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Deleted ScenesDeleted Scene #15Chapter Five: The New Ordering PrincipleSection: Overtaken By EventsCommentary: This fifteenth "deleted scene" was clearly a tangent I went off on when I supposed to be beginning the section about Y2K. Mark cut it, I'm sure, so I would stay on target for the section. I include it here simple because it's stuff I feel needs saying about the "preventability" of 9/11-like events. Deleted Scene: Being Realistic About the Threat In This Era[TEXT BEGINS] Don't get me wrong. I am not talking about uncovering terrorist plots beforehand and thwarting them, which the FBI has done on numerous occasions. I am talking about unrealistic public expectations that the military can somehow stop -- in advance -- any bad thing from happening to the United States. How do I know these expectations are unreal? Check out all the conspiracy thinking on 9/11, the inevitable finger-pointing about the "intelligence failures," and the government's feeble attempts to issue warnings and alerts.1 There is simply no such thing as the attack-out-of-the-blue that can be predicted-much less stopped. Having said that, do I expect anything like that from any fellow Core state? No. Any Gap state? No again, though there are a few I'd keep my eye on. But I do believe there are non-state actors who, in their increasingly desperate attempts to isolate their desired worlds from the entangling integration of globalization, will wage war against the United States -- or Globalization Central -- for decades to come. With no regimes to protect and believing time is not on their side, these forces of disconnectedness will seek to use the Core's internal connectivity against itself. They will seek to perturb the system -- again and again. They will seek to disrupt our mutually-assured dependence, turning Core against Core. They will seek to inflict such uncertainty and pain upon our lives that we will abandon all efforts to further globalization's advance -- in effect, letting their people slide into a splendid isolation that allows their absolute control. That is what I call the "dedicated threat" we face in this era of globalization, or those who purposefully plan to do us harm. I do not believe we can stop their direct attacks, meaning we will live in a world of 9/11s. But I do believe we can diminish them -- and their expectations -- on several fronts. First, we can deny them effective sanctuary throughout the Gap. That is the global war on terrorism and the strategy of preemption. Second, we can deny them easy access to the Core. That is largely bilateral U.S. security assistance to Seam States, but ultimately a Core-wide multilateral effort aimed at discrete firewall capabilities. Third, we can deny these forces of disconnectedness the outcomes they desire from strikes inside the Core. We can make our system imperturbable -- perhaps even unflappable. To achieve that last goal is to increase the Core's immune system response capacity to deal with shocks to the system like 9/11. Achieving such Core-wide system robustness is the surest route to defeating global terrorist networks whose main goal is to make us feel their pain, but we seek so much more in this endeavor than merely defeating the Al Qaedas of the world. We need this robustness because this is the essence of the rule-set reset we currently seek. It is about normalizing political and security rule sets in relation to economic and security rule sets, because the former deal primarily with system inefficiencies and breakdowns, while the latter speak primarily to the expansion of connectivity and the transactions that system allows. In short, we need more rules to handle unplanned disruptions in connectivity. In many ways, that is just a matter of learning how to run globalization better. By doing so, we will not only handle genuine security threats better, but unintentional or motive-less disruptions as well. The same skills we brought to bear in dealing with 9/11's aftermath served us well in dealing with the massive electricity blackout of August 2003.2 The same can be said for the lessons we learned from the anthrax attacks of 2001 being applied to the SARS epidemic of 2003.3 These "natural" or even "man-made" disasters can perturb the system just as strongly as those purposefully perpetrated by malevolent actors. That is why authorities always rush to rule out terrorism as a cause whenever they can. They want to restore faith in the system as quickly as possible. Maintaining our collective faith in the system of deep connectivity generated by globalization is tremendously important, because once we believe this connectivity is no longer worth all the vulnerabilities imposed, then we begin reaching for the thickest firewalls, the most imposing barriers, and the rule sets of exclusion and disconnectedness. Naturally, this is exactly what our enemies want. They want us afraid, unable to coordinate, and pulling back into our respective shells. They want us -- in effect -- to become just like them, and thus we hand them victory after victory with every divisive step we take. Every time we harden our country against attacks from outside we diminish the Core's unity, when what we should really be doing is strengthening our collective ability to withstand such attacks -- not just prevent, but withstand. In the end, the only way we can maintain our faith in globalization's connectivity is to understand better the nature of disruptions to that connectivity. Such disruptions are quickly becoming most citizens' core definition of security in our age, but here our national security establishment is woefully unresponsive -- even determinedly so. By focusing on the search for the "near-peer competitor" and the great power war it represents, the Pentagon has steadfastly refused to consider alternative definitions of system crisis and/or threat as holding anywhere near the same strategic weight. In the minds of most Pentagon strategists, the only true threat to system stability is a country that looks and acts like us in terms of military capabilities, and the only true system crisis is a traditionally defined war between that state-based threat and ourselves. My problem with this approach is that, while I think it was adequate when the international system was so neatly trifurcated into East/West/Rest, I am certain it underestimates the security implications of all the political, economic and technological connectivity now in play across globalization's Core. In short, I feel that continuing to use great power war as the ordering principle of U.S. national security is a mistake. I believe that this strategic construct has outlived its historical utility. I believe we need to move on to a broader definition of system crisis and threat in this age of globalization, and that if we do not, we will only have ourselves to blame when the next 9/11 hurts all the more. [TEXT ENDS] 1 For some great examples of conspiracy theories, see Josh Tyrangiel, "Did You Hear About …. The Search For Answers and a Blizzard of Information Have Made WTC Rumors as Ubiquitous as Flags," Time, 8 October 2001. 2 John Mintz and Christopher Lee, "Post-9/11 Emergency Training Pays Off: States' and Cities' Plans Helped Smooth Out Response, Specialists Say," The Washington Post, 16 August 2003. 3 Sheryl Gay Stolberg, "Lessons of Anthrax Attacks Help U.S. Respond to SARS," The New York Times, 2 May 2003 |
Putnam, 2004 |
