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Book Review: The Pentagon's New Map: War and Peace in the Twenty-First Century by Thomas P.M. Barnett Copyright 2004 Review By Steve Fritsch
The Pentagon's New Map: War and Peace in the Twenty-First Century is a must-read for those people who are searching to understand not just the United States of America's role in the global community and its vision for the future, but also how globalization is changing the world for the better.
Author Thomas P.M. Barnett, a senior strategic researcher and professor at the U.S. Naval College, is currently one of the most in-demand thinkers in the country when it comes to defining and explaining America's future in the global community. U.S. News & World Report's Michael Barone has said that Barnett "may turn out to be one of the most important strategic thinkers of our time."
The basic thesis of The Pentagon's New Map is that globalization is an economic movement that is bringing more peace and prosperity to the world. Barnett states that we are now in globalization's third stage (globalization I occurred from 1870-1914; globalization II occurred from 1945-1980; and globalization III beginning in 1980 to the present).
The key to globalization's advance, Barnett argues, is the rule sets put in place by the great economic and military powers, most notably the United States, which he says is "the biggest rule maker in the business of global security affairs." Barnett defines these "rule sets" as a "collection of rules that delineates how some activity normally unfolds." He also importantly notes that, "playing by the appropriate rule set is how we keep any game from collapsing into chaos." Therefore, in the global war on terrorism new rule sets concerning war and peace must be created to put the U.S. and the world on the correct path to bringing globalization to the troubled spots on the planet where it has yet to take hold.
Bringing globalization to these troubled spots is the key to peace, according to Barnett, who says that the only way to bring this change about is to create situations where rules will not only be created, but also followed.  On the opposite end, Barnett notes that the "fewer the rules, the more war you have."
Barnett points out that the real sources of instability in our world are not only concentrated in those "off grid areas" where globalization has yet to take hold (which he calls the Gap), but are likewise found anywhere that rule sets are "out of whack," or "when one aspect of life (say, security) seems to have fallen behind some other aspect of life (say, technology) in terms of providing sufficient rules to account for an unexpected turn of events."
In Barnett's opinion, what is important for the U.S. and the rest of its allies in the "Core" (where globalization has brought peace and prosperity) is to develop long-term strategies with reproducible strategic concepts (reproducible meaning Republicans and Democrats understand them in the same basic way).
Barnett says that, "if we as a nation, through our diplomatic and security strategies, succeed in closing the rule-set gaps that currently exist, we will do far more than make our nation more secure or wealthier, we'll finally succeed in making globalization truly global."
I highly recommend this book for all people of all political persuasions. The Pentagon's New Map is a straight-to-the-point book that provides a "map" of where we can go as nation in the twenty-first century in a positive direction.