Valentine's IV: Core Gap

These two quotes showed up on a Google search I made to see if there were any other interesting Valentine's Day news clips I should add to my small collection – and at first I didn't see much of a connection between them apart from their both being V-day pieces. As so often, however, the links are there if you just look for them…

It occurred to me that threse two pieces in juxtaposition neatly illuminate the current state of what Tom Barnett in his book The Pentagon's New Map calls "the Core and the Gap"… Valentine's Day (via online diamond sales) gave a thumbs up to that trend in the world represented by Barnett's "Core" nations, which is strong on connectivity and, so to speak, waging peace by economic means – and at the same time a significant setback to the reverse trend found concentrating in Barnett's "Gap", which seeks to avoid global connectivity and in its more extreme form wages war by means of terror.

Sources:

Valentine's Day bombing
Valentine's Day Online Spending