Thomas P. M. Barnett (born 1962) is an American military geostrategist and former chief analyst at Wikistrat. He developed a geopolitical theory that divided the world into "the Functioning Core" and the "Non-Integrating Gap" that made him particularly notable prior to the 2003 U.S. Invasion of Iraq when he wrote an article for Esquire in support of the military action entitled "The Pentagon's New Map" (which would later become the title of a book that would elaborate on his geopolitical theories). The central thesis of his geopolitical theory is that the connections the globalization brings between countries (including network connectivity, financial transactions, and media flows) are synonymous with those countries with stable governments, rising standards of living, and "more deaths by suicide than by murder". These regions contrast with those where globalization has not yet penetrated, which is synonymous with political repression, poverty, disease, and mass-murder, and conflict. These areas make up the Non-Integrating Gap.
Key to Barnett's geostrategic ideas is that the United States should "export security" to the Gap in order to integrate and connect those regions with the Core, even if this means going to war in Gap countries, followed by long periods of nation-building.
Education and career
Barnett was born in Chilton, Wisconsin and grew up in Boscobel, Wisconsin. After graduation from Boscobel High School, Barnett received a B.A. (Honors) from the University of Wisconsin–Madison in Russian language and literature, and international relations with an emphasis in U.S. foreign policy. He received his MA in regional studies: Russia, Eastern Europe and Central Asia and his PhD in political science from Harvard University.
From 1998 through 2004, Barnett was a senior strategic researcher and professor in the Warfare Analysis & Research Department, Center for Naval Warfare Studies, U.S. Naval War College, Newport, Rhode Island.
At the Naval War College, Barnett served as director of the New Rule Sets Project an effort designed to explore how the spread of globalization alters the basic "rules of the road" in the international security environment, with special reference to how these changes redefine the U.S. military's historic role as "security enabler" of America's commercial network ties with the world. The project was hosted by Cantor Fitzgerald and took place near the top of One World Trade Center. After the offices of Cantor Fitzgerald and its carbon credit brokerage subsidiary CantorCO2e were destroyed at One World Trade Center on 9/11/2001, Barnett described the event as the "first live-broadcast, mass snuff film in human history."
Following the September 11, 2001 attacks, from October 2001 to June 2003, Barnett worked as the Assistant for Strategic Futures in the Office of Force Transformation in the Department of Defense under the direction of the late Vice Admiral (ret). Arthur K. Cebrowski, during which time he created a Powerpoint brief that developed into his book The Pentagon's New Map.
In 2003, he wrote an article titled "The Pentagon's New Map" for Esquire magazine that outlined many of these ideas. He developed the article into a book The Pentagon's New Map: War and Peace in the Twenty-First Century, published in 2004.
A sequel Blueprint for Action: A Future Worth Creating was published in 2005. He presented his ideas for changing America's military structure in February 2005 in Monterey, California, for a TED talk titled "Rethinking America's military strategy".
In 2010, he became chief analyst for the Israeli start-up Wikistrat.
Barnett is currently the senior managing director of Enterra Solutions, a contributing editor for Esquire magazine, and a distinguished scholar and author at the Howard H. Baker, Jr. Center for Public Policy at the University of Tennessee. He writes the New Rules column at World Politics Review.
Ideas and concepts
Barnett's ideas involve the relationship between the United States and the rest of the world in past, present, and future contexts, although much of the work revolves around defining possible future roles of the country in the aftermath of the Cold War and terrorist actions such as the September 11, 2001 attacks.