Thomas P.M. Barnett

[--Pete]

Hi,

"Show me where globalization is thick with network connectivity, financial transactions, liberal media flows, and collective security, and I will show you regions featuring stable governments, rising standards of living, and more deaths by suicide than murder.  These parts of the world I call the Functioning Core, or Core.  But show me where globalization is thinning or just plain absent, and I will show you regions plagued by politically repressive regimes, widespread poverty and disease, routine mass murder, and—most important—the chronic conflicts that incubate the next generation of global terrorists.  These parts of the world I call the Non-Integrating Gap, or Gap. "[right][snapback]64021[/snapback][/right]

Very good. But which does he think are the horse and which the cart. For on a simple reading, it seems that he is saying that prosperity brings peace. I think that that is backwards, I think it is peace that brings prosperity. And the impediments to peace are not poverty, not lack of globalization or connectivity, but bigotry, ideology (especially religious ideology), and, especially, ignorance. To try to repair the 'gap' by imposing the results of prosperity rather than its causes brings to mind the old joke about the floggings continuing until moral improves.

--Pete