Quotes from Thomas P.M. Barnett

Homeland defense doesn't generate any force requirements beyond having enough National Guard to save lives in natural disasters and to baby-sit nuclear power plants on Code Red days.

Great powers reserve the right to police bad actors in their neighborhoods.

Barack Obama inherited a bankrupt economy, a bankrupt government, and a bankrupt foreign policy.

Despite living in this post-9/11 age of transnational terrorism, the risk of death during air travel has plummeted to the point where we now measure it in the 'per billions' of passengers.

Having grown up on 'Star Trek,' I've had one great dream since childhood, and that is to see my life end somewhere other than here on Earth.

China's headlong rush to industrialize was pursued with the most Marxist of prejudices - bending nature to man's will. That's a desperately hard trick to pull off when one fifth of humanity, having previously subsisted on 7 percent of the world's freshwater supply, decides that it wants to instantaneously increase its caloric intake.

You can't drag people from understanding to action. A customer isn't actually at the last mile if you're the one dragging her to the finish line.

During the cold war, it was easy for the Pentagon to justify its budget, as the Soviets essentially sized our forces for us. We simply counted up their stuff and either bought more of the same or upgraded our technology.

Women waited 144 years before earning suffrage. If a mature, multiparty democracy was so darn easy, everybody would have one.

Wikistrat is my ninth start-up, so I've been through this process a few times. You have to go with what works. The power of example is compelling, so model the ideas that you want someone to understand.

I have long argued that, if China and the United States were interested in pursuing a strategic partnership, Africa is the best place to start, as neither enters the situation with past colonial baggage, and both possess interests that are quite complementary.

To ask a country with 750 million people living on less than a dollar a day to optimize their development for the environment as opposed to getting food in the mouths of these people and giving them a decent lifestyle, that's just a little bit too much to ask.

Crafty politician that he is, Obama was smart enough to set low enough standards for his administration to claim 'victory' by the summer of 2011 or so.