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New Pentagon plans to conquer nations, secure oil, advance globalization, militarize space

by Peacemonger
Need some motivation to march for peace this Saturday and to keep working for peace every day?

Then please read the following. And please forward it far and wide.
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According to Bruce Gagnon, Coordinator of the Global Network Against Weapons & Nuclear Power in Space, "The U.S. military is increasingly being converted into a global oil protection service." Plans are being laid to wage war "to preemptively take control" of "a 'non-integrating gap' in the world that is resisting corporate globalization" so "the U.S. can 'manage' the global distribution of resources, people, energy and money." The "gap" nations happen to be in the world's key oil-producing regions.

Gagnon's article focuses on the writings and teachings of Thomas Barnett, a professor at the Navy War College, author of the book The Pentagon's New Map, and Donald Rumsfeld's "strategy guy," as Gagnon puts it.

Gagnon reports that Barnett "argues that the days of arms talks and international treaties are over" and that BARNETT RECENTLY REMINDED A MILITARY AUDIENCE THAT HITLER "NEVER ASKED FOR PERMISSION BEFORE INVADING OTHER COUNTRIES."

Gagnon goes on to note that "Barnett maintains that AS JOBS MOVE OUT OF THE U.S. THE PRIMARY EXPORT PRODUCT OF THE NATION WILL BE 'SECURITY'," that "[the U.S.] will be fighting in Central Africa in 20 years," that "National Guard units across the U.S. are now being assigned the task of developing on-going basing relationships with each nation on the African continent," and that "A new 'internet in the sky' is now being built for the wars of the future."

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IMPORTANT NOTE 1: Excerpts from Mr. Barnett's bio appear below. You'll learn a lot more from Mr. Barnett's website, http://www.thomaspmbarnett.com. Regarding Barnett's notion that "security" will become the main U.S. export, see the article he cowrote with Henry H. Gaffney Jr. at http://www.thomaspmbarnett.com/published/gts.htm It's titled "Global Transaction Strategy--Operation Iraqi Freedom could be a first step toward a larger goal: true globalization." Here's an excerpt:

"The one U.S. public-sector export that has only increased its global market share with time is security. We account for nearly half the global public spending on security, and unlike any other state, we actually can export it to other regions on a substantial and continuous basis. And that is our fundamental transaction with the global economy: WE IMPORT CONSUMPTION AND EXPORT SECURITY. Sharing our surplus of security with the world is what makes us unique. Any advanced industrial state can sell arms, but ONLY THE UNITED STATES CAN EXPORT STABILITY. Yes, it does engender plenty of anger from some quarters, but from far more it elicits real gratitude - and allowance for our 'living large.'" [emphasis added]

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IMPORTANT NOTE 2: If you've heard about the Project for the New American Century (PNAC) and their September 2000 master plan for "transforming" the U.S. military, "Rebuilding America's Defenses," Barnett's ideas may seem familiar. I wonder if Mr. Barnett is related to the Naval War College's Roger Barnett who participated in writing "Rebuilding America's Defenses." I wonder if Mr. Gaffney is related to PNAC affiliates Devon Gaffney Cross and Frank Gaffney. (I also wonder if PNAC affiliates Donald, Fred, and Robert Kagan are related to CNN anchorwoman Daryn Kagan who reportedly is dating Rush Limbaugh...but I digress.)

Remember, the PNAC plan (available at http://www.newamericancentury.org and elsewhere) is the one that says "we must restore the foundation of American security and the basis for U.S. military operations abroad by improving our HOMELAND DEFENSES" and "We cannot allow North Korea, Iran, Iraq or similar states to undermine American leadership, intimidate American allies or threaten the American HOMELAND itself." It also recommends beefing up the military with "a global network of space-based interceptors (or space-based lasers)" and asserts that "No system of missile defenses can be fully effective without PLACING SENSORS AND WEAPONS IN SPACE."

The PNAC plan also notes that "the process of [military] transformation...is likely to be a long one, absent some catastrophic and catalyzing EVENT LIKE A NEW PEARL HARBOR." [emphasis added]

And remember; PNAC published their plan a full year before "9-11."

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THE GAGNON ARTICLE: "New Pentagon Vision Transforms War Agenda" by Bruce K. Gagnon

(From Global Network Space Newsletter 16, Winter 2005, at http://www.globenet.free-online.co.uk/newsletter/gnews16.htm)
(Also available at the Centre for Research on Globalisation's EXCELLENT website, at http://globalresearch.ca/articles/GAG501A.html)


Pentagon transformation is well underway. The U.S. military is increasingly being converted into a global oil protection service. Secretary of War Donald Rumsfeld has a "strategy guy" whose job is to teach this new way of warfare to high-level military officers from all branches of services and to top level CIA operatives. Thomas Barnett is a professor at the Navy War College in Rhode Island. He is author of the controversial book The Pentagon¹s New Map that identifies a "non-integrating gap" in the world that is resisting corporate globalization. Barnett defines the gap as parts of Latin America, Africa, Middle East and Central Asia all of which are key oil-producing regions of the world.

In what Barnett calls a "Grand March of History" he claims that the U.S. military must be transformed in order to preemptively take control of the gap, so the U.S. can "manage" the global distribution of resources, people, energy, and money. (It has long predicted that the gap between rich and poor around the world will continue to widen and that the Pentagon will be used to keep the boot on the necks of the people of the third world to the benefit of corporate globalization.)

Barnett predicts that U.S. unilateralism will lead to the "inevitability of war." Referring to Hitler in a recent presentation, Barnett reminded his military audience that the Nazi leader never asked for permission before invading other countries. Thus, the end to multi-lateralism.

Barnett argues that the days of arms talks and international treaties are over. "There is no secret where we are going," he says as he calls for a "new ordering principle" at the Department of Defense (DoD). Barnett maintains that as jobs move out of the U.S. the primary export product of the nation will be "security." Global energy demand will necessitate U.S. control of the oil producing regions. "We will be fighting in Central Africa in 20 years," Barnett predicts.

In order to implement this new military vision," Barnett maintains that the U.S. military must move away from its often-competing mix of Air Force-Navy-Army-Marines toward two basic military services. One he names Leviathan, which he defines as the kick ass, wage war, special ops, and not under the purview of the international criminal court. Give us your angry, video game-playing 18-19 year olds, for the Leviathan force, Barnett says. Once a country is conquered by Leviathan, Barnett says the U.S. will have to have a second military force that he calls Systems Administration. This force he describes as the "proconsul" of the empire, boots on the ground, the police force to control the local populations. This group, Barnett says, "will never come home."

Barnett¹s plan is essentially underway today. New fast, flexible, and efficient projection forces with "lily pad" bases are now being developed for control of the gap. Over the next decade, the military will abandon 35% of the Cold War-era bases it uses abroad as it seeks to expand the network of bare-bones sites in the gap. The planned changes, once completed, will result in the most profound "reordering" of U.S. military forces overseas since the current global arrangements were set 50 years ago.

According to Michael Klare, professor of Peace Studies at Hampshire College, "American troops are now risking their lives on a daily basis to protect the flow of petroleum. In Colombia, Saudi Arabia, and the Republic of Georgia, U.S. personnel are spending their days and nights protecting pipelines and refineries, or supervising the local forces assigned to this mission."

Klare continues, "The DoD has stepped up its arms deliveries to military forces in Angola and Nigeria, and is helping to train their officers and enlisted personnel; meanwhile, Pentagon officials have begun to look for permanent bases in the area, focusing on Senegal, Ghana, Mali, Uganda and Kenya." The Wall Street Journal has reported that "a key mission for U.S. forces (in Africa) would be to ensure that Nigeria¹s oil fields, which in the future could account for as much as 25% of all U.S. oil imports, are secure."

National Guard units across the U.S. are now being assigned the task of developing on-going basing relationships with each nation on the African continent.

Role of Space Technology

The Bush administration is also exploring the possibility of expanding the emerging missile defense system into Eastern Europe as an element in the strategic containment of Russia, China and the Middle East. The Pentagon has been negotiating with Hungary, Romania, Poland and the Czech Republic about one or more of them hosting new missile defense bases. Oil-rich Iran is to be encircled by missile defense posts in Azerbaijan, Turkmenistan, Iraq, and Afghanistan.

In order to pull all of this together the Pentagon claims it will need "a God¹s-eye view" of the world. A new "internet in the sky" is now being built for the wars of the future. Costing well over $200 billion, the new web would give war machines and military forces a common language, instantly emitting an encyclopedia of lethal information about all enemies.

According to Art Cebrowski, director of the Pentagon¹s Office of Force Transformation, "What we are really talking about is a new theory of war." The military wants to know "everything of interest to us, all the time," says one Pentagon insider. Military intelligence including secret satellite surveillance covering most of the Earth will be posted on the war net and shared with troops. "The essence of net-centric warfare is our ability to deploy a war-fighting force anywhere, anytime. Information technology is the key to that."

Thus U.S. military and economic control of the gap will be dependent on a system of networked computers. Fusing weapons, secret intelligence and soldiers in a global network what the military calls net-centric warfare will, they say, change the military in a way the Internet changed business and culture.

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(Newsprint versions of Space Alert! can be ordered from: Bruce K. Gagnon Coordinator PO Box 652 Brunswick, ME 04011 (207) 729-0517 (352) 871-7554 (Cell phone) globalnet [at] mindspring.com)

(The Centre for Research on Globalization (CRG) at http://www.globalresearch.ca grants permission to cross-post original Global Research articles in their entirety, or any portions thereof, on community internet sites, as long as the text & title are not modified. The source must be acknowledged and an active URL hyperlink address of the original CRG article must be indicated. The author's copyright note must be displayed. For publication of Global Research articles in print or other forms including commercial internet sites, contact: crgeditor [at] yahoo.com

The views expressed in this article are the sole responsibility of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of Global Research. To express your opinion on this article, join the discussion at Global Research's News and Discussion Forum , at http://globalresearch.ca.myforums.net/index.php

For media inquiries: crgeditor [at] yahoo.com

© Copyright belongs to the author 2004.)

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EXCERPTS FROM THOMAS BARNETT'S BIOGRAPHY

(From http://www.thomaspmbarnett.com)

Thomas P.M. Barnett is a strategic planner who has worked in national security affairs since the end of the Cold War and has operated his own consulting practice (Barnett Consulting) since 1998. A New York Times-bestselling author and a nationally-known public speaker who's been profiled on the front-page of the Wall Street Journal, Dr. Barnett is in high demand within government circles as a forecaster of global conflict and an expert of military transformation, as well as within corporate circles as a management consultant and conference presenter on issues relating to international security and economic globalization.

...Dr. Barnett is best known as the author of The Pentagon's New Map: War and Peace in the Twenty-First Century (New York: G.P. Putnam's Sons, 2004). Described by the Council on Foreign Relations as "a tour de force," the wide-ranging volume has generated an enormous amount of reaction from around the world, leading to foreign rights already being sold in Japan, Turkey and China, as well as profiles in London's Daily Telegraph, Paris' L'Express (forthcoming), and Tokyo's Nihon Keizai Shimbun (forthcoming). Mr. Barnett's book was likewise the subject of a Book Notes show on C-SPAN (with Brian Lamb) and an On Point show on National Public Radio.

In addition to his teaching and consulting, Tom Barnett is a prolific blogger on current global events at his website http://www.thomaspmbarnett.com, where he counts among his regular readers representatives from all the major U.S. military commands, virtually all U.S. federal departments, numerous foreign governments, and major research and corporate entities the world over.

From 1998 through 2004, Prof. Barnett was a Senior Strategic Researcher and Professor in the Warfare Analysis & Research Department, Center for Naval Warfare Studies, U.S. Naval War College, Newport RI, where he taught and served--in a senior advisory role--with military and civilian leaders in the Office of the Secretary of Defense, the Joint Staff, Central Command, Special Operations Command, and Joint Forces Command. From November 2001 to June of 2003, Dr. Barnett was on temporary assignment as the Assistant for Strategic Futures, Office of Force Transformation (OFT), Office of the Secretary of Defense, where he worked with OFT Director Vice Admiral Arthur K. Cebrowski (USN, ret.) on a cluster of strategic concepts that link change in the international security environment to the imperative of transforming U.S. military capabilities to meet future threats.

...At the Naval War College, Dr. Barnett served as Director of the NewRuleSets.Project, an ambitious effort to draw new "maps" of power and influence in the world economy so as to expand the U.S. Military's--and specifically, the U.S. Navy's--vision of where and how it can wield maximum influence across the international security environment of the Era of Globalization. The first phase of the project (January 2000-October 2001) was conducted in partnership with the Wall Street broker-dealer firm Cantor Fitzgerald, which hosted three full-day "decision event" workshops atop World Trade Center 1 (Windows on the World). These workshops brought together elite leaders from the worlds of finance, national security, think tanks and industry to discuss the crucial "flows" of globalization, with a special emphasis on Developing Asia. Phase I yielded three briefings and two published reports: one on Asian Energy Futures and another on Foreign Direct Investment. The second phase of the project (November 2001-June 2003) consisted of Dr. Barnett's follow-on work with the Office of Force Transformation. Prior to this study, Dr. Barnett directed the Year 2000 International Security Dimension Project.
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