Book review

"In the land of the blind, the one-eyed man is king." This is my assessment of what I learned from reading a 2004 publication, The Pentagon's New Map, by Thomas Barnett, a professor at the Naval War College and a PhD graduate of Harvard. The book purports to describe what America should provide to the world (even if they aren't grateful), and why we Americans are now positioned to change history. I was put onto this book by all the inside-the-beltway buzz it has been receiving, along with words like 'genius' and 'revelation' attached to it. This of course means nothing other than that it is in fashion, but I decided to check it out for myself, and found it on the shelves of our own public library. I understand that a book's notoriety reveals nothing about its content, or its truth, but it is consistently amazing how little relationship there is, even when the author is clearly smart enough and has tremendous academic credentials. Although I am not predisposed to disagree with all of the book's conclusions, in an extended essay like this, I do like to see some rigorous reasoning put behind them. In 383 pages, I was unable to find even a clear definition of the most used words in the book, much less any valid, logical arguments that begin with established facts. Amazingly, the book mostly consists of arguments by assertion, repeated multiple times, backed up by counter-arguments to straw men, mixed in with bits of autobiography and travelog. For all of its folksiness, the book isn't even terribly readable. So why, you may ask, is it considered so brilliant? Presumably, because it is written by one of the Pentagon's golden-haired boys, and it offers some conclusions to suit a lot of different tastes (very politic), bound together by a very simple concept, its map which divides the world in two (basically this is the familiar haves vs. have-nots using different terms). It does have a reasonable, even noble goal, of trying to provide the Pentagon with a new set of security doctrines to replace the old Cold War rules. In so doing, the author (the one-eyed man) sees that such rules relate necessarily to global economic and social realities, something that others at the Pentagon (the blind) apparently do not see. Although he never demonstrates why it is true, Barnett argues that we, the world's only superpower, must remain persistently engaged with those who are relatively disconnected to the global economic system, to try to help them get connected and reduce the disparity between the two worlds. Nothing really new here (and for the record I largely agree), and it would not be notable but for the fact that many on the political right don't accept it. He makes it palatable to them, however, by leaping to the utterly unfounded conclusion that attempting such engagement via armed intervention, as in Iraq, is sometimes necessary and justified. Dr. Barnett shows, if nothing else, that he is a skilled politician, and that the Pentagon is no place for truth telling, even among technocrats.

DEMOPHOENIX