The following is a transcript that I prepared from watching Thomas Barnett's presentationtitled 'Military In The 21 Century' on C-Span. The transcript is long - 10 webpages, but thecontent of his message was so important that I was compelled to transcribe it. Barnettdescribes the silent war, the objectives, and the reasons. He is military strategist in theOffice of Force Transformation of the Department of Defense (DOD) lays out Wall Street'svision of the future. Through subtleties that would make Josef Goebbels proud, Barnettpresents the strategies for globalization and the destruction of the U.S. as a nation. It isthe plan to make it happen - to create history.[Note: Not all paragraphs denote a change in topic. Since this was a verbal presentation,almost the entire thing is one long paragraph so I threw in some paragraph breaks so thatyour eyes don't get crossed reading it.]
Barnett Transcript - Military in the 21
st
CenturyIntroduction
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Paul Davis, Executive Director, Center for Strategic LeadershipDevelopment
The 80
th
anniversary of the founding of the Industrial College of the Armed Forces, lastFebruary the Commandant hosted 20 chief executive officers from corporations andassociations instrumental to crafting the tools and capabilities the defense department relieson to maintain the nation’s security. Deputy Secretary of Defense, the honorable PaulWolfowitz and Air Force Chief of Staff, General John Jumper presented their strategicestimates of the national security situation. These included their insights into not only theongoing operations in Afghanistan and Iraq, but also the longer-range war on terrorism andthe need for defense transformation.
This event was followed immediately by an honoring of one of ICAF’s most famous alumni,General John Vessey, former Chairman of the Joint Chiefs Of Staff. We dedicated the otherauditorium in this college to General Vessey and recognize his many accomplishments withan honorary doctorate. General Vessey in turn, honored us with an insightful and inspiringlecture from this very stage. Today’s symposium is our opportunity to focus on the presentand contemplate what it will mean to lead in the emerging environments. We have titledthis symposium, “Strategic Thinking In Complex Environments”. One thing we haveemphasized this entire academic year is how thinking strategically differs from the focus of our daily operational lives.
Let me suggest, for this symposium that thinking
strategically means to think about how we think and what we think about. To consider our basic values and beliefs of how and why things occur as they do.
Wedon’t have time to do this as a matter of routine in our operationally demanding lives butsuch strategic thinking is critically important in these complex and turbulent times.
We will spend this morning with Dr. Thomas Barnett, a strategic researcher and professor atthe Naval War College in Newport RI. He will focus our attention on critical national securityissues and propose transformational solutions as he develops it’s strategies for combatingglobal uncertainties and their associated risks. After lunch, we will be joined by Ms. LauraAnderson, a national partner for strategy and development of KPMG in Melbourne Australia,an expert in strategic planning, risk management and capability planning. Ms. Andersonhas an international reputation for innovation. Following Laura, we will hear from Mr. GregCudahey, the global director of B2B, Business-2-Business and supply chain optimization forthe international consultant Cap Gemini, one of the leading global management, informationtechnology consulting firms in the world. Mr. Cudahey manages the largest supply chainconsultancy in the world. Immediately following his lecture, Mr. Cudahey will be rejoinedby Dr. Barnett and Ms. Anderson for a short panel discussion in which the audience willhave the opportunity to ask questions to which the three will be able to respond. Weconclude the symposium tomorrow morning with a lecture by Mr. Chris Myer, CEO of Monitor Networks, a new part of the Michael Porter’s Monitor Group. Mr. Myer’s entirecareer has been at the cutting edge of knowledge management and information technologyapplications for adaptive enterprises. You may be familiar with three books he has co-authored with Stan Davis: Blur, Future Wealth and It’s Alive. Our hope is that thissymposium will heighten your awareness of the strategic considerations that must be dealtwith by leaders of business, the military and governments. As you manage through theuncertainties and risks of the complex environments that are co-evolving at unprecedentedrate. So let us begin.Dr. Tom Barnett earned his PhD in political science from Harvard. He received his on-the- job training if you will, as a project director at the Center for Naval Analysis. He has been aresearch project director at the Naval War College for over a decade and directed the NewRules Sets Project in partnership with Cantor-Fitzgerald. Dr Barnett is the author of the newbook that is causing quite a stir around Washington, “The Pentagon’s New Map, War andPeace in the 21
st
Century”. Without further adieu, let me introduce the person that ViceAdmiral Art Cebrowski, the Director of the Office of Transformation for Secretary Rumsfeld,refers to as “My Strategy Guy”, Tom (Barnett).
ApplauseDr. Thomas Barnett
I like to describe the brief in this presentation as the product of about a six-yearconversation with Art Cebrowski in addition to a long mentoring relationship I’ve had orenjoyed with Hank Gaffney at the Center for Naval Analyses and a similar relationship withretired four-star admiral Bud Flanagan recently of Cantor Fitzgerald. The way I like todescribe the conversation with Art is to note that we came to the war college at roughly thesame time - summer 1998. He had a list of things he wanted us to study. At the top of that list obviously: net-centric warfare. At that point more glimmer in his eye than thedogma it has become around Washington. At the bottom of that list was a very oddsubject - the potential for the year 2000 problem to serve as a security situation around theplanet. As the most recent hire and the professor with the least standing, I was given thatproject. It turned out to be the most fascinating project I’d ever done.
It was a grand exploration of how we think about instability and crisis in this interconnected world.
And that is really how Art Cebrowski really saw it.
He saw it as a heuristic opportunity - an opportunity for teaching-learning because he knew there’d be unprecedented discussions between the defense dept and the rest of the U.S.government, between the government and the private sector and between America and the world.
So we created a project and we called it the Year 2000International Security Dimension Project. We came up with a series of scenarios both goodand bad. Our worst-case scenario was pretty fantastic. It got us a lot of interesting press.I was dubbed the Nostradamus of the Navy.
Jack Andersen, the muckraking journalistwrote an expose on my secretly training the U.S. government and the Marine Corp to takeover society in the event of chaos
on January 1
st -
and he had pictures. My wife said, “If youcan do all that from your desk at Newport, why can’t you take out the garbage on Tuesdayslike I ask?”
Our worst-case scenario - pretty fantastic. Wall Street shut down for a week; air travel in the United States shut down for about 10 days; a surge in hate crimes against ethnic groups identified as part of the problem, a surge in gun buying; islanding of certain services - especially insurance; breakdowns of just-in-time supply chains - a terrible description of January 1, 2000; a very prescient description of September 12
th
2001.
It wasn’t because we were predicting anything. I
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