This is a tale of the present and the future, where nation states fall into two basic categories: A) The politically stable, technologically developed, globalized, economically interconnected states – the Core, and B) the politically unstable, underdeveloped or even non-developed, non-globally connected states – the Gap. Who cares?, you might ask. Well, as Thomas Barnett writes in Esquire Magazine:
If we draw a line around the majority of [US] military interventions, we have basically mapped the Non-Integrating Gap. Obviously, there are outliers excluded geographically by this simple approach, such as an Israel isolated in the Gap, a North Korea adrift within the Core, or a Philippines straddling the line. But looking at the data, it is hard to deny the essential logic of the picture: If a country is either losing out to globalization or rejecting much of the content flows associated with its advance, there is a far greater chance that the U.S. will end up sending forces at some point. Conversely, if a country is largely functioning within globalization, we tend not to have to send our forces ambienbuy there to restore order to eradicate threats.