The Future (26 page)

The fear of a surprise military attack has itself had a distorting influence on the priority given to military expenditures throughout history, and is a fear inherently difficult for the people and leaders of any nation to keep in proper perspective. That is one reason why national security depends more than ever on superior intelligence gathering and analysis in order to protect against strategic surprise and to maintain alertness to strategic opportunities.

In addition, new developments in technology have frequently changed the nature of warfare in ways that have surprised complacent nations who were focused on the technologies that were dominant in previous wars. The Maginot Line painstakingly constructed by France after World War I proved impotent in the face of new highly mobile tanks deployed by Nazi Germany. Military power now depends more than ever on the effective mastery of research and development to gain leverage from the still accelerating scientific and technological revolution, which has an enormous impact on the evolution of weaponry.

While the utility of military power may indeed be finally declining in significance in a world where the people and businesses of every nation are more closely linked than ever before, the recent decline in warfare of all kinds in the world—particularly war between nation-states—may
have less to do with a sudden outbreak of empathy in mankind and may have more to do with the role played by the United States and its allies in the post–World War II era in mediating conflicts, building alliances, and sometimes intervening with a combination of limited military force and economic sanctions—as it did, for example, in the former Yugoslavia to limit the spread of violence between Serbia, Croatia, and Bosnia.

Supranational entities have also been playing an ever growing role, intervening in nations unable to halt violent conflicts and mediating the resolution of disputes. These international groups include not only U.N.-sponsored global efforts, but also, increasingly, efforts by regional supranational entities like the African Union, the Arab League, the European Union, NATO, and others. Nongovernmental organizations, faith-based charitable groups, and philanthropic foundations are playing an increasingly significant role in providing essential public goods in areas where nation-states are faltering. When sustained military operations are necessary and established supranational entities are unable to reach consensus, “coalitions of the willing” have been formed.

But in many of these interventions—particularly where NATO and coalitions of the willing were involved—the United States has played a key organizing and coordinating role, and has often provided not only the critical intelligence collection and analysis but also the decisive military force as well. If the equilibrium of power in the world continues to shift in ways that weaken the formerly dominant position of the United States, it could threaten an end to the period some historians have labeled the Pax Americana.

The recent decline in war may also be related to two developments during the long Cold War between the United States and the USSR. First of all, when these two superpowers built vast arsenals of nuclear bombs mounted on intercontinental ballistic missiles, submarines, and bombers, the quantum increase in the probable consequences of all-out war became so obviously and palpably unacceptable that both the U.S. and the USSR soberly backed away from the precipice. The escalating cost of maintaining and modernizing these arsenals also became a burden for both superpowers. (The Brookings Institution has calculated that since 1940, the U.S. has spent $5.5 trillion on its nuclear war fighting capability—
more than on any other program besides Social Security.) Though the risk of such a war has been sharply reduced by arms control agreements, the partial dismantling of both arsenals, and enhanced communications
and safeguards (including a recent bilateral nuclear cybersecurity agreement), the risk of an escalation in tensions must still be continually managed.

Second, during the last third of the twentieth century, both the U.S. and the USSR had bitter experiences in failed efforts to use overwhelming conventional military strength against guerrilla armies using irregular warfare tactics, blending into their populations and fighting a war of attrition. The lessons learned by the superpowers were also learned by guerrilla forces. Partly as a result, the continued spread of irregular warfare tactics is now seriously undermining the nation-state monopoly on the ability to use warfare as a decisive instrument of policy.

The large excess inventories of rifles and automatic weapons manufactured during previous wars are increasingly available not only to insurgent guerrilla forces, but also to individuals, terrorist groups, and criminal organizations. When a new generation of weapons is manufactured, the older generation is not destroyed. Rather, they find their way into the hands of others, often magnifying the bloodshed in regional and civil wars. Unfortunately, the lobbying power and political influence of gun and munitions manufacturers and defense companies has contributed to this spread of weapons throughout the world.
President Barack Obama reversed U.S. policy in 2009 and resumed advocacy of a treaty to limit this destructive trade, but progress is slow at best because of opposition from several countries and the dysfunctionality of global decision making.

The U.S. continues to dominate the international trade in weapons of all kinds—including long-range precision weapons and surface-to-air missiles—
some of which end up being trafficked in black markets. In his final speech as president, Dwight Eisenhower
warned the United States about the “military industrial complex.” As the victorious commanding general in World War II, Eisenhower could hardly have been accused of being soft on national security. Although there are undeniable benefits to the United States from weapons deals, including an enhanced ability to form and maintain useful alliances, it is troubling that more than half (52.7 percent in 2010) of
all of the military weapons sold to countries around the world originate in the United States.

More significantly, the dispersal of scientific and technological knowledge and expertise throughout Earth Inc. and the Global Mind has also undermined the monopoly exercised by nation-states over the
means of inflicting mass violence. Chemical and biological agents capable of causing mass casualties are also on the list of weapons now theoretically accessible to nonstate groups.

The knowledge necessary to build weapons of mass destruction, including nuclear weapons, has already been dangerously dispersed to other nations. Instead of the two nuclear powers that faced off at the beginning of the Cold War, there are now thirty-five to forty
countries with the potential to build nuclear bombs. North Korea, which has already developed a handful of nuclear weapons, and Iran, which most believe is attempting to do so, are developing longer-range missile programs that
could over time result in the ability to project intercontinental power. Proliferation experts are deeply concerned that the spread of nuclear weapons to some of these countries could markedly increase the risk that terrorist groups could purchase or steal the components they need to make a bomb of their own. The former head of Pakistan’s nuclear program, A. Q. Khan, developed extensive ties with Islamic militant groups. North Korea, strapped for cash as always, has already sold missile technology and
many believe it is capable of selling nuclear weapons components.

National security experts are also concerned about regional cascades of nuclear proliferation in regions like the Persian Gulf and Northeast Asia. In other words, the development of a nuclear arsenal by Iran would exert pressure on Saudi Arabia and potentially other countries in the region to develop their own nuclear arsenals in order to provide deterrence. If North Korea were to gain the credible ability to threaten a nuclear attack against Japan, the pressure on Japan to develop its own arsenal would be intense in spite of Japan’s historic experience and opposition to nuclear weapons.

Because leadership in the community of nations is essential, there is an urgent need to restore the integrity of democratic decision making in the United States. And there are hopeful trends, not least the awakening of reformist activism on the Internet. Throughout the world, the Internet is empowering the rapidly increasing members of the global middle class to demand the kinds of accountability and reform from their governments that middle-class citizens have historically always been more likely to demand than the poor and underprivileged. Stanford political science professor Francis Fukuyama notes that this is “most broadly accepted in countries that have reached a level of material prosperity sufficient
to allow a majority of their citizens to think of themselves as middle class, which is why there tends to be a
correlation between high levels of development and stable democracy.”

The trends associated with the emergence of Earth Inc.—particularly robosourcing, the transfer of work from humans to intelligent interconnected machines—threaten to slow the rise of the global middle class by diminishing aggregate wages. But a recent report from the European Strategy and Policy Analysis System (ESPAS) calculates that the global middle class will double in the next twelve years from two billion to four billion people, and
will reach almost five billion people by 2030.

The report adds: “By 2030, the demands and concerns of people in many different countries are likely to converge, with a major impact on national politics and international relations. This will be the result mainly of greater awareness among the world’s citizenry that their aspirations and grievances are shared. This awareness is already configuring a global citizens’ agenda that emphasizes fundamental freedoms,
economic and social rights and, increasingly, environmental issues.”

The awareness of higher living standards, higher levels of freedom and human rights, better environmental conditions, and the benefits of more responsive governments will continue to spread within the Global Mind. This new global awareness of the myriad ways in which the lives of billions can be improved is certain to exert a profound influence on the behavior of political leaders throughout the world.

Already, the spread of independence movements committed to democratic capitalism in states throughout the former Soviet Union, and the explosive spread of the Arab Spring in nations throughout the Middle East and North Africa, also serve as examples of the real possibility that such changes can occur even more quickly in a world empowered by its connections to the Global Mind.

With the ongoing emergence of the world’s first truly global civilization, the future will depend upon the outcome of the struggle now beginning between the raw imperatives of Earth Inc. and the vast potential inherent in the Global Mind for the insistence by people of conscience that excesses be constrained with the imposition and enforcement of standards and principles that honor and respect human values.

Lest this sound impractical or hopelessly idealistic, there are many examples of new global norms having been established by this mechanism in the past—well prior to the enhanced potential we now have
available for promoting new global norms by using the Internet. The abolition movement, the anti-Apartheid movement, the promotion of women’s rights, restrictions on child labor, the anti-whaling movement, the Geneva Conventions against torture, the rapid spread of anticolonialism in the 1960s, the ban on atmospheric nuclear testing, and successive waves of the democracy movement—all gained momentum from the sharing of ideas and ideals among groups of committed individuals in multiple countries who pressured their governments to cooperate in the design of laws and treaties that led to broad-based change in much of the world.

No matter the nation in which we reside, we as human beings now face a choice: either to be swept along by the powerful currents of technological change and economic determinism into a future that may threaten our deepest values, or to build a capacity for collective decision making on a global scale that allows us to shape that future in ways that protect human dignity and reflect the aspirations of nations and peoples.

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