Reviews for Successful Focus Groups, Vol. 156

The average rating for Successful Focus Groups, Vol. 156 based on 2 reviews is 3 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2012-05-06 00:00:00 Howard Cohan Get your copy now, read it, and pray to Odin that somebody running the government reads it. The book claims to be a "grand strategy" look at how America has, is, and should be interacting with the world vis-a-vis globalization, and as such presents a view of America that anyone outside of author Thomas P.M. Barnett's brain is likely unaware. Barnett's central premise is that the United States created globalization locally and exported it world-wide as a more-or-less genetically-required facet of America. That is, America and Americans are inherently called to the wilderness - albeit real or metaphorical - and when we get there, we start changing the landscape to suit our needs. Improving things, if you will, out of a desire to make profit and create co-dependents. This is a good thing, because in creating these new relationships and changing the scenery we improve the world and make it safer. One of the most interesting parts of the book is the hundred or so pages he devotes to re-interpreting American history through the lens of globalization, and showing what and how various presidents did to further the business interests of America. I'm fairly certain none of the presidents thought they were doing what Barnett says they were doing, but there's no doubt they did what they did, and the results happened. But the thrilling part of this section of the book is that someone - Barnett - is able to take a concept - globalization - and retrofit it onto how America turned into America and have it make sense in a positive way. Barnett is not another in an endless line of anti-American historians looking to rewrite America's past to show how bad we were/are, he's a pro-American writer trying to show how and why we are so good at what we do - being Americans, leading the way forward (in almost every facet of human life) and fostering peace and democracy. At the core of his book is the story of how America created a system of networking nearly every facet of life together into a uniform tapestry onto which anybody with any interest could sew something new. The world was no longer a top-down dictation from the elites; anybody could participate. All you had to do was show up with your idea and make a case for it. If people saw value in the newer mousetrap, you became a success; otherwise, it was back to the drawing board. Once America perfected this system within its own borders, it exported it as a natural extension of finding new markets and business partners. Over time, we changed every place we came in contact with because of the relentless nature of our version of globalization: seduction not coercion. You want the newest new bauble, and we want sell it to you, and in creating that dynamic, there no longer was a need to conquer you and take your stuff from you. And, vice versa. Now, other countries are perfectly copying this system and exporting it on their own, networking themselves into an ever-expanding system of inter-connected nations and business models. For example, China is doing to Africa now what we did to China 40 years ago: introducing menial jobs for to-us low pay that will generate wealth there and create a middle class that will rise up and demand political reformation, running water, electricity, air-conditioning, and all of the other things anybody born in America takes for granted, including clean clothes, fresh food, and an infinite variety of flavored beverages available at the corner convenience store. This all takes time, however, and Barnett argues that time is on our side. And their side. Indeed, everyone wins if nobody gets an itchy trigger finger. [Of course, Barnett doesn't offer any arguments about how the various socialists, fascists, communists, environmentalists and other ists are going to fight mightily to prevent all this or harness it to an ideology not exactly friendly to the outcomes of globalization] The Bush arguments are largely centered around the notion that George W. reacted incorrectly to the Sept. 11 attacks and that he been a bit more Vulcan, he'd have realized that such attacks are the natural result of a society/culture going through the initial death throes that globalization brings to primitive and backwards regions of the planet. As such, Bush should've responded more rationally, rather than trying to impose peace and democracy on Afghanistan and Iraq by conventional war methods, because the repercussions through the world worked against us and our version of globalization, allowing other "rule sets" to emerge to challenge us. This seems a little to pat for me, as I think we needed to scare the hell out of these cave-dwelling monsters as well as kill as many of them off as quickly as possible to keep them from succeeding again at killing another couple thousand of us. But, I can see Barnett's point and it's not dismissible. In essence, Barnett argues that those who are living in the poorest, least-developed areas of the world will naturally see the coming of globalization as a threat to their ancestral, time-honored ways of living. Patriarchal societies will despair the empowerment of females, young men will feel their blood run cold at the realization they will not rule the roost and dominate the future, that they will have to share and, in the end, submit to the idea that in some ways, women will be in charge. Just like what happened to America in the 1950s-70s. If there's one major flaw in the book, it's that Barnett has consumed many gallons of Anthropogenic Global Warming Kool-Aid and lets it influence many of his arguments about how the shape of things will come. He takes it as read that the world will warm up, coastlines will change and people will move as a result, creating new dynamics. He spends no words detailing what will happen should the world cool - as it has been doing for the last decade - or what will happen if the global climate just cools and warms in cycles as it has for the entire history of the planet. This facet of the book alone can be frustrating because it means that Barnett is also likely influenced by a whole host of other default-leftist thinking points (the page or two about recent Nobel Prize awards comes to mind), but if so, they don't emerge to contaminate his grand strategic idea, that the continuation of globalization is a good thing for America and the world. I'd like to know how Barnett sees the Obama agenda affecting his grand strategy, because if he thought Bush sent the whole globalization agenda down a wrong tangent, Barnett almost assuredly must think that Obama is going to work against globalization to some extent, since hardcore leftists almost always think that "Americanizing" the planet is a bad thing, since other cultures are "authentic" and "pure" and American culture is a despicable, planet-ruining thing. Barnett provides a wealth of evidence that this is not the case, that American culture is the importation of the best of other cultures, not the destruction of them. This book should be required reading for anybody seeking elective office if only because it explains what America is up to in a way that is easily digestible. And, if you want a new, fresh, interesting way of looking at the America you think you know, this will open your eyes and give you a glimpse into a parallel reality that is not separate, but intertwined with the American history you already know.

Review # 2 was written on 2019-02-16 00:00:00 Gregg Ovist Although this does not spell out exactly as a trilogy by the author - Barnett, it sort of is as a synthesis of his first two books - "The Pentagon's New Map" and "Blueprint for Action". This was not an easy read, unlike his first two books. A lot of what he said before was repeated here and repeated over and over again I felt. I will say that synthesizing American military coda into "Americanism-cum-globalization" was erudite and refreshing. This book also analyzes the Bush Administration's entry and bungling of Iraq and Afghanistan before delving into American global and economic future after Bush (book was written in 2009). I felt based on Barnett's first two books, his highly critical perspective on Bush's administration war efforts in this particular book although correct was hypocritical based on his grand strategy he presented in 2004 and 2005 respectively. I will leave to each of you to determine this if you so chose in reading Barnett. He is nonetheless as David Ignatius of the Washington Post states, "one of the most influential defense intellectuals writing these days. A combination of Thomas Friedman on globalization and Carl von Klausewitz on war." Touche, there is much to gain from his writing but you've got to be patient as it's long winded before he concludes it as he does very well at the end of each of the books in this "trilogy".