Conclusion

Looking now at your career, your intellectual odyssey, when you were talking about your early background, you started with a concern with rule sets; and that's where you've ended up.

Well, a strict Catholic upbringing, and the Catholic Church in general, certainly engenders a certain focus on rules. No meat on Friday and Mass every Sunday!

But you also said you were defending the rules on the playground, I think I heard you say.

Yes. Well, again, I had two parents who were lawyers. I come from a family with a long line of lawyers, so [I value] enforcing the rules and making a fair playing field, and giving everybody equal opportunity. The law defines America, and lawyers, as much as we dislike them in many ways, are a tremendous instrument of why this is such a great place to live.

I argue in the book that globalization in its current form is very much built on the American "source code," that it comes out of the experience that America finally achieved after the Civil War. We finally decided we were going to be a united country and it was going to be a free country. When we married that up with the second industrial revolution and you saw that kind of tremendous development and growth, it was like watching a China today. We were just bursting on the scene and when the previous European colonial version of globalization collapsed, we were the last man standing. We have built that up not just in the United States, we've built it up in what we called the West during the Cold War, and now we've expanded it to include an East increasingly. That's our gift to history, and like any gift, if it's of value, it's worth defending. That's the role the military plays.

One final question, requiring a brief answer. How would you recommend that students prepare for this future you're describing?

I always advocate learning a second language. If you want to get serious in terms of doing strategic work or working with the military, I always advocate getting a Ph.D., just because it teaches you the research.

On that note, we want to thank you, Dr. Barnett, for being here today as the campus's 2005 Nimitz lecturer.

Thanks.

And thank you very much for joining us for this Conversation with History.

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