Yes, that is core of his arguement in the Esquire article. The Pentagon's New Map lays out the entire arguement in complete detail. His Power Point presentation was a revelation for me. I, even as a Republican, a conservative, and a part of a military family, had been very uneasy with the Iraq war and its consequenses. As I watched his presentarion on CSPAN it was like I was struck by lightning, it suddenly all made sense.
His core theory that disconnection from a modernizing world causes conflict, is also a school of though in History (which I subcribe to) that has come along to refute Marxism as an analytical contruct. The idea is, modernization happens usually at controlable and even rates, but sometimes areas or groups of thought dont modernize at the same rate as the rest of the world and there must be a realignment, usually through violence or war.