for anyone who does presentations on a regular basis, Tom Barnett has some of the best abilities in moving media around the screen and graphics I haave seen.

He talks about the screens but does not read them or rely on them.  He uses the graphic to punctuate points and to set the mood.  In this world of power point, bad presentations are epidemic.  I recommend studying these techniques (even if you don’t buy his premise) to learn effective speaking and effective persuasion.

As for the content of the message, I have been watching this message for a number of years on C-SPAN and he has a thought provoking approach to the “GAP” countries as the source for conflict in the years to come.

He also links poverty and personal income statistics with political and social stability which is a unique theorem.  His book is challenging as well.

And his ideas aren’t bad either.

His core idea is the development of (an American) “System Administrator” function performed by a U. S. “Department of Everything Else.”

This idea will not work.  It will not work for the same reason that our public schools fail on a large scale, and for the same reason we have such a high incarceration rate in the U.S.:  inculcation and rehabilitation of human beings and human institutions requires a coherent consensus on real anthropology.

You cannot publicly educate children without public agreement on what it means to be educated.

You cannot rehabilitate a criminal or addict without public agreement on what it means to be rehabilitated.

You cannot “win the peace” without public agreement on what peace looks like.

He succinctly describes the sad outcome of the speedy and successful war against Iraq.  The war planners totally underestimated the overwhelming power of the U.S. military machine and were completely unprepared for to deal with the collapse and chaos that ensued.

I really admire Thomas Barnett and agree with much of what he says/preaches.  The only problem that I have encountered in digesting his thought is that we already have a “Department of Everything Else”: it is called the State Department (with its minions and associates elsewhere in the government), and its failure to do what it is supposed to do in terms of diplomatic, political, commercial, and cultural development abroad is the proximate cause of the military being tasked with “nation-building” and the ironically evangelistic mission of spreading democracy.  It appears that the cautious folks in the State Department just want to go to dinners and stamp passports and visas, while letting the military do all the hard stuff.  For those who scoff, Google the recent disgraceful fracas over the involuntary deployment of Foreign Service Officers to Iraq and Afghanistan.  As such, I propose that if we ever get around to chopping up the Executive Branch to develop the Department of Everything Else that the timid diplomats at State give up people and money to do what they should have been doing/coordinating in the first place.  In the interest of full disclosure, I am an Army officer with 27 years of service who is very tired of doing State’s job.