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Deleted ScenesDeleted Scene #19Chapter Five: The New Ordering PrincipleSection: The Rise of System PerturbationsCommentary: This nineteenth "deleted scene" consists of several more attempts to define the characteristics of a System Perturbation. It would have gone on page 263, right above the paragraph on "rule-set clashes." I think Mark Warren saw this as too much detail for the reader, bogging down the pace. I include it here because the text offers several good additional specific points about how System Perturbations unfold. Why didn't I fight more for this? With Mark threatening to cut the whole chapter, I wasn't going to wage war over every little cut, no matter how "precious" the material might seem to me. Deleted Scene: More Details on the Definition of a System Perturbation[TEXT BEGINS] In this outflow process, seemingly every involved rule set is somehow disturbed, knocked out of equilibrium or intrinsically rearranged. System Perturbations, while affecting the world as a whole, are nonetheless geographically centered. 9/11 was geographically centered not just in the U.S., but on the East Coast. The biggest rule set changes have been in New York and Washington DC, with changes decreasing in intensity the further West you travel. When the U.S. went to war with Iraq in the spring of 2003, the Washington Post published a special section on how to deal with terrorism that might arise. Did the Milwaukee State Journal follow suit? No. SARS was clearly centered in China, with the biggest rule set changes happening in the hinterland provinces, where clearly the country's medical rule sets were lacking in many ways. And yet, SARS changed some rules in Singapore, Toronto, and elsewhere around the world. It also led to the World Health Organization being granted unprecedented new powers to combat global epidemics.1 The regime change in Baghdad shook up the Middle East far more than any other region, and yet the resulting occupation will touch homes of soldiers killed all over America, not to mention in the U.K., Poland, and eventually any country that sends troops.2 Over time, our occupation there will likely redefine the Core's sense of commitment to shrinking the Gap -- for good or ill -- depending on the outcome. The fluxing of the system is temporary, meaning the perturbation does not last forever. Eventually things settle down. A new crisis emerges, or people just get tired of hanging up all those American flags, or wearing medical face masks in Hong Kong, or reading about another bombing in Iraq. But certain pathway dependencies are created, meaning turning points occur that can never be reversed. History is full of turning points, but no turning back points. 9/11 immediately triggered a new sense of personal vulnerability for most Americans, and when the anthrax attacks quickly followed, we did not just end up with a White House advisor on homeland security, we quickly got a Department of Homeland Security. That department will never go away thanks to the anthrax scare and -- in turn -- 9/11. That is a pathway that will never be erased. The potential for a conflict over differing rule sets, or what my old professor Samuel Huntington would call a "clash of civilizations," is dramatically heightened during a System Perturbation. The bombing of the Indian Parliament on 12/13/2001 almost triggered a war between India and Pakistan. That bombing occurred in a completely different rule set thanks to the United States having dramatically increased military cooperation with both nations in the weeks previous. That cooperation increased largely because the U.S. moved into the neighborhood in a big way when it invaded Afghanistan. The U.S. invaded Afghanistan in response to 9/11. Without that chain of events, India and Pakistan are not squaring off with nukes both convinced that they have a big new security relationship with a United States hell-bent on wiping out global terrorism. Those rising expectations could have easily triggered a nuclear exchange between the two states. At that point, the security rule set in Asia as a whole would have been thrown in dramatic flux. Prior to 9/11, the U.S. evinced absolutely no interest in running Central or South Asian security affairs, though China, Russia and India certainly did. After 9/11, any security incidents in those regions immediately attract intense attention from the United States. Did all past expectations from the likes of China, Russia, and India suddenly disappear with 9/11? Of course not. Would there have been a clash of competing security visions among all these great powers if India and Pakistan had lit it up? Absolutely. There still may be, simply by virtue of America's rising military presence in the region, one of the most important horizontal scenarios emerging from 9/11. [1] Rob Stein, "WHO Gets Wider Power to Fight Global Health Threats," The Washington Post, 28 May 2003. [2] For a good exploration of Arab responses to the fall of Baghdad, see Neil MacFarquhar, "Humiliation And Rage Stalk the Arab World," The New York Times, 13 April 2003. [TEXT ENDS] |
Putnam, 2004 |
