A VISION OF A FUTURE WORTH CREATING: REVIEWING BLUEPRINT FOR ACTION
Blueprint For Action by Thomas P.M. Barnett. G.P. Putnam’s Sons. Penguin Group. New York, New York . 2005
” Unite with your allies on intersecting ground”
– Sun Tzu, The Art of War
“One day you will come to a fork in the road. And you’re going to have to make a decision about what direction you want to go. If you go that way you can be somebody. You will have to make compromises and you will have to turn your back on your friends. But you will be a member of the club and you will get promoted and you will get good assignments. Or you can go that way and you can do something – something for your country and for your Air Force and for yourself. If you decide to do something, you may not get promoted and you may not get the good assignments and you certainly will not be a favorite of your superiors. But you won’t have to compromise yourself. You will be true to your friends and to yourself. And your work might make a difference. To be somebody or to do something. In life there is often a roll call. That’s when you will have to make a decision. To be or to do? Which way will you go?”
– Colonel John Boyd, The ” To Be or to Do” speech.
” Harvard, as it happens, is the perfect finishing school when it comes to working for the government. Because in Washington the only way to stand out when you are surrounded by thousands of people just like you is to tear down their ideas. The problem is, in that vision-hostile environment it is almost impossible to come up with any stories with happy endings – as I like to call strategic visions. That’s because no one in Washington is really interested in your happy ending; they all obsess about preventing what they are certain will be the disastrous outcome of your ill-conceived plan. So if you want to get ahead or get noticed, you learn to excel at this pack dog mentality, and you bury whatever dreams you had of proposing something different or better. This is why we do not have any real leaders in Washington anymore, just investigations.”
– Thomas P.M. Barnett, The Pentagon’s New Map
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