Brave New War

Robb John

Description

“For my money, John Robb, a former Air Force officer and tech guru, is the futurists' futurist.”
--"Slate"

The counterterrorism expert John Robb reveals how the same technology that has enabled globalization also allows terrorists and criminals to join forces against larger adversaries with relative ease and to carry out small, inexpensive actions--like sabotaging an oil pipeline--that generate a huge return. He shows how combating the shutdown of the world's oil, high-tech, and financial markets could cost us the thing we've come to value the most--worldwide economic and cultural integration--and what we must do now to safeguard against this new method of warfare.

Sujets

• Security International
• Security National
• Political Science
• John Robb

Informations

• Publié par: Turner Publishing Company
• Date de parution: 01 avril 2008
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781620458914
• Langue: English

Extrait

BRAVE NEW WAR
THE NEXT STAGE OF TERRORISM AND THE END OF GLOBALIZATION
John Robb
Copyright 2007 by John Robb. All rights reserved
Published by John Wiley Sons, Inc., Hoboken, New Jersey Published simultaneously in Canada
Wiley Bicentennial Logo: Richard J. Pacifico
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data:
Robb, John, date.
Brave new war: the next stage of terrorism and the end of globalization / John Robb.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN: 978-0-470-26195-8
1. Terrorism. 2. Guerrilla warfare. 3. Transnational crime. 4. Security, International. 5. National security. 6. Private security services. 7. Globalization. I. Title.
HV6431.R625 2007
363.325-dc22
2006029354
Printed in the United States of America
10 98765432
CONTENTS
Foreword by James Fallows
Preface
Part I THE FUTURE OF WAR IS NOW
1 The Superempowered Competition
2 Disorder on the Doorstep
3 A New Strategic Weapon
Part II GLOBAL GUERRILLAS
4 The Long Tail of Warfare Emerges
5 Systems Disruption
6 Open-Source Warfare
Part III HOW GLOBALIZATION WILL PUT AN END TO GLOBALIZATION
7 Guerrilla Entrepreneurs
8 Rethinking Security
9 A Brittle Security Breakdown
Notes
Further Reading
Index
FOREWORD by James Fallows
Through the spring and summer of 2006, I talked with a wide variety of experts about the current state of the conflict that Osama bin Laden thinks of as the world jihad and that the U.S. government has called the global war on terror and the long war. About half of the authorities I spoke with were from military or intelligence organizations; the others were academics or members of think tanks, plus a few businesspeople. I sought their views for an article I was writing for the Atlantic Monthly. Among the most memorable of these interviews was a man I had met briefly once before: John Robb.
From the interviewees as a whole, I was surprised by one implicitly optimistic theme. This did not have to do with the war in Iraq, which many of them had originally supported but which nearly all had come to see as an unbounded disaster for the United States. Nor was it necessarily based on a belief that the United States would figure out the shrewdest way to protect its people, interests, and institutions from terrorist-style disruptions that were sure to be a feature of twenty-first-century life.
Instead it had to do with America s success up to that point in disrupting Osama bin Laden s own al-Qaeda Central organization-and America s potential ability to recast the larger global war of ideas in a way far more likely to win support or sympathy and diminish sources of hostility around the world. This, after all, had been a crucial element of the West policy throughout the Cold War-hardly the only element, given the battles and wars the United States fought and the CIA projects and dictators it funded as part of the larger struggle against the Soviet Union. As Sir Richard Dearlove, the former director of Britain s secret intelligence agency, MI-6, and one of the people I interviewed, put it, by the end of the Cold War there was no doubt about which side stood on the moral high ground. Potential recruits would come to us because they believed in the cause, he said. This made our work much easier. Dearlove and countless others argued that the United States had gravely weakened its position by seeming to ignore its long-standing constitutional principles, in internal checks-and-balances and in its practices around the world. America s cause is doomed unless it regains the moral high ground, Dearlove said. But, as he and many others suggested, this should be a correctable situation, given the resilience of many western societies and the fundamental appeal of the modern model of tolerant civil society.
The implicit optimism of this outlook was surprising because it was a contrast to most public discourse since the al-Qaeda attacks of 2001. The crudest version of the pessimist message was the endless governmental warnings that the evil doers were ceaselessly planning to attack again, because they hate our freedom. Whether officials in the Bush administration actually thought the motivation was that simple is hard to tell. All I know, from reporting, is that virtually no one with first-hand operating experience in fighting or analyzing terrorist movements agrees. (Resentment of the western world s affluence and perceived licentiousness is no doubt part of al-Qaeda s impulse, but it s hardly the main part. As no less anauthority than Osama bin Laden put it in a tape released just before the 2004 election, if al-Qaeda was so opposed to liberties, Why did we not attack Sweden? Political grievances against western, especially U.S., policies have always come at the top of al-Qaeda s list of complaints.)
The more sophisticated pessimistic argument had to do with the inherent vulnerability of big, open societies. By this reasoning, the United States was locked into an asymmetric struggle in which many advantages lay on the other side. Any of the tens of millions of foreigners entering the country each year could, in theory, be an enemy operative-to say nothing of the millions of potential recruits already in place. Any of the dozens of ports, the scores of natural-gas plants and nuclear facilities, the hundreds of important bridges and tunnels, or the thousands of shopping malls, office towers, or sporting facilities could be the next target of attack. It is impossible to protect them all, and even trying could ruin America s social fabric and public finances. The worst part of the asymmetric predicament is the helplessness, as America s officials and its public wait for an attack they know they cannot prevent.
Then we come to John Robb. His analysis is in many ways darker even than the conventionally pessimistic view-though if properly understood it contains practical and positive elements as well. But mainly it is far more sophisticated than just about anything else the public is used to hearing about the nature of the challenge it faces. This book is not a complete answer to America s problems in defending itself while preserving its liberties. No book is, or could be. But it is a very serious and valuable contribution.
When I spoke with Robb in 2006, he pointed out how easy it is for terrorists to disrupt society s normal operations-think of daily life in Israel, or England under assault from the IRA. But large-scale symbolic shock, of the type so stunningly achieved on September 11 and advocated by bin Laden ever since, is difficult to repeat or sustain. There are diminishing returns on symbolic terrorism, he told me then. Each time it happens, the public becomes desensitized, and the media pays less attention. To maintain the level of terror, each attack must top the previous one, and in Robb s view, Nothing will ever top 9/11. He allows for the obvious and significant exception of terrorists getting hold of a nuclear weapon. But, like most people I interviewed, he says this is harder and less likely than the public assumes. Moreover, if nuclear weapons constitute the one true existential threat, then countering the proliferation of those weapons themselves is what American policy should address, more than fighting terrorism in general. For a big, coordinated, nonnuclear attack, he says, the number of people involved is substantial, the lead time is long, the degree of coordination is great, and the specific skills you need are considerable. It s not realistic for al-Qaeda anymore.
But he went on to argue, convincingly and disturbingly, that the rise of small-scale, do-it-yourself terrorism could in many ways be more troublesome than the big, centrally planned attacks the United States seemed to be most concerned about. And this led naturally to the most original part of his argument, and the one developed fully in this book: how the modern environment of networks and complex human systems required a completely different understanding of terms like defense, offense, aggression, and security. Many people argue that blunting al-Qaeda s ability to launch huge, spectacular attacks will protect developed societies in a signifi