Thomas P.M. Barnett :: Weblog

It was the bioweapon angle the sold me on Globalism. It was about 3 years ago on a PBS news report where the experts made it clear that at that time someone with the right knowledge could begin cooking up bioweapon agents for about $2000. They made it clear that in the near future making your own homemade genetic modifications would be easy too. For me it was the realization that our universe is not only put together with Elmer's Glue and bailing-wire at the atomic level, but also at the genetic level, that I could see the required sunset of nationalism and such 18th century romantic literature as the US Declaration of Independence, made for a tiny wilderness-agrarian nation. Note: our family had 5 ancestors who fought for that declaration in 1776.

Earth is dying and I would like to see at least a tiny part of the biosphere saved. Considering the whacko nature of those who make attacks with computer virus' and so forth - or such entities as Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold - I believe the future of terrorism will move ever away from groups like al-Qaeda and toward the kid next door. The recent plan in England to blow up planes makes my point - you could consider that a half-way point between al-Qaeda and the kid next door. What will we do when some look-a-likes to Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold decide to make a NAME for themselves (just for fun and not for religion) along such lines? All the phone taps of the Muslim world won't do swat to prevent that.

Balistic missile defense systems are already making the world a little more stable and a little less dangerous. Japan is buying Patriot PAC-3 missiles for land basing and SM-3 missiles for their Kongo class Aegis destroyers. They are also building some more of those destroyers. I think that this is a much less dangerous response to Krazy Kim's Fourth of July stunt than for the Japanese to build nuclear weapons.

Stephen Rosen's article in Foreign Affairs seems like a pretty good argument on why nuclear proliferation, particularly in the case of Iran is not a good thing. Stanley Kurtz at NRO has a decent synopsis and does not require subscription.

While I would really love to accept the Norman Angell with nukes hypothesis, I am afraid that I find this gloomier analysis more convincing. Once Iran is nuclear capable, Turkey and Saudi Arabia will follow suit pretty quickly. Maybe Egypt, maybe Kuwait, maybe UAE. The more nukes floating around, the more likely some will get lost. With a lot of possibilities, who will we blame when one goes off on a ship in New York Harbor? If we are inclined to retaliate against Iran in case of doubt, the Saudis (or Egyptians or...) will have an incentive to try a twofer. Appease their religious crazies and watch the US get rid of an aspiring local hegemon who makes them nervous.

I suppose at some point the US military may have to dust off its 1950s play book for soldiers in nuke combat. If the US could take just one dictator down who will throw a few nukes, and show Gap that inspite of that, we can still roll over him - that might cure the Nuke fixation. Certainly when the US backs down to such governments that have nukes, causes every Gap bad guy to seek nukes.

If it were up to me, where to invest that money, it would be towards getting us away from dependancy upon automobiles. And probably some sort of return to rail, as that is a lot more energy efficient than over-the-road trucking. I see a lot of head in the sand behavior with oil and the tight and declining supplies of oil. If Pemex's analysis is correct, and Cantarell is going to decline 70% by the end of 2008, then Mexico will go from being our second largest supplier of crude to, well, probably not exporting any crude oil at all. Without transportation, the global economy is screwed. We had sailing ships in the 19th century, and while I think they are way cool, I've sailed enough in bad weather to know why so many ended up at the bottom of the oceans: the weather in the middle of the ocean can be extremely bad. What we have mistakenly done since about the end of WW2 is to subsidize the suburbs, and subsidize the need/requirement to have a car. Which makes the transition from autos, to something else, anything else, so traumatic and impossible for most Americans to imagine. And why resistance to such a change will make it impossible to do anything until it is far too late.

We haven't had a hoof-and-mouth case in something like half a century here in the US. Although this is one of the stated reasons for NAIS. Tracking BSE infected critters (and what animals had contact with such infected critters) is another stated reason. Although we could eliminate the possiblity of E Coli tainted beef if only we let cattle graze on grass for the last week before slaughter. But we won't do that.

And as dramatic as biological weapons seem to be, I don't have much confidence in "terrorists" being able to weaponize biological materials. From a practical point, any country with the technology to brew beer and bake bread has the technology to make the ingredients for biological weapons. But as Aum Shinrikyo showed us, even if you have billions of dollars and some of the smartest people in the country working for you, making a weapon out of (for example) anthrax is very hard. The book Amerithrax covers the anthrax letters, and compares some of the other attempted deployments of biological weapons.

About all the "Harris and Kleybolds" of the world would be able to effectively do would be to spritz E Coli around. And thanks to the Rajneeshis in Oregon, we have sneeze shields on salad bars to prevent what they actually managed to spread. We have a long long ways to go before someone could design diseases such as Frank Herbert's "White Plague."

One of my favorite TV shows of my teen years was a British series called "The Survivors." The premise was that some biological weapon got out of some lab, and wiped out more than 95% of the population - what did the survivors do? Include the series "Connections" and you start to recognize that the current system is too complicated, no one can know it all, and if the system glitches, the failure can be catastrophic. Even in the central plains of the US, where much of the basis of our food supply (corn and soybeans) are grown, almost nothing else is grown. They too live at the end of a huge uncontrollable logistics chain.

We've already got some rudimentary analysis systems monitoring sales of cold and diarrhea medicines. If we had them in 1993, back in Minneapolis, we'd have noticed something was wrong and might have been able to figure out the water supply was messed up before 400,000 people got the runs (and more than 100 died) from cryptosporidium. Looking backwards, diarrhea remedy sales spiked 3 weeks before the water folks recognized they had a problem. Can that sort of analysis help with recognizing an outbreak of H5N1? Would the temperature cameras (that you describe Singapore using) help better than tracking sales of tissues and cold medicines?

Many folks like to pretend that modern medicine is why people live so much longer than they did 100+ years ago. Sadly, medicine comes in a distant second behind sanitation and clean food & water. Sadly, our modern food supply is reverting to 19th century "quality" standards.

Dumb question time: why couldn't the missile defence system be used to cement relations with China and Russia instead of undermining them?

Something that hasn't been brought up in discussions of North Korea is Mr Kim's reaction if China and Russia united with the rest of his neighbors against him. Would he say "Darn, guess this means I have to negotiate for real" and give up? Or would he start threatening Chinese and Russian cities and facilities along with his other neighbors? If they were brought in on this project, and protected under the same umbrella, they might be more willing to cooperate.

That limited defense would also be tempting if their "friend" in Tehran turns against them.