Thomas P.M. Barnett

[kandrathe]

Hi,
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
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He uses the past 50 or 100 years as examples of how former gap nations were brought into the core. This is done mostly via the mechanisms we have in place already, economic development, world bank, investment, etc. If the former is untenable due to a lack of security, then a security force is imposed until the mechanisms of peace can be implemented. This is how it has been done, only in a fairly shot gun and haphazard way. In the past when this rehabilitation occurs it requires the UN, or the US to reinvent the process, pass the hat to collect the funds for the transition, bludgeon our allies into contributing some manpower to the effort, and examine our forces to see which 19 year old trigger pullers would be the best at giving succor, and not killing the population. It is strange that even in this Indonesia tsunami disaster that the most visible sign of aid from the US will be US war ships pulling up to make drinkable water.