Year: 1995
Type: article
Abstract: The computer will not replace the book, and post-modern forms of conflict will not fully replace conventional war.We will, however, experience a bewildering expansion of the varieties of collective and factional violence.The computer expands our possibilities, and alters methods of working and organizing.So, too, the worldwide crisis in systems of social organization and belief broadens the range of challenges to global, regional, and local order.States and military establishments that restrict their preparations, initiatives, and responses to traditional patterns will pay for their fear of the future in blood, money, and quality of life.Although man and his failings will remain at the center of war and conflict, a unique combination of factors will precipitate and shape events.At least into the 17th century, Western man believed planetary and stellar conjunctions were responsible for disasters upon the earth.Today, we face a constellation of crises much closer to home with profound strategic and military implications.The warning comet is already with us as we approach a dark new century.Future wars and violent conflicts will be shaped by the inabilities of governments to function as effective systems of resource distribution and control, and by the failure of entire cultures to compete in the post-modern age.The worldwide polarization of wealth, afflicting continents and countries, as well as individuals in all countries, will prove insurmountable, and social divisions will spark various forms of class warfare more brutal than anything imagined by Karl Marx.Post-state organizations, from criminal empires to the internationalizing media, will rupture the integrity of the nation-state.Niche technologies, such as post-modern means of information manipulation and dissemination, will provoke at least as often as they produce, and will become powerful tools of conflict.Basic resources will prove inadequate for populations exploding beyond natural limits, and we may discover truths about ourselves that we do not wish to know.In the end, the greatest challenge may be to our moral order.The incompetence of the state has been demonstrated along fault lines from the former Yugoslavia and desperate North Korea to Zaire and Liberia.The "state" as we revere it is a cultural growth and must develop organically--where it has been grafted it rarely takes.The Euro-American and East Asian state's civility as well as its authority rely upon expanding wealth, on a perceived community of interests that allows public compromise or acquiescence, and on individual and collective senses of responsibility.In many of the "states" that presently hold seats in the United Nations, per capita wealth is declining, there is no community of interests, nor is there an individual sense of responsibility for the common good.Even in Western states, the vital sense of generalized responsibility is deteriorating as interest groups promote factionalization and citizen expectations grow excessive and wantonly selfish.In many "accidental states" shaped hastily in the recession of empire, state structures survived only through their ability to apply internal violence.Today, even these oppressive construct-states are breaking down as burgeoning populations make state-sponsored violence against their own citizens statistically ineffectual.Simultaneously, thanks largely to the temptress Media, worldwide citizen expectations of government have wildly surpassed the abilities of government to deliver (the gray area between possibilities and needs/wants is the age-old breeding ground of organized crime and political radicalism).This is true of the United States and of Algeria.Fortunately for us in the United States, our government's ability to deliver generally exceeds requirements, if not expectations.In Algeria, government shortcomings have led to a cultural struggle that has engulfed the state and threatens to destroy it.Cultural failure has many historical precedents, from the collapse of the Hittite empire to the destruction of the Aztecs, but there has never before been a time when a single dominant culture and its imitators have threatened to overwhelm every other major culture on earth.Even in the great age of European empire, most of the conquered
Author: Ralph Peters
Language: English
Field: Social Sciences
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: bronze
OpenAlex ID: W4293027495