Thomas PM Barnett, The Pentagon's New Map

     On the one hand, if you want to know the Kool-Aid the Pentagon has been drinking lately, this guy is mixing up the batches.  That said, it's such crap!  Terrorists are generally educated people.  This guy flips things upside down and claims that, generally, the problem is with cultures who are disconnected (socially? definitely economically) from the happy, global economic system.  No bias whatsoever.

     UPDATE: OK, there is a level at which he is right, but, still, it's way too go-go-markets and seems to ignore reality and politics, imposing the map on the world.

     UPDATE: Further reflections. Was America part of Europe, or out in the gap, back in 1776?   MORE: He seems blind to the idea that it is "our" (American, Western) "core" that he is so blithely spreading.  Sure, I like being smart, too.  But whether it is Jefferson and Franklin leading American newspaper readers or Lenin leading Russian peasants, it is usually the leaders who are educated, and others follow (or not) for reasons totally unrelated to "core-gap."