G
gilliam
Guest
***…and How to Defeat Them ***
[or how Smash discovered Barnett…]
THOMAS P.M. BARNETT, the author of The Pentagon’s New Map (note to Mrs. Smash: this book might make a good anniversary gift), is perhaps one of America’s greatest modern strategic thinkers. Here’s a short excerpt from an interview he gave to FrontPage magazine back in January:
Transnational terrorism, in the form of the Salafi Jihadist movement, is fundamentally a function of globalization. As the global economy penetrates the traditional societies of the Muslim world, the violent rejection of the integration is expressed by those Salafis, like bin Laden and al-Zarqawi, who detest that process so much they are willing to kill and die to keep it out, dreaming instead of an Islamic super-state that would transport people back to the golden religious age they prefer, a hint of which we saw in Taliban-dominated Afghanistan.
In short, their strategy is to drive the West out of the Middle East so they can hijack the Middle East out of globalization’s creeping embrace. We counter that strategy best over the long haul by seeking to connect the region to the outside world and allowing that connectivity to generate local demand from below for better and more representative government.
In two concise paragraphs, Barnett summarizes the problem of transnational terrorism, and tells us how to beat it. I’ve been struggling to articulate this for almost three years now.
Turns out he’s also got a weblog.
indepundit.com/archive2/2005/05/why_they_hate_u.html#
[or how Smash discovered Barnett…]
THOMAS P.M. BARNETT, the author of The Pentagon’s New Map (note to Mrs. Smash: this book might make a good anniversary gift), is perhaps one of America’s greatest modern strategic thinkers. Here’s a short excerpt from an interview he gave to FrontPage magazine back in January:
Transnational terrorism, in the form of the Salafi Jihadist movement, is fundamentally a function of globalization. As the global economy penetrates the traditional societies of the Muslim world, the violent rejection of the integration is expressed by those Salafis, like bin Laden and al-Zarqawi, who detest that process so much they are willing to kill and die to keep it out, dreaming instead of an Islamic super-state that would transport people back to the golden religious age they prefer, a hint of which we saw in Taliban-dominated Afghanistan.
In short, their strategy is to drive the West out of the Middle East so they can hijack the Middle East out of globalization’s creeping embrace. We counter that strategy best over the long haul by seeking to connect the region to the outside world and allowing that connectivity to generate local demand from below for better and more representative government.
In two concise paragraphs, Barnett summarizes the problem of transnational terrorism, and tells us how to beat it. I’ve been struggling to articulate this for almost three years now.
Turns out he’s also got a weblog.
indepundit.com/archive2/2005/05/why_they_hate_u.html#
