Once Europe's colonial empires were sent into deep decline, thanks to World War II, America became globalization's primary replicating force, integrating Asia into its low-end production networks across the second half of the twentieth century - just like Europe had integrated the U.S. before.

Thomas P.M. Barnett

Categorized in : Deep World War Globalization

Transnational terrorism, in the form of the Salafi Jihadist movement, is fundamentally a function of globalization.

Thomas P.M. Barnett

globalization terrorism movement

What makes a terrorist? Are the drivers primarily political or economic? Princeton economist Alan Krueger has made a great study of this question...What Makes a Terrorist lacks a question mark. That's because Krueger, marshaling persuasive statistics and analysis, comes down firmly on the side of politics, noting most terrorists are middle-class and well-educated.

Thomas P.M. Barnett

statistics political class

Women waited 144 years before earning suffrage. If a mature, multiparty democracy was so darn easy, everybody would have one.

Thomas P.M. Barnett

democracy earning years

You cant drag people from understanding to action. A customer isnt actually at the last mile if youre the one dragging her to the finish line.

Thomas P.M. Barnett

lines understanding people

Wikistrat is my ninth start-up, so I've been through this process a few times. You have to go with what works. The power of example is compelling, so model the ideas that you want someone to understand.

Thomas P.M. Barnett

example want ideas

If you can get out in front of people with your ideas and your execution, you'll attract the people who need to be pulled in.

Thomas P.M. Barnett

people ideas needs

Great powers reserve the right to police bad actors in their neighborhoods.

Thomas P.M. Barnett

police neighborhood actors

Run with what works: Sell to the people who believe in you and are willing to take the chances and make the experience happen.

Thomas P.M. Barnett

running believe people

We need to remind ourselves that our ultimate goal is not to reduce greenhouse gases or global warming per se but to improve the quality of life and the environment. We all want to leave the planet in decent shape for our kids. Radically reducing greenhouse gas emissions is not necessarily the best way to achieve that.

Thomas P.M. Barnett

best global-warming quality life

An economically confident America has - since becoming a world power at the start of the 20th century - tended toward global engagement. It is during times of economic stress (1930s, 1970s) that America has become more withdrawn.

Thomas P.M. Barnett

start stress power world

The Marines are like my West Highland Terrier. They get up every morning, they want to dig a hole, and they want to kill something.

Thomas P.M. Barnett

something like want morning

Some Western demographers have posited, due to the female shortage created by the one-child policy, that China will be forced to field a vast force - as in tens of millions strong - of wifeless men who'll gladly wage wars around the planet to burn off all those unrequited hormones.

Thomas P.M. Barnett

burn will strong men

Historians are going to look back on rising China and say America, at least under the Bush years, did not get that wrong.

Thomas P.M. Barnett

say back look america

To ask a country with 750 million people living on less than a dollar a day to optimize their development for the environment as opposed to getting food in the mouths of these people and giving them a decent lifestyle, that's just a little bit too much to ask.

Thomas P.M. Barnett

day food country people

Frankly, the only thing China has in easy abundance is people and dirty coal. Neither is the asset they're made out to be.

Thomas P.M. Barnett

china easy people dirty

The Air Force has it far worse than the Navy in terms of existential fears, primarily due to the rapid rise and unbelievable dissemination of drones, where seemingly now every military unit has their own miniature air wing of what would have recently passed as toys.

Thomas P.M. Barnett

rise own navy toys

Here's my favorite bonehead concept from the 1990s in the Pentagon: the theory of anti-access, area-denial asymmetrical strategies. Why do we call it that? Because it's got all those A's lined up I guess. This is gobbledygook for 'If the United States fights somebody, we're going to be huge. They're going to be small.'

Thomas P.M. Barnett

here why going small

There is no battle space the U.S. Military cannot access. They said we couldn't do Afghanistan. We did it with ease. They said we couldn't do Iraq. We did it with 150 combat casualties in six weeks. We did it so fast we weren't prepared for their collapse. There is nobody we can't take down. The question is, what do you do with the power?

Thomas P.M. Barnett

you battle space power

The Department of Homeland Security is a strategic feel good measure. It's going to be the Department of Agriculture for the 21st century. TSA - thousands standing around.

Thomas P.M. Barnett

feel good agriculture feel-good

China's headlong rush to industrialize was pursued with the most Marxist of prejudices - bending nature to man's will. That's a desperately hard trick to pull off when one fifth of humanity, having previously subsisted on 7 percent of the world's freshwater supply, decides that it wants to instantaneously increase its caloric intake.

Thomas P.M. Barnett

man nature humanity world