Tracing an imaginary line along the U.S.–Mexico border and extending it directly across a map of the world, what emerges is a political equator that roughly corresponds with the revised geography of the post-9/11 world. is revised geography is, in accordance with omas P. M. Barnett’s scheme for The Pentagon’s New Map, in which he eectively divides the globe into “Functioning Core,” or parts of the world where “globalization is thick with network connectivity, nancial transactions, liberal media ows, and collective security,” and “Non-Integrating Gap,” “regions plagued by politically repressive regimes, widespread poverty and disease, routine mass murder, and chronic con icts that incubate the next generation of global terrorists.”