Thomas P.M. Barnett Quotes & Sayings

“We need to remind ourselves that our ultimate goal is not to reduce greenhouse gases or global warming per se but to improve the quality of life and the environment. We all want to leave the planet in decent shape for our kids. Radically reducing greenhouse gas emissions is not necessarily the best way to achieve that.”

“The Marines are like my West Highland Terrier. They get up every morning, they want to dig a hole, and they want to kill something.”

“Some Western demographers have posited, due to the female shortage created by the one-child policy, that China will be forced to field a vast force - as in tens of millions strong - of wifeless men who'll gladly wage wars around the planet to burn off all those unrequited hormones.”

“The Air Force has it far worse than the Navy in terms of existential fears, primarily due to the rapid rise and unbelievable dissemination of drones, where seemingly now every military unit has their own miniature air wing of what would have recently passed as toys.”

“The Department of Homeland Security is a strategic feel good measure. It's going to be the Department of Agriculture for the 21st century. TSA - thousands standing around.”

“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.”

“So long as the global economy continues to recover, that remains Obama's No. 1 claim to successful leadership. Nothing else even comes close.”

“An economically confident America has - since becoming a world power at the start of the 20th century - tended toward global engagement. It is during times of economic stress (1930s, 1970s) that America has become more withdrawn.”

“In the end, for all of Obama's grand rhetoric on ridding the world of nuclear weapons, history has doomed him to preside over the emergence of two rogue nuclear regimes (North Korea and Iran).”

“An Obama administration truly looking to break with the molds of the past would stop treating Africa as an obligation and start treating it as globalization's next great opportunity, understanding that Chinese - along with Indians and Arab sovereign wealth funds - are natural partners in this process.”