Thomas P.M. Barnett Quotes
America has remained highly engaged in global affairs throughout decades of growing energy dependency, so it's hard to imagine it would disengage if its quest for energy self-sufficiency failed - especially amidst a world of heightened resource competition.
Barnett, Thomas P.M. "The New Rules." World Politics Review, World Politics Review LLC, 2012.
Actually, there were several purposes in the legislation creating the Department of Energy, albeit energy independence was one of the primary ones. However, the Department’s activities have been controlled by Congress and the various administrations. Neither of these two branches of our government has been willing to allow and/or require the Energy Department to do what is necessary to obtain energy independence, Each step in that direction is opposed by powerful interests and so this has been gridlocked.
Thomas P.M. Barnett (born 1962) is an American military geostrategist and former chief analyst at Wikistrat. He developed a geopolitical theory that divided the world into "the Functioning Core" and the "Non-Integrating Gap" that made him particularly notable prior to the 2003 U.S. Invasion of Iraq when he wrote an article for Esquire in support of the military action entitled "The Pentagon's New Map" (which would later become the title of a book that would elaborate on his geopolitical theories). The central thesis of his geopolitical theory is that the connections the globalization brings between countries (including network connectivity, financial transactions, and media flows) are synonymous with those countries with stable governments, rising standards of living, and "more deaths by suicide than by murder". These countries form the Functioning Core. These regions contrast with those where globalization has not yet penetrated, which is synonymous with political repression, poverty, disease, and mass-murder, and conflict. These areas make up the Non-Integrating Gap.
