Blueprints and maps are not quite the same thing.  Maps are drawn to represent ground realities, even if these “realities” are existing paradigms of a non-material nature rather than the more material lay-of-land realities; but blueprints are plans for building a future dynamic not quite existing already.

I suppose that Grand Blueprints might suggest new maps, or an entirely new ground reality, and in fact, considering the nature of blueprints, they always do suggest new ground realities.  The scale of the design will determine which maps are to be altered.

So I find it a bit disingenuous for Thomas Barnett to say things like this:

Good tidbit from my old Pentagon boss Art Cebrowski: he says he was invited recently to brief Bill Gates and a host of his business friends from around the world. He gives them the Core-Gap thesis and describes the military-market nexus (the Decalogue). The response? As always, the business world gets that stuff intuitively. That’s why I say this new vision I push is not mine but the world’s: it’s a reality I capture, not a dream I concoct. It’s happening and will happen within the Defense Department not because people like myself advocate it, but because the environment simply demands it from us. [ed. — emphasis added.]

[Thomas P.M. Barnett, Is your vision being adopted by the Pentagon?]

That is blurring the lines between maps and blueprints.  I actually liked these words when I first read them on his weblog, and I still do.  However, we can see quite easily how the anthropomorphism in the final sentence is being used as a rhetorical sleight-of-hand by Barnett to hide his own complicity in the very mortal process of establishing rules, or rule sets, to be applied to an existent, organic map:  “the environment simply demands it from us.”   Environments do not demand anything, unless we are speaking purely of an environment of humans, i.e., a society.  If we are speaking of a purely human environment, we must then wonder if that environment is truly demanding the things Barnett claims it is demanding of us.  Since he sees this human environment in terms of a Core and a Gap, and New Core and Seams, I wonder which of these is making those demands?

Many of those Gap nations are in fact not demanding our action.  I mean, anti-globalists within the Gap are not making the demand that we change them, or that we institute rule sets onto the existing map.  New Core nations are either demanding our action or wishing we would stop acting to change the map:  India may want us to help in the Kashmir, oppose Pakistan; but China and Russia want us out of Central Asia.  None of these three invites our action in Iran.  Unless I’ve missed something in Barnett’s weblog, he is not suggesting that we follow these demands, save for the issue of Iran — which, interestingly enough, is a demand made by China and Russia to not change the map.  That leaves the demands of the Core — the old Core — and so turns Barnett’s entire assertion on its head:  The [human] environment demanding it of us is us.

We can make excuses that some ethereal “environment” forces our hand, but we should not so disingenuously claim, as Barnett appears to claim in the above passage, that PNM theory is anything other than a top-down theory of management.  True, the existing map is not quite beneficial for America, and may “demand” our action; but let’s be clear that we are addressing our own interests.  They are our prime concern.  Gap, Seam, and New Core nations may not share these concerns as fully, if at all.  But merely because we can claim to see a less-than-beneficial, existent, organic lay-of-land, to which we react, this is not an argument that our blueprints are also entirely organic.  If we can finally navigate the rhetorical sleights-of-hand, maybe we will begin to see why others persist in navigating them as well, opposing us in our design work.

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Some recent related discussions:

Live From The FDNF has postulated a “Sys-Admin Academy & Exchange.”

I like the idea, and I want to see a semi-organic approach, an international “Peace Corps” of sorts, funded by private donations as well as states, but not within the UN (God forbid!) and not tied to any specific military although it will work with militaries.  I say, “semi-organic,” because the creation of the NGO would necessarily require a top-down approach informed by present dynamics; but once the organization is formed, I’d like to see an organic, resilient operation.  Mark Safranski of ZenPundit has been exploring theories of leadership and organic operations — “Leadership, Resilience and Ossification” —  which, I think, should inform the development of such a SysAdmin force.

More recently, Mark Safranski has joined the conversation on “Building Institutions vs. Nations or States” — a very, very important discussion which I wish Thomas Barnett would take more seriously.  Listen, one of the arguments I periodically have with our own president is that he refuses to explain himself in new detail, believing he has already said all there is to be said; and, it comes off as a defense of ossified theory, or purely self-defense.  If intelligent and concerned individuals continuously question a theory, that should be taken as a sign that either 1) the theory is lacking coherence or 2) it simply has not been explained sufficiently or 3) both.  Thankfully, the Blogosphere can inspire such discussion, whether on the purely political stage or the operational/theoretical stage, and bloggers like Mark Safranski and Purpleslog will continue to explore such things even if the Grand Master has difficulty thinking outside his own Box models.

Chapomatic is a new blog, for me, only discovered today, via FDNF.   I’m still exploring his consideration “On a Genocide Prevention Corps,” but I’ll say now that I like the title, and he provides an interesting analysis with the following subheadings: Thoughts on Intervention, If We Go In, We’re In For The Long Haul, Thoughts on What That Intervention Looks Like, and A New New Model Army,  Very interesting reading.  I particularly like this:

Sovereignty of the invaded country is an issue that also will need to be dealt with. We don’t do a lot of things nationally because those things occur in another sovereign nation. We can and do break that sovereignty when the issue is important enough to core American interest–but it is a Big Deal. A small war is still a war. Let’s get a better understanding of when we go to war when it’s a small war. Let’s ensure that congessional staffs know the human cost of intervention and nonintervention, and make sure people understand we’re going to get dead and greivously wounded Americans as a result of the decision–and then ensure people understand such a cost is sad but worth it if we decide so. War does not go according to plan, and endlessly carping about it like we’ve been doing for the last five years is counterproductive. Ensure decisions are made with knowledge and then committed to.

— because it addresses something not mentioned in the lead-in to these related links.  Even if Barnett’s “environment” is simply the society of the Core demanding action, sometimes that society is not actually demanding action but the reverse.  As I’ve said over and over, Barnett too often ignores gaps within the Core states, in his Risky shifting of pieces on the map, looking at the larger Blueprint while ignoring huge chunks of the Map altogether.