2004, ISBN: 9781464809101

Hardcover

Putnam Adult. Good. 24 x 15cm. Hardcover. 2004. 448 pages. Ex-library.<br>A former senior military analyst with t he U.S.Naval War College offers a thought-provoking analysis of t h… More...

Putnam Adult. Good. 24 x 15cm. Hardcover. 2004. 448 pages. Ex-library.<br>A former senior military analyst with t he U.S.Naval War College offers a thought-provoking analysis of t he United States and global security that utilizes recent militar y history and strategy; economic, political, and cultural factors ; and foreign policy and security issues to examine the future of war and peace, as well as America's role in the international co mmunity. 100,000 first printing. 100,000 first printing. Editori al Reviews Review This bold and important book strive s to be a practical strategy for a Second American Century. In th is brilliantly argued work, Thomas Barnett calls globalization th is countryÂ's gift to history and explains why its wide dissemina tion is critical to the security of not only America but the enti re world. As a senior military analyst for the U.S. Naval War Col lege, Barnett is intimately familiar with the culture of the Pent agon and the State Department (both of which he believes are due for significant overhauls). He explains how the Pentagon, still i n shock at the rapid dissolution of the once evil empire, spent t he 1990s grasping for a long-term strategy to replace containment . The terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, Barnett argues, re vealed the gap between an outdated Cold War-era military and a ra dically different one needed to deal with emerging threats. He be lieves that America is the prime mover in developing a future wor th creating not because of its unrivaled capacity to wage war, bu t due to its ability to ensure security around the world. Further , he believes that the U.S. has a moral responsibility to create a better world and the way he proposes to do that is by bringing all nations into the fold of globalization, or what he calls conn ectedness. Eradicating disconnectedness, therefore, is the defini ng security task of our age. His stunning predictions of a U.S. a nnexation of much of Latin America and Canada within 50 years as well as an end to war in the foreseeable future guarantee that th e book will be controversial. And that's good. The Pentagon's New Map deserves to be widely discussed. Ultimately, however, the mo st impressive aspects of the book is not its revolutionary ideas but its overwhelming optimism. Barnett wants the U.S. to pursue t he dream of global peace with the same zeal that was applied to p reventing global nuclear war with the former Soviet Union. High-l evel civilian policy makers and top military leaders are already familiar with his vision of the future?this book is a briefing fo r the rest of us and it cannot be ignored. --Shawn Carkonen From Publishers Weekly Barnett, professor at the U.S. Naval War Colle ge, takes a global perspective that integrates political, economi c and military elements in a model for the postâ?September 11 wor ld. Barnett argues that terrorism and globalization have combined to end the great-power model of war that has developed over 400 years, since the Thirty Years War. Instead, he divides the world along binary lines. An increasingly expanding Functioning Core of economically developed, politically stable states integrated int o global systems is juxtaposed to a Non-Integrating Gap, the most likely source of threats to U.S. and international security. The gap incorporates Andean South America, the Caribbean, sub-Sahara n Africa, the Middle East, Central Asia and much of southwest Asi a. According to Barnett, these regions are dangerous because they are not yet integrated into globalism's core. Until that process is complete, they will continue to lash out. Barnett calls for a division of the U.S. armed forces into two separate parts. One w ill be a quick-strike military, focused on suppressing hostile go vernments and nongovernment entities. The other will be administr atively oriented and assume responsibility for facilitating the t ransition of gap systems into the core. Barnett takes pains to de ny that implementing the new policy will establish America either as a global policeman or an imperial power. Instead, he says the policy reflects that the U.S. is the source of, and model for, g lobalization. We cannot, he argues, abandon our creation without risking chaos. Barnett writes well, and one of the book's most co mpelling aspects is its description of the negotiating, infightin g and backbiting required to get a hearing for unconventional ide as in the national security establishment. Unfortunately, marketi ng the concepts generates a certain tunnel vision. In particular, Barnett, like his intellectual models Thomas Friedman and Franci s Fukuyama, tends to accept the universality of rational-actor mo dels constructed on Western lines. There is little room in Barnet t's structures for the apocalyptic religious enthusiasm that has been contemporary terrorism's driving wheel and that to date has been indifferent to economic and political factors. That makes hi s analytical structure incomplete and more useful as an intellect ual exercise than as the guide to policy described in the book's promotional literature. Copyright ® Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. From Bookli st It has been generally recognized that the end of the cold war and the emerging threat of international terrorism presented new challenges in planning American diplomatic and military strategy. What has often been lacking is a coherent, integrated vision tha t assesses the new threats to American interests and provides a c omprehensive plan for coping with them. Barnett, a senior strateg ic researcher and professor at the U.S. Naval War College, presen ts his operating theory, which sees the principal threat to Ameri can security arising from dysfunctional or so-called failed state s, which provide fertile ground for the recruitment and sustenanc e of terrorists. On the other hand, as such past adversaries as R ussia and China are integrated into global economic and political systems, they are less threatening. To counter these threats, Ba rnett suggests some bold, even revolutionary, changes in our mili tary structure and in the dispersion and utilization of our force s. Of course, both his analyses and remedies are open to debate, but Barnett's compelling assertions are worthy of strong consider ation and are sure to provoke controversy. Jay Freeman Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved Review His w ork should be read not only by policy makers and pundits, but by anyone who wants to understand how the world works in the Age of Terror. -Sherri Goodman; Former Deputy Undersecretary of Defense Thomas Barnett is one of the most thoughtful and original think ers that this generation of national security analysts has produc ed. -John Petersen, President, the Arlington Institute Barnett puts the world into context. -Esquire About the Author Thomas P. M. Barnett is a senior adviser to the Office of the Secretary of Defense, Central Command, Special Operations Command, the Joi nt Staff and the Joint Forces Command. He formerly served as a se nior strategic researcher and professor at the U.S. Naval War Col lege and as Assistant for Strategic Futures in the OSD's Office o f Force Transformation. He is a founding partner of the New Rule Sets Project LLC, and his work has appeared in The New York Times , The Washington Post, The Christian Science Monitor, and Esquire , where he is now a contributing editor. Excerpt. ® Reprinted b y permission. All rights reserved. Preface An Operating Theory of the World WHEN THE COLD WAR : ED, we thought the world had ch anged. It had-but not in the way we thought. When the Cold War e nded, our real challenge began. The United States had spent so m uch energy during those years trying to prevent the horror of glo bal war that it forgot the dream of global peace. As far as most Pentagon strategists were concerned, America's status as the worl d's sole military superpower was something to preserve, not somet hing to exploit, and because the future was unknowable, they assu med we needed to hedge against all possibilities, all threats, an d all futures. America was better served adopting a wait-and-see strategy, they decided, one that assumed some grand enemy would a rise in the distant future. It was better than wasting precious r esources trying to manage a messy world in the near term. The gra nd strategy...was to avoid grand strategies. I know that sounds incredible, because most people assume there are all sorts of mas ter plans being pursued throughout the U.S. Government. But, amaz ingly, we are still searching for a vision to replace the decades -long containment strategy that America pursued to counter the So viet threat. Until September 11, 2001, the closest thing the Pent agon had to a comprehensive view of the world was simply to call it chaos and uncertainty, two words that implied the impossibilit y of capturing a big-picture perspective of the world's potential futures. Since September 11, at least we have an enemy to attach to all this chaos and uncertainty, but that still leaves us desc ribing horrible futures to be prevented, not positive ones to be created. Today the role of the Defense Department in U.S. nation al security is being radically reshaped by new missions arising i n response to a new international security environment. It is tem pting to view this radical redefinition of the use of U.S. milita ry power around the world as merely the work of senior officials in the Bush Administration, but that is to confuse the midwife wi th the miracle of birth. This Administration is only doing what a ny other administration would eventually have had to do: recast A merica's national security strategy from its Cold War, balance-of -power mind-set to one that reflects the new strategic environmen t. The terrorist attacks of 9/11 simply revealed the yawning gap between the military we built to win the Cold War and the differe nt one we need to build in order to secure globalization's ultima te goal-the end of war as we know it. America stands at the peak of a world historical arc that marks globalization's tipping poi nt. When we chose to resurrect the global economy following the e nd of World War II, our ambitions were at first quite limited: we sought to rebuild globalization on only three key pillars-North America, Western Europe, and Japan. After the Cold War moved beyo nd nuclear brinkmanship to peaceful coexistence, we saw that glob al economy begin to expand across the 1980s to include the so-cal led emerging markets of South America and Developing Asia. When t he Berlin Wall fell in 1989, we had a sense that a new world orde r actually was in the making, although we lacked both the words a nd the vision to enunciate what could be meant by that phrase, ot her than that the East-West divide no longer seemed to matter. In stead of identifying new rule sets in security, we chose to recog nize the complete lack of one, and therefore, as regional securit y issues arose in the post-Cold War era, America responded withou t any global principles to guide its choices. Sometimes we felt o thers' pain and responded, sometimes we simply ignored it. Ameri ca could behave in this fashion because the boom times of the new economy suggested that security issues could take a backseat to the enormous changes being inflicted by the Information Revolutio n. If we were looking for a new operating theory of the world, su rely this was it. Connectivity would trump all, erasing the busin ess cycle, erasing national borders, erasing the very utility of the state in managing a global security order that seemed more vi rtual than real. What was the great global danger as the new mill ennium approached? It was a software bug that might bring down th e global information grid. What role did the Pentagon play in thi s first-ever, absolutely worldwide security event-this defining m oment of the postindustrial age? Virtually none. So America drif ted through the roaring nineties, blissfully unaware that globali zation was speeding ahead with no one at the wheel. The Clinton A dministration spent its time tending to the emerging financial an d technological architecture of the global economy, pushing world wide connectivity for all it was worth in those heady days, assum ing that eventually it would reach even the most disconnected soc ieties. Did we as a nation truly understand the political and sec urity ramifications of encouraging all this connectivity? Could w e understand how some people might view this process of cultural assimilation as a mortal threat? As something worth fighting agai nst? Was a clash of civilizations inevitable? Amazingly, the U.S . military engaged in more crisis-response activity around the wo rld in the 1990s than in any previous decade of the Cold War, yet no national vision arose to explain our expanding role. Globaliz ation seemed to be remaking the world, but meanwhile the U.S. mil itary seemed to be doing nothing more than babysitting chronic se curity situations on the margin. Inside the Pentagon, these crisi s responses were exclusively filed under the new rubric military operations other than war, as if to signify their lack of strateg ic meaning. The Defense Department spent the 1990s ignoring its o wn workload, preferring to plot out its future transformation for future wars against future opponents. America was not a global c op, but at best a global fireman pointing his hose at whichever b laze seemed most eye-catching at the moment. We were not trying t o make the world safe for anything; we just worked to keep these nasty little blazes under control. America was hurtling forward w ithout looking forward. In nautical terms, we were steering by ou r wake. Yet a pattern did emerge with each American crisis respo nse in the 1990s. These deployments turned out to be overwhelming ly concentrated in the regions of the world that were effectively excluded from globalization's Functioning Core-namely, the Carib bean Rim, Africa, the Balkans, the Caucasus, Central Asia, the Mi ddle East and Southwest Asia, and much of Southeast Asia. These r egions constitute globalization's ozone hole, or what I call its Non-Integrating Gap, where connectivity remains thin or absent. S imply put, if a country was losing out to globalization or reject ing much of its cultural content flows, there was a far greater c hance that the United States would end up sending troops there at some point across the 1990s. But because the Pentagon viewed all these situations as lesser includeds, there was virtually no reb alancing of the U.S. military to reflect the increased load. We k new we ne, Putnam Adult, 2004, 2.5, Random House Trade Paperbacks. Very Good. 5.43 x 0.95 x 8.18 inches. Paperback. 1998. 448 pages. <br>From the author of the masterpiece All Quiet on th e Western Front, The Black Obelisk is a classic novel of the trou bling aftermath of World War I in Germany. A hardened young vete ran from the First World War, Ludwig now works for a monument com pany, selling stone markers to the survivors of deceased loved on es. Though ambivalent about his job, he suspects there's more to life than earning a living off other people's misfortunes. A sel f-professed poet, Ludwig soon senses a growing change in his fath erland, a brutality brought upon it by inflation. When he falls i n love with the beautiful but troubled Isabelle, Ludwig hopes he has found a soul who will offer him salvation--who will free him from his obsession to find meaning in a war-torn world. But there comes a time in every man's life when he must choose to live--de spite the prevailing thread of history horrifically repeating its elf. The world has a great writer in Erich Maria Remarque. He is a craftsman of unquestionably first rank, a man who can bend lan guage to his will. Whether he writes of men or of inanimate natur e, his touch is sensitive, firm, and sure.--The New York Times Bo ok Review Editorial Reviews Review The world has a great writer in Erich Maria Remarque. He is a craftsman of unquestionably fir st rank, a man who can bend language to his will. Whether he writ es of men or of inanimate nature, his touch is sensitive, firm, a nd sure.--The New York Times Book Review From the Inside Flap EL ISK A hardened young veteran from the First World War, Ludwig no w works for a monument company, selling marble and stone marks to the survivors of deceased loved ones. Though ambivalent about hi s job, he suspects there's more to life than earning a living off other people's misfortunes. A self-professed poet, Ludwig soon senses a growing change in his fatherland, a brutality brought up on by inflation. When he falls in love with the beautiful but tro ubled Isabelle, Ludwig hopes he has found a soul who will offer h im salvation--who will free him from his obsession to find meanin g in a war-torn world. But there comes a time in every man's life when he must choose to live--despite the prevailing threat of hi story horrifically repeating itself. . . . From the Back Cover T HE BLACK OBELISK A hardened young veteran from the First World W ar, Ludwig now works for a monument company, selling marble and s tone marks to the survivors of deceased loved ones. Though ambiva lent about his job, he suspects there's more to life than earning a living off other people's misfortunes. A self-professed poet, Ludwig soon senses a growing change in his fatherland, a brutali ty brought upon by inflation. When he falls in love with the beau tiful but troubled Isabelle, Ludwig hopes he has found a soul who will offer him salvation--who will free him from his obsession t o find meaning in a war-torn world. But there comes a time in eve ry man's life when he must choose to live--despite the prevailing threat of history horrifically repeating itself. . . . About th e Author Erich Maria Remarque, who was born in Germany, was draft ed into the German army during World War I. Through the hazardous years following the war he worked at many occupations: schooltea cher, small-town drama critic, race-car driver, editor of a sport s magazine. His first novel, All Quiet on the Western Front, was published in Germany in 1928. A brilliant success, selling more t han a million copies, it was the first of many literary triumphs. When the Nazis came to power, Remarque left Germany for Switzerl and. He rejected all attempts to persuade him to return, and as a result he lost his German citizenship, his books were burned, an d his films banned. He went to the United States in 1938 and beca me a citizen in 1947. He later lived in Switzerland with his seco nd wife, the actress Paulette Goddard. He died in September 1970. Excerpt. ® Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved. Chapte r One the sun is shining in the office of Heinrich Kroll and Son s, Funeral Monuments. It is April, 1923, and business is good. Th e first quarter has been lively; we have made brilliant sales and grown poor in the process, but what can we do? Death is inelucta ble, and such is human sorrow that it demands memorials of sandst one, marble, or even, when the sense of guilt or the inheritance is large, of costly black Swedish granite polished on all sides. Autumn and spring are the best seasons for dealers in the appurte nances of grief--­more people die then than in summer or winter: in autumn because the sap has dried up, and in spring because it mounts and consumes the weakened body like too large a wick in to o thin a candle. That at least is the conviction of our most acti ve agent, Liebermann, the gravedigger at the municipal cemetery. And he ought to know: he is eighty years old, has buried upward o f ten thousand corpses, has bought a house on the river and a tro ut hatchery with his commissions on tombstones and, through his p rofession, has become an enlightened brandy drinker. The one thin g he hates is the city crematorium. It is unfair competition. We do not like it either. There is no profit in urns. I look at the clock. It is a little before twelve, and since today is Saturday I prepare to close up. I slam the metal cover over the typewrite r, carry the Presto mimeograph machine behind the curtain, clear away the stone samples, and take the photographic prints of war m emorials and artistic funeral monuments out of the fixing bath. I am the advertising manager, draftsman, and bookkeeper for the fi rm; in fact, for a year now I have been the sole office employee in what is, after all, not even my own profession. With anticipa tion I take a cigar out of the drawer. It is a black Brazilian. T he salesman for the Württemberg Metal Works gave it to me this mo rning with the intention of foisting off on me later a consignmen t of bronze wreaths; so it is a good cigar. I look for a match, b ut as usual they have been mislaid. Fortunately a small fire is b urning in the Dutch oven. I roll up a ten-­mark bill, hold it in the flame and light the cigar with it. At the end of April there is no longer any real need for a fire in the oven; it is just a s elling aid devised by my employer Georg Kroll. He believes that i n time of sorrow when people have to hand out money they do it mo re willingly in a warm room than when they are cold. Sorrow in it self is a chilling of the soul, and if you add cold feet, it is h ard to extract a decent price. Warmth has a thawing effect--­even on the purse. Therefore our office is overheated, and our repres entatives have it dinned into them as an overriding principle nev er to attempt to close a sale in the cemetery when it is cold or rainy, but always in a warm room and, if possible, after a meal. Sorrow, cold, and hunger are bad business partners. I throw the remnant of the ten-­mark bill into the oven and stand up. At the same instant I hear a window thrown open in the house opposite. I don't need to look around to know what is going on. Cautiously I bend over the table as though I still had something to do to the typewriter. At the same time I peep into a little hand mirror wh ich I have so arranged that I can observe the window. As usual it is Lisa, wife of Watzek, the horse butcher, standing there naked , yawning and stretching. She has just got up. The street is old and narrow; Lisa can see us and we can see her and she knows it; that is why she is standing there. Suddenly a quirk appears in he r big mouth; she laughs, showing all her teeth, and points at the mirror. Her eagle eye has spied it. I am annoyed at being caught but act as though I had not noticed and retreat to the back of t he room in a cloud of smoke. After a while I return. Lisa grins. I glance out, but not at her; instead I pretend to wave at someon e in the street. As an extra flourish I throw a kiss into the voi d. Lisa falls for it; she is as inquisitive as a goat. She bends forward to see who is there. No one is there. Now I grin. She ges tures angrily at her forehead with one finger and disappears. I don't really know why I carry on this comedy. Lisa is what is cal led a terrific figure of a woman, and I know a lot of people who would gladly pay a couple of million to enjoy such a spectacle ev ery morning. I, too, enjoy it, but nevertheless it irritates me t hat this lazy toad, who never climbs out of bed until noon, is so shamelessly certain of her effect. It would never occur to her t hat there might be men who would not instantly want to sleep with her. Besides, the question does not even greatly interest her. S he only stands at the window with her black pony tail and her imp ertinent nose and swings her first-­class Carrara marble breasts like an aunt waving a rattle in front of a baby. If she had a cou ple of toy balloons she would happily wave them; it is all the sa me to her. Since she is naked, she waves her breasts; she is just completely happy to be alive and to know that all men must be cr azy about her, and then she forgets the whole thing and goes to w ork on her breakfast with her voracious mouth. Meanwhile, Watzek, the horse butcher, is slaughtering tired old carriage nags. Lis a appears again. Now she is wearing a false mustache and is besid e herself at this witty inspiration. She gives a military salute, and I assume that she is so shameless as to have her eye on old Knopf, the retired sergeant major whose house is next door. But t hen I remember that Knopf's bedroom window opens on the court. An d Lisa is artful enough to know that she cannot be observed from the few other neighboring houses. Suddenly, as though a reservoi r of sound has burst its dike, the bells of St. Mary's begin to r ing. The church stands at the end of our alley, and the strokes r esound as though they fell straight from heaven into our room. At the same time I see outside the other office window, the one tha t faces on the court, my employer's bald head gliding by like a g hostly melon. Lisa makes a rude gesture and shuts her window. The daily temptation of Saint Anthony has been withstood once more. Georg Kroll is barely forty, but his head is already as shiny as the bowling alley at Boll's Garden Restaurant. It has been shiny as long as I have known him, and that is over five years. It is so shiny that when we were in the trenches, where we belonged to the same regiment, a special order was issued that even at the qu ietest times Georg had to wear his steel helmet--­such would have been the temptation, for even the kindliest of enemies, to find out by a shot whether or not his head was a giant billiard ball. I pull myself together and report: Company Headquarters, Kroll a nd Sons! Staff engaged in enemy observation. Suspicious troop mov ements in the Watzek sector. Aha, Georg says. Lisa at her mornin g gymnastics. Get a move on, Lance Corporal Bodmer. Why don't you wear blinders in the morning like the drummer's horse in a caval ry band and thus protect your virtue? Don't you know what the thr ee most precious things in life are? How should I know that, Att orney General, when life itself is what I'm still searching for? Virtue, simplicity, and youth, Georg announces. Once lost, never to be regained! And what is more useless than experience, age, a nd barren intelligence? Poverty, sickness, and loneliness, I rep ly, standing at ease. Those are just different names for experie nce, age, and misguided intelligence. Georg takes the cigar out of my mouth. He examines it briefly and classifies it like a butt erfly. Booty from the metalworks. He takes a beautifully clouded , golden-­brown meerschaum cigar holder out of his pocket, fits t he Brazilian into it and goes on smoking. I have nothing against your requisitioning the cigar, I say. It is naked force, and tha t's all you noncoms know about life. But why the cigar holder? I' m not syphilitic. And I'm not homosexual. Georg, I say, in the war you used my spoon to eat pea soup whenever I could steal it f rom the canteen. And the spoon stayed in my dirty boot and was ne ver washed. Georg examines the ash of the Brazilian. It is snow white. The war was four and a half years ago, he informs me. At t hat time infinite misery made us human. Today the shameless lust for gain has made us robbers again. To keep this secret we use th e varnish of convention. Ergo! Isn't there still another Brazilia n? The metalworks never tries to bribe an employee with just one. I take the second cigar out of the drawer and hand it to him. Y ou know everything! Intelligence, experience, and age seem to be good for something after all. He grins and gives me in return a half-­empty package of cigarettes. Anything else been happening? he asks. Not a thing. No customers. But I must urgently request a raise. What, again? You got one only yesterday! Not yesterday . This morning at nine o'clock. A miserable ten thousand marks. H owever, it was still worth something at nine this morning. Now th e new dollar exchange rate has been posted and instead of a new t ie all I can buy is a bottle of cheap wine. But what I need is a tie. Where does the dollar stand now? Thirty-­six thousand mark s at noon today. This morning it was thirty-­three thousand. Geo rg Kroll examines his cigar. Thirty-­six thousand! It's a rat rac e. Where will it end? In a wholesale crash. Meanwhile we have to live. Did you get some money? Only a small suitcaseful for toda y and tomorrow. Thousands, ten thousands, even a couple of packag es of hundreds. Something like five pounds of paper money. The in flation is moving so fast that the Reichsbank can't print money r apidly enough to keep up with it. The new hundred-­thousand bills were only issued two weeks ago--­soon we'll need million-­mark n otes. When will we be in the billions? If it goes on like this, in a couple of months. My God! Georg sighs. Where are the fine p eaceful times of 1922? Then the dollar only rose from two hundred fifty to ten thousand in a whole year. Not to mention 1921--­whe n it went up a beggarly three hundred per cent. I look out the w indow toward the street. Now Lisa is standing across the way in a printed silk dressing gown decorated with parrots. She has put a mirror on the window ledge and is brushing her mane. Look at th at, I say bitterly. She sows not neither does she reap, and our F, Random House Trade Paperbacks, 1998, 3, Maxwell Air Force Base, Alabama: USAF Counterproliferation Center, 2002. Presumed First Edition, First printing. Wraps. Good. [6], iv, 31, [3] pages. Cover has some wear and soiling. Includes Acknowledgments, Abstract, and Introduction. Topics covered include The Virus; Possible Terrorists; Foot-and-Mouth Disease's Appeal as a Weapon of Choice; The U.S. As A Target; Today's Response; Work Remains in Countering Agroterrorist Threats; Conclusions; and Notes. Major Mike Peterson is a U.S. Air Force Aviator assigned to Headquarters Air Combat Command, Battle Management Operations Division, Langley AFB, VA. He graduated from the United States Air Force Academy in 1987 with a Bachelor of Science degree, and the Ohio State University in 1995 with a Master of Arts degree in Military History. He earned his navigator wings in 1988 and has had flying assignments in both U.S. and NATO E-3 AWACS squadrons. Major Peterson also served a tour at the U.S. Air Force Academy as an Assistant Professor and Course Director in the Military Arts and Sciences Department. He is a 2001 graduate of the Air Command and Staff College, Maxwell AFB, AL. Since the mass casualty terrorist attacks of Al Qaeda against the World Trade Center towers and the Pentagon, subsequent anthrax attacks, and with the gradual proliferation of weapons of mass destruction (WMD), the U.S. Government has been galvanized into action to provide greater homeland security against a terrorist WMD attack on a major U.S. city or other assets. Until just recently, however, the government ignored the threat of a possible terrorist attack on another key sector of the U.S economy, U.S. farms and feedlots. Agroterrorism," a concept foreign to the average citizen, is a serious threat that could cripple the agricultural industry, destroy consumer confidence, and cause billions of dollars of damage to the U.S. and world economy. While the U.S. has begun to acknowledge this growing agroterrorist threat, there is a great amount of defensive work to be done. In particular, there is one major threat that needs immediate attention, before it is too late - the defense against a possible foot-and-mouth disease (FMD) attack. Foot-and-mouth disease, one of the most contagious viruses known, might be the perfect weapon for an agroterrorism attack. To understand this problem, it is important to first examine the FMD virus in detail and to discuss the types of terrorists or states that might be interested in using foot-and-mouth disease against U.S. livestock. Also, in order to develop an effective response, we should understand the characteristics that make FMD an extremely important threat and why the U.S. is especially vulnerable. Finally, it is useful, indeed essential, to explore the responsemechanisms in place today to handle a FMD outbreak and to make recommendations for future improvements. Such an analysis will make clear the need for immediate increased funding, and heightened awareness and participation at the federal, state, and local levels. Such measures are imperative if the United States plans to avoid a disaster similar to the one that devastated the United Kingdom countryside in 2001., USAF Counterproliferation Center, 2002, 2.5, New. Over 60 million people are currently displaced due to conflict or violence, and about 140 million are exposed to natural disasters. As part of humanitarian responses to those affected populations, growing attention is paid to cash transfers as a form of assistance. Cash is being strongly advocated by several actors, and for good reasons: they have the potential to provide choice, empower people, and spark economic multipliers. But what is their comparative performance relative to in-kind transfers? Are there objectives for which there are particular evidence gaps? And what should be considered when choosing between those forms of assistance? This paper is one of the first reviews examining those questions across humanitarian sectors and in relation to multiple forms of assistance, including cash, vouchers, and in-kind assistance (food and non-food). These were assessed based on solid impact evaluations and through the lens of food security, nutrition, livelihoods, health, education, and shelter objectives. The paper finds that there is large variance in the availability of comparative evidence across sectors. This ranges from areas where evidence is substantial (i.e., food security) to realms where it is limited (i.e., nutrition) or where not a single comparative evaluation was available (i.e., health, education, and shelter). Where evidence is substantial, data shows that the effectiveness of cash and in-kind transfers is similar on average. In terms of costs, cash is generally more efficient to delivery. However, overall costs would hinge on the scale of interventions, crisis context, procurement practices, and a range of 'hidden costs'. In other words, the appropriateness of transfers cannot be predetermined and should emerge from response analysis that considers program objectives, the level of market functionality, predicted cost-effectiveness, implementation capacity, the management of key risks such as on protection and gender, political economy, beneficiary preferences, and resource availability. Finally, it seems possible (and necessary) to reconcile humanitarian imperatives with solid research to inform decision-making, especially on dimensions beyond food security., 6<

2016, ISBN: 9781464809101

World Bank Group Publications, Taschenbuch, 51 Seiten, Publiziert: 2016-09-12T00:00:01Z, Produktgruppe: Buch, 0.3 kg, Recht, Kategorien, Bücher, Sozialwissenschaft, Wachstum, Wirtschaft, … More...

World Bank Group Publications, Taschenbuch, 51 Seiten, Publiziert: 2016-09-12T00:00:01Z, Produktgruppe: Buch, 0.3 kg, Recht, Kategorien, Bücher, Sozialwissenschaft, Wachstum, Wirtschaft, Business & Karriere, Sozialarbeit, Gesellschaft, Politik & Geschichte, World Bank Group Publications, 2016<

ISBN: 9781464809101

Paperback, [PU: World Bank Publications], People affected by humanitarian crises are in need of support, but what form of assistance is more suitable? Giving people money can be important… More...

Paperback, [PU: World Bank Publications], People affected by humanitarian crises are in need of support, but what form of assistance is more suitable? Giving people money can be important, but there are also merits in providing in-kind assistance such as food and shelter. Why and where to use one form of aid or the other is the matter of this paper., Agriculture & Farming<

2016, ISBN: 9781464809101

the comparative evidence of cash and in-kind transfers in humanitarian situations, Buch, Softcover, [PU: World Bank Publications], World Bank Publications, 2016

2016, ISBN: 9781464809101

World Bank, 2016. Paperback. New. 51 pages. 10.00x7.00x0.25 inches., World Bank, 2016, 6