Quiet Transformation?

On Wednesday, David Ignatius wrote in the Washington Post of Pentagon-led efforts to build a "Colonial Office" of sorts to transform "the military services, the State Department and other agencies in ways that would help the United States do better what it botched so badly in Iraq." As it turns out, the White House reinforced this initiative with a Bush speech last night.

Ignatius' piece is worth reading in full, not only because it relates directly to a post of mine from yesterday about American militarism. The one thing I want to highlight is his reference to Thomas P.M. Barnett as "the most influential defense intellectual writing these days," which I would have to agree with. I'm somewhat astonished by how many of Barnett's ideas are now set assumptions within the Pentagon, particularly his "core-gap" thesis, which appears in DoD force transformation literature as underlining a historic shift from what's called "Globalization II" to "Globalization III."

That sounds terribly wonkish, right? Indeed it is, but Barnett is someone to pay close attention to. To his credit, he runs a very transparent and accessible website that also features a rather self-indulgent blog. It's worth taking a browse around there, especially the material on the Esquire article he turned into his influential book, The Pentagon's New Map. For the truly brave among you, there's a Barnett lecture available at CSpan that provides a nice window into his worldview.

I mention this not because I find Barnett terribly persuasive (far from it), but because he is very influential amongst the cadre of people crafting defense strategy and looking to implement the policies that are supposed to ensure the New American Century.