21 December 2008
Vulnerability and Deterrence
China and Russia are just as challenged as we by the new force of anarchy that the Bush Administrations have incompetently combated over the last seven years. This existential threat, noted by Mark Helprin in his Wall Street Journal OpEd article on December 19, 2008, cannot be averted by relying on conventional strategic means. The errors of both the Right and the Left in dealing with it were in not recognizing that we were in a different sort of fight in which those traditional methods of warfare are ineffective.
The information technology revolution has helped raise the potential of non-state actors for disturbing international order. Conventional and, particularly, massively destructive warfare and weapons are not the appropriate means for “routing” them out of the system. While the Rumsfeld Defense Department realized this, it was insufficiently innovative to come up with a winning substitute action plan.
The Right and the Left need jointly to develop a new strategy that enlists all our intellectual resources, law enforcement tools and inspirational devices to win over anarchists and form an optimistic unified human community.
China and Russia are just as challenged as we by the new force of anarchy that the Bush Administrations have incompetently combated over the last seven years. This existential threat, noted by Mark Helprin in his Wall Street Journal OpEd article on December 19, 2008, cannot be averted by relying on conventional strategic means. The errors of both the Right and the Left in dealing with it were in not recognizing that we were in a different sort of fight in which those traditional methods of warfare are ineffective.
The information technology revolution has helped raise the potential of non-state actors for disturbing international order. Conventional and, particularly, massively destructive warfare and weapons are not the appropriate means for “routing” them out of the system. While the Rumsfeld Defense Department realized this, it was insufficiently innovative to come up with a winning substitute action plan.
The Right and the Left need jointly to develop a new strategy that enlists all our intellectual resources, law enforcement tools and inspirational devices to win over anarchists and form an optimistic unified human community.
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