When the going gets weird, the weird turn pro. - Hunter S. Thompson

26 October 2005

NPR : Thomas P.M. Barnett's 'Blueprint for Action'

Being a non-car-owning Manhattanite, one of the things I don't do much any more is listen to drive-time radio.

Since I'm in Raleigh at the moment, driving a rental car around, I was checking out NPR's "Morning Edition" today and heard an interview with Thomas P.M. Barnett, who has a new book ("Blueprint for Action") out.

The interview is available at the NPR site in RealAudio and Windows Media format, and it's short and well worth a listen. Barnett is his usual provocative, rhetorical-bomb-throwing self. A sample, and I'm paraphrasing, not quoting: Barnett observes that America's most successful nation-building experience of all time has arguably been the Kurdish autonomous zone of northern Iraq. We gave them air cover for 15 years, didn't ask anything specific of them, and they've created a functioning state.

Check the interview out.

(And having enjoyed The Pentagon's New Map and learned a lot from it, I've ordered Blueprint For Action as well.)

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