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Thomas P.M. Barnett
I was dialing around cable at my parent’s house one day a couple of years ago and ran across the most incredible power point presentation being given by a dude from the Naval War College on CSPAN about how the U.S. should think about security threats in the future. Basically his point was that those alienated from global capitalism are those we need to be most worried about and that places like Central Africa will soon join Afghanistan as geographical locations from which threats will arise. That presentation became this book and it is seriously worth reading. Barnett makes his living predicting bad shit for the U.S. government (and now, I believe, also for big corporations) and he is very good at what he does. Obviously sites of threats to the U.S. are also sites for new modes of positive resistance (those these things are not interchangeable) and also sights for economic development, so this book struck really close to a lot of my interests.
Barnett also has a number of other predictions which may be hogwash, but may also lead to something really interesting. For instance, he toys with the idea that NAFTA will lead to a more EU style unification and the that the EU will soon be much more of a cohesive state. Interesting ideas and an interesting book. It’s a couple of years old now, but still worth picking up.