies says those efforts typically run about a decade. But it's hard to see how any such effort of that length could survive the self-criticism we regularly heap upon ourselves over the lack of instant results.

Ah, but how can we have patience with the casualties?

Ask yourself the better question of why it has to be our casualties. If we get enough friends in the SysAdmin effort, there are no significant casualties, as in the Balkans. And please, don't rewrite that experience ex post facto to make that one somehow seem "easy" compared to the Middle East. And to the extent that some must occur, they should obviously be spread among the Core's great powers. If you have 2,000 combat casualties in Iraq and they're 500 American, 500 other Old Core, and 1000 New Core (Russia, India, China, Brazil, to name the biggies), then it's not an issue among an American public that sees collective authority, collective effort and collective sacrifice.

Americans don't tire of the effort, nor the sacrifice, but the sense that we're in this somehow alone, uncredentialed by the support of others.

Build the larger rule set, or what I've dubbed the A-to-Z rule set for processing politically-bankrupt states, and the Americans will not see a "global test" but a global ratification process for identifying shared interests, shared tasks, and shared burdens. Americans give. They just want to see results.

This rule set must inevitably come. I would just rather see America lead in its enunciation rather than wait to have it imposed upon itself by others.

Why? I want America to lead, not follow. And I want to stop wasting time between here and there.

"Inside Man"

Saw it tonight with my wife, and it was even better than the trailers and reviews promised. If Spike Lee decides to do more studio productions, I foresee more than one Oscar. Just hands-down directing, he is really spectacular on this one. But the script also great, and the acting is truly enjoyable in a way it rarely is nowadays.

Plus, if you're a Jodie Foster fan, this was a fantastic let-it-loose role for her. One that justifies her status as thinking man's coolest actress.