BOOK REVIEW: Annihilation from Within

I just finished an excellent new book by Fred Ikle, the distinguished defense and foreign policy scholar, called Annihilation from Within. It was a surprisingly good and a mercifully short (in the sense that he quickly gets to the point without needless repetition) read. I heartily recommend it for all readers of this site since Fred's work is a natural compliment to the work being done here on global guerrillas.

Here's Fred's argument in a nutshell. The global order we enjoy today is unravelling. The reason is simple. Technological change is moving forward faster than social/political change. Eventually, ubiquitous access to rapidly advancing technology will make it possible for small groups to confront status quo political and social structures with weapons of mass destruction -- nuclear, biological, and other unknown new technologies. Since our antiquated nation-states are not constructed to withstand these challenges the results will be devastating: some states will completely collapse, others will turn into police states, and some will be taken over by coups (he lays out a scenario for how these weapons can be used to take control of a state). In short, most of the damage that will be done won't be from the attacks themselves, but from the societal response to the attacks (hence the name: Annihilation from Within). He completes the book by providing us with some ideas on how to mitigate the societal damage -- continuity of leadership, detection, unity, and territorial sovereignty.

In all, Fred Ikle does a great job at encapsulating a key aspect of global guerrillas. Unfortunately, he intentionally disregards the changes in warfare, copiously documented on this site, that will make the threat constant/ongoing/improving, rather than merely a set of random outliers. As a result of this deficit, Fred proposes, as improvements to our status quo political structures, only minor tweaks and amorphous goals (like unity). If he had fully embraced these changes in warfare, he would have seen that the nation-state isn't a structure that will provide the resilience we need to survive these challenges -- particularly since the complexity of its solutions are now generating negative returns on investment (they are not only ineffective, they can often cause more harm than good). What is needed are new simple platforms (my modification of Joseph Tainter's Byzantine strategy), that will continuously produce efficient, flexible, and non-zero sum resiliency from the bottom up. How to build these platforms is THE challenge of this century.

If you keep gazing into an abyss, the abyss will gaze back into you.
Friedrich Nietzche

Comments

[P-]

Eventually, ubiquitous access to rapidly advancing technology will make it possible for small groups to confront status quo political and social structures with weapons of mass destruction -- nuclear, biological, and other unknown new technologies...

Couldn't have said it any better!

P

[zenpundit]

This is the second warm endorsement of Ikle I've encountered in less than 24 hours. It's going to be a big seller.

[bobw]

Does anyone believe that the current nuclear states will see the danger coming and get behind some disarmament program? It sounds utopian alright, but the other route seems patently insane.

[adam]

Bobw,

Given that the US and Britain have announced massive upgrades/expansions of their nuclear arsenals in the past few years I'd say that there's not a chance of another anti-proliferation treaty.

Plus I'd note that from the 1970s onwards India, Pakistan, North Korea, Israel and South Africa have all managed to get the nuclear option so there's now not much of a reason to assume that a nation that wants them can't get them.

The key question is of course "wants" and that has required in each of the recent cases a clear external threat. South Africa dismantled its nuclear weapons as it didn't need them as soon as the threat was gone. Of course hoping for a living saint like Mandela taking over might be a little optimistic.

[ramsis]

Adam i agree completly. what troubles me even more is that nuclear wepons are looked at as a way to assure that present unstable regimes will guarantee their own survival. the last non-proliferation treaty has become non effective and for some, a great way to antagonize america into spending a lot of money in trying to enforce it. for all the talk about how China hopes for a nuke free Korean penninsula they have done very little to prevent it.I suspect that to them a nuclear armed communist ROK is better than a nuke free democratic one. the alternative is to scratch the hopes of non proliferation altogether wich would no doubt bring the world back to the brink of destruction. as we did in the cold war, america would counter nuclear threats by supplying nukes to allies in the areas of threat. Unfortunatly nukes are here to stay and regimes will always try to secure their legitimcy by procuring them. all we can do is watch and hope that other countries will see these things as unstablizing as they really are. maybe some day there will be a mass disarmament but only after they have been used again in war and people are reminded of how devastating they are

[Marcello]

Frankly I find that the "terrorists with WMD" scenario is overrated.
Nuclear weapons are inherently too much complex to manufacture to become readily available to terrorists an such.That isn't going to change anytime soon.
Biological weapons suck at the moment.Unlike in the case of nuclear weapons that could easily change as technology improves.
One has to wonder however if the same tech that could enable an AQ cell to crank out deadly agents on a shoestring budget wouldn't enable the opponent to crank out counters just as quickly.

[Marcello]

At the present time the opposition is using 60's vintage soviet weapons, various improvised explosive charges (from explosive belts to IEDs and car bombs), boxcutters and off the shelf civilian technology. Cheap and simple stuff.

[James Bowery]

Compare the actuarial value of a human life in the circumstances that give rise to terrorism to what an arms dealer would charge for a weapon comparable to a suicide bomber or equivalent.