Finally someone that has actually bothered to think about how to make world peace a reality. His name is Thomas Barnett and he gave an awesome presentation at TED. His wikipedia entry states this:

The group also noticed that globalization has caused a fairly common rule set to be shared between a great many countries around the world. States that have benefitted from globalization and begun to share in the wealth and prosperity associated with that are also losing interest in waging war with one another. Participants in the project noticed that once the per capita income of a country increases to about US$3000 per year, war essentially disappears. There are a few places where this hasn’t exactly been the case, but it seems to largely hold true for now.

Another interesting thing to note was that, of U.S. military deployments around the world since 1990, virtually all have taken place in countries that do not meet that level of income. Examining the regions more thoroughly, it was also noted that the countries have very little flow of people, information, or investment money across their borders. This all leads to the idea of these countries being “disconnected” from the outside world, running on rule sets that are different from that of globalized societies.

Barnett has termed the globalized countries the “Functioning Core,” or simply “the Core.” The other countries are part of the “Non-Integrating Gap,” or simply “the Gap.” The Gap has been shrinking as globalization has expanded. Since most terrorists seem to come from the Gap, he believes that the American military should focus on building partnerships with “seam states,” countries bordering the Gap, to stabilize those regions. Stable states would bring more investment and more connectedness with the outside world, therefore progressively shrinking the Gap. The end result of all of this, if it proves to be successful, would be nothing less than the end of interstate warfare on the planet, and probably a significant reduction in intrastate warfare and other problems like terrorism.

You want actual world peace? In countries that are capable you assist the development of free markets and democracy. In more intractable countries you invade and start from scratch forming a democratic free markets system. Any other solution for world peace, like Obama’s solution to just sit down and listen, is simply bullshit.

Check out his presentation at TED:

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