Global Instability and Strategic Crisis (Routledge Advances in International Relations and Global Politics)

Global Instability and Strategic Crisis

This is a truly important book, one that should be read by policy makers in London and Washington and elsewhere throughout the world. Lucidly written by a distinguished British academic with a strong background in natural science and military technology as well as in the humanities, the text reviews remarkably comprehensively the world outlook and strategic thinking in the aftermath of 9/11. It is also rich in constructive policy proposals for the future. Professor Milton C.Cummings, Jr., Johns Hopkins University, USA Global Instability and Strategic Crisis brings new perspectives to current debates surrounding missile defence and argues that it should have a limited role only. Looking to the future, the author radically extends the customary remit of strategic studies in order to address the new world situation. This book explores the diverse factors—military, scientific, economic, social, ecological and cosmological—bearing upon the quest for stability and peace and anticipates future possibilities. The interventions in Iraq and Afghanistan are both discussed at some length while the Holy Land, Central Southern Africa, Indonesia, China and the Arctic are all seen as foci of special concern in their respective ways. Thematically, the text addresses a raft of topics, among them the redefinition of terror; lethal lasers; internalized arms control; the nonweaponization of space; Guantanamo Bay; regional security pacts; latter-day Marshall Plans; climate change; a ubiquitous urban crisis; instability latent in Western society; a two-tier European Union; and pre-emption doctrine. Salience is given to the military and civil exploitation of space; biowarfare is treated as a singularly serious mass destruction threat. This book will interest students and researchers of strategic studies, contemporary history and geophysics as well as policy-makers. Neville Brown is a Professorial Associate Fellow at Mansfield College, University of Oxford, where he has specialized mainly in historical climatology. From January 2001 to December 2003, he was also a Senior Fellow with the Defence Engineering Group at University College London.

Routledge Advances in International Relations and Global Politics 1 Foreign Policy and Discourse Analysis France, Britain and Europe Henrik Larsen 2 Agency, Structure and International Politics From ontology to empirical enquiry Gil Friedman and Harvey Starr 3 The Political Economy of Regional Co-operation in the Middle East Ali Carkoglu, Mine Eder, Kemal Kirisci 4 Peace Maintenance The evolution of international political authority Jarat Chopra 5 International Relations and Historical Sociology Breaking down boundaries Stephen Hobden 6 Equivalence in Comparative Politics Edited by Jan W.van Deth 7 The Politics of Central Banks Robert Elgie and Helen Thompson 8 Politics and Globalisation Knowledge, ethics and agency Martin Shaw 9 History and International Relations Thomas W.Smith 10 Idealism and Realism in International Relations Robert M.A.Crawford 11 National and International Conflicts, 1945–1995 New empirical and theoretical approaches. Frank Pfetsch and Christoph Rohloff 12 Party Systems and Voter Alignments Revisited Edited by Lauri Karvonen and Stein Kuhnle 13 Ethics, Justice and International Relations Constructing an international community Peter Sutch

iii

14 Capturing Globalization Edited by James H.Mittelman and Norani Othman 15 Uncertain Europe Building a new European security order? Edited by Martin A.Smith and Graham Timmins 16 Power, Postcolonialism and International Relations Reading race, gender and class Edited by Geeta Chowdhry and Sheila Nair 17 Constituting Human Rights Global civil society and the society of democratic states Mervyn Frost 18 US Economic Statecraft for Survival 1933–1991 Of sanctions, embargoes and economic warfare Alan P.Dobson 19 The EU and NATO Enlargement Richard McAllister and Roland Dannreuther 20 Spatializing International Politics Analysing activism on the internet Jayne Rodgers 21 Ethnonationalism in the Contemporary World Walker Connor and the study of Nationalism Edited by Daniele Conversi 22 Meaning and International Relations Edited by Peter Mandaville and Andrew Williams 23 Political Loyalty and the Nation-State Edited by Michael Waller and Andrew Linklater 24 Russian Foreign Policy and the CIS Theories, Debates and Actions Nicole J.Jackson 25 Asia and Europe Development and different dimensions of ASEM Yeo Lay Hwee 26 Global Instability and Strategic Crisis Neville Brown 27 Africa in International Politics External Involvement on the Continent Edited by Ian Taylor and Paul Williams

Global Instability and Strategic Crisis Neville Brown

LONDON AND NEW YORK

First published 2004 by Routledge 11 New Fetter Lane, London EC4P 4EE Simultaneously published in the USA and Canada by Routledge 29 West 35th Street, New York, NY 10001 Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group This edition published in the Taylor & Francis e-Library, 2005. “To purchase your own copy of this or any of Taylor & Francis or Routledge’s collection of thousands of eBooks please go to www.eBookstore.tandf.co.uk.” © 2004 Neville Brown All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data Brown, Neville. Global instability and strategic crisis/Neville Brown. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. 1. Strategy. 2. War on Terrorism, 2001–3. Ballistic missile defenses. 4. World politics-21st century. I. Title. U162.B773 2004 355.02–dc22 2003022581 ISBN 0-203-69456-2 Master e-book ISBN

ISBN 0-203-34576-2 (Adobe eReader Format) ISBN 0-415-30413-X (Print Edition)

Contents

The author Preface Abbreviations PART I

The strategic revolution 1

viii x xv 1

Through 11 September

2

A revolution unfolds, 1985–2001

2

Explosive excision

17

2

The poverty of strategy

31

3

A war on terror?

44

4

Saddam, slow decline and rapid fall

58

PART II 5

6

7

Limited world war?

69

Social instability

70

Upheavals within?

70

Ultimate limits to growth

77

The Zen zone

88

Macabre lethality

96

Lethal gases and toxins

96

Martial microbes

99

Fissile ambiguity

107

Undercover nuclear attack

114

The ascent of the missile

117

vii

PART III

Defence against missiles 8 Ballistic encounter

9

10

PART IV

125 126

A chequered progression

126

Rigour, the first victim?

143

Terrestrial coverage

149

Defence from the surface

149

The airborne laser

153

The heavens subverted?

156

Celestial awareness

156

Global engagement

162

Information through space

170

The quest for strategy

172

11

Pax Atlantica?

173

12

Arms in moderation

187

13

Planetary internationalism

207

14

Strategy transcended

232

Open conspiracy?

232

Celestial encounters

243

Appendix A:

Geodesy and Geophysics

254

Appendix B:

Exotic technologies

261

Further reading

268

Notes

270

Index

295

The author

Since 1994 Neville Brown has been a senior member of Mansfield College, Oxford, mainly specializing in historical climatology. Between January 2001 and December 2003, he was also a Senior Fellow with the Defence Engineering Group at University College London (UCL). His career throughout has been based on an unusual interaction between the humanities and geophysics; and, especially of late, between strategic studies and global ecology. After grammar school majors in the physical sciences, he read economics with geography at UCL followed by modern history at New College, Oxford. For about half of the time he then spent as a forecasting officer in the meteorological branch of the Fleet Air Arm (1957–60), he specialized in regional upper air analysis. But other assignments included extensive experience on a coastal air station plus some in a gunnery trials cruiser. He was a field meteorologist on two British Schools Expeditions to sub-polar regions. In 1980, he was elected to a chair in International Security Affairs at the University of Birmingham. He has held Visiting Fellowships, or the equivalent, at the UK National Defence College, then at Latimer; the School of Physics and Astrophysics at the University of Leicester; the International Institute for Strategic Studies in London; the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute; and the Australian National University, Canberra. From 1965 to 1972 he worked part-time but quite proactively as a defence correspondent in the Middle East and South-East Asia, successively accredited to several leading Western journals. From 1981 to 1986, Professor Brown was the first Chairman of the Council for Arms Control, a British all-party body drawn from parliament and other professions and dedicated to a multilateral approach to arms control and disarmament. He thus became involved in the multinational debate about Ballistic Missile Defence (BMD). In 1985 and again in 1987 he paid extended visits to the Strategic Defence Initiative Organization (SDIO) in the Pentagon. The first was at the invitation of Allan Mense, then Acting Chief Scientist; and the second as the guest of O’Dean Judd as Chief Scientist. From April 1994 to the summer of 1997, he was attached to the Directorate of Sensors and Electronic Systems (within the Procurement Executive, UK Ministry of Defence) as the Academic Consultant to the official Pre-Feasibility Study on BMD policy. A

ix

declassified version of the 87,000-word Fundamental Issues Study he wrote in this connection was published by Mansfield College in 1998. He has authored twelve books or major reports. With the award-winning Future Global Challenge (New York, Crane Russak, 1977), he began to give economic, social and ecological factors some salience in the quest for a peaceable world. This thrust continued with New Strategy through Space (Leicester, Leicester University Press, 1990) and The Strategic Revolution (London, Brassey’s, 1992). His chief contribution to date to historical climatology has been History and Climate Change: A Eurocentric Perspective (London, Taylor & Francis, 2001). In 1990, Professor Brown was elected a Fellow of the Royal Astronomical Society. In 1995, the University of Birmingham conferred on him an official Doctorate of Science in Applied Geophysics. His next book will be entitled Engaging the Cosmos: Astronomy, Philosophy and Faith.

Preface

The essence of this analysis is that, diverse though the threats to Peace and Liberty are, a triad of menace looms up very obviously. Its components are the weaponization of Space, especially in pursuance of missile defence; ecological disruption, especially climate change; and biowarfare. The last of these is alarmingly far outside our usual understanding of conflict. But the first two broaden our customary concerns, in either war or peace, with the skies above. Even so, Space weaponization is a subject which urgently poses questions of overarching import, operationally and philosophically. In my case, awareness of the heavens was nurtured by wartime infancy. A basic reality was virtual confinement to one’s native Chiltern Hills. At the same time, the obligatory black-out illuminated starry nights to an extent unimaginable in South-East England today. I recollect neither author nor title of that first book read, at the age of 14, about climate over geological time. But I well recall being riveted as never before or since. Then, within twelve months, the once-in-a-century bitter winter of early 1947 was followed by a brilliant summer that figuratively translated us 15° equatorwards. Our British weather thus disported itself as exotically variable, worthy of attention and indeed celebration. My departure in that direction was in due course raised to a higher level by the amazing liberality with which a Royal Naval selection board accepted this inductee for meteorological long-course training, overriding its own stipulation about single honours in Physics or Mathematics. The ensuing thirty months as an aviation forecaster were for me more stimulating than undergraduate life had proved, more focused and lived out in a naval culture I found novel and inspirational. Moreover, the professional work was on an interface between the humanities and applied science, the sort of locale I had confusedly been seeking to occupy all along. An alternative pathway thence was naval strategy. My initiation was several weeks fortuitously spent in the Fleet Operations Centre in Malta during the Lebanon-Jordan warlike crisis of 1958. Another theme recurrent throughout this idiosyncratic progression has been the interaction between the Americans and the British. To see out the war on the Chiltern escarpment was to imbibe a sense of the paramountcy of air power as achieved by Anglo-American collaboration in Britain and abroad. Here, ‘Anglo-

xi

American’ perforce subsumes many other valiant contributions: Polish, Canadian, Anzac, Czech, French, South African, Rhodesian…a veritable coalition of the willing. Obviously, however, the London-Washington partnership was fundamental. Within several miles of my Watlington hearth lies Benson airfield, then the hub of Royal Air Force photoreconnaissance. A similar distance away is Chalgrove, then an operational reconnaissance base for the United States Air Force. Not far to the north began the thick zone of heavy bomber bases extending up through Yorkshire. My view was then and remains today that the AngloAmerican strategic bombing offensive against Nazi Germany was vital to victory (see Chapter 1, A revolution unfolds, 1985–2001). At university, friendships for life were to be formed with Rhodes Scholars with whom one discovered a deep affinity of outlook. Yet between times, in August 1951, had come a series of clashes—physical as well as political— between the US army of occupation in Austria and some seventy French and British, mostly youngsters. Among them was myself, then about to enter University College London (UCL). We were all en route to a huge World Peace Congress getting under way in East Berlin, and this intent was what the American military saw fit to object to. I had managed to enlist with the official observer group sent by Britain’s National Union of Students, a mainstream organization the elected leadership of which then (as perhaps always) was simply inclined more to the social democratic Old Left than median student opinion. Nevertheless, most of the seventy were Communists or ‘Popular Front’ socialists. However, their Marxism often seemed of mildly anarchic hue. Many of our young French colleagues, in particular, evinced an abandon starkly in contrast with the dirigiste Stalinism of the Communist Party leaders in Paris. As French social democrats came to say of the latter, ‘They are not to our Left, they are to our East’ Regarding the youngsters, I will just note this. One fine break of day (after we had all been corralled at the end of a railway platform for fifteen hours without food, water or sanitation) steel-helmeted American infantry (or Special Forces?), bearing rifles with fixed bayonets, moved in to force us inside a westbound train. This operation began with a snatch squad giving one of the older Frenchmen a savage beating-up. After that, the violence was fairly well controlled save that one French student did receive a severe bayonet wound in the stomach. We continued to give a stout account of ourselves. But the point for now is that, as this démarche built up, the dominant French contingent did not fortify their resolve with the Internationale. Instead, they led the rest of us in a rousing chorus of ‘La Marseillaise’. Eventually we outflanked our protagonists and made it to Berlin, indulged by Italian railways and then by a British army of occupation in Austria. The latter in particular was more accepting of our right to proceed than the Labour government in London declared itself to be. Though the whole encounter lasted but ten days, it was nothing if not kaleidoscopic. The successive scenarios ranged in character from mitteleuropean spy clichés to Ealing studios/B-movie farces.

xii

The main sequence was duly written up from our common perspective.1 More germane to this text may be some reflection on how one came to be involved in such an excursion. No doubt everyone was impelled in part by a defiant quest for adventure, however jejune. Equally obviously, we had more individual motivations. I had already had instilled in me the conviction that, to survive on this shrinking planet, we must be prepared to reach out to those we are most at variance with. This has its dangers but these may ultimately be as nothing compared with those created by pulling up the mental drawbridges. In World War II, my ultra-liberal father had insisted on our small family listening once or twice a week to the evening news as broadcast in English from the Third Reich. Subsequent applications of the reaching out precept were to include participating in a seminar in Muammar Al Gadafi’s Libya in the spring of 1986, a time of warlike crisis between Tripoli and Washington-cum-London. Later that year, my wife Yu-Ying and I did a comprehensive two-person tour of South Africa. Our trip was sponsored by Dr Denis Worrall, the liberal-minded ambassador in London. It goes almost without saying that a personal forward strategy can yield dividends in terms of one’s own awareness. How readily it may do so in regard to influencing the other side is a more contingent variable. During and after the South Africa trip, we did have a sense of contributing a bit to the dialogue then burgeoning about the country’s future.2 In Libya one may have done a little to feed in modes of argument more rooted in reality than Muammar’s vapourings (see Chapter 1, A revolution unfolds, 1985–2001). What then of the 1951 experience? Undoubtedly the US Army’s zonal command in Austria was under the influence of the phobic anti-Communism being cynically fostered by the malign senator from Wisconsin, Joseph McCarthy (see Chapter 1). Accordingly, it behaved quite illicitly and damnably stupidly, this under what rapidly became the glare of world publicity. Yet in pretty short order one recognized that its sheer incongruity and transience made McCarthyism less menacing than its alter ego, the totalitarian envelope nailed down by military force across Eastern Europe, not to mention the USSR itself. The Berlin rally was but orchestrated intolerance with no opportunities beyond the trivial to put alternative points of view. To enter such a setting for but a few days was to experience the full force of brainwashing via the public address system, with endless repetitions and heavy syncopation as the modus operandi. The slogans, lyrics and beats resonated long afterwards. Over time, the legacy helped make me overtly hard line on many matters of military defence, including some appertaining directly to British national policy: the retention of a national strategic deterrent3; contingent first use of nuclear weapons; and a military presence east of Suez. Nonetheless, free passage to other lands is an ancient liberty. If the years rolled back and the occasion came round again to insist on that the way we did in 1951, I would be there. Come 1958, I came tangentially into contact with the American military once more. Working in the Fleet Operations Centre above Malta’s peerless Grand

xiii

Harbour gave me ample opportunity to gauge the fulsome co-operation already resumed between the United States Navy (USN) and the Royal Navy, a mere twenty months after the Suez crisis. At that time, the USN had actively harassed the Anglo-French task force bearing down on Port Said. Yet now our erstwhile French allies were no longer part of British naval calculations. As a roving British journalist, one regularly found American embassies as welcoming as their British counterparts. I tended to go to the latter more for local political guidance but to the former to discuss economic and social issues. Barely a decade or so after this phase was ended, the interactions within the Pentagon on Ballistic Missile Defence (BMD) began. One was accorded access that would almost certainly never have been extended to a foreigner of similar status but different nationality. Nor was anyone involved in those days in the BMD aspect of the Special Relationship looking for an interaction that was blandly consensual. All the same, various American policy pitches have troubled one across the years. Operational aspects of the Vietnam War are considered in the main text. So let me now mention a most edifying aspect of meeting GIs in the field there. It was seeing how the stresses of war were breaking down racial barriers among them. Less reassuring was a disposition in Washington to indulge Israeli hubris far too unconditionally in the wake of the 1967 climacteric. In 1972, I visited Israel as an individual guest of the Foreign Ministry. The programme arranged could hardly have been fuller or more balanced. Often one was enchanted by the diversity and virtuosity of Israeli society. Yet it was impossible to ignore a huge collective blind spot apropos Palestinian aspirations. Liberal Jewish opinion there and abroad was already unhappy about this. Witness my own colleagues on the New Middle East. Yet thanks to pressure group influence, the point never really registered in Congress or the White House in those so formative years. If George W.Bush can will himself to bring the children of Abraham to live equably together in the Holy Land, he will render posterity a signal service. My personal interaction with the developing American dream has come full circle at Oxford. My teaching at Mansfield College is focused on ‘JYAs’: undergraduates from Yale, Brown or smaller liberal arts colleges in the north-east of the USA who are doing a Junior Year Abroad within their degree programme. I have never worked with finer young people—lively, enquiring, dependable and full of good humour. They epitomize an expansiveness of mind and spirit that was visibly resurgent within American culture before 9/11, and was attracting a growing constituency within the youth of the world at large. Unlike with many of their grandparents, any reservations the said constituents may sometimes have about the White House or the Pentagon do not ipso facto translate into blanket antiAmericanism. The disposition in this text is to look up to thirty years ahead, extending the while the remit of strategy. For purposes of enumeration, Anglo-American units are employed interchangeably with metric ones (Système Internationale) because that is how the literature pans out still. The prefixes indicating orders of

xiv

magnitude are used in the normal way. Thus ‘mega-’ is a million; ‘giga-’ a billion (109); and ‘tera-’ a trillion (1012). Likewise, ‘milli-’ means thousandth; ‘micro-’, usually a millionth; and ‘nano-’ a billionth (10• 9). As regards individual word usage, my preference is once again for ‘erraticism’ as opposed to ‘variability’ in allusions to acute fluctuations in climate at the interannual level. Also, the word ‘secular’ is used the way economists do—as a synonym for ‘long-term’, meaning a few decades. With ordnance delivery, the term ‘warhead’ is reserved for one particular destructive charge plus the shell that encases it. If a missile, say, delivers multiple warheads, the aggregate thereof is spoken of as the ‘warload’. As and where such gradation is of consequence, the term ‘liberal’ is used in its American sense— someone within the democratic Left. Quite a number of libraries have been supportive. The Oxford ones that have been so, regularly and interactively, are Mansfield College, Radcliffe Science and the School of Geography. Those in London similarly engaged have been the Defence Engineering Group at UCL, the Information Resources Centre at the US Embassy, the Royal Astronomical Society and the Royal United Services Institute for Defence Studies. Libraries in Oxford which have readily met the occasional request are Balliol College, the History Faculty, the Law Faculty, the Rothermere American Institute and the PPE Room of the New Bodleian. Those elsewhere to which this applies include the British Library, King’s College London, the London Library, the National Meteorological Library, the Wellcome Institute and the Whitehall Library of the Ministry of Defence. I also feel a special debt of gratitude for some high-technology discussions held in Japan in the winter of 2001–2, a seminal early phase in this project. The bodies that hosted me were the Japan Atomic Energy Research Institute, the Japan Defence Agency, the Japan Meteorological Agency, the National Space Development Agency and the Institute of Laser Engineering at the University of Osaka. Additionally, the International Hydrological Programme of UNESCO has supported my work on global climate change in the twentieth century. My cousin, Dr Michael Brown, has made most useful comments on much of the draft. Others who have helpfully reviewed particular facets include Steven Blundell, Paule Chicken, Sherwood Cordier, Milton Cummings, James Eberle, Paul Elliot, David Goldstein, Anthony Grahame, Paul Ladd, Sadao Nakai, Ronald Nettler, Shlomi Segall, Stewart Payne and Kenneth Slater. As always, a special thanks is extended to my literary secretary, Mrs Jill Wells, for the way she has transmuted palaeographic long-hand into elegant typescript and lent much support all round. Finally, this book is dedicated to the memory of Hugh Mullens and Jim Walsh, two early mentors who in contrasting ways taught me to see the political dialectic as a secular process, not just a matter of getting through the coming week. December 2003 Neville Brown

Abbreviations

ABL ABM ALL ANC ASAT ASEAN ASW AWACS BAMBI BMD BMDO BNSC BPI BSTS BTWC BVR BW C3 CEP CFC COIL COPUOS DARPA DEW DMZ EADS ECA

AirBorne Laser Anti-Ballistic Missile Airborne Laser Laboratory African National Congress Anti-Satellite Association of South-East Asian Nations Anti-Submarine Warfare Airborne Warning And Control System Ballistic Anti-Missile Boost Interceptor Ballistic Missile Defence Ballistic Missile Defence Organization British National Space Centre Boost Phase Interception Boost Surveillance and Tracking System Biological and Toxin Weapons Convention Beyond Visual Range Biological Warfare Command, Control and Communications Circular Error Probability ChloroFluoroCarbons Chemical Oxygen Iodine Laser Committee on Peaceful Uses of Outer Space Defence Advanced Research Projects Agency Directed Energy Weapons Demilitarized Zone European Aeronautics Defence and Space Agency Economic Co-operation Administration

xvi

EKV EMP EOKA ESA EW FBR GBI GDP GM GMD GNP GPALS GPS GUT HEL IAEA ICBM ICC ICF IFV IISS IMF INF INS INTEGRAL IPCC IRBM ISS IT ITCZ ITER JCOS KEW LDC LWIR MAD MBT

Exoatmospheric Kill Vehicle Electro-Magnetic Pulse National Organisation of Cypriot Fighters European Space Agency Electronic Warfare Fast Breeder Reactor Ground-Based Interceptors Gross Domestic Product Genetic Modification Global Missile Defence Gross National Product Global Protection Against Limited Strikes Global Positioning System Grand Unified Theorem High Energy Lasers International Atomic Energy Agency Intercontinental Ballistic Missile Inuit Circumpolar Conference Inertial Confinement Fusion Infantry Fighting Vehicle International Institute for Strategic Studies International Monetary Fund Intermediate Nuclear Force Inertial Navigation System International Gamma Ray Astrophysics Laboratory Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change Intermediate-Range Ballistic Missile International Space Station Information Technology Intertropical Convergence Zone International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor US Joint Chiefs of Staff Kinetic Energy Weapon Less Developed Country Long-Wave Infra-Red Mutual Assured Destruction Main Battle Tank

xvii

MCF MDA MIRV MOAB MOX MRBM MSL MTCR MWIR NAFTA NAO NASA NEO NMD NPB NPT OECD OEEC PLO ROK RUSI RV SADC SALT SATKA SBI SBIRS SBL SDIO SFW SSBN SSTS SWIR THAAD THEL TMD TVA

Magnetic Confinement Fusion Missile Defence Agency Multiple Independently Targetable Re-entry Vehicle Massive Ordnance Air Blast Mixed Oxide Fuel Medium-Range Ballistic Missile Mean Sea Level Missile Technology Control Regime Medium-Wave Infra-Red North American Free Trade Area North Atlantic Oscillation National Aeronautics and Space Administration Near Earth Object National Missile Defence Neutral Particle Beams Non-Proliferation Treaty Organization for European Co-operation and Development Organization for European Economic Co-operation Palestine Liberation Organization Republic of Korea Royal United Services Institute for Defence Studies Re-entry Vehicle Southern African Development Community Strategic Arms Limitation Talks Surveillance Acquisition Tracking and Kill Assessment Space-Based Interceptors Space-Based Infra-Red System Space-Based Laser Strategic Defence Initiative Organization Sensor Fused Weapons Nuclear-driven Submarine Bearing Strategic Ballistic Missiles Space Surveillance and Tracking Systems Short-Wave Infra-Red Theatre High-Altitude Air Defence Theatre High-Energy Laser Theatre Missile Defence Tennessee Valley Authority

xviii

UAV UCAV UNSCOM UUV UV-C WMD

Unmanned Aerial Vehicle Unmanned Combat Aerial Vehicle United Nations Special Committee on Iraq Unmanned Underwater Vehicle Ultra-Violet C Weapons of Mass Destruction

Part I The strategic revolution

1 Through 11 September

A revolution unfolds, 1985–2001 Mikhail Gorbachev assumed power in the Kremlin in March 1985. Soon he emerged as a prime mover in what one may identify as the third and last of the great turning points of the Cold War. The first had been the peace agreements in Korea then Indo-China in 1953–4. They came hard upon the death of Stalin, though also the acquisition by each Superpower of thermonuclear warheads, the more advanced form of atomic firepower that derives not from the fission of heavy nuclei but from the fusion of hydrogen ones. Then, in 1962, the resolution of the Cuba missile crisis betokened the conclusive acknowledgement by both Washington and Moscow that a global nuclear exchange would be the ultimate in gratuitous folly. What Secretary Gorbachev did with aplomb as well as dispatch was concede, in effect, that his adversaries in the West had won the Cold War. He thereby set in motion a more profound alteration in the complexion and structure of the European continent than had anyone since Martin Luther. In Gorbachev’s case, it does seem that a decisive influence was the Strategic Defence Initiative (SDI): the quest for comprehensive missile defence launched by President Reagan in March 1983. Some of us had apprehended that SDI would invoke a hard-line Soviet response, a reassertion of garrison state belligerency. Nor can anyone deny things could have turned out thus. After all, the USSR was in deep crisis internally by 1985–6, a crisis brought on by political immobility leading to underachievement in virtually every field bar certain aspects of military or Spacerelated technology. In fact, however, the panache SDI expressed convinced the Gorbachev entourage their side had neither the resources nor the enterprise to compete, never mind the unusually cogent critique of SDI then emanating from within their Academy of Sciences.1 Indications that SDI did have this impact have come from several quarters.2 Personally I was most persuaded by Roald Sagdeev, lecturing at Oxford in the spring of 1992. Through the middle 1980s, he had headed the Institute for Space Research at the Soviet Academy of Sciences. Arguing how decisive SDI was, he

THROUGH 11 SEPTEMBER 3

came across as eminently reasonable and trustworthy. Perhaps the only caveat to enter is that it was in 1986, too, that the war in Afghanistan finally turned decisively against the Soviet troops. Receipt by the mujaheddin of many US Stingers was critical. The Stinger (a hand-held surface-to-air missile launcher) is lethal against helicopters. To pursue a little further the historical comparison, Luther and Gorbachev each stepped on to the world stage at a time of marked expansion of information flow. For Luther, this meant his blazing the Reformation trail through a ferocious exploitation of printing. Between 1518 and 1525, a most seminal phase, he brought out in German more printed works than did the next seventeen of the anti-papal publicists between them.3 For their part, Gorbachev and his allies dialogued with the media with less inhibition than any of their Kremlin predecessors. But critical to their situation was the momentum throughout society as a whole of the revolution in information technology (IT). Transistors, VCRs, computers, faxes and photocopiers were breaking down the protective isolation of the Soviet sphere.4 By 1987, Gorbachev was indicating his government would not intervene militarily to preserve Communism elsewhere in Eastern Europe. In 1989 the Berlin Wall was prised apart, as were many less conspicuous impediments. Through the 1990s, the IT revolution continued to ramify globally in divers ways. Quite the most singular development was the emergence of the Internet. Initially it was created mainly for long-distance collaboration on research projects, not least military ones. Then, come 1994, the widespread introduction of a graphical browser for the World-Wide Web engendered a wave of interest across mainstream America and well beyond. By the turn of the century, there were an estimated 150 million Internet users worldwide.5 As with printing in Luther’s Europe, more IT is no guarantee of more enlightenment, toleration and peace. What can be said with some assurance is this: as this knowledge-driven century progresses, polities the world over will be obliged to become either progressively more open or else a lot more closed. By the same token, communities living side by side will become either progressively more interactive and integrative or else more categorically separate and psychologically distant. A tactical revolution A civic burgeoning of data flow was always going to be matched in the military domain. Granted, certain weapons improvements lately registered do not involve electronics as such. They relate to better structural materials, more efficient fuel use and so on. By previous standards the consequent gains in ruggedness and mobility have been impressive. Nevertheless they are a minor theme compared with those made in the destructive application of firepower, largely through progressive exploitation of the electromagnetic spectrum coupled with an accelerating growth of computer science.

4 THE STRATEGIC REVOLUTION

As early as the Yom Kippur War of 1973, the efficacy against hard targets of air-delivered ordnance, in particular, was starting to improve by one or two orders of magnitude. For decades past, a key criterion has been Circular Error Probability (CEP): the radius of a circle centred on the prescribed aiming point and of an extent such that a warhead being delivered a given distance stands a 50 per cent chance of landing inside it. When a bomb is dropped from several thousand metres, say, the CEP may still be as much as 50 metres if it is in free-fall (i.e. unguided after release) but can be under 10 metres if it is steered electronically. Witness the onslaught on the Taliban near Mazar-I-Sharif. Take, too, ‘sensor fusing’, an innovation discussed in Chapter 7. A descending shell, let us say, separates into several ‘sub-munitions’, each adapted to homing on a battle tank or some such individual target. This precision with indirect artillery fire is liable to supersede two modes of lineof-sight encounter—Close Air Support and the advance in formation of battle tanks. However, this exotic weaponry is especially dependent on comprehensive surveillance of the enemy and the tight co-ordination of responses. True, big progress is being made in these spheres too. Even so, the continual flows of data required will often be hard to sustain. Accidental interference will perforce occur. Active Electronic Warfare (EW), basically meaning jamming and attrition, may compromise surveillance or communications. It may be at its most effective when several platforms cooperatively engage. Considerable scope remains for deception, too. Even so, EW is unlikely to compromise the other side’s battle management completely, except when facilitated by a very marked technology gap. Otherwise, the patterns will be patchy and the sequences erratic. Sometimes the enemy’s data flow will lapse; at other times, it may remain voluminous. As to the further outlook, a sigmoid or extended S-curve has long been deemed very characteristic of the progression to maturity of specific sectors of high technology,6 military electronics included. The connotation is that, within a given sector, the improvement in overall performance will stay gradual for quite a while. Then it will become ever more rapid, only to slow down again as maturation draws near. Both the acceleration and the retardation are liable to set in quite suddenly. Usually, a nation embarked on the phase of accelerating development can be expected to increase awhile any lead it has established over a rival. Admittedly, there are today important aspects of military electronics that may not have much potential left in them. Even the fabled Stealth technology may not have a lot more to offer until relevant breakthroughs are effected in nanometric materials science. Nevertheless, there remains at various levels of electronic science (ranging from the very pure to the directly applied) much scope for further advance: molecular electronics; computer networking; fibre and ‘free space’ optics; automation and remote control… In other words, a revolution in IT should continue apace during the next two or three decades at least. One could likewise say as much or more for the transformation of biology under way across the board.

THROUGH 11 SEPTEMBER 5

Technology gaps The extent to which such scientific progress emanates from the United States reinforces a more general sense of imbalance as between herself and Europe, the other ‘twin pillar’ of the Atlantic Alliance. Through the second half of the 1990s, against the background of the IT boom, two-fifths of world economic growth took place within the USA. Even so, the hope has since been expressed this side of the Atlantic that a translation of the global economy from ‘a revolutionary period to one of incremental change’ will put ‘a premium on the patient perfectionism and long-term commitment’ seen as the special penchant of European and, indeed, Japanese industry.7 At all events, Japan has been noticeably active of late in high technology, both ‘blue skies’ and applied. If the S-curve projections made above be valid, however, the hope just cited is a good two decades premature, certainly for many goods and services. Besides, the plain fact is that, with the end of the Cold War, most members of the EU slashed their budgets for military projects development. The USA did otherwise. The latter now spends twenty times more on fundamental weapons research than the former in toto do.8 Inevitably, so stark a contrast is a big factor in the American acquisition of an awesome diversity of military hardware. Comparison with Europe’s often lacklustre assortment could ultimately undermine the whole concept of trans-Atlantic partnership, a danger freely acknowledged by the EU Commissioner for External Affairs.9 More particularly, Euro-American dialogue about future military doctrine and organization may be less fruitful if the Europeans are lacking in ‘hands-on’ experience of state-of-art technology. Granted, their dearth will be by no means absolute. Granted, too, it can matter less in assessing some aspects of military preparedness than others. Apropos National Missile Defence, for instance, options are still being weighed in broad doctrinal or generic terms. None the less, themes as involved as mechanized warfare overland, say, do need to be informed by field evidence and close analysis. No such procedures can ever afford proof conclusive. But uncorroborated arguments about such intricate matters will carry little conviction henceforward. Weight is added to this reality by a new-found willingness on the part of the American military to think quite radically about armouries to come—e.g. about ones from which the manned warplane has been all but excluded or in which lethal lasers, say, or maybe non-lethal weapons assume prominence. Move the spotlight back to the Cold War adversaries of the West and widening technology gaps are regularly evident, especially in respect of electronics. Needless to say, the Soviet state of art used to be critical. A background factor all along was Stalin’s failure to give due backing to indigenous computer development, no doubt as part and parcel of his morbid fear of information flow. A representative view was that, in 1970, the Soviet computer stock averagely lagged ten to twelve years behind the West in both concept and quality10: a state

6 THE STRATEGIC REVOLUTION

of affairs closely connected with how electronically inferior Soviet-designed fighter aircraft regularly turned out to be. It was a major reason why they were consistently worsted so badly in combat—Korea, 1950–3; the Straits of Taiwan, 1958; and successive Arab-Israeli encounters. After 1970, this microelectronics gap progressively narrowed awhile. Since 1990, however, things have rather fallen apart for Moscow. Not that the USA or the West as a whole can afford to be complacent. To date, the assessment of military IT has focused especially on air power. But, decisively important though this dimension so frequently was in twentieth-century warfare, its influence was often less readily gained than the basics of a given situation might have led one to expect. Not least was this true of the bombing of communication routes.11 As manned aircraft are displaced more and more by missiles and unmanned platforms, offensive expectations may be realized more readily. But shortfalls will still be experienced, particularly over forests and builtup areas. Moreover, if one does allow that IT will very generally make precision strikes more feasible, the inference must be that pre-emption will sometimes come to appear attractive or even imperative operationally. Even so, this option is one which multinational coalitions may find hard to agree on. For one thing, more operational scope for tactical pre-emption may make some states wary of an open-ended doctrine of strategic pre-emption against Weapons of Mass Destruction. Attitudes to firepower What has to be reckoned with concurrently is more insistence than heretofore on keeping casualties among one’s own troops minimal. Early indications of this in the West are discernible when World War II is compared with World War I. But it has waxed stronger since, especially in the context of the Strategic Revolution. Concern has burgeoned, too, with exploiting electronic precision to minimize casualties all round, especially among non-combatants. Obviously both these predilections contrast agreeably with the squandering of close to 100 million lives in the big wars of the twentieth century. Clearly, too, each owes a lot to the global explosion of information. All the same, the two aims may conflict. Moreover, either could make armed conflict harder to discourage or battles harder to win, especially against adversaries who have rediscovered the timehonoured martial virtue of suicidal sacrifice. Looking to the future, it would be nice to think that a desire to limit mortality through war will extend to heading off decisively the economic, social and ecological instabilities liable to contribute to warlike situations. In a new world climate, this may happen. But in the past we have often evinced complacency about the risk of war, then pragmatic resignation about the manner of its prosecution.

THROUGH 11 SEPTEMBER 7

Agonized pragmatism A contingent pragmatism became the norm in the long struggle against Hitler, then Stalin. An acid test is the strategic exercise of air power. In 1939 the Bomber Command of Britain’s Royal Air Force was hopeful that its offensive against German home territory could very largely be comprised of night attacks on specific targets of accepted legitimacy. Yet by early 1942 it was heavily committed to night-time area attacks—necessarily so, in my view, in the prevailing circumstances. Soon thereafter, General Ira Eaker, the first commander of the 8th United States Army Air Force starting to form up in the UK, did warn against our nations being indicted by history for ‘throwing the strategic bomber against the German man-in-the-street’. However, relatively precise USAAF attacks by day against nodal but heavily defended targets deep inside Europe proved prohibitively expensive through 1943. Come 1944, however, the USAAF was able to stamp its authority thus on the Third Reich. Likewise, by that autumn, a Bomber Command now kitted out with new electronic systems was embarked on a devastatingly accurate nocturnal campaign against the German railway system. Yet in February 1945 it was joined by the USAAF in the comprehensive devastation of the centre of Dresden. The RAF ‘aiming-point’ was a circle two miles across. My own recollection of passing through Dresden en route to Berlin in the summer of 1951 is that the residual ‘aiming-point’ scene was eerily akin to what we all later came televisually to recognize as the Sea of Tranquillity on the surface of the Moon. Hardly any edifice, old or new, as yet rose above the flatness. Electronic exactitude had effected overkill in all directions across the said two miles. In the Pacific theatre the USAAF was engaged in the very extensive bombing of Japanese cities, a campaign that was to culminate in Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Then between early 1951 and the armistice of July 1953, what was by now an independent United States Air Force (USAF) played by far the biggest part in the bombardment of North Korea. The climax came between 13 May and 18 June 1953 when the USAF bombed a quarter of the twenty dams in Haeju, the ‘rice bowl’ of North Korea, this escalatory threshold being crossed just after the seedlings had been transplanted. To start with, the UN-sponsored air strikes had been in pursuance of ‘Operation Strangle’, an attempt made with but limited success to effect the logistical isolation of the Communist forces dug in along what was now a very static front line across the waist of Korea.12 Through 1952, however, this air-sea offensive evolved into a thoroughgoing counter-society onslaught. The devastation must have accentuated the manic fanaticism of the Pyongyang regime, a fascisto-marxist collective mind-set that survives to this day chillingly unchanged. Obversely, a threat via several diplomatic channels to cross the nuclear threshold does seem to have secured a decisive breakthrough in the armistice negotiations in the spring of 1953.13 It represents a rebuke by History of those

8 THE STRATEGIC REVOLUTION

who say one should never contemplate using nuclear weapons first. Likewise, a multi-pronged argument can be advanced to the effect that the Anglo-American bombing campaign against the Third Reich was vital to Allied victory. Unfortunately, historians decently exercised by its brutality and legal shakiness fail properly to address the strongest of these dialectical prongs.14 The offensive badly cramped Nazi thinking at top level, not least Hitler’s and Goering’s. It critically affected Germany’s menacing ‘secret weapons’ programmes. Nor should one be at all cavalier about the massive diversion of Luftwaffe resources to Fatherland defence, especially from mid-1943. On D-Day, the Allied air forces supporting the Normandy landings outnumbered in warplanes by twenty to one their Luftwaffe opponents.15 These arguments still have to be pursued, not least because dilemmas of the kind posed by these campaigns, during and ever since, are likely to surface anew. Strategic pre-emption could be an instance in the years ahead. So could counter-insurgency. Nuclear first use, too, remains an issue. The way of the warrior With weaponry ever more exotic and diversified, it will be imperative to enunciate new codes of conduct for the application of military force. These will have to be more elaborated than the new-found axiom, ‘force can be exercised freely against the young combatants but never against innocent civilians’. Two of the various reasons for requiring elaboration may here suffice. As George Orwell well reminded us, young soldiers cannot bear responsibility for the origins of conflict whereas an older generation ensconced back home often does.16 Some civilians are less innocent than others. Yet neither can one draw a neat ethical distinction between force of arms and economic sanctions against civilians. Some half-million German civilians were killed by the Allied air attacks in World War II. About four times as many had died of famine and related diseases at the end of World War I. An Allied economic blockade had been considerably responsible. Any evolving philosophy of restraint will also have to reckon with what is likely to prove an obstinate insistence on the avoidance of heavy losses among one’s own soldiery. The obstinacy will come from its having sunk multiple roots. Among the stronger is an affirmation that everyone has a ‘natural right’ to live a long life and live it to the full. Medical people have lately become a deal more explicit when advising older people about their approaching demise; they have had their span, after all. A corollary of this approach is to regard death or disablement early on as close to unthinkable. Both aspects relate to a positive though also a negative side of contemporary societal evolution: the accent on welfare provision and the burgeoning of what can all too easily be obsessive selfconcern. Closely related is a sharp decline in social deference all round and in regard for the aptitudes and motivations of anointed leaders, not least military and

THROUGH 11 SEPTEMBER 9

political ones. Correspondingly, the arbitrariness so inherent in war is viewed astringently, especially as appertaining to our own troops. Witness the surge of litigious concern, still on-going, one may note, about those 70,000 veterans of the 1991 campaign against Iraq whom many believe suffer from a clinical ‘Gulf War syndrome’. Overall, the registered incidence of post-traumatic stress, in one form or another, rose very steadily in Western armies through the twentieth century. Moreover, any lingering sense of la gloire de guerre is diminished further by the current propensity to see everything in global perspective. Let us take, by way of example, the British advance from Alamein to Tunis in 1942–3. It rates as a truly epic counterstrike, one in which every surviving participant may take deep pride. But its ability to enthral the rising generation must be constrained by the fact that an orbital satellite could traverse the said span in five minutes. Then again, through the second quarter of the last century, J.B.Priestley was one of England’s most inspired literary figures in several genres. Also, he had been an infanteer on the Western Front. So there was authority behind an observation of his that a sense of belonging to ‘the flourishing life’ of a local region was what ‘common men have so often fought and died’ for.17 That sense tends nowadays to be ever less strong. Part of the answer may be found in a more general reversion to all volunteer armed forces hopefully able to derive satisfaction and togetherness from operating high-technology panoplies designed to wage war with the utmost discrimination. However, such voluntarism will not ipso facto exclude the modish ‘cult of victimhood’. Within the British military culture, a very distinguished part has been played since 1815 by Gurkha troops voluntarily inducted from Nepal. But lately legal cudgels have been drawn over the fact that the parity of treatment with home-recruited troops which they enjoy in most regards does not extend to pensions. A saving grace vis-à-vis the end of the Cold War was that Communist armies were shown ultimately to be more prone to loss of martial resolve than their Western counterparts. The malaise-ridden cohorts uncovered by the collapse of the Warsaw Pact could never have launched the veritably suicidal ‘human wave’ attacks so common on the Eastern Front in World War II, and again, one should add, by Communist troops during the Korean War and at the battle of Dien Bien Phu—the climax in 1954 of France’s war in Indo-China. For in this respect, too, Marxism-Leninism was eventually undermined by the information explosion. Nevertheless, the Tamil and Palestinian suicide bombers starkly remind us how a furious sense of denial may still cause the West and its friends to face fanatic violence. Indeed, this could happen repeatedly and extensively in what may be the tortured world of several decades hence. Granted, zeal has often failed to prevail over military professionalism, however numerous and confident the zealots themselves might have been. Witness the systematic destruction of Boadicea’s enraged horde by Suetonius in AD 60. Witness again the collapse of the kamikaze campaign against the American and

10 THE STRATEGIC REVOLUTION

British fleets near Japan in 1944–5, collapse in the face of the new proximityfused anti-aircraft shells. All the same, there will still be situations in which the landscape and/or the social setting will enable zealotry to pose a real menace regionally and therefore to the world order at large. Besides, it is a matter of common observation that countries which lag generally in modern military technology may not do so in every respect. Today there are two spheres in which a ‘rogue state’ may keep adequately on terms: missilery and the nuclear or biological means of mass destruction. A tactical missile will be far less complicated to develop than a strike fighter. The same can apply these days to a nuclear fission warhead or, still more, a germ bomb. To which one may add two other respects in which all three genres commend themselves to the disadvantaged. Their ‘shelf lives’ are measurable in decades. Also they need never match in quality or power their equivalents on the opposite side. They just have to perform a defined task. Perhaps one caveat to enter is that the penetration of anti-missile defences could prove more demanding over time. Still, this may qualify but partially the axioms here stated. Another question right back on the agenda is what weapons may be appropriate to the countering of insurgency or civil unrest. What options are not merely licit but acceptable in more general terms? Will the improved prospects for specific targeting weaken the taboos, always contingent in any case, against the use of heavy weapons to combat unrest in built-up areas? Also to be considered are non-lethal weapons, a new generation of which is emergent as part of the tactical revolution. Among the technologies being explored are ‘bluntforce trauma’ munitions; psychochemical gases; acoustic pulses, audible and inaudible; and electromagnetic beams on specific frequencies ranging from ultraviolet to radio. Beyond what thresholds do ‘non-lethal’ beams become ‘antipersonnel’?18 How ‘1984’ is the possibility of terahertz surveillance alluded to in Appendix A? And are non-lethal weapons always that moral? What about assaults on human dignity? Something further to ponder is whether so exotically varied a panoply will encourage certain regimes to presume, overtly or otherwise, that dissent can always be suppressed with or without political accommodation. Debate about this is beginning in professional circles; and not exclusively within the USA.19 The public at large ought to be involved too. Soviet Marxism The collapse of the USSR clearly meant that the Eurasian ‘heartland’ it effectively encompassed could no longer serve as a base area, logistically but also oneirically, for the interwoven assortment of revolutionary tendencies that make up the international radical Left. Indeed, the Soviet demise undercut the very foundations of Marxism-Leninism: the corpus of thought that had informed mainstream Communism but which had also been a prominent strand in the world view of the other elements within the radical Left, Islamic revolution

THROUGH 11 SEPTEMBER 11

included. One factor in its appeal to the angry and desperate has been Marx’s recasting of the concept of dialectical interaction as enunciated, somewhat arcanely, by G.W.F.Hegel. For this underpins averrations that, to be authentic, radical change has to be violently abrupt. But the plain fact was that the great Soviet experiment in Marxism-Leninism had failed far too comprehensively. A ‘classless society’ was not even in sight. Nor was the state as such withering away. Nor, indeed, had armed conflict by any means been absent as between the supposedly ‘fraternal’ member states of the Communist world. Nor was the ‘capitalist’ world around it wracked by ever more acute economic crises. Nor, for that matter, had the long-standing Marxian claim to be ‘scientific’ socialism been persuasively upheld. In the Soviet bloc as elsewhere, Marxist historical research could at its best be scrupulous and stimulating. At its worst, it fed savage historicist distortions, especially for presentation to the populace at large. Witness how even throughout the ‘liberalizing’ Khruschev era, no pictures of Stalin or Trotsky were to be seen in the big Moscow museums devoted to the history of the USSR in peace and war. Witness, too, how in early 1958 an English-language History of China was published in a Beijing then, to outward appearances, still locked solidly into Moscow’s sphere of influence. It attributed the precipitate surrender of Japan in August 1945 entirely to intervention by the Soviet army and Mongolian cavalry. The nuclear bombs went unmentioned.20 Ineluctably, the fear Soviet Marxism so regularly exhibited of full and accurate information about anything at all political vitiated its relationship with pure science. Persisting lags in computer science and in military electronics have been mentioned already. But the discordance went deeper and wider. In the nineteenth century, the Academy of Sciences (then headquartered in St Petersburg) was renowned for its promotion of fundamental enquiry. Under Stalin, this interest was suborned to the performance of such graceless tasks as condemning Albert Einstein for his ‘bourgeois idealism’ and encouraging, at home and abroad, the notion that the Dialectic was tantamount to being the fundamental law of the cosmos. Two distinguished British scientists who, being drawn to ‘scientific socialism’, aired this nostrum awhile, were J.D.Bernal, the crystallographer and J.B.S.Haldane, the pioneer geneticist. The latter did so not immoderately in a work of no little substance.21 As regards the applied side, the Stalin era undeniably registered some impressive technical achievements. Yet it was also studded with such phantasms as the revolution in biological mutation supposedly effected by the agronomist T.D.Lysenko and the climate transformation putatively ensured by newly planted arboreal ‘shelter belts’ sometimes hundreds of kilometres long. These belts could never be effective beyond several hundred metres, not even to their leeward. This last example is pertinent to our present and future discontents, especially in respect of global warming. As is now well appreciated, the various national models of Marxism-Leninism (the Maoist included22) have consistently performed badly in ecological respects. A number of reasons might be adduced.

12 THE STRATEGIC REVOLUTION

One can be that the early Marxists, not least Karl himself, extolled the technology-driven prospect of ‘socialist abundance’. In so doing, they were overreacting to Malthusian demographic pessimism but also to a Romantic movement that had shown itself often to be not just anti-industrialization but fundamentally anti-science, in abstract principle if not in material life style. Deviations from Moscow Unfortunately, by responding the way they did, the Marxists missed the chance of developing one of the most cogent critiques that can be levelled against capitalism whenever it is operating very much along laissez-faire open-market lines. It is that its costings take no account of what are now termed ‘external diseconomies of scale’. Every new car-owner in London, say, imposes a burden on every existing one and, one stage removed, on the city’s population at large. Every new car or power station or whatever adds to the level of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere around the world. These simple truths do not ipso facto clinch the argument against capitalism nor against sustaining economic growth. But they are illustrative of a factor which should always be taken into account. Having been ignored by the Marxist founding fathers, external diseconomies or, indeed, economies received systematic consideration only from 1920. Arthur Pigou, a Cambridge political economist, led the way. Undoubtedly, externalities at global level will be on the policy agenda more prominently in the future. All else apart, they will be as climate change bites deeper. Addressing them and their ultimate connotations in terms of constraints on world economic growth will require radical political analysis. One can further anticipate that a lot of people will wonder whether the Marxist-Leninist legacy can usefully be mobilized to this end. They may find their answer by considering not the mainstream of Marxism adumbrated above but deviations therefrom. Frankfurt and beyond Of these, quite the most free-ranging has been what came to be known in the 1950s as the ‘Frankfurt School’. Best remembered among its doyens is probably Erich Fromm. Like certain other literati, he sought to integrate Marx and Freud, in his rendering a much modified Marx and a much qualified Freud. Writing in the excoriating middle phase of World War II, Fromm saw the current generation as grappling unawares with contradictions inherent in five centuries of postRenaissance progress towards ever-wider horizons of knowledge.23 The isolated individuals characteristic of modern mass society could be, in times of acute stress, open to seduction by the vision authoritarianism might initially present— the sadistic appeal of complete power over others coupled with the masochistic one of dissolving oneself into a roseate collective identity. It is an interpretation with implications for future world security, viewed in the round. However, it does not overtly relate to ecological externalities. For that

THROUGH 11 SEPTEMBER 13

aspect, one might turn to another affiliate, Karl Wittfogel (b. 1896). Not that his place in the Frankfurt pantheon is assured. One eminent student of political thought did rank him primus inter pares.24 But to another, he was never representative.25 In the 1950s, his obsessive anti-Muscovite sentiments caused him to reside awhile on the far Right of the political spectrum. Still, Wittfogel made as from 1938 quite a singular contribution to political analysis. He recast ‘oriental despotism’, a theme the European literati had aired episodically since the sixteenth century. He related it to how other civilizations had arisen on broad river valleys, sun-baked and flood-prone. There agriculture might thrive dependably enough, always provided area irrigation and drainage could be installed. A precondition for that, he would always insist, was a centralized ‘hydraulic’ autocracy. As critics on all sides have observed across the years, he never explored evidence which ran contrary. Take devolution as an alternative approach to hydraulic management. An analysis in a Marxian journal in 1959 showed how, from the third century BC to the twelfth century AD, the Sinhala regime thrived in the ‘northern dry zone’ of Sri Lanka largely on the basis of devolving water control to village level.26 Much the same applied in Central America and the Andes up to the European advent.27 Obversely, the Muscovite autocracy arose between the headwaters of major rivers and in interaction with Mongols from the Gobi Desert fringes. There was not much hydraulic in that situation. This Wittfogel acknowledges but strives to explain in terms of what the Mongols themselves had imbibed from China.28 All the same, the most serious indictment of him (and, for that matter, of his critics) has to be failure to consider the circulation of water in any given valley. Nowhere in Oriental Despotism, his keynote study, are there indexed references to soil quality, salination, river basin topographies, silting or climate change. Nor is there any discussion of the distinction Edward Hyams had lately drawn between (a) the natural provision of silt, acting each summer to make the Nile bread basket ‘nearly man-proof’, and (b) the Mesopotamian situation in which the soil was so man-made as to be perennially vulnerable to silting and salting.29 All Wittfogel could offer on that score was the facile aside that two rivers—the Tigris and Euphrates—are better than one.30 In another neo-Marxian exposition, this time a ‘world system analysis’, Immanuel Wallerstein allowed climate deterioration only a small part in aggravating a European high medieval crisis otherwise driven internally. He worked from the dubious double assumption that economic recession began pre-1300 whereas climate decline did not, and the outright fallacy that the latter was likely ipso facto to have been uniform across the northern hemisphere.31 Again one encounters the same mental blockage. Those who would claim to be ‘scientific socialists’ fail to forge causal links between natural science and the humanities. Nor is it likely that the neo-Marxists of the Seattle generation will do enough to correct this shortcoming. All else apart, too much of the ecological agenda appears too soft on first examination to appeal to people bent on violent

14 THE STRATEGIC REVOLUTION

upheaval. Even the Christian Marxian ‘liberation movements’ of Latin America followed rather than led over matters like conservation of the rain forest. Herein is another reason for making sure Marxists never again make all the running within progressive politics, thence to disport themselves the arrogant way the New Left did through the middle 1960s. Among the consequences of such abnegation of full and free debate has been the constrictive influence Marxism-Leninism so pervasively exercised in the developing world through this last century. Accepted as a credo of Western origin, it was often endorsed in preference to more moderate political perspectives from that quarter or, indeed, to Christian religious ones. The disconcerting pace of social change brought on by the Western impact was a big factor in this predilection. A measure during the Cold War of its import was the currency gained by the notion of a ‘third world’ neatly set apart from both the Atlantic community and the Soviet bloc. It dates back forty years to endeavours by Khrushchev to give the neutralist geopolitics of many developing countries more of a pro-Soviet collective spin. Events soon deprived this patronizing expression of such coherence as it may initially have had. Yet one still encounters it not infrequently. A paucity of philosophy A particular consequence of this Marxian pitch, little remarked but very limiting, has been the developing countries’ failure to generate a body of political and philosophic thought that squares creatively with their own problems of adaptation. This has been in spite of a veritably ubiquitous and continual expansion, since 1950 or thereabouts, of the higher education base; the richness and depth, even today, of many traditional patterns of culture; and the vitality of more contemporary lifestyles, literary and artistic. What general political thought there has been has owed too much to a shallow Marxism interacting with cultural chauvinism. The latter may have various roots: religion, negritude, military grandiloquence, historical romanticism, personal charisma… Some of the more baleful contributions have come from men out to establish their own dictatorships in the aftermath of colonial or quasicolonial rule. Mao Tse-tung understood better than virtually any European Marxist the revolutionary potential of pauperized peasants. But he did not carry Marxism-Leninism forward in a more philosophic sense. Then again, in 1957, Kwame Nkrumah became the first President of Ghana. The book he had written fifteen years earlier, Towards Colonial Freedom, was just a diatribe of bitterness.32 The Philosophy of the Revolution by Gamal Abdel Nasser, his Egyptian counterpart, was more composed but heavily anecdotal. Nor does one glean much from the averration of Muammar Al Gadafi that all methods of education prevailing in the world should be done away through a worldwide cultural revolution to emancipate man’s mind from

THROUGH 11 SEPTEMBER 15

curricula of fanaticism and from the process of deliberate adaptation of man’s taste, his ability to form concepts and his mentality’.33 Hardly surprisingly, Western Marxists started to talk of ‘lumpen-socialism’.34 In China, the rich corpus of political thought emanating from Sun Yat-Sen (1866–1925) and his immediate disciples was effectively submerged beneath ascendant Maoism.35 At the same time, the Republic of India progressively lost contact with Mahatma Gandhi (1869–1948). His most visible disciple, as seen from abroad, was Vinoba Bhave with his ‘land gifts’ movement. Yet between 1951 and 1969 only 0.5 per cent of the country’s land area was redistributed in this utopian way. For political purposes post-independence, Gandhi’s philosophy was too fundamental and too inward-directed, not linked closely enough to political economy. As Arthur Koestler observed in a caustic evaluation, the spinning wheel he strove to revive found a place on the national flag but not in the peasants’ cottages.36 Likewise, Albert Einstein reminded him as a friend that his philosophy of non-violence was more effective in interaction with the British than it would have been against the Nazis.37 Still, in the wake of the world crisis of the early 1970s, a broad groundswell in favour of democratic accountability was suddenly discernible. Thus the middle years of the decade saw democracy restored in Greece, Spain and Portugal. Through the 1980s this tendency continued; and became entrained in the Strategic Revolution through the meltdown of the Soviet bloc, a transformation effectively completed with Boris Yeltsin’s blocking of the attempted military coup in Moscow itself in August 1991. South Africa and Nicaragua had been among the collateral gains for majority rule that decade past. Since when, this benign proliferation has continued. Among the countries in which democratic aspirations have lately been the subject of defiant articulation are Sierra Leone, Zimbabwe, Iran, Afghanistan and East Timor. To which one should add that, these last two decades, the global political trend towards greater democracy has been closely associated with economic liberalization, including sharp contractions of state ownership. This side of things has owed more to conceptual revaluation than has its political counterpart. Witness a whole raft of innovatory initiatives in respect of relations between the private and public sectors. Likewise observable, come the new millennium, was the upsurge in the prestige of American society, as viewed in the round. An astute biographer of Osama Bin Laden has inferred that he identified, at long last, with the Palestinian cause as his only way of overriding the longings of the Islamic masses for ‘all things American’.38 Wells and Fukuyama Still, all things are relative; and virtually all things are ever in flux. Bearing these truisms in mind, it is salutary to recall Anticipations, the 1901 essay in which a

16 THE STRATEGIC REVOLUTION

youthful H.G.Wells considered how the world might look towards the end of the new century. It is prophecy characterized by military naivety, geopolitical acuity and, above all, arresting insights into the future of Western society and its governance. He averred that political philosophers had never made any ‘case for the elective government of modern states that cannot be knocked to pieces in five minutes’ (p. 146). Accordingly, its advent could well turn out to be ‘not the opening phase of a worldwide movement going on unbending in its present direction but the first impulses of forces that will finally sweep round into quite a different path’ (p. 146). For one thing, a ‘confusion of moral standards’ (p. 132) was likely to result from the intermingling of cultures through increased communications. Distracted governments might thereby be impelled towards demagogic belligerency, drawing ‘the voter to the poll by alarums, seeking ever to taint the possible nucleus of any competing organization with the scandal of external influence’ (p. 167).39 Wells here wrote in a context strangely akin to the present. It was the turn of a century. It was a time of sharply expanded data flow: notably, the proliferation of popular newspapers and the effective completion of a global network of cables. It had seen intercontinental projections of military power: the Boer War, the international expedition to Peking, the Spanish-American War… Accordingly it is pertinent to contrast ‘H.G.’s’ account with a seminal rendering in 1989 by Francis Fukuyama, then deputy head of the policy planning staff at the State Department. He saw the closing down of the Cold War as effectively the ‘End of History’. He averred the liberal West could absorb all residual threats, these being classified as religious fundamentalism and traditional nationalism. The posthistorical phase would, we were advised, take longer to bring in small nationalities with still unresolved grievances (‘Palestinians and Kurds; Sikhs and Tamils…’) but ‘large-scale conflict must involve large states still caught in the grip of history and they are what appear to be passing from the scene’. The prospect in store engendered in him deep satisfaction tinged with a Kiplingesque sadness.40 In this short essay, Fukuyama revealed little of his broader outlook, save for an Hegelian insistence on the primacy within the historical process of ideas, a tenet that stands in opposition to the economic determinism of the hard Right or hard Left. Soon he was to develop his argument much further41; and he has lately moved well beyond it to weigh the direct impact on the human life cycle of biotechnology. So suffice for now to remark how someone who clearly understands the role of big ideas in past history did not here anticipate future paradigm change. A political economy based on consumer freedom and unlimited growth may in due course give way to a new ethos geared more directly to ecological preservation and social harmony. It may have to if peace and liberty are to be secured in a world shrinking by the day.

THROUGH 11 SEPTEMBER 17

Explosive excision A clinching argument for seeking to build a peaceable century around transAtlantic bipolarity is complementality of outlook. The American cultural tradition is dominantly sanguine whereas the European is more suffused with pessimism. August 1914 exemplifies the contrast in backgrounds. For Americans, it saw a canal through Panama connect ‘sea to shining sea’. For Europeans, a Balkan imbroglio escalated to continental immolation. Interaction between the two streams of consciousness remains imperative if the approaching divide between triumph and tragedy is as acute as some of us apprehend. In the decades before 1914, predictions of Armageddon were an established literary genre in Europe, especially Britain. In the USA, the theme little surfaced. Yet come 1915, J.Bernard Walker brought out in New York and London his America Fallen! The sequel to the European War. One illustration was of a skyscraper closely resembling the Empire State, soon to be. Under air attack, its top half is crashing into a second such edifice. The caption declaims that ‘in the cataclysm of the plunging towers, New York must surrender or perish’.42 Neither New York nor the USA did either after 11 September. Nevertheless, Walker was right to foresee that such a strike would ipso facto be focal to a bigger clash of interests. The atrocity of the 11th stemmed from a millenarianism that (within Islam though also Judaeo-Christianity) has recurrently found expression, religious or political, in stressful times. An enveloping vision is articulated by a great leader lately arrived on Earth or imminently expected. He tells how History’s last great struggle draws nigh, a gorge of apocalyptic crisis that must and can be traversed to attain the celestial city on the hill—a thousand years of peace. Bin Laden arose within this tradition, though as instigator, not as philosopher. There are manifestations, too, on the Christian Right in the USA. As the first Christian millennium drew towards its close, chiliastic declamations waxed more prevalent in Christendom than could otherwise have been expected. Ten centuries later, a similar tendency was discernible on the world stage, albeit in more cosmopolitan mien. It was no coincidence that Bin Laden did his worst so hard upon the Christian turn of millennium. Before that the most obvious millennial expression had owed nothing to voices from God. It was the fear that computer software not programmed to cover 2000 and beyond would constitute a ‘millennium bug’ liable to generate global chaos. In fact, the new century dawned with almost no such impact. Apparently the USA had spent $43 billion to ensure this. Russia spent $100 million but likewise had no difficulty.43 That apart, unease was abroad about disorderliness worldwide and its relationship with political extremism. Addressing millenarian tendencies in medieval Europe, Norman Cohn had pointed out how successive vicious outbursts drew support from the ‘amorphous mass of the people who were not simply poor but who could find no assured or recognized place in society’.44 In

18 THE STRATEGIC REVOLUTION

the year 1000, this stratum was not that prevalent. Over the next several centuries it got more so (notably around the Meuse and middle Rhine) as economic change loosened social bonds. Loss of identity may by then have been more a fount of radicalism than penury per se. Those trapped in grinding poverty are usually more concerned to break out than to save humankind at large. The world of the near future may likewise contain more people who have been radicalized by identity crisis than is currently anticipated either by governments or by the literati. The signs are very evident in a swathe of territory extending through the Horn of Africa, Arabia and the Gulf to Central Asia. Here the impact of Western Europe was for long episodic. Then through the twentieth century Atlantic imperialism, drawn to oil and other aspects of the strategic geography, induced a whole succession of culture shocks. Wilfred Thesiger (1910–2003), who saw himself as the last of the famous British genre of eccentric desert travellers, well captured the pathos of this denouement. Born in Addis Ababa, he sojourned with the Bedouin of Arabia and the Marsh Arabs of Iraq, the latter being a community that has since had its singular ecology wantonly undermined by Saddam Hussein. Unfortunately, Thesiger’s evocation of the Bedouin does not entirely persuade. His classic text has no indexed references to womanhood. Those to slaves cast them more as a venerated elite.45 Throughout, he portrayed in a kindly light attributes (e.g. violent rapacity) that the great majority of cultures have deplored. All the same, one can still hear his concern that a rapid collapsing of traditional mores is bound to lead to anomie. My own experience of the Arabian peninsula is almost confined to three journalist visits to Aden and South Arabia in the eighteen months preceding Britain’s withdrawal in November 1967. But a medley of images sticks in the mind. Two tribal bodyguards, archetypes of bewhiskered and bandoliered jollity. A British corporal, mortified at losing a squaddie in a firefight. A colonel of infantry decently concerned not to sacrifice troops with departure so near. Reflecting with him as night fell on the discordance between war and the timeless Radfan massifs under a full August moon. That morning a land-mine explosion near the perimeter had savagely injured abdominally two Adeni soldiers loyal to what India called the Raj. Two young expatriates soon to die: the one to a Marxian gunman, the other a collateral victim of an intra-tribal vengeance killing. The Old Etonian district officer on a lonely steppic posting, determined to do his duty while all dissolved around him. Senior civil servants still hoping yet another British federal solution might be essayed. The moderate Adeni politician who, throughout a longish interview, fought back fear of being seen talking to a Westerner. An intelligence specialist so modulating Marxian and tribal factions as to make sure our Leftist legatees were not people in hock to Cairo. Even with his aplomb, all this presaged a failed state. The closure of the Suez Canal (1967–75) confirmed this. Into this Arabian zone of culture shock, Osama Bin Laden was born in 1957, son of a self-made Jeddah multi-millionaire. But estrangement between his parents

THROUGH 11 SEPTEMBER 19

was followed, in 1967, by his father’s accidental death. This left young Osama marginalized within the Jeddah effendi. He thence-forward pursued a very convoluted quest for self-realization. In 1977, he was kind of ‘born again’ by the Haj (e.g. pilgrimage to Mecca) after two or three years of sowing wild oats in Beirut. Come the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, he was ready to put self and wealth on the line. Working through Pakistan, he did a lot to build the resistance, often liaising with the CIA. He was likely under fire himself occasionally.46 The Soviet abandonment of Afghanistan was completed in 1989. That year, too, Bin Laden (a) moved his base from Peshawar to Khartoum and (b) formed AlQaeda, ostensibly to keep Islamist war veterans in contact. Then, hard upon Baghdad’s invasion of Kuwait the next year, he was brusquely snubbed by Riyadh. He had offered to assemble a pan-Arab force of 10,000 men to shield the kingdom. The Saudis opted instead for an American-led liberation of Kuwait. That their preference was vindicated by Operation Desert Storm will have made Bin Laden all the angrier. Al-Qaeda ramified and waxed more militant. Early in 1996 the Khartoum government told it to depart. Nevertheless, the UN Security Council still imposed sanctions on the Sudan for not expelling three men (allegedly linked to Al-Qaeda) wanted for an attempt to assassinate President Mubarak of Egypt. Bin Laden duly turned to Afghanistan. Its tortuous geography, physical and political, vaguely proffered security. Its inner-Asian locale had connotations his charismatic physique and manner could exploit to the full. A distinguished British military historian saw his insurgent bands as within an Oriental tradition, not of hydraulic despotism but of nomadic fighters ‘appearing suddenly out of empty space’.47 By early 2001, Al-Qaeda was or had been fomenting guerrilla war in scores of territories. Among them were Algeria, Bosnia, Chechnya and that supreme ‘symbol of paganism’, the USA. The National Security Council in Washington had already identified Afghanistan as the regional centre of a ‘lethal cocktail of drugs, weapons, Islamic militancy and terrorism’.48 Once back in Afghanistan, Bin Laden had forged links with Mullah Omar, leader of the Taliban. These Islamic fundamentalists (largely from the Pushtundominated South) had failed to secure a grip on the country as a whole, Pakistani backing notwithstanding. Nevertheless, a study cast in historical perspective concluded thus in 1998: In the face of the utter destruction of the country, the lack of interest in its reconstruction by former Cold War opponents [my italics], the desperate turning to the drug trade as an alternative economy, perhaps the Islamic strictness of the Taliban may be the lesser price to pay for stability and economic recovery.49 However, the purblind bigotry was always hard to stomach: girls denied education; women required to wear the yashmak; men to grow full beards… In

20 THE STRATEGIC REVOLUTION

2000, the USA persuaded the Security Council to impose limited sanctions, given Kabul’s refusal to hand over Bin Laden to face charges concerning the suicide strike that October against the USS Cole moored in Aden, an act that left seventeen American sailors dead. As ghoulish as anything, many of us felt, was the explosive savaging of Buddhist statues by a local Taliban commander in March 2001—among them the world’s largest standing Buddha. It was part of a general despoilation through the 1990s in a land with a richly diverse cultural heritage. The Buddhas in question most likely date from the fifth century,50 a time when the brilliant Gupta empire in India was extending its influence into Afghanistan as elsewhere. Its brilliance was sustained by a tendency in that century towards strong monsoons. All through history, Central Asia (Afghanistan included) has been sensitive to rainfall fluctuations within its own limits or else in the lands around. One should therefore ask whether the several years of drought that through the turn of the millennium exacerbated the Afghan national trauma (especially in the North) were part of an irregular but on-going tendency. Here one can but put a few markers down. Contributing to the Cambridge history of Persia in 1968, the then director of the Iranian meteorological service stressed the input to regional winter rainfall made by slow-moving depressions of Mediterranean origin reinvigorated by moisture off Mesopotamia and the Gulf, though also by easterlies within the upper wind circulation round the Siberian anticyclone.51 However, that prominent feature of Eurasia’s winter weather seems now to be weakening under the influence of general warming,52 much as it did in the early Middle Ages.53 Tentatively, one could infer that Afghanistan is entered upon an era of drought recurrency, perhaps accentuated by the ‘Asian Brown Cloud’ of pollutants. Yet regardless, it faces a massive ecological crisis in the aftermath of twenty-two years of war. Thus about 15 per cent of the area is customarily designated farmland or pasture but under half was in use in 2001. There was a raft of explanations. Ten million landmines laid was one. Destruction of two-thirds of the villages another. Yet the population was 15 per cent higher than in 1979.54 One could say the root cause of all the mayhem was a backlash against globalization that had caught up with Afghanistan with shocking abruptness. Even so, it is hard to enthuse about the Afghan Marxist attempt, between 1973 and 1979, to go the other way, breast the tide of modernization and take it at the flood. It was too compromised by factionalism plus the desire of Moscow to pull the strings. Once again, Marxism-Leninism had let down the underprivileged. Military historians are bound to extol, for brazen audacity and brutal precision, the strikes of 11 September against New York and Washington. May they do so alongside other long-distance commando raids no less remarkable tactically but free from moral stain. One thinks of the British wrecking of the Normandie dry dock at St Nazaire in 1941, and the Israeli hijack rescue at Entebbe in 1971. In those instances, however, the specific aims were evident. Those of 11 September are not so. Bin Laden was or is a false prophet more

THROUGH 11 SEPTEMBER 21

given to diabolic millenarianism than to careful reflection upon action and reaction. His keynote broadcast a month later substantially tells us nothing unless it be that he was more exercised by the Palestine question than had previously been thought. Yet even taken at face value, that does not explain how the Palestinian cause was helped. Two other objects ought to be tested. The one could be to engender a reaction so excessive as to collapse all Allah’s enemies, both infidel states and corrupt Moslem ones. The other could simply be to cow the ‘international infidels’ into passivity. Bin Laden reportedly saw America’s precipitate exit from Somalia in 1993 as bespeaking a general ‘weakness, frailty and cowardice militarily speaking’.55 In truth, the idea that America could thus be numbed into acquiescence was never a starter. The real danger had to be her lurching too far towards the ultraradical Right: crudely nativistic, often fundamentalist, phobically antilibertarian, dismissively anti-European, obsessively anti-Chinese, meanly antiplanetary, quasi-millenarian… For my generation at least, there was a disturbing precedent from our formative years (see the Preface). It was the so-called ‘McCarthy era’ from 1950 to 1954. An undistinguished ‘junior Senator from Wisconsin’, Joseph McCarthy (1908–57) suddenly emerged as terrorizer supreme within the body politic, this via endless wild assertions about the covert advance of Communism within America’s borders. A purveyor of fabrication, insinuation and moral blackmail, he destroyed or compromised the careers of hundreds of good citizens. His own ended abruptly in 1954, checked by senatorial censure plus an easing of the Cold War. Mercifully, no one of that savagely anti-democratic ilk has been at all close to the Bush administration. There are not many elsewhere in contemporary America. Maybe the explanation partly lies in the new ethnic diversity. Thus today one in every eight residents is Hispanic; more than one in four in the southwest border states. As they emerge politically, the Hispanics are proving to be something of a swing force, more to the Left on social welfare though well to the Right on certain libertarian questions.56 Granted, their on-going influx has generated reciprocal anxieties. But answers are being sought not in reclusive patriotism of the ‘Know Nothing’ sort but through accommodation. Well before 11 September, George Bush as President had been quite involved in redefining a fissiparous and demoralized Christian Right. This had entailed broadening its base to become less preponderantly Protestant evangelical and more Roman Catholic, the Spanish-speaking naturally included. He had also sought to encompass other ‘people of faith’. Witness a programme on ‘Arab Muslim outreach’. This evolution will have helped to dampen down across the land any knee-jerk reaction to 11 September. Certainly things panned out tolerably well in that respect. As a couple, we made a long-arranged trip to the States early in October. It took in Boston and also Orange County, in legend the southern Californian inner sanctum of the hard Right. Everywhere we were struck by the

22 THE STRATEGIC REVOLUTION

unselfconscious normalcy of the public mood. Reportedly in some places Muslims did experience harassment and, in a very few, violence. But the great majority of Americans well heard the Presidential reminder, on 13 September, about how true to the flag the many thousands of New Yorker Arab Americans were. He could soon have added that the down-the-line loyalty of Muhammad Ali counted for more among non-Whites than the vacillations of Louis Farrakhan. One can further say that the five deaths caused nationally in October by the wilful spread domestically of anthrax was responded to sensitively but sensibly by people in general, even though sections of the media waxed a shade obsessive. That month, too, the Patriot Act was passed (see Chapter 14, Open conspiracy?). It was at the core of an emergent strategy of comprehensive Homeland Security. A glaring weakness in the NATO panoply during the Cold War had been the failure of member states to apply holistically the classic military precept, ‘security of the home base’. This must have owed something to a reluctance early on to avoid the illiberal connotations of coming down too hard on Communism in countries like France and Italy where it still enjoyed wide support. Then as now, however, two hazards were earnestly addressed: bombardment from the skies and nuclear espionage. Now the disposition is to embrace as well other themes (border control, countering mass sabotage, and the robustness of civil authority) and to conflate their planning and application. Economic security should also be embraced and, in due course, may be. Of continuing concern in Washington and all other capitals must therefore be the avoidance of reactions akin to that to President Kennedy’s announcement in July 1961 of a fall-out shelter programme. To quote a then Pentagon staffer, ‘The whole thing jumped from apathy to hysteria before we had a chance to catch our breaths.’57 So far, there are no signs whatsoever of any repeat, though it will soon be necessary to weigh attitudes to National Missile Defence. As regards the impact of international tension on individual human rights, an Economist leader in 1951 or thereabouts posited the problem of ‘how to reconcile Jeffersonian democracy with America in arms’. It looms again; and not just for Americans. A salient issue is Guantanamo. All else apart, it is casuistical to say the Taliban and Al-Qaeda prisoners held there are outside the remit of both the American legal system and the Geneva Convention. That just encourages cynicism, a damaging response readily engendered these days. What would give the cynics a field day is for the proceedings in the military tribunals to come to resemble their 1942 counterpart: the Quirin case concerning eight German American Nazis covertly landed from U-boats on the Atlantic seaboard in order to launch a sabotage campaign. Then the supreme attraction of trial by military tribunal to the American authorities (and especially Franklin Roosevelt) was the scope they offered for summary justice with a strong presumption of unqualified guilt.58 Aided considerably by proactive diplomacy by Tony Blair, the Bush administration had effectively forged within weeks of the ‘Twin Towers’ a multinational coalition able to access Afghanistan as well as lend moral approval to expeditionary warfare. Basic support for Washington’s intended riposte was

THROUGH 11 SEPTEMBER 23

near to ubiquitous at governmental level save that, in the Arab world, only Palestine and Jordan overtly backed from the start the air strikes on the Taliban.59 Even so, many states reserved judgement about what other countries a campaign against syndicated insurgency might extend to. What cannot be said of any Western country is that domestic opposition took off. The Left initially queried Bin Laden’s guilt, naively ignorant of how closely he had been tracked for years. It insisted the UN must legitimate action, though the General Assembly effectively had on 12 September. It refused to concede that military success was a precursor of decisive famine relief. Opinion at large was not swayed. Philosophic divergence Soon, however, questions more to the point were to be put about how freedom had contracted around the world in the aftermath of 11 September. How much contraction was imperative as opposed to ill-judged or even opportunistic? The debate on that front seems set to go on for years. Might those concerned usefully ponder this precept? The present information explosion no more guarantees that society will become more liberal than have others in the past (e.g. the advent of wireless in the twentieth century or printing in Europe in the fifteenth). Such a quantum jump merely obliges each and every society to become either thoroughly liberal or else utterly repressive. The latter path can be seen in the totalitarian upsurge of the last century even more starkly than in the religious bigotry of the sixteenth. As regards modern bigotry, there has been a disposition to disregard how far religious fundamentalism, acting as a spiritual anchorage in a stormbeaten world, has recently gained ground within all the great obediences. The ecumenical outreach by President Bush was considerably driven by a desire to have ‘faithbased organizations’ help run domestic welfare programmes. This idea proved controversial in that it ignored a great secular tradition nationally of good works. But the point for now is that outreach can be ambiguous. In the contemporary United States, it relates to a softening and broadening these last thirty years of the Christian Right, this in order to accommodate better the predilections of the national mainstream.60 This has involved less judgemental fundamentalism in regard to personal life but is liable to encourage, by way of compensation, stridency in foreign policy. Some of the religious leaders have lately adopted a much more aggressive pitch towards Islam than the Bush administration has looked for or the American public been inclined towards. Nevertheless, some of us are persuaded that the most immediate threat posed by religious zeal to general peace has come of late from hard-line Hindu militancy. In other words, it has emanated from those Hindus who abhor their subcontinent’s religious tradition of rich denominational diversity within an underlying sense of unity: a tradition nurtured most expressly by the Moghul

24 THE STRATEGIC REVOLUTION

Emperor Akbar (1542–1605) and, one should recall, by Mahatma Gandhi (1869– 1948). Such concerns must be aired and debated. Otherwise one will always lay a blanket of blame on Islam or, additionally or alternatively, lapse into a Manichean view of humankind as divided unambiguously into the godly and the satanic. On 20 September, 2001, George W.Bush told the world via an applauding Joint Session of Congress, ‘Either you are with us or you are with the terrorists.’ Seventeen days later, Osama Bin Laden said, ‘Events have split the world into two sides: that of the believers and that of the infidels, may Allah keep you from them.’ Both renditions lack historical perspective. Take World War II. It was waged against the most evil menaces world civilization has ever faced to date. Yet no two Allies shared exactly the same perspectives and objectives. Likewise, strategic geography pitched Finland into the Axis camp in 1941; and she duly paid dear in the post-1945 settlement. Yet in 1939–40, a small Finnish army had stoutly resisted a huge Soviet invasion right through an exceptionally bitter winter (see Chapter 2). In doing so, it finally convinced Hitler the USSR would be a push-over and warned Stalin, in the nick of time, that he had to reconstitute his armed forces instead of terrorizing them. Never has a small nation made a bigger contribution to liberty and eventual peace.61 The Chairman of the Indonesian People’s Assembly may have spoken for a broad swathe of world opinion when, in March 2002, he declared himself uneasy and angry about President Bush thus dividing the world into goodies and baddies.62 From a Western perspective also, big objections remain to adoption of the moral dualism of Mani (c. 216–76), that wildly eclectic mystic from Baghdad. The one is that to see politics as simply a just war waged by the forces of light against those of darkness is to stifle the open-minded reasonableness upon which both democracy and peace depend. The other problem is that Manichean dualism was and is a rationale for misanthropic pessimism—the majority of mortals being damned as a general rule. This is why, through to the Middle Ages and beyond, the impact the Manicheans made on Christendom was so often distracting and divisive. Much the same applies to that mindset in more modern guises and contexts. The Afghan campaign The fall of Mazar-I-Sharif barely a month after war began betokened the near collapse of the Taliban’s main field force. Although some commentators were therefore inclined to write them off as cowardly ruffians, one may ask whether any army would have longer withstood in hillside trenches a bombing campaign that was mainly precision-guided. The fact was their commanders had discounted the capabilities of air power. They were not by any means the first to do this. Shortly after the June War of 1967, one was told on good authority in Amman that the Jordan Arab Army had expected to fight against a background of air

THROUGH 11 SEPTEMBER 25

parity. However, its seniors could hardly have believed explicitly that Syria would have sought to extend an air umbrella over the hated King Hussein or that she could have done so effectively in any case. In reality, they simply wrote air power out of their doctrinal calculus. In this ‘first war of the twenty-first century’, an air dimension that was still discrete and distinctive proffered a foretaste of a robotic future when most pilots will remotely control their machines from the Earth’s surface. Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) reconnoitred extensively but, as yet, fired missiles only experimentally. Questions had still to be answered about how cost-effective the next UAV generation might prove in, say, air-to-air combat.63 But positive answers could be forthcoming as the incipient revolution in microsystems does for mechanical, optical and chemical devices what microelectronics has done for semi-conductors.64 Nanotechnology (see Appendix B) will be part and parcel. Regarding those Taliban in the north, they might have held out better dug well into urban areas,65 assuming that was manageable in terms of relations with local people. Then again, dispersion enabled many Taliban/Al-Qaeda in the south-east (Bin Laden perhaps included) to slip into Pakistan ahead of their pursuers. The question this raises is whether American and European troops ought not to have deployed in strength near the border well before the New Year, whatever the weather. As usual, the human factor in war came into play in a diversity of ways. By March 2002, some 500 Afghan civilians had died in nine major instances, officially recorded, of inaccurate fire or wrong targeting from the air. As regards ground operations, some concern was felt about the heavy premium placed on elite troops regardless.66 Did the Britishers sent to patrol Kabul upon its liberation have to be paratroops, yet again? They performed splendidly but so would have any one of our infantry-of-the-line regiments. Still, the fact remains that elite units together with Homeland Security were the two priorities pitched higher the world over post-11 September. A third usually cited, a generalized quest for enhanced tactical and strategic mobility, was well under way beforehand. Also to reckon with has been a soldierly discontent, at all levels of involvement, with rarely coming to close quarters with the enemy, From March to May 2002, first US Special Forces then British Marines skilfully conducted reconnoitres in depth close to the south-east border. But the British openly evinced frustration at, in their case, a total lack of contact with enemy troops. At the other end of the scale, George Bush referred, apropos Bin Laden, to an ‘old poster out West, Wanted Dead or Alive’. Similarly yearning for the mythic clarity of yesteryear, Donald Rumsfeld told how a Special Forces unit had been ‘overrun’ but had called up air support, thus avoiding casualties. Alas, that interpretation of ‘overrun’ would seem surreal to any veteran of Guadalcanal or Iwojima. All the same, the crux had to be whether the coalition efforts could effect a genuine liberation of the Afghan people from the Taliban but also from

26 THE STRATEGIC REVOLUTION

warlordism. A year after 11 September, a reply had to be couched in tones of equivocation tinged with pessimism. Maybe 150,000 irregulars still ate the salt of local warlords. Once more the opium trade thrived exceedingly. In June, a loya jirga (i.e. national grand council) had been held. One authoritative account ran as follows: ‘Eight candidates have been murdered; in Herat delegates were imprisoned. Hundreds of people have reported bribery and intimidation or have complained that some delegates…are criminals, bullies or members of AlQaeda.’67 What price parliamentary elections three years hence? Grander strategy Not that every measure of success in Afghanistan relates just to that country. Among the extrinsic achievements of the coalition has been affirmation of the truism that planetary reformation requires international order. As intimated above, many on the Left have customarily been reluctant to accept this. If they were prepared pre-2001 to endorse expeditionary action, it was characteristically in support of ‘humanitarian’ ends detached from any global strategy and delimited so vaguely as to leave ample room for mood swings.68 Ingrained in the Left is suspicion of intergovernmental togetherness, and also a reluctance to underwrite international norms that may lag behind the times. It is a mind set stretching back through the League of Nations appeasement era to, in the British case, the Boer War and ultimately to Cobdenite liberalism. Persuasive though he has generally been on the world stage since 11 September, Prime Minister Blair has sometimes appeared too keen to turn Leftist reluctance on its head by seeming to suggest that interventionary coalitions can usher in world utopia. Reacting to such visions, another star in Britain’s peerless constellation of distinguished military historians argued (also from a Rightist perspective) that, in this post-imperial era, Her Majesty’s Forces should just make ready to defend the United Kingdom and its immediate approaches, this against such time as the next continental dictator arises.69 Obversely, the ex-Conservative Foreign Secretary Douglas Hurd called for a temperate approach to intervention, one that inter alia does not ‘brand as terrorists everyone who uses force to change the status quo which they have no means of changing peacefully’. But so long as all concerned maintain a cool approach, the assets and instincts of the USA and her leading European allies can be blended. Lord Hurd further suggested one ‘cannot imagine GIs patrolling the streets in company with the Afghan troops’ the way our paratroops have.70 Actually stranger things have happened in the course of the Strategic Revolution. Let us recall how insistently the American armed services progressed from c. 1955 to racial integration internally, this progress being accelerated by Vietnam. When Colin Powell took office as Secretary of State, a widespread presumption was that he remained committed to the ultra-cautious approach he had adopted in the 1990s towards intervention whether in Kuwait, Iraq, Somalia or Bosnia. In fact, he visibly came out from under that hard rendering of the soft

THROUGH 11 SEPTEMBER 27

line. Hopefully, however, the instinctual moderation of this Purple Heart veteran from Vietnam can still be brought to bear firmly enough on global strategy in the round. In sensibility, soldierly experience and international appeal, he stands head and shoulders above colleagues in the Bush administration. His determination to keep closely in contact with the British but also other Europeans augurs well. The President himself has thus far been stronger on affirmation than on exegesis. His address on Memorial Day 2002 at the US Normandy War Cemetery was Lincolnian in clarity and homespun empathy. But he can be altogether too facile when seeking to reduce to a simple (usually sovereigntyrelated) theme a global issue that is perforce nuanced, multidimensional and contingent. Withdrawal from the Anti-Ballistic Missile treaty (without proposing a meaningful alternative) was not congruent with coalition building. Nor was precipitate rejection of the Kyoto climate control regime. Nor was dissociation from the genesis of the International Criminal Court. Unhelpful, too, was his designation of Iraq, Iran and North Korea as an ‘axis of evil’. That Manichean imagery must have harmed, at any rate in Iran, the prospects for internal liberalization. Not that all was negation. The President had overcome his instinctual aversion to peacekeeping, as applied to the Balkans. Also, in regard to Afghanistan, he had resolved, in principle at least, his distaste for nation-building. Above all, a year on from 11 September, insurgency did seem a less pressing problem globally. The Basque country, Chechnya, the Congo, Kashmir, Rwanda, Sierra Leone, Sri Lanka, Sudan and Ulster all looked nearer peace, even though in most cases the indications were tentative and ambiguous. Historians must elucidate how much any gains in these respects owed to the Bush strategy globally. But it will be surprising if it gets no credit. However, many would have said in September 2002 that a major sticking point pro tem was Palestine, a convoluted situation in which constructive intervention required close application to the local scene. Still lacking background, George W. had been endlessly distracted by Arafat and repeatedly humiliated by Sharon. One consequence of the resulting impasse was that no Arab state appeared willing to send troops to any Iraq war. Yet substantial Arab participation could have been invaluable, linguistically and culturally, for the peacekeeping and rehabilitation commitments consequent upon removal of Saddam Hussein. Besides which, the Palestine situation had played a big part in an upsurge of anti-Bush resentment. As much had been argued in July in a report by the prestigious Council for Foreign Relations in New York. It also said many countries, not just Islamic ones, found the USA to be ‘arrogant, self-indulgent, hypocritical, inattentive and unwilling or unable to engage in cross-cultural dialogue’.

28 THE STRATEGIC REVOLUTION

September reflections What held out more hope in these and in other respects was the 34-page National Security Strategy statement issued from the White House near that first anniversary of 9/11.71 It clearly owed much to Colin Powell and not a little, one senses, to Tony Blair. It is Churchillian in its bold celebration of how the last century’s great struggles between freedom and totalitarianism ended in ‘decisive victory’ (p. 1) for the former. Correspondingly, its foundations are set in the moderate Atlanticist Republicanism of the Eisenhower era, not the xenophobic nativism McCarthy stirred as the Cold War peaked. It goes much further than mainstream academic strategy yet has in treating as basic to lasting peace world economic development backed by targeted aid (pp. 21–3), health and education being key priorities in democratic development. It goes further still in recognizing the dangers, in the security context, inherent in climate change (p. 20). Not too many of the President’s hard-core supporters can have been happy with that. Dealings with other states are reviewed in a positive spirit. The relationship with Canada and Europe is deemed essential to accomplishments ‘of lasting consequence’ (p. 25). With China, the stance is to wait upon economic liberalization being complemented by political. Meanwhile, a less censorious note than before is adopted towards India’s and, by implication, Pakistan’s respective nuclear deterrents. This reflects (a) a new working relationship with Pakistan and (b) a new-found recognition of India as potentially ‘one of the great democratic powers of the twenty-first century’ (p. 20). More generally, the point is made that the concept of pre-emption against direct threats to ‘our national security’ is not novel and will be applied circumspectly. (p. 15). The Israeli-Palestinian conflict is seen as singularly critical; and as eligible for solution only through the creation of a democratic Palestine residing alongside Israel (p. 9). This text goes well beyond previous governmental commentary either side of the Atlantic in reminding the Israelis how their own ‘identity and democracy’ (p. 10) are undermined by endless occupation of the Palestinian territories. At the same time, the ‘war on terrorism’ is said not to be a ‘clash of civilizations’ between Christendom and Islam. However, it does involve a struggle at the heart of the Moslem world (p. 31). The lead role in policy formulation must be assumed by the State Department, not least as regards bilateral relations (p. 31). But as the domestic versus foreign affairs distinction diminishes, officials trained mainly in international politics must grapple with ‘complex issues of domestic governance’ (p. 31) wherever they serve. Yet, impressive though this sweep is, it is neither totally comprehensive nor entirely unflawed. The allusion to internal affairs being basic to external is progressive enough but needs to be amplified (and related to the advanced nations as well as the less developed) if it is to figure properly in a revamped Grand Strategy. Likewise, the characterization of terrorism as

THROUGH 11 SEPTEMBER 29

‘politically motivated violence perpetuated against innocents’ (p. 3) expresses a chilling anxiety but lacks analytical focus. Unclear, too, is the connotation of preserving ‘a balance of power that favours human freedom’. Does this mean a situation in which the USA retains a clear margin of superiority over every potential adversary but accepts defined limits on her own build-up, just as she expects others to? If this understanding be right, why does the text not mention arms control? And why is nothing specific said about Space weaponization, especially in relation to the overarching vision of National Missile Defence? Interception from Near Space is looming as an issue, militarily but also environmentally. Among the terrestrial ecological challenges to the world order are degradation of the Arctic basin; pressures on the marine biosphere; deforestation of the Himalayas; diminished biodiversity; and protection of the ozone layer. Yet the environment question is here presented as global climate change plus an assortment of local difficulties. Nor is discussion of the connections between politics and economics, what the Scots traditionally termed ‘political economy’, as broadly cast as it should have been. ‘Intolerance of corruption’ (p. 17) is becoming, we earnestly trust, a universal precept. But surely ‘lower marginal tax’ (p. 17) is a contingent good, not the paramount and eternal one as here portrayed. Nor would Adam Smith himself have said unqualified free trade is an invariable ‘moral principle’ (p. 18). Then again, this statement has endorsed by clear implication the notion that the mushrooming information explosion presents humankind with a pretty stark choice between ever more democracy and ever more tyranny. Yet that does not mean the former conforms to ‘a single sustainable model’ (p. 2). Everyone knows how endlessly variable democracies are in their structure, quality and many particularities. The 1783 formulation would never have been seen as democratic by the orators of Periclean Athens. Its geographical compass was too vast for proper interaction. Yet classical Greece would be seen by no lover of liberty anywhere today as proffering true democracy, sustainable or otherwise, never mind how many still regard that culture as the bedrock of modern political values. Finally, there is something alluringly mid-nineteenth-century about the notion that Peace can assuredly be maintained by the progressive extension of free and open polities resting on free trade. Granted, the period 1918–91 shows a gratifying correlation between democracy and peaceability, some loose ends from European disimperialism giving rise to the most marked exceptions. But seventythree years is too short a span to be conclusive. Democracies can atrophy and/or collapse if ambient factors are too discouraging. They can also nurture tyranny elsewhere, through errors of omission or commission. An ominous example is how the 1919 Treaty of Versailles paved the way for Hitler. That it did so considerably, everybody acknowledges today. Not a few foresaw some such outcome at the time. When it was signed, a celebrated British press cartoonist, Sir David Low, crafted his reaction. His sketch showed the four chief democratic leaders—Clemenceau, Lloyd-George, Orlando and Wilson. Frock-

30 THE STRATEGIC REVOLUTION

coated, they descend the steps of the palace, collectively exuding infinite satisfaction. But in the bottom right-hand corner was a ghost of the future. A baby boy, destined one day to be inducted within a yearly class of conscripts, was sobbing uncontrollably. The embroidery on his napkin read ‘1940 Class’.

2 The poverty of strategy

The neglect of arms control in that September strategy statement was expressive of a persisting blind spot within the Bush administration itself. But the other weaknesses identified in the previous chapter stem more from the failure of strategic studies to evolve as a dynamic academic discipline. Any fresh formulation of Grand Strategy, post-11 September or whenever, ought to take cognizance of every factor that bears appreciably on the promotion and preservation of peace with liberty. It could also benefit from some philosophical sense of alternative longer-term futures. In which connection, one may reflect on a thought aired in 1972 by Zbigniew Brzezinski, later to be National Security Adviser to President Jimmy Carter. Contrasting the time-honoured ‘international’ approach to world affairs with the more planetary one adopted by radicalized youth, he said politicians informed by new concepts were needed to blend the two.1 Not infrequently was one being advised in those febrile early 1970s that, whereas in the 1950s the main threat to human survival had come from the international arms race, now it resided in the planetary population explosion. Yet little reflection was or is needed to see them as twinned aspects of the core problem of violence between peoples. A nuclear or biological war could be the process whereby humankind or much of it effects a ‘population crash’ akin to those which periodically terminate immoderate numerical growth elsewhere in the animal kingdom. Not that one has to conjure up lurid visions, emanating from mayhem deep in our tribal past, of land-hungry hordes with nothing to lose but their warheads. Instances of competition for fertile land as ineluctably the cause of war have been few this past millennium. This is why the lebensraum theories formulated by the main Fascist regimes pre-World War II were so weak on fact and consistency. Likewise, one did well around 1970 to discount pronouncements about the fear of demographic overspill from China being what would impel Moscow towards détente in Europe.2,3 Shades here of the ‘Yellow Peril’ syndrome at the time of the Boxer Rising (1898–1900). Still, none of this proves US Secretary of State Dean Rusk was entirely wrong to apprehend in 1968 that land hunger could lead to recurrent strife inside two decades if population growth went out of control.4 Emigration by Ibos from their

32 THE POVERTY OF STRA TEGY

congested homeland, then the Eastern Region of Nigeria, caused a rise in communal tension and hence the dreadful Nigerian civil war of 1967–70. Throughout the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, both sides have sought to bolster their claims by keeping population growth up; and each has thereby made the other more fearful of ethnic cleansing. Similarly, Black African overcrowding in rural areas has been at the heart of South Africa’s communal stresses. The post-war era This can be said to have lasted from 1945 until the early 1960s. Everywhere was recoiling then rebounding from global conflict. Economies were recovering, and old antagonists were coming to terms. Meanwhile total war’s big legacy, the Cold War, had developed but then been stabilized, more or less. By 1963, let us say, the collective mien was changing markedly. Soon it would no longer seem sensible to discuss world issues in terms of post-war recovery. In the record of those twenty years, there remains much for those concerned with peace to conjure, much over and beyond the standard preoccupations of international strategists—political processes and military postures. At the time, the demographic aspects of the South African and Indonesian syndromes respectively figured in regional analyses. Globally a keystone contribution to Malthusian perspectives was the Paley Commission report to the US government in 1952, at the peak of Korean War rearmament. Warning of acute shortages of metals, it predicted production requirements in 1975 for the key ones. By 1969, those predictions had already been exceeded across the board, and no metals famine was anywhere in sight. With copper, the 1969 actual output was 40 per cent above the Paley 1975 prognosis; and that for steel was nearly 60 per cent over.5 Climate fluctuations also bore upon geopolitical developments. Around 1940, the secular rise in global temperatures the previous two centuries suddenly gave way, in the Northern Hemisphere at least, to what proved a moderate and transient reversal. Thus air temperatures averagely 5 to 8° Celsius below the secular seasonal norms ravaged the offensive a huge but purge-wracked Soviet army so ponderously waged against Finland from November 1939 to March 1940 (see Chapter 1, Explosive excision). Come 1941, the German meteorological service (arguably the world’s best) made the same basic mistake as had Napoleon’s climate adviser, the brilliant Pierre Laplace, when the 1812 invasion was being planned. That was a failure to ask whether an interlude of colder winters had started. It had led Laplace to assure his Emperor that the Russian winter never ‘really’ arrived until January, whereas in 1812 it did so in November. Then in 1941, Hitler’s advisers thought it improbable that the two severe winters the European USSR had just experienced would be followed immediately by another. Yet this is just what happened, thanks to a sustained dip in solar activity. By early autumn the Wehrmacht looked poised to take both Moscow and Leningrad.

THE STRATEGIC REVOLUTION 33

Then heavy October rains turned poor roads into mudbaths. Next, severe frosts from early November disrupted railways hardly less vital to further Wehrmacht progress. Neither city fell. Over Germany itself, another bitter winter in 1943–4 made the Anglo-American bomber campaign harder still to wage but could not preclude its conclusive ascendancy the following autumn. In 1946–7, with the Cold War under way in earnest, came the worst winter for a century across much of Europe. An acute coal crisis hit Britain that February, exacerbating tensions within her ruling Labour party over sundry issues, including the deep involvement of a British military mission in the war against Communist insurgents in Greece. Under the circumstances, London decided to disengage forthwith from that situation. Taking over a responsibility Washington had previously been unenamoured of, President Truman enunciated that March his doctrine for containing ‘direct and indirect aggression’. It was a landmark geopolitically even though it appeared to stem from a simplistic reading of relations between Stalin and Balkan Communism. A high priority for Communists in Greece, Bulgaria and Yugoslavia then was the creation of a South Slav Federation with Macedonia as its linchpin. A prime aim was to keep the Kremlin as well as the West at arm’s length.6 The launch that summer of the Marshall Plan for economic stabilization in Europe was in line with the Truman Doctrine. It was intended, first and foremost, to counter the threat posed immediately by Popular Front Leftism in Italy and potentially by resurgent Communism in the western zones of Germany. In the latter case, all concerned realized the risk of instability was heightened by the way slow recovery had been impeded further by the past winter. In the USSR itself, the ideological fervour engendered by Andrei Zhdanov (a Leningrad party veteran currently in Stalin’s favour) had intensified as the wintry depths came hard upon extended summer drought. An interaction the West may at first have missed is how closely his transient elevation (he died, ostensibly from natural causes, in 1948) coincided with the USSR’s retrenchment, in one sense or another, right round its strategic periphery: China, Persia, Turkey, Greece, Germany… Both the retrenchment and the propaganda were intended to further internal consolidation in the face of wartime devastation and climatic adversity. Something further to ponder is how the fortunes of the USSR were subsequently affected by recurrent droughts. In the ‘grain-producing’ parts of the USSR as we knew it, a twelve- to fourteen-year cycle seemed very established between 1890 and 1970.7 Moreover, this alternation closely corresponded in average span to a drought cycle discernible on the High Plains of North America the last several centuries. So did it, in my view, with the oscillatory pressure the Huns put on the legions and on other barbarian tribes during the later Roman Empire.8 Very likely, that pressure was drought modulated to a considerable extent. At all events, aridity acutely affected much of inner Asia through 1960. Well understood at the time was how it helped bring about the downfall in 1964 of Nikita Khruschev, this by impeding the ambitious plan he launched in 1955 to

34 THE POVERTY OF STRA TEGY

bring under cultivation the Virgin Lands of the USSR’s steppic south. However, the full effect of rainfall deficiency on China has been appreciated only of late. An expert study in 1971 concluded that, even through the early 1960s, the prime reason for grain imports was the uneven geographical distribution of national output, not an overall dearth.9 We now know, in fact, that upward of twenty million people died of famine as Nature’s perversity interacted with the ecological iconoclasm of Chairman Mao’s ‘Great Leap Forward’ from 1958: rabid deforestation, the campaign against sparrows, and all the rest. That catastrophe bears very much on the development from that time of the SinoSoviet split, the ‘New Cold War’. Also to be remarked is how the alternation in the Soviet grain baskets petered out around 1970: that is to say, from the time global warming was so strongly resuming. Drought cycles are always too problematic to allow one to rush to judgement about causation. Even so, this concurrence might be an early indication of the power of global warming to affect long-standing climate patterns in manifold, maybe mysterious, ways. Radical rebuilding Communism is or was supposed to be the great credo for social transformation. As the whole world is today aware, the results have rarely exceeded the mediocre. What should not be forgotten, however, is how deeply and successfully the USA became involved post-1945 in restoring desolated nations, this in contrast to some badly skewed endeavours in pre-1941 Central America. Clearly the more recent involvements were driven by a desire to preclude Muscovite ‘indirect aggression’ via Communist insurgencies. Yet they were overlooked by George W.Bush when, during his Presidential campaign, he poohpoohed notions of rebuilding failed polities. What tends to be overlooked more generally is the extent to which the whole American experience can be summated as incessant nation-building. It is salutary to go to somewhere like Nebraska, say, and reflect that virtually none of the material culture you see around you, well-entrenched and vibrant, existed two centuries ago, and not too much one century ago. That frontier legacy will have been inspirational post-1945 though there will also have been concern to avoid, by more robust and unambiguous commitment, the sort of convolutions visited on the Old South during the Reconstruction Period (1865–77), not to mention the Central American experience or the lack of due concern with German recovery after 1918. Then again, many of those involved in the Truman administration (1944–52) were ‘New Dealers’ inspired by that great American programme of inter-state restitution, the Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA). Writing in 1944 as TVA’s Chairman, David Lilienthal (later, 1947–9, Chairman of the Atomic Energy Commission) extolled the Authority’s achievements and prospects in regard to erosion control, malaria eradication and lacustrine amenities. But he laid much

THE STRATEGIC REVOLUTION 35

emphasis, too, on its ‘democracy at the grass roots’ via ‘dreamers with shovels’.10 Pivotal to TVA was the dam-building. It was also the American riposte to Soviet claims that those who built their big dams were ipso facto creating new ‘Soviet Man’. The boldest essay at single-nation rebuilding post-1945 was Japan. It was led with generous optimism by someone not instinctually drawn to TVA or other New Deal measures. As Chief of the General Staff, General Douglas MacArthur had master-minded the ruthless eviction from Washington DC, in the ‘economic blizzard’ year 1932, of some 20,000 Bonus Marchers—i.e. impoverished war veterans. Yet as head of the Supreme Command Allied Powers (SCAP) from September 1945, MacArthur masterminded in Japan a most progressive exercise in social engineering. His administration in-country chiefly comprised senior staffers from the Pacific War plus earnest young ‘New Deal’ graduates. Neither stream was well appraised of Japanese language or culture. Yet each had energy and vision. Also SCAP proved able to engage Imperial goodwill. Emperor Hirohito wilfully destroyed his own mystique by making frequent public appearances as a rather diminutive pedestrian in a pinstripe suit rather than rare ones as a field marshal on a white charger. A Japanese official committee appointed to draft a democratic constitution approached the task anxiously. To quote its chairman, the members felt ‘some of the roses of the West when cultivated in Japan are apt to lose their fragrance’. So SCAP drafted its own plan for a bicameral parliament and got it endorsed in 1946. Among the particular provisions were a ban on military in the Cabinet and the renunciation for ever of warlike preparations. A quite authentic general election was held that year. The turnout was high. Also from 1946 some 200,000 people adjudged to have been too implicated in Fascist aggression were excluded from public and commercial life. Again, a Land Reform Act was passed that year which by 1949 had reduced from 46 to 8 the percentage of arable that was rented. Other measures strengthened the bargaining power of industrial workers and democratized local government. Soon the Ministry of Education lost its monopoly of textbook production; and was made to devolve much administrative authority. The Economic Decentralization Act of 1947 sought to eliminate the zaibatsu industrial combines. Then from 1948, this transformation of the political economy was reined back as Japan came to be valued as a Cold War bastion. Nevertheless Japanese democracy was already rooted well enough to withstand what otherwise looked like a formidable Communist challenge internally. Monetary circulation had to be severely curtailed to check price inflation, this having been tenfold the previous two years. Many of the thousand Communists released from prison after Japan’s surrender had assumed trade union prominence. A general election that January had put thirty-five party members in the House of Representatives. Party membership nationally had doubled to 90,000 inside a year.

36 THE POVERTY OF STRA TEGY

However, violent demonstrations and lethal railway sabotage alienated the undecided. So did the brainwashed state of returning prisoners of war. So, too, did Moscow’s claim that all POWs had now been repatriated, though Tokyo reckoned 320,000 remained. So did abject party acceptance of a Cominform stricture for alleged lack of militancy. All in all, a political climate was thereby created for official curbs. Several CP leaders were arrested when the Korean War broke out in June 1950. The Communists’ opportunity had come and gone. MacArthur’s dedicated focus on Japan left him utterly unprepared for China’s ‘going Red’ in 1949. His precipitate reaction to that, within the context of the Korean conflict, made him awhile an idol of the McCarthyists. Nevertheless, Japan still affords an instructive model of how democracy may be revived, given a sense of purpose and a modicum of good fortune. By 1949, the USA’s cumulative aid to Greece was nearing a billion dollars. Moreover, the leverage the aid created was used without compunction. Pointed advice was given on matters such as budget details and senior army appointments. Above all, the Americans insisted in 1947 on the recall to the premiership of the veteran liberal republican Themistocles Sophoulis. This ensured, among other things, that civil liberties were not entirely eroded. Even so, an extrinsic development was needed to clinch victory. Backed by sanctuary areas in Albania, Yugoslavia and Bulgaria, 20,000 rebels still kept at bay government forces ten times their number. But in February 1949, their leader, Markos Vafiades, was removed because of his poor health and discord over Macedonia. In July, a Tito now acutely distracted by his bitter rift with Stalin forbade rebel operations from Yugoslav territory. Soon Albania and Bulgaria interned all Greek insurgents on their soil; and the Greek Communist leadership announced hostilities had ceased. However, the most celebrated of these rebuilding exercises remains the multinational plan George Marshall (US Army Chief of Staff 1939–45) enunciated in the summer of 1947. The concept was that those European states interested in mutual recovery would receive, over the next several years, largescale American and Canadian aid. The Marshall Plan led to the creation, in April 1948, of the Organization for European Economic Co-operation (OEEC) and the Economic Co-operation Administration (ECA). The latter was set up by Act of Congress, and channelled funds through its 600-man Paris office. OEEC comprised sixteen states initially, none Communist because Moscow was too hostile. Altogether the European members received (1948–51) $12 billion in Marshall Aid; and inter alia this helped to stimulate a 50 per cent increase in OEEC industrial production, 1948–53. The Americans involved could not sway their European colleagues on the early abolition of exchange control. But advice they gave was heeded in many lesser respects. Also as liberals looking towards a ‘twin pillar’ Atlantic Alliance, many drew added satisfaction from how the togetherness experience helped engender the ‘European idea’. The Mutual Defence Assistance Act passed by

THE STRATEGIC REVOLUTION 37

Congress in 1949 underpinned a parallel commitment, that of helping to finance the rearmament of NATO Europe. The legend lives on. Witness the recurrent calls for new Marshall Plan initiatives. In 1984, the Kissinger Commission called for fund infusion in Latin America. Three years later, a good spread of US Senators and Representatives proposed a mini-Marshall Plan for the Philippines. In the early 1990s, members of Congress advocated such plans for Eastern Europe and for the Global Environment. In 1996, Helmut Kohl called for a Marshall Plan in the Middle East, as did Nelson Mandela for one in Southern Africa.11 In 1992, Albert Gore had called for a Global Marshall Plan.12 Dawn but also high noon? However, the very visible dawning, during the late 1950s, of what we have since known as ‘strategic studies’ owed little to the materials considered above. Rather, it arose out of more familiar modes of discourse about allout war, especially strategic air war. But in addition, it owed something to a burgeoning conviction that Grand Strategy must no longer be the academic preserve of a few isolated individuals with backgrounds in the public service overseas, military or civil. It seemed better to foster a structured and data-rich community of energetic analysts from a wider range of disciplines and occupational experience. Perhaps the most seminal publication within this evolution was Henry Kissinger’s Nuclear Weapons and Foreign Policy which came out in 1957. A marker institutionally was the foundation in 1958 of the Institute for Strategic Studies (ISS), since 1971 the International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS). With its trans-Atlantic linkages, this London-based body became primus inter pares in the field; and has, indeed, remained so in a number of recognized respects. Through it and other channels, academe forged links with officialdom. But these appeared to be suitably offset by ramifications across the university world, not least through teaching programmes. Soon strategic studies waxed popular among the young. Therefore one might have said the scene was set for scholarly advance on an extended front. The diverse Cold War experience outlined above ought to have ensured full account would be taken of the strategic connotations of economic and political development, including instabilities latent within modernizing mass societies. Ecological stress should likewise have been allowed for. Geography in the round could have been addressed. So could deeper questions about the ethics and anthropology of war. Things did not work out like that. A climacteric that assumed a prominence little short of what 9/11 has of late occurred on 4 October 1957. It was the launch of Sputnik 1, the Earth’s first artificial satellite, and proof positive the USSR had a rocket sufficiently powerful and accurate for intercontinental warload delivery. Next year, Britain exploded her first thermonuclear (i.e. hydrogen) bomb. At the same time, the resumption of the leadership of France by Charles de Gaulle

38 THE POVERTY OF STRA TEGY

epitomized her resolve to build her own force de dissuasion. Meantime, most of NATO Europe had started to receive tactical nuclear warheads from the USA, albeit under ‘dual key’ (i.e. binational) control. The Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament was launched as a general protest against such initiatives, the Western ones at any rate. Undeniably, the nuclear physicists had presented humankind with a challenge uniquely esoteric yet massively consequential. Suddenly firepower had been transformed from being a resource perennially in short supply. Now it was too abundant to release, save in the tiniest fractions. Coming to terms with ‘the Bomb’ was duly seen as a task for intellectual heroes, paragons best excused from more mundane concerns. The brutal visibility of what was dubbed the nuclear ‘balance of terror’ (sic) made any other threat to Atlantic security look non-immediate or trifling. Anglophone tradition Furthermore, that response drew encouragement from the curious serendipity with which it blended with an English-speaking tendency to view war as something that happens elsewhere in the world, usually detached from the tenor of everyday national life. In accordance with this, the British school of strategy has, the past two or three centuries, placed comparatively little emphasis on the security implications of economic and social change at home or elsewhere. Agreed, the extension of empire was guided in no small measure by the desire to protect our commerce and secure access to such materials as sugar, cotton, gold and oil. Likewise, in neither of the two world wars of the twentieth century was the United Kingdom slow to appreciate the counter-economic potentialities of blockade and strategic bombing. Even so, she is not imbued with a continentalist sense of war as a continuation of politics. The Pacification of the Highlands and the recurrent miseries of Ireland apart, the British Isles have, since 1660, all but been spared social unrest sufficiently bad to threaten homeland stability. For one thing, insularity has well shielded them from outside interference of the kind that may exacerbate dangerously the polarization of internal dissent. Salt water has similarly shielded Australasia, Canada and the United States. Pre-Kissinger, the best-known American scholar strategist was Alfred Thayer Mahan (1840–1914). He drew on deep study of naval history (1660–1812) plus his own professional naval experience. However, his focus was very heavily on sea control, at times almost for its own sake. Though lucid to a fault when discussing the overt influence of the British blockade on Napoleon’s psychology and strategy, he is decidedly insubstantial on its multifarious economic consequences.13 William Pitt, the British Prime Minister from 1784 to 1801 and then 1804 till his death in 1806, had regularly been far more definitive on the economic front.14 But this is the point. His background was politics, not strategic theory.

THE STRATEGIC REVOLUTION 39

Anglophone predilections were transposed very visibly to strategic perspectives on the Indian subcontinent. Analysts, indigenous and otherwise, used to weigh the implications of Pakistan and/or India acquiring ‘the Bomb’. But rarely was systematic attention given to the geopolitical implications of a social crisis somewhere on the subcontinent proper or in its rimlands. Thus in 1948, a seminal report on the Republic of India’s defence options was submitted to the government in New Delhi. Its author, Patrick Blackett (1897–1974) had been a British pioneer in naval operational research and was about to become a Physics Nobel Laureate for cosmic radiation work. His text studiedly ignored the internal security dimension. Take a recent instance, renewed crisis in Kashmir. Through 2002, commentators have explored little the interaction between communal tensions within that territory and those without. Yet according to a member of the Centre for Applied South Asian Studies at the University of Manchester, a systematic campaign of pogroms in the state of Gujerat the first half of the year left 2,000 Moslems dead and 150,000 homeless. All this was in escalatory response to Moslems incinerating in a railway carriage sixty Hindu extremists.15 This morbid sequence bespoke structural cleavages just as stark and menacing as obtain within Kashmir. Ultimately the hazard is that this disjointed confrontation will engender subcontinental war. Nuclear recourse is always mentioned as a risk in such an eventuality. But another could be India’s feeling constrained to withdraw from the bilateral Indus Water Treaty of 1960, something she never did in the 1965 or 1971 wars.16 To my mind, a peculiarly blatant example of blinkered comprehension was furnished by the closure of the Suez Canal from 1967 to 1975. This situation put added strain on Indian and Pakistani economies compromised by weak monsoons in 1965 and 1966. Even so, the predilection among strategists was to discuss it exclusively in terms of how it interfered with the movement of Soviet naval vessels as between the Mediterranean and the Indian Ocean. No matter that, if you have a surface navy as superfluously large in relation to reasonable requirements as the USSR’s was, extra steaming time could be a positive attraction. Gallic modernism The decade from 1958 saw French strategic thought revive. One could feel let down by its failure to proffer a holistic alternative to the narrow formalism of les Anglo-Saxons. The French are heirs, after all, to the autarkic statism of Jean Colbert (1619–1683) and Louis XIV (1638–1715); and then to the continentalist tradition, exemplified by Napoleon then articulated by Clausewitz, of viewing war as a total struggle. Moreover, the desolation of 1940 and the grim colonial struggles in Indo-China then Algeria should have brought home anew the need to see conflict in the round.

40 THE POVERTY OF STRA TEGY

Yet now the overriding concern was to provide a Cartesian rationale for la force de dissuasion, the strategic nuclear arm. Nor was this valueless. Several pithy pronouncements together made a good Eurocentric case for an indigenous (French and maybe British?) minimum deterrent, one the Anglophone community should have addressed more closely.17 Granted, the French would sometimes present the concept as an alternative to the American umbrella rather than as its complement. However, in 1965 a cogent statement in favour of complementality was made by the retired officer who, in 1956, had commanded the French forces at Suez.18 Unfortunately, les Anglo-Saxons noticed more an overblown rendering advanced in 1967 by General d’Armée Charles Ailleret in his tous azimuts (‘every point of the compass’) presentation.19 Six months later, the Gaullist regime was to be critically undermined by the eruption on to the Paris streets of a muscular version of ‘flower power’. The students loved flowers but hacked down trees. Societal factors had come back into strategy, whatever Cartesian logicians presupposed. Helpful but circumscribed Still, the point for the moment is that our French colleagues never attempted to qualify the nuclear preoccupation. Instead they reinforced it. Among the eminent scholars who, between 1959 and 1963, brought out books about or bearing on nuclear deterrence were Patrick Blackett, Bernard Brodie, Alastair Buchan, Hedley Bull, Pierre Gallois, Margaret Gowing, Samuel Huntington, Henry Kissinger, Klaus Knorr, Basil Liddell Hart, Robert Osgood, Anatol Rapaport, Thomas Schelling, John Strachey and Maxwell Taylor. For strategic studies it seemed very much a golden dawn. However, nothing comparable has come to pass since, not even with the early debates about the Strategic Defence Initiative nor with the onset of the Strategic Revolution. In truth, this dawn was high noon as well. But this is not to deny that certain benefits accrued from the single-minded approach. Responding to a widespread desire for curbs on nuclear arms, analysts advocated that (a) deterrence and defence and (b) arms control and disarmament be treated as two sides of the same coin—‘not contradictory but complementary’, to quote a NATO study completed in 1966 by Pierre Harmel, then Foreign Minister of Belgium. No less seminal was a book in similar vein the ISS had published in 1961 by the late Hedley Bull, the acknowledged leader of a coterie of Australian academics making a significant contribution in the field. Since the 1960s, the Bull/Harmel formulation has been fundamental to the Alliance approach to stability. Today, reaffirmation is needed from the White House. As US Secretary of Defence from 1961, Robert McNamara promoted costbenefit analyses of weapons and support systems: a departure very much in line with the modish rationality. However, a basic limitation was that, with

THE STRATEGIC REVOLUTION 41

weaponry, the benefits were problematic in terms not just of inflictable damage but also of ensuing consequences. Nor were costs so very easy to predict, not at the development stage for sure. All the same, cost-benefit studies did rein in heady aspirations apropos Ballistic Missile Defence as well as the location of combat troops in Near Space. On both counts, witness the cancellation by the Pentagon and NASA in 1969 of a Manned Orbital Laboratory due to be crewed by two people. Addressing the National Press Club in Washington DC early in 1958, Brigadier General Honor Boushey USAF had famously proposed several reasons why the Moon itself would be a splendid locale for strategic missile squadrons. That disquisition soon came to be regarded as a curio. Otherwise, progress either with theory or with its application was hard to gauge. Sometimes the strategic community failed to show governments directions in which to go. At other times, it failed to come abreast of governmental best practice. One subject explored, notably by Herman Kahn as Director of the Hudson Institute and by Klaus Knorr at Princeton, was the restrained use of strategic weapons. The former sought to generate ‘ladders of escalation’. However, the ordering of the rungs depended on variables that could not be accommodated within so unilinear a model. In 1963, Alain Enthoven, a McNamara aide concerned with cost-benefit but also European security, indicated that controlled strategic response would involve giving the President options to choose from, as and when an actual crisis broke. That was more or less as far as doctrine was taking things. Too little discussion took place about how best to persuade an adversary to switch to positive collaboration. True, an action-reaction tendency has long been understood to be at work in arms build-ups, ‘arms races’ as they are customarily known. However, in 1974–5 Albert Wohlstetter argued in a triad of articles that, as regards Washington-Moscow competition in strategic arms, the simple reciprocation model had to be qualified considerably in the light of doctrinal, institutional and resource factors.20 But what of the same process at work in political didacticism or social tensions? Do not the extremists on each side often exhibit something of a common purpose? Have we not seen this very starkly in various situations in recent decades from Southern Africa to the Middle East and to the subcontinent? Cannot the same come as true of the moderates? In 1950, President Truman described Joseph McCarthy as the Kremlin’s greatest asset. By so doing, he courageously threw down the gauntlet of moderation. But he could better have said McCarthy was the greatest asset of Moscow’s hardest bigots. In international affairs, action-reaction is rarely a matter of neat alternation. But it is usually discernible and ought to be considered more than it has been. A related failing was a disposition to discount or completely ignore political differences within Western democracies appertaining to matters strategic. Israel has dramatically been a case in point. Both her supporters and her opponents have almost invariably talked as if she has one simple view about war and peace. Yet there is a deep philosophic gulf between what we have known as the mainstream Zionism of Haganah and social democracy and, on the other hand,

42 THE POVERTY OF STRA TEGY

the Revisionism of the Irgun and now Likud. The worldwide community of strategists has never done enough to help repair that critical oversight. Then again, a tendency for doctrine to marginalize or omit non-military factors could have had serious repercussions had, for instance, the situation along the inter-German border ever turned really warlike. One simple truth never squarely faced was that even an imminent threat of hostilities would have caused panic in such bourses as Frankfurt, London, Paris and Zurich. It was one of several considerations that would in reality have made nonsense of any attempt to conduct a prolonged non-nuclear defence in Central Europe, a strategy many social democrats were strongly attracted to through the 1960s. This fiduciary source of crisis aggravation loomed all the larger through 1980 due to scores of billions of dollars being on loan to the Soviet bloc. The creditors involved could have found themselves very exposed to ruthless behaviour by big debtors who happened also to be professing Marxist-Leninists with dirigiste economies and what they could claim as ideological justifications for debt renunciation. Also the broad impact of progress in civil high technology has never been systematically considered by the strategic studies fraternity. Yet programmes like Sputnik, Apollo 11, Concorde, Telstar, the Shinkansen bullet train and the Boeing 747 have had an international and planetary impact extending well beyond any military technology benefits or, indeed, commercial spin-offs. The New Frontier What one must acknowledge is that, as he looked towards the White House in 1958/9, Senator John Kennedy did anticipate considerably the wider agenda here favoured. He cultivated energetically the notion that the next President had to ‘get America moving’ on more or less all fronts, from civil rights to defence and foreign economic aid. He hoped thereby to regain the initiative lost to the USSR by the allegedly enfeebled and indolent Eisenhower regime. Indicative of this recovery would be a closing of the ‘missile gap’ Moscow was purported to have opened up at strategic level.21 Once in place, his New Frontier administration (1961–3) sought interaction with the strategic community. On military nuclear questions, the results were (as implied above) often tangible and sometimes creative. On other matters, each side was wont to be ill-prepared. Thus neither was ready for the good windows of opportunity then presented to progress towards peace in the Middle East and Southern Africa. Nor was either really geared up to dealing with Marxian insurgency. To anyone who spent any time in Saigon in the 1960s, there will be a mortifying ring of truth in David Halberstam’s thesis that Vietnam was lost mainly by ‘the best and the brightest’, the youthful scholar-politicians from Ivy League campuses to whom it was just another containment mission. By much the same token, anyone who passed through Washington in the Kennedy years will well hear Halberstam tell how a modus operandi for counter-insurgency was

THE STRATEGIC REVOLUTION 43

cobbled together, vexatious issues like defoliants and napalm being decided almost ad hoc.22 Correspondingly, too little attention was paid to the geographical specifics. Those concerned rarely acknowledged that Geography does not repeat itself; and that the jungle can never be neutral. Soon these shortcomings would be severely tested. At the same time, others would be exposed. Why could not strategic studies encompass social and ecological change? By 1960, use of the contraceptive pill was spreading fast. Then 1962 saw the publication of Rachel Carson’s The Silent Spring, since dubbed the morning star of environmentalism. The Partial Test Ban of 1963 was considerably a measure against radioactive pollution. Barbara Ward would be coining the term ‘Spaceship Earth’ in 1966. A gap was opening up within academia between the international and the planetary; and it has got wider more or less ever since. Geography may have a signal part to play in a blending of subject areas that is now desperately overdue. So may Philosophy. Karl Marx inveighed against what he saw as the poverty of the German philosophy of his day, its static formalism and lack of interest in intellectual advance and social progress. Strategic studies could ossify similarly, 9/11 notwithstanding. Does it not need the infusion of planetary philosophic perspectives? But will not the philosophy have to connect with a global analysis more congruously than Marx himself ever managed or even attempted?

3 A war on terror?

By launching so forcefully a global ‘war on terror’, President Bush has challenged head-on a long-cherished tenet of Western progressives. This has been that insurgency is the authentic voice of the oppressed; and the more adamant its leadership, the more this truth is confirmed. Shades here of the dozens of medieval ballads that created the Robin Hood legend. Shades, too, of a modern disposition to write indulgently of outlaws, gangland bosses and their ilk —Jesse James, Ned Kelly, Reggie Kray, Rob Roy… On the more overtly political plane, the literati tend to give ultra-Left revolutionaries (Mazzini, Lenin, Mao Tse-tung, Gerry Adams…) extensive and often empathetic press coverage compared with more moderate reformers or, of course, the anciens régimes. Moreover, the more dismal the status quo ante, the more these tendencies prevail, the underlying assumption being that anything must be an improvement. Alas, the materials of history suggest that unyielding repression is very liable to be replaced, through revolutionary upheaval, by brutality more uncompromising, albeit in a new guise. Robespierre was far more vicious than Louis XVI. Stalin was much worse than the Tsars. Nor does the current dearth of political thought, especially in the developing countries, inspire confidence that future revolutionists would be any better. Revolutionary leaders Ernesto (Che) Guevara (1928–67) and Nelson Mandela (b. 1918) are often cited as revolutionary leaders well endowed with sweetness and liberality. However, neither survived long operationally. A compulsive revolutionist, Guevara roved to Bolivia, only to get himself pointlessly killed in an ambience he himself had anticipated six years before would be too impoverished and underdeveloped for the robust guerrilla war he had in mind.1 One might add, underpopulated. Mandela’s two decades in prison were a deprivation hideously representative of the twentieth century. Yet politically this both exalted and shielded him. Otherwise he might well have been displaced by someone of harsher persuasion. Certainly harshness was abroad. Take Steve Biko. Nothing can condone how he died from brain damage in police custody in 1977. What must be conceded, however, is that he never made a convincing moral distinction between his

A WAR ON TERROR? 45

‘Black consciousness’ movement and ‘White racism’. His testament well identified positive traits within traditional African culture (pp. 55–61). He stressed the need to free ‘the mind of the oppressed’ (p. 82). But his sneer at the ‘myth of integration’ (p. 36) showed no awareness of how negative, in today’s dynamic world, a retreat into yesteryear can be. The same goes for his castigation of modern education as a cultural threat.2 Nor is Winnie Mandela to be discounted. During our 1986 visit, the South African police showed us the film of her extolling ‘our necklaces’ from a podium in Soweto, the said objects actually being flaming car tyres within which were immolated young Black people deemed to be compromised. Next one saw a beautiful young lady being brought out thus to die, maybe because she had a lover or kinsman in the police or wherever. Now, under President Thabo Mbeki, the ANC government rather disappoints. It is not proactive enough against the rise of Black Fascism in Zimbabwe. Furthermore, the President was for too long obscurantist about the AIDS epidemic so rampant regionally. Other questions can be raised about revolutionary leaders. One is how willing they are to put their own lives on the line. There will be no universal answer. But quite often they remain throughout or in due course become managers leading their regiments from behind. In that inclination, those concerned are not alone. But this pattern is still to be contrasted with the absolute nature of their revolutionary protestations. In Amman early in 1970, I interviewed Kamel Nasser, a senior PLO figure. I recall being impressed, today I think too impressed, by his professed admiration for the kibbutzim and other Israeli innovations in social engineering.3 However, the point for now is the distinction he drew between the likes of himself, safely above the fray, and the young men fighting in the Jordan valley. In fact, in 1973 he was killed in Beirut by Israeli commandos. But such escalation was not part of his reckoning that afternoon in Amman. Yet more instructive in this respect may be Josif Tito of Yugoslavia, the celebrated wartime leader of the Communist Partisans and afterwards federal President. He was in the thick of merciless fighting as late as June 1943, during the Sutjeska breakout.4 After that, he is much less up front. Milovan Djilas (1911–95), his close comrade in the Partisans but later his severest critic, saw his ‘overwhelming concern’ for personal safety as ultimately a big limitation in a military leader; and felt that, in wartime already, his ‘glittering political talent’ was driven by enormous self-regard.5 He stressed, too, how Tito’s flamboyant lifestyle as President helped impel the Yugoslav Communist Party to entrench itself as a new governing class. Djilas himself came across as a creative mix of dogma and sensibility, someone of real intellectual and physical courage. Mao Tse-tung (1893–1976), too, made an abrupt transition to higher things. He is repeatedly in the thick of a most ghastly civil war for nearly a decade up to the conclusion of the Long March in 1935. Yet once ensconced in Yenan he, too, is little further involved in the action.6 No matter that China was almost constantly at war, internally or externally, until 1953.

46 THE STRATEGIC REVOLUTION

With not a few revolutionists who have reached the top, the egocentric syndrome has given rise to a manic personality cult which distorts everything, politically and culturally. Mao was, of course, the paramount exemplar. Well below that level, however, status enhancement can frequently be a strangely strong propensity of the zealous radical. A striking manifestation in Marx’s case was denial of his Jewishness. Neither he nor Engels mention it ever. His references to other Jews, especially in letters to Engels, are abnormally virulent. Isaiah Berlin concluded that, to Marx, his origin was a ‘stigma’ he was ‘unable to avoid pointing out in others’.7 In 1991, the Professor of Applied Psychology at Cork University brought out a forthright study that inter alia minced no words about the IRA. Here he identifies ten signal attributes of the political fanatic. These can be adumbrated thus: Intense focus on the salient theme. Interpretation of the whole of life from this narrow perspective. Insensitivity to other individuals or normal social pressures. Inability to judge critically one’s own actions. Inconsistency. Certainty about one’s own rectitude. Simplistic descriptions of political and social forces. Resistance to any adjustment of outlook. Disdain for the well-being of others. ‘Contextual facilitation’, meaning the maintenance of a societal context mean enough to sustain fanatical behaviour.8 Admittedly, we all exhibit these traits in some measure. Occasionally they contribute to whatever good we may do. But a political fanatic (like his religious counterpart) lets them take him over. Sometimes the result is veritably clinical. Oft cited is the dichotomy between Heinrich Himmler’s willingness to manage backstage the Holocaust and his abhorrence of visiting the death camps as well as of hunting and meat-eating. Robespierre was similar. Derailing the popular will The morbid idiosyncrasies of revolutionary doyens acquire a certain rationale from the need to prepare for the intended uprising. As with religious extremists, the prior aim is control of the host community.9 On the political plane more widely than on the religious nowadays, this can involve violent coercion. The Washington authorities described Abu Nidal (1937–2002) as ‘the world’s most wanted terrorist’. Scores of the thousand or so people whose deaths he apparently masterminded were Israelis. But hundreds were fellow Palestinians.10 In January 2002, the Leftist New Statesman condemned how the Ulster paramilitaries (but, above all, the IRA) had used the Good Friday peace agreement of 1998 to strengthen their grip on the working class within their respective urban fiefdoms: The rocket launchers may have been put beyond use. The crude pipe-bombs, the nails, the baseball bats, the guns used for knee-cappings have not.’11 So how many IRA/Real IRA activists was one talking of? In 1986, the IRA’s flagging

A WAR ON TERROR? 47

insurgency was set to revive awhile, thanks to arms shipments from Libya. Even so, its ‘active service’ strength in 1990 was probably little more than eighty.12 A transitional stage during which a small extremist minority uses its readiness to shoot in order to inhibit the moderate majority can be quite drawn out. This applied in Cyprus where for two decades (1954–74) the EOKA insurgents answered to George Grivas (1898–1974), a hard Rightist born in Cyprus but with a wartime background as a resistance leader in Greece. Internally, his protagonist was now to be Archbishop Makarios III, Ethnarch of Cyprus from 1950 and the elected first President of the Republic of Cyprus from 1960. Philosophic breadth and depth effused from Makarios. But appreciation of such qualities was not a Grivas attribute. In a Preparatory General Plan for a Cypriot uprising drafted in 1952, he made it clear he sought to create a ‘single internal front’ underpinned by summary execution of ‘anyone and everyone considered to be dangerous to the cause’.13 The great bone of contention among Greek Cypriots soon proved to be the interpretation of Enosis, the proposed union of their island with Mother Greece. In 1956–7, the British authorities exiled Makarios awhile for allegedly encouraging terrorism. But as Lawrence Durrell argued at the time, even if the Archbishop was implicated in EOKA, he also acted as its brake.14 Not long after his return, he intimated that he favoured what he came to speak of as the ‘genuine’ Enosis of symbolic ties with Athens; and that the ‘organic’ Enosis of full integration espoused by General Grivas might best be postponed to the Greek Kalends—i.e. to a month absent from the classical Greek calendar. Fortified by the Athens military coup of 1967, General Grivas sought to thwart the Makarios vision comprehensively.15 Several years of sporadic violence culminated in the latter’s being deposed briefly in 1974. In the ensuing turmoil, Turkey intervened to occupy the northern third of Cyprus where very thorough ethnic cleansing then occurred. Since when, nothing has fundamentally altered. Therefore, by cramping the will of the great but more silent majority, EOKA had brought disaster upon its Greek Cypriot kith and kin and, albeit less starkly, their Turkish Cypriot compatriots. Diametrically opposite, but no more constructive, is the possibility that insurgent extremism will induce a political backlash within the majority. This is especially liable to happen if the insurgency is perceived as alien-controlled. Mention was made in Chapter 2 of the Americans rapidly becoming appraised in Greece in 1947 of the need to rehabilitate the politics of moderation as represented by Themistocles Sophoulis. The background was that, in 1946, both a general election and a monarchical plebiscite had registered a strong swing to the royalist Right. But this was, understandably, a phobic grass-roots reaction to the prospect of renewed civil strife with atrocious abuses, not least by the Communists. It should not be construed as the will of the people expressed in a climate of Aristotelian or Jeffersonian reasonableness. That downbeat verdict would have to stand even if one discounted all the irregularities perpetrated by gendarmerie, police and government officials.

48 THE STRATEGIC REVOLUTION

Clandestine involvement by an outside regime can often be a further pernicious aspect of insurgency, the perniciousness sometimes residing in the likelihood that much of the body politic of the said regime will actually know little of what is going on. Take the assassination by which the First World War was triggered— that of Franz-Ferdinand, heir to the throne of Austria-Hungary. The Young Bosnian assassins had invaluable help from some middle-rank Serbian army officers, including the head of intelligence. Moreover, Prime Minister Pavic knew something was afoot but felt too equivocal, and was too weak, to intervene effectually. What remains unclear is whether anybody else among the Belgrade higher-ups was appreciably in the know.16 A general inference can be that such undercover intervention is often inimical to the formulation of a well-founded Grand Strategy by the interventionary polity. As much is borne out by France’s role in the Nigerian civil war mentioned in Chapter 2. In Lagos in the New Year 1968, the French Embassy was telling us journalists that Paris firmly supported the Nigerian federation against the Biafran secessionists in its Eastern Region. The rejoinder of the British and American embassy spokesmen was that their French colleagues were decent people who believed what they said. However, intelligence agents reporting direct to President De Gaulle were shipping arms to the rebels via Iberian islands in the Bight of Biafra. Several weeks later, De Gaulle went public in support of Biafra. His proactively anti-Anglophone pitch was to escalate seriously the armed conflict. This caused vast misery and mortality within the old Eastern Region; and saddled the reorganized federation with an army still 225,000-strong a decade later. Measure that against the 60,000 on the active list today. To cap everything, revolutions of the totalitarian kind can take decades to come to power, far too long to wait supposing one did trust the revolutionaries and their nostra. The Chinese Communist Party was founded in 1921. It took twentyeight years to gain power despite being hugely advantaged by how onerously world depression and then world war bore on the Chinese people. Then again, one may take the island of Mindanao, often cited as ‘a potential engine of economic growth for the entire Philippines’. For thirty years, a rebellion by militant separatists within its three million Moslem inhabitants has continued spasmodically with 120,000 dead so far. Quite the largest guerrilla group, the Moro Islamic Liberation Front, has some 15,000 activists. This insurgency is still well short of achieving its declared aims,17 probably the more so with US ground combat involvement from 2003. Even so, it has succeeded mightily in denying Mindanao its latent potential, locking it instead into the syndrome Professor Taylor calls ‘contextual facilitation’. All in all, enough may now have been said to confirm that insurgency cannot be commended as a path for progress, not in this age of information flow and global awareness. Justice and freedom must be sought another way where at all possible.

A WAR ON TERROR? 49

The horizons of terror Nevertheless, we may have got the semantics of ‘terror’ skewed most prejudicially. The American Declaration of Independence of 1776 famously insists that governments are instituted to secure such ‘inalienable Rights’ as ‘Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness’. It further avers that whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these Ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such Principles, and organizing its powers in such Form as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. This inspirational testament to the ultimate right of revolt was deployed against a regime which, though colonial British and not native American, was intrinsically less disagreeable than most around in 2003. Correspondingly, the ensuing rebellion was far more authentic and generally healthy than almost any in this ‘century of the Common Man’, the century Roosevelt’s Vice-President Henry Wallace (1888–1965) advised us in 1942 we had entered upon. Wallace is worth reflecting on in relation to our present discontents. The sad thing was that, in his 1946 to 1950 phase, this erstwhile New Deal liberal argued that responsibility for the Cold War lay primarily with the Truman administration. This stance may have helped to induce the McCarthyist backlash. At all events, one cannot excuse Wallace’s refusal to recognize how basically the Cold War scene was set by Moscow’s total manipulation of information in pursuance of state terror. Looking back to the 1951 foray into Eastern Europe mentioned in the Preface, ten hours spent on a Red Army station in Austria was hardly less illuminating than the ten days at the Berlin Peace Congress. Several impressions abide. One is of the avuncular bonhomie of the Soviet company commander, a veteran of the Great Patriotic War. Another is of the innocent friendliness of his squaddies. But a third is how virtually all the wall space of their accommodation block was given over to virulently anti-American cartoons. A theme reiterated endlessly was the top-hatted Wall Street banker, his bloodied hands clutching atomic bombs he was lusting to detonate. Usually, too, he was a Semitic stereotype of the Shylock, Fagin ilk. Not a few of the Communists among us either said or visibly felt this was a rancid expression of the radical vision. The post-revolutionary regime that sustained it clearly was a long way from ‘the spirit of seventy-six’ or, indeed, the aspirations of 1917. Those ugly cartoons were doing their small bit to complement a ‘terror’ so ubiquitous that often ‘its victims are innocent even from the point of view of the prosecutor’.18 The state machine responsible arose out of revolution, but state machine it now was.

50 THE STRATEGIC REVOLUTION

The British colonial authorities typecast Jewish guerrillas in Palestine as ‘terrorists’ in the 1940s. So did they EOKA in Cyprus in the 1950s. Yet only since the Vietnam War have we been encouraged always to view insurgency as ‘terror’ and nothing except insurgency as ‘terror’. Thus in 1974 the Westminster Parliament passed a Prevention of Terrorism Act aimed mainly at the IRA but also at other insurgent threats within the United Kingdom. The linguistic adjustment involved would soon be catching on, this on the political Right but also the Left. For some years before the ‘Twin Towers’ atrocity, this twinning of ‘insurgency’ with ‘terror’ had been waxing more categoric. It is a salient aspect of the poverty of strategy. Take the Dictionary of Military Terms compiled under the auspices of the Joint Chiefs of Staff in Washington. The 1987 edition has a brief note on the Pentagon classification of the White, Yellow and Red states of ‘terrorist threat’. Otherwise there are no entries under ‘terrorism’. Instead it just addresses ‘unconventional’ and ‘guerrilla’ war, the latter being treated as a subset of the former.19 The 1999 edition has these entries again but adds ‘terrorism’ as well. This it understands to be the actual or threatened use of ‘unlawful’ violence in ‘pursuit of goals that are generally political, religious or ideological’.20 Unfortunately, this definition cuts across those used for the other two terms. Worse, it covers an embarrassingly wide compass for so emotive an expression. Among the legends of American history that could thus be typecast as ‘terrorist’ are George Washington, Davy Crockett, John Brown, Robert E.Lee, Geronimo and the Second Amendment. Since 11 September, this Manichean disposition to make the term ‘terrorist’ a corral that takes in any insurgent anywhere but nobody else at all has become obsessive. Yet Hannah Arendt’s alternative pitch of using it rather to cover the oppressive violence totalitarian regimes launch into once ensconced in power is much stronger on historical precedents. For the last 150 years or so, literary allusions have been made to ‘reigns of terror’ by the Jacobins and, latterly, Communist or Fascist states.21 When, in 1919, Woodrow Wilson spoke of the Great War just concluded as ‘shot through with terror of every kind’, he was mainly referring to what conscripted armed forces had done to one another.22 In my infancy, the archetypical instrument of ‘terror’ was a Junkers dive bomber. But this never meant all Luftwaffe aircrew were generically branded as ‘terrorists’. All else apart, that would have compromised the sense of fair play on which the morale of our own combatants not inconsiderably depended. Throughout, action-reaction has to be allowed for. Some time back, Britain’s leading authority on international counter-insurgency stressed how ‘some of the best historical case-studies vividly demonstrate how state violence often helps to provoke and fuel the violence of terrorist movements’.23 And this as well applies, of course, when the repressive regimes are conservative—e.g. Saudi Arabia at the present time. A clinching comment can be one made by The Cape Times on 27 October 1973, right in the depths of the Apartheid era: The Minister cannot expect journalists to do violence to the English language…by describing guerrilla warfare as terrorism at all times and in all circumstances.’24 The

A WAR ON TERROR? 51

support an oppressed community lends to insurgent extremism can fluctuate markedly as the prospects for alternative ways forward wax and wane. Correcting the spin The term ‘terror’ and its derivatives ought to be removed from the official lexicons for armed conflict. Following up the Cape Times admonition, we should be left entirely free individually to decide whether to condemn as ‘terror’ any particular act of political violence, be it from below or above. Not so many people the world over would be slow to condemn as terrorists Bin Laden and the others behind the 11 September attacks. The same goes for the perpetrators of the Bali massacre and the Istanbul bombings of November 2003. But much insurgent violence has not attracted condemnation as solid. American opinion, at any rate, has until now been myopic about the slaughter by Christian militia in September 1982 of a thousand Palestinian men, women and children at the Sabra and Chatila refugee camps in the suburbs of Beirut. They were scapegoats for the assassination (almost certainly by Syrian intelligence) of the Lebanese Prime Minister. In October 2001, the State Department completed an overview of significant ‘terror events’ over the past four decades. According to a Pentagon rendering, Sabra and Chatila are not mentioned.25 In August 2002, Newsweek published a very full account of how that January roughly a thousand Taliban were ostensibly accorded good surrender terms by a Northern Alliance warlord but then crammed into steel containers and left to suffocate.26 This surely was terror if words have meaning. That summer, too, a report by several American foundations (among them Jews for Peace in Palestine and Israel) said that, from September 2000 to March 2002, violence between Israelis and Palestinians claimed the lives of 286 children (232 Palestinian and 54 Israeli) under the age of 18.27 Too many of these killings will have been too wanton, terroristic in effect. Debate about whether terrorism comes more from above or from below goes full circle with North Korea. Pyongyang has sustained throughout a great leader cult (Kim Il-sung, ruled 1945–94; and since then his son, Kim Jong-il) that is tantamount to collective lunacy. At the same time, it has waged against the Republic of Korea (ROK) a covert war judged with chilling exactness in terms of how to disconcert without invoking an effective riposte. Take the record since the Korean War ended in 1953, and the creation then of a buffer territory or Demilitarized Zone (DMZ). There has been much tunnelling under the DMZ; the seizure of the Pueblo, a US government surveillance vessel in 1968; the murder of the wife of ROK President Park in 1974; the hacking of two American officers to death in the DMZ in 1976; several ROK Cabinet Ministers blown up in Rangoon in 1983; and repeated kidnappings. In September 2002, Kim Jong-il admitted his country’s responsibility for the clandestine abduction of thirteen Japanese between 1977 and 1983, taken at random chiefly from secluded parts of

52 THE STRATEGIC REVOLUTION

their homeland coast. All these incidents were acts of state terror, perpetrated by officials. Syndicated brutality The current disposition formally to equate ‘terror’ wholly with guerrilla actions weakens the support of moderate-minded people for a counter-insurgency strategy. It may do so increasingly. More specifically, it blocks out empathetic awareness of the surges of emotional ambivalence a youngster may experience before sublimating, maybe through a suicide mission, his or her sense of injustice. It also cramps due exploration of the correspondences between insurgency and criminality, especially when each is syndicated regionally or beyond. This, too, may be a burgeoning theme. After all, the respective godfathers operate similarly. Moreover, one cannot dismiss every criminal boss as devoid of political ideas. Al Capone (1899–1947) was wont to provide gambling dens and alcohol ‘speakeasies’ along with medical supervision of prostitutes and abortionists. To that extent, he offered a social alternative, notwithstanding his masterminding hundreds of murders. Obversely again, Hezbollah and the Tamil Tigers are among the insurgent movements deep into illicit drugs dealing. Diamonds have been another interest, certainly in Angola, the Democratic Republic of Congo and Sierra Leone. In 1998, the UN banned the import of diamonds from mines not under governmental jurisdiction. Unfortunately, one cannot always trace the original source of particular cut diamonds. In 1999 the three states just cited supplied under 4 per cent of the world’s recorded output of rough diamonds.28 Underworld togetherness can also be observed within the Russian Federation between Russian crooks and Islamic radicals.29 Nor is it remarkable, given the current weakness of certain insurgencies, that the Sicilian mafiosi have intimated a willingness to negotiate with the Berlusconi government in Rome. However tactical their overtures, they probably betoken some enfeeblement.30 Soon after 9/11, steps were taken to interdict the financial flows to and from syndicated insurgent groups; and, for some months, real progress was made. Since Spring 2002, however, things have slowed, partly because policy-makers have been diverted by Kashmir, Palestine and Iraq.31 On the other hand, the last decade has seen international action against corrupt practice across the commercial and public sectors.32 If well underpinned at national level, this campaign can embarrass insurgents, not least by bringing offshore tax havens more under regulation. Vietnam revisited Given the burgeoning impact of information technology, one could be tempted to infer that henceforward Western-style armies must prevail against insurgents. It

A WAR ON TERROR? 53

is therefore salutary to recall similar inferences being drawn before, notably in Indo-China. Received wisdom in Saigon in April 1966 was that the main Viet Cong/North Vietnamese field force would be broken within eighteen months. Mopping up would take a further three years, after which a free and open South Vietnam would go from strength to strength. The contrast with what actually transpired is so stark that one should still reflect on why this was. Various genres of explanation can be identified. To my mind, the most off-key have been the Marxian contentions that the Viet Cong were ‘Robin Hoods’ beloved of the masses.33 Agreed, the Communists could well articulate the popular desire for land reform, curbs on corruption and a weakening of the grip Northern Catholics had on the res publica in Saigon. Yet beyond that, Marxian prescriptions were most unlikely to gel with customary mores. Nor can critical importance any longer be attached to the perceived cultural divide between the ‘quiet and lazy’ Lao and Cambodians and the thrusting Annamese/Vietnamese: South Asia versus East Asia as the contrast was posited.34 East Asian martial ardour and ruthlessness did oblige the Americans to abandon South Vietnam in 1975 just as these attributes had forced the British to surrender at Singapore in 1942. Yet by far the most extensive savagery of the Vietnam War era was South Asian. It was the genocidal terrorism set in train within Cambodia by the Pol Pot regime. Then there is the insinuation that John Kennedy’s death left Lyndon Johnson all too free to get bogged down irretrievably. That Kennedy was the less disposed to escalate American force levels is probably true. But this does not mean he was poised to adopt a coherent alternative. Certainly the speech he would have delivered in Dallas the day he died would have shown no inclination to withdraw. Its draft conceded that assistance to nations on the fringe of the Communist world ‘can be painful, risky and costly as is true in South-East Asia today. But we dare not weary of the task. A successful Communist breakthrough in these areas would necessitate direct military intervention’.35 Short-term, he would have proceeded incrementally, guided largely by the Saigon staffers mentioned in Chapter 2. Alas, ‘the best and the brightest’ were little given to self-questioning. Egged on by McNamara, they drew too heavily on statistics drawn from skimpy and unsound sources within an alien culture. Briefed by them, it was all too easy to come back from Vietnam without having been there. They were too sanguine, not so much about the actual situation as about the outlook for near-term improvement. An invaluable corrective was talking to troops in the field. In my view as it is now, a basic blunder during the war and in retrospective assessment lay in not appreciating early on the significance of Communist infiltration from 1959 down the network of pathways from North Vietnam through Laos to South Vietnam: the ‘Ho Chi Minh’ trail, a conduit of insurgency which was to be strongly supplemented by the mid-1960s by another one created as Soviet supply ships docked at Sihanoukville in Cambodia. Yet to my

54 THE STRATEGIC REVOLUTION

knowledge only one author has highlighted how critical was the failure of the huge effort eventually made to interdict by bombing the Ho Chi Minh trail. He is a former Marine and Foreign Service officer with extensive Vietnam and Laos experience, 1965–7 and 1969–70.36 Those who discount the early impact of the trail pray in aid assessments which are too simplistically quantitative. A US National Intelligence estimate of October 1961 was that 80 to 90 per cent of perhaps 17,000 Viet Cong were locally recruited. Received wisdom also is that 2,000 activists moved south down the trail in 1962.37 Nearly all will have been Southerners who had gone north after the 1954 peace agreement. Likewise, Jeffrey Record felt that as late as 1965 there was ‘not much to interdict’ along the said corridor.38 Many of the weapons the Viet Cong had acquired up till then had come into their hands through the collapse of ‘strategic hamlets’, a large number of which had been established in haste by the Saigon government to provide secure accommodation in rural areas.39 Yet there can be no serious doubt that, for whatever reasons, infiltration increased sharply during 1965 and now included North Vietnamese army units. Hence the severe military pressure the Communists exerted that summer and autumn. But suppose there had only been, say, 2,500 returned activists working within the Viet Cong in late 1962. Would they not have been a cadre at the heart of the movement? And light though the flow of materials will still have been, it is bound to have included wirelesses, quality explosives and other items of high tactical value. Furthermore, the discouragement thus visited upon those in the South seeking peaceful change will have been much worsened by the plain fact that any infiltration was flatly in defiance of the Geneva Agreement on Laotian neutrality signed in May 1962. On this interpretation, the historiography of Vietnam has concentrated overmuch on the Johnson years.40 The war was all but lost by the time Kennedy died. It is therefore hard to endorse Lawrence Freedman’s judgement that ‘he left the Cold War in a far less dangerous state than he found it’.41 What John Kennedy should have done is a trickier question. But a background factor was the Sino-Soviet split, visible enough from 1958 but brought to a head in 1961 with Moscow’s unilateral cancellation of hundreds of aid agreements at the very time China was wracked by a ‘Great Leap Forward’, exacerbated by drought. Any measures taken in Indo-China then might usefully have been complemented by an energetic quest for détente with China, diplomatic recognition included. All in all, the world scene was more auspicious in this respect then than it was to be when Richard Nixon at last made an historic trip to Beijing in 1971. The British Ambassador in Washington, a close friend of the young President, later remarked that Kennedy was inhibited from making such overtures to Mao by apprehension of a Rightist backlash42 led by Richard Nixon. Also he sought, particularly after the 1962 Cuba crisis, a positive dialogue with Khrushchev, especially about Berlin and a partial test ban. Therefore a peace offensive

A WAR ON TERROR? 55

directed at Beijing could never have been risk free. But at least it might have been easier to modulate than containment pursued in Indo-China without a wider accommodation. At all events, certain Western liberals (e.g. Bill Clinton) are inconsistent in denouncing the Indo-China commitment while claiming to have inherited the Kennedy mantle. The commitment was the mantle. A more general lesson is that a Grand Strategy for rescuing a failing world is liable to unravel comprehensively if just one major strand thereof proves friable. Another is that a failing state is hard to rescue if its frontiers cannot be secured. Indeed, an otherwise robust polity can be subverted under those circumstances. When the great Swedish development economist Gunnar Myrdal (1898–1987) talked of ‘soft states’ in Afro-Asia, he had porous borders much in mind. Concern on that score is now ubiquitous, especially in relation to the illicit flow of small arms and explosives. Border security is the sine qua non of Homeland Defence. The insurgency outlook Impelled by the Americans, the limits of advanced military technology are moving outwards so fast that one could conclude that no irregular (i.e. insurgency) warfare will prevail against it, even if no democratic alternative is on offer to the local people. The Bali atrocity could be seen as a purblind lashing out by syndicated insurgency desperate to know where to turn next. The almost concurrent Chechen seizure of the Moscow theatre could be viewed in very similar terms. Some candid dialogue ought to take place about this tactical revolution and its connotations. For now, may one enter preliminary caveats. Take Al-Qaeda. The indications come the autumn of 2002 were that, although its Afghan nerve centre had been shattered, the movement was reorganizing along still more devolved lines. The future management of insurgency syndication may resemble what Manuel Castillo foresees for big business: decentralization with much networking, this largely ad hoc and horizontal.43 In any case, the new mixes of tactical systems have yet to be stringently tested against guerrillas located within urban or jungle environments. Blocking a Ho Chi Minh trail might still be difficult without putting troops on the ground. Besides, even with the technologies then available, Fascist and Communist regimes in the twentieth century were able to keep total if brittle control for years or decades. So have been governments less obnoxiously authoritarian. The acid test has always to be blending control with liberality. The IT revolution is making that still more imperative yet far more difficult. Nor should we forget that guerrillas, too, will have new means at their disposal. One hardly new but visibly undergoing a revival is the suicide mission. Currently this is identified in people’s minds with Islamic backgrounds. This is because of two Levantine waves of suicide bombings, the one in the Lebanon in 1983 and the other the latest Palestinian intifada. Philosophic linkages have been

56 THE STRATEGIC REVOLUTION

traced to the Assassins, a sect active in political killings in the Fertile Crescent, 1090–1275. Its fortified mountain base area was at Alamut, south of the Caspian; and its hard-core membership was committed to martyrdom. However, suicide bombings are not an Islamic preserve. The very fact that 1983 and 2002 stand out over time shows other factors coming contingently into play, just as they have among the Hindu Tamils in Sri Lanka. It has also been argued, half convincingly, that the precept subscribed to by Hezbollah and AlQaeda (a central religious authority masterminding the elimination of unbelievers) ‘has its clearest historical model in the Holy Inquisition. The idea that religion must struggle to assert control over politics is radically new to Islam.’44 In any case, the era of Total War extending from 1914 to the ABM treaty of 1972 saw countless examples of veritably suicidal commitment by youngsters from a wide range of religious or irreligious and national backgrounds. Infantry frontal assaults, from the Somme to Dien Bien Phu, readily assumed that character, certainly through repetition. The same applied to many aerial sorties, not just those by the kamikazes of Imperial Japan. May one add that the British anti-invasion slogan in 1940 was ‘You can always take one with you.’ The commando brigade preferred to say ‘ten’. My own most vivid war-related memory concerns the demise of a Wellington aircraft of RAF Bomber Command. At nine one morning, assembly time in our primary school, this Wellington was directly approaching at perhaps 1,500 feet. On board were a trainee pilot and his instructor. A mile or so out it suddenly started to descend. Just outside the quadrilinear Anglo-Saxon heart of the village, a two-acre patch of grazing had survived the centuries. With sublime skill and courage, the crew finally steered on to it, having left themselves no time to bale out. The plane impacted explosively 150 yards from us. Huge billows of oily, black smoke rapidly effected a terrible symbolism. What amazes me most looking back on that episode is the way everyone seemed to take the heroism for granted. In 2002 a memorial was dedicated to these lads. Another non-murderous manifestation of this supreme sacrifice for a cause is the hunger-strike unto death. From 1917 to 1981, it was a distinctive feature of the Irish troubles. But it does occur more widely. Thus in 1977 in Germany, three Baader-Meinhof members progressed from hunger-striking in prison to killing themselves outright in their cells. During the Cold War, too, individuals burned themselves alive in cities as far apart as Prague, Vilnius and Saigon. Members of the Falun Gong have behaved likewise in China.45 However forlorn this stratagem appears, its ability to disconcert may be considerable in this age of real-time visual information. Political cybercrime is even more of an insurrectionary option for our times. Something akin to an arms race is now extant between network intrusion and cyberspace security. Conceivably, hackers undeterred by risk of detection could take destructive control of dams, nuclear power plants, and the like.46 But the ‘millennium bug’ experience does rather suggest that defeatism need not be the flavour of the century in this particular regard.

A WAR ON TERROR? 57

On the other hand, much simpler tactics may be more or less as threatening in urbanized environments, especially in ‘the cities that came too soon’ (to deploy another Barbara Ward phrase) across the developing world. Some predictions may have presumed too simple a causal link between urban congestion and social violence.47 All the same, syndromes of deprivation do give rise not just to crime but to insurgency, especially where communal tensions are also endemic. Carlos Marighella (the quasi-mythic Brazilian insurgent, ‘Carlos the Jackal’, killed in a shoot-out with Sao Paulo police in 1969) identified a raft of revolutionary options. Some were blatantly lethal, including the use of mass protests as cover for sniper fire. Others were or could have been non-lethal. Among these were strikes, factory sit-ins, kidnapping, sabotage and the raising of false alarms.48 They well highlight how urban governance, even more than rural, depends on positive popular engagement in any polity that does not wish to become instead brutally illiberal. Much is made nowadays of insurgents perhaps acquiring means of mass destruction. That such acquisition could happen through theft or clandestine production is not impossible. But unconditional transfer by roguish governments may prove to be uncommon because such regimes will usually prefer whatever hostilities they covertly promote to be closely controllable in the ultimate by their own security services. In the Spring of 1970, PLO factions flaunted their power in downtown Amman, the capital of Jordan. One was always encountering their roadblocks. A largish Soviet embassy had evidently arranged for those concerned a goodly supply of firearms. But this did not include any weaponry designed for anti-tank use. So when King Hussein forced a showdown that September, his Bedouin armoured columns were unstoppable.

4 Saddam, slow decline and rapid fall

Thus far, accounts of this vexatious episode have kept the Saddam regime centre stage as the plot has unfolded from interminable containment to terminal erasure. Yet it could all almost as well be depicted as a dialectic between the world at large and what many now see as its first hyperpower, the USA. Throughout, the vision the latter has had of the end game has been catalytic to its own arousal. America was generating the overarching moral purpose, much as in every big crunch since 1776: the Declaration of Independence, the Freedom of the Seas, Manifest Destiny, Fifty-four Forty, Abolition, the Fourteen Points, Prohibition, Arsenal of Democracy, the Four Freedoms, Unconditional Surrender, the United Nations, the Free World, the New Frontier, SDI… So now, Regime Change. Iran and Iraq Evidently this latest mission was supercharged by the quantum jumps the profiles of George W.Bush and Osama Bin Laden adversarily made in 2001. Yet its sources go deeper. The Iranian revolution of 1979 marked the triumph of ‘the Blacks and the Reds’ (radical clerics and Marxists) the then Shah had long warned about. Its consummation owed much to how the West (especially the USA and Britain) had sought to build up Iran alias Persia as a queen on the South-West Asian chessboard. Come that revolution, the West’s blessing switched to Iraq where the brutally anti-Communist Saddam Hussein had just become leader. Lately the USSR had been Iraq’s big supplier of heavy weapons. But soon France would make substantial inroads; and with her arms would come a nuclear reactor, just as with Israel pre-1967. The West did little in 1980 to discourage Saddam from conjuring out of border skirmishes an all-out war with Iran. By December 1983, however, the tide of conflict seemed to be turning slowly, bloodily yet inexorably against Baghdad. So much so that regime change was declared to be a Tehran war aim.1 Duly, the White House sent a senior representative to Baghdad, the first for many years. He was Donald Rumsfeld. Documents from the time lately declassified show his brief as having been to pave the way for US components for chemical warfare. A National Security Directive that November had averred Washington would do ‘whatever was

SADDAM, SLOW DECLINE AND RAPID FALL 59

necessary and legal’ to prevent Iraq’s losing the war. The same month, Secretary of State George Shultz received intelligence about the ‘almost daily use’ of chemical weapons by Iraq against Iranian troops. Through 1988, a Republican White House stonewalled attempts made within an outraged Capitol Hill (both Houses with solid Democrat majorities) to set punitive measures in motion vis-à-vis Saddam’s gassing of Iraqi Kurds. The IraqIran War finally ended that year, with no tangible outcome bar a million dead. The previous four years the USA had sent the Iraqis many shipments appertaining to biological and/or chemical war. Concurrently much battlefield intelligence (gleaned, no doubt, from orbital reconnaissance) was made available to them.2 In 1987–8, Iran and the USA skirmished at sea several times; and, in July 1988, all 290 on board an Iranian airliner were killed when the United States Navy intercepted it over the Gulf in error. Then in July 1990, a week before Iraq’s invasion of Kuwait, the US Ambassador called to tell Saddam personally the then President Bush ‘wanted deeper and better relations’. But midst all these geopolitical convolutions, a particular irregularity stood out. From November 1979 to January 1981, the Iranians held dozens of American diplomats hostage in their embassy. Yet since the very dawn of diplomacy between states, regard for the well-being of the other side’s representatives has been a cardinal principle. Gratuitous flouting of it was bound to produce a bad American reaction. Washington and regime change Since Iraq’s defeat in 1991, a quest for regime change there had interwoven in American thinking with obliging Baghdad finally to abandon Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMD) as per the ceasefire terms. Shortly before Operation Desert Storm was launched that January, President Bush had urged the Iraqi people to oust Saddam. He is adjudged thus to have bestirred both Kurds and southern Shi’ites to rise up. The latter were thoroughly crushed; and many then suffered the added trauma of seeing much of their ancestral marshland punitively drained dry.3 Tardy and piecemeal Allied attempts to proffer both rebellions some military cover had firmed up by August 1992 into two ‘air exclusion zones’: the one north of the 36th parallel and the other south of the 32nd. Each would be patrolled by, and only by, British and American warplanes. Right from its creation in April 1991, the UN Special Commission (UNSCOM) tasked with monitoring Iraq’s WMD disarmament found itself circumscribed in sundry ways. But after October 1997, this Iraqi obstruction turned more forceful, Baghdad having given up on UNSCOM’s being induced through sheer weariness to declare that she was, after all, in compliance. So in December 1998, UNSCOM’s Chairman, Richard Butler, advised the Security Council his inspectors could no longer proceed usefully. On the 16th, they withdrew. Within hours, the Americans and British had begun a three-day air offensive. It targeted

60 THE STRATEGIC REVOLUTION

facilities relevant to ballistic missile development plus a suspected biowarfare facility and certain airfields. Meanwhile, pressure for regime change had waxed stronger in Congress, one result being the 1998 Iraq Liberation Act. It allotted $100 million in military and other aid to opposition groups the administration designated. The Act’s passage seemed indicative of a Congressional preparedness to promote insurgency by having US air power protect and sustain liberated enclaves. However, a parallel impression was of doubts within the Clinton entourage about the chances for any form of sponsored insurgency.4 Initially, President Bush (Jnr) followed through the 1998 thrust, containment underpinned by the threat of direct destabilization. But post-9/11 the mood was more proactive. Witness the 2002 State of the Union Message. Since Iraq, Iran and North Korea constituted an ‘axis of evil’, pre-emptive action against them might be warranted. As regards expeditionary warfare against Iraq, the choice was felt to be between a well-balanced ground force of at least 250,000 and one of 80,000 heavily backed by air power. The latter would be easier for neighbouring states to host. However, General Tommy Franks, the head of US Central Command (covering the Gulf, Arabia and much of the Indian Ocean) was reportedly concerned lest the latter formulation proffered too few troops to ensure success around and in the cities. Already, talk of regime change aroused anxiety in the Arab world and further afield. Likewise, the British preferred throughout to make WMD possession ‘the reason’ for any action. Then addressing the UN General Assembly in September, the President himself focused on that aim being achieved under UN auspices. But was this a distinction without a difference? Suppose in 1936 the League of Nations had obliged Germany to return to the Versailles dispensation by reversing (a) its introduction of conscription and (b) its reoccupation of the Rhineland. Could Hitler have remained Führer? Scepticism as to whether Saddam could have borne the humiliation of being forced into WMD compliance is reinforced by indications of just how encompassing inspection had to be. Writing in a specialist journal of liberal pedigree, an ex-Deputy Executive Chairman of UNSCOM (1993–2000) has given a raft of examples of the stratagems the Iraqis adopted to frustrate them, many too intricate to be readily perceived by the outside world.5 Concurrently, David Kay, formerly UNSCOM’s chief nuclear inspector, was quoted as saying a revived inspectorate should have a thousand staffers in the country, not the 150 present till 1998 and now being envisaged again.6 Also the Iraqis had to be far more forthcoming on documentation. Give war a chance? Military intelligence is acknowledged to be a sphere in which the AngloAmerican Special Relationship has long been peculiarly close. One

SADDAM, SLOW DECLINE AND RAPID FALL 61

may therefore take the British official assessment of September 2002 as near to an agreed position. Alas, it is much stronger on assertion than exposition for post-1998. Here the text is definitive only in regard to ballistic missilery, this presumably because the test ranges can well be observed.7 Yet being definitive may not be the same as being right. The Iraqis were said to be developing or modifying several rocket types to be able to strike beyond the limit of 150 km prescribed in 1991. But extensions of test ranges (if such were part of the evidence) might have been mere sops to wounded pride. Alternatively, they may have been deceptions. Among the oldest tricks in the military trade is to make just visible enough measures being taken ostensibly to conceal some asset or intention no longer extant, if it ever was. In the build-up to D-Day in 1944, the Allies assiduously gave the impression an extra army stood ready in East Anglia. This phantom force compounded German uncertainty as to where the main landings would come. Besides, even if Anglo-American received wisdom was right about the rockets, this did not confirm their further view that the chemical and biowarfare programmes were on-going and the nuclear one poised to resume.8 Yet all these inferences were being dogmatically reiterated three months after the fall of Baghdad. Where London and Washington have surely been right, however, is in stressing that the connotations of whatever WMD aspirations Saddam could still entertain were made more sinister by the singular propensity for evil his regime continually evinced. My generation was reared in the persuasion that nobody could be worse than Hitler. But in one signal aspect at least, Saddam may have proved us all wrong. A case can well be made for saying that, as regards his continued reign of terror over those he accepted in principle to be fellow countrymen, Saddam acted worse than Hitler. The yearnings on the ‘Arab street’ to see him as a second Saladin were to an extent understandable within a wider context of anger and frustration but still misguided substantially. By the autumn of 2002, Iraq stood out as a nodal though susceptible part of a polyglot matrix of disaffection seeking to challenge everywhere galloping globalization. After all, the Afghan situation had been brought under some sort of control. That in the Holy Land was not entirely out of control. North Korea might lend itself to an intricate version of stick-and-carrot; and, in any case, any alternatives were daunting. The notion that Iran was monolithically evil was coming to look passé. By default as well as by dint of its own iniquity, Iraq had assumed poll position. Some would also have stressed that, if she was en route to diversified WMD, a window of opportunity to deal with her at lowish risk would soon start to shut. The Special Relationship The main issue at stake therefore became how dissuasion should be exercised. By the United States with Britain in support? Or by an Atlantic Alliance endorsed by the Security Council? That the answer was not pre emptively cast in

62 THE STRATEGIC REVOLUTION

Washington in a quasi-unilateralist mould owed much to Britain’s Prime Minister exercising his flair for playing to the pragmatic willing-to-learn side of George Bush and to his own peerless repute in the USA in the afterglow of his shuttle diplomacy to rally world opinion behind the Americans in reaction to 9/ 11. A commonality of outlook between the two leaders on religion and geopolitics may have been more in letter than in spirit. Even so, it helped awhile. Across the years, an iron law has usually obtained in respect of British influence in Washington. This has been that it really counts only when American opinion on the matter in hand is divided. By some criteria, that was the case in this crisis. In the New Year, polls were showing more than two-thirds ready to go to war with UN backing but well under one-third ready to do so entirely alone. Meantime most religious leaders were at least cautionary about military action. However, the spectrum of attitudes encompassed Protestant fundamentalism, the religious mantle George W.Bush had assumed in adulthood in preference to his Episcopalian background. Much of this ‘Bible Belt’ Christianity adopted a hard line on the war question. As ex-President Jimmy Carter remarked as conflict loomed, certain people within the Southern Baptist Convention ‘are greatly influenced by their commitment to Israel based on eschatological or final days theology’9: in other words, by apocalyptic Christian Zionist millenarianism. Analysis of the evolving national mood became central to the American debate. In policy implications if not in thought process, the outlook of the Protestant evangelicals gelled awhile with that of the neo-conservative defence intellectuals in or near the administration—Bolton, Feith, Perle, Rice, Wolfowitz…10 One could further reflect that the narrow reductionism of the latter well illustrates how desperately the discipline we know as ‘strategic studies’ stands in need of paradigmatic regime change. It is not that those concerned positively endorse what neo-conservatives declaim. It is that they are ill-attuned to subjecting them to a sufficiently searching critique. The ambiguities alluded to above related to a trait another American author read into the current mood of her country. This was that, ‘unlike in Europe, there is a huge desire here to want to go to war which is weirdly different from a desire to go to war itself’.11 An evanescent derivative from the tradition of moral purpose, the mood can also be seen as a deep though delayed reaction to 9/11. Instinctually the neo-conservatives were in tune with it. Against this backdrop plus a welter of brooding suspicion in Europe and across the outside world, Tony Blair could either give up on the Special Relationship and Atlantic Alliance or else transcend himself. The interim verdict of the international correspondent of US Public Radio was that his response placed the Prime Minister squarely among those leaders who do ‘gain depth and sharpness from exposure to power and responsibility’ as opposed to those who ‘never grow larger than the political gifts that delivered them’ to high office: in other words, alongside the likes of Lincoln or Truman as opposed to Nixon or Clinton. Scott Simon concluded that

SADDAM, SLOW DECLINE AND RAPID FALL 63

by moving America to a renewed Middle East peace initiative, putting human rights at the centre of policy and staying the course for rebuilding Iraq, Blair will be identified by many Americans as the moral voice of the Western alliance…it has made him the most compelling public figure in America’.12 Such averration underlines the importance of one great unknown, the eventual effect on the Blair premiership of Lord Hutton’s enquiry into the circumstances surrounding the presumed suicide of Dr David Kelly, Britain’s leading expert on Iraqi WMD. Pros and cons Between November and March, the arguments for and against ‘going in’ were bandied endlessly as the vox populi became more audible worldwide. Opposition to the Bush-Blair axis, impelled by a sense that the two of them saw war as a consummation devoutly to be wished for, probably peaked around early February. Intellectually, neither side came out conclusively on top if only because each sought to argue too categorically. Many of the dissenters adopted an unconditional anti-war stance. Yet many of them had lately been just as unreservedly opposed to economic sanctions because of their impact on infant mortality and so on. The only way to square that circle was to suggest that George Bush and Tony Blair (or the former at least) presented more of a threat to peace than Saddam, if only through greater clout. Various of the European literati did adopt this nihilistic pitch. The Prime Minister himself was well understood to have been ‘almost as worried about America as he is about Iraq’. He apprehended its ‘withdrawal into an embattled and resentful isolationism’.13 Meanwhile, predictions were made of Iraq at bay becoming a ‘Vietnam’ or Baghdad a ‘Stalingrad’. Correspondingly, Allied battle casualties running into quintuple figures were feared. Better founded were the fears of a post-war humanitarian disaster. If they were not fully borne out in practice, this was in part because they were self-defeating prophecies, calls to action. Concern was expressed, too, lest conflict in Mesopotamia provided cover for those elsewhere keen to settle disputes the violent way. Yet save that Mugabe stepped up his official terror in Zimbabwe, little untoward happened. Sharon did not embark on ethnic cleansing in the territories. He was eerily reasonable about peace. India did not strike pre-emptively at Pakistan. In the New Year, North Korea had talked of ‘war without mercy’ should the USA impose fresh economic sanctions. Pyongyang further advised that, should Washington not join in bilateral talks, she could ‘pay a very high price for such reckless acts’ as the boarding of a North Korean freighter heading for the Yemen with a Scud cargo. Yet upon the fall of Baghdad, Pyongyang demurely intimated its willingness to ‘seek a settlement of the nuclear issue’ through the multilateral talks it previously

64 THE STRATEGIC REVOLUTION

eschewed. Only in Morocco and Saudi Arabia was a causal link with insurgency more or less immediate and clear cut. Apropos oil, most sceptics were disposed to believe nothing Washington said about Iraq’s national reserves (the second largest in the world) being made to serve the Iraqi people. Nor did they long ponder how far some of Washington’s protagonists (in Paris or Moscow, say) might have axes to grind in this domain. Nor did they draw a distinction between having an illicit desire to corner oil and a licit one to have it flow abundantly enough. Meanwhile, governmentally les Anglo-Saxons did protest too much their certitude about WMD. Obversely, the Americans were overtly anxious to proffer material proof of a link between the Saddamists and Al-Qaeda. It should simply have gone without saying that those two protagonists might be contingently prepared to collude. Perhaps the worsening violence through August 2003 was a sign they were doing so. At all events, it was always silly of some to dismiss this possibility on the grounds that the one was quasiMarxian nationalist but the other pan-Islamic. Modern history is replete with instances of regimes (authoritarian ones, especially) putting belief differences aside to unite against common foes. Action-reaction What would be hard to deny is that, come 7 March, the USA and therefore Britain were in no mood to receive in the Security Council a balanced report and careful oral advice from Dr Hans Blix, now the UN Chief Weapons Inspector. Nearly a fortnight before, it had been reliably reported that the US military were already sustaining a heavy and diversified leaflet-cum-cyberwar offensive.14 The gist of the Blix submission was that the Iraqis were at last being a deal more forthcoming but that appreciably more time was needed to test their commitment thoroughly. Yet in their way, too, the French, Germans and Russians were losing patience. They were resistant to what they saw as being shanghaied, particularly by a British draft for a new Security Council resolution which effectively gave Baghdad only until the 17th to demonstrate ‘full, unconditional, immediate and active compliance’. One justification advanced by Jack Straw was that ‘it may take time to fabricate further falsehoods but the truth only takes seconds to tell’.15 There was something in this. All else apart, however, one cannot be indifferent to the contrast between this eagerness to box in the Iraqis and the indulgence shown by both London and Washington towards Sinn Fein/IRA over the movement’s failure to decommission all its weaponry and end the punishment beatings as per the Good Friday agreement of 1998. In March 2003, Gerry Adams, head of Sinn Fein, attended the St Patrick’s Day party at the White House despite a continuing impasse. The October accord has yet to be tested. Though all sides acknowledged that the preservation of Security Council unity might have caused the Iraqi regime to implode spontaneously, the trans-Atlantic dialectic abruptly disintegrated into an all-round shouting match with the septuagenarian acerbity of Jacques Chirac and Donald Rumsfeld setting the tone.

SADDAM, SLOW DECLINE AND RAPID FALL 65

France’s firmly begging to differ on tactics and timing, though not on the Grand Strategy, was accommodated across the Atlantic less judiciously than much nastier shocks have been, 9/11 included. Apparently the atavistic outrage owed something to a prior expectation that France would not push things to the line because her own world status considerably depended on the Security Council’s remaining a going concern. To have believed that will have been to underestimate the geopolitical value Paris was attaching to the incipient evolution of a more organic relationship with Bonn, a trend expressive of a new not an ‘old’ Europe (pace Rumsfeld). Obversely, there was a mitteleuropean notion that Europe was more cautious about war because it had known more of it. The problem there was that broad swathes of Eastern Europe remained firmly pro-American throughout. Yet World War II was actually much grimmer in much of Eastern Europe than it was in Western. Thus Poland was a country that contributed immensely in multiple ways to defeating Hitler while doing what she could to curb Stalin. Yet even the grandchildren of those who struggled are today loath to discuss those years because of the augean misery this contribution involved. But in the 2003 climacteric, Warsaw backed Washington. The action-reaction that came into play within Europe as well as across the Atlantic was destructive. Chirac switched to more categoric rejectionism once he became convinced the Anglo-Americans only wanted a Security Council figleaf sufficient to cover their bellicose aspirations. The Anglo-Americans were thereby finally persuaded that French policy in the Middle East was, as ever, selfish and short-sighted. My own view was that it would probably have been better to accept with refinements the alternative strategy propounded with cheerful eloquence by Dominique de Villepin, the French Foreign Minister. This was that Iraq ought to be given up to four months to make carefully flagged progress along the required lines. If that did not yield results, resort to war. For ‘up to four months’ read ‘six weeks’? And acknowledge throughout that the utility of any deferment would have been nil or negative but for the compellence threat presented by the Coalition’s expeditionary army assembled in Kuwait. It has also been my view that, during the preceding six or nine months, George Bush should have heeded urgent advice from Tony Blair (and very likely the President’s own father) about spearheading a really solid and visible advance towards an Israeli-Palestinian settlement.16 The progress alluded to by Scott Simon (as quoted above) was within the context of the ‘quartet’: the ad hoc consultative routine between the USA, the EU, Russia and the UN. In itself, it was important since it involved formulation of the ‘road map’ to peace in the Holy Land. But the setting was too esoteric to resonate with the ‘Palestinian street’ et alia, given that the said map was not formally published ahead of the hostilities with Iraq. So, this time round, one did not have active Arab involvement à la 1991. Yet 50,000 troops, say, from mainstream Arab states could have contributed invaluably to urban peacekeeping during the critical early days of actual regime change. Their involvement would also have allayed deep

66 THE STRATEGIC REVOLUTION

apprehensions throughout AfroAsia about the connotations of pre-emption. They might also have facilitated the more general handing in of firearms, surely a sine qua non for building Iraqi democracy. Come September 2003, the talk was of giving the United Nations a bigger role in Iraq under American leadership. But again, the success of the proposed departure might depend on the Arab mainstream thus becoming engaged. The cultural disaster Historians are likely to see both the virtuosity and the shortcomings of the 2003 military campaign (March 20 to April 8) as residing considerably in how the cities were addressed. They may well observe that the admirable strategic subtlety with which all were captured was not matched by an expeditious restoration of good order and essential services. Yet on that negative side, they may think first of all of the failure to prevent the ransackings of schools and hospitals but also of museums and archival libraries, these replete with assets that are inherently irreplaceable. The loss of maybe thousands of cuneiform tablets could turn out to be the gravest aspect of all, that or the huge loss of paper records as the National Archives and the Koranic Library burned.17 What is so tragically ironic is that the fabled glories of Ancient Mesopotamia had been invoked on both sides. The Baathist elite professed pride in how old and wise the indigenous people were, compared with their antagonists. The Coalition averred that, liberated from Saddam, the Mesopotamians could be high achievers again. More directly to the point, the cultural pillaging (much wanton though much systematic and with signs of insider involvement) is liable to constrain severely the study not just of medieval and modern history but also of important steps in the early development of world civilization in regard to writing, mathematics, mythology, astronomy, hydraulics and many other themes. The seven-day week was invented in Sumeria sometime before 2300 BC, and had spread virtually throughout Eurasia by AD 1000. Under the fifth Abbasid caliph, Harun arRashid (ruled 786–809), Baghdad was the richest city in the world… Arab merchants did business in China, Indonesia, India and East Africa. Their ships were by far the largest and best appointed in Chinese waters or in the Indian Ocean. Under their highly developed banking system, an Arab businessman could cash a cheque in Canton on his bank in Baghdad.18 Moreover, for those of us persuaded that a fuller understanding of the influence of climate change on Mesopotamian history can usefully inform the debate about contemporary climate change, the institutions ravaged will have been full of materials. Take the advent of Islam. In 628, the Byzantine Emperor had inflicted a penultimate blow on the then Persian dynasty, the Sassanids, by marching to Ctesiphon, the dynastic capital on the Tigris. He did so having crossed the

SADDAM, SLOW DECLINE AND RAPID FALL 67

otherwise treacherous Anatolian plateau during a winter that marked the onset of a warmer and drier phase regionally. The best evidence for this secular regional trend comes from the Nile flood records and from the varves around Lake Van in eastern Anatolia. The Arab conquest of Mesopotamia in 637 was associated with the further decay of an already dilapidated hydraulic network, a consequent diversion of the Tigris creating much fresh desert. Although the new Islamic rulers effected restitution, a continued regional trend towards aridity would work against Harun ar-Rashid in his declining years. Though the Abbasid dynasty would survive till the advent of the Mongols in 1258, by the drought-stricken decades of the midninth century it was visibly in decline.19 What cannot be said is that the Coalition authorities were never alerted to the risk of cultural vandalism. UNESCO insists it sent warnings to a number of appropriate bodies. Besides, in early March a leading British daily published a letter from seven eminent archaeologists. They expressed concern for the safety of many tens of thousands of archaeological sites (registered or otherwise) in Iraq. Then they warned that ‘internal political and social destabilization following any intervention will have critical consequences for the remains of Iraq’s ancient civilizations. Mosques, churches, desert forts, bridges and khans are all at risk as are the treasures housed in Iraq’s museums.’20,21 Achieving anything like full restitution will be desperately difficult. Anybody who has experienced that special strain of surreal melancholy associated with the investigation of major art/archival theft knows that the losses will usually be worse than an initial review suggests, and the recovery rate significantly below what one might reasonably have expected. Nor are there solid enough grounds for believing the Iraq situation will be so very different. That Baathists connived in the disappearances from the Museum of Antiquities may have been rumbled. But connivance involved the trashing of records. Moreover, the country’s international borders are decidedly porous. Attempts by the world’s archaeological community to monitor sales are unlikely to succeed completely even with the explicit backing of the UN Security Council and certain national governments. Besides, robber syndicates can afford to wait. Art treasures looted in World War II still surface episodically. Yet perhaps most serious is the problem of the archaeological sites. Apparently the Iraq antiquities board protected these effectively enough until the Gulf War of 1991. Afterwards, economic sanctions became either the reason or the alibi for starving it of resources. Duly, the syndicates moved in. With the fall of Saddam pending, they turned awhile to the museums.22 Now they will be back at the field sites. About all such matters, the Coalition authorities initially appeared dilatory. Witness the US Secretary of Defence’s comment that ‘stuff happens’.23

68 THE STRATEGIC REVOLUTION

The reckoning A disposition resides somewhere deep in the human psyche to believe that warfare clears the air, settles things once and for all, makes room for a fresh start. The origins thereof no doubt lie in the Stone Age and our humanoid past before that. Then it could often have been valid in a brutish sense. On any reckoning, that combined span lasted many times longer than what we understand to be Civilization. Almost by definition, its legacy is still within us. The fact of the matter is, however, that that contemporary war produces messiness on a scale and of a complexity greater than was or could have been imagined: trauma, injury, destruction, dislocation, anger, confusion, chaos… This is true again in Iraq, precision weaponry notwithstanding. George Bush may now see this as a heaven-sent opportunity for nation-rebuilding. After all, he came to office cast as a ‘big government conservative’, one prepared in the American domestic situation to spend on social programmes if he approved of their aims. This wish transference will be yet stronger if no WMD are uncovered after all. Whether a democratic rebuild will actually be more feasible now than it might have been otherwise is unclear, this partly because the outlook for both the United Nations and the Atlantic Alliance still looks precarious. The internal situation, too, is still on the blink. The capture of Saddam and the deaths of his psychopathic sons may have made some more ready to resist occupation forcefully, secure in the knowledge that nothing they do will let that family back in. Moreover, various political pressures may induce the Coalition to depart or rein back too precipitately. A presence legitimated by the UN at the outset might have been less susceptible in this regard. Besides which, even if nation-building along acceptable lines does gather apace, the cultural attrition may remain a big minus in a world searching for deeper understanding between peoples. Shades of Alexandria in AD 391 and Constantinople in 1204.

Part II Limited world war?

5 Social instability

Upheavals within? One could fairly ask whether any state yet stands ready to tackle via the democratic process the novel problems the next half century will present. In the final analysis, however, it is democracy that must drive political change. This follows from the axiom that all regimes must become either progressively more open and accessible or else more prepared to reign by terror. Unfortunately, the destructive grimness of the latter path is no guarantee it will never be followed. Take the world depression precipitated by Wall Street in 1929. In the USA herself and in Sweden, Left Centre governments elected in 1932 adopted what came to be known as Keynesian remedies. But much of Europe, Latin America and the Far East turned towards what the Japanese term the ‘dark valley’ of Fascism. War and social bonding Always the bottom line for any statehood, regardless of complexion, must be its resolve when faced with aggression by Fascist regimes or whoever. The nub will be the interaction between threat response and internal dissent. This is not tritely predictable. In 1935, both Poland and Greece, being very divided within, set their strong liberal proclivities aside in favour of Rightist authoritarianism. But this did not stop each effecting great solidarity when totalitarianism aggressed: German and Soviet against Poland from 1939; and Italian then German against Greece from 1940 to 1941. Likewise, the acknowledged reality that Israel has perennially been riven by philosophic and social divisions has never precluded its forming a united front when under armed attack. Rather the converse, one could say. Still, the most awesome example of the masses galvanized by a call to arms is afforded by the Europe of 1914. In The Strange Death of Liberal England, George Dangerfield considered Britain pre-war at two levels. The one was life day by day in the Westminster political village. The other comprehended, on a

SOCIAL INSTABILITY 71

nationwide canvas, the upsurges of anger against Respectability, ‘one of the chief articles in the Liberal creed…unwritten deep in the heart’. With wan mystification, he noted how, as hostilities broke out, ‘a single nation’ was instantly reforged.1 Anger had been afforded a legitimated rationale. In every country involved, indeed, young men flocked to enlist. Meanwhile, at the higher reaches of politics, ironic realignments occurred. Socialism had lately improved its parliamentary standing in Germany, France and Britain but could largely be brought on board for a conflict that might ‘end war’, spread republicanism, and break monopoly capitalism.2 The other side of the coin, on a liberal conservative interpretation, was that a large part in the ‘unleashing of the armed forces was played by a kind of desperate and irrational conservatism seizing what it felt to be its only chance’ of avoiding Marxian revolution.3 Moreover, the combative connotations of Darwinism had been widely accented rather than its ultimate promise of evolutionary transformation. Yet even in classic geopolitical crises, action-reaction has by no means always been along those lines. Through the half decade of Nazi dominotoppling that climaxed in 1940, France’s resolve to defend itself was continually sapped by LeftRight polarization. Nor did resolution return in the hour of need. Three decades later, the American body politic polarized alarmingly under the strain of Vietnam. In the wake of the Strategic Revolution, the threats to survival may usually be presented more subtly or less directly, particularly if planetary rather than geopolitical in character. The issues may be harder to delineate; and the points of no return less obvious. Not infrequently, too, the most acute threat of political violence will emanate from within. Admittedly the idea of Western democracies turning that unstable seems at first sight out of kilter with their progress the past half century: income per head more than doubled; much better health care; much extended educational access; bigger housing stock; better working conditions; cleaner urban air; more leisure and leisure facilities; far more travel; vast consumer choice; marked social and occupational mobility; much less prejudice in various directions; and, informing everything, much stronger data flow, often in real time. These advances have been so conspicuous we tend to overlook them. Yet an on-going downside is a veritably universal (and often precipitate) decline in many aspects of the ambient environment, natural and social. Prospectively this must be deadly serious. But thus far, most people still see it as not a high price to pay for the manifold gains. Any valuation of the further outlook must focus on emergent youth, the revolutionaries or reformers or reactionaries of 2033. The collapse of American resolve in Vietnam was, above all, a youthful backlash. Protests began at Berkeley as early as 1964. Defeatism spread in 1966– 8 as (a) the young GIs in the field lost confidence in the modus operandi and (b) undergraduates back home spearheaded a worldwide youth revolt. ‘Vietnam’ was always centre stage. But global ecology assumed prominence too. The spread of television, higher education, illicit drugs and the contraceptive pill all expressed and reinforced the radicalism.

72 LIMITED WORLD WAR?

Ironically, the political fall-out, come the early 1970s, was a stronger centre Right—e.g. in Britain, France and the USA. But social values were shifted towards the libertarian Left on race, feminism, educational practice, personal freedom and war. Granted, few of the rebels were pro-Soviet. After the Warsaw Pact’s invasion of Czechoslovakia in 1968, that would have been doubly difficult. Even so, quite a number turned very anti the anti-Soviets, thereby consigning their own talent and concern to an inchoate limbo land on matters geopolitical. Dot.com revolutionaries? Presently, another youth revolution is under way, one not openly abrasive but very profound and destined to diffuse universally over a long time. It is the ‘dot.com’ transformation. Already two-thirds of American households have access to the Internet, led usually by the kids. Already, too, youngsters are graduating who have internalized its modalities since their early teens. They and their successors will have a big advantage over those of us the wrong side of 50, a generation to whom the Internet will always be a rickety external prop. Horizontal networking by Internet and e-mail undercuts the pyramidal hierarchies: corporative, governmental, ecclesiastical, scholastic or whatever. If these structures soften, the power balance shifts more towards youth. So, more generally, does culture. The virtual age always to be is 28 to 32. The older generation is therefore akin to what Alexis de Tocqueville would have recognized as an ancien régime which allows of revolution because it has lost its old assurance. With everything so fluid, one could ask why anyone should be wary. The answer may lie in the basics. Hard upon the youth revolt of the 1960s, there was an upsurge of anguished cerebration about the future of the Western way of life. Since the onset of the dot.com revolution, this has revived. It has especially focused on the quest for happiness, considered at mass society level. Those academically involved tend to seek heavily statistical answers. But there is a broader counter-current, notably in poetry and fiction, which addresses more subjectively the ennui consequent on the weakening of social bonding due to technocratic progress. The mood is less militant than with the Counter-Culture of the 1960s. But it is perhaps more probing, more profound and, in the final analysis, less sanguine. Might invention be the mother of necessity? Is technocracy a multiplicity of roads winding towards a castle which has to be a fiction? Do we hear the Rolling Stones when they ‘Can’t Get No Satisfaction’? Ennui is a social malaise with the potential to become a dangerous driving force, politically. With due respect to the Preamble to the American Constitution, the ‘pursuit of happiness’ may be a less edifying aim than the achievement of self-fulfilment. Either way, various of the ancillary indicators deployed seem too impressionistic to quantify. Can one really do international comparisons of personal vanity?4

SOCIAL INSTABILITY 73

Then again, in 1975 Robert Nisbet sensed a sharp decrease of humour across the USA ‘ranging from the spontaneous laughter no longer heard across the land to the kind of writing that America was once so rich in’.5 He could well have been right and not just for his own country. He could be more right now. But who could confirm this statistically? And who could emulsify in a numeration pressure cooker all the imponderables that determine individual fulfilment? Admixtures of diverse evidence are best left unaggregated. Full scope is thereby afforded for free-ranging debate, the very essence of democracy. For instance, it would appear that, above quite a lowish threshold, extra annual income per head does not enhance feelings of well-being. Is this actually the case and, if so, why? A 1996 study indicated the putative divide could be close to $6, 000.6 A more recent one says $13,000.7 Also the latter finds Fenno-Scandinavia, Sweden included, leading the world through 1995 in terms of perceived wellbeing. The inclusion of Sweden is pertinent because of the strictures customarily levelled against her social democracy by her own Old Right and, since 1970 or thereabouts, her New Left. These boil down to two contentions. The one is that burgeoning affluence has eroded personal motivation, displacing it with flaccid hedonism. The other tells how society at large is constricted within a cocoon of conformity. An astringent observer of the Swedish scene, Roland Huntford, cautioned in 1971 that phrases like ‘independent and critical ways of thinking’ in schools easily became newspeak for educational conditioning.8 In the 1970s, Sweden’s long-standing experiment in social democracy figured in the world political debate. Lately it has not. Politics in Stockholm itself has been much taken up with the country’s place in the Euro-Atlantic setting. For one thing, in Sweden as elsewhere, European social democracy has lost some of its mission drive. For another, modern ills are seen less as sui generis, more as universal. However, the murder of Anna Lindh may rekindle debate, perhaps more in depth than before. A salient problem at the international/planetary level is that, though it has widely assumed cultural ascendancy, today’s youth revolution is still effectively one of stimulated expectations. The gains of the last half century are taken for granted. So hopes intermingle with apprehensions, each ill-defined. Now the 9/ 11 climacteric has accentuated the divide between a cast-off past and a problematic future. For some young people, History has not ended. It has started all over again. Lonely crowds As always, the key question is how to maintain a positive interaction between the individual and society. Since 1945, we have come to understand how the young Karl Marx helped carry forward the concept of individuals alienated within a society which has been rationalized to excess by the output and ethos of Science.

74 LIMITED WORLD WAR?

Nowadays, alienation is manifested most visibly in how people react to one another in public places. Europe seems peculiarly afflicted. In Stockholm, negation will be expressed in a formalism which is too studied. In London, it is the informality which will be too studied. In neither direction will formal correctness be the point. It will be instead a lack of spontaneous graciousness in word and movement, avoidance of eye contact, generally cheerless demeanour… No scope here for statistical international comparisons. But for several years past, cold hostility between strangers has been a subject of common remark in the south-east of England. It has now started to attract media attention too. Yob culture is a lurid group expression of much the same misanthropic syndrome. Aggression on English football terraces is often laced with racism. In Italy and Argentina, it is often manipulated by the crime syndicates and the radical Right. Yobbery owes something to an identity crisis among young males, this in the light of (a) the contraction or easement of a variety of macho occupations, and (b) the progress the girls are making across the board. A still sadder sign is suicide. Among American males between 15 and 24, the incidence per 100,000 per annum has risen from 7 to 20 since 1950. Today in Japan, many youngsters are urban hermits (see this chapter, The Zen zone). Structural trends still in train may further compromise the life chances perceived by many young people of both genders. One thinks, first and foremost, of the work scene, still a defining aspect of fulfilment. Thus it is all very well saying the Internet (plus collateral electronic advances) facilitates horizontal information exchange, worldwide if so desired. This will not ipso facto collapse the pyramids of economic decision-taking. In fact, when one contemplates the communications explosion in the round (i.e. as comprehending the flow of people and materials as well as data), it is hard not to conclude that the net result will often be to centralize further the taking of key decisions. Admittedly, the communications revolution will help small entrepreneurs understand better the communities of suppliers and buyers around them, something they have customarily found tough. But the larger bosses, too, will benefit from more ambient knowledge. Additionally, they will gain from more internal knowledge about their own companies. So may they from the application to larger and more diverse installations of automation, another aspect of data flow. The implication is that, in any given sector of an economy, the smaller firm will eventually lose out. In the poor countries, this outcome may be deferred by cultural factors, what economic purists might see as rigidities in the system. In more advanced ones, it is being concealed awhile by a progressive shift of human resources from manufacturing to services: a sector still characterized, as of the turn of the millennium, by low average unit size. But except where free market operations are deliberately inhibited by govern ment, the trend to bigger units will be on-going for decades yet. In the public domain, too, similar tendencies will be at work.

SOCIAL INSTABILITY 75

One result will be to polarize further individual experience of work as between what for some is ‘dreary, painful or socially demeaning and what for others is enjoyable, socially reputable and economically rewarding’. A decade back, J.K.Galbraith saw ‘a common gloss’ being cast over the said dichotomy, this within a contemporary ‘culture of contentment’.9 If, as is likely, this polarization worsens as the number of youngsters coming forward with advanced qualifications expands willy-nilly, the resultant contradiction could be critical. It merits discussion by all those concerned to see democracy flourish. To which one must add this. Few people can long pursue fulfilment in vacuo. They need the support of family and friends; and, indeed, a societal ambience which both aids and encourages. So it is pertinent to ask when we may reach a critical threshold in terms of weakening personal and social bonds. This process much accelerated virtually worldwide during the 1950s as territorial, occupational and social mobility veritably quantum-jumped, increased urbanization being seen as expressive of this. The urban syndrome Discussing the origins of ‘1914’, Hew Strachan tells how a number of contemporary intellectuals—Maurice Barrés, G.D.H.Cole, Émile Durkheim, Max Weber…—saw city life as undermining social stability.10 If this applied then, it must the more so now and henceforth. Actually, in the Europe of 1914, and indeed 1939, many intra-urban communities could yet be described as territorially defined and as close-knit. Since when, very many have much weakened or simply vanished, their demise being effected prematurely in not a few cases by the shells and bombs of total war. A big question now may be what happens to a sense of belonging (to established communities or extended families) as the generation born pre-1939 moves on. Granted, in much of the world, the bigger cities have lately engendered less of a foreboding of near-term crisis than they did, say, twenty-five to thirty-five years ago. Even so, somewhere like London has to be regarded as in unstable equilibrium, to filch a term from engineering science. The activation of only one or two out of a tranche of relevant factors could pitch it into chaos. Its basic condition is neo-Malthusian, not so much the pressure of people on resources as the pressure of people on people. In other words, external diseconomies can readily turn critical. Not least does this nowadays apply to susceptibility to climate change and to armed violence from within as well as without. In the developing world, the concept of equilibrium is hardly appropriate as yet in that the urban population grew exponentially the last half of the last century. According to the World Bank, it was 300 million in 1950 and a good two billion in 2000.11 Inevitably this was at a heavy social cost. Though much of the more abject squalor has been alleviated the last twenty-five years, the World Bank has estimated that 170 million urban dwellers in developing countries still have no potable water supply near their home. Absolute poverty is also a persistent

76 LIMITED WORLD WAR?

problem. Most urban inhabitants in Bangladesh, Guatemala, Haiti and Honduras live below the recognized poverty line.12 Furthermore, it is in the cities of the developing world that the gap is usually widest between the expectations aroused by a prepackaged consumerist culture, aggressively projected globally, and what local economies can deliver. Moreover, that gap could yet widen markedly. Take the spread of English as an index of global acculturation. Today near to 650 million speak it as their first or second language. Come 2050, perhaps five billion ‘will be more or less proficient’.13 Mythic contradictions In 1964, the Boston geographer Saul Cohen drew a neat distinction between the world’s core areas and its ‘shatter belts’ or ‘crush zones’.14 Yet by 2050, anywhere could prove to be a shatter belt as the peoples grapple with pellmell change. Many could be tempted to close their minds and seek to rediscover a mythic past. Whence a fascistic future? Examples already abound of reactions along those lines. After the death of the dictator Francisco Franco in 1975, the Basque insurgency held back only briefly, perhaps because its leadership cadres sensed the secular tide of time was running against them. From time immemorial, Basque society had been delineated by a distinctive language, a high degree of agrarian self-sufficiency, traditional selfgovernment and a decidedly puritanical branch of the Catholic Church. By the late 1970s, however, two of Spain’s four Basque provinces had virtually detached themselves from the cause whilst, thanks to heavy immigration, not half the population of the other two actually spoke Basque. Moreover, the true Basques dichotomized as between the militants and the moderates; and the former divided into the ETA insurgents and the rest; and ETA fissured as between radical nationalism and social revolution. Meanwhile, in the three French departments normally regarded as Basque, assimilation was well under way, furthered by a brain drain to Paris and Toulouse. Yet despite these contradictions (and the granting of regional autonomy in 1979), several hundred people have died in this insurgency since Franco’s demise. In December 2001, the EU countries listed ETA among Europe’s ‘terrorist’ organizations. Given its current pitch, that is understandable. In fairness, however, one might allow that their assassination in 1973 of Franco’s anointed successor, Admiral Carrero Blanco, was an act against terror. That officer was, after all, the heir to a Fascist regime that had thrived on a reign of terror, especially in its earlier years. As with the USSR, one of its specialties was to designate those who had opposed it as mentally unwell. Accordingly, they were confined in most brutal and degrading pseudo-psychiatric clinics.15 Three weeks after 9/11, Professor John Gray, a liberal political philosopher at the London School of Economics, concluded that

SOCIAL INSTABILITY 77

The entire view of the world that supported the market’s faith in globalization has melted down… Led by the United States, the world’s richest states have acted on the assumption that people everywhere want to live as they do. As a result, they failed to recognize the deadly mixture of emotions—cultural resentment, the sense of injustice, and a genuine rejection of Western modernity—that lies behind the attacks on New York and Washington… The ideal of a universal civilization is a recipe for unending conflict.16 However, it is virtually impossible to revert or even mark time. The best hope this next half century may be to move forward to a global lifestyle and purpose geared to alleviating the planet’s ecological stresses. The contemplation of such a mission raises various philosophic themes, some of which will be addressed later. But the core issue is whether ecological constraints within that time frame will obligate us to limit economic growth. That question looks straight pragmatic but is, in fact, considerably philosophic. Ultimate limits to growth The posited alternative to ‘limits to economic growth’ is ‘sustainable development’. This term gained prominence in 1992 at Rio de Janeiro during the UN mega-conference on Environment and Development. Though mentioned in eleven of the twenty-seven Principles in the Earth Summit Declaration, the concept is only delineated piecemeal. It subsumes environmental protection (the fourth principle). The eradication of poverty is deemed fundamental (the fifth). Something beyond economic growth is sought (the twelfth). Otherwise, render as you think fit. No doubt one reason for bittiness was a lack of firm guidance from either academe or officialdom. One study highlights a divergence between scholars from an economics background and those trained as natural scientists.17 Another examines the assortment of attitudes (derivative from Communist or preCommunist days) that feed into the view the Russian Federation officially takes. A 1997 Presidential ukase presents a transition to sustainable development as an important element in national security. But a similar ukase the previous year links sustainability to the mystical notion the Russian scientist, V.I.Vernadsky (1863–1945) entertained about the ‘sphere of wisdom’ or ‘noosphere’. This he defined as a future milieu in which ‘the spiritual values and knowledge of humankind, existing in harmony with the environment, will become the criterion of national and individual wealth’.18 Lately, one international editorial view has been that ‘sustainable development is a contradiction in terms’ as long as development is taken to mean ‘the evercontinuing growth of material consumption’.19 At which point, unease about sustainability feeds into a bigger dispute about globalization. Has it narrowed the

78 LIMITED WORLD WAR?

average income gap as between rich and poor countries? Has it made the poor of this planet less poor in absolute terms? The answer on the latter score looks positive. Take two thresholds for calculated daily income per head: two dollars and one dollar, at 1990 prices and adjusted to Purchasing Power Parity. According to the World Bank, the percentage of the world’s population below the two-dollar line diminished from 51.4 to 47.3 between 1990 and 1998; and that under one dollar from 24.2 to 20. 2.20 But there is a difficulty about such neat statistics. Only a quarter of the world’s workforce is regularly active in the formal economy; the rest survive within an ‘informal economy’, much of which is not especially illicit but all of which is effectively beyond government ken. Correspondingly, it is hard to read the fortunes of the informal sector under the impact of globalization. But they seem erratically variable.21 Narrowing the rich-poor gap is a tougher proposition in any case. OECD output per head has grown faster than has the weighted average for the Less Developed Countries (LDCs). For population growth, the reverse holds true. However, the LDC record shows marked inter-regional variation. Considerably thanks to high technology investment coupled with demographic stability, income per head in Taiwan jumped from 13 to 36 per cent of the US level between 1981 and 1996. The gain in Singapore and Hong Kong was from 40 per cent to near parity. Conversely, the rural hinterlands of India, China and Africa were finding the trap of poverty less tractable, which could suggest that economic growth is ipso facto linked to more open trade. However, this is not well borne out by British imperial experience in the nineteenth century as, under the influence of laissez-faire economists, successive governments moved to free trade within the Empire and more widely. Local production in less developed territories sometimes suffered lasting damage. Such was conspicuously the case with hand-loom textiles in India and tenant farming in Ireland. Actually, trade across international borders seems to have expanded little of late in relation to the total output of goods and services. It has been given as 21.5 per cent in 1980 and 22.0 per cent in 1999. Moreover, two-thirds of the flow is between either the EU member states or else those of NAFTA.22 Arguably, this shows that the acquisition of technological skills and capital is what makes all the difference, not free trade per se. So follow the East Asia model? Alas, one cannot assume that the best East Asian experience can successively be replicated around the planet. The tendency for industrial processes to become ever larger-scale and their management more concentrated militates against that. So does the extent to which the on-going revolution in electronics will enable the most advanced countries (and especially the USA) to extend their qualitative advantage. In various fields, we could be at the start of a bigger brain drain worldwide to North America. To reckon with, too, are contentions that the West (often acting through UN institutions) discriminates severely against the LDCs in respect of such matters as transport subsidies, financial services and ‘trade-related’ intellectual property, not to mention

SOCIAL INSTABILITY 79

agricultural protection. Projecting thirty years on, the output gap between the OECD and today’s LDCs is likely to be wider than now, though with still stark differences among the latter between those which have taken off and those which have not. Two major uncertainties are whether China’s huge experiment in modernization will have succeeded and how much closer Russia will have come to realizing her potential. However, the OECD-LDC difference in population growth rate should progressively diminish; and this ought, on balance, to be conducive to limiting the divergence in income per capita. Yet all of this presupposes the preservation of a reasonably healthy climate, economic and political, above all the curbing of armed violence and syndicated crime. Forecasting the prevalence of poverty is doubly difficult in that it is a rather indeterminate derivative of average income, especially as regards redistribution through taxation. But linear extrapolation suggests that by 2033 ‘one dollar a day’ primary poverty should oppress only several per cent of humankind, though three in ten could still be below the ‘two dollar a day’ line. Yet at the same time, a more formidable challenge than ever will be presented by the revolution of rising expectations. Other things being equal, the OECD-LCD income gap would keep LDC aspirations high as would differential progress within the developing world. Yet in two signal respects, other things cannot be equal. Frustration and ennui will be exacerbated by the ever-mounting pressure of Western consumerist culture. Furthermore, susceptibility on that score will be increased by the progressive erosion (and detachment from the individual) of the traditional environment, societal and natural. Even now, a feeling burgeons among the young of Afro-Asia that, if consumerism is the only way through, they had better go for it. But might that not be the path to revolution? We all know Afro-Asian youngsters who love the American life style but are beside themselves the whole time about US geopolitics. A major international crisis could lead more of the radically inclined to rationalize this contradiction through revolutionary action. In principle, all this could point towards constraint of economic growth on the part of the advanced nations, this partly in order to give others a fair chance to catch up but also to enable the West and its emulators to reflect on where our civilization is heading in terms of the self-fulfilment of individuals. What this would perforce involve is a shift to a new cultural paradigm, a shift perhaps influenced by a West-East dialogue about the nature of fulfilment. The nature and scale of that challenge can be explored a little further in Chapters 13 and 14. Suffice for now to ask about the externalities. In particular, what ambient constraints may be coming into play at global level which could make curbs on economic growth that currently seem inconceivable come to appear imperative. Take the period 1967 to 1975. It witnessed repeated turbulence in the world’s financial markets as armed violence in South-East Asia and the Middle East finally blew apart the 1944 Bretton Woods strategy for financing world trade

80 LIMITED WORLD WAR?

through stable exchange rates and dollar-sterling parity. But in the public debate which ensued, interest focused not on international currency reform but on Malthusian fears of resource depletion. The hydrocarbon fuels ultimately received quite the biggest share of attention as an oil embargo came into play in 1973–4 and as OPEC overcorrected for two decades of oil underpricing. Nevertheless, some of us felt throughout that looming shortages of non-ferrous metals were being over-looked.23 Again such apprehension was, to say the least, premature. The customary anti-Malthusian considerations in this domain have been outlined by Bjørn Lomborg.24 To them should now be added the incipient revolution in nanomaterials. That will not lead to metal synthesis. Metals are elements; and nanoscience is not alchemy. But it will involve the production of subtly bonded compounds that match well such metallic properties as tensile strength or even electrical conductivity. Some metals (e.g. mercury) will still present substitution problems but maybe not too desperately. There are, however, huge external diseconomies of scale consequent upon the growth of economic output on this small planet and the collateral social changes. One is sheer pressure on space. This has manifold aspects. Thus in Britain the last half century, the population has risen by a fifth and the number of households by over two-thirds. Congestion may already be approaching critical levels in many urban localities: the lower Thames; Hong Kong and Canton; Tokyo Bay; New York, Baltimore… As serious, however, is the ubiquity of a more generalized pressure. It already affects severely what once were seen as the eternal repositories of primordial strength: the polar regions, the mountain tops and the High Seas. It bears on climate everywhere. Here one does leave econometrics behind and enter the realm of the aesthetic and holistic, many would say the spiritual. If it is contrary to natural law (some would say God’s Law) to weaponize the heavens, is it not similarly perverse to disturb the ‘planetary wind system’? In 1990, Bill McKibben made the point in his evocative essay, The End of Nature. By ‘changing the weather we make every spot on Earth man-made and artificial. We have deprived Nature of its independence and that is fatal to its meaning.’ A corollary will be a divorce of religion from naturalism, leaving us exposed to ‘a siege of apocalyptic and fanatic creeds’.25 Reason thus jettisoned at the philosophic level might be less likely to survive at the societal or geopolitical. Nor is this the only strand in a syndrome of concern about the fragility of reason and reasonableness. Stimulated by the New Left and the counter-culture, a body of literature was generated towards the end of the last century which effectively says that, though nuclear deterrence has its own narrow logic, it is profoundly irrational in a more holistic sense. The ICBM has been seen as the apex of an insecure pyramid, mindlessly erected by urban mass society. Unfortunately, the said literature has itself been stronger on millenarian vision than close argument. Its authors read each other avidly but never anybody else.

SOCIAL INSTABILITY 81

They have advanced sundry untestable hypotheses about the ‘bomb culture’ but their understanding of strategic deterrence is often flawed.26 Nevertheless, there may be more than a grain of truth in the proposition that we live in a ‘catastrophe culture’ which encourages a withdrawal from reason and reasonableness as understood in an affirmative, life-preserving sense. In 1985, the British Marxist historian E.P.Thompson opined that Technology, communications, and missiles are all shrinking the world. The “cold war”, by dividing this world into two opposite parts…has become necessary to provide both bonding and a means of regulation within each part.’27 Granted, at virtually the moment these words appeared in print, the Cold War began visibly to wind down. But that does not negate the proposition that the mechanism Thompson described has been operative and is transferable to other situations. Moreover, ecoconcern as rendered by McKibben does not run contrary to this interpretation, it blends with it. On such a reckoning, tackling climate change should be high on the peace agenda. Having said that, one must admit that those of us specialized in meteorology or climatology can be too inclined to attach overriding importance to our subject area. It may be salutary to remind oneself how bad is the planet’s ecological crisis, climatic change apart. A test case can be the direct impact of pollution on the water cycle (air, land and sea) the last half decade of the last millennium. Non-climatic pollution, 1995–9 Granted, the evidence was not entirely negative. Fifteen years earlier, much of Europe’s tree cover had seemed under mortal threat from sulphur dioxide gas and its derivative, acid rain. Yet it has since transpired that (a) the incidence of each has been diminishing and (b) trees can cope with acid rain better than realized. Oddly though, scientists in Arizona reported in 1998 that, in industrialized nations, high pollution levels during the working week were associated with less rain. This will probably be because given volumes of water condense around larger numbers of solid particles. The smaller droplets resulting will have been slower to aggregate enough to descend. On land, four million deaths in floods in China in 1998 were blamed partly on bare soil baking hard after illicit tree-felling. There were said to be one million illegal loggers in the Yangtse valley alone. Obversely, dam-building plans regularly aroused vocal anxiety concerning the effects on wildlife and indigenous peoples. This was especially the case in South America. Meanwhile, the new dam at the Iron Gates, 1,000 km up the Danube, was causing poisonous algae to flourish and fish stocks to diminish in the Black Sea. In 1997, Azerbaijan’s state ecology committee reported half the country’s factories as polluting lakes and rivers. A similar situation obtained in most former Soviet republics. Likewise Greenpeace found in Dzerzhinsk, a chemicals town not so far from Moscow, dioxin concentrations in groundwater fifty million times the international standard. Meantime, the mystery of the worldwide decline

82 LIMITED WORLD WAR?

of amphibians, remarked for a decade past, was resolved to an extent by the identification of a previously unknown fungus which had proved lethal against frogs and toads weakened by pollution. International controversy erupted the while over the ensnaring of turtles in shrimp nets. Coastlines remained vulnerable to oil spills and other toxic concentrations. But it was a relief to find bird and fish populations recovering better than feared in Prince William Sound, Alaska—site of the 50,000-ton oil spill by the Exxon Valdeez in 1989. Meanwhile progress was made around Europe on curbing oil slicks and radioactive discharges at sea and making sure obsolete oil rigs were dismantled ashore. However, the World Conservation Monitoring Centre adjudged half the coral reefs to be threatened by pollutants, sedimentation and fish poaching, not to mention the higher sea temperatures. One question that stayed on the agenda was modification of the international ban on commercial whaling so as to commend it to all countries, including Norway and Japan, the two most worrisome exemplars of non-compliance. Moreover, a 1999 study showed ocean life generally to be enduring unprecedented disease incidence, this due to climate change but also pollution. In some fishing grounds (e.g. the North Sea), stocks were depleting badly. Mercifully, however, seventy nations agreed to ban the barbaric practice of ‘finning’, cutting off the dorsal fins of sharks because they were rated a culinary delicacy. But all in all, the water cycle was seriously compromised in each and every phase, even apart from the effects of global warming. To which one must add a rise in low frequency sound pollution especially in the Northern Hemisphere. The effects on marine biology have still to be fully assessed but could be quite serious. Global warming Turning then to global warming, a suitable launch point is the Third Assessment (approved in January 2001) of the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). It stressed how the atmospheric concentration of every recognized greenhouse gas has been increasing. Some concurrent climate changes, as from 1960 or 1970, were as follows.28 Air temperatures at the surface and through the lower 8 km of the atmosphere have risen 0.1°C per decade (p. 4). Moreover, the likelihood is that, in the Northern Hemisphere at least, the warmest decade of the second millennium was its last (p. 2); and, the IPCC diffidently observes, recent warming is ‘unlikely to be entirely natural in origin’ (p. 10). In fact, one has only to glance at the millennial time series for temperature as presented graphically to conclude something very abnormal is now occurring. Snow cover is ‘very likely’ to have reduced a tenth since 1970. Likewise, north polar ice has retreated 10 to 15 per cent since 1960 (p. 4). Yet by 2000 Antarctic sea ice had withdrawn little since 1978, the year reliable satellite data came on stream (p. 5). On and around the polar continent, extra melting had thus

SOCIAL INSTABILITY 83

far been less impacting than the extra snowfall affected by more evaporation and ablation. Elsewhere, continental interiors have warmed more (since 1970) than has the open sea. Also, higher latitudes are warming more than lower, north of the equator, thanks to the ice albedo feedback (see Appendix A). High-latitude warming could have results both ironic and disastrous. The Gulf Stream is part of a circulation of the North Atlantic ocean which is not simply thermohaline—i.e. density-driven. It is sustained, too, by wind action that ultimately derives from a tropics-to-Arctic thermal gradient. In the near future, the sheer inertia of the main oceanic gyre could inhibit its being modified or displaced. The corollary is that, as and when the pattern does alter, this alteration could be rather abrupt and very radical. At the 2002 Glasgow meeting of the British Association for the Advancement of Science, Sarah Hughes of the Aberdeen Marine Research Laboratory reported the Gulf Stream had slowed no less than 20 per cent since 1950. She said the significance thereof should be clear within ten years. Meanwhile, most IPCC models do predict a weakening of the oceanic flow globally. Therefore, after 2100, it ‘could completely, and possibly irrevocably, shut down in either hemisphere’ (p. 16). A curtailment or foreshortening of the North Atlantic gyre could soon lower air temperatures several degrees across Western Europe; and cause many other disjunctions around the world.29 Abrupt climate change along similar lines has occurred at longish intervals throughout the last million years. Indeed, some authorities surmise that switches in oceanic circulation may explain more in the not so distant past than yet appreciated. Christian Pfister of the University of Berne believes the distribution of colder winters in the inclement fourteenth century suggests North Atlantic deep water could have been a forcing agent.30 If a decade or two hence there does seem to be a near-term possibility of gyre adjustments along the lines apprehended, such a scenario will surely have as strong a claim to prominence on the international security agenda as, for instance, those about regional nuclear wars have had across the years. Even so, it will still be important that neither this nor other ‘high dread’ aspects of climate change (e.g. rising sea levels; big meteoritic impact) divert attention from more urgent ‘lower dread’ hazards in this sphere. Mean global air temperature is predicted to rise somewhere between 1.4 and 5.8°C during this century. This wide prognostic spread bespeaks unresolved uncertainties in the computer programming but also varying assumptions about the pace and character of economic globalization.31 It assumes no very grand strategy of greenhouse mitigation is effectively being applied. But even if one is, the time lags between application and decisive result may stretch over decades. A median rise of 3.6°C would be very high compared with any experience the last millennium. Take the ‘little climatic optimum’ that occurred in and around Europe but also other parts of the world in what we know as the High Middle Ages. In West and Central Europe, there was a gain of 1°C between 700 and 1275.32 With this one may associate, either assuredly or with some confidence, a

84 LIMITED WORLD WAR?

raft of changes in landscapes and runs of weather. The great Siberian wintertime anticyclone proved fragile, as it may be doing again. In compensation, high pressure cells were organized more regularly over northern Scandinavia and the Arctic, a pattern in accord with the classic ‘planetary wind system’ depiction. Across much of northern Europe, the tree line ascended 100 metres during those centuries; and arable margins generally did likewise. Vineyards were created at 54°N in Yorkshire, England. Admittedly, technological advance and capital accumulation affect such alterations as do cultural evolution and demography. But just how critically some limits depended on a favourable climate is indicated by all the signs of recession hard upon the climate turning inclement in the late thirteenth and early fourteenth centuries.33 Erraticism A cause of some vexation is variability or ‘erraticism’, as the History and Climate Change text prefers. By ‘erraticism’ is meant the extent to which weather varies short-term: day-to-day, week-to-week or whatever. Right from the onset of the present ‘global warming’ debate, around 1988, received wisdom at popular level the world over has been that the weather is turning more freakish. That variability can vary has long been accepted. The hard question has been, and remains, how it correlates with secular trends. In 1912, the Swedish oceanographer Otto Pettersson well observed that ‘Part of the 13th and the whole of the 14th century show a record of extreme climate variations.’34 In other words, the weather turned more erratic as the climate turned colder. In 1966 Hubert Lamb (the British pioneer in historical climatology just cited) discussed the increased variability he had observed in Britain since 1940, a year which marked a turning point to a quarter of a century of cooler weather in the Northern Hemisphere. But in his bestirring 1977 Harvard monograph, Sir Crispin Tickell was agnostic about the causes of a worrisome erraticism he perceived worldwide in 1972 and again in 1974.35 By then, global warming was resuming. In 1995, the IPCC felt unable to discern a consistent global trend in this regard.36 Nevertheless, in 2001 the panel listed tendencies towards climatic extremes projected in computer forecasts. Among them were more intense precipitation events; stronger tropical cyclones; intensified droughts and floods; and a more variable Asian monsoon.37 One should look specifically at the expectation of a more erratic monsoon. Read together, two Chinese studies cast doubt on this, given that the summer monsoon over China is an outer segment of the Asian monsoon system. The one study positively correlates the strength of the outer circulation in a given season with that over the Indian subcontinent.38 The other observes a quantum rise since 1980 in summer precipitation norms across central China. The 1990s were quite the wettest decade in the last century, registering four of its twelve rainiest years. Maybe this owed something to a thirty-three-year precipitation cycle. But it must relate to global warming as well.39 To put things in the wider context, the

SOCIAL INSTABILITY 85

International Red Cross finds ‘far more people worldwide are affected by floods than by any other kind of natural disaster.’40 Indices for measuring erraticism are urgently needed. So is close argument about cause and effect. Three possible influences should be borne in mind. Chaos theory applied in this sphere indicates that response to global warming in a given locale will chiefly involve changes in the relative frequencies of the preexisting weather patterns.41 Then again, global warming might effect the frequency or intensity of the El Niño surges in the Pacific equatorial countercurrent. The lag of sea temperatures behind air temperatures during times of rapid warming might also be disturbing. A problematic Middle East Not that regional prospects are a simple function of the global prognosis. The causal link is insufficiently direct, and too susceptible to other over-riding influences. The Middle East exemplifies this. Analysis of recent centuries shows how much a northwards zonal displacement, induced by global warming, has been arrested or masked there by other factors. Among them has apparently been the North Atlantic Oscillation (NAO): the fluctuating steepness of the downward gradient in Mean Sea Level atmospheric pressure from the virtually permanent Azores High to what is averagely the Icelandic Low. When one is pronounced, the other usually is. If either is weak, the other will normally be. The NAO, too, must be affected by global warming though modelling has yet to delineate this. Certainly the dynamic climatology of the Mediterranean is complex. The progress of the First Crusade, climaxing in the bloody seizure of Jerusalem in 1099, was facilitated by the Levant being moister than simple notions about zonal displacement in an era of secular warming would have led one to expect. Obversely, the brilliant counteroffensive Saladin waged through 1187 was facilitated by a subtle shift in climatic advantage towards the Islamic hinterland, East Syria and Mesopotamia. The moral for our times may be that the general onset of severe desiccation in the Levant and other parts of the Middle East may be subject to decadal delay. But that could make its eventual dawning all the more acute. Human demands Until recently, the IPCC community was altogether too cavalier in respect of its assumptions concerning future global demands for energy. The profiles it called upon were much too set piece. At long last, this shortcoming is being addressed. Now a population prediction of between 7.0 and 15.1 billion in 2100 effectively extends between the 1998 medium-low and medium-high projections by the World Bank. This leads on to estimates for global annual output this next turn of the century between seven and twenty-two times the present aggregation of recorded Gross Domestic Products.42

86 LIMITED WORLD WAR?

Even that by no means encompasses the full range of admitted possibilities. These last two or three years, specialist opinion has been coming round to the view that world population may level out more decisively than the 1998 mediumlow projection connoted. At a demographic conference in New York in March 2002, the declines in live births per woman of childbearing age were the big news. In Catholic Italy, the drop since 1980 had been from 1.9 to 1.2: in Shi’ite Iran from 6.0 to 2.2; and in Communist Vietnam from 5.6 to 2.4. Computer projections from such figures give a 2100 figure as having fallen back to six billion, the number that inhabit the Earth today.43 If that comes to pass, the relevant Malthusian forebodings will have turned out agreeably to have been self-defeating prophecies. Yet these last few years the scientific press has also pondered life expectancy being extended more radically than previously anticipated. By 2020, mimetic calorie-restricting drugs may be pushing our general understanding of a maximum span from eighty-five towards ninety-five years. Soon thereafter, genetic manipulation of stem cells within the foetus or during any crises later on may give a newly born the prospect of living several decades longer still. Ironically, this could revive birth rates. After all, the emergence of an extra generation might induce young couples to broaden the base more. Evidently, this will especially apply if a collateral of longer life is an extended reproductive span. Regardless of that, however, great great grandparenthood may not be so unique as perhaps we assume. It cannot have been unknown in pre-modern societies in which girls were married by their sixteenth birthday. Having said that, one should allow that, both in principle and in practice, genetically contrived longevity will compound our foreboding about a future which can seem already a bottomless pit of indeterminacy. No less problematic in the shorter term, however, is energy usage per head. The knowledge explosion could impact critically in either of two contrasting ways. The one would be marked expansion of options within the service sector, these usually involving modest incremental demands on energy or other material resources. The other would be so to stimulate expectations and enterprise that energy is consumed ever more freely. Nobody can be sure which pattern will be uppermost as world society enters upon what must surely be its biggest multiple paradigm shift since the New Stone Age began. Militant scepticism Currently the two most vocal antagonists of greenhouse concern are Bjørn Lomborg and, from MIT, Richard Lindzen. The controversy in which they are engaged can wax ferocious. Each side accuses the other of polluting scientific enquiry with political advocacy, and thereby reinforces this destructive distortion. Lindzen and Lomborg accept the calculations of greenhouse gas increase and of temperature rise over the past century. But neither believes they presage change too drastic in this one. The climate compartment in Lomborg’s massive

SOCIAL INSTABILITY 87

text has come in for abnormally fierce criticism in Scientific American, notably in the last quarter of 2001. Furthermore, the several articles in question figured prominently in a January 2003 ruling on Lomborg’s book by Denmark’s Committee on Scientific Dishonesty. This was that ‘Objectively speaking, the publication of this work under consideration is deemed to fall within the concept of scientific dishonesty.’ A Roland Huntford might see that as newspeak for thought control. An assessment of how the said committee proceeded might confirm that view.44 The Danish government now wants a rethink. Not that one can deny that certain of Lomborg’s arguments might have been refined more had he not sought to craft so monumental a text in but a year or two. No one who has ever lived could have done that to perfection. But Bjørn Lomborg does usefully proffer a stringent overview; and on climate does pose three especially pertinent questions. Are there really grounds for believing global warming makes weather more erratic? How well do strategies to mitigate the greenhouse effect stand up to cost-benefit analysis? Has not the threat of rising sea levels this century been hyped in the media? Where he goes seriously wrong, in my view, is in taking the added uncertainty surrounding IPCC regional forecasts as grounds for simply polarizing his own impact assessments as between the industrialized countries and the developing ones.45 Richard Lindzen is a distinguished atmospheric physicist with scores of scientific papers to his credit. In one study, he tests the general sensitivity to disturbance of the ocean-atmosphere circulation.46 It tentatively concludes that this great system may be less reactive than is customarily assumed. In naval meteorology, one could sometimes get that feeling. A widely remarked Lindzen contribution uses data over a nineteen-month period from a Japanese geostationary satellite scanning the west Pacific (0 to 30° N; 130° to 170°E). It found that the amount of cirrus (upper-level icy cloud) associated with cumulus convective cloud actually decreased as surface temperatures rose; and this trend would, in itself, have a cooling effect.47 However, the formation or otherwise of cirrus is always a peculiarly subtle process; and may be especially so when it detrains from convection cells. The findings have been criticized as unrepresentative.48 But just as the man-made inputs are the biggest imponderables when analysing future climate, so the biggest uncertainty about derived climate change is its impact on humanity. Richard Lindzen has claimed to discern a ‘general consensus’ that a global mean temperature rise of 0.5 to 1.2°C consequent upon maybe a century of global warming ‘would present few if any problems’.49 Agreed, some distinguished historians, notably from the Annalistes school in France, have written in very similar vein, apropos Europe at any rate. But the problem cannot be dispatched that easily. All else apart, the present pace of change is exceptionally fast within the last several millennia. Mean air temperatures are estimated to have fallen 1°C between AD 1250 and 1700: that is to say, from the zenith of the Little Climatic Optimum to the nadir of the Little Ice Age. It took to 1940 to recover more or less all this loss. Yet the current rate

88 LIMITED WORLD WAR?

of global rise is one degree every half century and increasing. Moreover, this average masks big differentials as between major regions. Nor should we forget that any statement about secular temperature trends subsumes a raft of collateral climatic changes, especially the reorganization of rainfall patterns. Contingent impact The span 1200 to 1940 may have been relatively stable climatically. But it is still liberally strewn with examples of climatic changes influencing the fates of peoples or regimes, particularly when they are critically poised in other respects.50 How the Europe of world war and Cold War was affected by the arrest of global warming in the 1940s was considered in Chapter 2. But that leads on to a most pointed comparison. A standard measure of wintertime severity is the cumulative shortfall of monthly mean temperatures, December to February inclusive. Judged thus, the European winter of 1946–7 was indeed the worst since 1840; and it did accelerate and condition the development of the Cold War. Obversely, the winter of 1962–3 was the worst in much of Europe since 1740. Yet in the annals of world politics, it was entirely unremarkable. This was because both sides of the Iron Curtain were then at a post-war peak of stability and confidence with sustained economic growth and little unemployment. The stark difference well illustrates the precept that, across the last millennium, climate variation (whether secular or transient) has been unlikely to shape human destiny except in situations that were, in one sense or another, marginal to start with. We should therefore ask ourselves throughout how stable or otherwise this century would be regardless of global warming. The pitch adopted in this study is that a whole variety of negative tendencies (some of them quite novel) will interactively imperil Liberty and Peace. This prognosis is akin to what obtained in Europe in 1947 rather than 1963. It calls for affirmation of the precautionary principle in relation to matters ecological. Preventive action taken earlier may be far less agonizing than remedial measures embarked on late. The global struggle against syndicated insurgency is a matter of countering an on-going succession of specific threats which are acute yet of low incidence. Its prosecution must not distract us from addressing ecological hazards that lie more in the future but which could prove more radical and pervasive. Both are aspects of the same syndrome, the planetary diseconomies of scale consequent upon the onrush of imbalanced globalization. The most urgent policy debate on the ecological front concerns the Kyoto Protocol of 1997 on carbon emissions, this in spite of and because of the Bush administration’s terse disengagement from it. The Zen zone Any survival strategy trenchant enough to steer the world through the decades ahead needs a higher long-term goal. Can this not simply be to evolve for the

SOCIAL INSTABILITY 89

twenty-second century a world society better attuned to deeper human fulfilment? And might not progress to this end be furthered by another defined zone of cultural influence emerging strongly enough to counteract the West? And is not the Zen zone of East Asia an obvious contender? A precedent can be seen in how Europe and China were juxtaposed between Han/early Roman times and the middle Ming/Late Renaissance. In general, interaction (along the Silk Road or however) was tenuous. Yet, unwittingly, East Asia played a crucial part in the thirteenth century in saving Christian Europe from subjection to a universal Mongol Empire. For the Yuan dynasty Kublai Khan established in Khanbalik (i.e. Beijing) during his conquest of China sought to enhance rather than devastate the rich pre-existing culture. This huge polity thereby became so distinctive in Mongol terms as to undermine the very idea of universality. Meanwhile, in 1274 and 1281 respectively, two Mongol-led invasions of Japan ended in disaster as stout Japanese resistance was capped each time by a kamikaze (‘wind of God’) storm, the second linkable to climate change.51 In legend, those storms were conjured up by the Shinto gods who reside on the beautiful Ise peninsula on the Pacific coast of Honshu. But in East Asia great religious persuasions readily interweave and conflate. The region as a whole is often spoken of as ‘Zen’ because this is the main East Asian variant of Buddhism, the imported faith that has been a core element in the life and culture of Japan, Korea, China, Taiwan and, eventually, Mongolia. Zen finally assumed dominance within East Asian Buddhism in the ninth century AD. It means something like attaining full enlightenment through contact with one’s ‘original self’, this by guided meditation. In part, its roots are indigenously Taoist and predate the advent of Buddhism regionally. To my mind, the serene smiles of the terracotta soldiers at Chang-an (now Sian) intriguingly anticipate Zen. Zen has afforded inspiration to countless craftsmen, artists and monks as well as to warriors, suicidal or otherwise. Moreover, it does seem to engender within national communities a special facility for radical adapta tion to ambient change. The responses to the Mongols are a case in point. So is the agricultural revolution the Chinese had embarked on, some two centuries before, to facilitate their demographic advance across the Yangtse valley and beyond. It made China ‘by far the richest, most skilled and most populous country on Earth’.52 Japan’s transformation after the Meiji restoration in 1868 had very similar connotations. Japan resurgent? The same applies to the veritable economic miracle she worked after 1945. In the aftermath of surrender, the destruction and desolation were such that she was widely expected to settle long-term for living standards near the prevailing AfroAsian norm. Yet spurred on by MacArthur (see Chapter 2), her people embarked on an economic boom that, until 1973, averaged close to 10 per cent a year.

90 LIMITED WORLD WAR?

Correspondingly, projections made c. 1970 medianally put Japan’s Gross National Product close to the American by the turn of the century.53 Some such departure was foreseen in an essay published not long before her death by the ranking American anthropologist Ruth Benedict (1887–1948). Originally a position paper for South-West Pacific Command, it anticipated that, when circumstances allowed, the Japanese would again seek their ‘place of honor among the nations’, not this time through military adventurism but through peaceful though purposive economic growth.54 One has said ‘essay’ advisedly because a criticism levelled against Ms Benedict, notably in a UNESCO survey of youth attitudes published in 1955,55 was that she had here disregarded numerical techniques. Anticipating this, she had insisted that resolving the seeming contradictionsin underlying Japanese attitudes could not be done via opinion polls gearedto Occidental parameters. In fact, of course, the GNP gap with the USA has by no means closed. In the two decades following the 1973 oil crisis, the Japanese economy averaged 4.0 per cent growth a year. Then for the last eight years of the last century, the mean was 1 per cent. Measured on a basis of Purchasing Power Parity, Japan’s economic output is currently a third of the USA’s. A while back, a senior professor of international economics at Stanford spoke of an inability to analyse definitively Japan’s multifarious economic crisis as ‘the great failure of modern macroeconomics’.56 Undeniably, it takes some unravelling. But the gist is something like this. The Japanese economic boom of the 1950s and 1960s was effectively master-minded by indicative planning by the Ministry of International Trade and Industry, a quasi-formal étatisme which involved using the banks as forceful intermediaries. Against the background of slower growth, Japan’s banks diversified their investment portfolios in the 1980s. Not least did they turn to real estate, recurrently a bullish sector in a land where population density is ten times as high as in, say, the USA.57 But this investment bubble burst in 1989, leaving behind a welter of business bad debts and underprovided pension funds. Then from 1993 to 2002, the net public debt rose from 7 per cent of Gross Domestic Product to 67. Likewise, the general public debt/GDP ratio became the highest in the developed world, this after a decade in which those elsewhere had generally fallen or stabilized. Also, by the mid-1990s the banking system was visibly in crisis. Malfeasance around the public/private interface has made reform and financial deregulation all the more imperative yet also that much harder. There is a strong tendency for key government officials ‘to come down from Heaven’ (upon their quite early retirement) to hold virtual sinecures in the private sector. There are, too, linkages with the Liberal Democratic Party— still a major political force, its weariness and factionalism notwithstanding. The popular Western view of post-war Japan was that its mores were simply economic growth à l’outrance. In the ultimate, however, social values remained

SOCIAL INSTABILITY 91

centre stage. The supreme virtue in the crowded coastal plains was still wa—i.e. harmony. Therefore full employment has involved the bolstering of less efficient companies and sectors. Small farmers have similarly enjoyed heavy protection. Discipline and paternalism have been extolled throughout. All of which makes it the more disturbing to observe an apparently accelerating rise the last twenty years of fractious behaviour within the school system. One is talking about ‘school violence’ (k nai b ryoku) against staff and fellow pupils. So is one about chronic truancy.58 Still more concerning are assertions that as many as a million youngsters below the age of 25 (the great majority male) are living as recluses, sometimes for years on end, usually in their parents’ home. One can too easily imagine this asocial hikikomori eventually flipping into customary Japanese ‘groupism’ (sh dan shugi) managed by yakuza crime syndicates. Japan clearly needs another of her great reorientations. Perhaps Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi will at least enable others of his generation to access the upper political echelons and crack the misguided notion that wa requires the preservation of purblind consensus. There are some grounds for optimism. These last two years the Japanese have been singularly disinclined to inflate the property market again in a bid to avoid the share market plunge.59 This may augur well. There are also good prospects for high technologies spearheading a manufacturing revival. As of 2002, Japan had 370,000 industrial robots in service compared with 120,000 in the USA and 15,000 in Britain. She has a fighting chance of retaining a lead, qualitative as well as quantitative, through the nanometric revolution.60 She has lately played a key part in determining that neutrinos have rest mass. She may currently be in pole position vis-à-vis controlled nuclear fusion. Her Space programme has been revamped. In the late 1990s, she rather withdrew from the foreign policy realm, preoccupied as she was with economic stagnation. But come 2002 she backed the Bush response to 9/11 a sight less equivocally than had she that to the 1990 invasion of Kuwait. Now her way back to a sense of purpose may lie in acting as a bridge between ‘North and South’ and between present and future. Her historical background and cultural eclecticism may make her better equipped for this than is any other nationhood. The Director of the Parliamentary Office of Science and Technology in London has observed that how Japan enhances the quality of its urban life ‘could have a critical demonstration effect that could inform how the burgeoning cities of other parts of Asia, and indeed further afield could develop’.61 He thus enunciated a concept of exemplary systems engineering that could have wider application to Japan’s role in the world. But the precondition has to be real financial reform, no more forlorn gestures of the kind Koizumi made in October 2002.

92 LIMITED WORLD WAR?

China ascendant Necessarily, too, any planetary role will be set within a geopolitical matrix built mainly on Washington, Tokyo and Beijing. In strategic nuclear terms, Beijing is currently in transition. During 2002, it received into service, apparently very much on time, its first echelon (five or ten strong?) of Dong Feng-31s. Not merely does the DF-31 rate as China’s first true Intercontinental Ballistic Missile (ICBM), its range being confidently given as 8,000 km. In addition, it is solidfuelled and land-mobile; and bears MIRV-ed warheads (for MIRV—Multiple Independently Targetable Re-entry Vehicle—see Chapter 7, Strategic missile accuracy). Maybe, too, a variant will be installable in a new generation of nuclearpowered, ballistic missile submarines (SSBN), the first of which is or are reportedly under construction. However, we should remind ourselves that the Chinese first tried to bring strategic missiles into service in submarines from 1965. Their endeavours failed miserably. In 1984, Beijing did at last commission an SSBN bearing twelve ballistic missiles, these thought (then and now) able to travel more than 2,000 km. In 1988, it was authoritatively stated that several more of this Xia class were under construction though the programme was slowing down.62 In fact, only the one boat has ever entered service. However, the immediate focus of interest is on the regional balance. The deployment opposite Taiwan of missiles capable of hitting the island has risen from well under a hundred a decade ago to some 450 now. The C-in-C Pacific Command USN indicated in April 2002 that further significant growth could lead to the United States proffering Taiwan missile defence cover. In July 2003, the White House said as much again. A complication likely to arise in due course, however, is the threat being expanded not so much with more missiles as with multiple warheading. It is very hard to see any surface-to-air screen being adequate against incoming salvos scores or hundreds of warheads strong. Airborne lasers might just be another possibility in due course (see Chapter 9, The airborne laser). Where surface BMD just might be helpful, nevertheless, is in denying any belligerent regime in Beijing the option of intimidation by means of just a few shots across metaphorical bows. This offensive stratagem was, in fact, adopted during Taiwan’s first ever presidential election campaign in March 1996. Against the backdrop of a military build-up behind the opposite shores and a naval-cum-air exercise aggressively near Taiwan, four M-9 surface-to-surface missiles were fired, the respective aiming-points being fairly close to Taiwanese ports. To be in Taiwan then was to find the great mass of the people entirely laid back. But there was a heavy run on the local dollar. Interested military and industrial lobbies in Washington always find the prospect of supplying Theatre Missile Defence (TMD) to regional allies attractive because it can create a precedent for the area defence of national territory, a precedent that might make the American public the more ready to proceed down that path themselves. But the most fundamental issue surely has to be whether a

SOCIAL INSTABILITY 93

TMD contribution to the deterrence and containment of Beijing might enhance instead the standing of hard-liners there and divert mainland China as a whole from the path of peaceful development. For obvious reasons, this question is particularly germane to Taiwan but could appertain to Japan and the Republic of Korea (ROK) as well. In April 1997, on his first trip to North-East Asia as US Secretary of Defence, William Cohen urged both Tokyo and Seoul to buy American TMD. Thus far neither has, partly in view of the considerations just alluded to but also because the collateral threat from North Korea is being otherwise addressed. The July 2001 edition of Defence of Japan did not discuss missile defence definitively. The subject was covered in a box entry that endorses continued ‘cooperative research with the USA in the area’; and looks forward pointedly to any BMD measures enhancing the ‘international security environment’ via multilateral consultation and arms control.63 However, the August 2003 edition indicated that, to help contain the Pyongyang threat, some TMD (in the form of Aegis cruisers and PAC-3 batteries) is scheduled. Any military confrontation regionally between China and the USA plus allies is bound, for the foreseeable future, to be sea-cum-aerospace. In which connection, one may note how Chinese aircraft designers are striding ahead aerodynamically. Electronically, their progress seems more tentative, Israeli and Russian inputs notwithstanding.64 Aerodynamic virtuosity let down by electronic mediocrity was the fate of the Soviet air force throughout the Cold War. Recent evidence of a Russian diplomatic spy ring within the Swedish electronics firm Ericsson rather suggests Moscow is still exercised by that discordance.65 China is decades away from presenting a military challenge on the grand scale. The Taiwan Straits apart, two spheres of military-related activity currently give rise to concern. One is some tendency still to proliferate elsewhere missile and, just possibly, nuclear technology. Thus China does seem to have recently given Pakistan, Iran and North Korea tangible help with missile development.66 Ironically, the other bone of contention between Beijing and Washington is the former’s ‘counter-terror’ campaign against Uighur separatists in Sinkiang. In reality, the Uighurs stand no chance of independence now that Han Chinese are in a majority within the province. However, Beijing’s insufficient interest in assuaging the Uighur sense of exclusion caused disquiet in Washington before George W.Bush declared ‘war on terror’.67 Now it causes confusion. This situation epitomizes the West’s failure to think through what it means by ‘terrorism’ or, indeed, how it addresses the question of human rights in China.68 Clearly there is not enough in such issues to lead to great power confrontation near term. But China’s formidable emergence as an exporter of quality manufactures in the labour-intensive range could exacerbate things markedly. Moreover, if the Washington-Beijing dialectic does turn really sour, this sourness could well find expression in a strategic arms race. These last few years we have not heard China advanced as a justification for strategic missile defence the salient way it was in 1967. But the theme has never disappeared.69 And military-industrial lobbying could impel it up the Washington agenda again, once

94 LIMITED WORLD WAR?

the threat from the identified ‘rogue states’ proves containable in other ways. Either way, the Chinese themselves have to remain fiercely opposed to any American disposition to weaponize Space in pursuance of an anti-missile umbrella. Meantime, shades of the Sinophobia with which the ‘China Lobby’ of the Old Republican Right was suffused remain discernible. With them are now interwoven liberal sentiments aroused by Beijing’s poor record on human rights, not least vis-à-vis intellectuals and unskilled urban workers. As Britain made ready to hand over Hong Kong, some American liberals waxed vociferous about making an acid test of how well Beijing honoured the ‘one country, two systems’ principle.70 The signs to date are mixed. Part of the trouble is that Hong Kong’s commercial pre-eminence is now challenged by two other urban loci. One is the concentration of an eventual fifty million people in the close-by Pearl River delta, a ‘new workshop of the world’ Hong Kong itself largely engendered. The other is Shanghai. Uncertainty about Hong Kong epitomizes one’s more general anxieties about the ultimate outcome of Beijing’s dramatic endeavour to modernize a land already weighed down by a demographic explosion. At 1,250 million, the mainland population today is four times what it was a century ago and virtually twice the figure for 1958, the year Chairman Mao launched his ‘Great Leap Forward’. Though nearly two-thirds of this total live in the countryside still, the burgeoning cities spearhead the drive to sustain economic growth close to the double digits percentagewise so regularly recorded in the liberalizing quarter of a century that followed upon Mao’s death in 1976. The crux is the creation of twenty million new urban jobs a year to cope with influx, natural increase and restructuring. At the same time, a big drive is now under way to modernize the western provinces, meaning just over half China’s area and a quarter of its people. There is an ubiquitous need to alleviate rural poverty, not least financial insecurity in old age. So is there to build on the tentative steps lately taken towards self-government in the villages. Yet all this can be but a facet of an urgent imperative to recognize the revolution in expectations that economic liberalization has given added impetus to. Increasingly, this will encompass not just incomes as actuarially defined but political rights and environmental quality. Thus the number of Chinese nationals on-line to the Internet rose from one million in 1997 to twenty-two million in 2002; and was predicted to rise to 120 million plus by 2004. Admittedly, the authorities have thus far been able to manage the Internet quite tightly internally. But they cannot block off web sites abroad. Take the Falun Gong, the quasi-mystical opposition movement founded in 1992. Lately some tens of millions strong, it thus far has sought change through ‘flower power’, this in the face of often savage repression. What Beijing has been unable to prevent is its devotees accessing the web sites of their leadership in exile in the USA.71

SOCIAL INSTABILITY 95

A former US Ambassador to Malaysia (1995–8) has deplored the lack of intellectual rigour in Asian politics, Singapore seeming to him to be the one consistent exception.72 At both the philosophic and the technocratic levels, one can hear what he says. Yet one can still feel that China could in due course be exceptional too. My own experience dialoguing on BMD in 1987, 2000, and 2002 with ranking Chinese officials and academics has been encouraging. In particular, the colloquium in Beijing in March 2000 involving a very representative Anglo-Franco-German delegation was far more fruitful than any such event one recalls with the Soviets.73 The thoroughgoing response to the SARS epidemic has augured well too. It has not, after all, been ‘Chernobyl’. Instead, the accent has been well placed on quarantine and public hygiene. Even so, China is addressing a huge national agenda; and if economic, social and political progress are not properly harmonized, one could see a Fascistic reversion. It is impossible to expunge completely from one’s mind the Cultural Revolution (1966–74): the rabid xenophobia, industrial chaos, shattered universities, closed research centres, desecrated churches, teachers terrorized by crazed children, thousands of casualties in street violence, labour camps, and gleeful destruction of cultural relics. From observation posts on the Hong Kong border, one could see little squads of farmworkers marching to and from the paddy, each dutifully clutching a copy of Chairman Mao’s ‘little red book’ of analects. Were such a reign of terror ever to develop in China again, this would probably be as a result of political liberalization being too delayed but then too proscriptive. Here the governance of Sinkiang is peculiarly instructive. Save for a few years enforced absence during the Cultural Revolution, Wang Enmao was the provincial head for half a century until his death (aged 88) in April 2001. He was obviously seen in Beijing as a safe pair of hands. Yet his policy was nothing if not erratic. In 1992 he called for a ‘great iron wall’ to be built for fear of infiltration by Osama bin Laden.74 Similarly, influence from without can easily become too oscillatory, be it exercised by the United States or Japan or anybody else. But it is possible to identify certain guiding principles. Presumably one should be that the territorial integrity of Taiwan must be upheld until, though only until, the mainland is clearly ready in terms of democratic development for a ‘one country; two systems’ solution. Another has to be that BMD should not be pursued in such a way as to drag China into a strategic arms race, with dangerously negative consequences. On the positive side, it has been forcefully argued that environmental protection offers great scope for Sino-American dialogue and collaboration.75 If so, it would be an excellent entrée to broader confidencebuilding.

6 Macabre lethality

Lethal gases and toxins The deliberate spreading of disease or toxic substances is a stratagem viewed in all cultures as peculiarly ugly and depraved. Traditional mores may allow a bedouin, say, to make off periodically with an adversary’s camels but never to pollute his wells. The roots of this particular proscription may lie in how, during the interminable aridity of the late Pliocene (several million years ago), our hominid ancestors were constrained to leave a shrinking rain forest to resume the survival struggle on the less crowded but desperately parched African plains. The taboo against recourse to poisoning in war has often been codified. The Greeks and Romans saw it as a violation of ius gentium, the law of the peoples. Poisons and other weapons considered inhumane were outlawed by the Manu Law in India c.500 BC; and among the Saracens twelve centuries later. The Dutch scholar/statesman Hugh Grotius adopted a similar stance in 1625 in his seminal The Law of War and Peace. Still, no taboo is unbreakable. In 400 BC, Scythian archers dipped arrowheads into decomposing bodies. But uniquely dreadful in its consequences was a decision by Tartars besieging in 1346 the Genoese port of Kaffa in the Crimea to catapult corpses over its walls. The bubonic bacillus thus spread into Kaffa from whence it travelled to Genoa by sea and from there overland around Europe. The lucid French chronicler Jean Froissart reckoned ‘a third of the world’ died in the resultant Black Death. The gas era In terms of twentieth-century experience, however, poison gases are prior to biowarfare despite their having been formally renounced at the Hague Convention of 1899. Germany introduced them on to the battlefield in 1915, her aim being to break the gridlock of trench warfare in France. Horrific though the accounts of gas bombardment are, perhaps 90 per cent of the one million gas casualties on all sides (1915–18) appeared to make a full recovery. Admittedly there may well be a difference between immediate appearance and long-term

LIMITED WORLD WAR? 97

reality.1 Even so, it is hardly ‘mass destruction’ by world war standards. But since International Law no less than History is written by the victors, the fact that gas warfare was a German tactical innovation meant its illicit and demonic character would be heavily underlined. One should allow, too, that subsequent developments considerably bore this perception out. During the 1930s, Nazi Germany developed Tabun and then the more potent Sarin, the two main ‘nerve gases’. By interfering with the linkage between the brain and the muscles, this genre readily causes death. Soon application of the precautionary principle led to huge quantities of gas ordnance being accumulated on all sides during World War II. In 1945, some 71,000 German aerial bombs filled with Tabun were brought to Britain in preparation for retaliatory use in the Far East.2 That nobody ever did use such ordnance during this ‘total war’ is surprising. One cannot but recall, in any case, that cyanide gas was the standard Nazi means of murdering six million Jews and the other minorities earmarked for genocide. My recollection is that, come 1945, the pictures of the liberated death camps horrified us kids far more than did those of blitzed enemy cities, Hiroshima and Nagasaki not excluded. In August 1948, the UN Security Council endorsed a recommendation that ‘weapons of mass destruction should be defined to include atomic explosive weapons, radio active material weapons, lethal chemical and biological weapons, and any weapons developed in the future which have characteristics comparable in destructive effect’. Throughout the Cold War, large stocks of gas ordnance were once more retained on each side, any recourse to them being subject—certainly in the West —to positive control at top level, military and political. Yet since 1918, lethal gas has never been used by armies operationally except within that arc of recurrent culture shock extending from the Horn of Africa through the Persian Gulf basin. The four confirmed examples are Italy in Abyssinia, 1935–6; Egypt in the Yemen civil war, 1964–7; Iraq against Iran from 1984; and Baghdad against its Kurdish minority in 1988. Each time round, fatalities ran into the hundreds or thousands. The common theme may be that such Fascistic extremism flourishes in an ambience of cultural contradictions. The same as with Al-Qaeda? All the same, the instance lately seen as pointing to the grimmest of futures has been the concurrent Sarin attacks in March 1995 on five trains heading for Kasumigaseki railway station in central Tokyo. Twelve persons died and 1,200 were hospitalized. The previous June, seven had died in a Sarin attack in a small town near Tokyo. This mini-offensive had been launched by AUM Shinrikyo (‘Supreme Truth’), a cult founded in 1986 in a village in the foothills of Mount Fujiyama. Its millenarian philosophy eclectically drew on various Eastern religions. Archetypically, it believed its kingdom would come, once apocalyptic conflict had shattered our present civilization. It had systematically built up a strong following (40,000?) in the Russian Federation. Numbered among its Japanese members were ranking scientists from top universities. So were people on the

98 MACABRE LETHALITY

political far Right. Accordingly, AUM was well-funded. Its military inventory included a helicopter, some nitroglycerine and tons of chemicals for Sarin synthesis. By 1993, it had created a Sarin test site in the Australian outback, a locale unlikely to attract attention. Just possibly, local deposits of uranium were of interest to AUM as well. The Kasumigaseki incident obliged the police to crack down on AUM. The insurgents had released their Sarin merely by puncturing bags with sharp umbrellas. But optimally dispersed in a fine spray, the 5 kg used could have killed up to a quarter of a million. Moreover, tolerably functional pesticide sprayers could have been bought in any garden centre. Suffice to add that a reconnoitre in the USA during the year 2000 showed the several basic ingredients of Sarin could be bought on the open market.3 The general presumption is that volume requirements usually make chemical weapons, organic or inorganic, harder to manufacture unobserved than are the biologicals. Dealing with the nerve agents, however, one has to reckon with high potency weight for weight. In August 1998, the USA (acting with strong British endorsement) bombed the Al-Shifa pharmaceutical factory in Khartoum, alleging it was being used to make nerve gas. The Sudanese authorities denied this. But the very least this altercation shows is that pharmaceuticals could have been the cover. Mercifully the attack caused no nerve gas leaks. Toxins Intermediate in character and immediate potency as between the inorganic lethal gases and the live biological agents are the toxins, substances produced by microorganisms living within a biological substrate—either alive or dead. Granted, an inability to replicate makes them less threatening on the grand scale than germs. But they do have operational advantages. They are usually easier for people or platforms to transport. They are less menacing to their handlers and less affected by heat, cold, dehydration or short-wave radiation. Very generally, toxins will be ingested; and water will be their natural medium of transmission. They will be unsuitable for delivery from the skies even if the perpetrator is willing to contemplate the overt mass infection of urban populations. What biological advance may most evidently do for toxin potential is increase the number of substances identified as eligible for offensive use above the ten or so usually cited today. Toxins warrant more consideration. In the hands of insurgents or special forces, they could pose a diversified menace. Some will be adapted to acute incapacitation rather than lethality. Take the covert distribution of adulterated food. The World Health Organization has cautioned that the reasons for doing this have occasionally been political.

LIMITED WORLD WAR? 99

Martial microbes Casting his eye over Singapore Island close to the turn of the last century, Lord Roberts of Kandahar (the British Army’s commander-in-chief, 1899–1904) said the future of mankind would one day be decided there. Viewing the virtual realms of future war, one is strongly tempted to say the ultimate field of decision will be one dominated by microbes deliberately engineered to be irresistibly lethal. If so, an apposite point of departure in a suitable response strategy might be insistence that, in popular parlance and perhaps doctrinally, one should regularly condemn as ‘terror’ any recourse to living germs as instruments of war. In other words, it will be a very special case regardless of whether the microbial sponsors are governments or insurgents or criminals or any mixes thereof. Murky though the subject area may be, one thing is clear. In modern times as previously, preparation for and practice of offensive germ warfare has been heavily the preserve of established regimes as opposed to criminal or insurgent gangs. Witness the Japanese take-over of Manchuria from 1931. The next year, General Shiro Ishii, a talented microbiologist, established Unit 731 near Harbin. By August 1945, several thousand Chinese and Soviet prisoners had been done to death in pursuance of biowarfare capability. This involved the infliction of agony by individuals on individuals at a pitch unsurpassed even in those brutal times. Meanwhile, the unit became able to produce a ton a month of infective material. In 1942, a cocktail of disease aerially directed against villages in Chekiang caused hundreds of deaths. A number of the afflicted survive, some with hideous anthrax disabilities. Likewise, Nazi scientists flooding Italy’s Pontine Marshes anew in the winter of 1943–4, ahead of the Allied advance on Rome, deliberately engineered a salinity level favourable to a resurgence of the local malarial mosquito. This was in revenge for the overthrow of Mussolini. It caused well over 100,000 Italian civilians to contract malaria. These terror strikes then passed virtually unnoticed across the world at large. A decade later, during the Korean War, the subject did hit the headlines. In February 1952, first the North Koreans then the Chinese accused the USA of launching germ warfare. Foreign Minister Chou En Lai (who usually came across as a mild and almost liberal pragmatist) specifically alleged sixty-eight such missions had thus far been flown. After Stalin’s demise in March 1953, Moscow quietly dropped the accusation. Beijing followed suit. What still disconcerts one is how many European intellectuals claimed to believe it awhile. Hewlett Johnson, the Christian Marxist then Dean of Canterbury Cathedral, told from the pulpit how he had been to North Korea and seen the very canisters. More astonishing was the reaction of the Cambridge biochemist and sinologist Joseph Needham. Many of us knew him later on as the lead editor/author of the multivolume Science and Civilisation in China, a magisterial refutation of any notion that the Mediterranean-cum-Europe had monopolized creative enquiry the last two millennia and more. During my one and only extended encounter with him, he exhibited a lively interest in early Christian thought; and he also

100 MACABRE LETHALITY

expressed warm admiration for the dogged wartime leadership of Chiang Kaishek whom he had known when serving in our embassy in Chungking, then the wartime capital of the Kuo Ming Tang government. Yet Needham headed an International Scientific Commission for the Investigation of the Facts concerning Bacterial Warfare in Korea and China. Its bulky report found the USA guilty, using such evidence as ‘confessions’ by brainwashed prisoners of war. This aberration must have owed a lot to Joseph Needham’s propensity to identify with the Chinese people regardless of incumbent regime. It will also have owed something to the predilection for Marxism felt by many natural scientists of his generation. No doubt the ugly antics of Senator Joe McCarthy had accentuated this. But earlier, Needham will have been positively influenced by his senior compatriot and fellow biochemist, J.B.S. Haldane of University College London. In 1937, Haldane had written what still rates as a most cogent exposition of a putative synergy (alluded to in Chapter 1, A revolution unfolds, 1985–2001) between Marxism and natural science: the cogency deriving from its Marxism being non-dogmatic, non-fundamentalist one could say.4 At all events, this episode serves as a salutary reminder of how readily scare stories can catch on about matters biological, especially in the context of general hostilities. Their dissemination usually involves a hard core of avowed conspiracy theorists and a broad penumbra of the confused, concerned and compliant. Inevitably the susceptibility of society to phobias on this account is nowadays aggravated by how modern transportation enables disease to travel between continents without deliberate human intent. Anxiety is liable to be compounded further by the spontaneous emergence of novel human disease as microbes enter our bodies from other animals, the process known as zoonosis. Some scientists believe, for example, that ‘the tropical rainforests harbour a vast collection of future human epidemics waiting for the right conditions’.5 The least one must say is that there could be unpleasant surprises ahead. One thing abundantly clear is that, by 1978, the Apartheid regime in South Africa was waging offensive biowarfare within its own borders and in Rhodesia. One has to be talking about the death or incapacitation of scores of campaigners against Apartheid and its awkward Rhodesian appendage. There could even have been preliminary experiments in counter-population targeting. South Africa’s eminently civilized Truth and Reconciliation Commission has elicited a deal of evidence. Many different biological agents were tested, it seems. Overall, Saddam Hussein’s endeavours have been sufficiently addressed already. But one must here add an allegation discussed by Tom Mangold (a senior BBC correspondent and war reporter) in the thorough review of modern biowarfare he and a colleague have done. It is that, in 1994–5, Saddam used convicts as targets in field trials. Top UNSCOM officials are reportedly sure he did.6 Some Iraqis spoke in similar vein after the fall of Baghdad. However, the most grandiloquent example yet of a covert preparatory programme was the one the USSR continued (from rudimentary origins, 1941–5) regardless of becoming a signatory of the Biological and Toxin Weapons

LIMITED WORLD WAR? 101

Convention (BTWC) of 1972. The defection to Britain in 1989 of Vladimir Pasechnik (1937–2001), the head of one laboratory, revealed a Biopreparat network an order of magnitude stronger than Western intelligence had thought. An ‘archipelago’ of eighteen major facilities was spread across the USSR, employing 35,000 people. Already it was undertaking the genetic engineering of more robust versions of certain diseases.7 As much would soon be confirmed from other sources. Indeed, in 1992 Boris Yeltsin had admitted an anthrax outbreak in Sverdlovsk in 1979 (with maybe a hundred fatalities) had been due to a biowarfare accident. Yeltsin himself had then been the regional Communist Party boss. Terror, insurgent or official? In the early 1990s, the AUM sect in Japan brought botulinum then anthrax to operational status but did so on a small scale with limited sophistication. Therefore the results did not encourage perseverance. In various respects, safety included, generating the requisite cultures in 50-gallon drums, say, is inferior to doing so in an industrial fermenter of maybe 20,000 gallons capacity. That tends to require the goodwill of the incumbent political authorities. The anthrax campaign launched in the USA shortly after 9/11 killed five and clinically affected eighteen. However, suspicion was soon aroused that this had been a wake-up call perpetrated by someone within or otherwise close to the official American germ warfare community centred, since 1943, at Camp Detrick (later renamed Fort Detrick) in Maryland. The anthrax used was a high-quality sample of a sub-species associated with America, not the Middle East. Other circumstantial evidence pointed the same way, including a reluctance on the part of some relevant officials to collaborate with FBI enquiries. Save for efficient medical intervention, the death toll could have run into hundreds. This shadowy episode highlights the importance of curbing the proliferation of biowarfare capabilities within as well as between states. A careful review carried out before 9/11 of the situation worldwide noted that countries said to be working on offensive BW included China, Egypt, Iran, Iraq, Libya, Russia and Syria. North Korea might be able to wage it; and the Sudan, too, could have an interest. There was insufficient evidence to decide whether Taiwan was engaged in activities the BTWC had circumscribed.8 Controlling data flow At present thirty to forty living substances are usually deemed eligible for biowarfare against humans. But the number is bound to rise appreciably. Much of the useful knowledge can be considered to be not more than one stage removed from ‘blue skies’ research which it might be invidious, if not downright impracticable, to keep under wraps. Thus as of mid-2002, genetic blueprints for dozens of bacteria and nearly 1,000 viruses were held in computer data bases;

102 MACABRE LETHALITY

and American scientists had created from scratch the virus that causes polio, using a DNA blueprint drawn from the Internet and materials sent through the post.9 What has to be acknowledged more generally is how much the genetic engineering of micro-organisms will be facilitated by the rationalization and automation of data bases. So the question of curbing the flow of biodata that could be sensitive in terms of military security is urgent and on-going. It is something Western governments have turned to after decades of neglect. As of 2001, the US Defence Threat Reduction Agency was reviewing annually about 25,000 export licence applications to check them against equipment or materials being sent to places where they might be used to make advanced weapons. The list of restrictions ran to over 300 pages, yet only four of them contained items appertaining to biowarfare. No special licence was required to export DNA synthesizers or sequencers, mechanisms that may facilitate genetic engineering—e.g. of microorganisms.10 Since then, legislative and administrative measures have been taken in the USA and other countries to screen, monitor and supervise advanced biological research. Self-monitoring by the professional bodies concerned is also being encouraged. But experience with nuclear energy does not suggest the international dissemination of militarily useful knowledge can be constrained for more than a decade or two. Biological research, being more devolved and diversified, will be harder to monitor. The two world wars were considerably about combatant states making big sacrifices in lives and treasure to buy modest but needful spans of time. How much liberty should we sacrifice to buy limited time again? Until now, it has generally been regarded as reasonable and licit to generate modest quantities of a biological agent or toxins in pursuance of protection against its offensive use or spontaneous occurrence. Indeed, Articles I and X of the 1972 Convention are reasonably explicit to this effect. In which connection, an American specialist has observed that, if the USA found work of certain kinds it is itself engaged in ‘taking place in Russia, Iraq, Iran or any of several other countries, it would consider them to be part of an offensive biological program’.11 East Asian biotechnology Implicit in what has already been said is the proposition that biotechnology as a whole will spread across the world at least as insistently as other technical revolutions have. Even now, the Zen zone of East Asia is entering the business in quite a big way. Already it may be the locale for close to a thousand companies in this field, much the same number as in Europe and North America respectively. Also, there is a sense within the zone that the Zen-driven culture is conducive: respect for the scholar; robust traditional medicine; and indicative economic planning.12 Japan has lately been seen as Asia’s biotechnology leader

LIMITED WORLD WAR? 103

but China is coming up fast. Witness the key part the Beijing Genomics Institute has played in industrial-scale sequencing within the international Human Genome Project.13 Singapore, too, is poised to mount a strong challenge, not least as a ‘regulatory haven’ for stem cell research. Her preparations include more school biology, endowed scholarships, tax breaks and public funding. It will soon include Biopolis, a dedicated biomedical research village.14 Engineered volution There is no indication that a desire to create a state-of-art biowarfare option has played a part in this East Asian awakening. But it could anywhere be a consequence of genetic engineering alias Genetic Modification (GM) developments. For the whole point about GM in this context, as in others, is novelty. Within a species and ultimately within an individual, the immune system develops experientially in relation to specific threats. Too comprehensive a competence cannot be developed because that would ipso facto act against too many of the innumerable ‘good microbes’ which bigger organisms (homo sapiens emphatically included) need for their own survival. An immune system must therefore adapt specifically to any emergent threat. This may take the unwilling host species some generations. Germs are deemed to be divisible into two main classes, non-cellular viruses and cellular bacteria. Viruses are inherently simpler and usually smaller. They essentially comprise a small package of genes unable to reproduce in isolation. Instead they adopt the genes of a host cell and induce them to generate more viruses akin to themselves. One implication is that antibiotics are ill-attuned to coping with viral infections since they are designed to meet autonomous cellular threats. Therefore the main line of anti-viral defence remains immunization. Among the bacterial diseases considered to have biowarfare potential are bubonic plague, cholera, leprosy, tuberculosis, typhoid and anthrax. Among the viral are influenza, measles, smallpox and yellow fever. Aids and ebola are viral too. Viruses are 0.02 to 0.20 microns wide. Individual bacteria are 0.50 to 5 microns. Both groups are essentially solid but regularly exist in liquid suspension. Intermediate between them are the rickettsiae, intracellular parasites found in vertebrates. Five or ten are seen as biowarfare candidates. One uncomfortable but ineluctable truth is that germs invoke responses to challenges much faster than we humans or, indeed, our crops and animals. This is because, reproducing by binary fission, they typically go through a million generations while homo sapiens, for instance, goes through one. Likewise, they may go through several hundred thousand even as we seek some remedy through biotechnological innovation. A contemporary manifestation is the way a number of diseases modern medicine appeared to have conquered conclusively have been fighting back. Tuberculosis and salmonella are familiar examples. So, too, is malaria, though here it is more that the carrier mosquitoes have waxed resistant.

104 MACABRE LETHALITY

Meanwhile, some maladies (e.g. SARS, ebola and HIV since 1970) are apparently afflicting our species for the first time. This zoonosis will usually mean we are still not their main hosts. That in turn will leave them freer to inflict high mortality on us. Take anthrax. This has afflicted human beings episodically the past several centuries. But that is not so long in evolutionary terms. The fact remains that customarily its main hosts have been hoofed herbivore mammals. So when human beings inhale anthrax spores in some strength (as opposed to ingesting it or absorbing it through wounds) they are liable to suffer 100 per cent mortality, unless the condition has been treated during incubation. The point is that the survival of homo sapiens is not crucial to the survival of anthrax. In contrast, even a severe attack of bubonic plague will characteristically end up killing but 30 per cent or so of a population, ‘a third of the world’ as Froissart said. At present, SARS seems anomalous in that, although it appears to be a zoonotic illness new to humankind, the mortality rate is low, at least among the under-60s. Underlying all of which is a deep contradiction in our whole approach to disease control, in war as in peace. We strive continually for a sanitized environment. Yet in such a setting, our immune systems are denied the practice they need to keep honed up. A reason why smallpox looms so prominent in biowarfare concerns is that it was declared extinct in Nature two decades ago. The authorities apprehend that, without vaccination, this disease will storm through modern populations the way it did through the Aztecs come the conquistadores. Inevitably, all such possibilities will be strengthened by GM. But within the current debate, the most sinister option presented is the ‘ethnic bullet’. Gradually data has been accumulating about differences in the susceptibility of respective ethnic groups to certain diseases. Now the completion of the Human Genome (a synoptic map of our genes) affords boundless scope for group and individual comparisons. Not a few scientists have expressed concern lest such information be used in support of tyranny and prejudice.15 This sinister possibility suddenly became more tangible in 1998 with press reports that the Israelis had identified an illness to which Iraqi Arabs were especially susceptible and which was transmissible through the Baghdad water supply. What one must hope is that the fervent denials were better founded than earlier averrations that Israel would never be the first to introduce nuclear weapons into the Middle East. Mercifully, they likely were. The alternative would be altogether too Hitlerian. On the other hand, a similarly selective effect may be achieved by using a germ with high mortality coupled with short incubation. Thus ebola readily achieves a 70 to 90 per cent mortality but with an incubation/infec tion period of but four days the virus readily dies in its hosts. So outbreaks tend to be intense but localized and shortlived.

LIMITED WORLD WAR? 105

Crops and livestock A former Director General of Britain’s Chemical and Biological Defence Establishment at Porton Down is among those who have warned that biowarfare strikes against livestock and crops may result in ‘major socio-economic damage’.16 Here one is, of course, talking of targeting species which, though allimportant to human well-being, are individually confined by geography in a way Humanity itself is not. Among the plant diseases identified as especially applicable to biowar are the viral tobacco mosaic and sugar beet curly top; bacterial rice and corn blight; and the fungal potato blight, black stem dust and rice blast. Some 8, 000 fungal species are known to cause plant disease. So are more than 200 bacterial species, and 500 viral ones.17 Operational delivery What must be admitted, however, is that it is not easy to deliver biological warheads in such a manner that they diffuse satisfactorily. No doubt this will apply less to the waterborne diseases, cholera and typhoid being the salient examples in terms of anti-human attack. However, aerosols (biological or otherwise) intended for inhalation ought not to exceed 20 microns (millionths of a metre) across if they are to penetrate the upper respiratory tract; and 5 microns if they are to reach the base of the lungs. Twenty microns is typical of the fineness achieved by the vaporizing units (some 3 inches long) used for gasoline injection in automobile engines. Those reckonings compare with a general diameter distribution for droplets in atmospheric water clouds of between 25 and 100 microns.18 Even these may remain in suspension for many hours or days. In other words, if biological warloads are explosively dispersed well above the surface, either through having been primed or else on account of enemy action, there will be a contradiction between trying to contrive aerosols fine enough to be inhaled yet coarse enough to descend sufficiently fast for focused application. That dilemma stands over and above the problem of how to ensure the creation explosively in that situation of an aerosol of whatever fineness one has opted for. Taken together, these considerations argue for dispersing from ground level instead, using a suitable spray. But suppose the agent is to be used against crops; or against ourselves or other animals via ingestion; or else will ultimately be waterborne, like cholera and typhoid. Then one may settle for droplet diameters akin to those favoured for the more conservative agents such as chlorine or mustard gas—in other words, 2,500 microns. A droplet that large could, for instance, descend out of the stratosphere at several metres a second. Admittedly, in the denser air below it would be progressively and steeply retarded. Nevertheless, such an aerosol cloud generated at height might diffuse satisfactorily. But precise calculation would always be difficult for several reasons. One is uncertainty as to how much moisture the droplets might averagely lose or gain in transit.

106 MACABRE LETHALITY

An alternative approach is to have the biological warloads impact the surface encapsulated in unitary or multiple warheads. However, tests during World War II found that extreme heat and cold associated with the explosive impact of biological aerial bombs killed 95 per cent of the microbes inside while the surviving droplets were too large for retention in the lungs.19 But against this attrition one should set the fact that many bacteria and fungi can enter into a protective dormancy as spores; and these seem more resilient than the active mode, more or less regardless of specifics. Confirmation is coming in from a new academic domain, astrobiology. Spores fully exposed in real or simulated Near Space have been remarkably unaffected ‘by various physical insults such as cycles of extreme heat and cold, extreme desiccation, vacuum, Ultra Violet and ionizing radiation as well as oxidizing agents and corrosive chemicals’.20 What is striking about this list is that it covers some patterns of resistance hardly to be anticipated on ground of Darwinian natural selection. So maybe it can be extended to include abrupt impact. But there would still be the problem of the aerosol cloud. The droplets would be spread across a spectrum of size; and many would be too large or too small. Granted, the public debate about biowarfare could benefit from more definitive information about aerosol creation and other geophysical aspects. So could it from more attention being paid to the attributes of particular agents. Meantime, the indications are strong that biological warheads (and advanced chemical ones) are ill suited to ballistic delivery, especially across intercontinental trajectories with much frictional heat on atmospheric reentry (see Chapter 7). Even within regional theatres, cruise missiles or maybe aerial bombs would be more adapted to such a strike. Yet, handling risks notwithstanding, the most efficacious mode of all may be covertly by human beings, intelligence officers or insurgents, using compact micro-sprays. Perhaps one has to anticipate, most particularly, the suicide bomber who sets out already incubated. Beyond total war A very recurrent theme in military historical writing has been the dialectic between Offence and Defence. Not infrequently, it has been depicted as an eternal alternation, ‘first one the better now the other best’, as Shakespeare has Henry VI say. Yet if biowarfare is allowed to run its full course, the Offence seems bound ultimately to triumph. The ease and pace of microbic evolution and the myriad of lines it can take is the salient factor rendering this inevitable, especially within the context of Genetic Modification. If the logic is allowed to work itself out, the implications for open and relaxed governance could be grim in the extreme. So could they be for much of life on this Earth. As Britain’s Astronomer Royal has noted, ‘Someone with a mindset that could now make a computer virus may one day be able to make a genetically modified real virus.’21 And they could do so very inconspicuously.

LIMITED WORLD WAR? 107

Putting a time frame on this consummation is not easy. During the Cold War, those who tried to predict the fluctuating ‘technology gaps’ as between NATO and the Warsaw Pact got everything diametrically wrong with unerring consistency. Witness the furor over Sputnik I. Yet they were concerned with quite well-established applied sciences, mechanical engineering and electronics. Essaying a similar comparison as between the West and the emergent countries in the realm of biotechnology has to be trebly difficult. But thinking very conservatively, it is hard to avoid the conclusion that within twenty-five to thirty years biowarfare will have emerged as a great equalizer, a mode of conflict that will go far to close the muscle gap between the weak and underprivileged and even the American hyperpower. From the standpoint of the Atlantic Alliance, then, an expectation of ultimate nemesis in this respect perforce must be one of the bases on which to build a more constructive long-term strategy. In November 2000, Richard Butler, who had led the UN effort to eliminate Iraq’s biological munitions, inter alia urged that The possession of biological weapons—or actions ambiguously designed to produce them—should be categorized as a crime against humanity.’ In other words, we should reaffirm with emphasis the tribal decencies of our historic and prehistoric past. Such affirmation would be insufficient in isolation just as the UN Declaration on Human Rights and, indeed, the BTWC have been. Nevertheless, it would seem an essential part of a comprehensive Planetary Compact, a consummation that itself may be essential to the security of liberal or liberalizing societies in a globalizing world. Fissile ambiguity Popular opposition to fission reactors as a civil power source has probably been less fervent everywhere than politicians perceive. But nowhere has it been negligible, given the anxieties about accidents and decommissioning plus nuclear waste disposal. Now the threat of deliberate radioactive poisoning is recharging this concern. Yet what opinion at large still over-looks is how reactors provide the grist for nuclear bombs, eligible for delivery by ballistic missile but also in other ways. Within most ‘thermal’ (i.e. power) reactors, uranium releases heat through a fission chain reaction. The isotope consumed, U235, comprises 0.7 per cent of natural uranium, nearly all the rest comprising the slightly heavier U238 atoms. The uranium a reactor receives will usually be ‘enriched’ —i.e. with the U235 proportion raised above the natural level. Since the chemical behaviour of every isotope within an element is virtually identical, this enrichment cannot be by chemical means. The most familiar techniques are gaseous diffusion and the gas centrifuge. The former involves increasing the U235 proportion by repeatedly recycling the gaseous uranium through membranes of nanometric porosity. A big installation is required; and its electricity demands are heavy. The latter gradually fractionates gaseous uranium by centrifugal spin. A single centrifuge

108 MACABRE LETHALITY

can be small. But hundreds or even thousands may be linked in one facility. Iran’s pilot facility at Natanz already has a hundred centrifuge casings; and a later commercial one may have 50,000.22 Needless to say, the enrichment sought for reactor consumption need come nowhere near the 90 per cent sought for an explosive chain-reaction. However, the waste residual from the consumption of uranium, natural or enriched, yields Plutonium 239: an isotope too unstable to have survived over geological time but which can be used for a nuclear warhead, as per the Nagasaki bomb. Though extremely toxic, this plutonium can fairly readily be isolated chemically to a level of purity adequate for the fabrication of explosive devices. A capacity of 20 megawatts operating for a year could produce perhaps 5 kg of Pu239, enough to make a Nagasaki warhead. This is assuming 90 per cent purity, activation by implosion and also beryllium reflectors being incorporated. Without these standard attributes, 18 kg would be needed. The corresponding figures for U235 are around three times as high. To slow the neutrons released in an induced chain reaction, a ‘moderator’ medium (e.g. deuterium oxide—alias ‘heavy water’) can be introduced. Without a moderator, one can have a fast neutron reaction which may be applied to ‘breeding’ more weapons-grade fissile material. A substantial ingot of plutonium is set within somewhat enriched uranium. On cycle completion, more Plutonium 239 is present than was there to start with, this due to the neutron bombardment of U238. Fissile U233, the other uranium isotope, can similarly be produced, this by transmuting Thorium 232 in an enriched uranium/natural thorium mix. An alternative approach is to mix plutonium dioxide (PuO2) with uranium dioxide (UO2), the uranium in the latter being either natural or else ‘depleted’— i.e. with a diminished proportion of U235. This ‘mixed oxide’ fuel (MOX) can be used in standard power reactors of suitable design; and at the end of a cycle there will be a net decrease in the amount of plutonium present. In principle at least, this commends itself as better than deep storage, on land or at sea, as an alternative to explosive application. At present, however, MOX may cost half as much again to produce, weight for weight, as more standard fission fuel.23 It has long been proposed that nuclear reactors (fission or fusion) should have a lead role in the desalination of sea water.24 Of comparable longevity has been the notion that nuclear explosions can effect earth removal for major construction projects or deep rock shattering in order to facilitate either waste disposal or hydrocarbon extraction. Thus during the ‘atoms for peace’ euphoria of the middle 1950s, the USA initiated to this end its ‘Plowshare’ programme. India duly used the concept as the rather threadbare rationale for its first nuclear test in 1974. Egypt, France and, inevitably, the USSR also evinced an interest. Still, Article V of the Non-Proliferation Treaty of 1968 did stipulate that an ‘appropriate international body’ should arrange such explosions as requested by non-nuclear states. Currently this application of nuclear power is little regarded in any case. But it just might revive if major civil engineering is embarked on as part of the adjustment to shifting rainfall norms or anticipated climate erraticism.

LIMITED WORLD WAR? 109

Operational parameters The onset of the energy crisis in 1973 led briefly to a resurgence of the active interest in nuclear-driven manned aircraft evinced in the mid-1950s. Yet still the weight of reactor and shielding precluded installation in machines much below 2, 000,000 lb all-up weight, twice as heavy as a 747.25 On the other hand, nuclear marine propulsion has progressed, though very largely for naval purposes. The dominant fission application to date, however, has been base load provision for overland electricity grids. International Energy Agency figures for nuclear inputs to national electricity generation were, in 1999: from 3 to 10 per cent, China, India, Netherlands and Mexico; from 10 to 20 per cent, Canada then the USA; from 20 to 30, the Czech Republic, Taiwan, Britain and Germany; from 30 to 40, Japan, Finland, Switzerland, Hungary and South Korea; from 40 to 50, Slovakia and Sweden. Finally, Belgium 58 and France 74. Still, that ranking bespeaks previous commitment rather than future intent. At governmental level, Europe enthuses about nuclear power less than before. By 2001, Belgium and Germany had declared moratoria on new power reactors; and even France waxed less keen. A Swedish referendum, held after the reactor accident at Three Mile Island in Pennsylvania in 1979, had called for an end to nuclear power, a result which still conditions Stockholm thinking. Likewise, no new power reactors have been ordered in the USA since 1978. But in May 2001, the Bush administration published an energy plan calling for energy expansion on a broad front from coal to the renewables. Nuclear power was accorded a larger fraction of electricity production. Plutonium reprocessing has been a needle question. Washington has long been especially exercised about this because of the risk of military diversion. In June 2000, Moscow and Washington agreed each to dispose of 34 tons of processed plutonium, this at the rate of 2 tons a year from 2007. The USA plans to use 75 per cent as fuel and mix the other quarter into molten glass, while Russia is to use it all as fuel. As indicated above, London, Paris and Tokyo remain conspicuously involved in nuclear power. Perhaps 180 tons of civil plutonium is currently being stored by them, enough to make 72,000 Nagasaki bombs. By 2010, there are likely to be worldwide 550 tons of separated civil plutonium. As of now, about 250 tons is held by the military, an estimated 94 per cent of it in the USA or the former USSR.26 Though Japan has thus far relied on other countries, mainly France and Britain, for the actual reprocessing, she will soon have her own plant. She has also brought a Fast Breeder Reactor (FBR) to prototype stage. This tendency can be said now to be entrained with the resurgent national interest in a range of high technologies. Nevertheless, since two fatalities in a nuclear accident in 1999, Tokyo has phased back plans for twenty new facilities. Japan has come under sharp criticism, especially from Democrats on Capitol Hill, for getting so involved in plutonium recycling. Even so, none of her critics

110 MACABRE LETHALITY

has thus far seen her as preparing unilaterally to go nuclear in military terms. She has often called for a radical strengthening of the Non-Proliferation Treaty/ International Atomic Energy Agency (NPT/IAEA) regime. What also is appreciated is her energy insecurity. Over 95 per cent of her coal, oil and gas needs are imported, largely across thousands of nautical miles.27 In China, part of the economic case made for considerable investment in nuclear power is that it may ease energy shortage in provinces coal is hard to deliver to. In South Korea, on the other hand, the overt argument has followed lines akin to Japan’s, save for the earnest hope that a détente with Pyongyang might lead to coal and hydro-electricity being imported from the North. The nuclear percentage was said in 1994 to be destined to rise from 26.5 to 40 per cent by 2006.28 In fact, that target was passed six years early. Curbing proliferation In the summer of 1994, weeks of local rioting had obliged the Seoul government to rescind the building of nuclear facilities. It cannot have been mere coincidence, as Marxists have been wont to say, that the riots came during a spell of bitter diplomacy between Pyongyang and Washington. The former had brought a 30-megawatt reactor on stream in 1986. Then in 1990 a French SPOT-1 satellite revealed a plutonium separation plant, partially complete. In April 1992, North Korea’s parliament belatedly confirmed an IAEA safeguards agreement as per its accession to the NPT. But next March, it declared itself intent on NPT withdrawal. However, this bouleversement was put on hold in June, pending dialogue with Washington. The erratic course thereof was characterized by Pyongyang’s vacillating wildly about IAEA, and threatening to turn the whole peninsula into a ‘sea of fire’ if she was hassled overmuch. For her part, Washington deployed Patriot batteries to South Korea while pressing for UN sanctions against the North. Russia and China cautioned against them. The outcome was the October 1994 Agreed Framework plus a supplement signed in Kuala Lumpur the following June. Under these accords, Pyongyang was to abandon her nuclear weapons programme in exchange for two modern 1000-megawatt reactors; normalized relations with Washington; and oil supplies. Come December 2002, however, this fragile détente finally collapsed. But a new factor this time round was a groundswell of opinion in the South in favour of accord with the North, this regardless of ideology or, many felt, of nuclear strategy In Taiwan, sharp internal divisions over matters nuclear came to a head in 2001 with President Chen’s decision to stop construction of a fourth nuclear power plant. The Kuo Min Tang had argued, on economic grounds, for its continuation. Iran is another country with a nuclear interest about which domestic opinion is split more or less down the middle. But here the split is a manifestation of a much deeper philosophic and geopolitical divide. Comparison with mainland China is invited in that in each country the nuclear commitment of the hard-

LIMITED WORLD WAR? 111

liners is sustained by an awareness of having historically been at the centre of a regional world and much respected not just for its political influence but for its culture. Also, like Maoist China more than its legatees of today, the revolutionary side of the Iranian body politic has an acute sense of historical wrongs. Most searing has been the Iraq-Iran war. Thus the fact that Saddam’s Iraq ‘had started the war, had used chemical weapons, had targeted Iranian cities with missiles, and held Iranian territory…confirms for Iran its view that the current international order is unjust and hostile towards it’.29 Yet it was the last Shah who pointed the way to the unilateral nuclear option. Dilating in 1974 on his reactor installation programme, he averred that ‘We will buy everywhere, both from the Western countries and from the East if they are ready to sell.’30 Movement towards a nuclear capability can be a halting progression, as can movement away from it. North Korea and perhaps Iran apart, no countries seem poised newly to gain military nuclear status this decade. But this does not mean the floodgates could not open soon afterwards. The IAEA, founded in Vienna in 1955, has a somewhat contradictory legacy from that ‘atoms for peace’ era. Nor do the contradictions diminish over time. A desire to promote peaceful nuclear applications has been recharged by concern over greenhouse warming. But adequate surveillance may be vitiated by the difficulty of predicting reactor plutonium output to within 2 per cent. There may also henceforward be more determined concealment of enrichment and separation than has usually been essayed until now. Peaceable appeal Whether in the ultimate military nuclear proliferation can be managed appropriately is bound to depend heavily on the evolution of the international arms race, including the role of biowarfare within it. But it will also depend on how the civil demand for plutonium develops over the next thirty to fifty years. Here a salient issue will be how price-competitive nuclear energy proves. Prediction is vitiated by the reality that, traditionally, energy sectors have tended to be either heavily subsidized or severely taxed; and such intervention is sure to continue, Kyoto and all that. Official figures indicate that the OECD countries alone poured $159 billion into nuclear development between 1974 and 1998. Given that background, electricity from nuclear fission can today be quite competitive, subject perhaps to eventual decommissioning costs. In the future, it should become so more freely as (a) hydrocarbon fuels get more expensive and (b) novel reactor designs ‘dramatically improve’ safety, sustainability and general efficiency.31 But a big planning complication is that nearly all forms of sustainable energy are capital intensive, nuclear not least so. A fission reactor typically takes six years to plan, then six to build, and ought then to operate for forty years. These secular time frames leave room in plenty for supply-demand imbalances.

112 MACABRE LETHALITY

The availability of fissionable material is unlikely to be a limiting factor globally this half century, with or without fast breeders. The estimate often quoted for known reserves of uranium ore is 100 years on present extraction schedules. Thorium is not cheap to extract but large deposits of its chief ore, monazite, are found in India, Canada and Brazil. Besides, fuel only accounts for several per cent of the cost of nuclear electricity at present. Appreciable rises in fuel price might therefore be accommodated as demand and supply evolve. Meantime, a Japanese pilot scheme is extracting uranium dissolved in the oceans, albeit at ten times today’s market price. Operational reactor safety is something about which onlookers can afford to relax a little as monitoring improves. Granted, the Chernobyl explosion made 26 April 1986 more of a climacteric for millions than 9/11 was to be. After all, the final death toll therefrom will probably be the several tens of thousands suggested in a tenth anniversary article by the distinguished epidemiologist (as well as Ukrainian Green Party founder and man of letters) who was then the Ukraine’s Ambassador to the USA.32 Even so, it is fair to recall how wild some of the alarums in the early aftermath were; and to view this grim event as even then an exception, not the rule.33 Waste and resolution As ever, the disposal of nuclear waste (and especially spent reactor fuel) is clouded with uncertainties. One is how readily MOX may be made truly attractive. Otherwise, a modish notion is that ‘high-level’ waste might best be stored in vitrified rods and/or canisters some hundred metres underground, pending a more permanent arrangement. What certainly could be invidious is leaving them in situ more than a few decades. Nobody can be sure how underground hydrology may vary from one year to the next, let alone across time frames liable to encompass marked climate change. Nor can one exclude waste retrieval for radiological or explosive combat. Besides, nearby communities will have their own precautionary reasons for insisting retrieval remains a possibility. Given that its ‘half life’ is 24,400 years, Plutonium 239 would likely not decay to what we regard as acceptable levels for hundreds of centuries. All of which invites the revival of an old but still emotive theme: the use of the deep ocean floor to receive toxic waste, radionucleides included. This would involve inter alia revising the London Dumping Convention of 1972. The concept would be to drop vitrified rods on to mud or clay-covered stretches of the ocean floor well away from the mid-oceanic ridges, the vents of which are rich in exotic life. It would also be so to shape each rod that it sank into a soft sea floor.34 Nobody could call this solution ideal. The areas in question are flattish and seem not too varied in composition. But we cannot assume, in the absence of comprehensive exploration, that all such stretches are devoid of life. Much of the deep floor is something like 5,000 metres below the sea surface; and life forms

LIMITED WORLD WAR? 113

have already been found in the free ocean at 3,000. Moreover, it now seems probable that the oceans accommodate zillions (maybe 1025?) of free microbes, archaea and bacteria. A large proportion could be at great depth, and many will rely on metabolisms thus far quite unknown. A century ago, the assumption was that the entire deep floor was flat and lifeless. Though we have come a long way since, uncertainties about it remain. Sunken ships from two world wars have shown how insidiously sea water may corrode various hard structures, given a few decades. So could rods that did not become embedded be prone to eventual decay? The risk of lethal pollution should be very small even long-term, but can we be sure it would be nonexistent? A degree of desecration would be involved in any case. There is something to be said for treating the ocean deeps as a sacred grove. The fission contribution Time and again in this fraught century, the management of this shrinking planet will entail choices between greater and lesser negatives. Here the crunch question still has to be how much we must rely on nuclear reactors to cover future energy gaps, anticipated or otherwise. The economics of big reactors (e.g. 1,000 megawatts) may be enhanced by the coming into service around 2010 of ceramic power cables that ‘superconduct’ electricity at temperatures down to 77 K with liquid nitrogen (a quite available resource) acting as the coolant. Reactors as small as 100 MW seem a medium-term alternative. Conversely, nuclear power is still disadvantaged by several tendencies or residuals. Received opinion does not yet see desalination as a major nearterm requirement.35 The same must be said of fuel cells using reactor-generated hydrogen, despite a recent disposition to talk them up anew. After all, if a fuel-cell automobile engine today costs scores of times what the petrol variety does, the era of general application can hardly dawn much before 2020. Be that as it may, the environmental case for the fuel cell (which itself produces no CO2 or CH4) hinges on the hydrogen it consumes being produced in a way that also avoids greenhouse emissions. That, together with the thermal concentration desirable for efficient hydrogen generation, rather points towards nuclear or thermonuclear reaction as and when fuel cells do enter service in a big way. The International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis at Laxenburg in Austria reported in 1998 on the world’s energy outlook. They put its capacity in 2050 for the nuclear generation of electricity at between 410 and 740 gigawatts.36 But suppose it turns out to be 300 GW, presumptively because ‘renewables’ (solar power, wind power, hydroelectricity…) have progressed well. Run two-thirds of the time, this could generate enough plutonium yearly to make 10,000 Nagasaki warheads. One way to preclude military nuclear proliferation zooming out of control has to be addressing more urgently the waste disposal question. Another could be to focus on thermonuclear fusion more determinedly (see Appendix B). A third might be to evolve a global

114 MACABRE LETHALITY

nuclear strategy whereby those countries which are already military nuclear install a high proportion of the new reactor capacity. Yet at the same time, there should be acceptance of some further proliferation of nuclear deterrence to stable and responsible polities, a pitch close to that Kenneth Waltz has long argued for (see Chapter 12). The more dominant presumption endorsed fervently in the 1960s (though less so since) has been ‘N plus one’: that every state which goes military nuclear thereby encourages another to, this to the detriment of the rest of humankind. It has been the nuclear equivalent of the domino theory, and is similarly a product of chop logic from that same era. Few people then saw biowarfare as the more serious menace. Undercover nuclear attack Sometimes the science press intimates that, should a dissident group acquire enough suitably fissile material, making a usable nuclear bomb would be ‘child’s play’ for them.37 This viewpoint draws sustenance from the extraordinary ‘Nth country’ experiment embarked on in April 1964 in Livermore, California. Three post-doctoral physicists, with no background in nuclear technology nor access to classified information, were invited to design a fission bomb. By September 1966, they had finalized a detailed proposal for a plutonium implosion device generically akin to the Nagasaki bomb; and their submission stood up to crosschecks well. They then took a few more weeks to design a thermonuclear device, and again were confirmed to have arrived at a solution, albeit one of low efficiency.38 Inevitably, that double consummation fuelled fears lest, in due course, nuclear weapons separately be acquired by a score of parties, statist or insurgent. But as far as the latter possibility is concerned, one must ask whether any insurgency movement, even Al-Qaeda in its prime, could ever be possessed of a sufficiently solid engineering base. Take the use of beryllium reflectors to keep the critical mass tolerably small. This remedy is decades old but still seems quite exotic. Similarly, the triggering by implo sion that also helps limit critical mass requires much finesse conceptually and more in fabrication. Great computing power and skill is also required if one has to conduct a ‘virtual nuclear test’ rather than a real one in the desert or wherever. On the other hand, fabrication might be easier if one went for a simpler design philosophy. Reportedly, the fissile core used in the Hiroshima bomb weighed as much as 60 kg. This was in part because (a) U235 was used, and (b) the whole design approach was conservative. Thus the triggering principle employed was ‘gun-assembly’ rather than implosion. The end result was a bomb much too big to be man-portable. For use surreptitiously today, it would need to be concealed inside a freight container. However, analysts regularly cite that as a preferred means of long-range delivery in any case, since the bomb would thus be shielded from very efficient Geiger counters and related detection devices.

LIMITED WORLD WAR? 115

‘SBM’ Besides, we now have before us a graphic example of an insurgent movement (none other than Al-Qaeda) incipiently receiving advice from individuals within the official nuclear community of an emergent military nuclear state, namely Pakistan. The prime mover appears to have been one Sultan Bashir-ud-Din Mahmood, alias ‘SBM’. He and some others were detained by the Pakistani authorities a few weeks after 9/11. Then in January 2002, Islamabad decided not to press charges against SBM and a leading colleague despite having concluded they had violated their secrecy oaths during visits to Afghanistan. The two agreed to accept instead a monitoring regime almost tantamount to house arrest. The difficulty of tracking and curbing such dissident behaviour is usually compounded by individual contradictions and ambiguities. Take SBM’s personal profile. A talented nuclear engineer trained in Britain, he has held a variety of senior posts appertaining to his country’s military nuclear development. His resignation, reportedly early in 1999, was concurrent with outspoken condemnation of his government’s declared willingness to sign a Comprehensive Test Ban, now that its basic test programme stood complete. He sees the ‘Pakistani bomb’ as rightfully belonging to the Ummah—the worldwide community of the faithful. His interpretation of Islam is very millenarian and rather occult.39 Added to all of which are the uncertainties concerning the structure of any systemic conspiracy within Pakistani officialdom and the extent of any penumbra of approval or acquiescence surrounding it. Fission toxicity Radiological materials were probably included in any nuclear agenda SBM discussed with Al-Qaeda. At all events, they have to be on ours. They may be defined as transient products of radioactive decay, characteristically with shortish half lives. In other words, they freely give rise to alpha and beta particles and, of course, to gamma rays, all of which have toxic effects on living organisms. Alpha particles are, in essence, fast-moving helium nuclei liable to be absorbed into other nuclei, thereby altering their structure and chemistry. Beta particles are fast-moving electrons. Uranium nuclei fission down more than fifty different tracks, thereby creating over a hundred direct fission products. Nearly all are radioactive themselves and so decay into ‘daughter’ elements. By the time stability has been achieved, over two hundred isotopes from forty elements have been created. Two of the primary derivatives, Strontium 90 and Cesium 137, should be especially mentioned in view of their prevalence and lethality. Each has a half life of about thirty years. Prominent among the secondary derivatives is Carbon 14 with a half life of 5,600 years. Three-quarters of the energy ultimately given off by the decay chains is in the form of gamma rays. It is nowadays conceded that even slight rises in radioactive dosages above natural levels increase the risk of malignancy.

116 MACABRE LETHALITY

Several million individual sources of ionizing radiation exist around the world, many of them too casually secured against theft. Their defined purposes include sterilizing food and pharmaceuticals; tracing cancer cells; inspecting wells; exploring for oil; and addressing fundamental physics. Thus far they have been very little used for disruption or intimidation by either insurgents or common criminals. Handling difficulties and slow pathogenic results largely explain this.40 None the less, recent years have seen ten or more incidents of small-scale nuclear smuggling in the wake of the collapse of the USSR. Several reasons can be adduced. Poor record-keeping on such matters in former Soviet Socialist Republics has been one. Poverty coupled with residual revolutionary reflexes among nuclear scientists formerly in military employ has been another. All in all, it is probably sensible to regard radiological attack as a moderate potential threat primarily in the interval prior to a full development of biowarfare: a threat that might be presented most assuredly undercover by agents or insurgents locked into some state intelligence service. Very considerable though the terror engendered could be, the casualties per incident might be counted in their hundreds rather than their hundreds of thousands. Though an incidental global effect is different from targeted specific events, one may get some inkling of the overall impact from experience with nuclear testing in the atmosphere. Just over twenty years ago, a study was completed for the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute by Joseph Rotblat, Professor Emeritus at the University of London and a veteran of Project Manhattan. He concluded that the 300 megatons exploded in the air or at sea by 1975 (well over 90 per cent prior to the Partial Test Ban of 1963) would likely have caused 150,000 early deaths worldwide through cancer or other genetic damage. This would largely be induced by isotopes mentioned or alluded to above.41

7 The ascent of the missile

Herein a missile can be defined as a form of ammunition that propels itself in flight towards its target. Within that definition, the chief distinction to draw is between the cruise and the ballistic genre. The former is a crewless bomber dependent on air for oxygen and aerodynamic lift. The latter initially receives a boost from a rocket integral to itself. After burn-out, it is in parabolic ‘free flight’—i.e. subject, in principle, only to gravity. However, the boost phase is not usually less than a tenth of the total flight time and, at shorter ranges, may be a much higher fraction. Atmospheric resistance has some effect, too. A form that may assume tactical importance, in due course, is the cruisecumballistic hybrid. This will basically be a cruise design but with rocket boost for either initial or terminal acceleration. It will betoken the wider truth that cruise missiles and ballistic ones can be complementary means of attack especially in ‘theatre’ (i.e. regional) war. Indeed, the Iraqis mixed the two genres a little in their 2003 strikes. But when, in 1983, President Reagan embarked on his quest for missile defence worldwide, he principally had in mind wide-area defence against long-range rocketry with mass destruction warheads. Therefore the ensuing decade saw too little attention being paid everywhere to the singular defensive challenge advanced cruise missiles pose. That singularity resides in an ability to jink (at perhaps two or three times g, the acceleration due to gravity) or else to contour-hug or sea-skim closely and, in due course, at supersonic or hypersonic speeds. But as it does either, a cruise missile may consume fuel several times faster than it would on a ‘minimum energy’ flight. Even without that incremental demand, however, fuel load must be a constraining factor over extended ranges. Proscriptions on the overflight of neutral territory can be a further impediment. Nevertheless, cruise missiles intended to strike deep into the respective continental heartlands were deployed in submarines by each Superpower towards the end of the Cold War. The United States Navy brought into service in 1983 the Tomahawk (range 2,500 km). Its Soviet counterpart, the SS-N-21 (range 3, 000 km) was deployed in 1987. Moreover, in 1982 the US Defence Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) was said to be evaluating a proposal for a Ground-Launched Cruise Missile with a range exceeding 10,000 km.1 Evidently

118 THE ASCENT OF THE MISSILE

one way of thwarting surface BMD, even at intercontinental level, could be to have cruise missiles underfly it. Ballistic trajectories None the less, it is currently the ballistic genre which confers on missilery a salience at various scales of conflict. Among the definitions extant are the following. A Medium-Range Ballistic Missile (MRBM) has a range between 600 and 1,500 nautical miles while an Intermediate-Range Ballistic Missile (IRBM) covers 1,500 to 3,000 nm. Anything above is usually dubbed ‘inter-continental’. The flight of a rocket across the greater distances relates to geodesy, to the Earth’s curvature and gravitational pull. Because of these, the extra range achieved surface-to-surface through any increase in burn-out velocity rises more and more disproportionately (see Appendix A). But the downside is that range determination will therefore be less exact, unless terminal correction of some kind is incorporated. For any states newly embarked on the quest for strategic rocketry, this can pose a problem. So can the generation for extended ranges of enough propulsive power, this via a multi-stage rocket. Smooth separation of rocket stages can also be critical, especially as between the final stage and the missile bus or Re-entry Vehicle (RV)—the ‘warload’ in the terminology this text employs. A warload may be unitary. Alternatively it may comprise a number of RVs plus perhaps decoys intended to simulate further RVs. A subject of much discussion across the years has been the re-entry of an RV which has actually risen above the atmosphere appreciably (see Appendix A). Experience consistently shows this to be ‘the most difficult single technical problem for emerging rocket powers, making it extremely difficult for them to create effective ballistic missiles with ranges greater than 1,500 km or so’.2 However, general accounts sometimes dwell overmuch on the initial shock of re-entry, and too little on the thermal and mechanical stress generated well beyond it by frictional drag proportional to the square of the velocity of the RV at a given time. The aerospace community may have too readily seen analogies with the sound barrier in aerodynamic flight, an effect which can loosely be characterized as acute rather than prolonged since airflow abruptly realigns around aerofoil surfaces. The smooth return of an RV into the atmosphere will depend on the use of structural materials of enhanced quality. But it will also depend on the design philosophy. Two alternative modes were defined early on. The one is to have a broadly rounded heat sink integral to the nose cone. The other is to install a nose cone that ablates. The latter is less susceptible to wind drift but harder to develop. Suffice to add that the Iraqi Scuds fired against Israel during the 1991 Gulf War typically travelled 750 km. This meant they had barely to re-enter the defined atmosphere. Even so, their RVs tumbled badly, compromising their accuracy. How RVs of such poor quality would have behaved over longer ranges

LIMITED WORLD WAR? 119

is problematic. An RV dispatched across intercontinental distances will re-enter the atmosphere at about five times the speed those travelling 500 km normally achieve. It may therefore be retarding by 30 to 50 g as it passes through the lower atmosphere.3 In addition, the temperature of the air immediately around may rise several thousand degrees Celsius. This consideration cannot but cast doubt on a lead conclusion of the report to Congress in July 1998 by the Rumsfeld Commission on The Ballistic Missile Threat to the United States, meaning its home territory. This was that, should those concerned so decide forthwith, North Korean or Iranian mass destruction ballistic missiles could be targeted on American home territory, albeit imprecisely, by 2003 as could Iraqi ones by 2008.4 Besides, this apparently categoric assessment was rather undermined by the further comment that the range required might be reduced by firing from the territory of a ‘third party’.5 Launching from sea or air was also considered; and India was thought to be working on a sea-launch capability.6 Ballistic propulsion Here the most basic choice is between either solid or liquid fuels-cum-oxidizers. The liquid mixes very consistently yield 15 to 40 per cent more thrust, weight for weight, but do tend to be corrosive, volatile and therefore dangerous. They tend also to be difficult or impossible to store long inside a rocket. Moreover, their use requires on board not just tanks but high-speed pumps plus fuel-injection, cooling and ignition. That makes such missilery expensive to procure, especially when set within ferro-concrete protective emplacements. Furthermore, it is disadvantageous operationally if the mix used is ‘unstorable’—i.e. has to be pumped on board once the order to launch has been given. In the case of an ICBM that can take a good hour, twice the intercontinental flight time of an incoming rocket. In practice, liquid propulsion proved difficult even for ranking world powers to apply at strategic level. Technology transfer had to play its part. The USSR acquired the concept for a soundly storable propellant mix from the USA; and utilized it operationally from 1964, by which time China had got the formulae from the Soviets. She also benefited in this regard from a defection from the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena. Eventually, a solid fuel mix always proves the more manageable at the strategic level as well as below. Initially, however, there can be stability problems, especially the control of the burning rate. It has been said that the SS-20 (see below) was the USSR’s first really satisfactory solid-fuelled strategic rocket. France got its initial breakthrough only by swallowing its pride and eliciting help from US government and industry. Both the USSR and China also seem to have received basic assistance from that quarter.7 Britain opted to buy Polaris and then Trident from the USA, but make her own warheads.

120 THE ASCENT OF THE MISSILE

Missile accuracy Discussion of the accuracy of shells, aerial bombs and missiles still hinges on the notion of Circular Error Probability (CEP), defined above as the radius of a circle (centred on the aiming point) within which half the shots can be expected to fall at the given range or, in the case of aerial bombs, from the given altitude. With either ballistic or cruise missiles, acceptable accuracies might be achieved up to, say, 75 km without instrumental guidance en route. But for transit well beyond the horizon, the aerospace community has come to rely heavily on Inertial Navigation Systems (INS). The principle of INS is as follows. If a small mass is suspended inside an accelerating body, it will tend to move backwards in relation to it. Pari passu, the mass will shift forwards if the parent body is retarding. Springs attached to the mass will register the proportional strains. With such an accelerometer placed on each of the three cardinal axes, full data on motion can be derived computationally. During World War II, German scientists resolved the basic mathematics and made fair progress with the gyroscopic mountings accelerometers need to stabilize readings. An alternative approach is just to ‘strap down’ the accelerometers on to the aircraft or missile airframe. This cannot proffer consistently the same exactness. In the period 1950 to 1965, INS made great progress in the West, including the suspension of INS units in a film of lubricating fluid. Then and subsequently, esoteric knowledge was closely guarded for commercial as well as national reasons. Nevertheless, by 1985 more than twenty manufacturers in seven Western countries were building more than a hundred different INS models for aircraft.8 Clearly, that circumstance was conducive to still wider proliferation. But a big caveat to enter is that missilery makes tougher demands in the way of assured INS performance than aviation does. In this aspect of military technology as in others, China indicates the possible pace of progress by a dynamic emergent nation. She applied gyro stabilization in her DF-5 ICBM (which became operational in 1981), having brought into service in 1977 her first INS for aircraft. She had relied on ‘strap down’ for the DF-4 ICBM/IRBM when it entered service in 1979. Yet we are advised on good authority that cumulative inaccuracy can make this solution of little value beyond c.900 km.9 Now Beijing is likely to extend INS progressively. The last couple of decades, the progress of INS within the West has been subtly incremental. But over the next few years, a new generation of fluidsuspension sets will enter the missilery realm. Quite possibly, too, a more dramatic lift-off will be evident when (in twenty years’ time?) nanotechnology asserts itself in this field. It may be that advanced INS will be deadly accurate without any recourse to external cueing. At all events, INS will remain basic to the dispatch with high accuracy and far beyond the terrestrial horizon of ballistic or, indeed, cruise missiles.

LIMITED WORLD WAR? 121

Various means of course correction may be prayed in aid especially for the terminal part of a flight. With cruise missiles, indicated adjustments in direction or speed are affected via the main engine. With their ballistic counterparts, actuated vanes or vernier rockets may be used terminally. At boost phase, fluid injection or else gimballing of the main nozzle are ways of deflecting exhausted gases. Adjustment of the burning rates does not seem practicable with solid fuel mixes. Navigation via satellite is a further facility available. The United States early established a commanding lead. The launching of some thirty navigational satellites by various American agencies between 1959 and 1974 was capped in July of the latter year by the placing in high orbit of the first of the twenty-four NAVSTAR satellites which comprise the Global Positioning System (GPS): a joint services programme able from the outset to transmit to a user vehicle, anywhere and within a tenth of a second, its position to 10 metres in three dimensions and its velocity vectors to a centimetre per second. By 2002, the standard accuracy for GPS was 7 metres on the civilian code and 3 metres on the encryptable military P code. In 2005, a new military M code is to be introduced. From 2010, the advent of more satellites with tightly focused beams will multiply effective transmission power two orders of magnitude.10 Also, UAVs may serve as decoys. All in all, GPS should become a lot more jamming resistant. Still, the philosophy informing GPS is that it should also be accessible for peaceful purposes to all humankind. Evidently that can conflict with a general desire to inhibit unwelcome military activities. A partial remedy is the transmission of separate military and civilian codes. However, deployed forces that are stationary or slow-moving may enhance civil resolution severalfold by integrating multiple readings. Other countries will gradually acquire a useful capability in terms of satelliteaided navigation. A modest spread has already developed (by themselves or in collaboration) communications or Earth observation satellites. Meanwhile the Russian Federation and, until just recently, the Ukraine have been operating ICBMs in which INS is backed up by stellar fixes. A long-range cruise missile may have on board a terrain-following radar that can facilitate contour-hugging and (if complemented with relevant mapping data) navigate overland. Using such a radar during its approach, a Tomahawk is said characteristically to register a CEP of 15 metres. In other words, it is pretty well as accurate as an aerial bomb guided down from medium altitude by laser beam. Relying on INS alone, a Tomahawk might drift 100 metres or more over an extended range. Strategic missile accuracy Before the big lift-off in INS from 1950, the prospects for strategic rockets of adequate accuracy looked poor. The V-2s the Germans fired against Britain

122 THE ASCENT OF THE MISSILE

achieved a CEP of 5 miles across an average range of 200. In 1947, American military took 30 km as the best foreseeable intercontinentally, partly because the exact dimensions of the Earth were still uncertain. In fact, however, it seems that the ICBMs coming into service by the mid-1960s had CEPs of the order of 2 km. Then through the early 1970s a quantum hike came with the introduction, at this strategic level, of Multiple Independently Targetable Re-entry Vehicles (MIRVs). These autonomous multiple warheads (perhaps ten per rocket) did not merely enable thermonuclear firepower to be spread economically between several targets per missile, they also enabled a final guidance correction to be fed in late by an on-board programme updated at the time of separation. A mere 100 metres was being claimed in 1995 for Peacekeeper, the American MIRV-ed ICBM.11 No missile silo could ever be proofed against a nuclear ground burst so close in. Even a ‘nominal’ (i.e. Hiroshima) yield would be liable to produce a crater plus debris lip several hundred metres across. The other side of this particular coin is an important truism. It is that the warheads borne on long-range ballistic missiles may not have to be in the massdestruction category, not even for intercontinental strikes against hard targets. By 1987, the USAF was at a ‘critical point’ in the development of high-explosive warheads intended for installation in Minuteman 3 ICBMs modified to home in on emissions from enemy master radars. By 1995, the United States Navy (USN) had tested a Trident D5 SLBM fitted with a non-nuclear precision warhead incorporating metal rods so as to penetrate up to 20 feet of concrete. The advice was that this D5 might be guided on to target by GPS.12 Coming down to intra-continental level, at the end of the Cold War the US Army’s Pershing 2 (range 1,800 km) achieved a CEP of 30 to 40 metres through terminal correction (for inertial error and wind drift) by means of a built-in combination of radar and digital mapping. Alternatively, a proposed variant bearing up to seventy-six scatterable warheads could be used against Warsaw Pact airfields in Central Europe. Studies had indicated, in fact, that 100 such rockets could cut the Pact’s initial aerial sortie rate by 35 per cent.13 Never mind that, although rated on MRBM, the Pershing 2 program was cancelled worldwide under the Intermediate Nuclear Forces (INF) agreement of 1987. Likewise cancelled under this accord, the Soviet SS-20 rocket was able to deliver, across 5, 000 km, three MIRVs with CEPs of 400 metres. Ultimate precision However, the elixir of near-perfect terminal precision may soon be within sight of realization with ballistic missiles as well as with cruise missiles, shells and bombs. The instrumental technology will be sensor fusing. At the 1994 biennial air show at Farnborough, Britain, a canister of standard dimensions was exhibited which, dropped from an aircraft, opened up to release a dozen bomblets one or two hundred metres above—let us say— tanks in open formation. Each bomblet would then home, by means of an image-comparing sensor, on an individual

LIMITED WORLD WAR? 123

tank. The manufacturers stressed that the technologies incorporated in this Sensor Fused Weapon (SFW) were thoroughly state-of-art. The components had been bought off the shelf except for those machined to fit particular niches. No reason was seen why China, say, should not have this technology a decade or two hence, nor why the warload section for a theatre rocket could not readily incorporate the SFW principle on either a multiple or a unitary basis. Credibility is lent to these prognoses by such ordnance having entered aerial service very much on schedule in relation to the decadal lead time very characteristic of modern weapons. It was being predicted for the middle 1990s in the public debate in 1984–5.14 As regards eventual strategic application, sophisticated shrouding will probably enable sensors to withstand high speed re-entry. Even in the West, the SFW revolution may not be comprehensively complete this side of 2015. But when it is, ‘indirect fire’ beyond the horizon will no longer be less precise ipso facto than fire which is ‘direct’ or line of sight. Together with the quantum advance in surveillance, this will mean that high military dividends can accrue from tactical pre-emption. Technological diffusion Certain general statements can be essayed concerning how long it may take the developing nations to eliminate, more or less, the lead of the advanced nations in respect of military missilery. Perhaps the most basic is that development is a lot more difficult (because it is so multifarious) than may be the case with warheads of mass destruction. Within that context, one can further say that a lowperformance cruise missile tends to be easier to develop than its ballistic counterpart. However, a high-performance cruise missile may be inherently harder to design and build than its ballistic equivalent. Then, more fundamentally, a capacity for missile development most naturally emerges out of a broader aerospace industry set within a dynamic industrial sector. Within the Arab-Iranian zone, aerospace manufacture remains as yet minimal. What little takes place is largely concerned with assembly (e.g. of Scuds) as opposed to full production. In a world survey of this industry, Britain’s leading authority found no occasion to mention the region. Compare that with his extended coverage of elsewhere in Asia.15 The chief multinational restraint on the proliferation of either genre of missile is the Missile Technology Control Regime (MTCR) established by the G7 in 1987. By June 2001, there were thirty-three member states. Those in Asia included Japan, South Korea and Turkey. There were also several ‘adherents’. Those in Asia included Israel, China and Taiwan. The MTCR basically aims to limit the proliferation of rockets and aerodynamic vehicles able to carry a payload of 500 kg at least 300 km, the underlying concern being to constrain recourse to mass destruction warheads. In fact, in 1993 the guidelines were extended to include missiles usable for the dispatch of smallish biological and chemical charges. The MTCR is binding only

124 THE ASCENT OF THE MISSILE

politically, not legally, a flexible status that inter alia helps safeguard civil aerospace. Anxiety has sometimes been expressed that this regime is less stringent for cruise missiles than for ballistic. Performance is harder to define and determine with the former. Take the approval by the US Department of Commerce and the Pentagon in the mid-1990s of the sale to China of Garrett turbofans. The US intelligence community was reportedly apprehensive lest these be used to upgrade the HY-2 anti-shipping missile, enabling it to deliver its 500 kg warload across 600 km instead of the mere 95 km then achievable. In general, however, the sub-systems of an advanced cruise missile need to be specifically designed to achieve the compaction required. Moreover, those systems are more elaborated than are their ballistic counter-parts, the solid mix genre at least. In any case, it is hard to believe the MTCR per se can ever be more than a delaying stratagem or, indeed, that the capability limits set will not have to be relaxed in pursuit of wider considerations. The surface-to-surface missile, and perhaps especially the ballistic genre, is too attractive a weapon for the less privileged. Though by no means easy to make or operate, it is easier on both counts than is, say, a strike aircraft or frigate. It is among the instruments of war eligible for use in either small or large numbers without heavy infrastructure. It is further a ‘poor man’s’ remedy because it can readily have a long life (thirty years?) but also because old and new versions may be employed together to compounded effect. However, its weakness is a lightish warload. Well over a thousand Scud Cs (with 700 kg warheads) would be needed to deliver as much high explosive as, say, a NATO armoured division might expend in a day’s hard pounding. Nor would the Scuds distribute their warload as effectively against most target patterns. To which one might add that, the way things are, IRBM/ICBM proliferation seems destined to be minimal this next ten to fifteen years. After that, the number of contingent variables makes definitive prediction impossible. But in principle, there will be the pre-emption option. In technical terms at any rate, the best time to intercept an ICBM is when it is still on the production line.

Part III Defence against missiles

8 Ballistic encounter

A chequered progression1 As early as the 1920s, design work had begun in Germany on the pulse-jet: a simple form of jet propulsion destined to power the V-1 ‘flying bombs’. In 1944–5 some 6,000 of these rudimentary cruise missiles were to be launched from land or air against Britain or, in due course, the Low Countries. In 1943, the Luftwaffe had sunk several ships at sea, an Italian battleship among them, using a short-range air-launched cruise missile. The first waves of V-1s dispatched against England, in June 1944, were subjected by the British defences to an attrition rate of only 2 per cent. Within a week, however, the reckoning exceeded a third; and 43 per cent was to be the average for the nine-month campaign. Towards the end, anti-aircraft batteries on England’s North Downs were shooting down up to 80 per cent of those V-1s that crossed their sights.2 Yet invaluable though the interceptions were for the Allied cause, they cannot be said to have negated the threat the V-1s posed. Whitehall was always quick to dismiss them as mere ‘terror’ weapons. But they could have been much more had Hitler followed military advice early on and, instead of directing them so overwhelmingly against London, paid some attention to the congested ports being used to sustain Operation Overlord, the invasion of Normandy. The Supreme Allied Commander, Dwight Eisenhower, later wrote that had Hitler made the ‘Portsmouth-Southampton area’ a principal V-1 target over a six-month period, ‘Overlord might have been written off.’3 The vulnerability of ports and harbours may likewise be a big issue in the future, should the ascent of the missile spiral out of control. How the rates of successful interception of the V-1s varied over short spans of time well relates to experience with manned aircraft. Towards the end of World War II, the representative loss rates for warplanes engaged in offensive operations ranged between minima of under one per cent and maxima of 35 per cent or more. Placings within those limits were determined by geography, force strengths and densities, electronic technology gaps, tactics, weather, the element

BALLISTIC ENCOUNTER 127

of surprise and other variables. Much the same has applied in the more recent past. So will it in the future, this for cruise missiles as well as for manned warplanes. Just two caveats may be entered. One is that the upper limits for missiles will be more problematic. The other is that henceforward manned aircraft may regularly minimize risk by acting as platforms for the ‘stand-off’ launch of missiles, mainly of the cruise variety. Much of what has just been said applies no less to defence against ballistic missiles. But further qualifications should be entered. When one talks about ‘geography’ or, indeed, ‘weather’, one will often be doing so in the Near Space context rather than a customary Earth-bound setting. Then again, initial surprise may be very critical with Ballistic Missile Defence; and will very generally work to the advantage of the Offence. In particular, it will be difficult for the Defence to anticipate what may prove a suitable philosophy for battle management (see below). In fact, this is a salient reason why it has long been conceded on all sides that BMD could never guarantee 100 per cent success against a light and uncomplicated attack nor ever proffer complete protection against a heavy or sophisticated salvo. Visiting Israel in 1985, Edward Teller freely admitted that there was no ‘human way’ in which the Strategic Defence Initiative could be upgraded to ward off, say, 1,000 incoming missiles plus many decoys.4 The last September of World War II witnessed, too, the strategic debut of ballistic missiles as the Germans directed V-2 rockets against England and also the Low Countries to supplement their V-1 campaign. Electronic prediction of the place and time of individual rocket impacts was readily achieved. What did not follow, however, was even a distant prospect of interception on the basis of anything like a tolerable cost-exchange. A key study found that fields of shrapnel created by 320,000 exploding shells would be needed for the ‘likely kill’ of a single V-2. Phantasmagoric though that conclusion must have seemed, it did at least allow that chunks of metal could destroy or incapacitate an incoming warhead. That proposition may be significant for close-in defence in the future. Nazi Germany also embarked on the development of an A10/A9 ‘intercontinental’ rocket that Donald Baucom, the staff historian of SDIO, has opined might have become available to bombard New York during 1946, had hostilities continued.5 But was he being too facile about re-entry? At all events, the case for preparing for active defence against missiles (and especially ballistic ones) was firmly put in a War Department equipment report, headed by General ‘Vinegar’ Joe Stilwell, in May 1946. Henceforward a watching brief would be kept on the developmental possibilities. In 1958, this work was consolidated under the US Army’s Nike-Zeus programme. The Sputnik era The previous autumn the whole subject had been given a fillip by the orbiting by the USSR of Sputnik I. For this clearly connoted rocket propulsion of such power, accuracy and resilience that an alternative use could be the delivery of

128 DEFENCE AGAINST MISSILES

thermonuclear warheads against cities the other side of the Northern Hemisphere. The political impact worldwide was great Never mind the rocket motor in question being of the costly and cumbersome liquid-filled genre. Nor Moscow’s enduring preoccupation with Europe strategically, even in the realm of thermonuclear deterrence. Nor her emergent differences with Beijing. During the 1950s, she brought into service 200 strategic bombers able to make ‘intercontinental’ round trips to the American heartland. Yet she acquired another 1,000 with fuel capacity sufficient for ranging over Europe (or China) but not to reach North America and return. These Tupolev-16s were very largely based opposite Europe. Likewise, between 1961 and 1963 the USSR would install 700 strategic missiles inside its western borders, targeted on NATO Europe. The upshot was that the Soviets lost out awhile in terms of intercontinental deterrence at this, the dawn of the missile age. The imbalance that emerged was clinched by a double American breakthrough in 1960–2: reconnaissance satellites in orbit transmitting photographs of remarkably high resolution together with, at surface level, solid-mix strategic rockets in the form of (a) the Minuteman emplaced in silos and (b) the Polaris mounted in submarines. Among the early findings of satellite reconnaissance was that the USSR had far fewer ICBMs deployed than had previously been feared, a mere seventy-five by the summer of 1962 as against the several hundred or even two or more thousand successively forecast for then by intelligence services the past several years, this largely on the basis of simple extrapolations of the evidence from the U-2 overflights (1956–60). Yet the USA already had some 250 Minutemen and 150 Polaris operational. That disparity goes far to explain both the origin and the outcome of the Cuban missile crisis that autumn. By then, too, each side was deploying, in warships and on aircraft, nuclearcapable cruise missiles of short to moderate ranges. Portentous though this might seem in retrospect, however, it attracted little attention at the time. Nor did exploratory work on surface-based BMD hold out to either Superpower much hope of thereby gaining or regaining strategic ascendancy over its main rival. A sticking point, certainly for the Americans, was always the anticipated comparative cost. To build defences that might actively shield the continental USA against a salvo of 1,000 Soviet rockets, say, seemed liable to cost an order of magnitude more than Moscow might expend on doubling the size of the intended salvo, thus becoming able utterly to swamp the defence network. Duly, the Pentagon did a paper study of a concept called Ballistic Anti-Missile Boost Interceptor (BAMBI). It was proposed that up to 3,600 satellites might revolve in Near Space, poised to launch mini-missiles against ascending ICBMs during their boost phase. In 1963, BAMBI was cancelled, most essentially because various elements would have had to be orders of magnitude more reliable than seemed achievable near-term. But what many of us see today as the vexing question of Space weaponization had been brought on to the agenda, however chimerically.

BALLISTIC ENCOUNTER 129

Meantime both Washington and Moscow showed considerable interest in the passive defence of their respective homelands. In 1962, the United States administration committed itself in principle to a more or less nationwide coverage of fall-out shelters, public and private. Ostensibly, too, the securityobsessed Kremlin adopted an ever broader approach, one involving many blast-proof shelters, mass education and mass evacuation plans. How much solid progress the Soviets actually made along these lines is questionable. In any case, both Soviet and American interest in passive defence declined in the more relaxed international atmosphere that prevailed in the immediate aftermath of the peaceable resolution of the Cuba crisis. By 1968 or thereabouts, the two Superpowers were arriving at what could be an enduring Superpower stalemate in the realm of strategic deterrence. Solidfuelled rocketry again held the key. On each side, the deployment of ICBMs had already run into the several hundred while hundreds more strategic missiles were being installed in submarines. So at last it really did appear inconceivable that either Moscow or Washington could launch a disabling strike against the deterrent forces of its chief adversary without incurring the retaliatory destruction of virtually all the couple of hundred cities on which its national cohesion rested. Since 1964, Robert McNamara had been promoting the term ‘Mutual Assured Destruction’ (MAD) to describe this emergent circumstance. But what if, after all, this deterrence posture completely broke down and a full thermonuclear exchange between Moscow and Washington took place? Herman Kahn squared up to this issue more frankly than anybody. But he was not entirely convincing. He insisted a distinction was worth drawing between, say, twenty million American dead and a resultant time for economic recuperation of ten years; and the death of eighty million with a recuperation time of half a century. Nevertheless, his main contention was that casualties of some such order ‘would not preclude normal and happy lives for the majority of survivors and their descendants’ in the longer term.6 But how could he be sure? Might not a fraught post-war world be taken over, Orwellian fashion, by a cluster of Fascist regimes, each one more comprehensively ruthless and therefore enduring than anything seen yet? Quite a bit of the world went Fascist in the wake of the Wall Street crash of 1929. Yet that event was far less traumatic than MAD blowing apart would be. Acceptance of MAD as at least a pro tem working understanding found expression in the Strategic Arms Limitation Talks (SALT), an intergovernmental dialogue Moscow and Washington embarked on in the autumn of 1969. Those involved were mindful throughout of some scope for linkage between this diplomacy and the containment of violent conflict in Indo-China and the Middle East. Not just scope but an imperative, since some experienced commentators averred that strategic nuclear deadlock would otherwise leave more scope for local wars. The Superpowers also felt obliged to set an example on nuclear arms control, as per a requirement specifically enshrined in the preamble to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty of 1968.

130 DEFENCE AGAINST MISSILES

A SALT-1 agreement was signed in Moscow by President Nixon and Secretary Brezhnev in May 1972. It was so configured as to be verifiable by reconnaissance satellites, given a measure of mutual trust. It comprised (a) an interim agreement stipulating ceilings on the inventories of emplaced offensive missiles and (b) a treaty delimiting the deployment of Anti-Ballistic Missiles (ABM). This treaty allowed each Superpower to deploy just two screens, each to include not more than 100 static ABM launchers plus associated radars. One of the screens could be to cover the national capital and the other an ICBM field. First round BMD The fact was that the USSR already had ABMs in place immediately around Moscow. Their deployment had commenced in 1966. What has to be allowed, however, is that this commitment to defend the historic capital is consonant, within the SALT context, with a long tradition of the enveloping protection of Mother Russia. A clear manifestation thereof, ever since the eighteenth century, has been the maintenance of a large navy divided as between several land-locked or icelocked seaboards. Correspondingly in 1914, the Tsarist army had no fewer artillery guns overall than did its adversaries on the Eastern Front. But too much of its ordnance was tied down in fortresses, mostly close by a frontier or coastline.7 This preoccupation with all-round homeland defence can largely be traced back to the Muscovite polity’s having stood apart from the diversifying influences of early modern Europe, the Renaissance and the Reformation. The nearest Russian counterpart to the Reformation, the Great Schism, was triggered off by a Russian Orthodox Council decision, taken in 1667, to accept advice from the Greek Orthodox and Catholic persuasions about alterations to the scriptures and the liturgy. Despite Tsarist backing, this was fiercely opposed by many priests, peasants, cossacks and merchants—puritanical ‘Old Believers’ reactive to any whiff of spiritual pollution. Under Bolshevism, a sense of foes all round intensified. For many years, too, ‘Old Believers’ within the Communist Party acquiesced with almost tangible relief in the massive expenditure that defence against them involved. The alternative was to release resources into something of a Western-style consumer boom which might, in its turn, have stirred alarmingly Western political aspirations.8 Nowhere has this withdrawal syndrome been more evident than in the huge effort so long devoted to home air defence, this largely under the rubric of Protívo Vozdushnaya Strany, an elite force dedicated to the vain task of ensuring that the heavy bomber would never get through. Early in 1941, PVO-Strany was accorded direct representation on the high command; and in 1948, it was made a separate service. A dozen years later the Soviets were authoritatively reckoned to be spending three times as much on continental air defence as the Americans were.9 All the same, the advent within PVO-Strany of Soviet BMD must also be placed in its immediate context. In fact, it was part of the military response to

BALLISTIC ENCOUNTER 131

China’s entering that same year upon the nationwide orgy of manipulated Red Guard savagery known as the Cultural Revolution, an episode now recalled with horror and disgust by the overwhelming majority of those who experienced it. Suppose a China thus crazed had elected to use against the USSR the simple strategic deterrent it was establishing. Moscow would have been the most likely target since the national capital’s obliteration could have caused the whole Soviet regime to unravel. As to whether the BMD system being deployed (code-named ‘Galosh’ by NATO) could have defended the Soviet metropolis even against a weak strike with unsophisticated thermonuclear rockets, collateral British experience is instructive. It was also in 1966 that Polaris rockets (fitted with British-designed warheads) entered service in Royal Navy submarines. Each rocket bore three reentry vehicles. All three had thermonuclear warheads but were not separately targetable and remained quite close together throughout descent. Given that the large Galosh rocket was assessed as carrying a megaton warhead, the apprehension was that a single one could destroy such a clutch of RVs. Moreover, the British were overridingly concerned with the retaliatory destruction of Moscow. Accordingly London embarked on the Chevaline programme of warload upgrading. The individual RVs were made less ‘radiation soft’. Decoys were included to simulate RV appearance and flight. Added, too, were bunches of ‘chaff’, strips of radar-reflecting foil. Then all these items could be distributed on release with studied randomness, this within a ‘threat tube’ typically 100 km long and 10 km in diameter. The cost of this intricate development rose to a billion pounds.10 A protocol to the ABM treaty was signed in 1974. It committed each Superpower to settle for one mode or the other, defend either the national capital or else an ICBM field. The Soviets had continued with the former option, as the Russians still do. As for the Americans, in 1967 a weary Robert McNamara had reluctantly embarked on the Sentinel programme for thin-screen ABM deployment. Those obdurately pressing him to do this had been bolstered by Galosh. Within three years, however, the Chinese military had intervened decisively against the Red Guards. By then, too, the Beijing authorities were (a) satisfied that the American will to stay in Vietnam was broken and (b) concerned to move closer to Washington as an insurance against the military build-up around the common border conducted by the Soviets since 1966. Therefore President Nixon announced in March 1969 that, under the Safeguard revamping of Sentinel, the emphasis would switch from a ‘thinscreen’ defence of American cities against a limited thermonuclear threat from China. The focus was now to be on the active defence of one or more ICBM fields against the much enhanced strike the Muscovite Superpower could be expected to muster a decade or so hence. Not that Safeguard was to last. It was terminated by opposition ‘on the hill’ in 1975. Above all, Congress was doubtful about its ever being effective against the

132 DEFENCE AGAINST MISSILES

Multiple Independently Targetable Re-Entry Vehicles (MIRVs) the Soviets, like the Americans, had lately been installing. MAD uneasily revisited Thenceforward concern was repeatedly expressed about the acute vulnerability, in the near future, of all ICBMs in emplacements. Yet so was it about how far the land-mobile ICBM, the most obvious alternative, might (a) vitiate arms control surveillance and (b) impinge incongruently on civil society. At the same time, there was a tendency in certain quarters much to exaggerate the susceptibility of Fleet Ballistic Submarines well dispersed at sea (and, not infrequently, under ice sheets) to advances in Anti-Submarine Warfare (ASW). Obversely, the great majority of we analysts and commentators were disposed to disregard the dependence of these vessels on a few home ports and communication nodes, inherently exposed to attack.11 What was thus taking place was a Superpower reaffirmation of MAD. It was favoured by tendencies under way by 1970 in the general world scene. A crucial one was the precipitate decline from 1968 of the worldwide wave of protest that had begun, in the USA, in 1963–4: protest emanating on the campuses, energized by Vietnam, and highlighted by television. China’s Cultural Revolution can be seen as a distorted reflection of it. By 1970 the universities, those in the West let us say, had met most of the reasonable demands for internal reform, along with not a few of the unreasonable ones. By then, too, Washington was gradually but visibly resigning itself to the abandonment of Saigon. At the same time, she was developing a reassuring dialogue with Moscow, SALT being a core element thereof. Soon she would be on better terms with Beijing as well, President Nixon’s visit to China in 1971 marking an historic turning point. Unfortunately, no sooner did this new mood seem firmly established than it started to wane. An energy crisis was brought abruptly to a head by the ArabIsrael war of 1973. Soon, too, the lack of progress on actual arms reduction gave rise to concern. Even so, the strongest single source of renewed anxiety was the failure of the Soviet bloc members adequately to implement the human rights provisions in the 1975 Final Act of the Helsinki Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe. Then, around the turn of the next decade, local crises broke with disconcerting suddenness. They did so very notably with the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, though also in Grenada, Iran, Nicaragua and Poland. With each situation in turn, a feeling was soon abroad that the upset in question could have been avoided, given a modicum of foresight on the part of the respective authorities. Yet there was also a sense that each was, in the final analysis, but another symptom of a continual rise in global stress. Analogies were drawn with 1914, either overtly or by direct implication.12 One German commentator wistfully emphasized how instability was compounded by a technology-driven arms race.13 The fact that the

BALLISTIC ENCOUNTER 133

two Superpowers were currently settling for a rough parity in terms of ‘intercontinental’ war did not preclude them and their allies from engaging in competitive modernization of their panoplies at regional level. Most remarked in this connection was the Soviets’ embarking in 1977 on the replacement of their first-generation IRBM/MRBM force opposite Europe with a new MIRV-ed rocket, the SS-20. NATO’s decision to respond by deploying a mix of Pershing rockets and ground-launched cruise missiles proved bitterly divisive in Western Europe. One reason was that a lot of people who accepted that mutual deterrence was a necessary part of the endeavour to preserve peace felt it would be futile to try and control nuclear escalation if, after all, deterrence failed. On the far Left this scepticism was encapsulated, through the mid-1980s, in the notion that the world had enwrapped itself in a ‘catastrophe culture’. To many young people, in particular, it appeared ‘out of control and on the brink of destruction’.14 Star Wars? This European reaction was supercharged by what was soon dubbed the ‘Star Wars’ announcement of 23 March 1983. In making it, President Reagan was in part responding to a mood shift at home. A resurgent dread of nuclear war was an element in this. In 1983, in fact, some 75 million Americans watched on ABC a film called The Day After. It anticipated the consequences of ‘the bomb’ being dropped on a town in Kansas. A wave of public consternation ensued. Within it, there was an ‘America first’ impulse, this considerably in reaction to the antiAmerican slant so visible again in the European cocktail of protest. Very many of the activists repeatedly focused on Pershing and, still more so, ‘cruise’ as though they had never heard of the SS-20. However, a more intrinsic factor also came into play in what was, after all, an avant garde economic sector not really subject to the constraining discipline of (a) a robust and overarching strategic doctrine or (b) untrammelled market forces. That factor was industrial momentum sustained by (a) entrepreneurs in search of business and (b) gifted technologists on the lookout for really exotic challenges. Above all, these motives came into play with the application of Directed Energy Weapons (DEW), alias lethal beams, to Ballistic Missile Defence. We are told by Donald Baucom that progress with DEW ‘more than any other development excited renewed interest in deploying an ABM system’.15 Given the influence and inclinations of Teller, the nuclear-pumped X-ray laser (tested at Livermore in 1980) must for this purpose be included (see below). Within a month of the Reagan announcement of 23 March 1983, two studies had been launched. The more philosophic and policy-oriented was entitled Ballistic Missile Defense and US National Security and was chaired by Fred Hoffman. A finding highlighted was that any defences created ‘must themselves avoid high vulnerability, must be robust in the face of enemy technical or tactical countermeasures, and must compete favorably in cost terms with expansion of

134 DEFENCE AGAINST MISSILES

the Soviet offensive force’. Meanwhile a panel under James Fletcher, the head of NASA, completed a Defensive Technologies Study concerned to identify promising directions for technical exploration. Its broad conclusion was that ‘multilayered’ BMD should ultimately work out though much would depend on how ready the USSR was to negotiate a new framework of reciprocal deterrence. It looked towards a decision in the early 1990s about whether to proceed with engineering validations. In the policy directive of 24 April 1984 that created the Strategic Defence Initiative Organization (SDIO), the Secretary of Defence said it should follow ‘the technology plan identified by the Fletcher Panel and the policy approach outlined in the Hoffman study’. While keeping open the option of ‘near term deployment of limited BMD’, it was to explore a ‘layered defense system’ with the main emphasis on ‘non-nuclear technologies’. There had to be ‘full consultations with our allies’. A quietly charismatic USAF general, James Abrahamson, headed SDIO from its inception until 1990. Despite pertinent precedents, he simply dismissed as ‘absolute hogwash’ the notion that BMD might best be dedicated to the defence of ICBM silos.16 Subject to that arbitrary and unfortunate exception, however, he sought to stimulate a free-ranging debate about priorities within SDIO. As part and parcel, the organization launched a raft of exploratory technical programmes. Meanwhile the in-house debate interacted with a wider public one; and this often brought out the exemplary best in American think-tank analysis and scientific journalism. Much of the understanding thus acquired still bears on the outlook for BMD, not least as regards the Near Space environment. Adequate performance by the actual interceptor systems was always going to be essential. However, much importance also attached to two wider aspects. The one was Surveillance, Acquisition, Tracking and Kill Assessment (SATKA)—in short, the collection and processing of active threat data. The other was Battle Management, alias command-and-control. In the summer of 1985, the Eastport Study Group (a panel drawn from industry, government and academia) reported to SDIO on ‘Battle management and command, control and communication (BM/ C3), the paramount strategic defense problem’. It advised that any SDIO architecture should allow the BM/C3 structure to be devolved with no very tight co-ordination from the centre. A standard element within the panoply might be ‘a small battlegroup formed from several sensor and weapon platforms that are within a few 100 kilometers above a missile launching area at the beginning of a full-scale attack’.17 In other words, Space weaponry was overtly envisaged. Among the prospective advantages of a distributive network were these. The software could be simpler. There would be more scope for technical diversity. Above all, a devolved system should be better able to avoid catastrophic collapse in the face of programme aberrations or enemy interference.18 Yet appropriate though this approach to C3 may have been, it did not waft away the problems. The computer programme required for nationwide mass defence was generally expected to contain between six and thirty million lines of code. Some even said

BALLISTIC ENCOUNTER 135

100 million. Compare that with the 1.3 million lines in the then routing programme for US national telecommunications; the 3.0 million lines for the Space Shuttle, roughly 100,000 of them on board; and the 2,261,000 the Safeguard ABM had required.19 Reportedly, computer scientists at AT&T guestimated that 10,000 logical or syntactical errors might persist within an SDI nationwide programme, maybe one for every 2,000 lines of code.20 The ineluctable persistence of bugs was one reason for saying, as virtually every commentator did, that no SDI peace shield could ever achieve 100 per cent interception of a major attack nor ensure a perfect performance against a light one. Yet admission of these grounds for uncertainty led on to a more fundamental question. Might a ‘peace shield’ prove to have been holistically misconstrued: in other words, to have been erected in anticipation of attacks too different in configuration from what then transpired? According to a Defence Science Board task force reporting in 1987, the oft-remarked syntactical errors were ‘fuzz compared to the conceptual errors in most systems’.21 One antidote to thus being caught off balance would have been to have several battle plans available, so that whichever seemed the most appropriate dealing with a materializing threat could readily be selected. However, this remedy would have been liable further to extend software facilities over-stretched already. Besides, there were bound to be limits to the dexterity of any architecture. To quote again the Eastport Study, ‘the feasibility of the battle management system is much more sensitive to the system architecture than it is to the choice of software engineering’.22 As regards SATKA, the first thing to say is that facilities for passive sensing from orbit could well be ten times less bulky than those for active. The passive mode was therefore earmarked to provide much of the data on threat development. A few Boost Surveillance and Tracking Systems (BSTS), sensitive to Medium-Wave and Short-Wave Infra-Red (MWIR and SWIR), meaning 10, 000 to 800 nanometres, would be in geostationary locations looking for rockets ascending in boost phase. Meanwhile a rather larger number of Space Surveillance and Tracking Systems (SSTS) would orbit at lower altitudes, 1,000 to 4,000 km, say. The Long-Wave Infra-Red (LWIR) spectrum to be utilized on them to track mid-course objects also encompasses much of the natural radiation from the Earth. It was chosen because the surface temperature of warheadbearing Re-Entry Vehicles (RVs) will be liable to fall only slowly below those obtaining at sea level. Conversely, a decoy balloon maybe not a kilogram in mass would cool rapidly in the Near Space ambience. All the same, a threat cloud might best be viewed from a low oblique bearing that presented a Deep Space background. To curb internal ‘noise’, sensor cells would have to be supercooled, ideally to 5 Kelvin for LWIR and maybe 50K for Short-Wave. Though a lot of progress had been made with microcooling by 1987, a problem still remained.23 That

136 DEFENCE AGAINST MISSILES

much the same applies today even for SWIR is indicated by the ‘skyrocketing’ cost of Space-based Infra-Red System-High.24 One inference drawn was that quite different technologies would have to be mustered to provide the very exact tracking and definitive discrimination requisite for the engagement of RVs with tolerable assurance. Soon interactive discrimination was being experimented with in a score of different modes. The underlying idea was that a beam playing on an object may cause the latter to vibrate, slow down, warm up or give off distinctive radiation. Just how it reacts may be an indication of mass; and hence, in the SDI context, of whether it really is an RV, not a decoy. In 1986 Louis Marquet, SDIO’s director of Directed Energy Weapons (DEW), averred that interactive discrimination might ease performance requirements for related systems ‘by at least two orders of magnitude’.25 Among the particular approaches tried were lasers designed to effect either warming or retardation. But soon the most favoured by SDIO proved to be Neutral Particle Beams (NPB) intended to induce within their targets atomic reactions involving emissions of neutrons and electromagnetic energy, at distinctive speeds or wavelengths respectively. In 1987, an American Physical Society study group concluded that only with a high weight penalty could enemy decoys be modified to thwart NPB interrogation.26 Nevertheless, even a tentative assessment of cost-benefit was still some years off. One agreed priority was a reduction in the size of a neutron-detection orbital platform from 30 tonnes to several.27 That alone said volumes about expectations and realities. As regards the modes of interception, the big divide was always that between Directed Energy Weapons and Kinetic Energy Weapons. Programmes encompassed by the latter included missilery and Electro-Magnetic Launchers. Those covered by the former were particle beams (principally NPBs again) and lasers. Among the more critical judgements in the particle beam domain was the altitude down to which such platforms in orbit might be lethally effective against the rocket casings of ballistic missiles ascending in boost phase. In 1985, two distinguished physicists reckoned 140 km.28 Three years later, Marquet was claiming 80 to 100 km.29 But in 1986 the Committee of Soviet Scientists mentioned in Chapter 1 said 200 to 250 km.30 Granted, that was against the background of minimal comment on particle beams in Soviet technical literature the previous decade or so. However, in the USSR pre-Gorbachev there was not infrequently an inverse correlation between the attention accorded a technical military matter in the public domain and the interest taken within the corridors of power.31 In the USA the particle beam debate ran conjointly with a wider one about the use of lethal lasers to engage offensive missiles in boost phase. What this was reckoned mainly to turn on was the explosive rupturing of rocket casing. An early study by Ashton Carter of MIT opined that estimates of the hardness of existing Soviet rockets were ‘probably reliable only to a factor of 10 or so’.32 Nevertheless, many analysts would not have demurred at a guestimate Dr Carter

BALLISTIC ENCOUNTER 137

himself then proffered, up to 10,000 joules per square centimetre to rupture a solid-mix contemporary ICBM. After all, everyone started with the knowledge that the West was making the cases of even its biggest rockets only a few millimetres thick. What had to be anticipated, however, was a revamping of the Soviet strategic missile forces to make them far more resistant thermally. Thus a shiny aluminium surface might reflect over 90 per cent of any infra-red or visible light falling on it. Then again, a graphite layer a centimetre deep could absorb an energy deposition of 20,000 joules per square centimetre. A further authoritative claim was that adding several grams of graphite or metal to every square centimetre of casing on, say, a Soviet SS-18 ICBM could be offset by offloading perhaps a couple of its ten or so RVs.33 For liquid-mix propulsion, there could eventually be a return (albeit with a substantial weight penalty) to the V-2 concept of special fuel and oxidant tanks set well within an external shell. Finally, rockets might rotate in flight, an option reportedly available in the MX land-based strategic missile under development in France.34 When these considerations were related to those appertaining to staying locked on to an offensive missile accelerating unsteadily into Near Space, it became clear this mode of laser warfare was no easy option. Hence the interest attracted by the nuclear-pumped X-ray laser, it being intended for lofting into orbit (probably from submarines) in time of crisis. It was dubbed the ‘third generation’ nuclear weapon by Edward Teller in the very seminal meeting he held with President Reagan on BMD in the Oval Office on 14 September 1982.35 It soon transpired, however, that the President himself was not entirely happy with the idea of an SDI ‘peace shield’ that was supposed to make nuclear weapons ‘impotent and obsolete’ including, as one of its ‘layers’, a device dependent on channelling nuclear energy down directional rods. Meanwhile Freeman Dyson, an eminent Princeton astro-physicist, extolled the X-ray laser as a beautiful piece of physics but deemed it unsuitable for strategic deployment.36 Conversely Teller and his colleagues at Lawrence Livermore stressed how essential they deemed it thereby to redress the shortcomings otherwise inherent in National Missile Defence (NMD). Annual appropriations for X-ray laser development duly more than doubled between 1985 and 1987. Even so, it was exposed to well below average public scrutiny. Nowadays it plays no part in deliberations in any case. On the Kinetic Energy Weapon front, the rail-gun form of the ElectroMagnetic Launcher (EML) was closely considered. Alas, it is hard to see why. A solid shot from a rail-gun might take 40 to 50 seconds to reach a targeted ICBM, say, 1,000 km away. Even for that, a power surge to several hundred megawatts would be needed to impel the shot outwards; and its launch ramp would be hundreds of feet long. Accordingly, the static weight of any orbital launch platform would likely be a good 100 tons. So the subtle yet continual realignment of platform and/or launcher would have been a major challenge. Besides all of which, heavy

138 DEFENCE AGAINST MISSILES

duty operation in the Near Space ambience of so esoteric a technology as the railgun remained problematic. Generically speaking, the alternative KEW approach to BMD was the minirocket, either surface-based or Space-based. Though the interception of offensive rockets would be the prime concern, the engagement of enemy assets orbiting in Space might be a supplementary consideration. Ideas about the best architecture ramified. But by the late 1980s Lowell Wood at Lawrence Livermore was working towards the deployment of ‘Brilliant Pebble’ mini-rockets that, being suitably ‘smart’, could be installed singly on orbital mini-platforms, semi-colloquially termed ‘sleeves’ or ‘life jackets’. The launch weight of a ‘Brilliant Pebble’ might be 35 kg. The reckoning was that, from the end of the millennium, up to 100,000 in low orbit would proffer a density maybe two orders of magnitude greater than other Space-based remedies might register. However, actual lofting in such numbers might have to wait upon the breaking of a warlike contingency. But that proscription could prove hazardous in terms of crisis management and deterrence stability. In any event, the debris implications might be grim, too. SDI played down Through 1987, a disposition to ease up on SDI more or less across the board gained ground in Washington. It was conceded all round that developmental progress was proving harder to make than hoped. What is more, 1968 experience apropos Vietnam had left the American public none too persuadable that a heavy extra input of resources in whatever form would tip the balance decisively. Nor could the fiscal dimension be ignored. Between 1981 and 1986, the federal budget deficit more than tripled to 200 billion dollars. Yet the capital cost over time of comprehensive BMD at strategic level was very coolly calculated to run close to half a billion dollars.37 Not infrequently, in fact, a trillion was conjured.38 The relationship between those several global figures was not decisive but it was disturbing. Deep differences of opinion within the scientific and political communities weighed in as well. So did doubts entertained within other friendly countries. Thus as the liberal Arms Control Association fulsomely acknowledged at the time, the British Embassy in Washington assumed a singular salience as a friendly but forceful critic. To this pitch, there was a background. Very early on, the Thatcher administration had moved to stake out a joint Anglo-US policy. In December 1984, President and Prime Minister had agreed, at Camp David, on ‘four points’ that would be the criteria by which any decision to deploy BMD would eventually be taken. Their gist was that any such departure should follow upon discussions with allies and also with adversaries; preserve US-Soviet parity; consolidate deterrence; and allow of cuts in the missile echelons of both East and West.

BALLISTIC ENCOUNTER 139

Then speaking to the Royal United Services Institute in London in March 1985, Sir Geoffrey Howe was to spell out as Foreign Secretary a gamut of reservations about SDI. He summarized them as follows: There would be no advantage in creating a new Maginot Line of the twenty-first century, liable to be outflanked by relatively simple and demonstrably cheaper countermeasures. If the technology does work, what will be its psychological impact on the other side?… And, if the ballistic missile showed signs of becoming, in President Reagan’s words, impotent and obsolete, how would protection be extended against the non-ballistic nuclear threat, the threat posed by aircraft or cruise missiles, battlefield nuclear weapons or by covert action? If it initially proved feasible to construct only limited defences, these would be bound to be more vulnerable than comprehensive systems to countermeasures. Would these holes in the dyke produce and even encourage a nuclear flood?39 The pertinence of this indication by Sir Geoffrey Howe of his basic doubts lay in these already being quite widely shared both sides of the Atlantic. To them was soon to be added what must have been for SDIO a bitter-sweet reality. Accepting that the organization did appear to have made a salient contribution to the end of the Cold War, the fear was abroad none the less that this consummation might be compromised by a heavy and ongoing commitment to the SDI concept. The upshot was a tangible weakening of support in Washington, as 1987 progressed, for any very full-blooded rendering of SDI. Perhaps the clearest manifestation of this was the departure from the Reagan administration of the Pentagon’s five proSDI stalwarts: Frank Gaffney, Fred Iklé, John Lehman, Richard Perle and Caspar Weinberger. No matter that each in turn gave more personal reasons for exiting. As Vice-President, George Bush (Snr) had been paying particular attention to SDI issues. In February 1988, he affirmed that ‘Premature deployment of something that isn’t totally effective would do nothing but cause the Soviets to break out of the ABM treaty and overwhelm what we’ve got’. In the light of that, it was to be expected that, as President, he would soon set in motion a fundamental re-examination of missile defence strategy. In fact, in his inaugural State of the Union address of January 1991, he said that ‘Looking forward, I have directed that the SDI program be refocused on providing protection from limited ballistic missile strikes whatever their source.’ Evidently, this Global Protection Against Limited Strikes (GPALS) was pitched well short of the goal Ronald Reagan had propounded in March 1983, that of seeking to render all nuclear warheads ‘impotent and obsolete’. Nevertheless the Bush revision led to the Missile Defence Act of 1991, the first legislation to call explicitly for actual deployment. Its prime stipulation was the development, for deployment not later than Fiscal Year 1996, of 100 Ground-Based Interceptors (GBI) along with the requisite radar stations and satellites, the purpose being to defend the continental United States. Initially every GBI would be located at just

140 DEFENCE AGAINST MISSILES

one American site so as to comply pro tem with the 1972 treaty as qualified by the 1974 protocol. Grand Forks, North Dakota, was soon confirmed as the site selected. The Act also called on the President to ‘Pursue immediate discussions with the Soviets’ of treaty modification, hopefully to achieve (a) scope for additional interceptor and radar sites, (b) flexibility in regard to the application of more advanced radar technologies, and (c) clarification of the scope for flight testing as well as of the relationship between National Missile Defence (NMD) and Theatre Missile Defence (TMD). The thinking expressly was that, in its first generation, the NMD might cope at one time with up to 200 enemy Re-Entry Vehicles (RVs): in other words, a limit well below the many thousands Moscow could launch in extremis. In all that, moderation prevailed. None the less, a further commitment enshrined in the Act was to the ‘robust funding’ of technologies for Global Missile Defence (GMD), basically by means of platforms orbiting in Near Space. Specific mention was made of the Brilliant Pebbles programme. The said legislation passed through the Senate with solid Republican support but with the vital backing, too, of a group of Democrats led by a Senator Sam Nunn anxious to restore his reputation for firmness after an ill-starred response to the crisis in the Gulf. The Democrat opposition was led by another Southerner, Albert Gore. Once again the big bones of contention in both Senate and House were the weaponization of Space and, most particularly, the threat posed to the ABM treaty. With the election of Gore as Vice-President in 1992, the legislative and executive instruments of power had to accommodate to yet another sea-change on BMD strategy, a change reflected in recast Missile Defence Acts. The nub was that, under Clinton-Gore, the emphasis would switch from NMD for the continental USA or, indeed, GMD and towards TMD in locales like the Gulf or Korea. Barely a sixth of the $17 billion allocated to BMD in 1994 for the four fiscal years ahead was for the development of ‘options for the contingency deployment’ of NMD as and when the world situation might warrant. Pre-emption? Late in 1993, the Clinton administration enunciated a comprehensive CounterProliferation Doctrine. Needless to say, all the usual measures were incorporated: diplomacy, export controls, bilateral or multilateral safeguards, arms control pacts, deterrence through retaliation, economic sanctions, and security guarantees. BMD and pre-emptive elimination were included too. This elevation of BMD was consistent enough with the priority by then being given to theatre interception. Nor was it without precedent. Arguing for SDI in September 1985, Henry Kissinger anticipated that ‘several Third World countries’ would have their own nuclear bombs come the turn of the century, and that some of them would possess ‘a vast capacity for blackmail because they

BALLISTIC ENCOUNTER 141

could make the threat of suicide more plausible’.40 Neither part of that prediction was far wide of the Clinton-Gore mark. That July, Caspar Weinberger had suggested, as Secretary of Defence, that SDI could police a disarmed world41—a studiedly casual thought which begged a raft of questions. In 1988, Libya was found to be building (with help from a West German chemicals firm) a large chemical plant at Rabta, 40 miles south of Tripoli. It was closed in 1990, after Washington had threatened to bomb it. Work then started on an alternative facility inside a mountain near Tarkunah, also inland from Tripoli. Reportedly, the CIA generated in 1992 (from satellite reconnaissance and espionage) a computer model showing ‘Rabta 2’ with several thousand square feet of floor space already. Washington made ready to inhibit the inflow of supplies since direct attack on such a facility was still impracticable.42 The election of Bill Clinton to the Oval Office in 1992 did not alter perspectives on this score. In September 1993, Secretary of Defence Aspin confirmed that an ‘important category is attack on buried targets because in many of these countries, proliferators are using hardened underground structures to build or operate special weapons arsenals from’. This was subject just to the caveat that, before such a mission was essayed, local contamination risks would have to be assessed. Correspondingly, by 1996 the Israelis were remarking on a big change in retrospective international attitudes to their successful 1981 strike against the reactor Iraq had deeply emplaced at Osirak. At the time, they were censured by every other government, Washington included. Now attitudes appeared to have shifted diametrically.43 Possibly the same could have applied apropos the sabotage in April 1979, by Israel or whoever, of a reactor core then in storage at La Seyre-cum-Mer in France. It was awaiting shipment to Iraq. All of which makes highly paradoxical the way pre-emption was discounted by the Clinton administration during its last year or so. To hear then its spokesmen, you would think this option had always been regarded as an abomination only the most satanic would contemplate. Not hard to imagine is that, with the end of the Cold War, the aerospace industry was pressing for remedies to the coupled missile/mass destruction threat that required more in the way of new hardware than does pre-emption. The result has been that, when the Bush administration talks of pre-emption against mass destruction capabilities, this is seen by many as a novel departure rather than as a reaffirmation of a preexisting strategy. Unfortunately, this erratic progression has precluded as yet the systematic development of a well-rounded pre-emption doctrine. On 16 July 1998 came the report of the Rumsfeld Commission, a panel appointed by Congress to study the threat directly posed to United States home territory by ballistic missiles. By virtue of their collective experience and good spread of germane opinions, Donald Rumsfeld and his colleagues had credibility ‘within the beltway’ of Washington and well beyond. They found the threat to be ‘broader, more mature, and evolving more rapidly’ than intelligence had estimated. Three main reasons were adduced. Emergent ballistic missile states

142 DEFENCE AGAINST MISSILES

were not as concerned as the pre-existing nuclear states had been with their longrange missiles being strong on accuracy, reliability and safe operation nor with each type developed being procured in particularly large numbers. Furthermore, their respective development programmes had received substantial external backing through the general spread of dual-use technologies; specific assistance from Moscow, Beijing or Pyongyang; and collaboration between the emergent states themselves. Lastly, those states were getting more adept at concealing development work, often foreshortening thereby the strategic warning their adversaries might receive. At the regional level, at any rate, these findings were borne out by events around the report’s publication date. That very month, Iran fired across 1,300 km a Shahab-3 ballistic missile. In April, Pakistan had tested its Ghauri missile to a distance of 1,100 km. Also, North Korea had fired its triple-stage Tae’po-dong— 1 more than 1,500 km. Attempting a satellite launch may have been one of Pyongyang’s purposes. The most essential point is, of course, that all three rockets will have risen on ballistic trajectories marginally above the defined atmosphere. Even so, nobody was entitled to beg questions about the transition to intercontinental delivery. Rogue states? A theme that had regularly come into discussion of missile defence, since 1995 or thereabouts, was that we were into a new situation as we now faced adversaries not always susceptible to reason and so perhaps impervious to deterrence through the threat of overwhelming retaliation. Active missile defence could putatively assume added importance against such ‘rogue states’, alias ‘Club Mad’. This perspective is not one to cast lightly aside. Rationalism and positivism are under threat the world over as humankind slides deeper into philosophic chaos and as ambient stresses intensify. Nevertheless, the concept of Club Mad is not validated by the collateral phenomenon of suicide bombers readying themselves to die in the service of extremism. A basic distinction here to draw is that between leaders and led. In their mid-twentieth-century heydays, Communism and Fascism regularly inspired and enforced sacrificial dedication. But those directly involved in such episodes were motivated differently from those who managed them from on high (see Chapter 3). The latter were never indifferent to the survival of their regimes and of themselves. Look how Hitler and his entourage clung on to the shreds of power until veritably the last minute even though Germany itself was being ruinated more and more. Nor can one simply come in on a different tack and insist deterrence is invalid because the rogue leaders of today have already shown themselves to be comprehensively insane. You could not be madder than Josef Stalin, to judge by much of his behaviour on the home front. Take the utterly gratuitous purge of the Soviet armed forces embarked on at the very time (1937–8) Nazi Germany was emerging as continentally a Superpower. Some 35,000 officers and political

BALLISTIC ENCOUNTER 143

commissars vanished or were executed. All but five of the eighty members of the Higher Military Council were liquidated.44 Yet in his dealings with other national leaders, Stalin displayed cool and ruthless shrewdness much more often than not, just as the even more lunatic Hitler did. Mao Tse-tung was likewise accomplished at the ‘great game’ of geopolitics. Never mind the heavy responsibility he bore personally for two huge aberrations internally, the ‘Great Leap Forward’ and the Cultural Revolution. What made their manic digressions on the home front all the more awesome is how little either Mao or Stalin were constrained by the elaborate command structures in place around them. Granted, neither was able to avoid major aberrations in external policy, usually through underestimating the resolve of their opponents. But that was not madness per se. Much the same could as well be said of Saddam Hussein or his North Korean counterparts—Kim Il-sung and now his son and heir, Kim Jong-il. Besides, even if one does accept that we will sooner or later be faced with unmitigated insanity —a Pol Pot, say—that may still be insufficient reason for the USA or the Atlantic Alliance having comprehensive BMD in place as soon as possible. The madman may see that as a challenge to overcome or circumvent. The ‘rogue state’ problem is not so insubstantial that we can forget it. But neither is it so uniquely urgent that we must rush to proscriptive judgement. Would that Bush had inherited from Clinton and Gore a more coherent doctrine on these matters, above all on strategic pre-emption. Rigour, the first victim? It is often said that in war the first casualty is truth. It has also been said that debate without decision is better than decision without debate. Granted, the latter precept is ill-suited to the exigencies of full-scale war, a flawed reaction often being preferable to total inaction. Still, the world is not currently so warlike that no time can be made for a synoptic review of the mass destruction threat and the responses available. Missile interception, in particular, must be judged in the ultimate not via tightly reductionist logic but within a broad context, political and operational. Such judgement needs involve, too, an interweaving of the two big issues, desirability and feasi bility. Crucial to democratic choice will be simulations and flight tests that are thoroughly representative and scrupulously reported. After the passage of the 1991 Act, SDIO made way for a Ballistic Missile Defence Organization (BMDO). This has now been foreclosed in favour of the Missile Defence Agency (MDA). From the start, SDIO was distrusted by American liberals. They saw it as a front for what William Broad dubbed the ‘high-tech Gulags’, secluded National Laboratories where scientists worked with maniacal energy in deadly secrecy.45 Nor can one deny that some strands within the SDI ambience did owe too much to single-minded zeal. But let me recount a

144 DEFENCE AGAINST MISSILES

contrary episode. Early in 1988,1 invited SDIO to read in draft the chapter within my New Strategy through Space book which evaluated the various technologies of SDI. The SDIO people well knew this study would oppose the weaponization of Space, an option they worked towards themselves. Nevertheless, O’Dean Judd as Chief Scientist and Dick Gullickson, his deputy, closely scanned the text, much enhancing the quality of arguments cast contrary to their own perspective. In both remit and structure, however, BMDO was to be more a procurement agency, less an exploratory one. The same goes for MDA. What is now Lockheed Martin Marietta was decidedly upfront through the 1990s in the advocacy abroad of BMD. Twenty-five years ago, the repute of its main parent firm, Lockheed, in overseas dealings was low. In 1976, its then Chairman and Vice-Chairman resigned after Senate revelations about $24 million being paid as bribes to foreigners since 1970 alone. This, plus a mint of money in the 1960s, had been dispensed to promote the Starfighter, an overstretched warplane procured by the Luftwaffe only to be involved in hundreds of major accidents. What the Japanese called ‘the Lockheed bomber affair’ precipitated major political crises in Bonn, the Hague and Tokyo. Extensive contacts with Lockheed Martin Marietta as an MOD Academic Consultant (1994–7) did not leave me with the impression that anything remotely akin was currently extant. Their Theatre High-Altitude Air Defence (THAAD) system was accorded prominence but presentations about it were a sight more objective than one might find with most interest groups in whatever field. Obversely, this must be said. One did receive written evidence hard enough to convince any reasonable person that another American aerospace giant was the lead benefactor of an academic programme established within a Western European university not to study BMD but to promote it. Nor can one feel any confidence that this abuse of corporate power was and remains a solitary exception. So what both industry and academia need to remember is just how retrogressive such tendencies are. Most of us brought up in a Britain still largely regarding itself as the ‘Protestant island’ were encouraged to see the last five centuries as ones of progressive enlightenment—a sharp contrast with the supposedly unmitigated barbarity of the later Middle Ages and of the crisis-riven fourteenth century in particular. Yet a seminal study from Ohio State University observed how that century witnessed the founding of scores of new colleges of higher education. Moreover, it does seem that ‘no power—king, pope, bishop, ecclesiastical or lay authority—ever attempted to press its own candidates for college fellowships’.46 Do we now want to sink below that norm? Nor can it be just a matter of comparisons so stark. Bias seeps in even without wilful intent, not least as regards military threat prediction. Room for its so doing must be the greater when weapons performance is projected into problematic future scenarios; and when either a programme or its parent corporation are under market strain.

BALLISTIC ENCOUNTER 145

National military cultures National culture in the round must also be reckoned with. History has instilled in our American confreres a singular zest for exploiting technology to the full. Often this zest has been generative, at other times overweening. Since 1940, there have been a raft of differences between the Americans and the British about battle or campaign management. The former have very consistently been the optimists, about what technology can do and the difference this may make. Sometimes the said dialectic has led to highly fruitful compromise. A striking instance was the telephonic conferencing whereby consensual forecasts were thrashed out between several meteorological centres for the 1944 Normandy landings. British pessimism about coping with the predicted weather secured a postponement of D-Day from 5 to 6 June. Immediate disaster was thereby avoided. But then American optimism prevailed, with the confirmation of the 6th instead of further delay—this to the next tidal opportunity a fortnight thence. Had sanguineness not carried the day then, Allied forces would have been subject to what suddenly became (on 19 to 22 June) the worst midsummer Channel gales in forty years.47 For the likely implications, see Chapter 11, Contemporary military cultures. Being more abstract, debates about doctrine have tended to be more absolute. For several years from 1957, some within the American defence community nurtured the hope that battlefield nuclear weapons could proffer economy to overstretched forces; and even that Western armies, being more educated and democratic, were better suited to the mode of warfare nuclear use would involve. This perception informed an assessment by Edward Teller and a colleague in 1958: Any unit fighting in a nuclear war will have to be small, mobile, inconspicuous and capable of independent action. There will be no possibility and no need to occupy territory nor to fight at fixed and definite fronts.’48 However, such a mêlée in depth with its heavy casualties could overstretch severely the numerically weaker side. A decision to convert the US Army to a ‘five-fingered’ or ‘pentomic’ divisional structure (instead of the customary three brigades) was in part to aim off against this. Other American analysts more simply argued that the extra firepower battlefield nuclear weapons afforded would enable a division to deter or contain across a wider front. Optimism peaked with the advent of the Davy Crockett mortar, a light crew-served weapon that could throw across a couple of miles a fission warhead with an explosive yield limited by impedance plates to a quarter or a half of a kiloton: 1 to 2 per cent of that of the Hiroshima ‘nominal’ bomb. Late in 1960, the Pentagon placed a provisional order for 6,250 Davy Crocketts. Through the early 1960s, however, notions of a nuclear battle assuming any coherent pattern fell into disfavour. The Davy Crockett programme was cut back, then abandoned. Meanwhile, the US army firmly reverted to triadic divisions, ones with three brigades apiece. These bouleversements owed

146 DEFENCE AGAINST MISSILES

something to discussion with sceptical allies, the British but also the continental Europeans. More generally, intra-NATO discussions have shown the British to be closer to their continental partners than to the Americans where operational military management is concerned. Karl von Clausewitz, the Prussian military philosopher who emerged out of the Napoleonic Wars, is by no means ignored in North America. Nor is he acclaimed without reserve in Europe. Nevertheless, his insistence that war is inherently chaotic has special resonance from Iberia to the Urals. It may still affect attitudes towards matters such as missile defence, expeditionary warfare, counter-insurgency and how devolved command-andcontrol should become. The danger now is that Europe will lapse into sceptical passivity. Constructive trans-Atlantic engagement is what the times demand in this sphere as elsewhere. Systems evaluation In the SDIO heyday of the mid-1980s, the subject of the nuclear-pumped X-ray laser was not aired as it could and should have been. However, what damaged BMD credibility more was a drawn-out attempt to suggest that great operational success was achieved in the 1991 Gulf War by the unenhanced Patriot anti-aircraft missiles deployed to Saudi Arabia and Israel to defeat Saddam’s campaign against those countries with Scud ballistic missiles. In interviews of top Israeli officials conducted by Reuven Pedatzur in September 1993, it transpired that Raytheon were still claiming that 70 per cent of the Scuds directed against Saudi Arabia and 40 per cent of those directed against Israel were successfully intercepted. The basic facts are these. Not more than two of the forty-four rockets dispatched to Israel were effectively engaged; and the likely figure is zero. Much confusion had initially been caused by the Scuds’ tendency to disintegrate spontaneously, even though this had been well observed during the Iran-Iraq war. It was also known beforehand that descending Scuds reached speeds near to twice those the proximity fuses fitted in the Patriot warheads were designed to cope with. To which had to be added doubts as to how effective the omnidirectional fragmentation that proximity fusing usually generates could be, in any case, against so nuggety an object as a Scud warhead. A report to the Israeli air force beforehand had concluded that the unenhanced Patriot was unlikely to down an adequate Scud percentage. Nor were there grounds for claiming more success over Saudi Arabia, except that extravagance was less subject to scrutiny in that obscurantist ambience. The gently jovial Theodore Postol is currently MIT’s Professor of Science, Technology and National Security Policy. Responding to an official call to review the Patriot/Scud saga alerted him to the likelihood of other testing programmes being oversimplified if not deliberately massaged. Lately he has looked at how an Exoatmospheric Kill Vehicle (EKV) steers on to its incoming

BALLISTIC ENCOUNTER 147

target within a National Missile Defence threat field, a context in which the Offence is liable to present many decoys. He noted a 1998 stipulation that the EKV must select its target ‘with or without’ information from ‘the rest of the NMD system’. He gave reasons why, even apart from that stipulation, selection could be very difficult, maybe impossible. Co-ordination between the surface radar and the EKV is complicated because a divergent radar beam cannot register bearing precisely while the infra-red sensor of the EKV cannot measure range at all. Moreover, ‘Space-balloon’ decoys will have infra-red profiles that considerably overlap with the target warheads. Taking account also of scintillation may aid discrimination but ipso facto add to computation. Besides which, preliminary engineering tests have shown that neither means nor variances lend themselves well to image predictions in specific situations. Postol insists such matters be subject to independent peer reviews by disinterested lay scientists with a background in measurement theory. He sees this routine as viable and vital.49 That Ted Postol has not been alone in his concerns was obliquely borne out by the June 2002 announcement by the Missile Defence Agency that there will henceforward be more rigorous flight testing to seek ‘hit to kill reliably in the face of robust counter-measures’. A mid-course interception test due in August would be against three moderately sophisticated decoys and a tumbling warhead. Viewed from the outside, that seemed not too simplistic—though, one has to say, not too demanding either.50 Weapons in Space? The doctrinal domain is always of consequence. Therefore one should reflect on a subtle mood change at the turn of the millennium in the pages of the Aerospace Power Journal, a quarterly known until late 1999 as the Air Power Journal. It is recognized as singularly seminal in regard to USAF thinking. The new mood was more emphatic and yet more mistful. We were told that, over the next two decades, the acquisition of Space-borne war-fighting assets will transform the USAF ‘into an aerospace force that operationally employs both air and space platforms to achieve our national military objectives’.51 Among other notions aired was that an arm thus integrated would be well placed to attack the ground support of an enemy’s orbital satellites or the launch pads of any anti-satellite weapons he may have.52 If Space-related surface facilities can thus be attacked, what about other surface assets? Should any decisions whether to attack them from the air or from Near Space solely depend on operational utility? Should the interception in flight of ballistic missiles be conducted primarily from Space? And what of the reluctance of the then Clinton administration to see the weaponization of Space? One commentator recalled that President Eisenhower had been among those opposed to the weaponization of Space but that the airmen of that generation ‘developed visions of Space that were at odds with those of their political

148 DEFENCE AGAINST MISSILES

leaders’.53 Something similar was happening through 2000. Relevant once again, one suspects, was the question of how stringent Albert Gore was really prepared to be on issues he himself acknowledged were critical.54 The fact is that the USAF is the prime exemplar of the reality that air arms face a crisis of separate identity. They do so as the manned warplane is displaced considerably by other (usually more automated) modes of engagement, this within a tendency for the air-and-surface battles to conflate. The USAF is therefore disposed to affirm its separateness by extolling the putative paramountcy of Near Space, the new ‘high ground’. Yet pro tem this quest involves not spelling out too clearly what paramount might connote. Likewise, a keynote 1998 statement from the British aerospace community simply found it ‘difficult to avoid the conclusion that, sooner rather than later, the control of Space will become as important as controlling the seas or air’.55 Too often in this corpus of literature, the conclusions have been hard to avoid and their connotations easy to evade. Fortunately, there have been refreshing signs recently of a rebound against this collective turn-off. An article in the Aerospace Power Journal early in 2001 called for ‘Greater intellectual honesty and openness in discussions of strategy, greater coherence and rigour in the resulting vision statements’.56 The indications a year or so later of more rigorous MDA flight testing of anti-missiles (as noted above) similarly betokened a more positive spirit. Germane, too, are intimations that airborne laser research may be ‘emerging from the black world’.57 Defence is a fast-evolving field in which one cannot afford to be hamstrung by institutional predilections and contradictions. It is a cardinal reason why one needs from academia inputs of high intellectual rigour. What should be insisted on as a precondition of this is full and binding disclosure of sources of financial support, personal or departmental, whenever academics are bearing at all directly upon public policy. Some such requirement has, after all, become quite commonplace in, for example, civil medical research.58

9 Terrestrial coverage

Defence from the surface Customarily a basic distinction drawn in the Pentagon has been that between Theatre Missile Defence (TMD) and National Missile Defence (NMD), the latter normally referring to the protection of the American homeland against ICBMs or their sea-based counterparts. However, those concerned are no longer happy with this distinction. What counts as TMD in terms of global strategy becomes NMD for nations residing within potential theatres of war: South Korea, Taiwan, Israel and so on. Moreover, what the influentially hawkish see as the ultimate antidote in this regard, the Space-Based Laser (SBL), can contingently be seen as either TMD or NMD. Area or point? In any case, it may often be important to separate surface-based capabilities out another way, making a divide as between area and point defence, the latter referring to the close-in cover of key targets. Point defence tends to be the more efficacious since (a) relative force densities can be more favourable and (b) the defenders are concerned not with intercepting RVs crossing their line of sight but with ones directly approaching while often retarding. The assets being shielded that closely will frequently be military not civilian, the big sticking point with James Abrahamson as SDIO Director. Yet, as intimated above, the precept he ruled out does have persuasive precedents. At the height of the Battle of Britain, Berlin was raided expressly to draw the Luftwaffe’s bombers on to London and away from RAF fighter stations. Then in the wake of a revisionary Defence White Paper in 1957, the RAF deployed its squadrons of Bloodhound high-altitude surface-to-air missiles strictly to guard its own strategic bomber bases from pre-emptive attack by their Soviet counterparts. Likewise between 1969 and 1975, American anti-missile coverage was limited to an ICBM field.

150 TERRESTRIAL COVERAGE

The cruise missile Another recurring blind spot in discussion of these matters concerns the potential of the cruise missile. Yet it is starting to play what soon could be an awesome part in theatre war. Its attributes in flight (see Chapter 7) are well complemented by those pre-launch. Cruise missiles can be placed in canisters, making them easy to store and then operate even in harsh environments. Correspondingly, their launch sites may readily be improvised and concealed. Test firings, too, are hard to observe. Training to operate may take but a few weeks. All of which could explain why, to cite an authoritative 1992 report, ‘most countries with ballistic missiles in their inventories first bought and deployed aerodynamic missiles’.1 Granted, a simple cruise missile (e.g. a converted light aircraft) will likely be flying slow, straight and well above the surface. If so, it will be easier to intercept than its ballistic counterpart. But a cruise missile possessed of the generic attributes identified in Chapter 7 may be much harder to engage except perhaps over the sea. Harder still, however, may be the cruise-cum-ballistic hybrid. Take, for instance, a form that, powered by a ram jet or gas turbine, skims along near the surface for most of its flight but during final approach climbs into a vertical loop, from whence it makes a rocket-powered descent to target. The Russian Federation is said to have brought to operational status no fewer than ten kinds of anti-ship cruise missiles with rocket boosters incorporated for either initial or terminal employ.2 Two of these ten designs are supersonic. But what currently is the West’s most celebrated cruise missile, the Tomahawk, achieves a maximum speed slightly below Mach 1.0, the speed of sound in air, this usually being measured for such purposes at sea level—which means 760 mph. What this connotes is that deep overland penetration by the Tomahawk is achieved by dint of its ability to contour-hug. During a big army-air debate in the Pentagon through the early 1960s, war-gaming was essayed in which aircraft contour-hugged high prominences, incised meander valleys and the like. The broad conclusion, as related by the then Director of Army Aviation, was that a tactical warplane might do this acceptably well at speeds up to Mach 0.65.3 No less can today be said of a cruise missile. An approaching cruise missile could frequently be shielded from view by topography and also by how radar ground clutter obscured its tiny radar cross-sections. Early in September 2001, the US Army announced the first successful engagement Beyond Visual Range (BVR) by a truck-mounted battery of Stinger light surface-to-air missiles. The target intercepted, a QH 50 drone, had first been electronically tagged as hostile by a sensor network proffering the requisite forward vision. Operationally, any such routine is bound to be problematic. Surface-located interception systems ought still to be considered essentially lineof-sight just as airborne or Space-borne ones are. The geometric constraints that imposes are rarely addressed adequately in the professional literature.

DEFENCE AGAINST MISSILES 151

For those operating cruise missiles, there is an alternative engagement philosophy to jinking round the contours. It is approach fast and low. Manifestly this commends itself over the open sea and other flattish surfaces. In this respect, cruise missiles as a genre should benefit greatly from the progress into the realm of hypersonic flight now being made with ram jets utilizing new structural materials. Hypersonic flight is deemed to start between Mach 4.0 or 5.0, a threshold beyond which the equations of motion become non-linear. Applied to quasi-orbital Space planes, hypersonic propulsion may extend through Mach 15. 0. Applied to cruise missiles, Mach 6.0 is a representative aim. A concept poised to come into vogue is the ‘scram jet’. It involves a rocket initially boosting a ram jet to hypersonic speed. A Dutch 30-mm automatic cannon called the Goalkeeper is quite widely in naval service, principally for self-defence against cruise missiles. It is described, perhaps a shade conservatively, as effective against supersonic aerial vehicles between the ranges of 400 and 1,500 metres. At Mach 6.0, a cruise missile could transit that zone in barely half a second. Hardening a homing sensor against frictional heating would be a problem but, most likely, manageably so. NASA is leading American hypersonic research, working closely in conjunction with the USAF. Britain, France, Germany, India, Japan and Russia are among the other countries well to the fore. Hypersonic cruise missiles are likely to enter service in the more advanced armed services by 2015; and may be widely proliferated a decade or so later. This prospect underlines the futility of looking in the longer term to surface-to-air weapons for anything other than the point defence of highvalue assets. Ships at sea could still come within this rubric. So may ports or airfields, provided their surrounds proffer adequate fields of view. The ballistic alternative Though much the same conclusion is reached in respect of Ballistic Missile Defence, the argument is along different lines. The parabolic trajectories required to maximize range-cum-payload present the Defence with tangible opportunities to intercept incoming warloads should each comprise just the one unitary warhead. The high success rate apparently registered against Iraqi Scuds by advanced Patriots during the 2003 campaign illustrates this. The Patriots proffered what could be termed a modest extension of point defence. But the geometrical determinants may not be too dissimilar in area coverage at theatre level or, of course, above. The rub is that an adversary that has started to operate long-range ballistic missiles may, within a very few years, install in them warloads that include decoys and/or multiple warheads. These complex assemblages become, upon their programmed dispersion, confusing threat clouds. Soon after rocket burn-out is usually seen as the optimum time for this release or ‘debussing’ to occur. So the next question has to be at what height within the atmosphere debussing might take place. Can it be low enough to preclude prior engagement, Boost Phase

152 TERRESTRIAL COVERAGE

Interception as the jargon has it? The general answer appears to be somewhere between 40 and 70 km up, depending on required burn-out speed though also on warload composition. Decoys in the form of metallic balloons or reflectors may not inflate suitably so long as the air is relatively dense.4 The lower altitude limits on laser interception from high above tend thus far to be similar. From lower elevations, atmospheric interference is more of a problem throughout. But ignoring for the moment any help that may be received from more advanced states, how readily may an emergent country master the refinements of threat cloud creation? Certain of the recognized techniques are quite accessible. Since World War II, ‘chaff’ has been a favoured counter-measure throughout the realm of electronic warfare. It involves the dissemination of tiny metallic strips, each one cut to such a length as to resonate within a selected frequency band. A cascade thereof will produce on radar screens either misleading blips or else a generalized ‘white out’. A mere kilogram can be so dispersed as to present an image of perhaps 30 square metres head on. This can be very firm throughout all frequencies from, say, one to ten billion cycles a second in the UHF/SHF.5 What the Pyongyangs of this world lack, however, is experience of how a threat cloud is viewed by defenders possessed of a diversity of orbital or groundbased sensors. Therefore they themselves would find it hard to contrive unaided a mix which may mislead sufficiently such a panoply. Accordingly they may be inclined to concentrate rather on multiple warheads, bomblets or MIRVs or some calibre in between. Evidently, five or ten warheads debussed from one rocket’s warload could rarely be engaged comprehensively from the ground. Even Superpower resources could be hopelessly stretched by the density of the area defensive screens required. Yet what could still be feasible is the terminal defence of compact high-value targets against particular warheads about to impact. What has also to be acknowledged is that multiple warheads could figure in future missile exchanges at every level in terms of geographical compass. The prospective spread of SFW bomblet technology for use in local war was noted in Chapter 7. Then with reference to the intercontinental end of this spectrum, one may recall the scaling down of SDI embarked on by President George Bush (Snr) in 1991. His Global Protection Against Limited Strikes (GPALS) programme envisaged post-Cold War attacks on the continental USA by up to 200 RVs. But these might be delivered by several tens of rockets bearing several RVs apiece. At lower ranges the possible permutations are infinite. Multiple warheads, being smaller, are that much more liable to be affected by the mechanical and thermal stresses engendered by re-entering the atmosphere. But even with truly parabolic flight, this problem does not arise at ranges below 1, 000 km. If, through the second quarter of this century, it is resolved that wide area defence against ballistic missiles with multiple warloads must play a part, this will need to be on the basis of engagement prior to debussing; and that effectively means Boost Phase Interception (BPI). Nor is it difficult to craft

DEFENCE AGAINST MISSILES 153

scenarios whereby BPI would geometrically be possible using an anti-missile missile fired from a surface station. Mostly, one is talking about very short range tactical engagements of katushas and the like. But take an offensive two-stage rocket designed to travel 600 km. This would likely burn out after 80 seconds at a height of 45 km, while travelling at 2,200 metres a second. Therefore it might be subject to BPI by a surface anti-missile battery located perhaps 150 km away. However, there could be various impediments. One might be half this boost phase being spent below cloud cover. Through the middle 1990s, interest was evinced in the West in anti-missile batteries cast in this role being located on ships in enemy littoral waters, Libya and North Korea then being identified as major foci of concern. It is therefore of especial interest to note that an earnest British protagonist for a naval role in missile defence has lately conceded that, in reality, BPI ‘is only feasible for air- and Space-based systems’.6 The airborne laser Not surprisingly, aircraft have often been to the fore in repelling air attacks. Analysts envisage airborne platforms similarly conducting missile interceptions. The options explored at theatre level include mini-missiles fired from manned helicopters and now Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs)—rotary or fixed wing. Radars mounted beneath static balloons or airships could be ancillary. At present, however, pride of place belongs to the AirBorne Laser (ABL), by which is usually meant the Boeing AL-1A, an adaptation of the 747. In outline, its genesis has been as follows. Three decades ago, General Dynamics began work on an Airborne Laser Laboratory (ALL). In 1975, within this programme, a laser weapon was experimentally fired from a plane. Come 1981, the Chemical Oxygen Iodine Laser (COIL) weapons system appeared. Its design philosophy favoured use in a constrictive space with limited power supply. Duly, a 40-ton version was selected for the YAL-1A, an ABL prototype ordered in 1996. Also in 1981, the ALL did a live test against a Sidewinder airto-air missile. YAL-1A made its maiden flight in 2000; and will conduct its first firing against a ballistic missile during 2005. Earlier schedules had envisaged this event in 2002, then September 2003. But the first of the seven AL-1A planes required operationally is still expected to enter service in 2008. If realized, this will clinch the quite rapid development of a large and complex system. No doubt the pace set will have owed something to the project’s having been till lately exclusively a USAF preserve, housed at the Phillips Laboratory in remote Albuquerque. The AL-1A is expected to fire COIL up to thirty times a sortie, lock-ons normally lasting between 5 and 20 seconds. The standard cruising altitude is 12.9 km. In middle latitudes, that is close to the tropopause: the irregular though welldefined boundary between the troposphere (the weather-beaten lower atmosphere) and the virtually cloudless stratosphere (see Appendix A). COIL

154 TERRESTRIAL COVERAGE

operates in the several megawatt range, emitting a killer beam that is continuous wave (as opposed to pulsating) on a wavelength of 1,315 nanometres. A primary mirror 1.5 metres across is located at the base of a swivelling nose turret. Ideally, the killer beam could produce a spot of just 71 cm across a notional range of 720 km.7 One must say ‘ideally’ because compensation for atmospheric interference ‘is perhaps the most crucial’ step in bringing the AL-1A to operational status.8 The interference is due to absorption, refraction caused by wind, temperature or humidity shear, and ‘thermal blooming’—meaning how the air around the beam path heats and so expands. Since the launch of SDI, much work has been done with ‘adaptive optics’. Ancillary to the killer beam are two pulse radars. While the one (mounted just behind the cockpit) measures target range, the other corrects for atmospheric distortion, thus enabling deformable mirroring to realign the primary wave front hundreds of times a second. The concurrent application of this optical technology to astronomy (to obviate the ‘twinkling star’ effect) has been supportive. Thermal blooming is the least tractable problem. Take the study cited above from the house journal of the US Institute of Electrical and Electronic Engineers. The author concluded that were an ABL to travel at 200 metres a second perpendicularly to the bearing its target is on, the cross-wind vector from its motion could much curb blooming. So beam intensity might reduce only one order of magnitude. Were it approaching the target head-on, however, this motion would impel heated air straight down the beam path which could reduce peak intensity a thousandfold.9 Pointing jitter could cut effective range a further 10 per cent. All in all, analysts quote 400 km as the representative outside range for the ABL.10 Most vexing for this as for other BMD systems is the question of how tough a target a particular rocket may be. One knows the skin of a Scud B consists of steel a millimetre thick; and also that a portion being targeted would ‘rupture’ (i.e. acutely weaken) if heated near to 460°C. There is also a measure of professional consensus (well founded or nay) that North Korea’s Nadong 1 strategic missile is encased with steel 3 to 4 millimetres thick. The maximum range for decisive ABL engagement of the Scud is put at 240 km and of the Nadong at 185 km.11 The word ‘decisive’ here connotes enough heating to rupture a 45° arc of skin surface. Since 1996, the US-Israeli THEL programme has had over twenty trial successes using ground-based lasers to intercept katushas. Naturally this has reinforced a burgeoning conviction that the ABL has real operational potential, the plane’s bulk and low agility notwithstanding. As early as 1995, Sheila Widnall (then Secretary of the Air Force) thought it ‘quite possible’ that the ABL would rank among those exceptional instances of ‘an innovation that revolutionizes our operational concepts, tactics and strategies’.12 Since when, the professionals have taken up the theme. We are advised that, although the ABL and the Space-Based Laser (two ‘truly revolutionary systems’) are on very distinct lines of

DEFENCE AGAINST MISSILES 155

technological evolution, they are ‘a dual system’ strategically. As well as BMD, intra-theatre and inter-theatre, each ‘will be able to perform a variety of collateral measures’.13 In the case of the ABL, these are already seen as including ‘shooting down low-flying cruise missiles…suppressing enemy air defences, imaging and reconnaissance with the aid of an on-board telescope; and cueing other weapons systems through search and detection of infra-red signatures’.14 The interception of Surface-to-Air Missiles and Air-to-Air Missiles has also been mentioned.15 Plus or minus certain particularities (such as the possible saturation of onboard command-and-control), that list looks plausible. Indeed, it could logically be extended to cover attacks on a wide variety of soft surface targets. But here is the rub. The AL-1A killer beam can sweep the Earth’s surface because its wavelength (1,315 nanometres) lies just inside the sharp boundary of a pronounced window of low atmospheric absorption on the electromagnetic spectrum.16 It is the one sunlight floods in through. Accordingly, our eyes are especially sensitized to it. They receive what we know as ‘visible light’ between 400 and 800 nm. But they are decidedly vulnerable to overly intense radiation across the span 400 to 1,400 nm. Within it, permanent blindness might be inflicted in less than the split second it would take to snap one’s eyes shut. Laser target markers can have similar connotations. So can ones used to neutralize electro-optronic sensors.17 Humankind has a deep taboo against deliberate blinding. It has been respected to quite a remarkable extent through the most savage wars and by even the most terrorist dictators, insurgents and criminals. It is a very particular aspect of the death-ray syndrome. A taboo may be virtually as strong against weapons peculiarly liable to inflict blindness as collateral damage.18 Inevitably there are exceptions. A big one in terms of absolutes is the Byzantine emperor who left large numbers of Bulgar prisoners of war to struggle home over the mountains, having had 99 per cent of them blinded in both eyes and the remainder in one. Then again, conjunctivitis (sometimes long-lasting) was often a prominent result of the mustard gas Germany introduced to the battlefield in 1915. Yet although the main Fascist regimes of World War II (Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan) did just about everything else with chilling concurrence, neither seem to have resorted to systematic blinding. Intimations that, before so very long, lasers may be borne as the main ordnance in single-seat fighters make this a pressing issue. At the same time, they remind one how remiss the strategic studies community has been to ignore laser weapons the way it has the last few years. Being ahead of this deadly game could have been both feasible and valuable.

10 The heavens subverted?

Celestial awareness Proposals to destroy offensive missiles with weaponry orbiting in Near Space would pose questions qualitatively different from decisions about locating such systems in Montana or Yorkshire or on navy cruisers. The ‘heavens above’ evoke reactions set deep in our psyche, a legacy from our recorded, prehistoric and pre-human past. The respect they therefore command we scorn at our psychic peril. A striking aspect of cosmology is how regularly it blossoms once nomadic man looks towards a settled life style. Take the pre-European civilizations in and around central America. By such criteria as writing or wheeled transport, they severally remained backward to the last. Yet striving to observe and interpret the night sky, they between them ‘encompassed a vast range of skills and abilities, from the informal lunar calendars of many North American hunting tribes to the startling precision of the Mayan bark books’.1 Nor can such virtuosity be explained simply in terms of a desire to cross barren waste or open sea or else regulate harvests. Lunar calendars are a test case. They had appeared in Sumeria by 3000 BC, and eventually helped to guide the rituals of the great religions of the Arabian desert fringe: Judaism, Christianity and Islam. Yet their functional utility had always been constrained by two plain facts. The lunar month is not a whole number multiple of the Earth day. Nor is it a whole number divisor of the Earth year. The former truism means the Moon rises too variably to be suitable for timekeeping or navigation. The latter means it is unsatisfactory for harvest regulation. Some authorities are persuaded that Old Stone Age notations on bone or wood found in far-flung locations show humankind was already studying the stars systematically.2 However, one should consider how these markings may relate to the lines of dots, grids, chevrons, rectangles and so on widely found on Palaeolithic cave paintings up to 27,000 years old. These have been seen as expressive of hallucinatory experience derived from shamanism.3 Taken together, may not these two inscription modes be seen as linking the celestial with the human subconscious? Dr E.C.Krupp, the Director of the Griffith

THE HEAVENS SUBVERTED? 157

Observatory in Los Angeles, sees skywatching by Early Man as providing, effectively in all cultures, the overarching framework for a holistic view of Creation.4 The rudiments of an astronomy culture could well have arrived in the Americas via the Behring land bridge over 20,000 years ago. Subsequently, however, the very elaborated sky science of ‘mesoAmerica’ (California to Peru) evolved pre-Columbus in isolation from the Old World or, indeed, Australasia. Witness the singular prominence the Mayas accorded Venus, albeit as the deity not of love but of sacred warfare and ritual sacrifice.5 Sheer diversity shows how rooted astral wonderment is in our psychology. Yet this is also evidenced in a contrary way, the commonality across wide areas of particular cosmos-related patterns. Some from two or three thousand years ago recur across a zone centred on Iran and extending to China, Assyria and Greece. They are discernible in town plans, kinship structures, games and alphabets.6 Astronomic urban alignments are also apparent in the mesoAmerican civilization just alluded to. But perhaps the most striking example from within the tropics of a pervasive cosmic influence is the Khmer temple state in Cambodia, centred initially on Angkor Wat though later on Angkor Thom. Between the eighth and tenth centuries AD, the surplus wealth gradually accumulating was directed towards two disparate objectives. The one was a massive agricultural reorganization. The other involved heavy investment in ‘theocratic hydraulics’. The Angkor cities (and, less thoroughly, the rural hamlets) were turned into replicas of Heaven as per Indian cosmology. Yet, remarkably, no instance has been discovered ‘where a temple pond was equipped with a distribution system to water the fields’.7 Water-driven worship of the pantheon on high was kept aloof from mundane workaday existence. For analytic enquiry, however, Chinese astronomy was peerless throughout the first millennium AD. There was the ‘early conception of an infinite universe, with the stars as bodies floating in Space’.8 There are records exact enough to register the perturbation of Halley’s comet during its appearance in AD 837.9 What we call the ‘solar wind’ had been discerned, in AD 365, by how it slewed cometary tails. Major meteor showers are regularly recorded.10 As regards Europe, it is odd how the historical profession has ignored the interaction between the development of cosmology and that of society at large. Arthur Koestler, publishing in the year in which the Soviets obtained the first pictures ever of the far side of the Moon, deplored the omission of Copernicus, Descartes, Galileo and Newton from the index of Arnold Toynbee’s multivolumed exercise in monumentalism, A Study of History.11 Likewise Martin Bernal, a Cornell historian, has protested that a neglect by his profession of mathematics and astronomy has helped preserve the myth that Ancient Greek civilization owed little to Egyptian. With the Greeks, one turns first to the insights afforded by Pythagoras (c. 582– c. 507 BC) and his school into the harmony between music and mathematics, a relationship symbolized for them by the motions of the heavenly spheres. Three

158 DEFENCE AGAINST MISSILES

centuries later, Aristarchus from Samos (the old Pythagorean base) firmly propounded a Sun-centred universe. He showed, through study of the lunar phases, that the Sun was much bigger and more remote than the Moon. He thereby denied a dualism then believed to exemplify the world about us. However, Pythagorean cosmology never gained wider sway. Certain collateral attitudes were too cultish and subversive. Nor were revolving orbs easily imaginable without a theory of gravity. Most decisively, this interpretation was to be dismissed by both Plato and Aristotle. Eventually, in the second century AD, Claudius Ptolemy of Alexandria, astronomer and astrologer, persuasively expounded the Earth-centred alternative. There the debate stopped. For over a millennium, the cosmological setting of Christendom would be a firmament on the undersurface of which the planetes (wanderers) moved in cycles within cycles. The heavens were never scanned definitively. That would be profane. By the fifteenth century, however, unease was spreading about how to reconcile the Ptolemaic model with evident facts. This mood engendered two centuries of contention. Nicolaus Copernicus, a distinguished Polish monk and man of parts (1473–1543), dallied thirty years before publishing, from his deathbed, De Revolutionibus Orbium Coelestium, his averration that our Earth is a planet and all planets moved in circles round the Sun. Among his early contemners were the leading Protestant reformers: John Calvin, Martin Luther and even the gentle Philip Melancthon. Their concern was not with the flawed mathematics involved in his reading elliptical motions as circular but with his failure to underscore biblical authority. As Luther gracelessly put it, This fool wishes to reverse the entire science of astronomy. But sacred scripture tells us that Joshua commanded the Sun to stand still, not the Earth.’ That instance alone cautions one against allowing one’s world view to be driven by fundamentalism, Judaeo-Christian or Islamic or whatever. A complementary moral could be drawn from the Catholic side. It would be that one should not mix celebration of the heavens with power politics on Earth. The sixteenth century had witnessed many transformations including a revival of astrology. But the biggest politically was the emergence of a world system based on European statehoods. Geopolitical awareness developed. To the Vatican, this came to mean, above all, the preservation of Hapsburg imperial power, Austrian and Spanish. In 1600, an Italian monk, Giordano Bruno, was burnt at the stake for heresies including a bowdlerized Copernicanism. Worse, he saw an AngloFrench binational axis as a consequence of his true philosophy.12 Nor should we forget how Galileo’s trial by the Inquisition, for trying to evade a 1616 proscription on affirmation of Copernicanism, was set in motion in 1633 by Pope Urban VIII, a Renaissance virtuoso who had once sent Galileo a sonnet of compliments on his astronomy. His attitudinal shift came after two disastrous years for the Imperial side in the Thirty Years’ War. The crushing of Galileo was less brutish than Protestant historians once had us believe. But it was categoric and conspicuous.

THE HEAVENS SUBVERTED? 159

Yet as the seventeenth century advanced, the Copernican revolution (refined by the observations and calculations of Galileo and Kepler) entrenched itself in Western Europe. Collaterally bigotry diminished and enquiry waxed strong, with astronomy and mathematics as spearhead themes. Astronomy and astrology went their separate ways. National scientific academies were set up, a phase which culminated in 1725 at St Petersburg. It was in 1662, two years after his return from exile, that King Charles II of England had founded the Royal Society, the first of these ‘invisible colleges’. Several early doyens, notably Sir Isaac Newton and Sir Edmund Halley, were mathematical astronomers. But the Society also sought to promote utilitarian arts. Thus Newton was a fine optical engineer while Sir Christopher Wren combined cosmic awareness with architectural brilliance. The development of precision engineering was also crucial to the harnessing of latent sources of energy, notably coal. That in turn was basic to the decisive ascendancy of Western civilization. A century and more later, astronomy is still in the thick of the general fray. In The Age of Reason (published 1795–6) the English radical Leftist Thomas Paine spoke for not a few when he said appreciation of the Creator’s ‘wisdom and beneficence’ grew with our knowledge of the ‘extent and structure of the Universe’. Paine himself was as zealous for astrophysics as he had been for American independence. His pitch was diametrically at variance with that assumed by Jean Marat, the talented French medic who turned bitter revolutionary and was murdered in 1793 during the ‘Reign of Terror’. His ‘antiNewtonianism’ was calculated to undermine the Paris Academy of Sciences, it having refused him membership. The Academy (founded in 1666) did close in 1803. This clash epitomized a stark divide opening up within Western civilization, a divide which still persists. Our era is vibrantly a legatee of the rationalist Enlightenment that spread throughout the West (especially France, Scotland, England and America) in the century from 1650. However, we are also subject to a strong counter-current, the Romanticism that surged through Europe from the late eighteenth century. Witness the poet Samuel Coleridge opining in 1801: ‘The souls of 500 Sir Isaac Newtons would go to the making of a Shakespeare or a Milton.’ Alas, there were grave dangers in reacting that far, in setting absolute store by organic unity, sensibility and naturalism while scorning reason and deductive enquiry. Holism so absolute may give scope to mythic authoritarianism, to a Latin American caudillo or a Pol Pot or Bin Laden. The great German philosopher Immanuel Kant (1724–1804) was much concerned that humanity kept the realm of the senses and the realm of the intellect in coherent relationship. He saw the heavens above as uniquely meaningful to both. He did more than anybody to popularize the notion that the stars were clustered together in huge galaxies, his ‘island universes’. In the nineteenth century, astronomy rather receded from the public view in favour of biology and geology and also of an Earth-centred positivism professing

160 DEFENCE AGAINST MISSILES

boundless confidence in material and moral progress going hand-in-hand, the conquest of Nature being its supreme expression. From 1850 or thereabouts, the term ‘star’ was regularly applied to somebody who ‘shone’ in the arts or sport.13 Obscuration of the night sky by urban light or pollution may have contributed to a decline in astronomy’s standing. Its twentieth-century resurgence has been less a matter of skywatching and more one of cosmic interpretation. The basics of the Einsteinian interpretation of the ultimates in physics entered popular consciousness quite coherently. The next big paradigm change in this area— quantum mechanics and the principle of uncertainty—has never come across as well. The early cultures referred to above very consistently envisaged a cosmos with an identified centre and defined limits. Ever since, too, the mainstream presumption has been almost invariably that a cosmos bounded in Space is likewise delimited in time, starting with a unique Creation event. Myth was confirmed as reality c. 1965 with the detection of the microwave background predicted to be persisting from soon after the Big Bang. This discovery dealt a seemingly mortal blow to the contrary interpretation, the Steady State (‘has existed for ever’) school of astrophysics. Yet now a notion of the never-ending may be returning in the form of an infinity of other universes existing in dimensions our cosmos knows not of. Though testable only with thought experiments, it may grip public attention a few years hence.14 Assisted by computer graphics, Space travel could loom as large in public awareness as aviation did in the era between the two world wars. Already galactic treks are interwoven with such futurist manifestations as terradomes encompassing wide urban areas with strangely few inhabitants. Evidently these flights are considerably ones from reason and reasonableness. Much of the narrative action has been brash and violent, and, indeed, too chauvinist about either the male gender or humankind in general. Physiological tests completed in 2002 at the University of Indiana Medical School shows how violent video games desensitize young people. Many are set in Outer Space. Often, too, the escapist motivation has been starkly apparent. Buck Rogers made his debut in 1932, at the nadir of the world slump. Star Trek first appeared in 1966 as unease spread about Vietnam. Some would aver that this initial series imparted a Kennedy-style liberal optimism that successive resurrections have lost hold of.15 Now NASA itself is striving to rebut widely credited allegations that the Apollo 11 moon landing was a hoax. In an age in which cultishness and more general irrationality kick in from many directions, we can do without Space fiction presented as well-grounded hypothesis. The works of Immanuel Velikovsky and Erich von Daniken come readily to mind. So does the 1974 prediction by John Gribbin and Stephen Plagemann that an alignment of planets in 1982 could subject Los Angeles to ‘the most severe earthquake in the populated regions of the Earth in this century’.16 Actually such a causal linkage was mathematically inconceivable.

THE HEAVENS SUBVERTED? 161

However, Percival Lowell (1815–1916) still affords the most infamous extravaganza. He commendably predicted the existence of a planet beyond Neptune; and the observatory he founded in Flagstaff, Arizona, was where that planet, Pluto, was first observed in 1930. But he had followed up far too avidly a claim made in 1877 by an Italian astronomer, Giovanni Schiaparelli, that a crisscross of canali could be observed on Mars. In his 1906 best-seller Mars and the Canals, Lowell asserted that Martians had dug these water-ways for irrigation. For several decades this phantasy lingered on in a shadowland of half-belief. To conjure with still are ‘Unidentified Flying Objects’ alias ‘flying saucers’. Claimed sightings of such vehicles from extra-terrestrial communities peaked in the USA as the Cold War ramified in the late 1940s. As the Cold War wound down, the Soviet media gave them much coverage.17 Carl Jung saw the discshapes so characteristic of UFO reports worldwide as a sign of craving for psychic holism.18 In other words, they were symptoms of insecurity. Shades of the Palaeolithic notations mentioned above? Astrology must yet be reckoned with, too. Though modern India has a deal of advanced science, family horoscopes are compared not uncommonly before arranged marriages. In Britain, astrological literature has flourished of late. Just what this could connote is hard to gauge. Again, there is a broad and fluid grey area between banter and belief. Humankind has looked to the realms beyond the Moon for aesthetic gratification and moral inspiration. Yet they can also be the source of adversity dreadful in itself but also a sign of divine displeasure. This allusion is to major impacts by meteorites, asteroids or even comets. These events merit further enquiry along interdisciplinary lines—historical, geophysical, astronomical… One amply confirmed to my mind is a meteoritic shower hitting Britain in AD 442, seriously disadvantaging the Romano-British in their struggle against the intruding English.19 A conviction that ‘the heavens were made for wonder not for war’ is a prime driver of the protest against Space weaponization. The gods may fight in that domain but mere mortals must not aspire to. But unless interpreted through the relevant science, this precept can easily engender callow utopianism leading on to dogmatic intolerance. A way through was sought in 1985 by Patricia Mische, the founder of Global Education Associates. She prosaically identified the key military parameters. She saw SDI as a morbid diversion from the proper study of Space, study which could help us understand better our terrestrial situation. She concluded thus: ‘How each of us responds to the conflict in our own souls is what we will bequeath to the universe; this is what will become the soul of the universe.’20 Lyrical, yes. But Mische offered lyricism of a kind Palaeolithic people might have identified with. So might the hundreds of generations between them and us.

162 DEFENCE AGAINST MISSILES

Global engagement As suggested above, lately prevalent within the middle management of the United States Air Force (USAF) has been the perception that primacy in Space holds the key to the USAF itself having an independent future. Maybe this view has been fortified by a reshaping of the Pentagon’s triservice structure. In October 2002, a new Strategic Command was formed by the amalgamation of the pre-existing Strategic Command and the Space Command. The former had been in overall control of US nuclear forces. The latter had managed Space planning and operations together with information generation and protection. Admiral James Ellis, the first head of the new StratCom, has said they have sought to create ‘a new culture’ geared to hitting targets anywhere in the world within hours if not minutes in what his Director of Space Operations avers ‘could very well be a pre-emptive, independent global strike’. Nuclear, conventional or non-destructive means might be mobilized. Among the non-orbital assets mobilizable for the delivery of conventional warheads could be B-2 or B-52 bombers or warships armed with cruise missiles. Additionally or alternatively, ICBMs could feature.21 In 1997, the USAF adopted a doctrine document entitled Global Engagement: A Vision for the 21st Century. Concurrently, Space Command distributed an exhortatory compilation entitled Vision 2020. Addressing Space as ‘the fourth medium of warfare’, it looked towards ‘Full Spectrum Dominance’ achieved through ‘maneuver, precision engagement, full-dimensional protection and focused logistics’. Space systems are so important ‘to military operations that it is unrealistic to imagine they will never become targets’. Obversely, ‘sea and air strategic attack missions will be augmented by the deployment of Space force application systems’. Meanwhile National Missile Defence ‘will evolve into a mix of ground- and Space-based sensors and weapons’. The fact that this presentation was not crafted as a formal doctrinal litany may actually make it the more indicative of Pentagon inclinations. It certainly mocks Clintonesque averrations that Space-based weaponry was not part of the missile defence conspectus. It mocks likewise the public discussion paper on BMD the Ministry of Defence in London issued in January 2003.22 It holds that the USA sees interception as being by ground-or sea-based anti-missiles or else by airborne lasers (para. 43). In other words, ‘The 1980s vision of a comprehensive Space-based shield for the United States against ballistic missile attack…is now acknowledged to be out of technological reach in any meaningful timescale’ (para. 65). An irreducible impediment to setting this bold assertion alongside Vision 2020 or such like affirmations is that, both qualitatively and quantitatively, the difference between a Space-based shield adequately effective against a lightish attack and one able to counter comprehensively a heavy continental one is not that considerable, hardly a matter of one generation against another. Moreover, any quantitative aspect can change in quite short order.

THE HEAVENS SUBVERTED? 163

Project Air Force is a division of Rand, the USAF-backed think tank. In 1999, it published a lengthy report on Space weaponry.23 The text insists it ‘does not present an argument either for or against Space weapons but instead describes their attributes and sets out a common vocabulary’ (xv). But while acknowledging ‘there is currently no compelling threat to US national security’ which ‘could not be deterred or addressed by other means’ it suggests the USA ‘could consider Space-based weapons as a component of…global power projection for 2010 and beyond’ (xxii). One purpose of Space weapons might be ‘to demonstrate global leadership’ (xxii). They are described as ‘static in the same way as stone fortifications are static’ (xx), meaning that the orbits they revolve in are closely predictable. A further consequence of orbital flight is that the destruction of a platform ‘would leave a persistent cloud of debris, in a shell of nearby orbits’ (xxi). It is further acknowledged that, because of orbital revolution over a rotating Earth, Spacebased BMD ‘would require dozens of weapons in orbit for each needed to engage a target at a particular time and place’ (xxi). For other force applications (e.g. against certain surface targets), two to five absentee platforms for each one on target may be viable. Terrestrial strikes may be legitimate under Article VI of the Space Liability Convention provided they can be presented as part and parcel of self-defence. However, a’decision to base missile defense weapons in Space would require changing or abandoning the Anti-Ballistic Missile treaty and other arms control treaties (as most national missile defenses would)’ (xxi). As usual, a basic distinction drawn is that between Kinetic Energy Weapons (KEW) and Directed Energy Weapons (DEW). These days the former means little other than mini-rockets. Their shortcoming in the BMD context is the difficulty of effecting interceptions below altitudes of 60 km even from close to overhead. Often this will mean interception of an ascending missile/warload only post-boost phase. Nor is KEW seen as being, for the USA at any rate, a useful way of attacking surface targets (xix). Nowadays, too, orbital DEW simply means lethal lasers. Their acquisition is seen as an ordnance option which is ‘proprietary to the United States…not inherently or indefinitely’ (xxiii) but for the foreseeable future. That makes sense. Basic choices In the regeneration of the American missile debate through the 1990s, jovially robust Ambassador Henry Cooper, the last Director of BMDO, figured prominently. A basic motivation was his scarifying scorn for the ‘crappy’ Theatre High-Altitude Air Defence (THAAD) system being prof fered by Lockheed for extended aerospace defence at theatre level. Over and beyond which, he generally discounted for the longer-term surface-based anti-missile area weapons. He did so against the background of a burgeoning opinion that ‘the capability to release submunitions from ascending ballistic missiles could be on the world market within five years’.24

164 DEFENCE AGAINST MISSILES

Cooper’s conclusion in 1995 was that Space-Based Interceptors (SBI), soon to be followed by Space-Based Lasers (SBL), should be deployed by the turn of the century. He believed SBL would be able to intercept in boost phase; and ‘throughout most of their flight trajectory’ all ballistic missiles with ranges exceeding 300 miles. He even foresaw an SBL engaging any travelling 75 miles or more.25 Never mind that a rocket fired across that distance would be unlikely to rise more than 20 miles (c. 32 km) above the Earth’s surface. The revival across the American Right of a rather uncritical enthusiasm for remote control Space-based weaponry also owed a lot to successes by Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAV) in the Lebanon then Bosnia and elsewhere. For some time, too, unmanned platforms had been strongly commended throughout the aerospace domain by Edward Teller. He had written in 1986 that they could ‘easily be made more resistant, more adaptable’ than manned vehicles; and could include an ‘improved version of every human sensory ability’.26 Yet the crunch issues remain regardless. Should the United States, and by extension its allies, go for area missile defence throughout their home territories and in operational theatres abroad? Or should they settle for the active defence of hard points? And if the former, what part should Space-based weapons play? The cardinal purpose of BPI, precluding the distribution of decoys and/or warheads by ascending enemy rockets soon after burn-out, is well understood. Now the laser (SBL and ABL) seems poised to apply this principle more decisively than before, this by dint of the general progress with lasing (especially pulsed lasing) as outlined in Appendix B. Project Air Force claims that, as things stand, a hydrogen fluoride pulsed laser could begin to engage any rocket it is more or less overhead to when the latter is as little as 14 km above the ground.27 Sometimes this facility might negate fast-burning ascent as a stratagem to thwart BPI. However, the reckoning in SDI days was that an ICBM configured to fastburn evasion could be 80 km up at the end of but a 40-second combustion phase. Besides, hydrogen fluoride lasers pulsate at 2,700 nanometres, not an ideal wavelength in terms of atmospheric interference nor of beam divergence. Artifices to negate beam lock-on (e.g. shiny rocket cases and rocket rotation) hardly seem enough to counteract the maximum gains in pulse peak power to be anticipated. However, the critical question will be whether these gains can satisfactorily be transferred to orbit, given that SBLs already threaten to be too cumbersome. Thus they are likely to be ill-adapted to even limited manoeuvring on account of the fuel demands this could make. In the longer term (twenty years hence?) a solution could lie in moving the beam projectors down to the Earth’s surface, retaining on Space platforms simply the mirrors to redirect the beam energy to targets around the globe.28 This possibility was much discussed in the mid-1980s in connection with the Free Electron Laser, a non-chemical device with tunable wavelengths. Evidently, it would depend on incredibly fine positional adjustment. All the same, BMD sceptics might be ill-advised to rest their case on doubts about whether SBL can ever be made to work. The crux is whether it ought to be.

THE HEAVENS SUBVERTED? 165

High-altitude bursts Advocacy of BPI for coping with multiple warheading is sullied too often by the observation that the debris of encounter ‘will rain back down on the launching country’.29 As a matter of fact, a nuclear warhead thus intercepted would be unlikely to detonate on hitting the surface, though it could still cause localized contamination.30 However, the main weakness in this short chain of reductionist logic is that an aggressor might very well not fire such weaponry from his national heartland. He would prefer the home territory of some marginalized ethnicity. If material demonstration is needed, it is afforded abundantly by experience with above-ground nuclear testing. All five permanent members of the Security Council have in turn inflicted test programmes on other ethnicities from oceanic, steppic or desertic environments well away from their own people. Nevertheless, there is a serious argument for early interception even when incoming enemy missiles have unitary warloads. Analysts believe it to be a relatively simple task to ‘salvage fuse’ a mass destruction warhead: that is to say, set it to explode as the shock wave of an approaching interceptor missile is registered by on-board ‘environmental sensors’. Granted, doubts have been aired as to whether an aspirant nuclear power would wish to fit its strategic force with salvage-fuse devices that it may have found impossible to flight test.31 But an easier, more dependable ploy may be to prime warheads barometrically to explode at altitude regardless. As was noted in Chapter 6, the destructive connotations will depend on the number of variables, most obviously the altitude and the warhead. A key criterion on a given occasion must be how far the menace of radioactive diffusion is mitigated by thinning out and decay. Generally with a nuclear air burst, the contaminating cloud would be far less menacing than that from a ground burst of similar strength since no solid particles would have become entrained. However, there would also be the threat posed to living things by the short-wave emissions within an initial nuclear flash, and that posed collaterally by the sheer heat. The former effect will sometimes be line of sight. Regarding the latter, dry paper is liable to ignite 5 km from a ‘nominal’ explosion (i.e. Hiroshima-scale or 20 kilotons) conducted 2 or 3 km up. Furthermore, a nuclear burst in the electrically active upper atmosphere (80 km up, say) can give rise to the electron surge known as Electro-Magnetic Pulse (EMP). This can cause acute interference across a broad range of radio frequencies. Edward Teller long regarded inadequate comprehension of this effect as weighing against the West’s having agreed in 1963 to ban nuclear tests in the atmosphere, oceans and Near Space. Yet, as the late Dr Teller might well have conceded, the case for adequate comprehension phases into one against agreeing to such a ban ever. Anyone who has seen the endless variety of everchanging forms that characterize Aurora Borealis displays at those latitudes (c. 70°N) at which they may be at their most lively, might find optimistic any idea that a few more tests forty years ago could have resolved the EMP interaction. The measurable fluctuations in Near Space wind and temperature short-term do

166 DEFENCE AGAINST MISSILES

not allow of that.32 Besides, the situation aloft evolves secularly. Since the International Geophysical Year (1957–8), the mean temperature at 80 km has fallen by 6.0 K, this as a negative feedback to greenhouse warming lower down.33 The associated profile changes are bound to complicate the application of data on EMP retained from the era of atmospheric nuclear tests (1945–63). Mid-course interception The mid-course engagement of warloads being dispatched between continents has been accorded high priority in the American BMD conspectus these last few years. In 2001, the Bush administration decided to proceed forcefully with preexisting plans to locate NMD forward facilities in Alaska. Their most immediate purpose will be to act as the cornerstone of a North Pacific mid-course test range. Come the New Year, a Scud missile was to be intercepted by a SM-3 shipborne anti-missile: the weapon at the heart of the US Navy’s mid-course programme, the one BMD venture it currently receives substantial funding for.34 Mid-course defence has been portrayed as combating the long-range strike by several rockets, each with a unitary warload. Sooner rather than later, however, any rocket which had leaked through a BPI umbrella would be able to ‘debus’ multiple warheaded RVs plus multiple decoys. Either way, ‘mid-course’ would connote heavy reliance on all-encompassing surveillance from above, especially passive infra-red. Yet it will never be easy to achieve the sensitivity required to distinguish warheaded RVs from decoys in a virtually airless environment that will effect little retardation and has a diverse and warmish terrestrial background. Tracking individual objects will similarly be difficult. Indeed, both discrimination and tracking will be infeasible in the infra-red without adequate cryogenic cooling of the sensors. This can be to between 70 and 20 Kelvin on present showing, a marginally adequate SWIR spread (see Chapter 8, Star Wars?). For close to twenty years, deferments and cost-escalations have betokened the extreme difficulty the Pentagon has experienced making ready to bring into BMD service a satisfactory constellation of infra-red platforms. The then Chief Scientist at SDIO said in 1985, ‘Decoys can perhaps be readily distinguished from warheads if we can observe the birth of decoys at the very instant they are deployed.’35 Otherwise it is largely a question of presuming that decoys will cool perceptibly faster than warheads. Theatre Missile Defence Even so, a measure of agreement obtains to the effect that a Space Missile Tracking System of the kind just discussed might operate more consistently in the face of an intercontinental threat than of one intra-theatre. Moreover, selecting the right architecture for area TMD could prove nigh impossible, over the land at least, given all the threat permutations imaginable. An added TMD complication could be a tendency for the contamination from mass destruction

THE HEAVENS SUBVERTED? 167

warheads to flow across international borders. Sometimes, indeed, high-altitude interception would occur over a friendly or neutral neighbour. Even when this prospect mattered little ecologically, it could be of moment politically. Orbital debris The considerations here addressed underline the axiom that 100 per cent BMD effectiveness can never be achieved against a heavy attack and cannot be assured against a light one. At the same time, however, they indicate that SBLs might augment appreciably terrestrial defences. But there could be serious penalties. One is that the Space basing of weapons could compound acutely the debris problem. Apprehension of orbital collisions waxed strong in the late 1970s as the number of orbital objects observable (i.e. several centimetres or more across) built up sharply, mainly from firings of US Delta launch rockets plus AntiSatellite (ASAT) test interceptions by the Soviets. From 1981, the Deltas were made to burn out lower down while, in 1982, Moscow suspended ASAT tests. Nevertheless, the number of objects observed has continued to rise, from 5,000 in 1981 to 8,000 in 1995 and close to 10,000 today. Some 600 are active satellites, the rest dead satellites or fragments. The number of items more than one centimetre wide is well over 100,000. If a fragment two or three centimetres across, say, hits a small satellite at a relative velocity of perhaps 15 km per second, it will be liable to disintegrate it, thereby causing a cascade of maybe 10, 000 more pieces at least a centimetre across plus millions of tinier ones. From which could follow a chain reaction. Even a millimetric particle may pit a window or a sensing surface. Always, too, the myriads of tinier bits are contributing to the light pollution of the night sky. Altitude is obviously a critical parameter, both in peacetime and envisaging a war that might involve the interception of RVs and maybe, too, of platforms in orbit. There is still a narrow band of debris around the geostationary altitude of 35,800 km, even though the practice now is to ease worn-out satellites out of the primary circuit. But more consequential is the much broader zone of detritus lower down. Debris accumulation is pronounced between the heights of 500 and 1,500 km, with the peak concentration at 900 km. As indicated below, the likelihood is that SBLs would operate towards the top of that altitude band. The velocity and directional spread of the debris from any explosive event means not many pieces will enter orbit except at altitudes near it. So BPI will usually pose little difficulty in this regard. Nor does the mid-course interception by anti-missile missiles of offensive rockets travelling less than 1,000 km. Above that range, the situation progressively changes. Take the offensive rockets the two Superpowers respectively cancelled under their world-wide Intermediate Nuclear Forces (INF) agreement of 1987. On a ‘minimum energy’ (i.e. near parabolic) flight path, the US Pershing 2 rose to 330 km to travel 1,800 horizontally; and the Soviet SS-20 rose to 950 km to travel 5,000. In other

168 DEFENCE AGAINST MISSILES

words, the interception mid-course of strategic warloads could engender a persistent debris problem. By the turn of the millennium, humankind had been leaving detritus in orbit for nearly half a century. Over a third of the 25,000 objects catalogued over time were still there. Another sobering comparison is that some 2,000,000 kg of anthropogenic material is in Low Earth Orbit at present, whereas only 70 kg of meteoritic dust is.36 At the gateway to the heavens, humankind is over-turning Nature; and is doing so nonchalantly. SBL absentees A question close to the heart of this matter is whether an American commitment to SBI would induce other Great Powers (Russia and/or China?) to acquire the ability to engage SBLs and/or satellites dedicated to operational surveillance. The altitude at which SBLs may revolve if deployed has been put in the literature as high as 3,000 km. But the general understanding appears to be that 1,300 km would be the likely altitude.37 Several passive surveillance platforms might be geostationary but others would mainly be somewhere in the 500 to 4,000 km zone. Those elevations may be compared with the inferred performance of the first generation surface/airborne Anti-Satellite (ASAT) missiles Moscow and Washington respectively field-tested in the 1980s. These were credited with slant-cum-orbital ranges of up to 2,000 km. The temptation to Moscow and Beijing to revive the ASAT genre would surely be considerable were SBLs deployed by Washington. The grounds for saying so are chiefly that any such deployment would effectively be global even were the intention just to present a capability in a particular theatre. The reason is ‘dwell time’ and the absentee effect: in other words, the small proportion of total time an SBL platform revolving relatively low above our rotating Earth would have within range a given locale on the surface. Granted, the said platforms could be so orbited as not to reach any latitude higher than the highest in the country thus being constrained. But that could always be subject to rapid adjustment. North Korea is roughly bisected by the 40°N parallel. The Russian ICBM emplacements are distributed between 50 and 60°. With a very modest increase in launch velocity, SBLs covering North Korea could be realigned to cover that sector. Besides which, an SBL constellation that was always to have, say, three platforms over North Korea would ipso facto have to have 200 overhead to China. Admittedly, a platform would not have to be perpendicularly above North Korea to engage a missile ascending therefrom. But allowing for obliquity may affect the argument a good deal less than geometry may suggest. Project Air Force conceded this when (as cited above) it allowed for dozens of absentees for every platform on target. A 1997 judgement attributed to the SBL programme integrator at BMDO would be laughed out of court if it ever gained enough currency. It was that as few as twelve SBLs at a height of 1,300 km might proffer planetary coverage.38

THE HEAVENS SUBVERTED? 169

But even if such a claim were remotely valid, it would address absenteeism only as a logistical and costing problem. The BMD balance between the major powers could still be complicated to such an extent as to render infeasible codified arms control. Apprehension on this score drives the emphasis the Chinese have lately laid on non-weaponization of Space,39 this despite their current preoccupation with domestic development rather than high-profile foreign policy. Their anxiety will probably have been increased by the mid-2003 appointment of Aaron Friedberg as deputy National Security Adviser. He has foreseen China emerging later this century as the USA’s ‘only strategic competitor’, and has more specifically suggested that ‘Over the course of the next several decades there is a good chance that the USA will find itself engaged in an open and intense geopolitical rivalry with the People’s Republic of China.’ The advent of Chinese manned Spaceflight could affect this prognosis either way. Underlying concerns of a broadly similar kind can be read into Russian admonitions ahead of the USA’s withdrawal from the ABM treaty.40 Moscow was unable to endorse unequivocally Pentagon averrations that ‘The Russians know that nothing we are doing will undermine Russian security.’41 Nor had she been enamoured by the disclosure in 1998 that an American high-performance Xband radar was being installed at Vardø in Norway. Washington’s intimation that it was essentially to track Space debris was vitiated by its having a resolution of 10 to 15 cm, a degree of discrimination inadequate for debris monitoring though sufficient for studying ICBM test firings—particularly the ‘debussing’ of multiple warheads. It was further weakened by Vardø’s being ‘nearly the last place on Earth one would choose’ to track debris from. So was it by a similar facility (also oriented towards Russia) being planned for Shemya Island in the Aleutians.42 In January 2001 came the report of a Rumsfeld-led Commission to Assess United States National Security Space Management and Organization. Vaguely warning of some kind of ‘Space Pearl Harbor’, it said History showed ‘Space warfare’ to be ‘a virtual certainty’. The USA therefore needed ‘superior Space capabilities’ including ‘power projection in, from or near Space’.43 Now the Bush administration milestones for NMD development include the launching in 2008 of several missile-armed satellites intended to test the feasibility of this mode of Space-based BPI. However, a report published in July 2003 by the American Physical Society estimated 1,000 interceptors (all of them awkwardly large) would have to be placed in orbit to constitute an adequate operational deployment. Meanwhile, the military professional literature eloquently maintains a near silence about the absentee platform dilemma and whether so destabilizing a contradiction can be accepted in an era in which the supreme need is positive international collaboration against the pervasive menace of clandestine biowarfare.

170 DEFENCE AGAINST MISSILES

Information through Space The scope satellite reconnaissance affords for civil observation of the Earth’s surface is shown by several exotic methodologies. Infra-red scans of convective cloud tops coupled with microwave probes of the cloud interiors are used to guestimate rainfall over tropical seas.44 Likewise, surveillance from Space can input predictive models of fish catches. Thus research at the University of British Columbia has helped resolve the paradox that the Food and Agriculture Organization global record of fish landed haltingly rose past 80 million tons in the 1990s, even though many particular fisheries were conspicuously in decline. Apparently China for one had been over-stating her catches: 10 million tons reported in 1999 as against a modelled prediction of 5.5 million. Also, ocean currents are to be assessed more definitively as media for heat transfer. Already NASA and German researchers have been exploring the Spaceborne mapping of gravity variations at the sea surface. Furthermore, this capability may well be applied to the location of oil and other minerals ashore, given the anticipated attainment in orbit of gravity measurement a million times more sensitive than currently achieved.45 Space-based radar is technology which operates regardless of darkness and which can have singular if limited ability to penetrate clouds, foliage, shifting sands and salt water. Its utility is considerable in the civilian context and often crucial in the military. A direct precursor was the radar on board the Lockheed SR-71 Blackbird, a very high-altitude reconnaissance plane which first flew in 1962. NASA was involved in satellite radars by 1970. Two years beforehand, the USSR brought one into service for naval reconnaissance. When the Superpowers began optical orbital surveillance in the early 1960s, ‘definition’ was defined as the diameter of the smallest white spot visible against a black background or vice versa. Quite soon the quotable figure shrank, in the American case, below 25 cm. But comparison seems more complicated now. What mix of wavebands is in use? What about light levels? What field of view is sought? How many transits are made? Nowadays ‘definition’ is usually taken to mean the width of the smallest actual feature discernible. Using this yardstick, one metre is widely seen as a ‘sweet spot’ for, say, distinguishing individual vehicles in convoy. Commercial optical reconnaissance is now on that threshold while, in military programmes, below half a metre is achievable. In that radars work on longer wavelengths, their discrimination will be less. Employing the two modes together may lead to useful synthesis, as per the four optical and two radar satellites France and Italy plan to orbit, 2004–7. This constellation is predicted to have ‘a one-metre capability’. Reception from more than one part of the electromagnetic spectrum is, in fact, the key to sophisticated Space surveillance. Its utility against camouflage is evident. Its civil value, too, is considerable. In 2003, a programme was launched to map thus the habitats of the mountain gorillas in the Uganda-Congo-Rwanda

THE HEAVENS SUBVERTED? 171

border zone. The aim is to evolve a strategy for the survival of these animals (now down to perhaps 650) in the face of poachers exploiting the ravages of war. If successful, this approach will be applied to many of the other 730 World Heritage Sites identified by UNESCO. The Near Space milieu is sure to be used much more thirty years hence. The human presence is likely to increase modestly. Unmanned satellites are liable to become far more numerous. However, ten to fifteen years may well elapse between the point in time the technology of a programme is fixed and when it really turns profitable, assuming it ever does. Any venture is therefore prone to error in demand forecast. These last several years, some forward planning has rested on overestimation of the general resilience of the pre-existing boom in IT. May there also have been an underestimation of the competition from terrestrial fibre optics? Some of the headier forecasts of secular growth in Near Space usage do need to be scaled down. Nevertheless, the number of satellites of conventional sizes in orbit for communications purposes, say, could still quadruple by 2033. Additionally, much interest is being shown, especially in the USA, in deploying for communications and eavesdropping swarms of small or very small satellites. Here ‘small’ refers to nanosatellites weighing less than 10 kg; and ‘very small’ to picosatellites weighing less than 1 kg. Such micro platforms could figure in constellations of satellites in Low Earth Orbit (typical altitude 400 km) able to supplement, and to an extent displace, satellites in ‘geostationary’ orbit. The trouble with a geostationary location is that it takes a seventh of a second for an electromagnetic wave to travel between the surface and the satellite. That can be limiting for interactive communication or aerospace navigation. Near Space will thus become more firmly than before the overarching framework for long-distance data exchange. This could precipitate major congestion problems, both vehicular and electromagnetic. Undoubtedly, too, there will be episodic backlashes against intensive surveillance and cultural pollution. There have been quite a few to date. In 1979, the USSR supported by India et al. proposed that the resolution of civilian satellites should not exceed 50 metres. In 1986, Papua New Guinea deferred a decision about national television because ‘We do not want to become Americans or Australians’, and because too many soap operas would exacerbate further the high incidence of violent crime, alias ‘rascalism’.

Part IV The quest for strategy

11 Pax Atlantica?1

Each side of the Atlantic, the twentieth century brought forth sundry secular prophets, telling of futures revealed in divers ways. H.G.Wells might still be lauded as doyen of them all. His most famous prevision came in 1913 when, in The World Set Free, he foresaw a war fought with ‘atomic bombs’ in 1959. More often, however, his interest in military science was too spasmodic. He gyrated between blimpish insensitivity to change and skittish indifference to continuity. In Anticipations (1901), he could only allow that heavier-than-air machines would fly ‘very probably before 1950’ (p. 191); and that submarines would rarely be lethal except to whosoever sailed in them (p. 200). Nevertheless, this overview of the century ahead was laced with social and geopolitical insights. By 1935, the USA was likely to overhaul Britain in naval and mercantile terms. Yet concurrently the looming German challenge should induce a ‘synthesis of the English-speaking peoples’ (p. 260). Once Germany had been curbed in a series of wars, the destiny of Western Europe would hinge on a federalism based on the states extending across the Rhine valley, states destined to become a single economic entity the next fifty years.2 What Wells thus foretold was the Rhine being the axis of an incipient Pax Europa. The great river would no longer divide Francophone land from Germanophone: a role imposed on it from 962, the year the title of Holy Roman Emperor resumed by Charlemagne on Christmas Day 800 passed less firmly yet more conclusively into German hands. Currently such an objective is expressed in the endeavour to forge Franco-German links which cannot be sundered. Beforehand, one can credit with the same ultimate vision those statesmen who, in the 1950s, created the Coal and Steel Community and then the European Economic Community, all its six founder members bar Italy grouped round the Rhine. Then, come the 1960s, those who endorsed the 1957 Treaty of Rome’s commitment to an ‘ever closer unity’ began further to ask whether the EEC per se might contribute more to the resolution of world problems than could its members acting separately.

174 THE QUEST FOR STRATEGY

A Eurocentric world, 1492 to 1942 A satisfactory answer to that question seemed further off than ever in the wake of the splenetic exchanges over Iraq in February 2003. A renewed quest might start with consideration of how the whole world turned Eurocentric from 1492 to 1942: the former date marking the arrival of Columbus in the West Indies and the latter the Battles of Midway Island and Stalingrad, victories heralding the Superpower status of Washington and Moscow respectively. Since both America and Russia have roots set deep within this globalizing Europe, they each remain concerned with our continent in a very special way. No matter that neither is European in a sense germane to this discussion. Europe’s focal position in the world at large was underpinned in the course of the eighteenth century. The Seven Years War (1756–63) was dubbed by Winston Churchill the ‘First World War’ since that intra-European conflict was waged not just in Europe and adjacent waters but also in the Americas and India. Around that time, too, the notion of ‘the land hemisphere’ started to surface. A bifocal French map dating from 1768 presented the world as two hemispheres. The one, centred antipodally several hundred miles north-east of New Zealand’s North Island, is very predominantly sea. The other, centred in western France, comprises appreciably more land than sea. Europe thus had a pivotal advantage in that most seafaring of eras. Complementary to this truism is one succinctly observed by David Hume (1711–76), the lead philosopher of the Scottish Enlightenment. It was that ‘of all parts of the Earth, Europe is the most broken by seas, rivers and mountains…and most naturally divided into several distinct governments’. Especially remarkable is how deeply the continental compass is penetrated by two very articulated arms of the sea—the Baltic and the Mediterranean. Configuration still counts. So does location. An interesting, albeit roughhewn, attempt has been made to show liberal values flourish best where the difference in mean temperature between the warmest month and the coldest is relatively small. Western Europe is well blessed in this regard, thanks to the prevalence of westerly winds off the moderating sea.3 All in all, it is hard to believe there has never been anything in such correlation. Yet it is no less hard to relate much of Europe’s history since Hume’s time (and, above all, in the twentieth century) to the smile of Enlightenment reason. The fractured geography he extolled has sometimes favoured local freedom but has otherwise called forth cohesion through tyranny. Europe the disparate has readily become Europe the atrocious. Witness the Balkans. The enlargement impasse However, all but two of the dozen statehoods that comprised the map of Eastern Europe after 1920 were based on the principle of a paramount nationality. The two exceptions—Yugoslavia and Czechoslovakia—have sundered. Therefore,

PAX ATLANTICA? 175

the threat of violent conflict may stem most basically from a possible EU collapse, probably brought on by economic crisis. Clearly, the EU must be robust enough to withstand whatever crises break, within or without. It must also be coherent enough to contribute in due measure to crisis avoidance or resolution far afield. Unfortunately, however, the EU has slid into a two-track strategy liable to vitiate both robustness and cohesion. It is going concurrently for closer integration throughout and for extensive territorial enlargement. No matter that, for a good three decades after the Rome Treaty, all sides saw more integration and further enlargement as alternative priorities. Nowhere was this understanding more explicit than in Britain; and nowhere was a ‘wider Europe’ more favoured. The term ‘wider’ was taken to connote expansiveness, not overstretch. But then the change of name in 1993 from EEC/ Common Market to European Union betokened a desire to conflate the two aims. The most immediate danger thus posed is that the stresses engendered by membership expansion will oblige the Union to look inwards more. The ultimate is that it will simply become unmanageable. Thus at their Copenhagen summit in December 2002, the EU heads of government approved of ten more applications: the Czech Republic, Cyprus, Estonia, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Malta, Poland, Slovakia and Slovenia. Subject to ratifications, they will join in 2004. However, the euphoria evinced at Copenhagen did not adequately reflect informed opinion. Even the existing EU membership has not found it at all easy to harmonize for monetary union or other purposes. Broad cultural differences inhibit the development of an internal market at all perfectly. Specific differences in economic culture mean, for instance, that national economies still vary markedly in their responsiveness to interest rate alterations. Meanwhile, certain central areas are prospectively more dynamic than some peripheral ones. The proposed accessions seem certain to make existing problems worse, in some respects much more so. The two island applicants are small and exocentric; and Cyprus still lacks a unification agreement even on paper, let alone one proven to work in practice. The other accessor states are all former Soviet bloc. The fact that these last five years their economies have grown at double the eurozone average is expressive of the rebound from this past experience as their internal markets liberalize. As things stand, none of these countries has a per capita income less than a quarter below the EU average; and the poorest, Lithuania and Latvia, achieve not 30 per cent of it (IMF estimates for 2001, based on Purchasing Power Parity). So far, too, liberalization has, if anything, worsened the pervasive corruption inherited from Communism.4 Already it is clear the subventions sought by the East will be especially heavy in agriculture. What is unclear is how a Europe of the twenty-five will function day by day. How long will routine meetings last? How will the translation service cope? And how will the situation be affected if, despite recent inclinations, the euro currency does assume a greater global role?5

176 THE QUEST FOR STRATEGY

Turkey and others? The applications of Romania, Bulgaria and Turkey were left on hold at Copenhagen. Turkey, in particular, was told very expressly that the earliest negotiations could start was the end of 2004; and this only if demanding reforms had been effected. These specifically include abolishing both the death penalty and restrictions on the Kurdish language. Policy and practice in regard to political detentions must also be addressed, as must corruption. Nor could any Greek or British government endorse Turkish entry without an equitable solution of the Cyprus question. Never mind that EOKA insurgent extremists on the Greek side set up the situation that led Ankara to mount an invasion in 1974. Now Turkey has in Recep Tayyip Erdogan a Prime Minister who is a liberal though devout Islamist as well as a passionate advocate of EU membership. He epitomizes the outreaching cosmopolitan side of Turkish Islam, a side manifested repeatedly for centuries past6 and expressed best in Istanbul/Constantinople as opposed to Ankara. Erdogan was an excellent mayor of Istanbul from 1994. He could prove to be an outstanding Prime Minister, not least in respect of Cyprus. But the rub is that Turkey’s GDP is one-twelfth that of Germany. Yet demographically she is virtually as big; and area-wise over twice as big. Her population is close to 70 million; and that, coupled with her backwardness and eccentric location, could imbalance the EU desperately. Droughts expressive of secular climate trends could prove a further complication. In any case, the Turks might better fulfil their destiny through simply being a cornerstone of the Atlantic Alliance and the keystone of the Middle East. Saddled instead with ambiguous status as an incongruent national appendage of the EU, many Turks might turn towards the belligerent fundamentalism. In a process of action-reaction, their putative European compatriots could turn more to Islamophobia. Religious hatred will have been engendered by economic differentials and geographic asymmetries. Valéry Giscard d’Estaing (long doubtful about EU expansion westward) currently believes that Turkey’s accession would mean ‘the end’ of the EU.7 A most depressing aspect has been the purblindness of Washington to this all too possible outcome. The Bush administration and, more surprisingly, the Clinton administration before it have backed Turkey’s candidature very overtly; and this pitch will likely survive the Ankara-Washington altercations of early 2003. A primary reason appears to be a disposition to define that country’s nodal role very much in military terms. Its utility in force projection (especially to Afghanistan and Iraq) is undeniable, provided it stays stable enough internally. But another consideration aired—that it can be invaluable for Europe’s anti-missile defence—is spurious for a raft of reasons. The most trite is geodesy. A great circle track from Tehran to Berlin bypasses Turkey comfortably. Nonetheless, her putative importance in this regard routinely figures in promotional BMD conferences.

PAX ATLANTICA? 177

Nor is this the only tough case in prospect. In March 2000, the King of Morocco reaffirmed in Paris his nation’s desire to join the Union, sanguinely suggesting the Turkish precedent had effectively broken an anti-Islamic taboo. Likewise, Croatia aspires to follow Slovenia to the negotiating table. Other constituent states of the former Yugoslavia may not long delay Ukrainian and Georgian politicians have also looked towards eventual inclusion in EU and NATO. Jacques Delors (President of the European Commission, 1985–94) has urged us not to forget ‘The Ukraine is a very European country.’ Her political and religious origins justify this averration taken in the round. So does the courage with which so many Ukrainians resisted both Stalin and Hitler. Even so, it bears not at all on the danger the EU is now in of making itself unmanageable through aiming simultaneously at vast expansion and the high degree of integration Delors himself worked towards as President. Already it is pretty much committed to accepting Romania and Bulgaria soon after the ten states endorsed at Copenhagen. Nor is the post-Soviet malaise to reckon with in Eastern Europe a straight question of corruption, pollution and agrarian poverty. The negative legacy of Marxian officialdom has been all too well reflected in the low morale of the armed forces recently brought within NATO. Worse, the resurgent backlash against gypsies viciously confirms communal bitterness is still endemic. Even so, the gypsy question is not being seen as a test of suitability for EU accession. Pivotal Britain The truth that Germany is the dominant heartland of the expanding EU is so obvious that it is easily overlooked. Yet the country likely to do most in the course of this decade to shape Europe’s future one way or another is Britain. She will do this not by dint of having a supra-national continental strategy to propound but because she is struggling to redefine her own place in the world, not least in relation to membership or otherwise of the euro currency zone. A small but not insignificant minority of British opinion seeks outright British withdrawal from the EU. Its spokesmen like to present this as a simple choice crisply to be made. In reality, the process would be agonizingly protracted, and hugely damaging to national credibility. And where would Britain repair to? Unsplendid isolation? Into a North Atlantic Free Trade Area which would still be highly asymmetrical even were Australasia appended? And what if any particular prospect engendered strong differences among the four components (Scotland, England, Wales, Ulster) of a now devolved United Kingdom? Might the British nationhood fragment? And might secessions thus be encouraged within other EU members? (Cyprus? Spain? Balkan states?) Nor is the case for Britain or any other member staying in purely negative. Ecological collaboration at continental level may yield real benefits. So may working together on internal security and military contingency plans. The same goes for tariff-free trade. Incipient, too, is a pan-European aspiration to create a

178 THE QUEST FOR STRATEGY

high-technology community second only to the American overall. On a range of political issues (from conflict in the Holy Land to the Kyoto climate pact) the Europeans have acted regularly in harmony, sometimes to effect. Complementary military cultures A coming together of peoples has also been in train. Thus Anglo-French relations between what they call ‘ordinary people’ often seem as easy nowadays as Anglo-American have customarily been. Besides which, the British have often been closer to ‘the continent’ in certain philosophic respects than to America. Salient among the trans-Atlantic differences in this realm has been a stronger European disposition to wax sceptical about technology’s ability to solve outstanding problems. In military science, this particularly applies to commandand-control. Europeans are more drawn to the Prussian strategic theorist, Karl von Clausewitz (1780–1831), and everything connoted about inchoate violence by his celebrated expression ‘the fog of war’. Many instances of this divergence could be cited from World War II and the Cold War.8 Among them would be the blanket scepticism many in Europe evinced from the start about SDI prognoses. So could the reservations lately entertained, most explicitly in London and Paris, about US aspirations to ‘riskfree’ deployment. Perhaps the most momentous example of constructive compromise was the weather forecasting for the Normandy landings. American weathermen were throughout more sanguine than their British colleagues as to how confidently one could predict, for the five days ahead Eisenhower insisted on, situations as complex as that unfolding. Likewise the American planning staff had long exuded confidence about the ability of advanced technology to ensure Allied success regardless. British caution famously secured deferment of the landings from a storm-bound 5 June to a somewhat quieter sixth. Less famously but as importantly, American sanguineness then precluded further postponement, probably into the teeth of the 19–22 June storm (see p. 152). Nothing worse can be imagined. Even as events transpired, serious damage was done to a consolidated beach-head.9 Had D-Day failed, Europe might have faced years of chaotic strife, as a resurgent Berlin played off a fissuring West against an embittered Moscow. What this episode illustrates is how, when perspectives from the two sides of the Atlantic are different, the creative tension can be invaluable. That was well appreciated by a generation of Atlanticist leaders emergent in the 1940s of the last century, men like Marshall and Eisenhower. Both those American captains of war and peace were, one may note, assiduous readers of Clausewitz.10

PAX ATLANTICA? 179

Evolving geopolitics For a good twenty years after 1945, the USA actively promoted European unity in order to create a twin pillar within the Atlantic Alliance. Thereafter, this bipolarity was taken almost for granted until 9/11. Virtually throughout, it counted for more than ‘Pacific First’ isolationism, the brief exception being in the middle of the Korean War. Nearly a quarter of the Senate voted early in 1951 against the dispatch of four more American divisions to Germany The ‘Pacific First’ school was located on the Right of the Republican party and interwove with McCarthyism. Geographically, much of its leadership came from the West or Middle West; and resented what they saw as the control of their party and country by Ivy League and Wall Street. They placed more emphasis than Eastern Republicans or Democrats on the deterrent and punitive effects of air and sea power; and less on the value of multilateral alliances or, indeed, UN authority. In the United States as elsewhere, political battle lines can no longer be drawn on the map as neatly as once they could. Nevertheless, the divide here identified is still significant. George W.Bush gained the Presidency as a worldly unwise Texan isolationist. Since when, he has been torn between the global unilateralism of Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld; and the anguished multilateralism of Colin Powell. A distinguished British columnist has contended that, impelled by its own Right wing, the USA has always sought ‘a liberal free market Europe, securing capitalism and democracy but with no capability to become a partner in the exercise of Western political and military power’. Hence the consistent pressure on the EU to enlarge to the point where it ‘collapses into dysfunctional paralysis’.11 Evidently, this blanket judgement casts American policy as monolithically negative over time in a way it never was nor could have been. Nevertheless, a kernel of truth within it bears on our present discontents. All of which behoves the EU not to undermine its twin pillar potential through illjudged enlargement. Russia must also be considered. However much one welcomes the transformation of her relations with the West that has been the prime mover of the Strategic Revolution these past fifteen years, one cannot yet presume a warlike crisis with her is no more conceivable than, say, one between Canada and the USA. To proceed as if so could be to leave such a crisis room to develop against the background of some authoritarian backlash in Moscow. All else apart, the eastward limits of NATO ought finally to be set where it still has some hope of implementing the linear forward strategy for deterrence and defence it first endorsed in 1950. That effectively means the western border of the USSR as it was early in 1940—i.e. encompassing the Baltic States but not Belarus or the Ukraine. To advance further east would be more provocative yet less viable. Correspondingly, the EU should never extend that far either.

180 THE QUEST FOR STRATEGY

Two-tier stability Without a political framework that facilitates the collective attainment of more positive goals, the nations of Europe may well lapse deeper into what Brian Beedham has dubbed a ‘melancholic envy’ of the United States. But will it not be near to impossible to integrate at all solidly and uniformly a Europe of the twenty-five or thirty? A burgeoning sense that such will prove to be the case has encouraged a revival the last year or so of previous ideas about a ‘two-tier’ or at least a ‘two-speed’ Europe. The concept has been forcefully aired by prominent Frenchmen, President Chirac among them. Jacques Delors has called for an avant garde with specific executive and legislative powers set within existing EU treaties. Certainly, closer integration in whatever form is least unpopular within the original Common Market six—the Rhine states bar Switzerland but plus Italy. But to codify their inclination within an exclusive core treaty could be to draw too rigid a distinction. The balance of argument favours instead an inner core able to accommodate other states for particular purposes. Nor was the FrancoGerman commitment early in 2003 to forge confederal links in some important policy areas incompatible with this prospect. On the contrary, this bilateral endeavour may well be extended in due course to embrace other neighbouring states. Nevertheless, many in Britain will feel full membership of any such inner grouping would limit the leverage we contingently exercise in Washington still. One should reflect, too, that the geopolitical role historically of insular and oceanic England or Britain has been to offset the preponderant continental power—Philip II, Louis XIV, Napoleon, the Romanov tsars, Kaiser Wilhelm, Adolf Hitler… A need to counterbalance may still be there. To believe it may, one does not have to read the pan-European federalism in vogue in Berlin as merely Hitler’s New Order in kid gloves, not that nor anything like it. More prominent than geopolitics in the present debate within Britain, however, are the economic arguments for and against accession to the euro currency. What will be important is that any referendum debate about its adoption not be dominated by prior governmental judgements about enough convergence taking place between the existing euro-economies and our own. Even if the several criteria identified yield consistent and accurate guidance, they will only indicate whether joining could precipitate an immediate crisis. Judgements about the longer term can only be based on hunch, given the unprecedented paradigm change the global economy is entered upon. What may be surmised, nonetheless, is that, if twenty-five or more countries were to adopt the euro in quick succession, the resultant monetary bloc would long be too brittle to withstand the impact of some major world recession. Furthermore, its disintegration could leave the EU far more fractious than if the euro had never been thought of in the first place and less binding modes of monetary co-operation settled for. Shades of the collapsing gold standard in the world of 1930s.

PAX ATLANTICA? 181

Persisting economic rigidities among EU member states (notably in labour mobility and agriculture) would increase the danger of such an outcome. Nor does it seem these can, or indeed should, be expeditiously resolved, never mind what intentions governments express. Reforming agricultural strategy to take proper account of climate change, other ecological stresses, food security and eastward enlargement will be a daunting task, one likely to be much aggravated in South-East Europe by secular rainfall decline and periodically in Italy and Iberia by severe seasonal droughts. Nor can freer labour mobility help the desperate congestion building up in areas like the south-east of England. Nor may Europe’s demographic ageing favour adaptiveness. Nor does the corruption widely endemic facilitate sound economic management. All of which points firmly towards national membership of the euro zone being kept well below the enlarged EU’s, at least for the next ten years. The former should be confined essentially to an inner core plus a very few outliers, as per Finnish, Greek and Irish participation currently. Limited membership would much improve the prospects of the Euro consolidating; and consolidation would benefit the whole EU and indeed the whole world. Almost as firm is the inference that Britain ought therefore to stay without through 2010. Some specific pros and cons have still to be weighed as best they can be, not least the implications for the City of London and its international financial services. In the final analysis, however, everything should hinge on the connotations for merged sovereignty. Basic questions have still to be resolved apropos the operational management of the euro via the European Central Bank. Even more problematic is the overall political framework, not least as regards relations between the Brussels Commission and the Strasbourg Parliament. To all outward appearances, no desire to create a two-tier Europe is expressed in a EU ‘constitutional treaty’ draft submitted in May 2003 by Valéry Giscard d’Estaing acting in his capacity as chairman of a convention on the EU’s future. It is due to lead on to a full constitutional conference (maybe in mid-2004) from which it is hoped an agreed constitution can emerge. This would then have to be ratified within two years by all member states. To an extent, the Giscard d’Estaing exercise has been a reaffirmation of existing precepts, some dating back to 1957. But many innovations have been suggested. The main ones are as follows. The EU Council will elect a President of Europe and also a rather circumscribed Foreign Minister. The practice whereby each member state provides one EU Commissioner will end. The European Parliament will have much-expanded powers—e.g. as regards justice, agriculture and the EU budget. On the justice side, the EU will intrude deeply into national legal codes. There will be a European Armaments Agency. The EU will acquire an explicit legal personality; and there will be an EU Bill of Rights. The draft has attracted a broad spread of criticism. So how things play from now on is very unclear. But one quite possible outcome of any ratification process is that something like this draft will eventually be approved by all or nearly all the core states in Western Europe but rejected by most on the

182 THE QUEST FOR STRATEGY

periphery. If that happens, the EU could be en route to a two-tier structure. That ought to be compatible with a goodly measure of unity on external affairs, more than has lately been achieved. Unfortunately, it will be hard to make Europe more of a functional democracy through institutional reform, however radical. The crisis within the EU in this regard is part and parcel of the democratic malaise throughout the West. Obversely, it does have features peculiar to the EU itself. Take elections to the European Parliament. Electoral opinion regularly fragments along national lines. Typically, under half the electorate vote. Those that do make their choices largely in relation to predilections at national level. The elected members can be of second-order calibre and uncertain commitment. These and sundry other considerations have led a former EU commissioner to opine that the Union’s ‘decision-making process…is an insult to democracy’.12 Europe and the open sea Looking at the material basis for the exercise of European influence worldwide, the most evident truth is that Europe is very much a seafaring fraternity. It is replete with naval and fishery tradition. Over and beyond which, it is a leader in maritime trade. UN compilations of merchant shipping movements seem oddly incomplete. But it is clear enough that, in 1997–8, port clearances measured in Gross Register Tons were over half as much again in the EU as in the USA, China and Japan combined.13 One inference could be that the EU is well placed to assume a lead role in global economic strategy. High technology A salient concern must be ratings in high technology. Biotechnology assumes ever more importance. Similarly, sheer information exchange is expanding much more than exponentially. For many purposes, however, Physics and Engineering are still lead subjects; and in the Euro-American interaction, prowess in aerospace is a core expression thereof. It typically absorbs half the defence procurement budget. Duly, the literature on aerospace merges with that of defence production viewed in the round. In 2001, the six top defence companies in terms of total sales, civilian as well as military, worldwide were Boeing with US$58 billion; Northrop/TRW on 29; United Technologies on 28; EADS on 27; Mitsubishi nearly 25; and Lockheed Martin, 24. Overall, nearly a third of the sales value was directly defence-related.14 At present, however, it is the civil side which is deemed the more to proffer market stability and industrial dynamism. A perennial problem for European aerospace/defence is that the Americans, whether in government or the firms, have thus far preferred to make collaborative links binational, a preference liable to impede intra-European knowledge transfers. Take the Memoranda of Understanding for SDI collaboration signed from 1985. These agreements in principle were as between

PAX ATLANTICA? 183

SDIO and national bodies in Britain, West Germany and (in modified format) the Netherlands along with Israel and Japan. A key reason why the Netherlands Organization for Applied Scientific Research signed a looser Memorandum of Agreement was that the industrial giant Philips of Eindhoven said it was ‘not in the business of selling research results but products and systems’.15 True to her penchant for appearing different, France never signed an MOU or anything similar. No less characteristically, however, Prime Minister Jacques Chirac said France must ‘associate herself with this great research’ as it had to stay ‘the third country in the world in space technology’.16 However, times are a-changing. Europe is pursuing more solid collaboration across its own borders. The Airbus consortium formed c. 1980 has lately reformed as a multinational public firm. Three years ago, EADS (the European Aeronautics Defence and Space Agency) was created by the French, Germans and Spanish. Thales is another of the emergent intra-European multinationals. Of French origin, it specializes in civil/military dual-use applications in air traffic control and airborne avionics. Such consortia have a bargaining power ad hoc groupings cannot match. Also, the consolidated base their formation creates should enable them to plan ahead coherently. One reason why French and British firms decided to build together the supersonic Concorde was because they believed its sales could be at least ten times what they turned out to be. This belief arose because, locked into an ad hoc tandem, those concerned could never stand back and reflect on how fares in the subsonic market would be lowered by the advent of the jumbo jet. On the face of it, the consolidation through mergers of Europe’s aerospace production (hard upon a similar post-Cold War tendency across the Atlantic) has left the sector well attuned to directed evolution. Airbus has lately drawn level with its arch-rival Boeing as regards backlog orders for jet-liners worldwide. In respect of Space launchings and commercial satellites, Europe is very much on terms. The same goes for civil and military helicopters. Europe also waxes quite strong in various purely military spheres, Theatre Missile Defence included. Even the ‘stealth’ concept has been less exclusively an American growth than sometimes presumed.17 According to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, the Europeans provide a quarter of the world’s defence exports as against the Americans rather over half.18 Yet still the fact remains that, on a sanguine interpretation, current European expenditure on defence systems development is running at barely a fifth of America’s. Hence the considerable concern expressed this last year or so about European backwardness in, for instance, Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs). But that may translate into a broader failure to foresee the progress of automation in war. A strong consensus has it that the trans-Atlantic military technology gap is wide and widening. Contrast that with 1985, say. Though ahead overall, the Americans were keen to mobilize, especially for SDI, allied technical strengths: British aeronautics and avionics; Dutch electromagnetic launching; the supercomputer the Japanese were aspiring to create…

184 THE QUEST FOR STRATEGY

Once again, the Brussels response has been to launch industrial strategy initiatives. Early in 2001, the Commission together with aerospace entrepreneurs unveiled A Vision for 2020. This report called for an extra $20 billion research and development funding, public and private, this decade and next. In 1999, the Union had spent nearly $10 billion on aerospace research, close to half of it governmentally provided. Central to the said vision is the elimination of residual fragmentation along national lines inside the aerospace community. This should contribute inter alia to a halving of development lead times. The focus is on ‘more affordable, safer, cleaner and quieter’ as opposed to ‘higher, further, faster’.19 A strategy very much to that effect was formally endorsed in November 2001. At the same time, EADS was pressing the case for establishing a European equivalent of the US Defence Advanced Research Projects Agency, a body established soon after the launch of Sputnik. The generation and retention of top-class talent in pure science is liable to prove a sine qua non for a technological community. The decisive post-war recovery, through the middle 1980s, of West Germany’s aircraft industry may have owed something to West German scientists then receiving a clutch of Nobel prizes in relevant areas. If so, Europeans should welcome the more the bold ambitions of the European Space Agency, no matter that the data gleaned cannot be the preserve of European science alone. Here mention may be made of two of the Cornerstone projects in ESA’s Horizons 2000 programme. Bepi Colombo involves three Spacecraft scheduled for launch in 2009, possibly with Japanese involvement. They will swing past Venus to orbit Mercury; and one of them will dispatch a lander there. Then Gaia, due to lift off by 2012, is inter alia to map a billion stars in our galaxy. Its design accuracy (at magnitude 15) of 10 microseconds of arc is comparable to the width of a human hair at 1,000 km.20 Additionally, an ESA report has advocated a military Space reconnaissance programme. More prosaic, though no less crucial, is the future of Airbus. Its singular experience with multi-engined wide-body designs could give it the option of developing the new reconnaissance bomber surely required for expeditionary warfare. Yet of paramount importance for the survival in Europe of a cohesive aerospace community will be the outcome of a struggle between Airbus and Boeing for opportunities to facilitate the threefold increase in air passenger mileage worldwide expected these next twenty years. The rival projects under development are the Airbus A380 and the Boeing Sonic Cruiser. However, the rivalry is oblique in that the two designs are aimed at different niche markets. The former is for passengers wanting cheapish flights between hub airports while the latter offers quick transits to secondary centres. In other words, the crux of the matter is conflicting views about the growth prospects of the respective niches. Anyone concerned for the stability of the Atlantic Alliance must hope the result will be a draw.

PAX ATLANTICA? 185

It is also important to lessen the ill-feeling engendered this last decade by American assertions that subsidies to Airbus programmes are against the principles of ‘fair trade’ (understood to mean ‘free trade’) and, more particularly, violate a 1992 Convention. Now each side recurrently accuses the other of peddling misinformation. In addition, the Europeans protest that American firms gain hidden subsidies from heavy defence and Space involvement. It would be difficult to deny much truth in this, especially against the background of how Space-based defence has lately been presented. Ironically though, we were told over fifteen years ago that NASA’s work on energy-efficient engine technology, digital cockpit systems, and composite materials had afforded a ‘cornucopia of information’ from which Airbus had been a leading beneficiary.21 An emergent question is whether the resumed interest in both NASA and DARPA in hypersonic flight at altitudes of c. 35 to 60 km (high stratosphere and low mesosphere) will in the medium-term (2015 to 2020?) have major market implications, civil no less than military. The answer may hinge on predicted ecological impacts. At all events, the crux is that ‘fair trade’ is never completely fair; and sometimes it is desperately unfair, especially to weaker participants. Let us take the weapons domain. The trend more towards pilotless aircraft (not to mention other unmanned or lightly manned systems) will probably involve a shift in the spread of full life costing more towards gestation—i.e. Research and Development. That means the R&D cost is best spread over a long production run. In World War II, the unit cost of a US fighter (R&D included) was deemed unlikely to level out until 20,000 had come off the line.22 Regularly audible are averrations that closer trans-Atlantic ties are a key to the full realization of economies of scale. Outside of the United Kingdom, these have not much involved as yet interlocking ownership, a conspicuous exception being the acquisition in 2000 by United Defense of Bofors, the Swedish firm renowned for anti-aircraft artillery. But what is still seen as the British flagship in the field, BAe Systems (founded by merger in 1999) has heavily invested in the USA as well as Europe; and is much involved in co-development, notably of the Joint Strike Fighter which promises to be the biggest programme of its kind on record. Lately the company has moved still closer to the American community, partly in order to minimize the handicap of being expatriate.23 This may well be good for the company and for Britain short-term. Whether it can be good for Britain and Europe long-term is a moot point. Very much may depend on how the building of the Royal Navy’s two new 50,000-ton carriers proceeds. The Ministry of Defence in London has divided the work between BAe Systems and Thales. Questions can similarly be posed about other ad hoc ties. EADS has reportedly linked up with Boeing for a programme the latter is leading for the mid-course interception of ballistic missiles. Which way may the technology on balance flow? What will industrial and official circles in Europe learn about BMD operations in general from this nexus? What, indeed, will American? Must one

186 THE QUEST FOR STRATEGY

firm be the leader and the other the led? How big is the risk that much skill and commitment will be put into something which is then cancelled ahead of procurement? It is pertinent to recall that interception mid-course is quite the most problematic sector of the whole BMD conspectus. Technological twin pillars The United States should ponder anew the merits in alliance terms of leaving a European aerospace/aerospace community enough time and space fully to emerge. Should this emergence fail to materialize, there will be some negative consequences globally. Partnership options will be restricted for firms elsewhere with relevant interests: Brazil, Canada, China, India, Israel, Pakistan, Russia, Sweden… So will procurement options for dozens of countries. Besides which, a Europe without a strong high-technology base would be in no fit state to act as a twin pillar within the Atlantic Alliance. Yet without such bipolarity, the alliance may never gain acceptance as the chief guarantor of orderly world progress. It might well not be accepted by the Europeans themselves. It would be too obviously divided between the integrator and the integrated, as the Gaullists used to say. On the civil side of aerospace, a desirable outcome may not be hard to achieve since the current balance of trans-Atlantic advantage is tolerably even within an expansive world market. The military side is another matter. A wide technology gap is widening. See Chapter 1, Technology gap. Moreover, a decadal procurement cycle remains discernible in spite of the respective endeavours of the Gorbachevs and the Bin Ladens of this world. It is due to trough out next in 2008–10. By then, too, the post-9/11 procurement hike could well be declining markedly. This points towards a studied application by Europe through those years of what the laissez-faire purists would see as ‘unfair trade’—i.e. a measure of protectionism. That might be fair enough.

12 Arms in moderation

Osama Bin Laden’s contribution to the history of humankind has been an insurgency movement syndicated more or less worldwide though without management by or underpinning from a solidly constituted statehood. Since that infamous 11 September, however, the lethal potential of his sinister innovation has arguably been halved. Much credit must be due to George W. Bush and those close to him. They are further to be commended in so far as they have begun to weld certain pre-existing themes (e.g. AIDS and a Middle East road map) into a broader Grand Strategy. Nevertheless, there have been serious shortcomings, these mainly engendered by their Manichean world view being too liable to flip into unilateralist impatience. Too often the diplomacy has disregarded Theodore Roosevelt’s fabled injunction to talk softly while carrying a big stick. Guantanamo bespeaks an attitude to human rights unbecoming for those who extol freedom under the law. Ecology needs more political attention. In the war-fighting domain, too, there is much to examine. In an article in May 2002 in the house journal of the US Council for Foreign Relations, Donald Rumsfeld laid his military strategy out. The emphasis was over-whelmingly on deterring or thwarting attacks on ‘our nation’. The West, Europe and the UN receive no mention. Alliances would consist of ad hoc coalitions which must not be ‘run by committee’ nor have their missions ‘dumbed down to the lowest common denominator’. Arms control is ignored except for what is literally a throw-away reference to the Anti-Ballistic Missile (ABM) treaty. Ominously high priority is accorded the protection of Space assets. Above all, the ‘transformational goals’ of the Pentagon must include being able to ‘deny our enemies sanctuary, making sure they know that no corner of the world is remote enough, no mountain high enough, no cave or bunker deep enough…to protect them from our reach’.1 One does have to stress that this last goal could never be achieved, by military means alone, against a biowarfare threat posed from within a world at large which was seething with resentment against the USA or the West in general. All else apart, you may need neither caves nor bunkers to make biobombs. A stable could suffice. Yet this confirms a wider truth. Warlike stances should advance geopolitical stability in such a way as to allow of the emergence of a planetary

188 THE QUEST FOR STRATEGY

sense of inclusiveness. One is looking for top-level leadership able to blend determination with moderation in the style of Truman and Eisenhower. At the same time, the modus operandi on the military side needs to embrace new modes of professionalism. Apostles of information Historically, military science has been driven by a dialectic between fire-power and mobility. Yet now information seems supreme. It does by dint of how much can be obtained, processed, disseminated and applied. The volumes grow incessantly. One could be tempted to infer that, for the West at any rate, the ‘future battlefield’ will be entirely transparent. However, a recurrent lesson of military history is that surveillance fails to live up to its ostensible possibilities. A legendary instance is how radio silence and other concealment stratagems, assisted by woodland and winter weather, enabled an entire panzer army to lose itself to Allied observation in the fortnight prior to the Wehrmacht’s menacing Ardennes offensive in December 1944. As remarkable was the failure of the Israelis to pre-empt the Egyptian offensive across the Suez Canal in October 1973. This was because they did not read the signs with enough assurance to convince themselves, and also the Americans, an onslaught was in the offing. That in turn was due to elaborate Egyptian deception. The assault force was spread along the canal with tanks and guns positioned as though for defence. Bridging equipment was hidden. Underground cables bore sensitive messages. A general forward movement was obscured by unit rotation. And so on. Later the Egyptian Chief of Staff Lieutenant General Saad el Shazli admitted, ‘The last three days were especially difficult…we did not expect the enemy to be taken in as easily.’2 Enigmatic WMD Big advances in surveillance technology have been made in the interim. But how well do these translate operationally? A signal case study concerns Iraq’s Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMD) as adjudged in August 2003. The American and British governments still expressed themselves sure of their existence. So why had they not directed inspection teams straight to the known sites? Politically, the situation was playing worst in London. Early in May the Defence Minister, Geoffrey Hoon, had reiterated that WMD possession ‘was the reason we gave, which I stand by, for taking military action against Saddam Hussein’s regime. We’re confident that weapons of mass destruction are there.’3 Her Majesty’s Government then felt any broader justification would have created too open-ended a precedent. Soon this imbroglio was compromising further a

ARMS IN MODERATION 189

Prime Ministerial credibility already under unwonted scrutiny regarding matters nearer home.4 Mystification is compounded by the scale and diversity of the surveillance effort against Saddam. Much information had been in-coming at or near surface level. More importantly, six large orbital satellites had been dedicated primarily to Iraq-watching from 2001. Three bore radars with a basic resolution of 2 feet while the other three had optical cameras and infra-red sensors. The optical scan was 200 miles wide with a white spot resolution of 4 inches. Averagely, one of the six would cross Iraq on an ideal path every two hours. More marginal transits would also be made.5 To cap everything, a number of seniors from the Saddam era were in American custody soon after Baghdad fell. Yet the nearest things to ‘smoking guns’ discovered by late August had been two lorries initially taken to be mobile biowarfare laboratories. But they had canvas sides and showed, in any case, no trace of pathogens. Accordingly, the two governments involved were asking for more time, the very concession they had been unwilling to see extended to Hans Blix, the UN Chief Weapons Inspector, back in February, even though Baghdad (feeling, no doubt, under real pressure) was at last beginning to cooperate with him more fully. Obviously, one will have to wait upon events, including the institutionalized enquiries now under way in Washington and London in relation to this intelligence quest. But, as suggested in Chapter 4, this does look prima facie like yet another case of overly dogmatic linear extrapolation from a status quo ante that was tolerably well known. As and when the dogma was infused into the renderings may or may not be revealed. The likely rationale was the presumption that Saddam was proceeding through underground facilities. But the logistical support for the construction of any big enough to house nuclear or chemical programmes ought to have been observable. Extrapolation errors will continue, no matter how much surveillance progresses. Two akin to the one here considered occurred as the two Superpowers entered upon the era of InterContinental Ballistic Missiles (ICBM). Through the late 1950s, Washington intelligence markedly overestimated the Soviet ICBM build-up the next few years. This was because they exaggerated Moscow’s bellicosity but also her capacity for a rational disposition of resources. Then through the mid-1960s, the CIA underestimated the progression appreciably.6 Yet each time round, Moscow’s actual inventory had been tracked, accurately and with integrity, the previous several years. The liberation of Iraq That Iraq has been freed from a disgusting dictatorship hardly anyone denies. But there remains room for debate about timing, context and process. Nor should we forget how often, historically speaking, the outcome of such regime change has been disappointing.

190 THE QUEST FOR STRATEGY

Clearly, the urban syndrome was something for which the coalition forces were ill-prepared, mentally and materially. After regime collapse, Baghdad itself lapsed into worse deprivation and disorder than might have been hoped, given that (a) the preliminary bombing was declared to be focused strictly on the regime infrastructure, and (b) the take-over battle against the Special Republican Guard was briefer than anticipated. One reason why the actual take-over was not too bloody was that Saddam had felt constrained to continue his established policy of not allowing the Republican Guard (nor many army units) into the capital lest they found the temptation to launch a coup irresistible.7 Instead, many had to deploy circumferentially without the city limits where they were sitting targets for strike aircraft. No more viable was another putative alternative— deep manoeuvre defence. Again, the desperately asymmetric air balance figured. So, too, did the way the Iraqi military culture had precluded the wholehearted adoption of either Soviet or Western manoeuvre doctrine.8 Nevertheless, inferior weapons design and maintenance was the biggest impediment to Iraqi forces building on the tough resistance they proffered awhile in Um Qasr, Nasariyah and elsewhere. Much as with the North Korean armed forces, systems replacement and routine logistic support had become much less available from abroad, this against the background of the Strategic Revolution and of mounting disapproval of the respective incumbent regimes. The fact is that every state which has confronted the West forcefully the last quarter of a century (Argentina, Iran and Syria as well as Iraq and North Korea) has used a panoply of war built up within the context of the Cold War. That overriding determinant has now disappeared. Meanwhile, the leading Western democracies (and, above all, the USA) are remorselessly increasing their qualitative lead, probably over all comers. For this purpose, Israel is conspicuously within the West’s orbit. The divergence is capped by the 50 per cent rise in American defence expenditure between 2001 and 2007 currently scheduled. Yet there is still plenty of room for debate as to what that connotes about how far free societies can or should rely on military force to preserve their life styles. One obstacle to evaluation is that regular frontal warfare seems much less on the cards now. In 1940 or 1950, say, there were many fronts across which armies or guerrillas might engage. Now there are fewer; and in virtually every case, the ambient inhibitions against decisive military action are very strong. Information ascendancy Yet whatever judgements one makes overall in relation to the changing strategic geography, the status of the information explosion is bound to remain a core issue. At the cutting edge, it will continue to accelerate. In due course, sensors of ‘sugar-cube’ size with milliwatt engines will be scatterable ahead of one’s forward positions to monitor adversary movements, for months on end if needs

ARMS IN MODERATION 191

be.9 Meanwhile, overhead surveillance will continue to make wider strides. Endeavours to frustrate it (as per the great Nordic tradition of naval camouflage in littoral waters)10 cannot but fail to keep pace with computerized multisensing. To my mind, a bestirring indication of the ultimate in this regard is afforded by radio astronomy. It is in that some observatories routinely register over time galactic signals of the order of one hundred billion billionths (10• 20) of a watt. Granted, military radar is typically over a thousand billion times less sensitive to date, and could never close this gap at all completely. Even so, this comparison surely implies the latter has considerable scope left for on-going improvement. Radar now under development for the US military is able to register at representative ranges a perfect reflector set perpendicularly and presenting an area of just one ten-millionth of a square metre.11 In very many situations, that will be hard to camouflage against. Underground sites small enough to be accessed from within erected buildings are and will remain difficult to discern from on high. Obversely, large numbers of military tunnels (as per North Korean practice) will be hard to differentiate as regards function. Moreover, forest cover is still tough to see through. Witness how well the Serbian army concealed itself during the 1999 air campaign over Kosovo. Urban areas, too, do not lend themselves to close scrutiny; and, even with improved observation, the prediction of human behaviour within them (short-term or otherwise) is bound to remain problematic. Over and beyond all of which, much will depend in many conflict situations on how apposite is the ‘system of systems’ architecture for command-andcontrol. A comparison with the missile defence debate in SDI days prima facie invites itself. However, there is one big difference devotees of network centricing do well to ponder. It is that for all-arms warfare at theatre level, full information flow in all directions is not invariably an unqualified boon. For one thing, cerebral overload never helps an individual keep their courage steady. Wing Commander Stanford Tuck was a leading British fighter ace during the Battle of Britain. But he later told how the only way he could persevere with an attack on a mass formation of bombers (protected on board by switched-on Luftwaffe air gunners) was to focus unswervingly on one part of one bomber, excluding from his mind everything else in the cosmos. For another thing, a surfeit of information of whatever quality at formation level can, not seldom, cause collective zeal to flip into collective panic. In a military historical study that must have a fair claim to rank primus inter pares within that genre, David Chandler tells how at Waterloo, just after 7 p.m. on that fateful 18 June, the morale of Napoleon’s Imperial Guard reserve wobbled visibly, just as it was being committed to a crucial attack. False assurances about Marshal Grouchy’s army having now arrived in support had been overshadowed, immediately upon their promulgation, by clear signs that Marshal von Blücher’s Prussians really had made it for the Allies.12 That data-driven tremulation was critical to Wellington’s just turning near defeat into crushing victory.

192 THE QUEST FOR STRATEGY

Therefore one well hears advice, in the modern information context, to abandon ‘integrated networks that mandate collaboration except where they are clearly effective—perhaps for naval forces. Instead, create electronic systems that support tailored unit- or mission-specific needs.’13 Such adaptive pragmatism matches Secretary Rumsfeld’s injunction to be ready for ‘the unknown, the uncertain, the unseen, and the unexpected’.14 The emergency management of captured cities may lend itself well to networking. Like the naval task forces, a generic exception? There are those, not least in Northern Europe, who are so persuaded that armed forces must share completely the social mores of open societies that they can be expected to enthuse for networking regardless, just as they have pressed for unconditional military acceptance of trade unions and access to all roles regardless of sexuality. With respect, one would commend to them a letter sent in November 1775 to the Naval Committee of Congress by Paul Jones, the American fighting sailor of the ‘rough tarpaulin’ ilk destined to become a folk hero of the Revolutionary War. The missive’s main burthen was summated in the sentence, ‘Whilst the ships sent forth by the Congress may and must fight for the principles of human rights and Republican freedom, the ships themselves must be ruled and commanded under a system of absolute despotism.’15 This harsh rendition from a harsh era by a one-time slave-trader did not say the last word on naval culture, then or now. But surely it said the first. The paramount test of any modern armed service must be its readiness to meet contingencies ranging from international policing to WMD exchanges. This matters more than template compliance with civic norms back home. Every vocation from professor to blacksmith has something of an emigration interieure about it. Soldiering does more so than most. The air arm16 Since 1914, very few campaigns over open terrain between regularly constituted armies have been won in the face of enemy air superiority. Yet for much of that time, air forces have been more problematic than either armies or navies. A salient reason was identified seventy-five years ago by the British military strategist J.F.C.Fuller, when he sardonically yearned for a ‘portable land ground’, while characterizing the warplane as ‘a kind of animated rocket fired… from an aerodrome, a weapon as immobile as a fortress’.17 Exposure to immobilization on the ground often proved the Achilles’ heel of air power in the Second World War. After the advent, from 1944, of the jet age, this vulnerability increased, a prime reason being a requirement for longer runways—up to 10,000 feet eventually. By the end of the Cold War, the proliferation of cruise and ballistic missiles was accentuating the preemption risk yet again. A partial corrective was sought through mobilizing technological advance to design aircraft able to take off and/or land vertically. The helicopter gained much

ARMS IN MODERATION 193

favour but the technical limits on its forward speed are acute; and it has repeatedly proved susceptible to adaptive ground-fire, above all to the hand-held rocket launcher. An alternative approach is to utilize the engine power of modern monoplanes either by tilting engines or else by vectoring their thrusts. The British Harrier design has been outstanding as a subsonic application of the vectored thrust principle. But a supersonic successor is not now in train. The American V-22 tilt-rotor development has had a chequered career, though into 2003 its prospects improved. Vertical take-off designs are liable to have tightly circumscribed loaded weights; and this is very consistently reflected in their ranges. The warplane has lately fared a lot better when in the sky than many were expecting thirty to forty years ago. Electronic aids have been incorporated to effect. Loss rates have been variable but often remarkably low. Lifetime costs have not soared out of control. But the genre has had to share primacy with alternative systems, not least the Unmanned Aerial Vehicle. The proliferation of UAVs seems likely to continue on a steepening curve. As 2003 broke, the Pentagon indicated its fleet of ninety was set to quadruple by 2010. Elsewhere, too, involvement deepens. As early as 1995, indeed, no less an authority than Jane’s opined that ‘the most UAV-active country’ in Asia and its Pacific rim, for civil as well as military purposes, appeared to be China.18 Recent intelligence on her very much confirms a diversified military thrust in the UAV sphere.19 Military UAVs are moving from simple observation to manifold tasks, much as warplanes did in 1914–18. Already they conduct strike missions. Their utility in electronic warfare is being tested, including High Power Microwave (HPM) jamming at short range. Their use to intercept missiles or aircraft is being evaluated. So is the self-defence of the larger models. Meanwhile compaction confers real benefits, reduced runway dependence among them. Moreover, reliance on solar powering should enable some models to loiter for months at a time, once lightweight night storage of energy is available. Not that UAVs yet convince fully. They are still not as fast or dexterous as manned aircraft. Their fiscal cost advantage is diminished by a need for heavy ground support. How to control them en masse is unclear. In Kosovo they were subject to quite severe attrition. But once again, the civil side affords pointers to the long term. One is advised that, come 2030, pilotless jet-liners will be commonplace. This does not connote pari passu crewless long-range bombers. But it does indicate strong UAV developments in the interim. The ethos of air power has been built around the view from the cockpit of the elegant monoplane surging down the runway into the wide blue yonder. To an ever greater extent, that image will be overlain by satellites, missiles, helicopters, tilt-rotors and UAVs. This may not warrant abandonment of the principle of independent air arms. After all, using continuity to accommodate change is what modern armed services must be about. What could cast doubt, however, is certain air forces paying undue attention to Near Space, this in too febrile a quest for new identity.

194 THE QUEST FOR STRATEGY

The naval arm Naval and air warfare can readily be bracketed. Armies deployed for defence have always used landscape to bolster their situation. At sea as in the air, the attack may more easily exploit an initial edge, be it in mass or quality. Generally, the constraints geography imposes on these domains are less acute save that ships and warplanes each rely on a few nodal bases. History has confirmed that naval anchorages, too, can be susceptible. Over the next thirty years, qualitative gains should sustain the naval ascendancy of the West. Automation will be applied to the evolution of UAVs and also of UUVs (Unmanned Underwater Vehicles), these to complement manned aircraft and manned submarines respectively. More generally, there will be reduced manning levels afloat. The USN’s DD-21 Land Attack Destroyer will have a crew of but ninety-five. Meantime, a shift in mission priorities is on-going. The accent is now on warfare from the sea, not warfare at sea. A primary weapon will be the cruise missile. As regards its platforms, whenever the requirement is unobtrusive availability for immediate response, the nuclear-propelled attack submarine will be an ideal choice. Additionally, such a vessel is virtually invulnerable to chemicals and biologicals. Otherwise, warships of several thousand tons commend themselves, tactically but also as a way smaller navies may contribute. Aircraft, manned or otherwise, dispatching missiles from stand-off locations are another option. Large carriers are still attractive to navies intent on global projection. Witness Britain’s decision to replace the existing three of 18,000 tons with two nearly thrice that displacement. As a US Deputy Chief of Naval Operation has put it, ‘The proposed small carrier concept (seven working together) only delivers 21 per cent of a large carrier’s punch and would cost almost two thirds more…while missing out on the hull survivability inherent in the larger designs.’20 What must be addressed, nevertheless, is vulnerability in the longer term. One thinks of hypersonic cruise missiles and also of biological warheads. Warships of varying sizes possess a good measure of passive protection against radioactive contamination via enclosure and wash-downs. But germs could pose a peculiarly insidious threat to communities afloat. However, a long-established alternative mode of air power projection into limited conflicts oceans away is the land-based multi-engined bomber. Both the West and the USSR assigned such aircraft thus during the Cold War. Barely three days after the Korean war broke out in 1950, B-29 Superfortresses were bombing approach roads to Seoul. In 1976, during his first stint at the Pentagon, Donald Rumsfeld testified that ‘We plan to use available B-52 aircraft to assist in mining operations in a major conventional war. We also feel that such aircraft would be useful in providing anti-ship capabilities.’ Undoubtedly the progressive development of smart ordnance for strike or interception enhances this solution.21

ARMS IN MODERATION 195

However, during the angry alliance diplomacy of early 2003, the Pentagon navy staff waxed veritably militant about independent sea-basing, close to warlike situations, of balanced forces. Evidently, this also related to a burgeoning navy and army interest in long-distance but high-speed movement by water. A variety of technologies for sustaining 40 to 50 knots or more are being studied.22 What may come onto agendas before too long is the wider application to warships of nuclear propulsion coupled with electrical transmission. Long endurance on station and reduced noise levels could be important benefits. Much public discussion of littoral warfare proceeds as if total control of the littoral (however defined) and its coastline was an end in itself. As and where wider purposes are identified, they tend to involve wresting a hinterland from enemy occupation. Yet a more likely scenario may be one where the hinterland is friendly enough but the main port facilities have been incapacitated by missile strikes or unrest. The challenge could then be the movement of large volumes of supplies plus many support personnel across undeveloped coasts, not enemy-held but maybe overshadowed by him. Disaster relief amidst violent disorder may often be a core aspect of the mission. So may evacuation, military and civil. The land arm Conceptually the ‘land battle’ may be undergoing more change than at any time since the herbivorous, peace-loving horse was inducted into active service on the Ukrainian steppes 6,000 years ago.23 The separation made soon thereafter between cavalry and infantry now looks obsolescent. At the same time, the inverse relationship between range and accuracy of fire is vanishing. Duly, concentration of force must command less of a premium. Forward areas will be lightly held. Front lines will lose definition. The core operational objective will be not territorial conquest or assets attrition but the disintegration of the opposing regime. Linked with this is the emergent aim of minimizing trauma all round. In the literature, this raft of themes often boils down into a debate about the outlook for the Main Battle Tank (MBT), in effect the heavy cavalry from 1917 till today. Now a consensus is emerging, its thrust being that the MBT as a genre will fall markedly in number while making a quantum jump downwards as regards median size. Some 20 to 25 tons will be representative instead of 50 to 60, which means inter alia that some models will be wheeled as opposed to tracked. No matter that over 100,000 old-style MBTs are still extant worldwide. Not that one can foresee at all precisely where new balances may be struck. Thus the impact of lethal lasers on the future battlefield cannot yet be gauged, this because of ethical uncertainties as well as more esoteric ones. Then again, the nanometric revolution in materials will enhance propellants and warheads but also structures. Geography will always figure too. Nevertheless, some broad perspectives can be outlined. Tanks may long have been more susceptible to various antidotes (e.g. minefields) than legend

196 THE QUEST FOR STRATEGY

acknowledges. But these last several decades, they have also proved very vulnerable to new-style infantry or air-delivered weapons. Field artillery, too, is poised to menace them more. Meanwhile the MBT’s salient attribute in a close support or spearhead role (namely, ‘direct’ or line-of-sight shellfire at short range) is counting for less. This is because ‘indirect’ or beyond-visual-range shellfire has become similarly responsive and accurate. MBTs have customarily had something in common with the battleships of yesteryear. This ‘something’ is that they have been tailored, first and foremost, to fight their own kind. A progressive widening of armour plate and gun calibre has been driven by an MBT arms race. The corollary is that build-down in tank size could be reciprocally on-going as well. This curbing of MBT influence is tantamount to removing the cavalry arm from war. Granted there has, since the 1960s, been much talk of ‘air cavalry’, mounted formations in which the helicopter is the principal nag. Yet although helicopters are uniquely adapted to sundry mobility tasks, few would still claim they can viably be employed en masse to overwhelm prepared defences. The platforms most characteristic of forward areas in 2025, say, are likely to be Infantry Fighting Vehicles (IFVs) in modularized varieties, some inclining towards light tank status. These IFVs will be the mainstay of a unitary arm, the mounted infantry. No doubt IFV specifications will include the ability to close down against biological as well as chemical threats. Residing as they have done on the interface between infantry and artillery, mortars have tended historically to be played down by both parties. They could come more into their own as a means of indirect fire by mounted infantry, perhaps using self-homing ‘sensor-fused’ warheads. Their installation in light armoured vehicles is a well-established practice.24 Moreover, the steep trajectories their shells follow make mortars especially pertinent to jungle or urban war. A seminar held at Britain’s Joint Services Command and Staff College in mid-2001 showed her to be woefully unready for expeditionary urban warfare, the Ulster experience notwithstanding.25 Nor was she alone in this. Yet in the coming years, failed cities may stand out more than failed countries. The military human factor Conditions of service can be more resistant to radical change than almost any aspect of military affairs. It is therefore incumbent on every government actively engaged in building a peaceable world order to evolve an induction philosophy which may work well to this end for several decades. If the scene-setting here essayed be at all valid, military manpower requirements in the wake of the Strategic Revolution could be very variable, at times decidedly onerous. We cannot yet have much idea how Great Power relations will evolve in the new context. Nor can we exclude the second quarter of this century being generally more stressful than the first. Besides, reviving a failed city or country is liable to be, even militarily, a bigger as well as a more

ARMS IN MODERATION 197

protracted undertaking than governments care to assume. In neither Afghanistan nor Iraq were coalition forces in firm control as of November 2003. On land is where the crunch comes, manpower-wise. The most appropriate induction philosophy may basically be several years on the active list then a number more in ready reserve: genuinely ready in terms of operational preparedness but also of the legal liabilities of individuals and their employers. Changing training requirements (with the accent more heavily on exercises below divisional level) will be compatible with reliance on reserve echelons. A cardinal merit of the volunteer principle could be that it should ultimately make it possible to ease away from too narrow a concern with not taking casualties. A serious omission in Afghanistan surely was not garrisoning other cities and towns hard upon the fall of Kabul itself. Smallish units thus dispersed would have been at more risk but would have had awesome air power behind them. Yet only now are coalition forces (newly under the NATO rubric) equivocally reacting to Kabul’s entreaties on this score. Then again, after AlQaeda’s strike against the USS Cole in October 2000, the US Navy Secretary said naval diplomacy must continue but ‘In the long term, we’ll have to make policy judgements on the extent to which we want to put naval ships at risk.’26 Since when, Al-Qaeda’s Yemen cell has actually been hit hard. But the notion that it might have called the shots will have been music to Bin Laden at the time. In the early weeks after the collapse of the Saddam regime, much was made in the British media (especially by the Left) of how the British Army had resolved, following a consultation exercise with corporals and sergeants, to have its troops located in southern Iraq regularly patrol on foot without steel helmets or flak jackets. Accordingly, they were not as yet taking casualties anew whereas the heavily accoutred rather vehicular GIs had started to.27 However, it would have been wrong to wax hubristic. The mainly Shi’ite southern Iraqis were unreservedly joyful at Saddam’s exit. In any case, the softly-softly stance did have a downside. Basra was the first Iraqi city to fall. Having gained it, Her Majesty’s Forces may have been slow to act against looters, thereby allowing of dangerous precedents. Nor did they long avoid peacekeeping casualties. A double incident in June 2003 killed or wounded fourteen. Yet provided one was prepared to accept an added initial risk, there were real merits in this philosophy of relaxed peacekeeping, a philosophy kneaded in countless imperial encounters and latterly reaffirmed in Ulster. During that 1951 confrontation in Austria, the British Army’s way of getting a crowd of aggravated youngsters to vacate a train was to send on board a sergeant and a subaltern. In their drill shorts and short sleeves, they bore no arms or body armour. Their mission was to enquire whether we could be so kind as to make ourselves scarce. It worked with a brilliance that fascinates me still. The question of idiomatic communication by means of military paraphernalia comes up recurrently apropos employing Armoured Fighting Vehicles in internal security: notably tanks in Tiananmen Square, Indonesia or against the intifada. William Douglas Home (the brother of Alec, the future Tory Prime Minister)

198 THE QUEST FOR STRATEGY

was to break rank as a young officer with the British Army in France in 1944 over what he felt was a too cavalier attitude to urban civilian casualties. An interim autobiography also describes his reaction earlier on when his regiment converted to Churchill MBTs: As I looked into the bowels of a Churchill tank… I could not see any blueprint for the future of the world in that ponderous piece of mechanism. Those huge, clanking monsters…seemed to crush the voice of reason and to harness us irrevocably to the God of Force.28 Such sensibility hardly makes a case for not using Churchills to help dispatch Hitler. But these comments can be pondered still where the aim is to draw an aggrieved people away from insurgent extremism and towards peaceable democracy. Internal arms control Forty years ago, MBTs figured centrally in quite a flourishing debate about negotiated arms control at regional level. This debate revolved around one bilateral confrontation, that across the Iron Curtain between the Germanies. A prominent theme was the distinction between ‘offensive’ and ‘defensive’ weapons that, in a 1963 study for the Kennedy administration, we young staffers at the Institute for Strategic Studies (now the International Institute) just about persuaded ourselves could be drawn in Central Europe.29 Since then, the qualitative aspects of military strength have complicated calculations ever more acutely. But, in any case, the many-sided world of today places a comprehensive stability pact virtually beyond reach. WMD limitation remains of active interest in various regions. Otherwise international arms control anywhere on the Earth’s surface arouses little interest. However, an alternative approach may be worth adopting. At different times historically, various weapons have been identified which armed services should not use except with express government or alliance permission. In the twentieth century, poison gas fell into that category early on. So in their turn did nuclear warheads. What ought now to be considered is whether other classes of weaponry might not be subject to similarly internalized arms control. One that only ought to be used highly selectively is Massive Ordnance Air Blast (MOAB), a bomb which obliterates virtually everything within a square kilometre. Two more are the E-bombs which disrupt electrical circuitry; and the carbon filament black-out bombs intended to interrupt power generation. Then again, uranium which has been depleted (i.e. had U235 extracted) is widely used in shell-heads to enhance their penetrative power. However, some analyses associate it with malignancies, birth defects, and even the elusive Gulf War syndrome. Cluster bombs likewise cause concern, given the frequency with which they lie unexploded.

ARMS IN MODERATION 199

Beam weapons in general should also be subject to top-level political and military control. Laser weapons intended to dazzle or to blind, at least temporarily, eyes or electronic sensors may enter service soon. Reportedly, the Joint Non-Lethal Weapons Directorate at Pennsylvania State is discreetly developing a beam weapon that (across several kilometres) can vaporize clothing or skin.30 Microwave pulses that cause traumatic loss of consciousness are also being explored. So are munitions emitting fierce flashes of light or else nonnuclear electro-magnetic pulses.31 Judgement about permissive control of nonlethals will usually hinge on their specific attributes. Yet sheer novelty makes both current and ultimate performance hard to predict; and their effects will, in any case, depend on circumstances. That argues for added caution. Internal arms control might harmonize well with an international measure potentially of significance—namely, the 1997 Ottawa Convention outlawing the use, retention or acquisition of anti-personnel landmines. Ottawa stemmed from worldwide disgust at how fifty million or so landmines left strewn around from past conflicts were still killing or maiming 10,000 people annually, many of them children. Crucial to Ottawa was the addressing of two problems. The one was distinguishing operationally between anti-personnel mines and those directed against vehicles, especially MBTs. It was difficult partly because anti-personnel mines are used to inhibit anti-tank mines being swept. The other was that the role of minefields as defensive measures has gained in importance through their not being susceptible to precision pre-emption. In World War II, the Western Desert theatre (between Alexandria and Benghazi) was seen as made for mobile armoured warfare. But in 1942, the decisive year, first the Axis armies then their British-led adversaries found their big offensives being constrained awhile by thick minefields. Come December 2000, some 137 countries had ratified or, at any rate, signed the Ottawa Convention. However, fifty-five had not. Among the latter were some regimes (Bahrain, Iraq, Myanmar…) who customarily put their trust in the security of obscurity. There were others (Estonia, Finland, Israel, the two Koreas, Latvia, Syria, Turkey…) with good reasons for viewing laid mines as stabilizing. Absent as well were three great powers: Russia, China and the USA. Again Moscow was evincing her historic concern with the control of shores and borders. During the Cold War this became truly obsessive. Though the Ottawa Convention does not cover sea mines, it is illustrative to note that, in 1990, the USSR retained 350 naval minesweepers in service, many of them designed to work inshore or coastally against a minelaying threat hardly worth presenting in waters so land-locked or ice-locked. China has been similarly preoccupied, albeit less conspicuously. In Washington, the Clinton administration was sympathetic to the Ottawa Convention but unwilling to sign up without a thoroughly convincing alternative to pre-laid minefields for consolidating the ceasefire line in Korea.32

200 THE QUEST FOR STRATEGY

As it happened, the Ottawa parties met in Nicaragua one week after 9/11. Certain signs were encouraging. Thus the estimated number of supplier nations had dropped from fifty-five to fourteen. Even so, the world’s estimated total of stockpiled landmines still topped 240 million. Nearly half were said to be in China, a quarter in Russia, and eleven million in the USA. There were worrisome indications, too, of non-compliance. Uganda appeared still to be making mines for use in the Congo, and Tajikistan to be laying mines on its Afghan border. Whether Tajikistan could be entirely blamed was a further question, one requiring quite an intricate answer. All the same, there were and are aspects of Ottawa to build on. Thus it does allow of the remote broadcasting of mines should war break out, provided their distribution is recorded and all are designed to self-deactivate after a due interval. Qualitative firebreaks created by Internal Arms Control could assist dissuasion in asymmetric confrontations. Would an aggressor persist with a ‘mother of all battles’ if his opponents could escalate progressively? And might not those thwarting him glean more pride from progressive escalation than from the instant application of total force? Controlled response would run the risk of higher initial casualties. So a priori it would run counter to what was acknowledged above to be an entrenched sentiment in favour of keeping our troops out of harm’s way. But even this concern might well be tempered by the ambivalence with which the advent of laser weapons is likely to be received. Eyebrows could also be raised over various items in the non-injurious genre, not least the psychochemical gases. No weapons in Heaven Though multilateral arms control on the Earth’s surface holds little interest at present, the weaponization of Space is a subject which can draw attention. Nor is it, in any case, something to leave to segments of the military-industrial complex and their academic aficionados. The most basic objection to Space weapons is profanity. For thousands— perhaps tens of thousands—of years, our structured belief systems (from Palaeolithic shamanism33 to Kantian liberalism and Soviet Marxism) have been set within an overarching celestial framework. We cannot now accept that the heavens were, after all, made for war not wonder. Already Near Space is internationally considered a ‘universal common’ like the High Seas. Granted, that milieu bears countless weapons. But a big difference operationally that Near Space would be much easier to ruin with the detritus of war. On all these counts, it is perverse to say ‘Space possesses no qualities that imply special moral or ethical considerations.’34 Operationally again, another fundamental problem is that posed by the dwell times of platforms revolving in low Earth orbits: the fact that to have several SBLs trained on a smallish roguish state, you may necessarily have scores or even hundreds over large territories like India or China. The suggestion that this

ARMS IN MODERATION 201

is an obsolete argument ‘buried in Cold War concerns’ beggars belief.35 Even at the very best of times, military stability remains a precondition of great power rapport. Today this truism is especially germane apropos China and the USA. The bio bomb Nor should anyone who places mini-missile or laser platforms in Space oppressively poised to hit surface targets at will then expect others to exercise restraint in respect of WMD. A pitch towards their acquisition could also be encouraged by burgeoning anxiety among emergent nations about the West moving impossibly far ahead with its array of ‘conventional’ (i.e. 1945-style, more or less) arms. They might conclude that the only way to get remotely on terms is to go for WMD. As the editor of the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists has lately commented, ‘Evidence that nations might revitalize or start programs featuring weapons of mass destruction is meager. By 2020, however, that may not be the case.’36 Take note, one might say, of the intermittent speculation about a possible Saudi bomb. An ultimate general prospect, given a breakdown of trust all round, is that the preferred WMD option would be the biological bomb, that singularly terroristic form which can be fabricated free from overhead detection and which lends itself to clandestine delivery. What should never be assumed is that this remedy would be adopted by, and only by, insurgent movements working amidst the dilapidation of failed polities. Managing powerful germs would be extremely difficult in such a setting. Even in salubrious surroundings, it can pose taxing problems, be the team concerned academic or official or insurgent. Witness the smallpox death at the University of Birmingham in 1978 during prophylactic work related to the drive to eliminate the disease worldwide. On the other hand, the covert retention of stockpiles may pose no problem. Phials of the smallpox virus, say, can be held in freezers for decades. This could, in fact, still be happening.37 Any hope of precluding warlike applications of such facilities must hinge on engendering between the nations a stronger sense of common destiny, of togetherness on a planet perceptually shrinking by the day. Some will say such envisaging is pie in the sky. But it may actually be less so than trying to (a) find biowarfare bunkers or (b) give the Biological Warfare Convention of 1972 real teeth, through inspections or whatever, within the context of a world order still international/geopolitical in spirit as opposed to planetary. Setting the bounds A priori, President Bush was surely right to withdraw from the 1972 AntiBallistic Missile (ABM) treaty, a Cold War artefact that was conceptually obsolescent the day it was signed. Liberal orthodoxy had clung to it far too long.38 However, the President was out of touch with a broad swathe of informed

202 THE QUEST FOR STRATEGY

opinion, at home and abroad, in omitting to enunciate some alternative general principle for strategic arms control. The non-weaponization of Space commends itself for the reasons given but also because it allows of relatively neat definition. However, the relative falls well short of the absolute. One quandary during the thirty-year life of the ABM treaty was how to interpret the prohibition in Article 5 of ‘systems or components’ that are Space-based. The convention which came to be accepted was that orbital sensors which essentially supply background information (cueing included) should not be seen as components. Thus the US Space-Based InfraRed System (SBIRS) has been adjudged compliant. Now one has to reckon with a mushrooming volume of sensed data becoming more definitive and better networked. So general reconnaissance may lead directly to surface target engagement, this within minutes. In other words, the received convention is compromised technically as well as semantically. One possibility will be more beam jamming or disablement of satellite sensors, a stratagem the Iraqis essayed against GPS in 2003. A complication here is that, a decade or two hence, such interference will be a lot easier for the Americans and others to conduct from orbit than from the surface, this in terms of distance and closing speed if not always of bearing. Such encounters between orbital platforms could prove harder to monitor than the engagement from orbit of surface targets or, indeed, vice versa. Even so, the crunch issue will still be how to persuade the USA to relinquish the option of destructive strikes from orbit, one she might otherwise possess unilaterally through the decade 2015–25. Part of the answer lies in the fact that the Americans themselves have for so long been working on alternative technologies for delivery of non-WMD warloads, swiftly and ubiquitously, through the fringes of Space. In 2001, exploratory work began at Wright Patterson air base on future Long-Range Strike systems. The possibilities to be examined included a hypersonic bomber (Mach 7.0 to 11.0) cruising 30 miles up, and a quasi-orbital Space plane. Either might complement an evolved subsonic bomber. BMD or pre-emption? Still, the nub is what the portents are for active missile defence. A basic tenet has to be that at no level from theatre blitzkrieg to intercontinental slog can comprehensive area defence be any more than a transitory prospect. It cannot have an enduring future against a mass of warheads, deliverable ballistically or by cruise or clandestinely Close-in defence from the surface of master radars, runways, bridges and maybe ports can, in principle, be a reasonable aim against high-explosive delivery by ballistic or even, out at sea at least, cruise missiles. Moreover, some wider coverage will likely be proffered by the airborne laser as and when its deployment seems right, tactically and politically. Otherwise there must be reliance on passive measures: concealment, deception, dispersion, mobility,

ARMS IN MODERATION 203

hardening… Helpfully, these ploys are akin to those required for fluid ground-toground combat. For some years, American liberals have been concerned lest Theatre Missile Defence becomes an alibi for NMD. If Japan can be covered, why not Texas? The implication of what has been said above could be that they can now relax. However, the dialectical process is not that straightforward. Multiple warheading of enemy ballistic missiles is too readily discounted in commercial and academic advocacy. So are jinking and contour-hugging by cruise missiles. Presentations about the latter often unfold as if those incoming will progress as their V-1 antecedents did, 1944–5. Chug along straight and level, well above the surface.39 One suspects, too, that the ongoing NATO review is too sectioned to allow of free-ranging enquiry. Something liberals particularly need to evolve a position on is the ABL. At continental level, one must focus on really hard point defence against WMD ballistic attack. Such a concept can hardly encompass the comprehensive protection of a metropolitan area, the precept Moscow has worked to on its own behalf since 1966. Rather, one must be talking of the defence of static ICBM sites. If feasible, this has real advantages over dependence on mobility to preserve a capability for strategic retaliation. Mobile forces at sea or in the air may be stranded, should home bases be wrecked. Mobility overland makes arms control verification next to impossible. One could envisage understandings being reached whereby ICBMs assigned to strategic deterrence were in defended silos while any earmarked for non-nuclear use could be mobile. That dispensation could be open to gerrymandering yet still remain stable within acceptable limits. In 2000, Condoleezza Rice addressed a conference of the Institute for Foreign Policy Analysis and the Fletcher School at Tufts. She underlined the Republican view that NMD should be ‘the centrepiece’ of defence policy. This and all that has transpired since makes it near to inconceivable that a Republican administration would abandon the said principle without a robust pre-emption doctrine as an alternative. Nor might a Democrat leader any longer settle for less. Under the Bush administration, the subject of pre-emption has become very much bound up with proposals for a new and diversified programme of lowishyield nuclear warhead development, a matter reportedly to be carried forward in a top-level administration meeting in late 2003. High on any agenda will be the proposed fabrication of earth-penetrator warheads complete with nuclear charges. Furthermore, a perception is abroad that the government in London has been trending pari passu the same way. Whitehall has been slow to issue denials. A joint report by the US Departments of Defence and Energy estimates there could be worldwide more than 10,000 militarily hardened underground structures containing, in not a few cases, chemical or biological stockpiles. It is hard to imagine a nuclear charge directed against them exploding so deep as not to cause an irradiated crater.40 Besides, is not biowarfare in a class by itself within the WMD conspectus? Given the compaction of the facilities and

204 THE QUEST FOR STRATEGY

materials used to generate this uniquely sinister terror, would there ever be any necessity to place them underground? On and off, strategic pre-emption has been a bone of contention for a good four decades. It will likely be the more so in the near future. Some, myself certainly included, have addressed it too casually in the past. But giving it due attention now will involve consideration of political scenarios. So it is best deferred to the next chapter. May one just sound this cautionary note pro tem. Generals are always accused of preparing to fight the last war. Arms controllers should make sure they are not trying to prevent it. Modulated proliferation A premise one ought to work from is that, in respect of the technology of limited war, emergent countries will indeed find it hard even to stay in touch with the United States and other leading Western nations. In so far as they do so, this will largely be by dint of arms being imported from the West under circumstances in which there may be little scope for playing off one national supplier against another geopolitically in the manner often feasible during the Cold War. In short, the LDCs will be liable to move more into a dependency situation in this signal respect. It will therefore be important to ensure that governments and their armed services do not turn in upon themselves, seeking to demonstrate self-reliance by pursuing internal security goals beyond the threshold at which they cease to be licit and become official terror. Yet it will be even more important that neither incumbent regimes nor dissident communities within their sovereignty do go down the ugly road to bioterrorism. The answer may lie in accepting as an alternative some proliferation of military nuclear capability. Kenneth Waltz, now of Columbia University, has long been stalwart for this prospect, working from the axiom that the nuclear age has been one in which the great powers of the day have been more at peace than at any time the previous three centuries.41 Today he accepts that America’s ‘conventional dominance spurs other countries to resort to unconventional means’.42 In 1995, he and Scott Sagan of Stanford engaged in a thoroughly civil disputation on this issue, with Sagan coming in from the anti-proliferation mainstream. They did so within the one pair of covers. Now they have returned to the charge in a new edition, the text just cited. Waltz says that ‘Some day the world will be populated by 15 or 18 nuclear weapons states’ (ibid. p. 4). He goes on to stress the behavioural moderation that nuclear weapons induce in their possessors as well as in others. Sagan is especially concerned about the risk of regional pre-emptive action during the transition to nuclear status (pp. 50 and 61) and a likely lack of proper commandand-control as and when transition is complete. Both are neglectful, strangely and regrettably in my view, of the biowarfare spectre. More positively, each is concerned that whatever nuclear proliferation there is to be should be carefully

ARMS IN MODERATION 205

modulated. Waltz avers that the ‘gradual spread of nuclear weapons is better than either no spread or rapid spread’ (p. 41). Sagan says that the USA should ‘encourage sustained control of the military with appropriate checks and balances’ (p. 86) within new nuclear weapons states. She should also consider sharing advanced warning routines and operational practices with them. Subjects to cover might include the security of storage sites; weapons safety features; and personnel reliability (ibid). One could add that a crucial requirement might be external guarantees during the crossing of the nuclear threshold. Obviously a lot would depend on the specifics of a given situation. Is an aspirant nuclear power a reasonable mature democracy? Is it seeking this status within a regional security arrangement? It is worth remembering, too, that a country with a nuclear energy programme can licitly be poised quite close to a military capability, even as a signatory of the Non-Proliferation Treaty. The NPT commits non-nuclear weapons members to accept IAEA inspections of their civil military programme. On the other hand, it does allow any party to withdraw at a mere three months’ notice should it decide ‘that extraordinary events related to the subject matter of this Treaty have jeopardized the supreme interests of its Country’ (Article X). As regards inspections, one does have to say they would be more palatable all round if the existing nuclear powers were transparent about their respective assets. Recently we have seen an adversarial duo crossing the threshold virtually together. This was India and Pakistan in 1998. Since the 1960s, the two of them (though especially India) had pressed the need to extend nuclear arms control to existing nuclear weapons states; and neither had ever signed the NPT. However, India led this 1998 departure because she was worried about military nuclear technology Pakistan had been getting from China.43 Anxieties about the adequacy of the command-and-control on each side were not assuaged by a detailed study of shortcomings in safety provisions in India’s civil nuclear programme.44 However, in the aftermath of 9/11 and the campaign against the Taliban, there was a marked upsurge of tension in Kashmir and generally on the subcontinent. Arguably, mutual strategic deterrence was one factor inhibiting all-out war. Pakistan’s President Musharraf has claimed as much. Planetary awareness The Indian subcontinent has been cited as archetypically a major region strategists have too often addressed without encompassing the social and ecological roots of conflict: monsoonal trends, urban growth, Himalayan deforestation… But one’s hope that the subject area can now broaden appropriately, there and elsewhere, is sustained by the precedents set in the twentieth century by eco-minded personalities coming in from geopolitical or military perspectives.45 Charles Lindbergh (1902–74) evolved from intrepid aviator to advocate of isolationism, this partly because he saw Nazism as a

206 THE QUEST FOR STRATEGY

bulwark against Communism. Then post-1945, he helped plan the first generation of US strategic missiles. But by 1960, his chief concerns were environmental. He was to head ‘extremely effective conservation missions to a number of countries such as Madagascar, Chile and the Philippines’.46 Inspirational, too, is the etymology of ‘holistic’, the word in vogue in the New Left and counter-culture days of the 1960s to connote a quasi-mystical overview of the natural world. Apparently it was coined in 1926 by Field Marshal Jan Christian Smuts of South Africa.47 He used it to connote the ‘whole-making’ balance of nature in his book Holism and Evolution. In two world wars, this former Boer commando leader was to serve in the highest councils of the British Empire. David Lloyd-George credited him with having been the father of the Royal Air Force. Most striking of all is how, in years when the greenhouse effect was being ignored or discounted by the great majority of professional climatologists, it was being warned against by the two men identified as the respective fathers of the American and Soviet hydrogen bombs. In 1958, Edward Teller noted with Albert Latter that, if hydrocarbon combustion drove up levels of atmospheric CO2, a melting of the ice caps could eventually result.48 A decade later, Andrei Sakharov warned that CO2 from ‘burning coal is altering the heat reflecting qualities of the atmosphere. Sooner or later, this will reach a dangerous level.’49

13 Planetary internationalism

Since the ‘Twin Towers’, the world has been preoccupied by armed conflict, actual or looming. Yet over decadal time spans, things often turn out very different from whatever had seemed so obviously in train. Addressing the US Congress in July 2003, Prime Minister Blair described an equitable settlement within the Holy Land between Palestinians and Israelis as essential to the success of the global counter-offensive against insurgent terrorism. Subject to that, the next twenty years or so could be comparatively peaceable. However, such an interlude will not herald the End of History. It will simply be an opportunity to evolve a new world order, this via the proactive participation of all peoples. Failing that, major crises will break in rapid succession, in the 2015 to 2033 timeframe, as various climaxes or thresholds of tension concur. At the heart of this syndrome will be the biowarfare threat cranked up by Genetic Modification. It will perforce assume a macabre pride of place within WMD. Meanwhile, the weaponization of Near Space could be a major issue. Climate change may also be biting hard, and countless ecological indicators be in accelerating decline. In other ways, too, the downside of globalization (material and cultural) will be impacting. Not least, the generation which came to adulthood before 1960 will be passing on; and in the more urbanized societies it will have been the last to know the full strength of community and extended family bonding, attributes often constrictive for individuals but important for social cohesion within the West no less than elsewhere. All in all, the world of 2033 could be dangerously distracted. Nor will the proliferation of personal firearms and addictive drugs help the situation. Blinkered virtuosity This prospect strategic studies is desperately unready for. As an academic discipline, it never fails to generate its fair share of closely argued analyses. Yet almost everything is still set within the thematic confines of forty years ago. Lately, the Department of War Studies at King’s College London has created a Chair to consider Security and Development. With Mats Berdal as the first incumbent, this could evolve into a fully fledged programme. But as things stand, it has merely brought us back to where Robert McNamara was by the late

208 THE QUEST FOR STRATEGY

1960s.1 Likewise in 1989, articles in a special edition of the IISS house journal proffered a broader conspectus.2 But this initiative was taken no further. Now the Institute has followed President Bush in acknowledging AIDS can be seen from a world security perspective.3 May this not be another false dawn. In short, ‘strategic studies’ is overdue for what Thomas Kuhn in 1962 dubbed a ‘paradigm change’.4 This expression became one of the great clichés of contemporary academe, certainly among social scientists and cultural historians. Nevertheless, Kuhn was long criticized for not making clear quite what he was getting at. In response, he stressed how a professional community of the kind he has depicted may share not just formal rules but ‘examples of successful practice’ in doctrine or methodology. As and when these are found wanting, a new corpus of understanding may simply displace what has gone before.5 The Copernican revolution in astronomy was his prime example. Strategic studies needs a security paradigm extended to accommodate ecology along with economic and social factors, these viewed worldwide—the West most certainly included. Not that all concerned will gladly discard the tight identity originally created. As one forthright purist has put it, Strategy, ‘a word stemming from the Ancient Greek term for a general and generalship, refers to the relating of military power to political purpose’.6 However, subjects have to change their personae to remain vital. In Ancient Greece, both Economics and Ecology had connotations more domestic than today. Each derived from oikos— the word for ‘house’. What can be allowed, none the less, is that strategic studies should also anticipate better how weaponry is evolving: that is to say, work towards a situation in which doctrine moves ahead of acquisition. Roosevelt and Churchill, Marshall and Alanbrooke would never have tolerated the cart-beforethe-horse we currently put up with. There are two fundamental respects in which the semantics may stand in need of reappraisal. Asymmetric deployment of the term ‘terror’ is, of course, one. Worth reflecting on, too, is whether political declamations should not extol ‘liberty’ more, rather than ‘freedom’. Dictionaries frequently treat the words as synonymous. But maybe ‘liberty’ has more individual and positivist associations. ‘Freedom’ is usually from something and may, in addition, be more of a group experience. At the 1951 East Berlin peace rally, the loudspeakers endlessly lauded how ‘Everywhere the Youth is singing Freedom’s Song’. They had nought to intone in praise of liberty. Action reaction Attention should more systematically be paid as well to action-reaction between nations, though also within them. The persecution of American liberals by Joseph McCarthy and his acolytes has been viewed above as a reaction to Josef Stalin. But they were reacting as well to the erstwhile New Deal intellectuals— first and foremost, to the maddeningly urbane Alger Hiss. Suspected from 1948 of having passed classified information to the USSR, he was sentenced to prison

PLANETARY INTERNATIONALISM 209

in 1950 on a related charge of perjury in a trial an aspiring Richard Nixon had been instrumental in initiating. For the next quarter of a century, many American liberals veered too far towards ‘anti-anti-Communism’ considerably because they presumed this verdict was unsafe. Quite likely, it was not. Moderated action-reaction is the warp and woof of parliamentary democracies, multinational alliances and, indeed, the resolution of warlike crises. However, extreme action-reaction can tear our fragile world apart. Underlying consensus is crucial to consistency. So is it to constructive debate about how goals may best be attained. One sphere in which this is a pressing need is climate control. Climate change The pace and character of climate change varies markedly across lines of latitude and longitude. Above all, pronounced high-latitude warming is anticipated in the Northern Hemisphere. Take two emission scenarios for mean temperature in 2071 to 2100 compared with the 1961 to 1990 mean. In the one, the rise in the Cameroons is 2°C and in Novaya Zemlya 6°C In the other, for an economic philosophy less environmentally attuned, the respective increases are 3°C and 8° C.7 Water cycle projections are everywhere more intricate with much interzonal plus and minus. Nevertheless, for late this century, drier conditions are quite consistently forecast for North Africa and the Middle East, Southern Africa, Australia, Amazonia and the inner Asian part of the Russian Federation. Expectations diverge sharply for India as well as the eastern half of the USA. Bjørn Lomborg ignores regional differentials almost completely. One could hardly have asked of him or his publishers that they explore every one specifically. But they should have acknowledged the destabilizing connotations overall. Other sceptics see any prognostic variance as justification for not being too concerned about climate instability in general. However, many sides of modern government and business routinely rely on predictive procedures with imperfect track records. Urban congestion is one example. Military operations are another. The precautionary principle is apposite. Corrective measures Enough inertia is built into the circulation of the atmosphere and oceans for a fair measure of climate change to occur the next half century, counter-vailing strategies notwithstanding. Nevertheless, these are urgently required. Among the more exotic proposals is seeding sea surfaces with iron filings. One of the major building blocks for phytoplankton is nitrogen. In Nature, it is fixed from the atmosphere by iron. Field tests have shown that, over quite a latitude range, iron seeding can produce enhanced plankton blooming.

210 THE QUEST FOR STRATEGY

The amount of carbon annually absorbed from the air and sea through phytoplankton photosynthesis is currently around forty-five billion tons, over five times the feed into the atmosphere from hydrocarbon combustion. Of that tonnage, seven or eight billion eventually passes down to the ocean deeps. But how would the proportion of carbon thus sequestered vary as plankton volumes rose? And what of the further outlook? Little of the carbon that does descend is transferred to the actual seabed in shales or whatever. The rest returns to the surface over several centuries. So would not added sequestration stack up a huge problem for posterity? Nearer term, might plankton blooming starve marine animals of oxygen? And might the disturbance of marine ecology also stimulate the generation of methane and nitrous oxide, two greenhouse gases which together are nearly half as influential as CO2 already?8 Are there also unforeseen negatives? Conversely, could plankton blooms revive fish stocks? Unfortunately, our understanding of the oceans has lagged so far behind atmospheric science that those concerned with their management are reluctant to extend beyond preservation of the status quo. Nevertheless, canisters designed to sink tens of metres below the ocean floor need still to be considered as a means of long-term disposal of vitrified nuclear waste, assuming fission is slated to contribute significantly to the world’s energy budget the next half century. Bush and Kyoto The central role of the USA in the formulation of international strategy is nowhere more evident than in the energy sector. It is therefore most welcome that the Bush administration is embarked on a comprehensive policy reconnaissance with strong emphasis on research, not least into nuclear fusion, hydrogen fuel cells, and the phytoplankton prospect. There is also now a sometimes tremulous acceptance of the proposition that global warming is a menace, a notion still anathema to many at Republican Party grass roots. Launching a Climate Resolve initiative in February 2002, the President set a target of reducing the ratio of carbon emissions to economic output by 18 percent by 2012. Arguably, this pitch was not hopelessly different from that of the Kyoto Climate Change Protocol of 1997: a measure in which, very early in 2001, the Bush administration had brusquely declared itself to ‘have no interest’. Basically, Kyoto says that by 2008–12 thirty-eight countries should limit total greenhouse gas emissions by a specified quantum compared with 1990. Among them are Australia, Canada, Japan, New Zealand and the USA. The rest are European, Russia and the Ukraine included. Australia would be allowed to increase up to 8 per cent and Russia stay the same. Otherwise reductions of up to 8 per cent were called for, 7 per cent in the American case.9 Thomas Schelling, now of the University of Maryland, made a singular contribution to the delineation of strategic studies four decades ago. But by 1985 he had moved to urban and environmental economics. Though not sure the

PLANETARY INTERNATIONALISM 211

White House should have discarded Kyoto as precipitately as it did, he has reviewed critically its protocol and process. His view is that Kyoto represented short-termism, hurriedly embarked on. Too little is yet known about the sensitivity of specific economic sectors either to climate change or to incentives to reduce carbon emissions. Also the entitlement to sell unwanted slices of allocated emissions quotas he sees as an invitation to haggle about future limits. Meanwhile, few of the larger developing countries countenance signing up to obligatory reductions. So the international focus should be instead on preparation for deep cuts late this century. By then, supportive technologies should be more available and deployable resources much greater. Where Schelling seems to me most basically to err in all this is in suggesting that the carbon dioxide level beyond which damage would be unacceptable is ‘probably between 600 and 1,200 parts per million’.10 At present, it is 370 as against 280 in 1850; and the mean global temperature is 0.75°C higher now than then. Granted, there cannot be a linear correlation. Nevertheless, it is unhelpful to postulate that the post-1850 gain could be multiplied severalfold without catastrophic effects, regionally and globally. A crunch must come much nearer term. A recent study suggests the Arctic could be ice-free in summer by 2080. Yet even that looks too conservative on the evidence the authors themselves adduce.11 Regional syndromes There are quite a few situations around the contemporary world in which diverse factors may come together to produce a conjunction conducive to large-scale strife. One region that fits this pattern all too well is Central Southern Africa: Angola, Zambia, Zimbabwe, Mozambique, Botswana… The climate projections are very consistently droughty, threatening aggravation of already grave water shortages.12 Borders are flimsy. Central governments are weak. Tribal identification is still strong, and social deprivation widespread. Armed violence is even now endemic, with four million war-related deaths the last ten years. The mineral reserves are of much interest to outsiders. Not least, HIV/AIDS is rampant. In both Botswana and Zimbabwe over a third of all people between 15 and 49 were infected by 1999.13 Another regional syndrome to conjure is the Arctic basin, not currently as a prospective war zone but rather from the McKibben perspective that, by denying Nature autonomy, we unhinge our own psyche. Through the nineteenth century, those the Amerindians scorned as ‘eskimos’ (eaters of raw flesh) assumed a ‘conspicuously privileged place in the imagination of a West fascinated by their position amidst the ice’.14 Today their fragile Arctic homeland is under multiple ecological threats. Melting of the ‘permafrost’ (soil at depth which customarily stays frozen perennially) is one insidious menace—e.g. in Alaska. Overfishing is another. So has been acid rain. So, too, has been Arctic haze’, blankets of smog mainly from Eastern Europe. So, too, are organic pollutants borne on the Gulf

212 THE QUEST FOR STRATEGY

Stream Drift. Every four years the Inuit (alias eskimos) of Alaska, Canada, Greenland, and Siberia hold an Inuit Circumpolar Conference. At the 2002 ICC high priority was given to promoting the Kyoto Protocol. The delegates will have been fully aware that climate was not their only concern. Nevertheless, the secular retreat of permanent sea ice is an awesome indicator. So are findings that September sea ice has thinned by a third the last several decades15; and that, in September 2002, the ice sheet’s measured area was the least since systematic records began. Everyone can sense in the polar North resonances of an ancestral response to glacial vicissitudes. Hence the dour celebrations of that locale in modern Western literature: Fridtjof Nansen, Vilhjalmur Stefansson, Robert W.Service, William Morris, Jack London… Granted, mythic evocations of a Nordic past can be sinister or silly or both. Witness the ‘World Ice Theory’ promulgated in the 1920s by the Thule Society of Munich, a group linked to the infant Nazi Party. But deviant attitudes towards the natural and primeval are more easily avoided if pristine landscapes remain robustly in being. Unfortunately, the proposition that such considerations are basic to a stable world order is not well accommodated by the hyper-rational reductionism into which strategic analysts so quickly lapse. But this does not make it less germane. Speaking in Murmansk in October 1987, Mikhail Gorbachev urged the circumpolar countries to collaborate through treaty to manage ecologically the Arctic basin. The idea could be worth resurrecting, not least because both Washington and Moscow would ipso facto be involved but also, one must now add, because a rapid disappearance of the pack ice under the influence of the icealbedo feedback (see Appendix A) could weaken quite abruptly the air-sea circulation of the Northern Hemisphere. Equatorial and archipelagic, Indonesia may have large numbers of species in niches which will be especially susceptible to climatic vagaries. The implications of this may be the greater in that the line famously drawn by Alfred Russel Wallace (1823–1913) to separate Asian fauna from Australasian runs between its islands. Wallace can fairly be regarded as the true progenitor of Darwinism. Secular climate change may not impact on Indonesian agriculture too disastrously unless it affects the strength and frequency of El Niño, the surging every several years of the Equatorial Counter-Current across the Pacific. But a perennial structural threat to Indonesia’s stability is the imbal ance in its human ecology: the concentration of nearly two-thirds of its people on Java, an island with but 7 per cent of the land area. Over the past century, attempts by successive governments to correct this somewhat have had very negative results. All else apart, the said disproportion has scarcely altered since 1941. In 1998, forest fires in Indonesia (concurrent with a strong El Niño) caused atmospheric pollution regionally. At much the same time, ‘tiger economies’ across East and South-East Asia contracted abruptly as confidence collapsed for a year or two. In Indonesia, the downturn in Gross Domestic Product was 20 per cent in 1998. Food supplies declined visibly. That May the Suharto regime fell in

PLANETARY INTERNATIONALISM 213

Jakarta after thirty-two years, an outcome triggered by unrest, first by students and then the urban poor. East Timor therefore came to the threshold of independence, military repression notwithstanding. Not a few commentators saw these several happenings as part and parcel of the same instability syndrome. The urban challenge Mercifully, it would be hard to find a close parallel elsewhere to the Indonesian demographic contradiction. On the other hand, urban growth, relative and absolute, is still virtually ubiquitous. The city versus the country has been a dialectical theme since Antiquity. Concern about the former is undergoing a revival in environmental circles as well as military. The Chairman of Britain’s Environment Agency reminds us that The challenges of sustainable development are at their most concentrated in cities— healthier living conditions and tackling inequalities to name but two.’16 Earlier, a public-oriented journal had warned that dislike of urbanization cannot excuse neglect of the city as ‘one of the most important front lines of environmental issues’.17 A disposition is abroad to say the answer to urban malaise lies in spreading cities more thinly. Accelerate the incorporation ‘into cities of precisely those features which make the countryside attractive’.18 In the tension-wracked 1960s, Frank Lloyd Wright had prophesied that in ‘the organic city of tomorrow’ ground space will be measured in acres not square feet.19 Now IT specialists aver their revolution will achieve something like this. However, when residences are set well apart in leafy suburbs, this may inhibit community bonding—the attribute we should be striving, above all else, to preserve or regenerate. Besides, an adjustment so radical may require many decades to effect at all generally This could be much more time than we have to play with as a planetary urban crisis builds up caused by structural factors but exacerbated by drugs and firearms. Thirty years ago, a positive interpretation of the city’s future longer-term was published from within the Greek tradition. It still commands attention. The gist is that global urban growth will continue, insistently but stressfully, well into this century. It will then slow down markedly; and as it does the quality of urban life will much improve. Eventually, sometime next century, an ‘Ecumenopolis will come into being, binding together all the habitable areas of the globe as one interconnected network of settlements’. This state of penultimate equilibrium will proffer lasting peace through international melding. Even so, our survival will further depend on establishing ‘a genuine partnership with Nature’, a balance to be struck ‘at every level from the single house with its garden to the entire globe’.20 Did the authors mean an urban ‘open conspiracy’ to limit economic growth? At all events, they are setting this consummation a long way off. Since Periclean Athens, city life and democracy have been interwoven themes. Assuredly, TVA devotees would refute the idea that large rural restoration projects are characteristically ‘Too unwieldy for significant voluntary

214 THE QUEST FOR STRATEGY

efforts’.21 And there is a long and enduring tradition of espousing village communitarian values as the antidote to cosmopolitan rootlessness. Nevertheless, urban welfare and grass-roots democracy probably go together in a rather special way. Democratic participation in urban renewal within the developing world has been extolled for some decades past. Democracy The supposedly Kantian precept that democracies are unlikely to make war on each other was revived by President Clinton in his 1994 State of the Union address. It is now a modern mantra. As intimated in Chapter 5, Upheavals within?, however, it is belied by the First World War. Among the big European powers, the most apprehensive of being embroiled were the two least democratic, Austria-Hungary and Russia. Other wars, too, have occurred involving on opposite sides polities with tolerably democratic credentials.22 In fact, a high proportion of modern states have democratic forms within their body politic. Yet they can have autocratic ones too. There can also be discordance between formal appearance and functional reality Take a regional arc abutting Afghanistan, a country where authentic elections in 2004–5 remains the declared aim. In the former Soviet republics of Trans-Caucasia and Central Asia, ‘elections even when reasonably free as in Kyrgyzstan have resulted in strong executives, weak legislatures and judiciaries, and few civil and economic liberties’.23 In Kyrgyzstan, indeed, a personality cult of the President is now being promoted, this against the background of an American military baselet having been established incountry post-9/11. In Afghanistan itself, the sway Ismail Khan exercises in a swathe of territory round Herat is a thinly cloaked block on democratic progress. Like sundry other barons in different places at other times, he is not entirely unenlightened. Yet in the final analysis, he is an uncompromising autocrat. Now his erstwhile Iranian backers are dialoguing with the Americans, for whatever mix of reasons, about possibly easing him aside. But can that be effected without descent into anarchy? And what of the other renascent Afghan warlords? The worldwide upsurge of support for democracy the last twenty to thirty years has been decisively at the expense of its old protagonists, Fascism and Communism. In many developing countries, however, its prospects are compromised by unsatisfactory legal structures and by action-reaction between those in power and organized unrest, be this insurgent or mere criminal or hybrid. Nor do ethnic and religious cleavages within state boundaries help, not to mention other acute divides: rural versus urban, young versus old, sans culottes versus bourgeoisie, female versus male… None is irreducible but everything is a race against time. Meanwhile, in the advanced democracies of the West the hallowed precepts of representation and accountability are coming across less credibly than once they did. To my mind, quite the weakest aspect of the record of the New Labour

PLANETARY INTERNATIONALISM 215

government in Britain remains constitutional reform. A raft of proposals has not been followed through or not thought through. It has been a matter of those concerned being uncertain what they are going for. Hopefully, the Hutton Enquiry of 2003 (basically about public information ahead of the Iraq war) will stir all concerned to re-examine the parameters of open government. Yet on the broader canvas one has to reaffirm the overriding argument in favour of actively encouraging progress everywhere towards democracy set squarely within the rule of law and underpinned by economic progress. That argument cannot actually be that democracies, however immature, would never take up arms against each other. It must again be that the unprecedented explosion of information will oblige regimes everywhere to become rather more open or a lot more closed. Take Saudi Arabia. In the not distant past, inaccessibility helped the kingdom keep stable. But now it fights an endless cyberwar against cultural and political pollution as it perceives them. State control of Internet provision is stringent in principle. Yet it is insufficiently so in practice to prevail very long.24 But dare the kingdom risk more stringency on this new front? Mention has been made of the ‘dark valley’ of Fascism into which Japan descended from 1931. Any such valleys in 2031 might be dark indeed, not the kind of ambience from which a people could lift itself unaided. Pre-emption A contingent connection is not hard to visualize between the emergence of polities of exceptional nastiness and the mass destruction threat presented in its ugliest form, genetically engineered biowarfare. A totally closed society could conceal facilities for this with very little risk of detection. Clandestine dispatch, using dedicated kamikazes, would be less assured but still an inviting prospect for a future Idi Amin, Adolf Hitler, Saddam Hussein or Pol Pot. There is, however, one saving grace. As we move into the Genetic Modification era, it will be progressively harder for any country to justify its biowarfare research on the grounds that it is being directed to prophylactic ends. The range of offensive options will become so great that specific prophylaxis will be futile. The physicist Herbert York was scientific adviser to President Eisenhower. He had been first director of Livermore (now the Lawrence Livermore) national laboratory in 1952, and the first technical director of the Advanced Research Projects Agency (now DARPA) in 1958. He sees the biological bomb as the most dangerous thing on the horizon. We in the United States, in the name of examining what the possibilities are so we can defend against it [my italics], are going to lead the world into a much greater trap than nuclear fission did.25 Soon that loophole should everywhere start to close.

216 THE QUEST FOR STRATEGY

However, developing a sound strategic doctrine incorporating long-lead preemption will be tough going. It will have to rest on an emergent world order open and equable enough to make it improbable that anyone bar the most depraved of dictators would wish to disturb the strategic balance by developing intercontinental missiles or germ bombs. Egypt’s Gamal Abdel Nasser (1918–70) was an autocrat without a coherent political philosophy. He was also impetuous. But nobody would accuse him of being depraved. Nevertheless, he allowed his troops to use poison gas during their intervention in the Yemen civil war in the middle 1960s. One hopes that in a new context the Nassers of this world will see liberal democracy as the consummation towards which to progress. One must hope, too, that the UN Charter could then be amended to endorse the principle of pre-emptive regime change, including when the intention to acquire germ bombs can be presumed though not confirmed. It is a tough stipulation but may become imperative. A more structural problem is how to deal with deviance by polities considerably bigger than Iraq or Afghanistan. There are a fair number. One way through might be to transpose a suggestion Herman Kahn made at a London seminar in 1965. Asked what the West should do if the Soviets invested West Berlin, he said ‘Declare war.’ In other words, give ourselves legal space within which to apply a selection of punitive and constraining measures. Cyberwar might be among them, as might intrusive means of technical surveillance, soon including UAVs weighing but a kilogram or two. Without a declaration of war such measures could be illicit. Other economic, political or military options likewise suggest themselves. However, recourse to punitory and coercive action that stopped short of overwhelming the recalcitrant regime would always be a complicated exercise in action-reaction. Dissuading a regime from unwelcome behaviour is never easy. It can be even harder to induce it to launch out on such policies as one regards as constructive. Tom Schelling deployed the term ‘compellence’ to cover this requirement as it might arise within the context of a nuclear showdown. He warned against trite applications of behaviourist psychology, trying too naively to reward conduct that was welcome and vice versa.26 Here is yet another concept that stands in need of wider exploration and development. As to where the 2003 Iraq crisis fits into this sombre prospect, it is hard to avoid the following inferences. By late July, Tony Blair had visibly come to realize how supererogatory his government had been in trying to tie licit intervention to supposedly certain knowledge of WMD possession. The Americans were better founded with their insistence that the Saddam regime was sufficiently diabolical to do more or less anything; and that, in any case, its crippling of the UN inspection regime could not go unchallenged. But the American hand was vitiated, regionally and beyond, by a previous failure to develop a pre-emption doctrine coherently and a current one to register progress on the Israel-Palestine crisis

PLANETARY INTERNATIONALISM 217

Correspondingly, there must today be an interaction between (a) pursuance of the Middle East road map and (b) the democratization of Iraq. If things do move forward on both fronts, it will boost the moral legitimacy accorded to the American and coalition regional presence plus the prospects for more Arab involvement. No less important over the medium term may be the identification of a ‘flagship’ project that may betoken Iraq the resurrected. The regeneration of the historic marshes almost entirely drained post-1991 is actively mooted. But there is indigenous scepticism given (a) the time now elapsed and (b) the impossibility of convincing replication.27 More promising might be the launching internationally of a major archaeological programme to compensate for recent material losses and help regenerate Mesopotamian pride. The permanent members Inherent in any recourse to strategic pre-emption is the danger that this will be a green light for other protagonists to exploit modern surveillance and precision by striking first regardless. This danger may be addressed in various ways but one would be to get the proposed action legitimated if at all possible. Evidently much will hinge on whether UN legitimacy can be obtained via the Security Council and especially through the concurrence of its five permanent members. This desideratum will be even more fundamental to the evolution of strategy in the round. Above all, the global promotion of liberty, democracy, arms control and environmental management would always be near to impossible without the endorsement by or acquiescence of both Moscow and Beijing. China could be especially crucial, being the only one of the five which is not preponderantly White. Currently her foreign policy has a low profile but that is bound to change, given the dynamics of (a) her internal development and (b) her interaction with the USA. Meanwhile, her domestic programme remains amazingly bold. Witness her commencement of manned Spaceflight, this possibly leading on to the launch of an orbital Space station to coincide with the Beijing Olympics in 2008. Witness, too, her flooding of the Yangtse gorges, a riverscape famed in art and literature. Witness, above all, her drive to become the ‘workshop of the world’ in light manufactures. Already she contributes half the world’s output of shoes and of bicycles, and should provide within ten years half its garments exports. Better wages and conditions for Chinese factory workers could thereby become a major human rights issue. The outcome of China’s endeavours will be either triumph or tragedy, for her people and therefore us all. We need to be watchful lest it goes menacingly wrong for internal reasons—not least, one apprehends, urban crises. Yet at the same time, China must be allowed enough space, psychologically speaking, to work her destiny out. ‘Enough space’ is like the proverbial hippopotamus, hard to define but not difficult to recognize. Orbital BMD would be a negation of it.

218 THE QUEST FOR STRATEGY

Unfortunately, the next few years threaten to be febrile apropos the SinoAmerican nuclear balance, intercontinentally and across the Taiwan Straits. Debate proceeds in professional circles in Beijing and Shanghai about American aims in regard to NMD plus a new generation of nuclear strike weapons.28 For the rest of us, something to conjure is how much the missile build-up opposite Taiwan owes to Washington’s NMD plans. The echelon of strategic missiles the Soviets deployed opposite Europe in the early 1960s represented a bigger investment than its ICBM force then did. This prioritization struck those of us analysing these matters as irrational. But Moscow evidently saw advantage in initially presenting overwhelming force to the secondary target area. Now Beijing does likewise. Today, Russia’s strategic forces are reputedly as run down as the rest of her panoply. All the same, missile squadrons might be reconstituted more readily than armoured divisions. If and when the USA starts SBL deployment, the reaction in Moscow, too, is sure to be adverse. Russian weapons never will be deployed in Space, we are officially advised, except with the consent of the international community.29 So, instead, the countervailing action would be an offensive build-up. Whether part would be trained on NATO Europe once again might depend on how the Atlantic Alliance was faring. But there could, in any case, be a recrudescence of a more universal threat, the former Soviet biowarfare capability. That in turn would encourage a lurch towards xenophobia: a reflex akin to that evinced by ‘Old Believers’ in the Great Schism within the Russian Orthodox Church in 1667 and, indeed, in many subsequent episodes. The susceptibility of Russia to such a reaction could be accentuated by a syndrome we in the West are prone to overlook, a pervasive sense of failure apropos Soviet Communism: seventy-four years of hard slog with far too little to show for it. There was, however, the victory over the greater part of the Nazi juggernaut. That saga has many sides to it, some very nasty or stupid. But overall it was an awesome manifestation of collective courage.30 The West might do well to acknowledge it more fully, not least the twenty million war-related Soviet deaths. Political convolutions apart, the Russians will be evaluating anew the vast territory they so centrally occupy in Eurasia: ‘For centuries, a mere sight of their country on the world map helped shape—and distort—many a Russian generation’s view of their country.’31 Accepting the customary horizons of his fellow countrymen, Dmitri Trenin has highlighted the need for other perspectives too. One thinks of climate change. Among Soviet/Russian climatologists, quite the best known in the West through the later Cold War and beyond has been Mikhail Budyko of the Main Geophysical Laboratory in Leningrad/St Petersburg. For one thing, he was occasionally prepared to query the way the Marxian mainstream extolled the ‘drive for victory over the forces of Nature’, portraying the latter as socialistically exploitable ad infinitum. That ill-gotten vision found its most prominent expression in plans to transform Soviet climates using soot to melt the Arctic pack ice or controlling the water flow through the Behring Straits

PLANETARY INTERNATIONALISM 219

or else watering the arid south by diverting there (in the course of half a century) perhaps a third of Siberia’s river flow. The last-mentioned strategy was explored doggedly and not, in fact, abandoned until 1986. Budyko conjured whether the secular cool spell that had set in c.1940 might represent a stronger tendency than did global warming. By 1985, however, he and colleagues were satisfied that, thanks to human activity, ‘within only a few decades the amount of atmosphere carbon dioxide is increasing by a value corresponding to its decrease previously over millions of years’. Moreover, this restoration of the atmosphere’s ‘ancient chemical composition’ could enhance photosynthesis and make cold countries less so. Therefore one might in the future work out ‘efficient methods to influence the atmosphere for the sake of the whole of mankind’.32 Then in the 1990s Budyko, along with colleagues at Harvard and Caltec, confirmed that 600 million years ago climate change peaked dramatically in the other direction. For ten million years, the Earth was almost completely encased in ice. The 1985 contribution was rather redolent of the spin the classical Marxists had put on Victorian triumphalism. Climate change can supposedly be engineered without causing conflicts of interest between different territories. It also avers that, in principle, colder regions can draw direct benefit from global warming in terms of longer and more intensive growing seasons. The point has often been made in connection with the USSR/Russia but also Canada. However, causation is not that simple. In each continent, polewards advances of agricultural margins tend to be from good soil on to shield or permafrost areas with patchy and shallow acid soils. One complication is that, compared with the USSR, the Russian Federation has much less deep rich ‘black earth’. In 1997, the year of the Kyoto Protocol, Russian scientists reportedly found that, across the Northern Hemisphere, Spring was averagely arriving a week earlier than ten years before. That summer, however, the Siberian city of Yakutsk declared a state of emergency as permafrost melt undermined building foundations. The hope is that Russia will ratify Kyoto in 2003. In December 2002, Canada became the ninety-eighth country to do so. An arresting aspect of Mikhail Budyko’s work is how evocatively it portrays climate change in terms of primeval forces operating on long secular time frames. There is something enduringly Russian about that, just as there is about reverence for the Siberian winter and the Arctic ice. Yet Communist environmentalism meant for all the Soviet peoples a dismal pollution record to set alongside Marxist utopianism. The Russians, like the others, have yet to shake off conclusively the negative legacies. When, a decade or two hence, Moscow has done so, it may emerge as the pioneer of a new planetary geopolitics. That is what Soviet Marxism should have been about in the first place.

220 THE QUEST FOR STRATEGY

Europe Proper A case was put in Chapter 11 for setting the eastward limits of NATO and the EU effectively at the Soviet border as per December 1939. Europe Proper, delineated thus, is an articulated landmass extending through 35 degrees of latitude from Gibraltar to North Cape, not to mention Svalbard. It therefore has manifold ecologies. But given heavy human pressure, this means a diversity of ecological problems. A basic one is posed by the new EU strategy for Common Agricultural Policy farm support. It shifts the emphasis towards conservation rather than indigenous food supply. So can ‘conservation’ satisfactorily encompass adaptation to global warming? Climate change is one of several issues about which a fuller trans-Atlantic dialogue is urgently required. Another is Israeli-Palestinian accommodation, especially as and when this moves beyond formal resolution via two viable states to a deeper compact between neighbours. A third is the application of ‘soft power’ to peacefulness but also democracy, not least in city governance.33 A fourth is doctrine for future armed conflict, strategic preemption and internal arms control included. The premise all this rests on is that the West as such still exists. Neither Europe nor North America desperately needs the other geopolitically any more. But intellectually and culturally, they still have much more in common than either does with any other major region, Latin America not excepted. One can look towards this exclusiveness progressively waning over the next half century. But it cannot be ignored yet. Yet almost never has this ‘twin pillar’ nexus worked as well politically as its advocates envisioned. Achieving more this time will require adaptiveness both sides of the ocean. The EU’s basic structure must be confirmed before too long. Also, pan-European institutions must be created to thrash out parameters for Grand Strategy which are reformist in themselves and build to Europe’s special strengths. The fact that Europe provides 70 per cent of international economic aid implies leverage during years in which soft power should count for more in practice as well as theory. The EU has already been dubbed the ‘civilian Superpower’.34 Having said that, a most elusive question in respect of emergent Europe is what it requires in terms of military defence. Border control and other recognized accoutrements of homeland security are clearly sine qua non, a truism underlined for Europe by brooding concern lest its great exercise in togetherness comes unstuck sometime. If it does, the most immediate threats to security will ipso facto come from within Europe itself. If the EU aspires to exert due influence the world over, it is probably important to retain thermonuclear weaponry. A logical way through would be routine coordination between the strategic deterrents of France and Britain. Both essentially comprise several submarines with a modest number of strategic missiles apiece; and the common purpose is minimum deterrence —standing

PLANETARY INTERNATIONALISM 221

ready to inflict wholly unacceptable damage, mainly on civilian areas, in response to a major attack. Elaborate targeting would not be necessary, either beforehand or on the dreadful day. Some thirty to thirty-five years ago, there was a flurry of interest in such collaboration. Franz Josef-Strauss, Georges Pompidou and Edward Heath were among those arguing for. A complication is that, under Britain’s 1998 Strategic Defence Review, one or more of the Trident missiles borne on the Royal Navy’s strategic submarines might be used to demonstrate nuclear intent, a ‘shot across the bows’ or something harsher. However, this is not an apposite way to employ Trident. All else apart, one missile being fired will reveal the position of the other fifteen on board. Nevertheless, one can argue for otherwise retaining this option and, indeed, elaborating it to become a more flexible or graduated nuclear response ahead of a large-scale counter-strike. How this argument plays from now on will depend, above all, on relations with the USA as expressed through NATO. But if NATO as such is to survive, it will be important that its geographical delineations and political topography within Europe closely match those of the evolving EU. During this evolution, regional affinities may acquire more definition. Already there are signs of the smaller states on the Nordic/Baltic flank coming together to formulate a collective viewpoint on peacebuilding. Tactical nuclear flexibility may be especially germane to ‘out of area’ force deployments. Had Saddam’s tanks in 1990 rolled on through Kuwait towards the Saudi oilfields, only nuclear weapons could have stopped them. Scenarios within that genre are now less likely but not inconceivable. Besides, it is herein argued that accepting some progression towards or through the nuclear threshold may have to be part and parcel of anti-germ bomb strategy. Iran, and maybe before too long Saudi Arabia,35 must be judged carefully in this connection. Also to reckon with is encountering biowarfare in battle. A tactical nuclear response could be less sinister than one in kind. Relatively civilian though European power may be, several reasons can be adduced why EU members may periodically wish to be able to intervene out of area. One could be to protect the import flow Europe so vitally depends on. Another, to assist states born out of European empires. A third, to strengthen American resolve. A fourth, to give American engagement a kind of legitimacy, given an impasse in the Security Council. Heartfelt desire to deal with natural calamities or genocidal strife or to topple regimes so obnoxious as to be downright menacing can also be allowed for. So can giving tangibility to any decision not to accept a particular commitment. Robert Kagan’s simile that the USA is akin to Mars in outlook and Europe to Venus is presently fashionable inside the Washington beltway. Yet France and Britain, at least, remain quite Martian (i.e. martial) by modern standards. They duly maintain balanced armed forces. Not least is this so in the maritime domain, save that Britain is running close to manpower over-stretch. Closer naval collaboration between them across the board could pave the way for more general interactiveness out of which multinational European task forces may be

222 THE QUEST FOR STRATEGY

formed ad hoc. That approach may be more adaptive than keeping in being a tightly defined Rapid Reaction Force. Moreover, such a Paris-London nexus might helpfully offset the evolving Paris-Berlin axis. Then there is the question, several decades old, of whether Europe can engender a scientific and technological community able to match the American. A full answer could be intricate with many loose ends. May one feed in just one further observation. It is that the USA still has nothing approaching a monopoly of creative talent. Take the distribution of Nobel Science Prize money the first three years of this millennium. Fifty-five per cent went to the USA but 31 to Europe and 12 to Japan. The remaining 3 went to Russia. What this can mean for Europe in terms of community building may heavily depend on British policy. Visionless criticism The near-to-unbelievable trans-Atlantic rancour over Iraq in early 2003 had history behind it, the history of the previous couple of years. Some materials come from a Europe consumed by internal discord. Meanwhile, the British had sought to occupy a mid-Atlantic position without enunciating an analysis that lent their stance coherence. On the collateral topic of global warming, Europeans were disposed to assume the American pitch was determined simply by pandering to lobbies and fantasizing about the moral worth of the free market. But was Washington entirely wrong to regard the Kyoto conspectus as too time-urgent? Or wrong to suggest the developing countries should have incurred some obligations? In November 2000, the EU peremptorily blocked proposals by the outgoing Clinton administration to use market mechanisms to achieve Kyoto goals. Was that wise in the circumstances? One can also discern a European disposition to discount the progress made for the short to medium term by the counter-insurgency offensive President Bush launched hard upon 9/11. Through mid-2003, one was being advised that AlQaeda still had at least 17,000 trained insurgents on call worldwide. Maybe. So why are they not more active against relevant hard targets? The answer is lack of assurance. On the morrow of 9/11, it will have been possible for many of them to believe once more in the old insurgents’ shibboleth about the tide of history running irresistibly in their favour. Within a fortnight, this belief will have started to dissolve again. It has been dissolving continually since. At the same time, certain ‘roguish’ states (Cuba, Iran, Libya, Syria…) have been more concerned to gain respectability in Western eyes. Europeans ought to be acknowledging that a few years’ grace may have been won while insisting this interlude be used to revise fundamentally some policy modalities and objectives. The upshot might be a timely shift of emphasis towards Venusian soft power.

PLANETARY INTERNATIONALISM 223

Dogmatic uncertainty European diplomacy towards the USA has of late been unimaginative, therefore insensitive. American towards NATO Europe has been insensitive, therefore unimaginative. The bribery and cajolery applied to Turkey to try and gain fuller access through her territory to Saddam’s Iraq is bound to be scorned by historians. They may be less amused by Secretary Rumsfeld’s tirade against Belgium for evincing contrary perspectives. The threat to press for the removal of NATO headquarters from Brussels, should this insolence continue, was otiose. Move to where? Would not a NATO thus detached from the emergent EU just wither away? Besides, if small countries within the Atlantic community cannot be free to vent opinions, global democracy will mean little. People who know Donald Rumsfeld describe him as firm but fair, congenial to work with, especially in committee. Yet in public he too often feels impelled to act the redneck. More generally, within the neoconservative cabal that is the Bush administration, pugnacious rhetoric can be a substitute for philosophy. It is a little like the ancient gods making their anger known through thunder and lightning, fire and brimstone. Whom they were angry with and why was not always well explained. Part of the problem today is the penchant the President has displayed for saying the right things in the wrong order. The neoconservatives have not published comprehensive testaments. But one is given to understand that the Platonist tradition several come out of combines a commitment to democracy with a belief in its being firmly guided by elites. The basic instincts of this new Right favour heroic toughness, though how this translates into strategy is moot. Rearmament heavily excepted, administration seniors divide among themselves (sometimes within themselves) about basic aims. If the UN or the EU is not happy with some policy, is this a cost or a bonus? How serious are we about the Middle East road map? Is Guantanamo worth it? And do all good neoconservatives contend that abrupt regime change is ipso facto more authentic than that which is gradual? If they do, they align in this particular with revolutionary Leftism. What, not least, about global warming? At first sight, it is quintessential soft politics. But it is not really. Meeting Kyoto-style commitments requires social discipline. Certain of the scientific challenges are intellectually demanding. One could add that no one who extols heroic toughness can be indifferent to the incipient dissolution of an Arctic ambience so visibly redolent of our ancestral past. More prosaically, one cannot ignore studies emanating from, for instance, the CIA or the strategy task force at the Ministry of Defence in London telling how climate change can exacerbate global instability. Yet ask a Washington policy-maker about the level of commitment to greenhouse restraint and the answer will vary with respondent, audience and the weather outside. More probing by critics at home and abroad is needed to gauge the inclinations and seek to modulate them.

224 THE QUEST FOR STRATEGY

No less intriguing is how the neoconservatives latch on to the hard Right of the Republican mainstream. Can cosmopolitan Jewish intellectuals really identify with Protestant Creationism or apocalyptic Christian Zionism? And what of the regard a broader swathe of Republican opinion once had for Fascist regimes abroad, seeing them as bulwarks against Communism and in keeping with local traditions? Has that sentiment just evaporated? One’s inclination is to cite Colin Powell as the individual able to create a new Republican synthesis tolerably close to the Atlanticist tradition of Eisenhower, Reagan and George Bush Senior. But Secretary Powell himself might be the first to discount this. And for this British observer, a comparison with Sir Anthony Eden is salutary. A veteran rifleman told me many years ago how fine an officer Eden was to serve under in the trenches of the Western Front. He was also to be outstanding as wartime Foreign Secretary, 1940–5. Yet he lacked the wider and deeper political understanding required to measure up as Prime Minister, 1955–7. Not that one can deny that the Bush cabal was well cast for 9/11. Their uninhibited preparedness to take up arms was vitally germane. Valuable awhile, too, was that Manichean sense of good versus evil. The danger now is that these strengths will be impediments apropos the secular unfolding of derivative events. Martial determination could turn counter-productive in an era in which the most dreadful armed threat we face—undercover bioterror —will never be eliminated by military means alone. Likewise, the Manichean outlook may make those possessed of it too arbitrary, impatient and simplistic. One’s apprehension is that a second-term Bush administration would stomp confusedly from qualified international triumph to the very edge of planetary tragedy. A contrary hope must be that progress with the Middle East road map or a firm compact with China will exert an edifying influence. One must further ask that other debates open up more, notably that about the weaponization of Near Space. Otherwise neoconservatism could all too easily sink into corruptive, natavistic Republicanism of the Harding, McCarthy, Nixon hue. It is, in any case, likely that, by 2008 at least, the American people will be happy to see a Democrat in the Oval Office again. She or he will need a broad and radical agenda, one sufficiently so to incorporate certain conservative themes. Salient among them must firmly be the option of pre-emptive military action against any regime so misanthropically evil that it might be prepared to unleash mass destruction on populations near or far. What we cannot afford again is the endless international prevarication that characterized the Saddam visitation. Early in 1998, Secretary of State Madeleine Albright said Iraq would be dealt with multilaterally if possible but unilaterally if not. Yet five more dragging years passed before action via what might be dubbed fractional multilateralism. Yet the history of strategic pre-emption shows that thrashing out appropriate doctrine will not be easy.36 Indeed, it may be infeasible except in a world in which very evident progress is being made all round towards political and social justice. Then it should be possible to identify and isolate pathological regimes.

PLANETARY INTERNATIONALISM 225

An alternative world of rougher justice (in which even tolerably open and wellfounded regimes are driven by exasperation and insecurity to retain a biowarfare option) would be much harder to cope with. In any case, doctrine would also have to encompass the question, more calculable but still taxing, of the strategic missile. Regional security pacts Little impetus exists at present towards strengthening international governance at global level. The UN General Assembly is far less remarked than it was half a century ago. Permanent Membership of the Security Council seems likely now to stay at the existing five for some years ahead; and, indeed, a certain rough logic attaches to this situation, a core reality being that these five constitute the thermonuclear club—i.e. the hydrogen bomb powers. Besides, the Security Council is but a framework in which to thrash out crisis compromises. To wish more on it is a bit like saying the village football team should arrange its players’ marriages. The G8 Economic Summits are broadening their remits somewhat but remain consultative. The UN special agencies continue to develop but, apart from Near Space and maybe the Arctic basin, there are no subject areas (thematic or geographical) that call for more such bodies. Even so, the interaction of many planetary pressures creates a need for more multinational management somehow. A way through may be to encourage the emergence of regionalisms sufficiently multipurpose to apply operationally the more expansive interpretation of strategic studies here pleaded for. One could be thinking of confraternities of typically six or eight contiguous states which together constitute a defined geographical entity appropriate to common security and collaborative development. Regionalism on this sort of scale usually lends itself better than does the global setting to the sharing of financial benefits and obligations. So does it to policy coordination, either within a given region or else for advocacy in world fora. A varied remit can be envisaged: democratization, inter-state conflict, counter-insurgency, the illicit trade in small arms, syndicated crime, arms control, nuclear deterrence, the management of Near Space, economic growth, climate change, biodiversity, scientific collaboration, the cultural heritage… In no way can this proposal be described as novel. Something similar was expounded at length in 1982 by the Independent Commission on Disarmament and Security Issues, a group of international luminaries chaired by the late Olaf Palme of Sweden.37 Moreover, the concept relates to a trend which is under way, often querulously but with momentum overall. An authoritative gazetteer of world events lists twenty organizations operating below continental level outside the Atlantic area.38 All are explicitly committed to a degree of economic collaboration. Most have additional declared objectives. Others tentatively extend their remits in accordance with logic or common sense. Take the Southern African Development Community (SADC), founded in 1992. Its stated aim is a

226 THE QUEST FOR STRATEGY

Common Market between the fourteen member states. In this new century, it has been concerned to bring internal peace to three of them: Angola, the Democratic Republic of Congo and Zimbabwe. However, in none of these situations has SADC yet achieved much tangibly. Most remarked in the West is the Association of South-East Asian Nations (ASEAN). Founded in 1967, it now has ten member states. Alas, the repute of ASEAN itself as a driver of high economic growth looks extravagant given (a) the slow progress towards economic integration and (b) policy divisions during the regional crisis of 1998, notably between a Malaysia anxious to insulate itself from the world beyond and a Singapore keen to draw in overseas capital. Likewise, the principle of non-intervention in the domestic affairs of member states is hard to move beyond because one of them—Indonesia— is huge relative to its peers and perennially distracted internally. None the less, the bonding ASEAN membership involves may have intangibly helped to prevent tensions spreading across intra-regional borders. In the 1960s, animosity between Singapore and nearby Malaya was palpable. In 1965, the former left the new federation of Malaysia. Then 1969 saw serious anti-Chinese riots in Kuala Lumpur. However, placatory bonding was to hand in the form of a Commonwealth defence pact, its signatories being Malaysia, Singapore, New Zealand, Australia and Britain. In due course, it was superseded by ASEAN. Evidently Singapore’s basic military precept remains deterrence of her ASEAN neighbours through threat of air strikes. But it is wrong39 to suggest this negates the bonding argument. In other respects, ASEAN progresses. Meeting Colin Powell in Brunei in 2002, its foreign ministers agreed to establish a regional intelligence pool, take steps to interdict insurgent funding, and tighten border controls. An e-mail network is being established; and plans are afoot for satellites developed and launched by ASEAN.40 In October 2003, the concept of an ASEAN security community was accepted. Revamping or replacing existing regional affiliations will not be easy. Nor will starting from scratch. Nor does everywhere on Earth lend itself to regionalism. Nevertheless, one valuable role for regional institutions could be to accommodate external military support in times of warlike crisis. Another could be to act as frameworks for Marshall Plans geared to urban development, clean water or whatever. Certainly there is now a need to shift the global security effort more towards soft power, especially official economic aid. The world currently spends a thousand billion dollars a year on military defence. Meanwhile, national agricultural subsidies claim $350 billion and official economic aid $58 billion. The second category ought to be switched more to conservation, adaptation to climate change included; and the third allowed to grow considerably at the expense of the other two. Rebuilding failed states or cities could easily absorb $50 billion a year. Lately the accent has been on trade liberalization as the way to make developing countries prosperous. Yet this approach may not have much further to run, if only because of a disposition to

PLANETARY INTERNATIONALISM 227

protect certain sectors to military, cultural, social or ecological ends. Direct transfers à la Marshall may therefore come back in vogue. As regards regionalism and ‘North-South’ relations generally, the requisite adjustments may depend on the engendering of a new vision. Our response to the Strategic Revolution (and to 9/11 in particular) is still redolent of 1931 to 1942, the years when the democracies were preoccupied with reacting to the next dictatorial foray We should move into 1943 to 1963, an era rich in positive ideas about the future—ideas which, in quite a few cases, have stood well the test of time. Is not the Holy Land a good place to start afresh? Jerusalem, bridgehead or bridge? Arthur Koestler deplored the omission of Copernicus, Descartes, Galileo and Newton from the index of Arnold Toynbee’s monumental A Study of History. He saw it as typifying ‘the gulf that still separates the humanities from the philosophy of Nature’.41 One can fancifully imagine, that aberration having been corrected, a valhallan joust for primacy between Aristotle (384–322 BC) and Albert Einstein (1879–1955). For my money, the former would win by virtue of the ease with which he moves between natural science and the humanities. He well explains why dew forms and shrewdly observes the changes in rainfall distribution across Greece since the Trojan War.42 Yet he addresses as judiciously the classification of governments. Even so, Einstein nearly pips him through the brilliant insightfulness of his imaginative leaps. Albert Einstein was a committed Zionist within the social democratic Haganah mainstream that led Israel to statehood under David Ben-Gurion. Criticized by Chaim Weizmann for an allegedly deficient sense of realpolitik,43 Einstein had the kind of pristine vision of Jewish-Arab partnership in Palestine that modern Zionism desperately needs to rediscover.44 In this regard, as in much else, there is no finer example of the rich traditions of Jewish humanism being informed by scientific perspectives, nanometric to cosmic. The hostility his relativity theories encountered from within Judaic orthodoxy (not to mention Nazis and Stalinists) defined their intellectual lineage.45 In 1934, Einstein cautioned that the Revisionist Zionism of the hard Right was ‘the modern embodiment of those harmful forces which Moses with foresight sought to banish when he formulated his model codes of social law’. A decade later, he warned that the Jews in Palestine ‘will succeed in a good measure of cooperation with the Arab people only if both our people and the Arabs succeed in conquering that childhood complaint of a narrow-minded nationalism imported from Europe and aggravated by professional politicians’.46 The following autumn (in the year the Holocaust was fully uncovered) came another dire warning, this time from Hannah Arendt—the Jewish refugee from Nazism cited above as a peerless authority on political terror. The gist was that whether the Jews or Palestine can be saved

228 THE QUEST FOR STRATEGY

with the categories and methods of the nineteenth century seems at the very most highly improbable. If Zionists persevere in retaining their sectarian ideology and continue with their short-sighted realism, they will have forfeited even the small chances that small peoples still have in this none too beautiful world of ours.47 Now, eighty-seven years after the Balfour Declaration, we look at a scene suffused with tragic irony. Each of the peoples in the on-going conflict has proved incredibly resilient in the face of continual pressure and provocation. Yet each continues to persuade itself the other has no resilience; and can be curbed by punitive action. On each side, too, successive generations of kids are raised (at home, in school and at worship) in the belief that their own have never done anything wrongful nor anything stupid except be too restrained. Meantime both Palestinians and Israelis are ridden with insecurity. To quite an extent, this stems from a common fear of being denied the land they respectively live in. Yet for each there is existential anxiety as well. The Israelis are aware of how, across the diaspora, the Jewish identity is tending to contract or dilute. For the Palestinians, the culture shock of adapting to the globalizing outside world has been made all the more acute by the dynamic Zionist presence. What does seem likely is that, had the Arab League and the Palestinians accepted the UN partition plan of 1947, then today the confederal democracy of Israel-cum-Palestine would be a beacon of liberty and reconciliation for all humankind. But with their rejectionist reflex, the Palestinians were acting as countless other societies have, faced with alien intrusion. How, might one ask, would the modern Israelis have responded? If the British wanted the Palestinians to rise to higher things, they should have launched forth on countervailing nation-building. In fact in 1921, a most formative year, there is no sign of their even considering that. As Colonial Secretary, Winston Churchill found it sufficient to argue that, under the rule of law, every inhabitant of Palestine stood to gain from the proven ability of the Zionists to spearhead development, rural and urban.48 In truth, this was profoundly insufficient. One indicator, alas, is the vulgar immaturity of the post-Ottoman political culture. Take the 12,000-word memorandum presented to Churchill on 28 March by the Executive of the Haifa Congress of Palestine Arabs. A keynote passage is chillingly anticipatory of Mein Kampf: It is well known that the disintegration of Russia was wholly or in great part brought about by the Jews, and a large proportion of the defeat of Germany and Austria must also be put at that door… The Jew is a Jew all the world over… He encourages wars when self-interest dictates and thus uses the armies of the nations to do his bidding.49

PLANETARY INTERNATIONALISM 229

In the interim, alas, the often traumatic unfolding of world events has so forced the pace of things in the Holy Land that the Palestinians themselves have taken little time out to rethink. The upshot has been that, although Palestine and Jordan have seen many individuals of ability and moderation attain influential positions, the national struggle has been shaped by guerrilla movements sustained by an embittered radicalism within which a racist streak persists. Edward Said wrote with eloquence about the West’s quasiromantic stereotyping of the Oriental persona. But no one has yet written a definitive prevision of Palestinian social democracy. So what we have is an all too classic rendering of action-reaction. Palestinian rejectionism and Revisionist Zionism have been the macabre alter egos of one another. Thus the Irgun and the Stern Gang assumed a spearhead role in the ethnic cleansing of 1947–8, a clinching action being the butchery of several hundred Arab villagers at Deir Yassin—an Irgun terror strike led by Menachem Begin. Then came the war of 1967. What the historians are confirming is that the USSR played a most ambiguous role in setting a crisis scene which led to Arab mobilization and therefore Israeli pre-emption. As a journalist, I had visited Cairo that January and had discussions at a fairly high level. A message that came over was that (a) war with Israel was inevitable, (b) when it came the Arabs would win whether or not the AngloAmericans intervened but (c) the Arabs would not be ready for several years. In the event, a victorious Israel occupied East Jerusalem, the West Bank and Gaza. Territorially, this brought the Revisionists closer to realizing their aspirations. Yet if the new limits were consolidated, Israel would be in a demographic twist. She would be unable to remain at once authentically Jewish and truly democratic. David Ben-Gurion was among the many of varying persuasions who welcomed the chance to treat Jerusalem once again as a sacred entity, free from barbed-wire bisection. But at the same time, he warned earnestly against making disengagement from the West Bank ever harder by implanting Jewish settlements across it. He was heeded insufficiently. In 1969, Israel’s Prime Minister Golda Meir bowed to Rightist pressure by allowing the reestablishment of a Jewish community in the centre of Hebron. It was a turning point. The anger engendered among the Palestinians has been exacerbated by gratuitous affronts. The settlements have spearheaded savage discrimination in regard to water supply.50 Also, many occupy hilltop locations where they bespeak dominance, a bit like the hill stations in British India.51 In 1967, Ariel Sharon led the Israeli southern division into battle. A verdict on his prowess was delivered forthwith by an inspirational soldier-scholar who had been perhaps Britain’s most distinguished commando leader in World War II and later (1953–6) the commander within Jerusalem of Jordan’s Arab Legion. Brigadier Peter Young, who had known Israel’s current premier for some years, wrote that

230 THE QUEST FOR STRATEGY

A distinguished fighting record need not be taken as positive proof of mental deficiency. Sharon is certainly a warlike figure, the born leader one hears about but so seldom meets. But his plans are the result of much thought and study; and he has a mind receptive to ideas—even other people’s.52 In Sharon’s case, tactical skill and resolve in battle translate into the same attributes in politics. For the audacious night raider of yesteryear, adaptiveness and deception are what it is all about. Politics is a continuation of war. By 1982, Ariel Sharon was Minister of Defence in Begin’s Likud-led coalition: an administration that was very much a protégé of the Revisionist tradition. At Camp David in 1977, Begin had compromised Anwar Sadat fatally by refusing to have the Egyptian-Israeli peace agreement provide for more than the briefest of halts to Jewish settlement in the territories. In 1981, Likud had been prepared to orchestrate hooliganism against its Labour opponents in order to retain power in a pivotal general election; and so to time the attack on Iraq’s nuclear facility as to serve the same ends. Very many Israelis would further say that the assassination of Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin in 1995 came out of an anti-peace hysteria that Likud had whipped up and personalized.53 In June 1982, Begin ordered the invasion of the Lebanon, seeking to terminate insurgency along Israel’s northern border. This episode climaxed in midSeptember when Lebanese Falangist militia killed roughly a thousand unarmed Palestinians in the wanton terror strike against the Sabra and Chatila refugee camps. How deeply implicated the Israel Defence Force was may never be established. Undoubtedly there was initial encouragement even to the extent of providing nocturnal illumination. Early in 1983, Sharon resigned after the Israeli official enquiry. The 1982 crisis developed into something of a battle royal between Ariel Sharon and Yasser Arafat. This satanic duel has lately resumed regardless. In July 2000, President Clinton convened at Camp David a trilateral summit involving himself, Arafat and Israel’s Prime Minister Ehud Barak. In 1999, Barak had swept into the premiership with 56 per cent of the votes cast, this on a ticket of peace coupled with social liberalization. The chief element in the coalition government he then formed was the Israel Labour Party. What was on offer to Arafat at Camp David seems to have been a ‘two viable states’ solution which could have laid the foundations for an Einsteinian ‘promised land’ of partnership. But the chemistry between Arafat and Barak was bad, and the exact status of Jerusalem a matter of some contention. Arafat felt unable to proffer even a general endorsement. Whatever the constraints upon him, it was a lapse of epic proportions, insurgent immobilisme at its worst. On 26 September, Barak and Arafat met at the former’s home in what was described as their ‘best ever’ discussions. But two days later, Sharon studiedly paid an ultra-high-profile visit to the nodally contentious religious site—Temple Mount/Haram Al-Sharif. In the ensuing

PLANETARY INTERNATIONALISM 231

rioting, four Palestinians died and 200 were wounded. By year’s end, the intifada insurgency was raging again. In the special general election held for the post of Prime Minister in February 2001, Sharon defeated Barak by 62 per cent to 37. The difficulty the United States then had in controlling the former precluded solid Arab commitment to the campaign against Saddam. A big problem for the Bush administration is undoubtedly Sharon’s flair for flagging one objective while pursuing a contrary one. Thus all through the long hot summer of 2002, the Israel Defence Force trashed the managerial infrastructure of the Palestinian authority while its spokesmen were demanding from that authority decisive action against ‘terrorist organizations’. At the same time, the incarceration of Arafat in his Ramallah headquarters recharged his innate obtuseness. This whole strategy was a calculated nonsense. As to what Ariel Sharon would have preferred instead of the Middle East road map, his indicated conspectus has been neatly adumbrated by the Diplomatic Correspondent of Ha’aretz, the Israeli daily.54 Even as formally compared, this Sharon vision has to be described as an exceptionally stringent form of Apartheid. But the Holy Land is shrinking like everywhere else on this globalizing planet. Anything that smacks of ethnic separation cannot be preserved except by turning ever more vicious. Nor can separation handle big common problems like climate change impact, population control and security— internal and external. It would also preclude the Holy Land’s becoming a bridge between faiths. The danger is not so much that Sharon will fulfil his vision. It is that he will be able to drive the road map into the sand, destroying another opportunity and consuming time which neither the region nor the world can afford to lose. The result could be disastrous for the Bush Grand Design for the world at large. The credo that would stand to gain from a Middle East failure at this juncture would not be Zionism. Nor would it be Hamas fundamentalism, nor even neo-Marxism. It would be cynicism, the weltan-schauung already too widespread in the modern world. Prefacing the personality sketch cited above, Peter Young insisted Ariel Sharon was ‘far more’ than the ‘fighting animal’ he was often dismissed as. Maybe the latter could, under due international pressure, move things forward somewhat. In the ultimate, however, the future of the Holy Land lies with the latitudinarian Zionism espoused by Einstein, Ben-Gurion and, less assuredly, Arendt. Needless to say, the Palestinians have their part to play in facilitating its resurrection. Not least must Hamas strike, once and for all, the tents of yesteryear. In addition, the outside world will have to remain engaged long-term as the two-state relationship becomes more confederal in order to cope with common developmental and security problems and as the Holy Land assumes a lead role in the open conspiracy/Planetary Compact next to be considered.

14 Strategy transcended

Open conspiracy? A downside of pell-mell globalization is that, in many societies, material expectations run well ahead of production capabilities. But the upside could be that it engenders within all cultures a greater awareness of the planet’s holistic needs. Episodically, H.G.Wells envisioned an international ‘open conspiracy’, a global political synergy between people possessed of planetary vision and evincing positive action-reaction worldwide. He probably had in mind radio hams and Esperanto pen pals. Nowadays a stronger cosmopolitan effect is being achieved through the Internet but also more directly as many millions of young people intermingle, form friendships and partnerships and gain work experience, especially in the world’s big cities. It is not, of course, pure utopia. Naturally enough, most of those involved are more concerned most of the time with self-realization than with saving the planet; and the movement as a whole is not inconsiderably interwoven with the brain drain. Also, syndicated insurgency and crime can take advantage. In any case, the broad tendency is always liable to be interrupted by economic collapse or mysterious epidemics or else in the aftermath of wanton acts of terror. On the other hand, this global togetherness gains resilience through sheer momentum. Take the figures for the USA alone. Its total population today is 280 million. Of these, eighteen million are legally resident aliens while seven million more are illegals. A further ten million are foreign-born American citizens. Large inflows of temporary visitors also figure. To triumph or tragedy Moreover, one can look towards expansive data flow further encouraging this forgathering, and giving it articulation about a raft of new challenges ranging from delayed ageing to bioterrorism. This evolution will be important because we cannot tackle such problems as global warming and biowarfare without the positive involvement of humankind as a whole, a kind of informal Planetary Compact.

STRATEGY TRANSCENDED 233

Besides, the stark alternative is an eventual backlash everywhere against surfeits of disturbing knowledge, an atavistic retreat into what the late Pierre Trudeau termed (when Prime Minister of Canada) the ‘wigwams of the past’. Nor does the notion that information overload can induce societal involution lack salutary precedent. Take the plethora of intra-European violence that came hard upon the ‘new learning’ of the Renaissance. Much of it seems not just brutish but positively manic. Witness the witch craze which lasted a good two centuries from the death of Joan of Arc. Nearer our own time, both Wells and Churchill had a strong sense of how technology was dichotomizing alternative futures as never before between triumph and tragedy. In the immediate aftermath of the First World War, the former commented that ‘Human history becomes more and more a race between education and catastrophe.’ In the summer of 1940, Churchill cautioned the world (though especially the USA) about the onus on Britain. If she thwarted Hitler, the whole world could look towards a better future. But ‘if we fail’, humanity will enter a ‘new dark age made more sinister and protracted by the lights of perverted science’. Nowadays Science, perverted or otherwise, advances much faster than it was then perceived to do. Security versus Liberty Not surprisingly, the dilemmas posed are now set very much in the post-9/11 context. In many countries, World War II saw massive curtailments of individual liberty. But in most this descent was conclusively reversed soon after hostilities ceased, a blatant exception being the Soviet bloc. The last two years, things have slumped again to facilitate the ‘war on terror’; and this time round, the reversal could everywhere take place more slowly and less conclusively. As has well been said, only since 1994 or thereabouts, has Orwell’s 1984 been feasible.1 In May 2003, the Secretary General of Amnesty International summated the current situation as she saw it: What would have been an outrage in Western countries during the Cold War—torture, detention without trial, truncated justice—is readily accepted in some countries today. The US continues to pick and choose which bits of its obligations under international law it will use and when it will use them. The upshot was that ‘people, whether rich or poor in the global north or south, feel more insecure today than ever since the end of the Cold War’.2 Actually, it is not obvious to some of us that popular feelings of insecurity are today as acute as they were in the immediate wake of 9/11, let alone some earlier stage. Nonetheless, it is important to gauge to what extent basic rights have lately been compromised by parliamentary democracies as well as by other regimes; and, in particular, how seriously this endangers the open conspiracy. A

234 THE QUEST FOR STRATEGY

fundamental concern throughout has to be how far one should accommodate rather than dismiss the propensity many people have to exaggerate by orders of magnitude the threat terroristic guerrillas pose to them personally. It must be a throw-back to our pre-industrial past when everything really was more localized. The enormity of the 9/11 horror was compounded by its being the antithesis of localization. British dispositions Britain lost eighty citizens in the ‘Twin Towers’. Duly, a new Anti-Terrorism, Crime and Security Bill was enacted that December after heated debate. One of the surviving provisions dented severely the precept of universal equality before the law, a precept surely crucial to any progress towards a Planetary Compact. The said inclusion enabled the government to opt out of Article 5 of the European Convention on Human Rights by declaring a state of emergency which would allow non-British terrorist suspects to be held without trial indefinitely, save that they would always be free to leave the country. A special appeals commission was to be established, and an overall review of this aspect conducted every two years. As of March 2003, thirteen people of unrevealed identity were being detained in close confinement. Also the kind of evidence admissible was broadened for ‘terrorist cases’. Bugging is now more allowable. The police can freeze the funds of suspects, monitor accounts and seize assets. Banks must report dubious transactions. Internet service providers and mobile phone companies have to sign up to a code for record keeping and scrutiny. At the same time, the burden of proof regarding involvement in insurgency has shifted towards those who stand accused on account of links with proscribed organizations. The attributes of the appeals tribunals have caused especial concern. Their membership and hearings are secret. Defence advocates are drawn from a security-cleared pool, and may be denied access to evidence. Further appeals can be lodged only on points of law. Though there is much in all this that is regressive, it is not irreversibly so. To an extent, too, it is offset by the Human Rights Act 2002 as well as by judgements of the European court of human rights. Conversely, the British government, like the American, has freely used the discretionary power of the immigration services as ancillary to its ‘war on terror’. American dispositions Very soon after 9/11, the Bush administration secured the passage of the Patriot Act, this with overwhelming majorities in both Houses. It has increased the powers of special investigators and prosecutors provided for under the 1996 Anti-Terrorism Act, passed in the wake of the Oklahoma bombing. It has also

STRATEGY TRANSCENDED 235

given the federal government new powers to bug phones, monitor e-mails and Internet visits, and scan official databases. In the reaction against McCarthyist hysteria, the Supreme Court and Congress established the principle that peaceable involvement with a group identified federally as hostile was not ipso facto illegal. But the 1996 Act overturned this, making it a crime to offer such groups ‘material’ support. Now the Patriot Act was to toughen that stance further. If operative then, it would apparently have made it a crime to aid in any way, during the Apartheid era, the ‘terrorist’ African National Congress (ANC). No matter that present ANC leaders salute the American support they received ahead of what eventually proved to be a remarkably peaceable transfer of power. The Patriot Act also allows the preventive detention indefinitely of immigrants, on the authority of the Attorney General, even if they have committed no crime and are not liable to legal deportation. Already a precedent had been created in that, in the first two months after 9/11, some 1,200 immigrants were rounded up, nearly all of them Moslem. Some were held for months before seeing a lawyer or coming before a judge. In due course, some were deported and a few charged. Though figures are no longer released, it seems detentions continue. Granted, other people who are Arab and/or Moslem (citizens or immigrants) have probably been under less pressure from the American populace then they would have been in parts of Europe. Nevertheless, legal discrimination cannot but occasion concern. McCarthyism emerged out of know-nothing nativist xenophobia.3 Joe McCarthy himself applied techniques developed for the Palmer Raids organized in 1919 to 1921 by J.Edgar Hoover (1895–1972), then head of the Alien Radical’ division in the Justice Department. Some 3,000 alleged subversives were rounded up. Come the 1950s, the FBI with Hoover as Director helped McCarthy write his mendacious speeches.4 In due course, things may come to a head in the military domain. The incarceration of 650 youngsters at Guantanamo, with no legal process or other end game definitively in sight, drags on. Hovering in the background, too, is the Order that President Bush signed in November 2001 allowing for the trial in military courts (with penalties up to death) of non-Americans the President judges to be involved in ‘international terrorism’. As things stand, the intended modus operandi appears more suitable for the application of official terror by avowedly totalitarian regimes than for upholding liberty and the rule of law in the land of Abraham Lincoln and Albert Einstein. Trials before a military panel may be secret in whole or in part, at the whim of the presiding officer or Pentagon officials. The accused cannot represent themselves. Any civil legal adviser a defendant may employ can be excluded at any time; and must not talk outside about substance or process. The main defence lawyer will always be a military officer, assigned to the job. Whatever the accused says to him or her can be officially recorded. Not all the evidence the prosecution submits need be examined in court.

236 THE QUEST FOR STRATEGY

A unanimous vote is needed to pass a death penalty. Otherwise a vote by threequarters of the panel will be sufficient to convict. Another military panel will review any conviction. The final appeal will be to politicians who have already called everyone in the prison where you are held ‘killers’ and ‘the worst of the worst’.5 Any or many of the procedures can be changed whenever by the Secretary of Defence. So much for the constitutional principle of the separation of powers, something successive generations of Americans have prided themselves on. Yet several times previously, in the rumbustious history of the USA, similar institutions have operated, given the reality that a federal court cannot vary the rules of evidence nor protect sensitive sources. Nor are judges or juries easy to protect against fanatics. Reportedly, the American Bar Association endorsed early on the use of commissions to try Al-Qaeda violations, provided this was subject to a number of standard safeguards.6 A much remarked example of quasi-military tribunals being used to try insurgents charged with acts of terror were the Diplock Courts the British established during the post-1969 troubles in Ulster. Among the safeguards built in were a civil presiding judge; an open trial; a defendant choosing his own lawyer; the confidentiality of that relationship being respected; the two of them being appraised of all the evidence against the defendant; and an appeal being to a civil judge. Even so, these institutions still ‘generated substantial sympathy for the terrorist cause’.7 What could further sharpen this dialectic between civil liberty and the ‘war on terror’ would be if the Bush administration goes ahead with something like the proposed Domestic Security Enhancement Bill 2003. Granted, a presumptively authentic draft of this ‘Patriot 2’ leaked in January contains certain proposals likely to be broadly welcomed. A DNA data base for insurgents, actual or suspected, is one. Considerable support might also be given, however uneasily, to sweeping new powers for gathering domestic intelligence. Open societies will need a sight more intelligence data, internal and external, if they are to avoid a progression which eventually leads to biowarfare. However, firmer reservations might be expressed about the circumscription of judicial reviews as well as of public access to relevant information. Above all, there would be anguish at the provision for American nationals born elsewhere being stripped of their US citizenship and expatriated to their country of origin if found to be either a member of, or providing material support to, a group listed by the government as a ‘foreign terrorist organization’, even if this participation was in itself licit. Security versus liberty? These legal altercations are hardly ones for the strategic community to get immersed in. But at this juncture it ought to be taking a keen interest in how they play. All else apart, the political cohesion of democracy is ultimately at stake.

STRATEGY TRANSCENDED 237

Yet that must always be the bedrock of homeland security. Nor would things have to go too critically wrong in the West to compromise hopelessly its ability to encourage by example freedom under the law as the foundation for democratic evolution elsewhere. This consideration weighs in the more given how, in the year after 9/11, the ‘war on terror’ afforded cover for official repression more or less regardless: Chechnya, Gaza, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Liberia, Xinjiang… Chechnya seems quite the worst example with a counter-insurgency death toll running into tens of thousands. Striking the security versus liberty balance is never easy, partly because the perceived threat fluctuates markedly. But it may be helpful to ask what Bin Laden may have been hoping for from 9/11. Most likely, his ideal would have been a world too jaundiced and cowed to do anything, much as it was in the face of Fascist predacity through most of the 1930s. But his second preference would surely have been illiberal overreaction. The outcome which would assuredly have dismayed him is one in which the open conspiracy flourished exceedingly. At present, we stumble confusedly somewhere between the second and third alternatives. Technical intellectual property A quandary of long standing within the liberty-versus-security dialectic is how far to endorse the free transfer of science and technology. The specialists themselves can be strongly attracted to working on anything that presents a professional challenge and then to promulgating without inhibition any results not patented. An added complication is that, to a growing extent, technology is dual use as between civil and military applications. Space, biotechnology, nanomaterials and the Internet afford conspicuous instances.8 That alone is reason enough why one cannot stop the diffusion of knowledge, merely retard it. Nevertheless, constraints are applied regularly. The vetting of publications is obviously one. Then again, the curbing of knowledge transfer is a primary aim in controls on arms exports. For one thing, reverse engineering can be used to unlock the secrets of equipment received. Before the Shah fell in 1979, there was concern over the proposed sale to Iran of Sentry, the West’s main Airborne Warning And Control System (AWACS). Boeing, the manufacturers, argued that to reverse engineer Sentry’s electronics would take four to five years minimum. Maybe, but everything would be on a learning curve from the outset. Lately Israel and Russia have inclined towards selling AWACS to China while the USA has been resolved not to. Similarly in 1997 fresh legislation passed through Congress regulating the export of supercomputers to countries in sensitive locales strategically. The employment in relevant sectors of people from abroad is another aspect. In 1999, Edward Teller cautioned against their exclusion since past successes in military development had owed much to such people. He acknowledged that today Americans do ‘have to worry’ because the Atlantic protects the USA no

238 THE QUEST FOR STRATEGY

better than the English Channel could Britain in 1940. Nevertheless, he averred that ‘security is acquired by new knowledge rather than by conserving old knowledge’. In other words, safety lies in ‘action leading to more knowledge and, one hopes, towards positive interaction between nations’.9 Issues are oddly entangled here but expansiveness still comes across. The ‘Twin Towers’ did nothing to obviate the ambivalence many of us feel on this whole question. Tam Dalyell, currently the longest serving member of Britain’s House of Commons, has for over thirty years been a distinguished Westminster correspondent of the New Scientist. In September 2002, he warned illustratively that, were no action taken, the ‘genome of the deadly 1918 influenza virus could soon be available; and I shudder to think what bioterrorists might do with it’.10 Yet in March 2003, his express view was that ‘terrorists already have information aplenty with which to harm the rest of us. All good research should be published.’11 Political violence, illicit and licit Whenever armed conflict looms, it threatens the precept of liberty within the law. In some ways, it does this more acutely than hitherto. Thus more intelligence penetration of an adversary government or insurgency may generate more frequent opportunities for the selective assassination of leadership cadres. In 1975, a committee under Senator Frank Church of Idaho concluded that ‘cold-blooded, targeted intentional killing of an individual foreign leader has no place in the foreign policy of the United States’. But also it found documented evidence of involvement by the US government, over the last twenty years, in assassination plots against five foreign leaders, four of whom did die violently albeit not at the hands of an American operative.12 One presumes a large majority of people would agree that this stratagem ought never to assume much prominence in a free society’s panoply. But can we say it should never figure at all? Not against a Mussolini or a Bin Laden? We all know that there could be a risk of making them martyrs thus. But that judgement is pragmatic. What about the moral choice? Would it be adequate to say anything goes if war has been declared? What then about democratic accountability? Take the Israeli selective assassination campaign through the long, hot summer of 2003. Whether this contributed to the Middle East peace process rather than impeded it will be easier for historians to judge than it has been for contemporaries. Their answer may be sometimes the one outcome and sometimes the other. Extracting information by torture is another remedy security forces very often feel tempted to turn to, not least to negate the metaphorical ‘ticking bomb’. A big problem is that certain individuals find it altogether too tempting subjectively. The appetite grows with the feeding. A further difficulty is that definitions tend to be too wide or too vague. Yet another can be obscuration, not least from judicial review. In 1999, Israel’s supreme court unanimously ruled that coercive

STRATEGY TRANSCENDED 239

interrogation of Palestinians by Shin Bet, the security service, was illegal. But nobody believes things have changed much. On 26 June 2003, the UN’s day for torture victims, President Bush said The United States is committed to the worldwide elimination of torture; and we are leading this fight by example.’ Yet although American officials claim to have apprehended thousands of ‘terrorist suspects’ in the wake of 9/11, they do not say where or under what conditions most are being held. What does seem confirmed is that significant numbers have been transferred to other national authorities for interrogation, without due process and often—one must presume— against their will. Meanwhile, we are appraised, to an extent, of the Guantanamo situation. That set-up seems contrived to inflict, ever so hygienically, prolonged mental torture. Is this for information or for vengeance? And how are things at the detention centres at Bagram air base near Kabul and on Diego Garcia?13 The looming threat of surreptitious biowarfare undeniably presents parliamentary democracies with thoroughly unpleasant choices. One is bound to insist, none the less, that neither assassination nor torture be resorted to routinely. Each should be employed only in extremis and on a limited scale; and be subject to democratic accountability and judicial monitoring to the fullest extent feasible. Otherwise democracy may be unable to retain cohesion, either internationally or internally. Nor is it clear it will deserve to. The just war On the larger canvas, the Judaeo-Christian doctrine of the ‘just war’ seems set to enter a phase of revival and revision. This is due to a changing philosophic background as well as to altered security requirements.14 In which connection, one does well to note that the ‘just war’ has also figured in Islamic thought ever since the Prophet’s injunction to ‘Fight in the Name of Allah and in the Paths of Allah’ and to give adversaries a prior option of compliance. Initially, the setting for Islamic doctrine was expansion of the faith. Nowadays the mood is defensive. As in the West, technology has enabled the avoidance of civilian casualties to emerge as an issue.15 May one just express the hope that, as and when an interfaith doctrine of the ‘just war’ does evolve, it will also embrace obligations to rebuild communities in the aftermath of battle and to respect throughout the natural environment and the cultural heritage. Planetary dialogue A sine qua non of this proscriptive analysis is a widely cast dialogue, this between statehoods through ‘the usual channels’ but also involving the burgeoning of an open conspiracy among the peoples. Unfortunately, it remains easy to discount this approach to peacebuilding. Grounds for so doing can be seen in the huge imbalance currently obtaining between the West and elsewhere, an imbalance expressed in cultural ascendancy every bit as much as in economic

240 THE QUEST FOR STRATEGY

and military strength. Democracy is a concept which now enjoys unprecedented support at grass-roots level throughout the developing world. But its origins lie in the pre-Christian West, notably in Athens and in Iceland’s Thingvellir. Even now, there is a big deficit in democratic practice between the Atlantic area and, in particular, the ex-members of the Sino-Soviet orbit and much of Islam. In the latter, the lag in gender equality is pronounced as well. Correspondingly, Islamic societies remain more conservative on divorce, abortion and homosexuality than emergent youth may long accept.16 Not unconnected as both cause and effect is how a brain drain to the USA from virtually everywhere else gathers pace. It surges strongly across much of Asia, often affecting all grades from young ancillaries to professorial alumni.17 In Iran, there was a big rise in emigration to the USA after the Shah fell in 1979. The annual total more than tripled to 25,000 by 1990. The idea that the emergence of secular democracy under the rule of law might reverse this Iranian brain drain seems sanguine.18 What may be quite helpful, there and elsewhere, is the diffusion of scientific knowledge and opinions through the Internet. One need not travel to arrive. Promising nodes of high technology development can be identified—India, Singapore, Taiwan…, not to mention China and Japan. Nor are brain drains all bad in any case. It is a natural part of the open conspiracy which can be professionally beneficial to the countries of origin in terms of experience imparted by returnees. However, the benefits can be submerged if the migrations are too large-scale and long-term, and are too exclusively one way. Such is the case, often though not always, at the present time. The futility of hubris Under present circumstances, the West may readily feel it has little to learn from fuller exchanges. It alone imparts wisdom. But that will hardly be so if, within two or three decades, a collapse of extended families and local communities threatens to lead anywhere or everywhere to breakdowns in social order. Averting this may require much pooling of experience. So ultimately may any endeavour to limit economic growth to conserve the planet’s ecology. The West may also stand to learn, in due course, about the benefits of democracy as seen by those who have more recently experienced alternatives. Besides, any hubris about a supposedly monocultural end of history would fly in the face of a deal of magisterial historical advice. Thus Samuel Huntington has crafted a quasi-Toynbean formulation, depicting the progress of events in terms of big though discrete civilizations interacting along well-defined fault lines. But at the same time, he joins with Arnold Toynbee and other interpreters of the broad sweeps of change in deploring ‘the widespread and parochial conceit that the European civilization of the West is now the universal civilization of the world’.19

STRATEGY TRANSCENDED 241

A theme that Huntington famously develops is recurrent conflict across the fault lines between Islam and Christendom. His thesis is too probing and too intricate to be done justice here. But it may be appropriate to apply just one test to judge whether, in the twentieth century, Islam’s collective consciousness put it in line for the kind of global encounter Huntington apprehends. Before and during two world wars, Berlin sought to engender a pan-Islamic revolt against the British Empire. The first time round, there was briefly a Senussi uprising in the Western Desert. Otherwise the one signal result was an alliance with Turkey, not unimportant but quite unrepresentative. The second time, the pattern was curiously similar. In 1942, the Egyptian young officers’ movement briefly extolled the transient but dramatic successes in the desert of Rommel’s Afrika Korps. Meanwhile, in Palestine some ill-judged appreciation of the Nazis was manifest. Nevertheless, the only really menacing support for the Axis had come in 1941 from the Rashid Ali coup in Iraq. There, forcefully and swiftly, the British effected regime reversion. Meanwhile, from Italy to Malaya, very many Moslem Indians fought valiantly for the British Raj alongside confreres of other faiths. Similarly today and tomorrow, generation gaps may affect stability across the world at large more than religious boundaries determined long ago. Actually, History’s most remarkable example of cultural aggression is the way Western European nationhoods from Iberia to the Narrow Seas (acting competitively among themselves but to a common end) so quickly spread maritime empires round the world, hard upon Columbus’s quest for the Indies. The West ought to reflect far more than it is disposed to on how basically our present discontents stem from this opportunistic aggrandizement. The Chinese responded with more circumspection to still more compelling temptation. Early in the fifteenth century, they had sent large armadas into the Indian Ocean. According to a detailed study by a mariner-cum-sinologist, they actually went much further afield in 1421–3. They sailed through the Atlantic and deep into the Arctic; to Australasia and the Antarctic fringes; and around the Eastern Pacific.20 But then they resolved to withdraw into themselves rather than try to take the world over. Though they did have certain prosaic concerns, their resolve was informed by philosophy. Multicultural conspiracy For a Planetary Compact to emerge, it clearly must involve North Americans and Europeans; Westerners and others; religious, agnostic and irreligious; progressives and conservatives; academics and others; science and liberal arts; young and old… Not least should one be looking for extensive dialogues between the identified cultural zones, including as between the religious obediences that have underpinned them. The compass would perforce be the diversity of novel issues appertaining to ethos and ethics which are posed by advances in Science (above all, in biology and cosmology) as well as by societal

242 THE QUEST FOR STRATEGY

evolution and by the security situation as viewed post-9/11. One evident imperative is a new understanding between the Children of Abraham—i.e. between Judaeo-Christianity and Islam. Forging an Israeli-Palestinian partnership in the Holy Land, having sundered the death dance of reciprocal bigotry and violence, could be especially creative. Despite ugly communalism in certain localities, India still remains overall quite an encouraging study of unity in diversity. Witness the apparent failure of syndicated insurgency to exert much influence over India’s Moslems.21 Then again, the eclectic agnosticism of East Asia recurrently lends itself to creative conflation with Western knowledge. One looks towards the involvement of the big religious obediences for several reasons. They represent historical continuity as overtly expressed in literature, music, architecture and ritual. Furthermore, such involvement can help to curb the inclinations towards narrow dogmatism all are prone to exhibit. In the USA, these were evident with missile defence in SDI days when public attitudes were articulated and studied more than currently. In a Gallup survey of American public opinion published in 1987, the two identified bedrocks of Republicanism (each about 15 per cent of the likely electorate) were the Enterprisers and the Moralists. The former were pro business and anti-government, liberal on certain social issues. The latter were archetypically Southern church-goers, many of them avowedly born again. Presented with a bland choice about whether to develop Star Wars, 44 per cent of the national electorate said ‘Yes’ and 42 per cent ‘No’. Among the Enterprisers and Moralists, the percentages in favour were 67 and 63 respectively, easily the two highest out of the twelve groups responding. Among the Moralists this was a manifestation of militant antiCommunism coupled perhaps with a subconscious desire to recreate a firmament. Its debt to operational analysis had to be minimal, given the vagueness of the question as put. It correlated more with this group’s rather limited concern for the environment and with its heavy commitment to mandatory death penalties for premeditated murder.22 More dialogue on such matters between the established faiths could do something to diminish religious fundamentalism. At the same time, it might keep in check the spread of autonomous cults, so many of which are blatantly irrational and anti-scientific. Japan has spawned hundreds since 1945, including AUM Shinrikyo, the deviant Buddhists who deployed Sarin in the Tokyo subway. Included, too, is the Panawave Laboratory cult which attracted attention in 2002 by seeking to save the world from electromagnetic wave bombardment by hanging white sheets over a road in Gifu prefecture. In evidence in 2003 were the Raelians. They were mainly so because of their claim to have cloned three humans but also because of the postponement of plans for an Earth visit from the planet Elohim, a heavenly body which continues to elude all non-Raelians. Things have been put on hold until a landing site and consular facilities have been built to receive the peaceable Elohims. Unidentified Flying Objects, alias ‘flying saucers’, figure prominently across this cultish dreamland. They are also recorded more widely, notably in the USA

STRATEGY TRANSCENDED 243

during the pre-McCarthy years and in the USSR ahead of its breakup.23 The celebrated Austrian psychologist Carl Jung was inclined to see UFO discs as expressive of a universal craving for psychic unity.24 If inter-faith discourse can accommodate that craving more sensibly, all well and good. However, this way through has its limitations, complications and dangers. Organized religions vary considerably from country to country in the nature and extent of their social impact. They also vary in the degree to which they systematically address topical issues, Roman Catholicism and Judaism being perhaps the most proactive in this respect. One would not wish, in any case, to encourage religious movements to become monolithically institutionalized vox populi. Nor does one wish to see the alter ego of religious inclusiveness being the exclusion of the non-religious, the dichotomy some observe in certain of President Bush’s domestic programmes. Maybe this is where astronomy comes in. During the Apollo era, Lord Kenneth Clark, the British art historian, gave it as his opinion that artists ‘who have been very little influenced by social systems, have always responded instinctively to latent assumptions about the shape of the universe’. He went on to surmise that the ‘incomprehensibility of our new cosmos’ is the ultimate reason ‘for the chaos of modern art’.25 Now a lot of the information that astrophysics is uncovering about the universe connotes its being pervaded by an immanence that one may or may not call God and which one can worship or celebrate according to taste. Additionally, astrobiology is likely to enhance our basic understanding of life and our place within it, even if it fails to contact extraterrestrials in the coming decades. Not for the first time, astronomy/cosmology is in ascension as the queen of all disciplines. Celestial encounters As the last century dawned, it looked as if, following on from Newton, physicists had comprehended the universe. Then in 1900 Max Planck (1858–1947) gave an account of ‘black body’ radiation that heralded Quantum Theory—our basic understanding of the matter/energy duality. Five years later, Albert Einstein (1879–1955) enunciated his Special Theory of Relativity; and complemented it in 1916 with his General Theory. Each relates Space, Time and Gravitation. The Special Theory addresses bodies in steady motion; and the General those in variable. Between them, Planck and Einstein pretty much redefined for the decades ahead the frontiers of physical science; and thereby gave astrophysics essential new guidelines. A century of achievement was capped in 1998 by two conceptual discoveries. The one was that, during the most recent fifth of its fourteen-billion-year existence, the expansion of our universe has accelerated, contrary to ‘common sense’ assumptions. The other was when Superkamiokande, an underground facility in Japan, provided the first indications that some mass was possessed, even when at rest, by the neutrino, an abundantly ubiquitous elementary particle.

244 THE QUEST FOR STRATEGY

This discovery ran contrary to the established Standard Model for Particle Physics. Cosmology now looks much more complicated than when Einstein tried so long and hard to enunciate a Grand Unified Theorem (GUT) with which to integrate what are recognized as the five cardinal determinants of the interaction of energy and matter. These are gravity; electromagnetism; the ‘strong force’ that binds together atomic nuclei; the ‘weak force’ of radioactive decay; and, he equivocally surmised, an anti-gravity influence. Today, a GUT formulation looks farther off than ever, save in one respect. Theorists see grounds for believing that, immediately upon the ‘Big Bang’ of creation, an integrated GUT did operate. While direct observation now extends back routinely to when the universe was 1,500 million years old, inferential modelling is predicting within ten trillion trillion trillionths (10–37) of a second after the big bang. Yet this may require more dimensions than the three we naturally recognize. As many as eleven have been proposed.26 Moreover, in dimensions quite detached from any which encompass our cosmos,27 other universes are likely to exist. An elementary justification for saying so could be the quest for simple symmetry seen by Aristotle as fundamental to scientific enquiry. Our universe is idiosyncratic in so many ways that it must be offset by other cosmi, presumptively an infinite number. A signal contradiction is that surrounding the Anthropic Principle, the notion that, in the final analysis, the cosmos we know is pro-life. Looked at common-orgarden, it seems overwhelmingly anti-life. Yet various fundamental parameters, physical and chemical, appear to be honed with extreme finesse to be pro-life, at least at this stage in cosmic history. The Cambridge Professor of Mathematical Sciences notes how ‘The speed of light, the strength of gravity, and the charge of an electron, for example, fall within the narrow windows of opportunity that allow atoms to form and hold together.’28 Likewise, the fact that matter and antimatter have not effected complete mutual annihilation means they were not generated in exactly equivalent quantities to start with. Matter has survived asymmetrically to proffer life platforms, energy generators and building blocks. Astrobiology has its roots in speculative enquiry going back to Aristotle. These last few years it has consolidated into a modern discipline. It studies the long evolution of life on Earth but also the future of life across the universe. It searches for habitats, biomolecules and living things in the solar system and beyond. Planets and moons are the habitats mainly envisaged. A planetary blob was first observed orbiting a star other than our Sun in 1995. Now over 100 different sightings are on record. By 2033 there should be thousands. One must say ‘blob’ because many planetary accretions will not as yet have consolidated. Not that this will preclude microbial life. A useful analogy could be that microbes may flourish profusely in the water clouds of our terrestrial atmosphere. But the current understanding is that the emergence of ecosystems more diversified and advanced would require firmer platforms.

STRATEGY TRANSCENDED 245

As regards molecular evidence, well over 100 different kinds of molecules have been identified (from their electromagnetic absorption spectra) in interstellar clouds or circumstellar shells. Many are molecules we regard as organic, some of them very complex by the standards of inorganic chemistry if not those of biochemistry. Perhaps the most elaborate molecules detected so far are of diethyl ether.29 Regarding actual life forms, the best extra-terrestrial evidence to date is ALH 84001, the meteorite of Martian origin found in Antarctica in 1984. The question outstanding is whether the ‘very ordered structures’ visible on cut sections are truly fossil micro-organisms.30 The Swedish chemist Svante Arrhenius (1859–1927) is celebrated still for his ability to think in a stimulating way across a broad front. His timely if illrequited affirmation of the need to constrain greenhouse warming was one instance. Another was his proposal that life seeded across the universe on comets, asteroids and dust. This concept of Panspermia was to be carried forward, notably by the late Sir Fred Hoyle and Professor Chandra Wickramasinghe of the Cardiff Centre for Astrobiology. The latter has lately averred that It is now generally conceded that organics in interstellar clouds and in comets played a decisive role in life’s origins on Earth. Moreover, it is accepted that micro-organisms are sturdy enough to withstand the rigours of space travel, if suitably coated or encased.31 Such claims will assuredly be tested in the coming decades. If the upshot is clear signs of life elsewhere, this will cause culture shock. If, alternatively, consistently negative results make us think we might be alone after all, that will be arresting. Our Earth’s ability to sustain life over extended time does depend on a clutch of specific planetary attributes which, taken together, seem highly fortuitous. So life as complex, advanced and diversified as what we know just might be unique or, at all events, very rare. Involvement from the ground Whatever the facts of that matter, human involvement with the ‘high frontier’ of Space is a subject with broad ramifications, operational and philosophic. A very basic consideration remains how visible or otherwise the night sky is to astronomers and also to people at large, not least children. An atlas produced in 2001 showed the incidence of light pollution, the factor inimical to stellar visibility as well as to aspects of terrestrial ecology. The third worst afflicted country, after the USA and the Netherlands, was the United Kingdom. In our case for sure, the poor showing was a consequence of defeatism masquerading as indifference. Britain has no controls over the power or direction of artificial lights since they figure nowhere on official lists of pollutants and nuisances.32 Everywhere such denaturing ought to be viewed as an insidious enveloping

246 THE QUEST FOR STRATEGY

aspect of urban malaise. An acid test of whether a given ecology may assure and inspire could be whether infants can see the Milky Way, the Silver River to the Japanese and Chinese. Astronomy is one of those sciences (like palaeontology and ornithology) to which amateurs with expertise still have a contribution to make, thanks to their numbers, spread and aplomb. Many comets and asteroids, not to mention the planet Uranus, have been discovered by them. The said fraternity continues also to assist with the observation of brightness in variable stars as well as explosive novae in our Milky Way galaxy and supernovae beyond.33 A relatively new field amateurs can get involved with is ‘gamma-ray bursters’, stellar phenomena in distant galaxies that flare up a few hours at a time. However, these also require scrutiny by orbital satellites with apogees not just outside the defined atmosphere but above the main concentrations of charged particles in the Earth’s magnetic field. In October 2002, a Russian Proton rocket launched the International Gamma Ray Astrophysics Laboratory (INTEGRAL) designed by the European Space Agency. Its eccentric orbit reaches beyond 40, 000 km. In general, professional astronomers are turning more to orbital locations though Earth-bound instruments still progress. A quarter of a century ago, a 250-inch mirror or aperture seemed the upper limit for terrestrial optical telescopes. Now 1,000-inch designs are being mooted.34 But atmospheric absorption is a big impediment terrestrially across much of the electromagnetic spectrum while diffraction and diffusion can be limiting throughout. Manned Spaceflight At least since the Sputnik flights, nearly half a century ago, a debate has continued among astronomers about the utility of manned Spaceflight. Nobody doubts that, for Space probes just as for satellites, unmanned systems will play the major part. They are much cheaper and, to many situations, better adapted. Nor does anyone any longer look towards manufacturing in the zero-gravity ambience of orbital flight, a prospect that was enthused about initially in both the West and the USSR.35 Nor does one hear much nowadays about Solar Power Satellites (intended to microwave the Sun’s energy to terrestrial power stations), another option that would have required assembly and servicing and was much talked of twenty to thirty years ago.36 Nor is it still thought that manned Spaceflight per se can generate invaluable spin-off throughout the industrial sector. For all the major players, China partially excepted, technological advance is these days on a broader front regardless. On the other hand, manned Space programmes may do more than unmanned to underpin the rest of a nation’s aerospace industry; and that, in turn, may be an important factor in technological sovereignty. All concerned would probably accept, too, that humans will long be superior to robots and automatons when it comes to major repair and construction work in Space or to free-ranging

STRATEGY TRANSCENDED 247

reconnoitres on celestial bodies. Furthermore, largish structures assembled in orbit could assume importance in due course as observation platforms. Then again, the sizeable vehicles that manned flight necessitates have their positive side. Take the scientifically important task of recovering rock samples. The Apollo programme brought back two thousand with a total mass of 382 kg. The Soviet unmanned missions that followed on brought back not a hundredth as much. By the same token, manned vehicles are seen as the means of eventually mining from asteroids high-value metals, especially perhaps those in the platinum family. Trillions of dollars of added value per asteroid are spoken of.37 Lastly, manned flight is politically expressive. It may be so of competition. It may be so of collaboration. It may be so of competition that has turned cooperative or of collaboration that has gone sour. Currently this manning controversy focuses on two endeavours. The one is the International Space Station. It has had a chequered history ever since it was proposed by President Reagan as Space Ship Freedom in 1984. Its survival in Congress through 1993–4 probably hinged on Russia being invited to join; and an ulterior motive has been to induce Moscow to come on board more metaphorically by not getting too deep into indulging or encouraging the proliferation of nuclear weapons.38 The scientific community in the USA and elsewhere has widely seen the Freedom project as an otiose diversion; and while microgravity still affords opportunities for basic research (e.g. on crystal development), such endeavours have been distracted and debilitated by cost overruns on the aggregate programme. Assuming operation through 2010, the life cycle budget is now due to top $100 billion, a two- or three-fold overrun since inception. Matters have not been helped by cultural divides on board, including as between astronauts and scientists.39 It is arguable that a trick was missed through an initial failure to focus on the observation of terrestrial ecological trends and events40; and maybe embracing the monitoring of armaments developments as well. At all events, ISS was a central factor in the NASA crisis that climaxed in 2001. The other endeavour much discussed is the exploration of Mars. It received a big boost in mid-2002 with confirmation by orbital radar of the existence immediately subsurface of a Canada-size sea of frozen water. Scheduled to touch down on Mars in January 2004 are two NASA missions to land rover vehicles; and other missions will include NASA’s dispatch of a nuclear-powered lander in 2009. By 2020 another NASA unmanned probe should have returned a sample of Martian soil. However, in 1997 a panel convened by the US National Research Council warned NASA that the recovery of soil samples should be subject to stringent precautions against the contamination of Earth by Martian microorganisms. The discovery of extensive frozen water seems sure to revive anxieties that it may harbour active or dormant life forms, which individually may be primitive but which are too novel and diverse for human beings to cope with properly.

248 THE QUEST FOR STRATEGY

Also problematic is how astronauts would adapt to many months of travel outside the usual Earthling framework of reference, in surrounds no doubt much more confined (in terms of room and privacy) than in, say, the ISS or the Shuttle; and with the prospect of a singularly hazardous enterprise by, one presumes, two crewmen at the culmination of it all.41 Having said that, the American astronautical community is not deterred easily. All in all, there remains quite a strong possibility that Americans will walk on Mars by 2030. As to what might follow, the prime motivation for going to Mars will have been the time-honoured one that it is there. But the red planet does have its own connotations. It likely was in Mesopotamia under the Chaldeans that the planets were first identified with gods and goddesses, with well-defined attributes, in the way later familiar across the Mediterranean and beyond. Most notably, Venus became the Goddess of Love and Mars the bloodthirsty deity, ultimately the God of War and martial statehood. This imagery may not resonate that forcefully nowadays. But there could still be cultural spin-off from setting foot on Mars, heroically yet peaceably. A kind of regime change, one might say. Meantime, strong arguments can be advanced for reviving the manned exploration of the Moon, with the USA and China presumably providing the launch facilities. The general scientific case is that, although sending people to Mars would be ‘orders of magnitude more challenging and expensive’42, the Moon in many ways contrasts more with the Earth—no magnetic field, no atmosphere, no water, seismic stability, total sterility… Moreover, it would facilitate the building up of quite a detailed record across the last four billion years of fluctuations in (a) impact cratering and (b) the solar wind. But in each case the data collection would best involve human field workers. Such work could precede the construction of a lunar laboratory/observatory, the Wellsian vision that Edward Teller long advocated more definitively.43 A wider argument in favour is the opportunity created by the numbers liable to be involved for making the whole enterprise decidedly multi-ethnic and multinational. NASA has to date set a fine precedent in this regard in the expansive way it has involved in its Space programme not only American citizens born abroad but also foreign nationals. One was reminded of this, sadly but movingly, by the Columbia shuttle disaster of February 2003. The crew included Kalpana Chawla, born in India, and Ilan Ramon of the Israeli air arm. Both were role models for an ‘open conspiracy’. What must be guarded against, however, is falling for the notion (not infrequently expounded by astronomers and other ‘blue sky’ scientists) that we need manned Space travel to offload people from this planet either in order to hold in check otherwise inexorable population growth or else in anticipation of an abrupt catastrophe, a big meteoritic impact or biowarfare or some permutation of misfortunes. In a much-remarked prevision of Space travel published in 1977, a Princeton physics professor, Gerard K. O’Neill, suggested that, ‘perhaps by the middle years of the next century’, a start could be made with reducing the Earth’s population through emigration to Space. After the first decade, 290,000

STRATEGY TRANSCENDED 249

might thus have settled; and after the third, the figure (aided by natural increase) could reach 631 million.44 Two years later, Freeman Dyson, a Princeton doyen of astrophysics, surmised that comets might serve as ‘way stations’ en route to a progressive ‘greening of the galaxy’ by human colonies. He felt our innate expansionism can sustain such a departure, affording scope thereby for cultural preservation or experimentation to offset the ‘inexorable diminution of cultural diversity on Mother Earth’.45 Sometimes one does well to recognize that, while philosophic scientists are the salt of the earth in our generation, some of their more carefree digressions are best read as parables about our human situation, admonitory parables in a distinctive idiom. A further variation on the theme is afforded by Sir Martin Rees, Britain’s Astronomer Royal. He sees colonies on the Moon, Mars or wherever as possibly being, by AD 2100, the best prospect for the survival of our species in the face of genetically engineered epidemics disseminated, as often as not, by ‘just one fanatic or weirdo with the mindset of those who now design computer viruses’.46 Logistically this migratory pattern looks more feasible than the O’Neill or Dyson scenarios. What it could mean in terms of social mores might depend on foresight. The precipitate decamping of a proportion of humanity to another celestial body could turn out to be quite a fascistic exercise. The best answer may be to continue with a daring approach to the unmanned probing of the solar system, and to combine this with an approach to manned flight that is insistently incremental (especially as regards the Moon) but not overly adventurous (especially as regards Mars). The manned panoply just might appropriately run to a second generation international Space station geared to monitoring the Earth with particular reference to ecological disorders and warlike crises. Experience shows this would often draw the hostility of all closed or falsely proud regimes. But a massive flow of terrestrial information from or via Near Space is a burgeoning reality that all polities will have to come to terms with. Take satellite receiver dishes. As they get more compact and popular demand for them rises, the Saddams of the future will only be able to uphold a ban on them by becoming ever more frenetic about it. Managed common At all events, any ISS oriented as proposed would be part and parcel of tighter international management of the Near Space universal common. The vexatious dimension of national military competition has been addressed. Mention has also been made of a need to limit light pollution from the surface. Now there is much talk of pleasure trips in small Spaceplanes that marginally enter orbit. At perhaps $80,000 for a 30-minute sub-orbital flight, this dimension will be more plutocratic than democratic.47 Either way, there will be still more pressure on monitoring procedures and resources. Another issue waiting in the wings is the removal of orbital debris. A study crafted at the USAF College of Aerospace Doctrine, Research and Education at

250 THE QUEST FOR STRATEGY

Maxwell is germane. It commends high-energy pulsed lasers being used to drive debris below 200 km—i.e. to altitudes at which atmospheric drag will be terminal within hours or weeks, depending on item size. Some analysis suggests that a single laser facility costing less than $200 million and operating near the equator could in two years remove all orbital debris up to 800 km.48 However, one would need to be sure that lasing would effect dislodgement rather than disintegration. The latter could worsen the situation. The deeper international collaboration invited by this mix of concerns could evolve into an overriding ‘peace shield’ less tangible but more benign than orbital BMD. In other words, it is an opportunity to work for planetary stability, an opportunity presented largely by progress in non-lethal high technology and ‘blue skies’ research. A major sin of omission by ‘strategic studies’ has been its failure to explore the broader connotations of progress in the peaceable applications of advanced technologies. But this alternative peace shield can only be viable if the requisite institutions develop against a background of philosophic consensus on the significance of Space. In 1959, the UN established a Committee on the Peaceful Uses of Outer Space (COPUOS) to serve the General Assembly by seeking consensus on germane matters, legal and technical. The 1968 Convention on the Rescue of Astronauts was one of its earlier fruits. In 1967, the UN had adopted a Treaty on Principles Governing the Activities of States in the Exploration and Use of Outer Space, including the Moon and other Celestial Bodies; and within ten years, eighty states had signed up. It stipulates that the Moon and other celestial bodies must be explored for peaceful purposes alone. It forbids the placing in orbit around the Earth or in Space of ‘weapons of mass destruction’. It precludes ‘national sovereignties’ being asserted territorially. Other international bodies have an involvement with Space under the UN rubric. Several do outside it. There are also the various regional bodies with Space interests. In 1992 and 2002, World Space Congresses were held in Washington and Houston respectively under the auspices of the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics. Four thousand Space managers, researchers and company executives attended the former event and 13,000 the latter. China’s Space community went high profile at Houston.49 The natural missile threat Valuable though these manifold interactions assuredly are, the policies and perspectives that have emerged stand in need of reaffirmation, integration, and elaboration, this via an international Space authority and a comprehensive Charter of Principles: the beginning perhaps of a general Planetary Compact concerning world development. The basic need here identified is accented by the threat posed to our planet by Near Earth Objects (NEOs)— meteors, asteroids and comets. In 1694, the British astronomer, Edmund Halley, opined that commentary impacts may have caused past disasters, the Noachic flood

STRATEGY TRANSCENDED 251

included. In 1822, Lord Byron proposed that approaching comets be diverted. By then, the asteroid main belt was progressively being described. By 1900 a debate was under way about how impacts could have helped sculpt the observed terrestrial landscape. In 1973, Arthur C.Clarke coined the term ‘Spaceguard’ to cover fending off this threat. In 1980, it was persuasively proposed that a massive asteroid impact had been the decisive factor in the abrupt near-extinction of a waning dinosaur kingdom, sixty-five million years ago. That debate then became intertwined for several years with that about ‘nuclear winter’, the months or years of savage cold that could result from the ejection of dust into the high atmosphere due to numerous thermonuclear ground bursts. One of Herman Kahn’s colleagues at the Hudson Institute had warned of this possibility back in 1965 but had been solidly ignored.50 The current reckoning can be adumbrated as follows. An NEO of, say, 75 metres diameter will hit the Earth on average once a millennium; and do so with an impact of several tens of megatons, enough to destroy a city the size of Moscow. One something like 350 metres across would impact with a force of several thousand megatons averagely every 16,000 years, and cause ocean-wide tsunamis or, on land, totally devastate somewhere the size of Estonia. A blow like that struck against the dinosaurs and all living things is averagely delivered every 100 million years by an NEO maybe 16 km across. Its force can be upwards of a 100 million megatons.51 There is a significant risk that in AD 2880 an asteroid will register a 100,000 megaton impact. At the end of the Cold War, a full-scale thermonuclear exchange between the Superpowers would have expended in excess of 10,000 megatons. However, that would have been more damaging pro rata because (a) the successive salvos would have been directed for maximum effect and (b) there would have been the concomitants, nuclear heat flash and radioactivity. Ensuring early warning and interception poses singular problems where asteroids and comets are concerned. For one thing, both genre are variegated. Each ranges in size from the pebbly to agglomerations hundreds of kilometres across. Asteroids are composed of carbonaceous substances, sili cate rocks or metallic ores. They can be solid lumps or loose aggregations. Observing them is very hard. But once an individual has been tracked, one should be able to predict, let us say, a one in four risk it will hit the Earth in 320 years’ time. Billions of comets orbit the Sun thirty to 100,000 times as far out as is the Earth. They basically comprise in frozen form certain compounds (e.g. methane, ammonia) commonly known to us as gases. As with asteroids, those which threaten us have been tugged out of normal orbit gravitationally, usually by Jupiter. They may be visible enough if they retain tails composed of volatile gas and dust. But they characteristically travel twice as fast as asteroids; and many will last have visited our realm before instrumental astronomy began. Putting these considerations together, one should be prepared for less than a year’s tactical warning.

252 THE QUEST FOR STRATEGY

Some 400 NEOs a kilometre or more across have now been tracked. But there could be as many again in that category. Fewer than a tenth of the likely total of objects 300 metres across have been catalogued; and much lower proportions of smaller ones.52 There is clearly a great need to enhance observational capacity. As regards interception, it is a huge challenge to home on a tiny object at a relative speed of maybe 50 km a second millions of miles from Earth, this in an ambience which (being airless) allows of no blast effect. Moreover, the difficulty is compounded acutely by the danger that hitting an asteroid or comet will break it into several large fragments liable cumulatively to inflict even more damage on this Earth. While recognizing this dilemma, the British National Space Centre report here being cited opined that nuclear warheads ‘might only be contemplated as a last resort’.53 Yet for reasons adduced elsewhere in this text, evolving world opinion may be readier to accept nuclear or thermonuclear recourse than the three-man BNSC study team allows. Surely that remedy has to be more credible than the team’s chief proposal, flying ‘a spacecraft alongside the object perhaps for months or years, nudging it in a controlled way from time to time’.54 Not that a thermonuclear detonation could guarantee results, not even with targeting orders of magnitude more refined than anything yet registered on terrestrial battlefields. Large and nuggety asteroids could be highly resistant to melt down in the split second effectively available. Arranging for an asteroid to pass directly through a fireball perhaps several kilometres across might be an essential part of the remedy. At present, the USA is doing far more about the NEO threat than the rest of the world put together. In the EU the effort is not just small-scale but utterly fragmented. Heavier commitment all round might include the early-day provision of high definition observatories on Earth or preferably the airless Moon, thereby affording the earliest possible coverage of NEO approaches. Does not this requirement clinch the case for renewed lunar exploration? As with familiar aerospace threats, a passive defence strategy must also figure. Preparations for disaster relief are an obvious aspect. Over and beyond which, NEOs complement the strong social arguments for working over the long haul (a century or so?) towards more devolved patterns of urban settlement and governance. The preponderance in many countries of one or two metropoli leaves the whole of society more susceptible to sudden disaster, accidental or contrived. Nor is NEO impact the only natural occurrence that could be cataclysmically lethal. Sometimes the Earth’s internal mechanics have this effect. One such hazard is the ‘supervolcano’, a eruption of magma so long confined that its eventual extrusion is a shock event maybe dozens of times as great as Krakatau’s huge eruption of AD 535.55 The last such occurrence was at Toba (also in Sumatra) 72,000 years ago. A seabed core extracted from the mid-Atlantic at 53° N shows the mean summer sea-surface temperature then fell abruptly from 14°C to 6°C.56 Now DNA analysis is suggesting this trauma reduced the world’s

STRATEGY TRANSCENDED 253

human population to a few thousand, a total critically close to extinction, especially if thinly spread. Also in the broad sweeps of time geologists move through, our planet is overdue for a reversal in its magnetic polarity. During the actual transition, field strength temporarily drops to zero, thereby leaving all life forms more exposed to menacing cosmic rays. Granted, the magnetic field is constantly subject to constant fluctuations in intensity, the reversal cycles apart. Inevitably, however, there are more precipitate falls as a reversal approaches. Suffice to say that those across recent decades have been abnormally marked. A more dispersed urban order could be an invaluable collateral to specific protection against natural catastrophes. It would also favour the preservation or regeneration of communitarian values, as was argued in the last chapter. At the same time, active NEO defence could help to define planetary togetherness in terms of cosmic exclusiveness. In such ways, ecology, warlike preparation and philosophy may come together to ensure the survival not just of material civilization but of civilized values. This could be the redemption of strategy.

Appendix A Geodesy and Geophysics

Notwithstanding what has just been said about NEOs, collisions with small meteors in interplanetary Space now seem far less likely than once was feared. That invites outreach. As yet, however, we are still very much Earthlings, overridingly concerned with the surface of our parent planet and the skies immediately above. Classically the science of Earth measurement was Geometry. Today it is presented as a branch thereof, Geodesy. A primary calculation is the slant range to an unobstructed horizon of a body at a given altitude above Mean Sea Level (MSL). At this tangential limit, a line of sight will intersect at right angles a straight line drawn from the Earth’s centre. Therefore one can apply the celebrated theorem of Pythagoras: the square on the hypotenuse of a right-angled triangle is the sum of the squares on the other two sides. Since the Earth’s mean diameter is just over 7,900 miles, the geodetic horizon will be 285 miles away from a position 10 miles high; and for a satellite orbiting 200 miles up, it will be 1,250 miles. The angular velocities at which bodies stay in Earth orbit gradually decrease with height. Of particular interest for surveillance and communications is the altitude at which a satellite revolving around the equator will be ‘geostationary’— i.e. always above the same position on the Earth’s surface. The answer is 22,300 miles. A geostationary satellite will overview some 150 degrees of latitude and longitude, Ballistic flight Next, one should consider the path of a body effectively moving ‘ballistically’— meaning that, after an initial impulse from a rocket or whatever, only gravity acts on it. The basic mathematics of truly ballistic flight have been outlined elsewhere.1 The aiming angle for energy-efficient maximum range will be 45°; and the path then follows a parabola. However, pure ballistic flight is qualified by (a) acceleration continuing throughout a rocket burn that may last several minutes and (b) air resistance, especially at low altitudes. Accordingly, a ‘minimum energy’ long trajectory will be markedly steeper at each end than if it were perfectly parabolic. In mid-course, it will tend to be flattish over intermediate ranges and to follow the Earth’s curvature quite closely over intercontinental ones.

APPENDIX A: GEODESY AND GEOPHYSICS 255

Another question that can be of operational importance is how much of the flight of a ballistic missile’s warload may be ‘outside the atmosphere’. Obviously that depends on defining, perforce arbitrarily, where the atmosphere ends. An accepted indicator has been the velocity in air at which an iron surface starts to ablate. The greater the air resistance, the lower is this velocity threshold. Descending from 120 to 80 km, it decreases from 58 to 6.5 km/sec. That is a much more rapid change, proportionately at least, than occurs either higher up or lower down, a contrast well confirmed by this being the region within which meteors so abruptly and visibly burn out. Therefore, 100 km is taken as the boundary up to which atmospheric drag is appreciable whether in regard to a warload re-entering, a missile homing or a satellite orbiting. In other words, it is tantamount to a functional divide between ‘endo’ and ‘exo’ atmospheric. During the early 1960s, the great majority of governments came to accept this as the legal boundary between national air space and outer space. A physical explanation can be as follows. Air density decreases exponentially as one ascends through the lower atmosphere. Witness the fact that half the total weight of air is within 6 km of the surface. At an altitude of 80 km, the density is well under 1 part in 10,000 of what it is at sea level. Until then, however, the mix of gases has varied remarkably little. But by 100 km, gas particles are starting to break up under the influence of energetic radiation from the Sun. Molecules break down into atoms. Concurrently, many atoms ionize—that is to say, electrons separate from nuclei. Meanwhile, those elements with lighter nuclei become more dominant. The first and last of these tendencies accelerate the decline in air density with height within that narrow region. Even with trajectory reshaping, the apogee (i.e. highest point) registered is a goodish indication as to how much of a ‘minimum energy’ flight path is exoatmospheric. So is it of maximum range. A horizontal range of 500 km is achievable with an apogee of 125 km, and twice that with one of 225. The Soviet SS-20 rose to 900 km to travel 5,000 km (see Chapter 10, Celestial awareness). As trajectories turn flattish, the maximum range registered in surface-tosurface delivery increases markedly with added impetus. A burn-out velocity of 1,600 metres per second (mps) will yield a range of 400 km; and thrice that, one of 2,800 km. Rockets that cut out at 7,800 mps may dispatch warloads nearly 10, 000 km. Add another 500 mps and the range is doubled. Direct exit from Earth to interplanetary Space requires 12,000 mps. Half that could achieve a direct exit from Mars. Quantum physics Everything said thus far rests four square on Newtonian physics. But in evaluating the overall prospects for operation in Space, one has also to be concerned with ‘quantum theory’: the exquisite corpus of early twentiethcentury scientific thought rooted in the observed behaviour of radiant energy and of the primary atomic particles, nuclei and electrons. Among other things, it

256 APPENDIX A: GEODESY AND GEOPHYSICS

postulates that electromagnetic waves can usefully be seen as comprised of parcels of energy known as photons; and that the individual energies of an assemblage of photons correlate linearly but inversely with the distance between successive waves of them. Pari passu, there are aspects of the behaviour of sub-nuclear particles which can be explained only if one considers them also to be wave forms. At the quantum level, waves behave considerably like particles and particles like waves. Interwoven with quantum mechanics is the ‘uncertainty principle’ propounded by Werner Heisenberg in 1927. Among its connotations is that photons, electrons and other minute entities are individually governed not by rigid causal determinism but by probabilities. For many purposes this does not affect ‘common sense’ physics as ‘zillions’ of entities randomly vary around what ineluctably emerges as a well-defined median state. Beam projection Nevertheless ‘uncertainty’ does confirm and explain the axiom that, whatever the instrumentation, no beam of energy or particles can be absolutely parallel. Ineluctably, divergence will be directly proportional to the wavelength but inversely so to the diameter of the projector.2 In the aerospace milieu, electromagnetic energy is the only medium currently available for active or passive sensing. How then should it be described? It is the heat energy that radiates from innumerable points throughout the universe; and includes, of course, the ‘microwave background’ derivative from the original ‘Big Bang’ of Creation. The virtually immutable relationship between wave frequency and wavelength is determined thus. It so happens that, to within less than 1 part in 100,000, the rate of flow of electromagnetic energy (the rate usually spoken of as ‘the speed of light’) is 300 million metres a second, otherwise rendered as 186,200 miles a second. The gravitational pull associated with a massive star or black hole may affect this ‘universal constant’ perceptibly. However, that Einsteinian refinement concerns us not herein. A sensing mode in which the sensor itself does not transmit coherent energy (see below) whether to search for, examine or track is spoken of as ‘passive’. It interprets emissions from the target vicinity instead. It can therefore be of limited weight; and, in a warlike context, does not give itself away. However, a major constraint on passive sensing is that a single sensor cannot range find. This can only be essayed through triangulation by two or three platforms. Also, it is sometimes hard to identify the distinctive emissions spectra of objects that may be of interest. To consider why, one should visualize to start with a ‘black body’, an idealized object that is a perfect absorber and emitter throughout all wavebands. Its wavelength of peak emission will be an inverse linear function of how far its surface temperature is above absolute cold, the end state where matter is drained of all energy. It is located at • 273° Centigrade or zero on the specially

APPENDIX A: GEODESY AND GEOPHYSICS 257

contrived Kelvin scale. A degree Kelvin covers the same temperature range as a degree Centigrade. The mean temperature of the Earth’s atmosphere at sea level is 300 K; and that connotes a ‘black body’ peak emission at 9,660 nanometres (billionths of a metre). A burning rocket might reach 3,000 K. The surface of the Sun is twice as hot, and its emission peak is 485 nm. Around a warload of an intercontinental missile re-entering the atmosphere, temperatures can reach several thousand degrees Kelvin. In the military Space domain, it should be possible in principle to read the peak temperature of a black surface to within a tenth of a degree. This might encourage the belief that passive discrimination can be relatively straightforward. However, a big complication is that the profile of radiation from a particular source will extend unevenly across a wide segment of the electromagnetic spectrum; and any Space background comprises a multitude of stellar and galactic sources. Moreover, many terrestrial targets are by no means black bodies. They emit radiation within certain defined wavebands, a ‘coloration’ which relates to the energy levels at which their surface molecules characteristically vibrate. The distinctive spectra that result come across as modulations of the Kelvin temperature profile. What cannot be gainsaid is that, for military operations in particular, major advantages attach to sensing via the active mode, whereby ‘coherent’ radiation is emitted by the sensor. What coherence here means is that all waves are in phase, with every wavelength the same or else in close and systematic relationship. It makes it possible to measure target range from the time a pulse (travelling at the speed of light) takes to return after reflection. A coherent reflected pulse can also serve to measure target movement relative to the transmitter. This is done through the Doppler effect, the apparent change in signal frequency due to the differential motion. Over and beyond which, coherent transmissions are the very essence of wireless communication. A commonly agreed delineation of the electromagnetic spectrum is set forth in Table 1. The segment with wavelengths between 30 cm and 1 mm is termed ‘microwave’. A conspicuous reality is the huge spread of wavelengths of operational concern. The shortest VLF wavelength is ten million billion times that of the longest gamma ray. The longer wavelengths with their more divergent beams can sometimes be useful for preliminary search. Otherwise narrow beams count among the attractions of shorter wavelengths. They are more tightly directional as well as brighter. They distinguish smaller targets and define better all targets. Likewise the density of communication channels rises with the frequency. The whole of the VHF carries, even in principle, only 50,000 channels. Yet except that signals may wander a little from whatever frequency is selected, the SHF could accommodate 50,000,000.

258 APPENDIX A: GEODESY AND GEOPHYSICS

Table 1 The ***electromagnetic spectrum

Notes kc/s=kilocycles per sec=1,000 cps mc/s=megacycles per sec=1,000,000 cps kmc/s=kilomegacycles per sec=1,000,000,000 cps A term now regularly employed to indicate frequency is the hertz, its meaning being million, and a gigahertz, a billion, cycles per second. A terahertz is a trillion cps. nm=nanometer=a billionth of a metre

The higher the frequency the harder it may be to generate coherent radiation, a circumstance that can engender fierce competition between adversaries. Allied air and naval arms were able to derive great advantage from the invention, in 1940 at Birmingham University, of the cavity magnetron: a device for generating coherent microwaves in confined spaces and with low power inputs. Today a similar cachet attaches in many quarters to laser developments. One should add the caveat that thus far there has been a wide and decidedly opaque transmission gap between the electronic circuits that generate microwave radiation and the lasers. The former cannot cope with frequencies much above 100 gigahertz; and the latter have not extended below 100 terahertz. Now, however, ‘quantum cascade’ lasers are starting to reach down to several terahertz. As and when the said gap can thereby be closed operationally, there will be major implications, both for society and for international security. Many terrestrial objects are transparent to terahertz radiation (see Appendix B). Another operational problem at higher frequencies is absorption, especially at low altitudes. Thus the EHF and above are liable to penetrate precipitation and cloud less well than the SHF and UHF bands do. Of more general import, however, is absorption by the atmosphere’s mix of gases. In the 1810s, Joseph von Fraunhofer (a gifted German optical engineer) showed how every gas has a

APPENDIX A: GEODESY AND GEOPHYSICS 259

distinctive spread of absorption lines on the electromagnetic spectrum. In fact, absorption by the atmospheric gases becomes cumulatively significant as one moves from longer wavelengths into the SHF. Through the EHF, attenuation worsens fairly steadily. Even within the successive windows of better penetration, the overall trend is towards greater attenuation. On through the InfraRed, absorption rates are sharply variable but often high. Then at about 1,400 nm, a remarkably good window begins and extends to about 300 nm. It thereby encompasses what we know as visible light, 800 to 400 nm. After that, windows are very limited; and for wavebands shorter than 35 nm, the atmosphere is effectively opaque. Several other effects (e.g. thermal blooming) are also conducive to beam dispersion and brightness diminution. Vertical atmospheric zoning The 100 km boundary is by no means the only divide as one ascends through the atmosphere. Much more acute geophysically is the ‘tropopause’, the divide between the lower atmosphere (alias troposphere) and the stratosphere. Molecular diffusion occurs across this interface. Sometimes, too, horizontal pressure patterns formed within the troposphere are discernible some way above. Even so, air currents rarely make the transition. Therefore the stratosphere is all but devoid of water in any form. Except that the thin air warms or cools readily, there is no obvious weather. Typically, the tropopause is 11 km above MSL in middle latitudes. Around the North Pole, 8 is more the norm; and near the equator, 16. Below it, a contaminant cloud (chemical, biological or nuclear) would subside or be washed down by rain within a few hours or, at most, a few weeks. On the other hand, the finer particles in any such cloud above the tropopause might readily diffuse globally and take perhaps several years to descend completely. Within the stratosphere, there is horizontal lamination, most notably the ozone layer. This ozone presence effectively occurs between 20 and 30 km up, and amounts to 500,000 tons or 1 part in 10,000 of the total atmosphere. Ozone is a molecular variant of oxygen that has three atoms per molecule instead of the usual two; and it disintegrates and reforms in perennial interaction with hard ultra-violet (UV-C) radiation from the Sun. The consequent UV-C absorption warms the stratosphere considerably. At the same time, protection from this menacing waveband is afforded to life below. A subject of worldwide concern has been the way the dynamic but delicate ozone balance has been compromised by the chlorine from ChloroFluoroCarbons (CFCs). An ozone depletion effect was reported above the south polar region in 1985; and above the north polar several years later. The Montreal Protocol of 1987 may now be containing the problem effectively enough: a reasonably encouraging precedent for the more demanding Kyoto Protocol. At 50 km, one enters (according to the nomenclature here favoured) the mesosphere, the zone where cooling with height resumes. At 80 km, this gives

260 APPENDIX A: GEODESY AND GEOPHYSICS

way to the ionosphere, the finely articulated zone hundreds of kilome tres deep that is highly active electrically because of the molecular and atomic dissociations referred to above. Layers within it are reflective of waves longer than the microwaves. This attribute has been exploited extensively for HF to UHF radio transmission. Climate parameters The greenhouse effect can considerably be explained geophysically, by comparing the correlation between Kelvin temperature and peak emission wavelength for the solar surface and the Earth at Mean Sea Level respectively. The main point is that carbon dioxide, which is still the principle greenhouse gas, has a moderate absorption peak just below 5,000 nm, then a strong one at 15, 000. Therefore it blocks terrestrial radiation more readily than it does solar. Other aspects of climate dynamics are as follows. Both mechanically and thermally, the oceans are more conservative than the atmosphere; and since they have a thousand times the heat retention capacity of the latter, the former exercise quite a controlling influence. Sea surface temperatures vary much less readily than do those on land: diurnally, annually and during secular climate change. However, ice fields (whether marine or on land) are a class apart. This is because of their high albedo, meaning the extent to which they reflect the Sun’s rays. At high latitudes, snow and ice characteristically reflect 70 to 90 per cent of the sunlight incident upon them. To that extent, an ice field acts as its own refrigerator. This in turn causes it either to expand more or to contract more than otherwise would be the case. Huge convective uplift is continually under way in the equatorial regions, this axially around the seasonally mobile Intertropical Convergence Zone (ITCZ). Just below the tropopause, the ascended air spills polewards in both directions. But then adjustment each side of the equator effects a partial sinking of the air currents thus generated, a sinking that sustains the subtropical anticyclones. These in their turn engender largely cloudless skies and desertic landscapes. It is a mechanism traceable in the geological sequence across hundreds of millions of years. But median positionings of the anticyclonic cells do vary, seasonally and secularly.

Appendix B Exotic technologies

Forecasting the development of science and technology is both possible and impossible. We often talk with assurance about the prospects down avenues already being explored. Bioscience and biotechnology are replete with examples. In other realms, however, we must be prepared for complete surprises. Twenty years ago, nobody talked of the World-Wide Web and the impact it would have. Ten years ago, nobody suspected the expansion of the universe would soon be shown to be accelerating, in flat contradiction of Newtonian premises. What follows is an outline appreciation of the state of play in three areas of applied science of signal importance in planetary ecology and international geopolitics. In all of them, it may be important not to overstate what can be done the next ten years and not to understate what may be done, for good or ill, the next thirty. Nanoscience Nanoscience may be defined as the utilitarian study of materials and processes of nanometric dimensions, meaning down to a billionth of a metre (10• 9 m) or the same linear order as the width of a simple molecule. Often one distinguishes between ‘nanotechnology’ and ‘nanomaterials’, the former considering mechanisms that may be created in nano-dimensions. More often, in industrial circles especially, the term ‘nanotechnology’ encompasses this whole science. A nanometre is recognized as a defining boundary on the electromagnetic spectrum. At wavelengths that short, photolithographic fabrication is unsatisfactory. Therefore reliance is placed on the ‘bottom-up’ method of using chemical reactions to stimulate atoms and molecules to assemble as required. This is what draws a distinction between nanoscience and micro-electronics, no matter that the latter’s purview may sometimes extend well below 1,000 nanometres. The acclaimed morning star of the nanometric age is a lecture, ‘There’s Plenty of Room at the Bottom’, delivered by the late Richard Feynman in 1959. But for long afterwards, progress was slowish. A defining step forward was the development in 1991 at Tsukuba Science University in Japan of the nanotube, a carbon atomic structure that grows almost spontaneously given the right ambience. Nanotubes have great tensile strength. In 1998, at the Delft University

262 APPENDIX B: EXOTIC TECHNOLOGIES

of Technology, a nanotube was used as a transistor. Soon afterwards, a single molecule served as a switch. As this century dawned, the annual official expenditure on nanometric research was of the order of a billion dollars in the USA, in the EU and in Japan. Other countries actively involved in development included China, India, Malaysia, Singapore and Taiwan. Marked gains in materials quality have already been demonstrated. Thus manufactured components may be a minor fraction of previous weights yet ten times previous strengths. Nano-materials evolved from non-metallic compounds may exhibit metallic properties. Witness nanotubes conducting electricity. Nanomaterials may be more resistant to corrosion or to irradiation through nuclear decay. And so on. In life science, more progress is being made with the artificial synthesis of proteins. Crystals known as ‘quantum dots’ (comprising but a few hundred atoms) could be invaluable markers: for instance, in revealing tumours early. Other nanoparticles may administer drugs with precision, maximizing their efficacy while minimizing side effects. Still others will act as tags to track antibody responses. All this and more could supercharge medicine within two or three decades. Biowarfare, too, may draw added strength. Over the past fifteen years, K.Eric Drexler has made singularly bold claims on behalf of nanotechnology. In September 2001, he returned to his charge, indicating nano-devices he felt could be made. Among them were generalpurpose building mechanisms, and some means, unspecified, of removing greenhouse gases from the atmosphere. In the same issue, however, expectations of elaborate nano-machinery were discounted by Richard Smalley, himself a nanoscience Nobel Laureate. His grounds were that (a) there never would be enough nanospace to effect the required manipulations, and (b) atoms being repositioned would tend to adhere to the transfer matrix. His pitch was supported by George Whitesides, a Harvard chemistry professor.1 So far as a layman dare judge, their reasoning looks cogent. Nanoscience should not be hyped. Laser revolutions As remarkable are the advances being made in Light Amplification through the Stimulated Emission of Radiation (LASERS). The physics is basically as follows. Any electron orbiting round an atomic nucleus will assume one of the energy levels characteristic of the element in question. While the gaps between successive levels do diminish outwards, electrons on paths further out are consistently more energetic. Eventually, at an ‘ionization limit’, they escape from the atomic confines. Lasing involves a build-up of energy within a selected material (the ‘lasant’) by an electric current or radiant heat or chemical reaction. A prerequisite is that a fraction of this energy input will cause an ‘inversion’ within the electron population inside atoms: that is to say, some will be ‘pumped’ to a higher energy

APPENDIX B: EXOTIC TECHNOLOGIES 263

level. But any electron affected will then be prone to revert to its original level, shedding a photon equivalent to the ‘jump’ initially made. Some eighty years ago, Einstein proposed that coherent electromagnetic emissions could be ‘stimulated’. A photon introduced into a lasant may cause an excited electron to revert from a higher level, thereby effecting the emission of another photon of equivalent strength. These two photons may likewise stimulate the release of other identical ones, thus initiating a chain reaction. Moreover, every photon will undulate away in waves completely in phase. In other words, there will be coherence. Evidently many of the stimulated photons will be liable to leave the lasant soon, thereby precluding a chain reaction being sustained. To constrain this tendency while making it directional, it will be necessary to shape the lasant as a rod or, be it gaseous, hold it in a cylinder. Usually, too, mirrors at either end will continually reflect photons which otherwise could pass outside. These photons may engender an avalanche effect. Obversely, an aperture in one mirror will allow through a proportion of the impacting photons, thus facilitating a directional beam. Many materials could serve as lasants. Choice will depend on how readily a substance may yield an avalanche and how appropriate the lasing wavelength is. Wavelength selection will in turn depend on absorption spectra and on how narrow a beam is required. The lower (i.e. terahertz) frequencies now being lased (see Appendix A) are achieved by cascade lasing, a technology invented some years ago at Bell Laboratories. It, too, depends on electrons being ‘pumped’ into making quantum jumps in energy levels. But instead of reverting in a single step, the electrons in question ‘cascade’ down through a lasant comprising thin layers of different semi-conducting materials. The photons of energy given out at each step, and hence the wavelength of the radiation they form, tends to be determined by the thickness of the layer in question rather than by its composition. A cascade laser is therefore subtly tunable across a wide spectrum. Applying it to the terahertz proved difficult but, by 2002, feasible. This pioneering work was carried out by the Scuola Normale Superiore in Pisa together with the University of Cambridge.2 To move through the X-ray sector and beyond at the high frequency/short wavelength end, one would have somehow to exploit the much greater jumps involved in changes in the energy level of atomic nuclei. At present, the subject of study is how nuclei may be held long-term (by quantum mechanical spin) in much heightened excitation. Their stimulated reversion to lower levels could then be the basis for gamma-ray lasers, reasonably compact devices proffering a power flux five to ten orders of magnitude more concentrated than currently obtainable. Some will aver that, over the next twenty to fifty years, this line of enquiry could open up the substrate manufacture of nanocomponents.3 Meantime other aspects progress. As unit costs fall sharply, solid-state lasers are steadily assuming workaday roles, military ones included. They are lighter, more compact

264 APPENDIX B: EXOTIC TECHNOLOGIES

and better converters of energy than comparable chemical models, and do not use toxic or corrosive substances. Towards the top of the performance spectrum, a number of nations around the world have today in operation ‘superlasers’ of maybe table-top dimensions but with peak powers of at least 10 terawatts (1013 W). These have important applications in physics, astrophysics and—increasingly—medicine, not to mention again the military arena. Additionally several countries are investing in 100 to 1,000 terawatt models.4 Such lasers might variously fission heavy nuclei, initiate thermonuclear fusion or create anti-matter. Pulse compression is the key to maximizing peak power. From 1985 to 1999, the huge Nova facility at Lawrence Livermore usually registered a 3-nanosecond pulse. Now with pulses one ten-thousandth that duration, a table-top laser may attain comparable peaks. Moreover, corrective optics applied to beam focusing is further increasing intensities on target.5 Controlled thermonuclear fusion The Einsteinian conversion of matter to energy is via diametrically contrasting routes at each end of the spread of atomic weights. At the higher, conversion is via the fission of heavy nuclei but, at the lower, through the fusion of light ones. The cross-over point is iron which has an atomic weight of close to 56. The scale of relative atomic weights ranges from hydrogen (nowadays adjusted to 1.008) up to 245 or thereabouts. A fusion reaction is alternatively known as ‘thermonuclear’. Hydrogen is naturally comprised of three isotopes—i.e. atomic variants which behave very similarly chemically but are structurally different. Quite the most prevalent is Hydrogen 1 which has an atomic nucleus comprising a single proton. One part in 7,000 of natural hydrogen is deuterium while the very unstable tritium (half-life, 12.4 years) is present minutely. A deuterium nucleus has one neutron in addition to the proton while a tritium has two. A subtle though significant difference between these isotopes and Hydrogen 1 is that both deuterium and tritium are, to an extent, ‘biological exchangers’: in other words, they gravitate towards organic material, an attribute which safety-wise cannot be ignored. The fusion reaction which looks most promising currently is between deuterium and tritium, the requisite supply of the latter coming from the neutron bombardment of lithium. The fusion product is helium, fast neutrons and electromagnetic energy. During the 1920s, astronomers started to propose that some kind of atomic synthesis was the heat source of stars.6 In fact, in stellar inner furnaces the otherwise intractable process of proton combination is facilitated by (a) energy levels tantamount to tens of millions of degrees Kelvin and (b) all matter having assumed the state known as ‘plasma’, a state characterized by a great concentration of atomic particles that have become completely disaggregated. To effect fusion in constricted terrestrial environments, one must achieve (for a

APPENDIX B: EXOTIC TECHNOLOGIES 265

requisite ‘containment time’) a dense plasma which has been energized to 100 million degrees Kelvin (108 K). This in turn poses not just the problem of how to generate such concentrated heat but also how to confine the plasma so as to sustain the said process, necessarily out of direct contact with the enclosing chamber wall. One criticality identified is the Lawson Number, the number of particles in a cubic centimetre times the containment time in seconds. For an adequate deuterium-tritium reaction, a Lawson Number somewhere between 100 and 10,000 trillion is apparently required (i.e. 1014 to 1016). Two alternative confinement philosophies have been insistently pursued the last several decades. One holds plasma compactly in place ‘inertially’, bombardment by the beamed radiation of photons or maybe particles. The other exploits plasma’s singular responsiveness to magnetic fields, an attribute evident on the Sun’s surface in sunspots and solar flares. A developmental obstacle common to both geometries is the irradiation and corruption of the chamber wall by fast-moving free neutrons. Their absorption into this thick structure, otherwise known as the ‘blanket’, represents a stage in the direction to useful purposes of a due fraction of the fusion-generated energy. What one can reasonably hope is that, over the next couple of decades, the incipient revolution in nanomaterials will help make blankets much more resilient. Otherwise the most taxing requirement apropos Inertial Confinement Fusion (ICF) is synchronization. The preferred architecture involves a fair number of laser sources training inwards from all directions beams which successively confine and infuse with energy what have been small pellets of plasma cooled by liquid helium to several degrees Kelvin, this in order to achieve initial compaction. Unfortunately, the tiniest errors in respect of timing, focus, etc., can render the whole mechanism dysfunctional. Heavy ions have been considered as the particle alternative or supplement to lasing but their dispersion is hard to control. Still, through the turn of the century, well under a quarter of the world’s fusion expenditure was on ICF whereas well over half was on Magnetic Confinement Fusion (MCF): generating a magnetic field or ‘bottle’ to contain the plasma. Moreover, multinational collaboration comes more easily than with ICF. This is because many have been concerned about the military potentialities of High Energy Lasers (HEL). The grounds have been twofold. One is the possible redirection of HEL work to missile interception or other lethal tasks. The other has simply been a belief that a laser able to initiate controlled fusion might ipso facto be able to trigger in situ a thermonuclear ‘doomsday’ bomb. However, some commentary on each score may have been too facile. Many MCF designs are based on the toroidal (alias ‘doughnut’) principle conceived of soon after 1945. A rendering thereof much favoured is the tokamak: a geometry mainly developed during the 1960s, this multinationally though with the USSR in the lead. Research tokamaks were constructed by a number of countries worldwide; and some have made significant contributions to

266 APPENDIX B: EXOTIC TECHNOLOGIES

the study of plasma behaviour. But since 1992, attention has focused on a $5 billion International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor (ITER) programme launched by the EU, Russia, Japan and the USA, all very much on an equal footing. In 1999, the USA pulled out because of Congressional politics. Then early in 2003, she re-enlisted. China and Canada are now actively involved too. A basic design for this tokamak stands complete. The next big decisions will be whether to proceed with this geometry once and for all, and if so where to site it. In April 2003, limited fusion was reported from a much smaller experimental reactor at Sandia in Albuquerque. Its Z-pinch design involves the free neutrons being absorbed in liquid. These last thirty years, it has been my good fortune occasionally to dialogue with the operational fusion community in various locations: Birmingham (UK), Canberra, Culham, Naka, Osaka, Princeton and Tokyo. Those one meets consistently impress with their commitment and objectivity. But on the fringes there has been hyperbole. In Argentina in 1951 and, more circumspectly, in Britain in 1956, premature claims of fusion break-throughs were made, these largely in response to the prevailing political climates. Then again, in 1989 but also in 2002, progress was reported but not confirmed on laboratory cold fusion. One also uneasily recalls, from the USA of the 1980s, the Rightist millenarianism of Lyndon La Rouche and his Fusion Energy Foundation. What should probably be conceded as well is that, through 1985 at least, the fusion mainstream did wax too sanguine in spite of itself. Nowadays, sceptics often comment that the era of viable commercial exploitation is always a good thirty years away, i.e. two or three reactor generations. Lately, indeed, thirty-five to forty-five years has seemed a more typical prediction. Nor is there any denying big challenges remain. Tritium leakage needs be prevented though it poses far less of a radioactive threat (especially long-term) than fission waste does. Plasma fluctuation is a related problem, not least with MCF. Also, MCF requires in the inner chamber a vacuum below a ten-millionth of an atmosphere. Besides which, in order to cover energy conversion losses along with development, capital, running and decommissioning costs, the fusion process (via either the MCF or the ICF route) might need to yield fifty or more times as much heat energy as may be inputted to achieve ignition. On the other hand, progress has been very steady for several decades past in regard to Lawson Number-cum-temperature gains. Duly in 1996, the JT-60 reactor at Naka in Honshu became the first tokamak to ‘break even’. In other words, as much heat energy was produced by fusion as had been put in so as to effect brief ignition. Even though anticipated lead times have extended further, confidence in ultimate success is more solid now. Therefore the Bush administration seems justified in its belief that, particularly through the energetic production of hydrogen as a chemical fuel, fusion reactors could play a valuable part in limiting global warming the second half of this century. Hydrogen produced from solar power directly (i.e. without the intermediate generation of electricity) is a

APPENDIX B: EXOTIC TECHNOLOGIES 267

potential alternative but its technologies, too, are far from mature. It is not easy to believe that the solar production of hydrogen could be as easy to scale up as the fusion alternative. But it may be that, if and when a choice is presented (2030?), the general preference will, in any case, be for more distributive power production, this to bolster the identity and autonomy of local communities: an objective that may then be seen as basic to the maintenance of peace and liberty.

Further reading

Arendt, H., The Origins of Totalitarianism, New York, Harcourt Brace, 1958, 3 vols. Beck, L. (ed.), Blinding Weapons, Geneva, International Committee of Red Cross, 1993. Benedict, R., The Chrysanthemum and the Sword, London, Secker and Warburg, 1947. British National Space Centre, Report of the Task Force on Potentially Hazardous Near Earth Objects, Leicester, British National Space Centre, September 2000. Brown, N. (ed.), American Missile Defence. Views from China and Europe, Oxford, Oxford Research Group, 2000. —— History and Climate Change, London, Taylor & Francis, 2001. Castello, M., The Internet Galaxy,, Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2001. Clarke, I.F., Voices Prophesying War, 1763–1974, London, Oxford University Press, 1966. Cohn, N., The Pursuit of the Millennium, London, Paladin, 1972. Coker, C., Humane Warfare, London, Routledge, 2001. Dando, M., Biological Warfare in the 21st Century, London, Brassey’s, 1994. Dyson, F., Disturbing the Universe, New York, Harper & Row, 1979. Feldman, S. (ed.), After the War in Iraq, Brighton, Sussex Academic Press, 2004. Hadingham, E. (ed.), Early Man and the Cosmos, London, William Heinemann, 1983. Halberstam, D., The Best and the Brightest, New York, Random House, 1972. Hodgson, P.E., Nuclear Power, Energy and the Environment, London, Imperial College Press, 1981. Horneck, G. and Baumstark-Khan, C., (eds), Astrobiology. The Quest for the Conditions of Life, Berlin, Springer, 2002. Huntington, S., The Clash of Civilisations and the Remaking of the World Order, London, Touchstone, 1998. Karp, A., Ballistic Missile Proliferation, the Politics and Technics, Oxford, Oxford University Press for SIPRI, 1996. Kennedy, J.F., The Strategy of Peace, London, Hamish Hamilton, 1960. Lomborg, B., The Sceptical Environmentalist, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2001. McKibben, B., The End of Nature, New York, Viking Penguin, 1990. Mangold, Tom and Goldberg, Jeff, Plague Wars, Basingstoke, Macmillan, 1999. Menzies, G., 1421, London, Bantam, 2002. Mische, P.M., Star Wars and the State of Our Souls, Minneapolis, Winston Press, 1985. Project Air Force, Space Weapons. Earth Wars, Santa Monica, Rand Corporation, 1999. Sagan, S.D. and Waltz, K.N., The Spread of Nuclear Weapons, New York, W.W. Norton, 2002. Strachan, Hew, The First World War, (5 vols), Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2000, vol. 1. Taylor, M., The Fanatics, London, Brassey’s, 1991. Thesiger, W., Desert, Marsh and Mountain, London, Collins, 1950.

269

Watson, R.T. (ed.), Climate Change 2001: Synthesis Report, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2001. Wells, H.G. Anticipations, London, Chapman and Hall, 1902. Zakaria, F., The Future of Freedom, New York, W.W.Norton, 2003.

Notes

Preface 1 British Youth Festival Preparatory Committee, The Innsbruck Story, London, The National Council of Civil Liberties, 1951. 2 Neville and Yu-Ying Brown, South Africa: Sanctions or Targeted Aid?, Birmingham, The University of Birmingham, 1987, Muirhead Paper No. 1. 3 Neville Brown, Britain in NATO, London, Fabian Society, November 1964.

1 Through 11 September 1 Yevgeni Velikov, R.Sagdayev and A.Kokoshin, Weaponry in Space. The Dilemma of Security, Moscow, Mir Publishing House, 1986. 2 See the author’s The Fundamental Issues Study within the British BMD Review, Oxford, Mansfield College, February 1998, p. 17. 3 Marc U.Edwards, Printing, Propaganda and Martin Luther, Berkeley, University of California Press, 1994, p. 1. 4 Robert G.Kaiser in Nicolas X.Rizopoulos (ed.), Sea Changes, New York, Council on Foreign Relations, 1990, p. 27. 5 Wendy D.Lennert, Light on the Internet, Reading, Addison-Wesley, 1999, p. 2. 6 E.Jantsch, Technological Forecasting in Perspective, Paris, OECD, 1967, pp. 156– 63. 7 Anatole Kaletsky, ‘Buddy, Can Europe Spare America a Dime’, Times, 23 May 2002. 8 Dr Jamie Shea, ‘NATO and Terrorism’, Journal of the Royal United Services Institute for Defence Studies, vol. 147, no. 2, April 2002, pp. 32–40. 9 Christopher Patten, ‘Friends Across the Water’, Guardian Saturday Review, 18 May 2002. 10 Soviet Military Power, Washington DC, US Government Printing Office, 1982, p. 74. 11 Neville Brown, The Future of Air Power, Beckenham, Croom Helm, 1986, pp. 136– 49. 12 James T.Stewart, Air Power: The Decisive Force in Korea, Princeton, Van Nostrand, 1957, Preface.

NOTES 271

13 David Rees, Korea, The Limited War, New York, St Martin’s Press, 1964, Chapter 22. 14 Barrie Paskins and Michael Dockrill, The Ethics of War, London, Gerald Duckworth, 1979, pp. 42–8. These authors discuss the campaign very fairly but still fail to grip these issues. 15 Adolf Galland (Mervyn Savill, trans.), The First and The Last, London, Methuen, 1955, p. 285. 16 George Orwell, Homage to Catalonia, London, Secker and Warburg, 1938, Chapter 5. 17 J.B.Priestley, Essays of Five Decades, Harmondsworth, Penguin, 1968, p. 292. 18 Nikolai Novichkov, ‘Russia Plans to Export Non-Lethal Beam Weapons’, Jane’s Defence Weekly, vol. 36, no. 21, 21 November 2001, p. 18. 19 ‘Non-Lethal Weapons’, World Defense Systems, vol. 4, issue 1, April 2002, pp. 105–15. 20 An Outline History of China, Peking, Foreign Languages Press, 1958, pp. 410–11. 21 J.B.S.Haldane, The Marxist Philosophy and the Sciences, London, George Allen and Unwin, 1938. 22 Vaclav Smil, The Bad Earth, London, Zed Press, 1984. 23 Erich Fromm, The Fear of Freedom, London, Kegan Paul, Trency and Trubner, 1942, p. 40. 24 Ernest Gellner, ‘The Last Marxists’, Times Literary Supplement, no. 4773, 23 September 1994, pp. 3–5. 25 Leszek Kolakowski (P.S.Falla, trans.), Main Currents of Marxism, Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1978, p. 343. 26 E.R.Leach, ‘Hydraulic Society in Ceylon’, Past and Present, no. 15, April 1959, pp. 2–26. 27 Jared Diamond, Guns, Germs and Steel, London, Jonathan Cape, 1997, pp. 283–4. 28 Karl A.Wittfogel, Oriental Despotism, New Haven, Yale University Press, 1957, pp. 206–7 and 219–25. 29 Edward Hyams, Soil and Civilisation, London, Thames and Hudson, 1952, Chapter VI. 30 Wittfogel, Oriental Despotism, Chapter 6B. 31 Immanuel Wallerstein, The Modern World System (3 vols), New York, Academic Press, 1974, vol. 1, pp. 34–5. 32 Kwame Nkrumah, Towards Colonial Freedom, London, Heinemann, 1942. 33 Muammar Al Gadafi, The Green Book, Tripoli, The Public Establishment for Publishing, Advertising and Distribution (undated) pp. 110–11. 34 Ian Roxborough, Theories of Underdevelopment, London, Macmillan, 1979, Chapter 1. 35 Chester C.Tan, Chinese Political Thought in the 20th Century, Newton Abbot, David and Charles, 1972, Chapters 5 and 6. 36 Arthur Koestler, The Heel of Achilles, London, Hutchinson, 1974, pp. 221–4. 37 Abraham Pais, Einstein Lived Here, Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1994, Chapter 9.3. 38 Adam Robinson, Bin Laden, Edinburgh, Mainstream Publishing, 2001, p. 287. 39 H.G.Wells, Anticipations, London, Chapman and Hall, 1902. 40 Francis Fukuyama, ‘The End of History’, The National Interest, no. 56, Summer 1989, pp. 3–18.

272 NOTES

41 Francis Fukuyama, The End of History and the Last Man, London, Hamish Hamilton, 1992. 42 Reproduced in I.F.Clarke, Voices Prophesying War, 1763–1984, London, Oxford University Press, 1966, p. 160. 43 R.S.Lewis (ed.), The Annual Register 2000, Bethesda, Keesing’s Worldwide, 2001, p. 443. 44 Norman Cohn, The Pursuit of the Millennium, London, Paladin, 1972, p. 282. 45 Wilfred Thesiger, Desert, Marsh and Mountain, London, Collins, 1950, pp. 297–8. 46 Robinson, Bin Laden, Chapter 8. 47 John Keegan, ‘In This War of Civilization, the West will Prevail’, Daily Telegraph, 8 October 2001. 48 Ahmed Rashid, ‘Epicentre of Terror’, Far Eastern Economic Review, vol. 163, no. 9, 11 May 2000, pp. 16–18. 49 Ralph H.Magnus and Eden Naby, Afghanistan, Mullah, Marx and Mujahid, Boulder, Westview Press, 1998, p. 195. 50 Jet van Krieken, The Buddhas of Bamiyan’, International Institute for Asian Studies Newsletter, no. 23, October 2000, p. 14. 51 M.H.Ganji in W.B.Fisher (ed.), The Cambridge History of Iran (7 vols), Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1968, vol. 1, Chapter 5. 52 Deduced from lower atmospheric thermal patterns (1,000 to 500 millibars) published in the Monthly Weather Log of Britain’s Royal Meteorological Society e.g. January to March 2003. 53 Neville Brown, History and Climate Change: A Eurocentric Perspective, London, Taylor and Francis, 2001, p. 150. 54 David S.Saba, ‘Afghanistan: Environmental Degradation in a Fragile Ecological Setting’, International Journal of Sustainable Development and World Ecology, vol. 8, 2001, pp. 279–89. 55 Robinson, Bin Laden, p. 153. 56 David Mather, ‘Latinos Wait for the Action’, CQ Weekly, 19 June 2002, pp. 1716– 19. 57 Arthur L.Waskow and Stanley L.Newman, America in Hiding, New York, Ballantine, 1962, p. 11. 58 Mark Weisenmiller, ‘Military Tribunals in the United States’, History Today, April 2002, pp. 28–9. 59 The Economist, 13 October 2001. 60 Fareed Zakaria, The Future of Freedom, New York, W.W.Norton, 2003, pp. 208– 20. 61 See the author’s paper on ‘The Winter War’ delivered at the University of Wroclaw in June 2002. Contact [email protected]. 62 Amien Rais, International Institute for Asian Studies Newsletter, no. 28, August 2002, p. 3. 63 ‘Huge Promise, Nagging Concern’, Aviation Week and Space Technology, vol. 59, no. 7, 18 August 2003, pp. 44–50. 64 ‘Last Chance for Micromachines’, Economist Technology Quarterly, 9 December 2000, pp. 26–30. 65 Michael O’Hanlon, A Flawed Masterpiece’, Foreign Affairs, vol. 81, no. 3, May/ June 2002, pp. 49–63.

NOTES 273

66 Bruce Anderson, ‘They Also Serve’, The Spectator, vol. 288, no. 9049, 12 January 2002, pp. 22–4. 67 ‘So Much Done, So Far to Go’, The Economist, vol. 363, no. 8276, 8 June 2002, pp. 23–5. 68 Stuart Croft in Michael Clarke and Philip Sabin (eds), British Defence Choices for the 21st Century, London, Brassey’s, 1993, Chapter 3. 69 Correlli Barnett, ‘War Games’, The Spectator, vol. 287, no. 9044, 8 December 2001, pp. 22–3. 70 Douglas Hurd, ‘Over There and Overstretched’, The Spectator, vol. 288, no. 9050, 19 January 2002, pp. 14–15. 71 The National Security Strategy of the United States, Washington DC, White House, September 2002.

2 The poverty of strategy 1 Zbigniew Brzezinski, ‘The International and the Planetary’, Encounter, vol. XXXIX, no. 2, August 1972, pp. 49–55. 2 Harrison E.Salisbury, The Coming War between Russia and China, London, Secker and Warburg, 1969, Chapter 9. 3 Neville Brown, ‘The Myth of an Asian Diversion’, Journal of the Royal United Services Institute for Defence Studies, vol. 118, no. 3, September 1973, pp. 48–51. 4 The Times, 12 January 1968. 5 Kenneth Warren, Mineral Resources, London, Penguin, 1973, Table 33. 6 Donald Watt, Frank Spencer and Neville Brown, A History of the World in the 20th Century, New York, William Morrow, 1968, Part III, Chapter IV (ii). 7 A.V.Meshcherskaya and V.G.Blazhevich, ‘The Drought and Excessive Moisture Indices in a Historical Perspective in the Former Grain-Producing Regions of the Former Soviet Union’, Journal of Climate, vol. 10, no. 10, October 1997, pp. 2670– 82, Fig. 2. 8 Neville Brown, History and Climate Change: A Eurocentric Perspective, London, Taylor and Francis, 2001, p. 268. 9 Audrey Donnithorne, ‘Why China Imports Wheat’, The China Quarterly, no. 48, October/December 1971, pp. 734–41. 10 David E.Lilienthal, TVA. Democracy on the March, Harmondsworth, Penguin, 1944, Chapters 1, 14 and 20. 11 Curt Tarnoff, The Marshall Plan: Design, Accomplishments, and Relevance to the Present, Washington DC, Congressional Research Service, September 1997. 12 Albert Gore, Earth in the Balance, London, Earthscan, 1992, Chapter 15. 13 A.T.Mahan, The Influence of Sea Power on the French Revolution and Empire, 1793–1812, London; Sampson Low, Marston, 1893. 14 Ernest Rhys (ed.), Orations on the French War to the Peace of Amiens by William Pitt, London, J.M.Dent, undated, Chapters I, IV, XIII, XV, XVI and XXI. 15 Mary Searle-Chatterjee, Fabian Review, vol. 114, no. 2, Summer 2002, p. 13. 16 Fred Pearce, ‘Water War’, New Scientist, vol. 174, no. 2343, 18 May 2002, p. 18. 17 Neville Brown, European Security, 1972–1980, London, Royal United Services Institute for Defence Studies, 1972, Chapter 5(1).

274 NOTES

18 André Beauffre, ‘The Sharing of Nuclear Responsibilities, a Problem in Need of Solution’, International Affairs, vol. XLI, no. 3, July 1965, pp. 411–19. 19 Cited at some length in Lawrence Freedman, The Evolution of Nuclear Strategy, London, Macmillan, 1981, p. 322. 20 Lawrence Freedman, The Evolution of Nuclear Strategy, pp. 347–8. 21 J.F.Kennedy, The Strategy of Peace, London, Hamish Hamilton, 1960. 22 David Halberstam, The Best and the Brightest, New York, Random House, 1972, p. 316 and pp. 210–11.

3 A war on terror? 1 Mao Tse-tung and Che Guevara, Guerrilla Warfare, London, Cassell, 1962, p. 151. 2 Steve Biko, I Write What I Like, Harmondsworth, Penguin, 1983. 3 Neville Brown, ‘Kamel Nasser: Terrorist or Man of Peace?’, The New Middle East, no. 56, May 1973, pp. 17–18. 4 F.W.D.Deakin, The Embattled Mountain, London, Oxford University Press, 1971, pp. 10–32. 5 Milovan Djilas, Tito, London, Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1981, pp. 12–13 and 24. 6 This judgement derives largely from my reading of Philip Short, Mao, A Life, London, Hodder and Stoughton, 1999. 7 Isaiah Berlin, Karl Marx, London, Oxford University Press, 1963, p. 267. 8 Maxwell Taylor, The Fanatics, London, Brassey’s, 1991, pp. 37–55. 9 Karen Armstrong, ‘Cries of Rage and Frustration’, New Statesman, 24 September 2001, pp. 17–18. 10 ‘Abu Nidal’, The Economist, vol. 364, no. 8287, 24 August 2002, p. 65. 11 ‘The Message is that Terrorism Pays’, New Statesman, 28 January 2002, p. 4. 12 Richard Clutterbuck, Terrorism, Drugs and Crime in Europe after 1992, London, Routledge, 1990, p. 76. 13 Charles Foley (ed.), The Memoirs of General Grivas, London, Longmans Green, 1964, Appendix 1. 14 Lawrence Durrell, Bitter Lemons, 1957, p. 243. 15 Neville Brown, ‘Cyprus: A Study in Unresolved Conflict’, The World Today, vol XXIII, no. 9, September 1967, pp. 396–405. 16 Hew Strachan, The First World War (5 vols), Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2000, vol. 1, pp. 66–8. 17 Deidre Sheehan, ‘Held to Ransom’, Far Eastern Economic Review, vol. 163, no. 21, 25 May 2000, pp. 20–1. 18 Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism (three parts), New York, Harcourt Brace, part 1, 1958, p. 6. 19 JCOS, Dictionary of Military Terms, New York, Greenhill, 1987, pp. 366, 379, 161. 20 JCOS, Dictionary of Military Terms, London, Greenhill, 1999, pp. 168, 396, 381. 21 J.A.Simpson and E.S.C.Weiner, The Oxford English Dictionary (20 vols), Oxford, Clarendon Press, vol. XVII, pp. 820–1 22 Frank Ninkovich, The Wilsonian Century: American Foreign Policy since 1900, Chicago, University of Chicago Press, 2000, p. 4. 23 Paul Wilkinson, International Affairs, vol. 57, no. 3, Summer 1981, p. 467.

NOTES 275

24 Simpson and Weiner, The Oxford English Dictionary. 25 ‘Four Decades of Worldwide Terrorism’, Air Force Magazine, vol. 85, no. 2, February 2002, pp. 70–5. 26 Babak Dehghanpisheh, John Barry and Roy Gutman, ‘The Death Convoy of Afghanistan’, Newsweek on-line, 26 August 2002. 27 Who Will Save the Children?, Washington DC, American Educational Trust, 2002. 28 ‘Diamonds and Conflict’, Strategic Comments, vol. 6, issue 4, May 2000. 29 Dr Mark Galeotti, ‘Crime Pays’, World Today, vol. 58, no. 8/9, August/September 2002, pp. 37–8. 30 John Dickie, ‘Has the Mafia Surrendered?’, Prospect, no. 75, June 2002, pp. 56–60. 31 Jonathan M.Winer and Trifin J.Roule, ‘Fighting Terrorist Finance’, Survival, vol. 44, no. 3, Autumn 2002, pp. 87–104. 32 John Brademas and Fritz Heimann, ‘Tackling International Corruption’, Foreign Affairs, vol. 77, no. 5, October 1998, pp. 17–22. 33 E.J.Hobsbawn, Revolutionaries, London, Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1973, Chapter 17. 34 J.Delacour, ‘Some Contrasts in the Civilization of Indo-China’, The Geographical Journal, vol. LXXX1, no. 6, June 1933, pp. 519–26. 35 William F.Kaufman, The McNamara Strategy, New York, Harper and Row, 1964, pp. 316–17. 36 Richard L.Stevens, The Trail, Hamden, Garland, 1993. The above comments owe much to discussion with Dr Stevens while his book was in the press. 37 Lawrence Freedman, Kennedy’s Wars, New York, Oxford University Press, 2000, pp. 325 and 353. 38 Jeffrey Record, The Wrong War. Why We Lost in Vietnam, Annapolis, Naval Institute, 1998, p. 177. 39 Julian Thompson, The Lifeblood of War, London, Brassey’s, 1991, pp. 191–2. 40 Gary R.Hess, ‘The Unending Debate: Historians and the Vietnam War’, Diplomatic History, vol. 18, no. 2, Spring 1994, pp. 239–64. 41 Freedman, Kennedy’s War, p. 419. 42 Discussion with the late Lord Harlech in 1984. 43 Manuel Castillo, The Internet Galaxy, Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2001, p. 67. 44 Scott Atran, ‘Genesis of Suicide Terrorism’, Science, vol. 299, no. 5612, 7 March 2003, pp. 1534–9. 45 D.S.Lewis (ed.), The Annual Register, 2001, Bethesda, Keesing’s, 2002, p. 366. 46 Giles Trendle, ‘Hackers Threaten Suicide Attacks’, The World Today, vol. 58, no. 11, November 2002, pp. 10–11. 47 E.g.Desmond Morris, The Human Zoo, London, Jonathan Cape, 1969, Chapter 4. 48 Robert Moss, Urban Guerrilla Warfare, Adelphi Paper 79, London, International Institute for Strategic Studies, 1972, Appendix.

4 Saddam, slow decline and rapid fall 1 Keith McLachlan in H.V.Hodson (ed.), The Annual Register of World Events, London, Longmans, 1984, p. 257.

276 NOTES

2 ‘How US Helped Iraq Build Deadly Arsenal’, The Times, 31 December 2002. 3 John Stevenson (ed.), Strategic Survey, 2002–3, London, International Institute for Strategic Studies, May 2003, Maps XII. 4 Kenneth Katzman, Iraq: US Efforts to Change the Regime, Washington DC, Congressional Research Service, October 2002, p. 5. 5 Charles Duelfer, ‘The Inevitable Failure of Inspections in Iraq’, Arms Control Today, vol. 32, no. 7, September 2002, pp. 8–11. 6 ‘Why Iraq Weapons Inspectors would have a Daunting Task’, Aviation Week and Space Technology, vol. 157, no. 13, 23 September 2002, pp. 24–5. 7 Iraq’s Weapons of Mass Destruction, London, Her Majesty’s Government, September 2002, pp. 27–8. 8 Iraq’s Weapons of Mass Destruction, pp. 6–7. 9 Jimmy Carter, ‘This Will Not Be a Just War’, Guardian, 12 March 2003. 10 Michael Lind, ‘The Weird Men behind George W.Bush’s War’, New Statesman, 7 April 2001. 11 Tina Brown, The Times, 30 January 2003, T2, p. 3. 12 The Sunday Times, 23 March 2003. 13 ‘Why Blair Fears America’, The Economist, vol. 366, no. 8316, 22 March 2003, pp. 31–2. 14 International Herald Tribune, 24 February 2003. 15 The Independent, 8 March 2003. 16 Letter by Neville Brown in The World Today, vol. 58, no. 6, June 2002, p. 27. 17 Robert Fisk, The Independent, 15 April 2003. 18 Sir John Glubb, A Short History of the Arab Peoples, London, Hodder and Stoughton, 1969, pp. 104–5. 19 Neville Brown, History and Climate Change. A Eurocentric Perspective, London, Taylor and Francis, 2001, Chapter 4. 20 Letter by Dr Harriet Crawford et al. in The Independent, 5 March 2003. 21 See also ‘Iraq’s History is Our History Too’, The Art Newspaper, vol. XIII, no. 130, November 2002, p. 1. 22 James Randerson and Bob Holmes, ‘Will Iraq Ever Get Its Treasures Back?’, New Scientist, vol. 178, no. 2394, 10 May 2003, pp. 6–7. 23 ‘Who’s to Blame?’, The Economist, vol. 367, no. 8325, 24 May 2003, p. 57.

5 Social instability 1 George Dangerfield, The Strange Death of Liberal England, London, Constable, 1936, pp. 355–6 and 409. 2 Hew Strachan, The First World War, Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2000, (5 vols) vol. 1, pp. 111 and 133–62. 3 D.C.Watt in D.C.Watt, Frank Spencer and Neville Brown, A History of the World in the Twentieth Century, New York, William Morrow, 1968, pp. 114–15. 4 ’Vanity’, The Economist, vol. 356, no. 8186, 2 September 2000, p. 130. 5 Robert Nisbet, ‘Has Futurology a Future?’, Encounter, vol. XXXVII, no. 5, May 1971, pp. 21–3.

NOTES 277

6 David G.Myers, ‘The Pursuit of Happiness’, Scientific American, vol. 274, no. 5, May 1996, pp. 54–6. 7 Rodger Doyle, ‘Calculus of Happiness’, Scientific American, vol. 287, no. 5, November 2002, p. 17. 8 Roland Huntford, The New Totalitarians, London, Allen Lane, 1971, Chapter 2. 9 John Kenneth Galbraith, The Culture of Contentment, London, Penguin, 1993, p. 33. 10 Strachan, The First World War, p. 139. 11 David Drakakis-Smith, Third World Cities, London, Routledge, 2000, Fig. 1.3. 12 Ibid., Figure 4.4 and Table 4.1. 13 ‘A World Empire by Other Means?’, The Economist, vol. 361, no. 8253, 22 December 2001, p. 14. 14 Saul Cohen, Geography and Politics in a World Divided, Methuen, London, 1964, pp. 80–93. 15 Giles Tremlett, ‘Marxists are Retards’, Guardian, 1 November 2002. 16 ‘Is Globalisation Doomed?’, The Economist, vol. 360, no. 8241, 29 December 2001, p. 14. 17 Robert C.Ayres, Jeroen van den Berrgh and John Gowdy, ‘Strong versus Weak Sustainability, Economics, Natural Sciences and “Conciliance”, Environmental Ethics, vol. 23, no. 2, Summer 2001, pp. 155–68. 18 Jonathan D.Oldfield, ‘Russia, Systemic Transformation and the Concept of Sustainable Development’, Environmental Politics, vol. 10, no. 3, Autumn 2001, pp. 96–110. 19 J.N.R.Jeffers, ‘Beyond Sustainable Development and World Ecology’, International Journal of Sustainable Development and World Ecology, vol. 8. 2001, pp. 277–8. 20 Harold James, ‘Capital Ideas’, National Interest, no. 69, Fall 2002, pp. 132–9. 21 Teodor Shanin, ‘How the Other Half Live’, New Scientist, vol. 175, no. 2354, 3 August 2002, pp. 45–7. 22 Philippe Legrain, ‘The Not So Global Economy’, Prospect, issue 68, November 2001, pp. 44–7. 23 E.g. Donella H.Meadows, Dennis L.Meadows, Jorgen Randers and William W. Behrens III, Limits to Growth, London, Earth Island, 1972, pp. 54–69. 24 Bjørn Lomborg, The Sceptical Environmentalist, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2001, pp. 138–47. 25 Bill McKibben, The End of Nature, New York, Viking Penguin, 1990, Chapter 2. 26 See the author’s The Strategic Revolution, London, Brassey’s, 1991, pp. 139–40. 27 Quoted in Dorothy Rowe, Living with the Bomb. Can We Live without Enemies?, London, 1985, p. 146. 28 J.L.Houghton (ed.), Climatic Change 2001: The Scientific Basis (4 vols), Cambridge, Cambridge University Press for IPCC, 2001, vol. 1, Summary for Policy Makers. 29 Michael Vellinger and Richard A.Wood, ‘Global Climatic Impacts of a Collapse of the Atlantic Thermohaline Circulation’, Climate Change, vol. 54, no. 3, August 2002, pp. 251–67. 30 Christian Pfister, G.Schwartz-Zanetti and M.Wegmann, ‘Winter Severity in Europe: the 14th century’, Climate Change, vol. 34, no. 1, September 1996, pp. 91– 104.

278 NOTES

31 Robert T.Watson (ed.), Climate Change 2001: Synthesis Report, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press for IPCC, 2001, pp. 62–3. 32 H.H.Lamb, Climate, History and the Modern World, London, Routledge, 1995, p. 179. 33 See the author’s History and Climate Change, London, Taylor and Francis, 2001, Chapter 9. 34 Otto Pettersson, ‘The Connection between Hydrological and Meteorological Phenomena’, Quarterly Journal of the Royal Meteorological Society, vol. 38, no. 163, 1912, pp. 173–91. 35 Crispin Tickell, Climate Change and World Affairs, Harvard Studies in International Affairs, No. 37, Cambridge, Harvard University, 1977, p. 45. 36 J.L.Houghton (ed.), Climate Change, 1995, The Science of Climate Change (4 vols), Cambridge, Cambridge University Press for IPCC, 1995, vol. 1, p. 173. 37 Houghton (ed.), Climate Change 2001, p. 173. 38 Jianhua Ju and Julia Slingo, ‘The Asian Summer Monsoon and ENSO’, Quarterly Journal of the Royal Meteorological Society, vol. 1, no. 525, July 1995, pp. 1133– 68. 39 Gong Dao-yi, Jin-hong Zhu and Shao-wu Wang, ‘Flooding 1990s along the Yangtse River, Has It Concern of Global Warming’, Journal of Geographical Sciences, vol. 11, no. 1, 2001, pp. 43–52. 40 K.A.Browning, ‘Quantitative Precipitation Forecasting’, Weather, vol. 58, no. 3, March 2003, pp. 126–7. 41 T.N.Palmer, ‘A Non-linear Dynamical Perspective on Climate Change’, Weather, vol. 48, no. 10, October 1993, pp. 314–26. 42 Watson (ed.), Climate Change 2001, Table TS1. 43 Fred Pearce, ‘Mamma Mia’, New Scientist, vol. 175, no. 2352, 20 July 2002, pp. 38–61. 44 John Kay, ‘Previous Convictions’, Prospect, vol. 85, April 2003, p. 80. 45 Lomborg, The Sceptical Environmentalist, Chapter 24. 46 Richard Lindzen and Constantine Giannitisis, ‘On the Climatic Implications of Volcanic Cooling’, Journal of Geophysical Research, vol. 103, no. D6, 27 March 1998, pp. 5929–41. 47 R.S.Lindzen, M.D.Chou and A.Y.Hou, ‘Does the Earth Have an Adaptive InfraRed Iris?’, Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society, vol. 82, no. 3, March 2001, pp. 417–32. 48 Bing Lin, Bruce A.Wielicki, L.Chambers, Y.Hu and K.Xu, ‘The Iris Hypothesis: A Negative or Positive Cloud Feedback?’, Journal of Climate, vol. 15, no. 1, 1 January 2002, pp. 3–7. 49 R.S.Lindzen, ‘On the Scientific Basis for Global Warming Scenarios’, Environmental Pollution, vol. 83, nos 1 and 2, 1994, pp. 125–34. 50 See Neville Brown, History and Climate Change, Chapters 10 and 11. 51 History and Climate Change, pp. 210–11. 52 William H.McNeill, The Pursuit of Power, Oxford, Basil Blackwell, 1988, p. 50. 53 Herman Kahn, The Emerging Japanese Superstate, London, André Deutsch, 1971, pp. 128–30. 54 Ruth Benedict, The Chrysanthemum and the Sword, London, Secker and Warburg, 1947, Chapter 1.

NOTES 279

55 Jean Stoetzel, Without the Chrysanthemum and the Sword, London, William Heinemann, 1955, pp. 10–17. 56 Ronald McKinnon, ‘Wading in the Yen Trap’, The Economist, vol. 352, no. 8129, 24 July 1999. 57 Edward J.Lincoln, ‘Japan’s Financial Mess’, Foreign Affairs, vol. 77, no. 3, May/ June 1998, pp. 57–66. 58 Makoto Watabe, ‘Youth Problems and Japanese Society’, The Japan Foundation Newsletter, vol. XXVII, nos 3–4, pp. 1–20. 59 ‘As Safe as What?’, The Economist, vol. 364, no. 8288, 31 August 2002. 60 Charles Bickers and Ichiko Fuyuno, ‘Banking on the Robot Evolution’, Far Eastern Economic Review, vol. 163, no. 43, 23 November 2000, pp. 38–42. 61 David Cope, ‘Time for Japan to Go to Town on the Environment’, Insight Japan, vol. 7, no. 3, December 1998, pp. 4–8. 62 The Military Balance, 1988–9, London, the International Institute for Strategic Studies, 1988, pp. 146–7. 63 2001 Defence of Japan, Tokyo, Japan Defence Agency, 2001, pp. 11–12. 64 ‘Chinese Air Force in Throes of Cultural Revolution’, Aviation Week and Space Technology, vol. 157, no. 19, 4 November 2002, pp. 55–7. 65 Andrew Osborn, ‘Sweden Expels Russian Jet “Spies”’, Guardian, 12 November 2002. 66 Shirley A.Kan, China’s Proliferation of Weapons of Mass Destruction and Missiles: Current Policy Issues, Washington DC, Congressional Research Service, July 2002. 67 Charles Horner, ‘The Other Orientalism’, National Interest, no. 67, Spring 2002, pp. 57–65. 68 Chien-peng Chung, ‘China’s “War on Terror”’, Foreign Affairs, vol. 81, no. 4, JulyAugust 2002, pp. 8–12. 69 Peter Brookes, ‘The Case for Missile Defence’, Far Eastern Economic Review, vol. 163, no. 36, 7 September 2000, p. 33. 70 Jonathan Mirsky, ‘Peking, Hong Kong and the US’, New York Review of Books, vol. XLIV, no. 7, 24 April 1997, pp. 9–12. 71 Nina Hachigian, ‘China’s Cyber-Strategy’, Foreign Affairs, vol. 80, no. 2, March/ April 2001, pp. 118–33. 72 John R.Malott, ‘Asia Needs Some Self-Honesty’, Far Eastern Economic Review, vol. 162, no. 24, 17 June 1999, p. 32. 73 Neville Brown (ed.), American Missile Defence. Views from China and Europe, Oxford, Oxford Research Group, May 2000, Current Decisions Report No. 25. 74 ‘Wang Enmao’, The Economist, vol. 359, no. 8219, 28 April 2001, p. 130. 75 Elizabeth Economy, ‘Painting China Green’, Foreign Affairs, vol. 78, no. 2, March/ April 1999, pp. 14–17.

6 Macabre lethality 1 Delayed Toxic Effects of Chemical Warfare Agents, Stockholm, Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, 1975, pp. 1–17.

280 NOTES

2 G.B.Carter and Graham S.Pearson, ‘Past Chemical Warfare Capabilities’, RUSI Journal, vol. 141, no. 1, February 1996, pp. 59–68. 3 George Musser, ‘Better Killing Through Chemistry’, Scientific American, vol. 285, no. 6, December 2001, pp. 10–11. 4 J.B.S.Haldane, The Marxist Philosophy and the Sciences, London, George Allen and Unwin, 1938. 5 Jon Allan, ‘Silk Purse or Sow’s Ear’, Nature Medicine, vol. 3, no. 3, March 1997, pp. 275–6. 6 Tom Mangold and Jeff Goldberg, Plague Wars, Basingstoke, Macmillan, 1999, pp. 299–300. 7 ‘Vladimir Pasechnik’, Daily Telegraph, 29 November 2002. 8 SIPRI Yearbook 2000, Oxford, Oxford University Press for Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, 2000, pp. 526–7. 9 ‘Surfing for a Satan Bug’, New Scientist, vol. 135, no. 2352, 20 July 2002, p. 5. 10 W.Wayt Gibbs, ‘Innocence Abroad’, Scientific American, vol. 286, no. 1, January 2002, pp. 12–13. 11 Milton Leitenberg, ‘Just How Bad Can It Get?’, Los Angeles Times, 28 October 2001. 12 ‘Ready for the Biotech Boom?’, Far Eastern Economic Review, vol. 163, no. 24, 15 June 2000, pp. 44–49. 13 ‘Biotech’s Yin and Yang’, The Economist, vol. 365, no. 8303, 14 December 2002, pp. 87–9. 14 ‘Asia’s Biotech Tiger’, New Scientist, vol. 175, no. 2360, 14 September 2002, pp. 54–7. 15 Victoria Griffith, ‘Wires Cross over Genes’, Financial Times Weekend, 2/3 November 2002. 16 Graham S.Pearson, ‘Why Biological Warfare Matters’, The Arena, no. 3, October 1995. 17 Malcolm Dando, Biological Warfare in the 21st Century, London, Brassey’s, 1994, pp. 36–44. 18 Roger G.Barry and Richard J.Chorley, Atmosphere, Weather and Climate, London, Routledge, 1987, pp. 85–7. 19 Quoted in Aaron Karp, Ballistic Missile Proliferation, the Politics and Technics, Oxford, Oxford University Press for SIPRI, 1996, p. 171. 20 Gerda Horneck and Christa Baumstark-Khan (eds), Astrobiology, The Quest for the Conditions of Life, Berlin, Springer, 2002, p. 62. 21 Interviewed in The Guardian on Thursday, G2, 24 April 2003, pp. 4–6. 22 The Economist, vol. 367, no. 8328, 14 June 2003, p. 24. 23 Matthew Bunn in Chapter 7 of Frank Barnaby (ed.), Nuclear Reprocessing. Has It a Future?, Oxford, Oxford Research Group, October 1999. 24 Michael d’Ornal, Water Desalting and Nuclear Energy, Munich, Verlag Karl Thienig KG, 1967, p. 184. 25 R.H.Lange, ‘Design and Concepts for Future Cargo Aircraft’, Astronautics and Aeronautics, vol. 14, no. 6, June 1976, pp. 24–32. 26 Barnaby, Nuclear Reprocessing: Has It a Future?, p. 5. 27 Professor David Cope in UK/Japan 2000 Seminar Series, London, Daiwa AngloJapanese Foundation, 2001, Chapter 6. 28 Briefing received that April at the Ministry of Science and Technology in Seoul.

NOTES 281

29 Shahram Chubin, ‘Does Iran Want Nuclear Weapons?’, Survival, vol. 37, no. 1, Spring 1995, pp. 86–104. 30 Keyhan International, 12 October 1974. 31 James A.Lake, Ralph G.Bennett and John F.Kotek, ‘Next Generation Nuclear Power’, Scientific American, vol. 286, no. 1, January 2002, pp. 70–9. 32 Yuri M.Shcherbak, ‘Ten Years of the Chernobyl Era’, Scientific American, vol. 274, no. 4, April 1996, pp. 32–7. 33 Peter E.Hodgson, Nuclear Power, Energy and the Environment, London, Imperial College Press, 1999, pp. 58–9. 34 Charles D.Hollister, D.Richard Anderson and G.Roth Heath, ‘Subseabed Disposal of Nuclear Waste’, Science, vol. 213, no. 4514, 18 September 1981, pp. 1321–6. 35 ‘Squeezing Water from the Sea’, The Economist, vol. 347, no. 8063, 4 April 1998. 36 Nebojsa Naki enovi , Arnulf Grübler and Alan McDonald (eds), Global Energy Perspectives, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1998, p. 84. 37 Bob Edwards, ‘Your Worst Fears’, New Scientist, vol. 170, no. 2293, 2 June 2001, pp. 4–5. 38 Dan Stober, ‘No Experience Necessary’, Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, vol. 59, no. 2, March/April 2003, pp. 57–63. 39 David Albright and Holly Higgins, ‘A Bomb for the Ummah’, Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, vol. 59, no. 2, pp. 49–55. 40 Michael A.Levi and Henry C.Kelly, ‘Weapons of Mass Disruption’, Scientific American, vol. 287, no. 5, November 2002, p. 58. 41 Joseph Rotblat, Nuclear Radiation in Warfare, London, Taylor and Francis for SIPRI, 1981, pp. 47–8.

7 The ascent of the missile 1 Flight International, vol. 1, no. 3822, 7 August 1982, p. 290. 2 Aaron Karp, Ballistic Missile Proliferation, the Politics and Technology, Oxford, Oxford University Press, 1996, Chapter 5. 3 g is acceleration due to gravity at the Earth’s atmosphere. It is 32 feet per second per second. 4 Executive Summary, The Report of the Commission to Assess the Ballistic Missile Threat to the United States, Washington DC, US Congress, 15 July 1998, pp. 3 and 2. 5 Ibid 6 Richard L.Garwin, ‘The Rumsfeld Report. What We Did’, The Bulletin of Atomic Scientists, vol. 56, no. 6, November/December 1998, pp. 40–5. 7 Karp, Ballistic Missile Proliferation, pp. 101–11. 8 Military Avionic Equipment, 1987/8, vol. 1, Cointrim-Geneva, Interavia, 1987, pp. 39–44. 9 Karp, Ballistic Missile Proliferation, p. 117. 10 ‘USA Sets Sights on GOS Security Enhancements’, Jane’s Defence Weekly, vol. 37, issue 3, 16 January 2002, p. 10. 11 The Military Balance, 1995–6, London, The International Institute for Strategic Studies, 1995, p. 286.

282 NOTES

12 See the author’s The Fundamental Issues Study within the British BMD Review, Oxford, Mansfield College, 1998, p. 23. 13 Flight International, vol. 120, no. 3770, 8 August 1981, p. 434. 14 Neville Brown, The Future of Air Power, Beckenham, Croom Helm, 1986, p. 132. 15 Keith Hayward, The World Aerospace Industry, London, Duckworth for the Royal United Services Institute, 1994, pp. 51–7.

8 Ballistic encounter 1 For the basic physics, see Appendix A. 2 Basil Collier, The Battle of the V-Weapons, 1944–5, London, Hodder and Stoughton, 1964, pp. 151, 165. 3 Dwight D.Eisenhower, Crusade in Europe, New York, Doubleday, 1948, p. 250. 4 Stanley A.Blumberg and Louis G.Panos, Edward Teller. Giant of the Golden Age of Physics, New York, Charles Scribner, 1990, Chapter 24. 5 Donald R.Baucom, The Origins of SDI, 1944–1983, Lawrence, University Press of Kansas, 1992, p. 4. 6 Herman Kahn, On Thermonuclear War, Princeton, Princeton University Press, 1960, p. 21. 7 Norman Stone, The Eastern Front, 1914–17, London, Hodder and Stoughton, 1975, pp. 23–8. 8 See the author’s The Strategic Revolution, London, Brassey’s, 1992, pp. 54 and 63. 9 Herman Kahn, On Thermonuclear War, Chapter 4. 10 Paul Roper, ‘Technical Options for a Minimum UK Deterrent if Faced with a Proliferation of National Missile Defense’, in Neville Brown (ed.), American Missile Defence. Views from China and Europe, Oxford, Oxford Research Group, May 2000, pp. 35–40. 11 This account of the MAD era essentially derives from the author’s Fundamental Issues Study within the British BMD Review, Oxford, Mansfield College, 1998, pp. 13–14. 12 Miles Kahler, ‘Rumours of Wars: The 1914 Analogue’, Foreign Affairs, vol. 58, no. 2, Winter 1979/80, pp. 376–96. 13 Carl Friedrich von Weiszacker, ‘Can a Third World War be Prevented?’, International Security, vol. 5, no. 1, Summer 1980, pp. 198–205. 14 John E.Mack and Roberta Snow in Ralph K.White (ed.), Psychology and the Prevention of Nuclear War, New York, 1986, p. 238. 15 Baucom, The Origins of SDI, p. 113. 16 Aviation Week and Space Technology, vol. 123, no. 21, 23 November, 1987, p. 19. 17 Eastport Study Group, ‘A Report to the Director, Strategic Defense Initiative Organisation’, Washington DC, unpublished, 1985, p. 24. 18 Ibid, pp. 25–6. 19 See the author’s New Strategy Through Space, Leicester, Leicester University Press, 1990, p. 96. 20 Philip Boffey, The New York Times, 16 September 1986. 21 Report of the Defense Science Board Task Force on Military Software, Washington DC, Government Printing Office, September 1987, p. 51.

NOTES 283

22 Eastport Study Group, ‘A Report to the Director’, p. 48. 23 SDI. A Technical Progress Report to the Secretary of Defense, Washington DC, SDIO, April 1987, p. 44. 24 ‘New Space-Based Radar Shaped by SBIRS Snags’, Aviation Week and Space Technology, vol. 156, no. 7, 18 February 2002, p. 20. 25 John T.Bosna and Richard C.Whelan, Guide to the Strategic Defense Initiative, Arlington, Military Space, 1986, p. 158. 26 ‘Report to the American Physical Society of the Study Group on the Science and Technology of Directed Energy Weapons’, Reviews of Modern Physics, vol. 59, no. 3, July 1987, Part II. 27 SDI Technology, Survivability and Software, Washington DC, Office of Technology Assessment, May 1988, p. 100. 28 Hans Bethe and Richard L.Garwin, Daedalus, vol. 114, no. 3, Summer 1985, pp. 353–4. 29 IEEE Spectrum, vol. 22, no. 9, February 1988, p. 51. 30 Yevgeni Velikhov, Roald Sagdeyev and Andre Kokoshin (eds), Weaponry in Space: The Dilemma of Security, Moscow, Mir Publishing, 1986, p. 42. 31 Neville Brown, New Strategy Through Space, p. 170. 32 Ashton B.Carter, Directed Energy Missile Defense in Space, Washington DC, Office of Technology Assessment, April 1984, p. 17. 33 Sidney D.Drell, Philip Farley and David Holloway, The Reagan Strategic Defense Initiative: A Technical, Political and Arms Control Assessment, Stanford, Stanford University Press, 1984, p. 17. 34 Naval War College Review, vol. XXXX, no. 2, Sequence 318, Spring 1987, p. 39. 35 William J.Broad, Teller’s Wars, New York, Simon and Schuster, 1992, p. 118. 36 In conversation with the author, 1987. 37 Barry M.Blechman and Victor A.Utgoff, ‘The Macroeconomics of Strategic Defences’, International Security, vol. 11, no. 3, Winter 1986–7, pp. 33–70. 38 New Strategy Through Space, p. 100. 39 For a near-to-complete transcription see The Annual Register of World Events, 1985, Longmans, London, 1986, pp. 497–9. 40 The Washington Post, 8 September 1985. 41 Los Angeles Times, 9 July 1985. 42 ‘Target Gaddafi, Again’, Time, vol. 47, no. 14, 1 April 1992, pp. 23–4. 43 Uri Dromi, head of the Israel government press office quoted in The Times, 19 April 1996. 44 Michael Garder, A History of the Soviet Army, London, Pall Mall Press, 1966, Chapter 8. 45 William J.Broad, Star Warriors, New York, Simon and Shuster, 1985, p. 220. 46 Francis Lee Utley (ed.), The Forward Movement of the 14th Century, Columbus, Ohio State University, 1961, p. 108. 47 J.M.Stagg, Forecast for Overlord, Shepperton, Ian Allan Ltd, 1971. Group Captain Stagg was Eisenhower’s senior forecaster. 48 Edward Teller and Albert L.Latter, Our Nuclear Future…Facts, Dangers and Opportunities, London, Secker and Warburg, 1958, pp. 497–9. 49 Theodore A.Postol, ‘Scientific Fraud in the National Missile Defense Program’, Paper delivered at Physics Colloquium, University of Chicago, 1 February 2001.

284 NOTES

50 ‘Missile Defense Test Complexity to Increase’, Aviation Week and Space Technology, vol. 26, no. 25, 24 June 2002, pp. 51–2. 51 Lt. Col. Cynthia A.S.McKinley, ‘The Guardians of Space’, Aerospace Power Journal, vol. xiv, no. 1, Spring 2000, pp. 37–45. 52 Maj. Gen. John L.Barry and Col. Darrell L.Herriges, Aerospace Integration, Not Separation’, Aerospace Power Journal, vol. xiv, no. 2, Summer 2000, pp. 42–7. 53 Maj. Howard D.Belote, ‘The Weaponization of Space’, Aerospace Power Journal, vol. xiv, no. 1, Spring 2000, pp. 46–51. 54 cf. ‘How Green is Al Gore?’, The Economist, vol. 355, no. 8167, 22 April 2000, p. 54. 55 Air Vice Marshal Tony Mason, The Aerospace Revolution, London, Brassey’s, 1998, p. 21. 56 Lt. Col. Peter Hays and Dr Karl Mueller, ‘Going Boldly—Where?’, Aerospace Power Journal, vol. xv, no. 1, Spring 2001, pp. 34–49. 57 ‘Lasers Being Developed for F-35 and C-130’, Aviation Week and Space Technology, vol. 157, no. 2, July 2002, pp. 32–3. 58 ‘Going for Gold’, The Economist, vol. 359, no. 8222, 19 May 2001, p. 15.

9 Terrestrial coverage 1 William R.Graham (chair), Ballistic Missile Proliferation. An Emergent Threat, Arlington, Systems Planning Corporation, 1992, p. 4. 2 ‘2003 Aerospace Source Book’, Aviation Week and Space Technology, vol. 158, no. 2, 13 January 2003, pp. 184–7. 3 Brigadier General Clifton F.van Kann, ‘Vulnerability of Army Aircraft’, Military Review, vol. I, no. 11, November 1961, pp. 2–8. 4 See the author’s The Fundamental Issues Study. Within the British BMD Review, Oxford, Mansfield College, 1996, p. 48. 5 R.J.Schlesinger, Principles of Electronic Warfare, Engelwood Cliffs, Prentice Hall, 1961, Chapter 6. 6 Jeremy Stocker, Sea-Based Ballistic Missile Defense, Lancaster, Centre for Defence and International Security Studies, 1999, p. 39. 7 Geoffrey Forden, ‘The Airborne Laser’, IEEE Spectrum, vol. 34, no. 9, September 1997, pp. 40–9. 8 Kenneth W.Baker, Airborne and Space-Based Lasers: An Analysis of Technological and Operational Compatibility, Occasional Paper No. 9, Maxwell Air Force Base, Centre for Strategy and Technology, June 1999, p. 25. 9 Forden, ‘The Airborne Laser’, p. 46. 10 Gilles van Nederveen, ‘A Light Dawns, the Airborne Laser’, Aerospace Power Journal, vol. XV, Spring 2001, pp. 95–7. 11 Forden, ‘The Airborne Laser’, Table 1. 12 BMD Monitor, vol. 10, no. 22, 3 November 1995, p. 2. 13 Baker, Airborne and Space-Based Lasers, p. 32. 14 Van Nederveen, ‘A Light Dawns’, p. 97. 15 Paul Jackson (ed.), Jane’s All the World’s Aircraft, 2002–3, Coulsdon, Jane’s Information Group, 2002, p. 539.

NOTES 285

16 Project Air Force, Space Weapons, Earth Wars, Santa Monica, Rand Corporation, 1999, p. 28. 17 M.W.Tovey, ‘The Laser Battlefield’, The British Army Review, no. 112, April 1996, pp. 60–6. 18 Louis Oswald Beck (ed.), Blinding Weapons, Geneva, International Committee of the Red Cross, 1993, pp. 344–6.

10 The heavens subverted? 1 Evan Hadingham, Early Man and the Cosmos, London, William Heinemann, 1983, p. 234. 2 E.C.Krupp (ed.), In Search of Ancient Astronomers, London, Chatto and Windus, 1979, p. 37. 3 Roger Lewin, The Origins of Modern Humans, New York, Scientific American Library, 1993, pp. 150–4. 4 E.C.Krupp, Skywatchers, Shamans and Kings, New York, John Wiley, 1997, p. 13. 5 John B.Carlson, ‘Rise and Fall of the City of the Gods’, Archaeology, vol. 46, no. 6, November/December 1993, pp. 38–69. 6 Anthony F.Aveni in Krupp (ed.), Skywatchers, Shamans and Kings, Chapter V. 7 Elizabeth Chesley Batty, ‘Archaeoastronomy and Ethnoastronomy So Far’, Current Anthropology, vol. 14, no. 4, October 1973, pp. 389–431. 8 Joseph Needham, Science and Civilization in China, Cambridge (14 vols), 1959, vol. 3, pp. 459–60. 9 Richard Stephenson and Kevin Yau, ‘Oriental Tales of Halley’s Comet’, New Scientist, vol. 103, no. 1423, 24 September 1984, pp. 30–2. 10 Chinese Astronomy, no. 1, 1977, pp. 197–200. 11 Arthur Koestler, The Sleepwalkers, London, Hutchinson, 1959, p. 13. 12 Lawrence S.Lerner and Edward S.Gosselin, ‘Galileo and the Spectre of Bruno’, Scientific American, vol. 255, no. 3, November 1986, pp. 116–23. 13 Shorter Oxford Dictionary, Oxford, 1950 (2 vols), vol. 2, p. 2002. 14 For a helpful layman’s overview, see Dennis Overbye, ‘The Universe. Is Ours Only One of Many?’, International Herald Tribune, 31 October 2002. 15 Charles Shaar Murray and Mike Margusee, ‘End of the Trek’, Prospect, no. 66, August/September 2001, pp. 34–9. 16 John Gribbin and Stephen Plagemann, The Jupiter Effect, London, Macmillan, 1974, p. 116. 17 Martin Walker, The Guardian, 4 February 1987. 18 C.G.Jung, Memories, Dreams, Reflections, London, Penguin Books, 1983, pp. 239, 354–5 and 366. 19 Neville Brown, History and Climate Change: A Eurocentric Perspective, London, Taylor & Francis, 2001, pp. 90–2. 20 Patricia M.Mische, Star Wars and the State of our Souls, Minneapolis, Winston Press, 1985, p. 130. 21 ‘“New” Strategic Command Could Assume Broader Roles’, Aviation Week, vol. 157, no. 16, 14 October 2002, p. 63.

286 NOTES

22 Missile Defense: A Public Discussion Paper, http://www.mod.uk/issues/ cooperation/missile defence/intro.htm 23 Project Air Force, Space Weapons, Earth Wars, Santa Monica, Rand Corporation, 1999. 24 Aviation Week and Space Technology, vol. 143, no. 4, 24 July 1995, p. 15. 25 Henry F.Cooper, ‘To Build an Affordable Shield’, Orbis, vol. 39, no. 1, Winter 1995, pp. 85–99. 26 Edward Teller, Better a Shield than a Sword, New York, Free Press, 1987, p. 19. 27 Project Air Force, Space Weapons, Earth Wars, p. 28. 28 Ibid., pp. 126–30. 29 Strategic Survey, 1998/9, London, International Institute for Strategic Studies, May 1999, p. 45. 30 Geoffrey Forden, ‘Laser Defenses: What if They Work?’, Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, vol. 58, no. 5, September/October 2002, pp. 49–53. 31 Ibid. 32 Nelson C.Maynard, ‘Space Weather Prediction’, Reviews of Geophysics, vol. 33, no. 2, July 1995, Supplement pp. 547–57. 33 Henry Rishbeth and Mark Chilverd, ‘Long-term Change in the Upper Atmosphere’, Astronomy and Geophysics, vol. 40, issue 3, June 1999, pp. 26–8. 34 Hans Binnendijk and George Stewart, Toward Missile Defenses from the Sea’, The Washington Quarterly, vol. 25, no. 2, Summer 2002, pp. 193–206. 35 Gerold Yonas, ‘The Strategic Defense Initiative’, Daedalus, vol. 114, no. 2, April 1985, pp. 73–90. 36 Aviation Week and Space Technology, vol. 150, no. 1, 4 January 1999, p. 51. 37 Dave Dooling, ‘Space Sentries’, IEEE Spectrum, vol. 34, no. 9, September 1997, pp. 50–9. 38 Ibid. 39 Neville Brown (ed.), American Missile Defence. Views from China and Europe, Oxford, Oxford Research Group, May 2000. 40 Amy F.Woolf, National Missile Defense: Russia’s Reaction, Washington DC, Congressional Research Service, June 2002, pp. 6–10. 41 Douglas J.Feith quoted in Aviation Week and Space Technology, vol. 155, no. 5, 30 July 2001, p. 26. 42 Theodore A.Postol, ‘The Target is Russia’, Bulletin of Atomic Scientists, vol. 56, no. 2, March/April 2000, pp. 31–46. 43 Quoted in Michael Krepan, ‘Lost in Space. The Misguided Drive toward AntiSatellite Weapons’, Foreign Affairs, vol. 80, no. 3, May/June 2001, pp. 3–8. 44 G.D.Quartly, T.H.Guymer, M.A.Stokesz, K.G.Birch and C.E.Jones, ‘Measuring Rainfall at Sea, Part 2—Spaceborne Sensors’, Weather, vol. 57, no. 2, October 2002, pp. 363–70. 45 Frank Morring, ‘Orbiting Gravity Mappers Might Spot Oil Fields’, Aviation Week and Space Technology, vol. 156, no. 7, 4 March 2002, pp. 56–8.

NOTES 287

11 Pax Atlantica? 1 This chapter is, in some measure, a revision of an analysis that first appeared in the October 2001 edition of the Naval Review. 2 H.G.Wells, Anticipations, London, Chapman and Hall, 1902. 3 R.A.Beck, ‘Climate, Liberalism and Intolerance’, Weather, vol. 48, no. 2, February 1993, pp. 63–4. 4 Ian Traynor, The Guardian, 9 November 2001. 5 ‘A Global Euro?’, The Economist, vol. 360, no. 8232, 26 July 2001, p. 78. 6 Norman Stone, ‘The Ottoman Empire’, The Spectator, vol. 287, no. 9041, 17 November 2001, p. 78. 7 Valéry Giscard d’Estaing, ‘The Two Europes, East and West’, International Affairs, vol. 65, no. 4, Autumn 1989, pp. 653–8. 8 See the author’s New Strategy Through Space, Leicester, Leicester University Press, 1990, pp. 16–17. 9 Neville Brown, ‘The Weather for Overlord’, The Journal of Meteorology, vol. 19, no. 189, May/June 1994, pp. 141–9. 10 Gertram Suide, ‘Clausewitz in US and German Doctrine’, Military Review, vol. LXVI, no. 5, June 1986, pp. 39–47. 11 Will Hutton, ‘If Europe Takes on Too Much We Shall All Lose’, The Observer, 9 December 2001. 12 Ralf Dahrendorf, ‘Can European Democracy Survive Globalisation?’, The National Interest, No. 6, Fall 2001, pp. 17–22. 13 United Nations Statistical Yearbook, 1997, New York, United Nations, 2000, Table 66. 14 ‘Defence Survey’, The Economist, 20 July 2002, p. 10. 15 ‘Taking on Japan Inc.’, Time, vol. 127, no. 20, 19 May 1986, pp. 52–7. 16 The Washington Times, 23 May 1986. 17 ‘Europe: Stealth’, Jane’s Defence Weekly, vol. 35, no. 25, 20 June 2001, pp. 68– 73. 18 Quoted in Jane’s Defence Weekly, vol. 35, no. 17, 25 April 2001, p. 18. 19 ‘Europe Seeks Global Leadership in Aeronautics’, Aviation Week and Space Technology, vol. 154, no. 6, 5 February 2001, pp. 30–1. 20 Peter Bond, ‘ESA’s Next Generation’, Astronomy and Geophysics, vol. 41, issue 6, December 2000, pp. 27–9. 21 ‘Thanks to NASA: Airbus’, Flight International, vol. 132, no. 4077, 29 August 1987, p. 1. 22 W.D.White, US Tactical Air Power, Washington DC, Brookings Institution, 1974, fig. 4.2. 23 Martin Lundmark, ‘The TransAtlantic Defense Industry Market: Future Modes of Integration’, Breakthroughs, vol. XI, no. 3, Spring 2002, pp. 11–21.

12 Arms in moderation 1 Donald H.Rumsfeld, ‘Transforming the Military’, Foreign Affairs, vol. 81, no. 3, May/June 2002, pp. 20–32. 2 Sunday Times Insight Team, Insight on the Middle East, London, André Deutsch, 1975, p. 110.

288 NOTES

3 Andrew Gimson, ‘Hoon: We Have to Find those Weapons’, The Spectator, vol. 292, no. 9117, 3 May 2003, pp. 18–19. 4 ‘Bliar?’, The Economist, vol. 367, no. 8327, 7 June 2003, p. 9. 5 ‘Secret NRO Recons for Iraqi Threats’, Aviation Week and Space Technology, vol. 157, no. 12, 16 September 2002, pp. 23–6. 6 Lecture by Douglas MacEachin on ‘What We Knew’, London; RUSI, 19 February 2002. 7 Amatzia Baram, The Guardian, 3 April 2003. 8 Michael Eisenstadt and Kenneth M.Pollack, ‘Armies of Snow and Armies of Sand, The Impact of Soviet Military Doctrine on Arab Militaries’, The Middle East Journal, vol. 55, no. 4, Autumn 2001, pp. 549–75. 9 ‘The Engines of Lilliput’, Economist Technology Quarterly, 16 March 2002, pp. 37–8. 10 Philip Sen, ‘More than Meets the Eye’, Jane’s Navy International, vol. 107, no. 3, April 2002, pp. 12–20. 11 Bill Sweetman and Nick Cook, ‘Hidden Agenda’, Jane’s Defence Weekly, vol. 35, no. 25, 20 June 2001, pp. 61–5. 12 David Chandler, The Campaigns of Napoleon, London, Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1967, p. 1087. 13 John A.Gentry, ‘Doomed to Fail: America’s Blind Faith in Technology’, Parameters, vol. XXXII, no. 4, Winter 2002–3, pp. 88–102. 14 Rumsfeld, ‘Transforming the Military’. 15 The Naval Review, vol. 91, no. 1, February 2003, pp. 74–5. 16 For a fuller discussion of issues here aired, see the author’s The Future of Air Power, London, Croom Helm, 1986. 17 J.F.C.Fuller, On Future Warfare, London, Sifton Praed, 1928, p. 202. 18 Kenneth Munson (ed.), Jane’s Unmanned Aerial Vehicles and Targets, Coulsdon, Jane’s Information Group, 1995, Foreword. 19 Robert Wall, ‘Bulking Up’, Aviation Week and Space Technology, vol. 159, no. 5, 4 August 2003, pp. 22–3. 20 Dennis McGinn, ‘Why the Aircraft Carrier is Still a Worthwhile National Asset’, Jane’s Defence Weekly, vol. 35, no. 25, 20 June 2001, p. 42. 21 The Future of A ir Power, pp. 208–11. 22 ‘Power for the Oceans’, a paper delivered by Dr Julia King at the Maritime World 2025 conference at the University of Greenwich, April 2002. 23 Jared M.Diamond, ‘The Earliest Horsemen’, Nature, vol. 350, no. 6416, 2 March 1991, pp. 275–6. 24 M.P.Manson, Guns, Mortars and Rockets, London, Brassey’s, 1997, pp. 52–3. 25 Dr Alice Hills, ‘Can We Fight in Cities?’, The RUSI Journal, vol. 146, no. 5, October 2001, pp. 6–10. 26 Richard Danzig interviewed in Jane’s Defence Weekly, vol. 34, no. 17, 25 October 2000, p. 32. 27 Richard Dowden, ‘The Brits Really Are Superior’, New Statesman, 28 April 2003, p. 21. 28 William Douglas Home, Half-Term Report, London, Quality Books, 1955, p. 145. 29 For an outline of this exercise, see Evan Luard (ed.), First Steps to Disarmament, London, Thames and Hudson, 1965, Chapter 9.

NOTES 289

30 David Hambling, ‘Star Wars Hits the Streets’, New Scientist, 12 October 2002, www.newscientist.com. 31 Malcolm Dando in Brassey’s Defence Yearbook, London, Centre for Defence Studies, 1996, Chapter 22. 32 Alternative Technologies to Replace Anti-Personnel Land-Mines, Washington DC, National Academy Press, 2001, pp. 15–17. 33 Evan Hadingham, Early Man and the Cosmos, London, William Heinemann, 1983, pp. 92–5. 34 Kevin McLaughlin, ‘Would Space-based Defenses Improve Security?’, The Washington Quarterly, vol. 25, no. 3, Summer 2002, pp. 177–91. 35 John B.Sheldon, ‘Space as the Fourth Environment’, RUSI Journal, vol. 144, no. 5, October 1999, pp. 52–6 and 88. 36 Mike Moore, ‘Unintended Consequences’, Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, vol. 56, no. 1, January/February 2000, pp. 58–60. 37 Richard Preston, The Demon in the Freezer, London, Headline, 2002, pp. 95–7. 38 See the author’s The Fundamental Issues Study within the British BMD Review, Oxford, Mansfield College, February 1998, pp. 71–2. 39 For a creditable exception see Dennis M.Gormley, Dealing with the Threat from Cruise Missiles, Adelphi Paper 339, London, IISS, 2001, Chapter 4. 40 David Appell, ‘Ground below Zero’, Scientific American, vol. 287, no. 1, July 2002, pp. 9–10. 41 Kenneth N.Waltz, ‘Nuclear Myths and Political Realities’, American Political Science Review, vol. 84, no. 3, September 1990, pp. 731–45. 42 Scott D.Sagan and Kenneth N.Waltz, The Spread of Nuclear Weapons, New York, W.W. Norton, p. 150. 43 Jaswent Singh, ‘Against Nuclear Apartheid’, Foreign Affairs, vol. 77, no. 5, September-October 1998, pp. 41–51. 44 Nayan Chandra, ‘The Perils of Power’, Far Eastern Economic Review, vol. 162, no. 5, 4 February 1999, pp. 10–17. 45 For a fuller account, see the author’s The Strategic Revolution, London, Brassey’s 1992, pp. 132–6. 46 Peter Scott, Observations on Wildlife, Oxford, Phaidon, 1980, pp. 73–81. 47 Supplement to Oxford English Dictionary (4 vols), Oxford, 1976, vol. 2, p. 120. 48 Edward Teller and Albert L.Latter, Our Nuclear Future…Facts, Dangers and Opportunities, London, Secker and Warburg, 1958, p. 167. 49 New York Times translation of Andrei D.Sakharov, Progress, Co-existence and Intellectual Freedom, New York, New York Times Book Service, 1968, p. 49.

13 Planetary internationalism 1 See the author’s ‘Underdevelopment as a Threat to World Peace’, International Affairs, vol. 47, no. 2, April 1971, pp. 327–39. 2 Survival, vol. XXXI, no. 6, November/December 1989. 3 Stefan Elbe, Strategic Implications of HIV/AIDS, Adelphi Paper 357, London, International Institute for Strategic Studies, 2003.

290 NOTES

4 Thomas S.Kuhn, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, Chicago, University of Chicago, 1972, p. 68. 5 Thomas Kuhn, ‘Second Thoughts on Paradigms’, in Frederick Suppe (ed.), The Structure of Scientific Theories, Urbano, 1977, pp. 459–82. 6 Colin S.Gray, Strategic Studies. A Critical Assessment, London, 1982, p. 4. 7 Robert T.Watson (ed.), Climate Change 2001: Synthesis Report, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, for IPCC, 2001, Fig. 20. 8 Paul G.Falkowski, ‘The Ocean’s Invisible Forest’, Scientific American, vol. 287, no. 2, August 2002, pp. 38–45. 9 For essentially the complete Kyoto text, see Alan J.Day (ed.), The Annual Register, 1997, Bethesda, Keesing’s, 1998, pp. 568–72. 10 Thomas C.Schelling, ‘What Makes Greenhouse Sense?’, Foreign Affairs, vol. 81, no. 3, May-June 2002, pp. 2–9. 11 Matthew Sturm, Donald K.Perovich and Mark C.Serreze, ‘Meltdown in the North, Scientific American, vol. 289, no. 4, October 2003, pp. 43–9. 12 Larry Swatuk, ‘The New Water Architecture in Southern Africa’, International Affairs, vol. 78, no. 3, July 2002, pp. 507–30. 13 Elbe, Strategic Implications of HIV/AIDS, Table 2. 14 Francis Spufford, I May Be Some Time. Ice and the English Imagination, London, Faber and Faber, 1996, p. 187. 15 Watson (ed.), Climate Change 2001, Table SPM-1. 16 Sir John Harman, ‘Putting the Environment at the Heart of Urban Renewal’, Environment Action, Autumn 2002, p. 3. 17 Andrew Light, ‘The Urban Blind Spot in Environmental Ethics’, Environmental Politics, vol. 10, no. 1, Spring 2001, pp. 7–35. 18 David Nicolson-Lord, ‘Make Our Cities Green’, New Statesman, 21 April 2003, pp. 32–3. 19 Frank Lloyd Wright, The Living City, New York, Horizon Press, 1968, p. 79. 20 C.A.Doxiades and J.G.Papaioannu, Ecumenopolis, The Inevitable City of the Future, New York, William Norton, 1974, Chapter 38. 21 Light, ‘The Urban Blind Spot in Environmental Ethics’, p. 31. 22 Thomas Schwartz and Kiron K.Skinner, ‘The Myth of the Democratic Peace’, Orbis, vol. 46, no. 1, Winter 2002, pp. 159–72. 23 Fareed Zakaria, The Future of Freedom, New York, W.W.Norton, 2003, p. 98. 24 Joshua Teitelbaum, ‘Duelling for Da’wa: State vs Society on the Saudi Internet’, Middle East Journal, vol. 56, no. 2, Spring 2002, pp. 223–39. 25 George Dyson, Project Orion, London, Allen Lane, 2002, pp. 276–7. 26 Thomas C.Schelling, Arms and Influence, Newhaven, Yale University Press, 1966, Chapter 2. 27 ‘Marsh Arabs Wary of Return to Ancient Past as the Wetlands Flood Again’, The Times, 1 August 2003. 28 Joanne Tompkins, ‘How US Strategic Policy is Changing China’s Nuclear Plans’, Arms Control Today, vol. 33, no. 1, January-February 2003, pp. 11–15. 29 ‘Russia’s Revamped Space Forces Goes Operational’, Jane’s Defence Weekly, vol. 35, no. 25, 20 June 2001, p. 15. 30 See the author’s The Strategic Revolution, London, Brassey’s, pp. 172–4. 31 Dmitri Trenin, The End of Eurasia. Russia on the Border between Geopolitics and Globalization, Washington DC, Carnegie Endowment, 2002, p. 10.

NOTES 291

32 M.I.Budyko, A.B.Ronov, A.L.Yanshin, History of the Earth’s Atmosphere, Berlin, Springer-Verlag, 1985, pp. 125 and 130. 33 ‘Soft power’ is sometimes read as just cultural diplomacy. Here it refers to all nonmilitary means of international suasion. 34 Andrew Moravcsik, ‘Striking a New Transatlantic Bargain’, Foreign Affairs, vol. 82, no. 4, July-August 2003, pp. 74–89. 35 ‘Saudis Consider Nuclear Bomb’, The Guardian, 18 September 2003. 36 Robert S.Littwak, ‘The New Calculus of Pre-Emption’, Survival, vol. 44, no. 4, Winter 2002–3, pp. 53–71. 37 Common Security, London, Pan Books, 1982, Chapter 6, Sections 5 and 6. 38 D.S.Lewis (ed.), The Annual Register, 2002, Bethesda, Keesing’s, 2003, pp. 433– 46. 39 David Martin Jones and Michael L.R.Smith, ‘ASEAN’s Imitation Community’, Orbis, vol. 46, no. 1, Winter 2002, pp. 93–109. 40 David Soo, ‘Asian Space’, IIAS Newsletter, no. 30, March 2003, p. 46. 41 Arthur Koestler, The Sleepwalkers, London, 1959, p. 13. 42 E.W.Webster (trans.), The Works of Aristotle (11 vols), vol. III Meteorologia, Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1908, book 1, section 14. 43 E.g. Camillo Dresner (ed.), The Letters and Papers of Chaim Weizmann, Jerusalem, 1978, XV-Series A, pp. 404–8. 44 Albert Einstein, The World As I See It, London, Watts, 1940, pp. 96 and 105. 45 Nigel Calder, Einstein’s Universe, Harmondsworth, Penguin, 1979, Chapter 20. 46 Abraham Pais, Einstein Lived Here, Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1994, Chapter 19. 47 Hannah Arendt in Michael Selzer (ed.), Zionism Reconsidered, London, Macmillan, 1970, pp. 213–49. 48 Martin Gilbert, Winston S.Churchill, London, Heinemann, 1975, Chapters 31 to 33. 49 Ibid., p. 563. 50 David Knighton, ‘Water Fights’, The World Today, vol. 59, no. 7, July 2003, pp. 26–7. 51 Judith T.Kenny, ‘Claiming the High Ground: Theories of Imperial Authority and the British Hill Stations in India’, Political Geography, vol. 16, no. 8, 1997, pp. 655–73. 52 Peter Young, The Israeli Campaign 1967, London, William Kimber, 1967, pp. 100– 2. 53 Shlomo Avineri, ‘Murder in Zion’, World Today, vol. 51, no. 12, December 1995, pp. 226–7. 54 Aluf Benn, ‘The Last of the Patriarchs’, Foreign Affairs, vol. 81, no. 3, May-June 2002, pp. 64–78.

14 Strategy transcended 1 Timothy Garton Ash, ‘In the Terror Trap’, The Guardian, 17 October 2002. 2 Irene Khan quoted in The Independent, 29 May 2003. 3 David Cole, ‘Enemy Aliens’, Stanford Law Review. vol. 54, no. 5, May 2002, pp. 953–1004.

292 NOTES

4 Bulletin of Atomic Scientists, January/February 2003, p. 67. 5 ‘Unjust, Unwieldy and Un-American’, The Economist, vol. 368, no. 8332, 12 July 2003, p. 9. 6 Ruth Wedgwood, ‘Al Qaeda, Terrorism, and Military Commissions’, American Journal of International Law, vol. 96, no. 2, April 2002, pp. 328–37. 7 Philip B.Heyman, ‘Civil Liberties and Human Rights in the Aftermath of September 11’, Harvard Journal of Law and Public Policy, vol. 25, no. 2, Spring 2002, pp. 441–56. 8 Michael Hirsh, ‘The Great Technology Giveaway?’, Foreign Affairs, vol. 77, no. 5, September/October 1998, pp. 2–9. 9 Edward Teller, ‘Secret Stealing, Then and Now’, New York Times, 14 May 1999, p. 55. 10 New Scientist, vol. 175, no. 2361, 21 September 2002, p. 55. 11 New Scientist, vol. 177, no. 2387, 22 March 2003, p. 54. 12 As quoted in Frederick P.Hitz, ‘Unleashing the Rogue Elephant. September 11 and letting the CIA be the CIA’, Harvard Journal of Law and Public Policy, vol. 25, no. 2, Spring 2002, pp. 765–80. 13 ‘Ends, Means and Barbarity’, The Economist, vol. 367, no. 8306, 11 January 2003, pp. 21–3. 14 Christopher Coker, Humane Warfare, London, Routledge, 2001, pp. 74–7. 15 John Kelsay, ‘Al-Shaybani and the Islamic Law of War’, Journal of Military Ethics, vol. 2, no. 1, 2003, pp. 63–75. 16 Ronald Inglebert and Pippa Borris, ‘The True Clash of Civilizations’, Foreign Policy, March/April 2003, pp. 63–70. 17 Nayan Chandra, ‘The Tug of War for Asia’s Best Brains’, Far Eastern Economic Review, vol. 163, no. 45, 9 November 2000, pp. 18–43. 18 Akbar E.Torbat, ‘The Brain Drain from Iran to the United States’, Middle East Journal, vol. 56, no. 2, Spring 2002, pp. 272–95. 19 Samuel Huntington, The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of the World Order, London, Touchstone, 1998, p. 55. 20 Gavin Menzies, 1421, London, Bantam, 2002, p. 10. 21 Sonia Gandhi, Conflict and Co-existence, Oxford, Oxford Centre for Islamic Studies, 2002, p. 16. 22 The People, Press and Politics, New York, Times Mirror, 1987, Figs. 21 and 25. 23 Martin Walker, The Guardian, 4 February 1987. 24 C.G.Jung, Memories, Dreams, Reflections, London, Penguin, 1983, pp. 239, 354–5 and 366. 25 Kenneth Clark, Civilization, London, BBC Publications, 1971, p. 345. 26 Paul Wesson, ‘The Shape of the Universe’, Astronomy and Geophysics, vol. 43, issue 6, December 2002, pp. 6.13 to 6.16. 27 The terms ‘universe’ and ‘cosmos’ are almost interchangeable. However, people tend to use the former when being descriptive and the latter when addressing dynamics. 28 John D.Barrow, The New Scientist, vol. 175, no. 2259, 7 September 2002, p. 31. 29 Pascale Ehrenfreund and Karl N.Menten in Gerda Horneck and Christa Baumstark (eds), Astrobiology, the Quest for the Conditions of Life, Berlin, Springer, 2002, p. 7. 30 Baruch S.Blumberg in Horneck and Baumstark (eds), Astrobiology, p. 2.

NOTES 293

31 Chandra Wickramasinghe, ‘The Beginnings of Astrobiology’, International Journal of Astrobiology, vol. 1, issue 2, 2002, pp. 77–8. 32 Bob Mizon, ‘Restoring Dark Skies…’, Astronomy and Geophysics, vol. 42, issue 6, December 2001. 33 ‘In Praise of Amateurs’, The Economist, 29 April 2000. 34 Govert Schilling, ‘Giant Eyes of the Future’, Sky and Telescope, vol. 100, no. 2, August 2000, pp. 52–6. 35 Peter Marsh, The Space Business, Harmondsworth, Penguin, 1985, pp. 131–7. 36 For a review of the difficulties, see the author’s New Strategy Through Space, Leicester, Leicester University Press, 1990, pp. 111–12. 37 Jeffrey S.Kargel, ‘Metalliferous Asteroids as Potential Sources of Precious Metals’, Journal of Geophysical Research, vol. 99, no. E10, 25 October 1994, p. 21, 129–41. 38 ‘Hard Question for NASA: Can Space Stations Survive?’, Wall Street Journal, 5 February 2003. 39 ‘When Astronauts Refuse to Volunteer’, Nature, vol. 391, issue 6669, 19 February 1998, p. 737. 40 Tim Beardsley, ‘Science in the Sky’, Scientific American, vol. 274, no. 6, June 1996, pp. 36–42. 41 Richard Harding, Survival in Space, London, Routledge, 1989, pp. 194–5. 42 Ian A.Crawford, ‘Back to the Moon’, Astronomy and Geophysics, vol. 44, issue 2, April 2003, pp. 15–17. 43 Edward Teller, Better a Shield than a Sword, New York, Free Press, 1987, Chapter 23. 44 Gerard K.O’Neill, The High Frontier: Human Colonies in Space, New York, William Morrow, 1977, Chapter XII. 45 Freeman Dyson, Disturbing the Universe, New York, Harper & Row, 1979, Chapter 21. 46 Martin Rees, ‘Special Report: The Science of Eternity’, Prospect, issue 70, January 2002, pp. 50–4. 47 Justin Mullins, ‘Who Needs NASA?’, New Scientist, vol. 178, no. 2394, 10 May 2003, pp. 12–13. 48 Jonathan W.Campbell, ‘Using Lasers to Remove Orbital Debris’, Aerospace Power Journal, vol. XIV, no. 4, Winter 2000, pp. 90–2. 49 ‘Chinese Highlight World Space Congress’, Aviation Week and Space Technology, vol. 157, no. 16, 14 October 2002, p. 24. 50 Leonard Bertin, Nuclear Winter, Background Paper 3, Toronto, Canadian Institute for International Peace and Security, p. 1. 51 Report of the Task Force on Potentially Hazardous Near Earth Objects, Leicester, British National Space Centre, September 2000, p. 16. 52 Ibid., p. 20. 53 Ibid., p. 29. 54 Ibid., p. 25. 55 David Keys, Catastrophe, London, Century Books, 1999. 56 Alastair G.Dawson, Ice Age Earth, London, Routledge, 1992, Figure 10.7.

294 NOTES

Appendix A: Geodesy and Geophysics 1 E.g. the author’s New Strategy through Space, Leicester, Leicester University Press, 1990, Appendix A. 2 P.H.Borcherds, ‘Focussing a Coherent Beam of Light’, American Journal of Physics, no. 3916, June 1971, pp. 680–1.

Appendix B: Exotic technologies 1 Scientific American, vol. 285, no. 3, September 2001, pp. 66–75. 2 Justin Mullins, ‘Forbidden Zone’, New Scientist, vol. 175, no. 2360, 14 September 2002, pp. 34–7. 3 Marcus Chown, ‘Gamma Force’, New Scientist, vol. 64, no. 2193, 3 July 1999, pp. 42–5. 4 André Gsponer, ‘Superlaser Development in Germany’, Inesap Information Bulletin, no. 19, January 2002, p. 79. 5 Gerard A.Mourou and Donald Uinstater, ‘Extreme Light’, Scientific American, vol. 286, no. 5, May 2002, pp. 63–8. 6 Sir James Jeans, The Mysterious Universe, London, Penguin, 1937, pp. 89–90, (First published 1930).

Index

A10/A9 intercontinental rocket 127 ABL 91, 147, 152–2, 161, 163, 202 ABM treaty (1972) 26, 129, 130, 139, 162, 168, 186, 201 Abrahamson, James 133, 148 Abyssinia 96 academia 42; and BMD 143–2, 147 acid rain 80, 211 action-reaction tendency 40, 50, 71, 175, 207–19, 214, 215, 228; Iraq 63–7 Adams, Gerry 63 aerodynamics 92 aerospace industry 122–9, 181–6, 246, 255 Aerospace Power Journal 146, 147 Afghanistan 61, 175, 196; democracy 14, 25, 213–5; Soviet invasion 3, 18, 131; war on Taliban regime 4, 18–1, 22, 24– 7 Africa: poverty 77; regionalism 210; see also South Africa; Southern Africa African National Congress (ANC) 235 AIDS see HIV/AIDS Ailleret, Charles 39 air forces 6–7, 24, 191–4 Air Power Journal 146 Airborne Laser Laboratory (ALL) 152 airborne lasers 91, 147, 152–2, 161, 163, 202 Airborne Warning and Control System (AWACS) 237

Airbus consortium 182, 183–5 Akbar, Moghul Emperor 23 AL-IA 152–2 Al-Qaeda 18–1, 24, 54, 55, 63, 114, 115, 186, 196, 222, 236 Alanbrooke, Alan Francis Brooke, Viscount 207 Alaska 81 Albright, Madeleine 224 Algeria 18, 39 ALH 84001 244 alienation 73 ALL 152 American Bar Association 236 American Declaration of Independence (1776) 48 American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics 249 American Physical Society 135, 169 Amnesty International 232 Anglo-American Special Relationship 59– 4, 179 anthrax 21, 98, 100, 102, 103 anthropology of war 36 Anti-Ballistic Missile treaty (1972) 26, 129, 130, 139, 162, 168, 186, 201 anti-personnel landmines 198–10 Anti-Satellite (ASAT) missiles 166, 167 Anti-Submarine Warfare (ASW) 131 Apartheid: Israel 230; South Africa 50, 99 Apollo programme 159, 246 Arab-Israeli War (1973) 131 Arab States: and Afghanistan 22; 295

296 INDEX

and Iraq 65 Arabian peninsula 17–18 Arafat, Yasser 27, 230 Arctic basin 210–2 Arctic haze 211 Arendt, Hannah 49, 227, 231 Argentina 73, 190 Aristarchus of Samos 157 Aristotle 157, 226–8, 243 Armoured Fighting Vehicles 197 arms control 28, 30, 40, 186, 201, 237; internal 197–10, 216, 219 Arms Control Association 137 arms exports 237 arms races 40, 93, 95, 110, 132 Arrhenius, Svante 244 ASAT missiles 166, 167 assassination plots 238, 239 Assassins 55 Association of South-East Asian Nations (ASEAN) 225–7 Assyria 156 astrobiology 105, 243–6 astrology 158, 160 astronomy 156–8, 207, 242, 244–7, 263 astrophysics 159, 242–5 ASW 131 Atlantic Alliance 16, 36, 39–2, 67, 106, 142, 175, 178, 184, 185, 217, 223; technology gaps 4–5; see also NATO AUM Shinrikyo cult 96–2, 100, 241 Australia 37, 209–1 axis of evil 26, 59, 61 Azerbaijan 80 B-2/B-52 bombers 161, 193–5 B-29 Superfortresses 193 Baader-Meinhof movement 56 BAe Systems 184 Bahrain 198 Bali massacre 50, 54 Balkans 16, 26, 47 Ballistic Anti-Missile Boost Interceptor (BAMBI) 128

Ballistic Missile Defence (BMD) 40, 116, 117, 126–50, 161, 162–2, 175, 185, 202– 14; China 91, 92, 94, 95, 217; lack of rigour in development and evaluation 142–5; surface-based defence 91–6, 150–60 Ballistic Missile Defence Organization (BMDO) 143 Ballistic Missile Defense and US National Security 132–1 ballistic missiles 61, 116, 191; accuracy 119, 120–7; biowarfare 105; geodesy and geophysics 253–6; Iraq 59, 61; precision 122; propulsion 118; technological development 122, 123; trajectories 117–4 ballistic submarines 131 Bangladesh 75 Barak, Ehud 230 Barrés, Maurice 74 Barrow, John D. 292n28 Bashir-ud-Din, Mahmood, Sultan 114, 115 Basque insurgency 26, 75 Battle Management 133–2 Baucom, Donald 127, 132 beam projection 255–70 beam weapons 198, 201 Beedham, Brian 179 Begin, Menachem 228, 229 Belgium 108 Ben-Gurion, David 227, 229, 231 Benedict, Ruth 89 Bepi Colombo project 183 Berdal, Mats 207 Berlin, Isaiah 45 Berlin Wall, fall of 3 Bernal, J.D. 10 Bernal, Martin 156 Bhave, Vinoba 14 Big Bang 159, 243, 255 Biko, Steve 43–6 Bin Laden, Osama 15, 16, 18–1, 20, 22, 23, 24, 25, 50, 57, 94, 186, 196, 237

INDEX 297

Biological and Toxin Weapons Convention (BTWC) (1972) 100, 101, 106, 201 biotechnology 16, 101–9, 181, 237 bioweapons and biowarfare 30, 58, 61, 95, 98–11, 110; arms moderation 186, 189, 193, 200– 12, 203, 204; and global security 206, 214–6, 217, 220, 223; operational delivery 104–10; progress towards a Planetary Compact 231, 236, 238, 239 Birmingham University 257 Black Death 95 Black Fascism 44 Black Sea 80 Blackett, Patrick 38, 39 Blair, Tony 22, 26, 27, 61–4, 64, 206, 216 Blanco, Carrero 75 blinding 198; taboo against 154 Blix, Hans 63, 189 Bloodhound high-altitude surface-to-air missiles 148 BM/C3 133–2 BMD see Ballistic Missile Defence Boadicea 8 Boeing 152, 181, 183–5, 185, 237 Bofors 184 Bolton, John 61 Boost Phase Interception (BPI) 151, 152, 163, 164, 169 Boost Surveillance and Tracking Systems (BSTS) 134 border security 54, 220 Bosnia 18, 26 Botswana 210 Boushey, Honor 40 BPI 151, 152, 163, 164, 169 Bretton Woods system 79 Brezhnev, Leonid Ilyich 129 Brilliant Pebble mini-rockets 137, 139 Britain: arms moderation 192, 193, 195, 196–8, 203; astrology 160; BMD 126, 130, 137–6, 145, 161; cultural tradition 17–18;

and Europe 173, 174, 175, 176–8, 179, 180; global security 214, 220, 221; and insurgency 49, 233, 236; and Iraq 59–4, 63, 66, 187, 196; light pollution 245; and Middle East 228; missiles 118, 150; naval forces 193; nuclear facilities 108; progress towards Planetary Compact 233; social instability 73, 79; Strategic Revolution 6, 8, 17–18, 25–8; strategy 32, 37, 38; urban warfare and management 195, 196–8; and USA 59–4, 177, 179, 182, 183 British National Space Centre 251 Broad, William 143 Brodie, Bernard 39 Brown, Tina 275n11 Bruno, Giordano 157 Brzezinski, Zbigniew 30 BTWC 100, 101, 106, 201 bubonic plague 95, 102, 103 Buchan, Alastair 39 Budyko, Mikhail 218–30 Bulgaria 175, 176 Bull, Hedley 39 Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists 200 Bush (George Snr) administration 58, 138– 7, 151, 223 Bush, George W. 33 Bush (George W.) administration: arms moderation 201, 203; and China 27, 93; and Europe 175, 178; and global security 207, 222–5, 239, 242; and Iraq 57, 59–9; Israeli-Palestinian conflict 230–2; and Kyoto Protocol 88, 209–1; National Security Strategy statement (2002) 27–29; NMD 165, 169; Plowshare nuclear programme 108;

298 INDEX

response to September 11th attacks 20– 4, 23, 25, 26–9, 28, 43, 186, 222, 223, 233–7; and strategic pre-emption 140, 142; thermonuclear fusion and global warming 266; and torture 239 Butler, Richard 58, 106 Byron, George Gordon, Lord 250 Calvin, John 157 Cambodia 52, 156 Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament 37 Canada 27, 37, 209, 218, 219; exotic technologies 266 Cape Times, The 50 Capone, A1 51 Carbon 14 115 carbon filament black-out bombs 198 Carson, Rachel 42 Carter, Ashton 136 Carter, Jimmy 61 cascade lasing 262 Castillo, Manuel 54 cavalry 194, 195 Central America 12; cosmology 155, 156 CEP 4, 119, 120–7 Cesium 137 115 chaff 130, 151 Chandler, David 191 chaos theory 84 Chechnya 18, 26, 54, 237 Chemical Oxygen Iodine Laser (COIL) 152–1 chemical warfare 57–58, 61, 95–2, 197, 199, 203, 215 Chen, Shui-bian 110 Cheney, Dick 178 Chiang Kai-shek 99 China 141, 169, 240; arms moderation 200; astronomy 156; biowarfare 100; climate change 84; Cultural Revolution 94, 130, 131, 142; and global security 216–8, 224;

Great Leap Forward 33, 54, 142; insurgency 44–7, 47, 56, 197; landmines 198, 199; military domain 91–7, 237; missiles 118, 119, 122, 123, 167; nuclear facilities 109, 110; political thought 13, 14; population growth as cause of war 30; relations with Bush administration 27, 93; science and technology 102, 239, 261, 266; social and economic trends 77, 78, 88, 91–9, 217; Space weaponization 168; Spaceflight 246, 247, 250; strategy 33 Chirac, Jacques 64, 179, 182 cholera 104 Chou En Lai 98 Christian Marxian liberation movements 13 Church, Frank 238 Churchill, Sir Winston 173, 207, 228, 232 CIA 18, 140, 189, 223 Circular Error Probability (CEP) 4, 119, 120–7 cities see urban… civil use of technology 41, 169–9, 181, 182, 185, 192, 237, 249 civilian casualties 6, 7, 24, 197, 239 Clark, Lord Kenneth 242 Clarke, Arthur C. 250 clash of civilizations thesis 239–2 Clausewitz, Karl von 39, 145, 177 climate change 260; Afghanistan 19–2; Communism and 10–11; Europe 180, 219; and global security 206, 208–23, 218– 30, 226; Iraq 66; neo-Marxism 12–13; nuclear power 108; and social instability 74, 79–4, 81–8, 86–1; and strategy 31–5;

INDEX 299

US National Security Strategy statement (2002) 27, 28; see also global warming Clinton, Bill 54 Clinton administration 59, 139–8, 142, 147, 175, 199, 213, 221, 230 Close Air Support 4 cluster bombs 198 Cohen, Saul 75 Cohen, William 92 Cohn, Norman 17 Colbert, Jean 39 Cold War 31, 36, 48, 80, 92, 138, 160, 190, 203; cruise missiles 116; insurgency 56; landmines 198–10; liberty 232; military cultures 177; poison gases 96; Strategic Revolution 2, 13, 21; technology gaps 106 Cole, G.D.H. 74 Cole (USS), attack on 19, 196 Coleridge, Samuel Taylor 158 Commission to Assess the Ballistic Missile Threat to the United States 118, 141 Commission to Assess US National Security Space Management and Organization 168 Communism 141, 214, 223; Afghanistan 20; conduct of war 8; insurgency 47, 53, 55; Strategic Revolution 8, 9–14 community 206, 212, 213, 252 computerized multisensing 190 conformity 72 Congo 26 consensus 208 consumerism 78 Convention on the Rescue of Astronauts (1968) 261 Cooper, Henry 162–1 Copernicus, Nicolaus, Copernicanism 156, 157–6, 207, 226 cosmology 155–7, 199–11, 242 Council for Foreign Relations 27

counter-insurgency 7, 9, 42, 49–8, 93, 222, 237 criminality 231; and insurgency 51–4, 56; and nuclear power 115; social instability 73, 214 Croatia 176 cruise-cum-ballistic missiles 116, 149 cruise missiles 116–3, 126, 128, 132, 161, 191, 193; accuracy 119, 120; biowarfare 105; defence against 126–4, 202; precision 122; surface-based defence 149–8; technological development 122, 123 Cuba 222 Cuban Missile Crisis (1962) 2, 54, 128 cults 241–4 cultural aggression 240 culture 239; dialogue between 240–4; differences 16–18; disaster in Iraq 65–9, 216; dot.com revolution 71–6 cybercrime 56 cyberwar 215 cynicism 22, 231 Cyprus 174, 175; insurgency 46–9, 49 Czech Republic 174, 175 Czechoslovakia 71, 173 Dalyell, Tam 238 Dangerfield, George 70–4 Daniken, Erich von 160 DARPA 183, 184 Davy Crockett mortars 145 DD-21 Land Attack Destroyer 193 de Gaulle, Charles 37, 47 decoys 120, 130, 134, 151, 165–4 Defence of Japan 92 Defensive Technologies Study 133 Delft University of Technology 261 Delors, Jacques 176, 179 Delta launch rockets 166 democracy 14, 27, 28–1, 70;

300 INDEX

Afghanistan 14, 25, 213–5; and global security 213–5, 215, 216, 219, 222; progress towards a Planetary Compact 236–8, 239, 239 demography see population growth Descartes, René 156, 226 developing countries: arms moderation 203; democracy 214; and insurgency 56; and Kyoto Protocol 210, 221; nuclear weapons 140–9; political thought 13–14; social and economic trends 74–9, 77–2, 226; and surface-based defence 151 DF-4 ICBM/IRBM 119 DF-5 ICBM 119 DF-31 ICBM 91 Dictionary of Military Terms (JCOS) 49 Directed Energy Weapons (DEW) 132, 135–4, 162 Djilas, Milovan 44 Doxiades, C.A. 290n20 Drexler, K.Eric 261 drugs 206, 212 Durkheim, Émile 74 Durrell, Lawrence 46 Dyson, Freeman 136, 248 E-bombs 198 EADS 181, 182, 183, 185 Eaker, Ira 6 Earth Summit (Rio de Janeiro, 1992) 76 East Asia 70, 241; biotechnology 101–7; economy 77, 212; missiles 122; social and economic trends 88–9; see also individual countries East Berlin peace rally (1951) x–xiii, 207 East Timor 14, 212 Eastern Europe 36 Eastport Study Group 133, 134 ebola virus 103–9 ecology 184, 186;

Communism and 10–11; crisis in 19, 80–7, 87–2; disregarded by strategists 36, 42, 205; EU 176; and global security 206, 207, 210–3, 216, 219; progress towards a Planetary Compact 239, 239; social instability 71, 76, 95; Strategic Revolution 12–13, 16, 19–2, 28 Economic Co-operation Administration (ECA) 35 economic growth: China 93–8; Japan 89–5; limits to 11, 76–88, 213 economic sanctions 7, 19; Iraq 62, 67 Economist 22 economy: disregarded by strategic studies 37; EU 179–1, 181; and global insecurity 37, 207; and global warming 82; and social instability 70, 76–88, 89–5, 93–8; and Strategic Revolution 4, 11, 14, 27 Eden, Sir Anthony 223 education 27 Egypt, ancient, astronomy 156–5 Egypt, modern 187, 240; biowarfare 100; chemical weapons 96; nuclear facilities 108 Einstein, Albert 10, 14, 226–8, 231, 242, 243, 255, 262 Eisenhower, Dwight L. 126, 177 Eisenhower administration 27, 41, 147, 187, 223 electromagnetic energy 255–70 ElectroMagnetic Launchers 135, 136–5 Electromagnetic Pulse (EMP) 164–3 Electronic Warfare (EW) 4 elites 222 Ellis, James 161 End of History thesis 15–16 energy resources 85;

INDEX 301

1973 crisis 79, 131 Engels, Friedrich 45 Enlightenment 158, 173 Enthoven, Alain 40 environment see ecology EOKA 46, 49, 175 Erdogan, Recep Tayyip 175 Ericsson 92 ESA see European Space Agency Estonia 174, 198 ETA 75 ethical issues 7, 9, 36, 195, 200 ethnic cleansing 46, 228 ethnicity 20–3, 214 euro currency 179–1 Eurocentrism 173 Europe 70; cosmology/astronomy 156–8; cultural tradition 16–17; Strategic Revolution 4–5, 16, 27; see also Atlantic Alliance; European Union; NATO European Central Bank 180 European Convention on Human Rights 233 European court of human rights 233 European Economic Community see European Union European Space Agency 245, 246; Cornerstone projects 183 European Union (EU) 173–96; economic growth 77; and global security 219–3; military domain 220–2; science and technology 221, 261, 266; Space 251 EW 4 Exoatmospheric Kill Vehicle (EKV) 146 Exxon Valdeez disaster (1989) 81 Falun Gong 56, 94 Fascism 30, 55, 70, 75–76, 94, 128, 141– 50, 154, 214, 223, 237, 248 FBI 235 federalism 173 Feith, Douglas 61

Feynman, Richard 260 Finland 23, 198 Firearms, personal 206, 212 First Crusade 84 fishing 169, 211 Fletcher, James 133 Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) 169 Forden, Geoffrey 284nn7, 7 France: and Atlantic Alliance 177, 181; civil uses of space 170; global security 220, 221; and Iraq 57, 63, 64; missiles 118, 136, 150; nuclear power 108, 140; social instability 71; strategy 38–1, 47 Franco, Francisco 75 Frankfurt School 11–13 Franks, Tommy 59 Franz-Ferdinand, Archduke of Austria 47 Fraunhofer, Joseph von 257 Free Electron Laser 164 free trade 28, 29, 77, 177, 184, 185, 226 Freedman, Sir Lawrence 53 freedom 22, 207 Freud, Sigmund 11 Friedberg, Aaron 168 Froissart, Jean 95, 103 Fromm, Erich 11 Fukuyama, Francis 15–16 Fuller, J.F.C. 191 fundamentalism 23–6, 157, 241 Fusion Energy Foundation 266 G7 122 G8 Summits 224 Gadafi, Muammar Al 14 Gaffney, Frank 138 Gaia project 183 Galbraith, J.K. 74 Galileo 156, 157–6, 226 Gallois, Pierre 39 Galosh BMD system 130 gamma-ray bursters 245 gamma-ray lasers 262

302 INDEX

Gandhi, Mahatma 14, 23 Gaulle, Charles de see de Gaulle gender equality 239 General Dynamics 152 Genetic Modification 101, 102, 103, 105, 206, 214–6 genocide 52 geodesy 175, 253–71 geographical factors 42, 193, 195 geophysics 252, 253–71 Georgia 176 Germany 142; and Atlantic Alliance 182, 183; civil uses of space 169; and EU 173, 176; and Iraq 63; missiles 119, 120–7, 126, 127, 150; nuclear power 108; use of poison gases 95–1 Ghauri missile 141 Giscard d’Estaing, Valéry 175, 180 Global Engagement: A Vision for the 21st Century 161 Global Marshall Plan 36 Global Missile Defence (GMD) 139 Global Positioning System (GPS) 120, 201 Global Protection Against Limited Strikes (GPALS) 138, 151 global warming 10, 81–7, 84, 209–1, 219, 221, 223, 231, 244, 266; scepticism about 86–1; see also greenhouse gases globalization 206, 231; Afghan backlash 20; Iraqi challenge 61; and social instability 76, 77, 88 Glubb, Sir John 275n18 Goalkeeper automatic cannon 150 Goering, Hermann Wilhelm 7 Gorbachev, Mikhail 2–3, 211 Gore, Albert 36, 139, 147 Gowing, Margaret 39 GPS 120, 201 Grand Strategy 25–9, 47, 54, 64, 186, 219 Grand Unified Theorem (GUT) 243 Gray, John 76 Greece, ancient 95, 207, 239; astronomy 156–5

Greece, modern: democracy 14; and EU 175; social instability 70; state-rebuilding 35 greenhouse gases 81, 86, 113, 205, 209–1, 223, 260; see also global warming Greenpeace 81 Grenada 131 Gribbin, John 160 Grivas, George 46 Grotius, Hugh 95 Ground-Based Interceptors (GBI) 139 Guantanamo Bay detainees 22, 186, 223, 235–7, 239 Guatemala 75 guerrilla warfare see insurgency Guevara, Ernesto (Che) 43 Gulf War (1991) 8, 67, 117–4, 145 Gullickson, Dick 143 Gurkhas 8 gypsies 176 Ha’aretz 230 Hague Convention (1899) 95 Haifa Congress of Palestine Arabs 228 Haiti 75 Halberstam, David 42 Haldane, J.B.S. 10, 99 Halley, Sir Edmund 158, 250 happiness, quest for 71 Harding, Warren G. 224 Harman, Sir John 289n16 Harmel, Pierre 39 Harun ar-Rashid, Abbasid caliph 65–8 Hayward, Keith 281n15 health development 27 Heath, Edward 220 hedonism 72 Hegel, G.W.F. 10, 15 Heisenberg, Werner 255 helicopters 191–3, 195 Helsinki Final Act (1975) 131 Hezbollah 51, 55 High Energy Lasers (HEL) 265

INDEX 303

High Power Microwave (HPM) jamming 192 Himmler, Heinrich 45 Hindu miltancy 23, 55 Hiroshima bomb 6, 114 Hispanics 20–3 Hiss, Alger 208 Hitler, Adolf 6, 7, 23, 29, 31, 61, 126, 142, 232 HIV/AIDS 44, 103, 186, 207, 210 Ho Chi Minh trail 53, 55 Hoffman, Fred 133 holism 205 Home, William Douglas 197 Homeland Defence and Security 21, 54, 128, 129, 130, 139, 148, 220, 236 Honduras 75 Hong Kong 77, 93 Hoon, Geoffrey 187 Hoover, J.Edgar 235 Howe, Sir Geoffrey 138 Hoyle, Sir Fred 244 Hughes, Sarah 82 Human Genome Project 102, 103 human rights 22, 62, 93, 131, 186, 217 humanitarian action 25 Hume, David 173 Hungary 174 hunger-strikes 56 Huntford, Roland 72, 86 Huntington, Samuel 39, 239–2 Hurd, Douglas 26 Hussein, Saddam 17, 57–67, 99, 142, 145, 187–9, 190, 216 Hutton, Will 287n11 Hutton Enquiry 62, 214 HY-2 anti-shipping missiles 123 Hyams, Edward 12 hydrogen fluoride pulsed laser 163 hypersonic bombers 201 hypersonic cruise missiles 150, 193 IAEA 109, 110, 204 ICBMs 79, 91, 117, 118, 119, 120, 122, 123, 128, 128, 130, 131, 136, 148, 161, 163, 168, 189, 202, 217 ice-albedo feedback 211, 260

Iceland 239 IISS 36, 207 Iklé, Fred 138 Independent Commission on Disarmament and Security Issues (1982) 225 India 62, 77, 95, 241; astrology 160; civil uses of space 171; missiles 118, 150; nuclear facilities 108; nuclear weapons 204–16; political thought 14; science and technology 239, 261; strategy 38; USA and 27 Indo-China 2, 8, 39, 128 Indonesia 23, 31, 197, 225; environment and climate change 211–3 Inertial Confinement Fusion (ICF) 265, 266 Inertial Navigation Systems (INS) 119, 120 Infantry Fighting Vehicles (IFVs) 195 information: biodata 100–6; exchange of 181, 231–4, 236, 239; explosion of 8, 22, 28, 214; fear of 10, 214; military domain 4, 59–2, 187–9, 190– 2; retrieval via Space 169–9, 248 information technology (IT) 3, 4, 4–5, 55, 56, 170, 212 INS 119, 120 Institute for Strategic Studies (ISS) 36, 39, 197 insurgency 18, 26–9, 42, 43–56, 63, 231, 241; and biowarfare 100, 186, 200, 223, 238; China 44–7, 47, 56, 93, 94, 197; and criminality 51–4, 56; experience of Vietnam 52–6; and nuclear weapons 113–21; outlook for 54–8; Palestinian 228, 230; revolutionary leaders 43–6; semantics of terror 48–3;

304 INDEX

and social instability 74, 75–76, 78, 87, 214; see also counter-insurgency; war on terrorism Intercontinental Ballistic Missiles see ICBMs Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) 81–6, 83, 85, 86 Intermediate Nuclear Forces (INF) Agreement (1987) 122, 167 Intermediate-Range Ballistic Missiles (IRBMs) 117, 119, 123, 132 International Atomic Energy Authority (IAEA) 109, 110, 204 International Criminal Court 26 International Energy Agency 108 International Gamma Ray Astrophysics Laboratory (INTEGRAL) 245 international governance 25–8, 224; of space 249–2 International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis, Laxenburg 113 International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS) 36, 207 International Peace Research Institute, Stockholm 115, 182 International Red Cross 84 International Scientific Commission for the Investigation of the Facts Concerning Bacterial Warfare in Korea and China 99 International Space Station (ISS) 246, 247, 249 International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor (ITER) programme 266 Internet 3, 71–6, 73, 94, 101, 214, 231, 237, 239 intifada see Palestine, insurgency Inuit Circumpolar Conference (2002) 211 IPCC 81–6, 83, 85, 86 IRA 45–8, 49, 63–6 Iran 131, 190, 222, 237; astronomy 156; biowarfare 100; democracy 14; emigration 239; missiles 92, 118, 141; nuclear facilities 110, 220;

perceived as part of axis of evil 26, 59, 61 Iran-Iraq War 57–58, 96, 110, 145 Iraq 57–67, 175, 196, 198, 201; and global security 216, 220, 221, 222, 224; missiles 116, 117–4, 145–4, 150; nuclear facilties 140; perceived as part of axis of evil 26; Rashid Ali coup 240; regime change 58–68, 189–190, 216; WMDs 96, 99, 100, 106, 110, 187–9 IRBMs 117, 119, 123, 132 Islam 15, 55, 114, 239, 239 Ismail Khan 213–5 Israel 57, 62, 92; biotechnology 103; Entebbe hijack rescue 20; and global security 226–42; and insurgency 50; military domain 182, 190, 198, 237; military information 187; missiles and missile defence 122, 140, 145–4, 148, 153; political violence 238–50; social instability 70; strategy 41 Israeli-Palestinian conflict 28, 31, 50, 61, 216, 227–42; peace initiative 62, 64–7, 186, 206, 216, 219, 223–5, 230–2, 238, 241 Israeli-Palestinian partnership 241 ISS (Institute for Strategic Studies) 36, 39, 197 ISS (International Space Station) 246, 247, 249 Istanbul bombings (2003) 50 IT see information technology Italy 98; chemical weapons 96; civil uses of space 170; insurgency 51; social instability 73 Jane’s Information Group 192 Japan 10; biowarfare 98, 100;

INDEX 305

democracy 34–7, 214; ecology 81; and Kyoto Protocol 209–1; military domain 92, 122, 150; nuclear facilities 108–14, 111; Sarin attacks 96–2, 241; science and technology 4, 102, 182, 183, 239, 243, 260–3, 266; social and economic trends 73, 88–5; state-rebuilding 34–7 Johnson, Hewlett 98 Johnson (Lyndon B.) administration 52 Joint Strike Fighter 184 Jones, Paul 191 Jordan 22, 24, 56, 228 Judd, O’Dean 143 Jung, Carl Gustav 160, 242 just war 239 Kagan, Robert 221 Kahn, Herman 40, 128, 215, 250 Kahn, Irene 291n2 kamikaze campaigns 8–9 Kant, Immanuel 158–7, 213 Kashmir 27, 28 Kay, David 59 Kazakhstan 237 Kelly, David 62 Kennedy administration 21, 41–4, 52–6 Keynesianism 70 Khruschev, Nikita 13, 33, 54 Kim Il-sung 50, 142 Kim Jong-il 50–3, 142 Kinetic Energy Weapons (KEW) 135, 136– 5, 162 King’s College London, Department of War Studies 207 Kissinger, Henry 36, 39, 140 Kissinger Commission 36 Knorr, Klaus 39, 40 Koestler, Arthur 14, 156, 226 Kohl, Helmut 36 Koizumi, Junichiro 90, 91 Korean War 8, 31, 178, 193; biowarfare 98 Kosovo campaign (1999) 191, 192 Krupp, E.C. 156

Kublai Khan 88 Kuhn, Thomas 207 Kuwait 26, 220 Kyoto Protocol (1997) 26, 88, 209–1, 211, 219, 221, 259 Kyrgyzstan 213, 237 La Rouche, Lyndon 266 Lamb, Hubert 83 land-based multi-engined bombers 193–5 land forces 194–6, 196–8 landmines 198–10 Laplace, Pierre 31 lasers 135–4, 162, 163, 194–6, 198, 199, 249, 257, 261–5 Latin America 13, 36, 70 Latter, Albert 205 Latvia 174, 198 Lebanon 55, 229–1 Left 9–13, 22, 25–8, 71, 71; New 13, 205; see also Communism Lehman, John 138 Less Developed Countries 77–2, 203 Liberia 237 liberty 207, 216, 232–5 Libya 152, 222; WMDs 100, 140 Liddell Hart, Sir Basil 39 life expectancy 85 light pollution 245, 249 Lilienthal, David 34 Lindbergh, Charles 205 Lindh, Anna 72 Lindzen, Richard 86–1 Lithuania 174 Lloyd-George, David 205 Lockheed Martin 143, 163, 181 Lomborg, Bjørn 79, 86, 208 London Dumping Convention (1972) 112 Long-Range Strike systems 201 Louis XIV 39 Low, Sir David 29 Lowell, Percival 160 lunar calendars 155 Luther, Martin 2, 3, 157 Lysenko, T.D. 10

306 INDEX

MacArthur, Douglas 34, 35, 89 McCarthyism 20, 27, 40, 48, 99, 178, 208, 224, 235 McKibben, Bill 79, 80 McNamara, Robert 40, 53, 128, 130, 207 MAD 128, 131–40 Mafia 51 Magnetic Confinement Fusion (MCF) 265, 266 Mahan, Alfred Thayer 37–38 Main Battle Tanks (MBT) 4, 194–6, 197 Makarios III, Archbishop 46 Malaysia 225; nanoscience 261 Malta 174 Mandela, Nelson 36, 43 Mandela, Winnie 44 Mangold, Tom 99 Manichean world view 23–6, 26, 49, 186, 223 Manu Law 95 Mao Tse-Tung, Maoism 13, 14, 33, 44–7, 54, 142 Marat, Jean 158 Marighella, Carlos 56 Marquet, Louis 135 Mars, exploration 246–9, 248, 254 Marshall, George 35, 177, 207 Marshall Plan 32, 35–8; calls for new initiatives 36, 226 Marx, Karl, Marxism 10, 11, 42, 45, 72, 218–30 Marxism-Leninism see Communism Massive Ordnance Air Blast (MOAB) 198 Mayas 156 Mbeki, Thabo 44 MBTs 4, 194–6, 197 Medium-Range Ballistic Missiles (MRBMs) 117, 122, 132 Meir, Golda 229 Melancthon, Philip 157 microwave radiation 257 Middle East 36, 42, 128; climate change 84; see also Israeli-Palestinian conflict Middle East road map see IsraeliPalestinian conflict military domain:

arms moderation 186–205; Atlantic Alliance see NATO; attitudes to fire power 5; conduct of war 7–9; cultures xii, 144–3, 177, 196–8; human factors 24–7, 195–8; information 4, 59–2, 187–9, 190–2; and insurgency 54–7; pragmatism 6–7; tactical revolution 3–4, 9; technology 4–5, 9, 106, 122–9, 181–6, 187–9, 215, 262 millenarianism 16–17, 61, 80, 114, 266 millennium bug 17, 56 Mindanao 47–48 mini-rockets 137, 162 Minuteman ICBMs 122, 128 MIRVs 91, 122, 131, 132 Mische, Patricia 160–9 Missile Defence Agency (MDA) 143, 146, 147 Missile Technology Control Regime (MTCR) 122–9 missiles 9, 116–9, 192, 224; accuracy 119–7; precision 122–8; technology 122–9; see also Ballistic Missile Defence; ballistic missiles; cruise missiles Mitsubishi 181 Mongols 12, 88, 89 Montreal Protocol (1987) 259 Moon: cosmology 155; exploration 247, 248, 249, 251 Morocco 63, 176 mortars 145, 195 MOX fuel 107, 111 MRBMs 117, 122, 132 MTCR 122–9 Mugabe, Robert 62 multiculturalism 240–4 multinational coalitions 5, 22, 25–9 Multiple Independently targetable Re-entry Vehicles (MIRVs) 91, 122, 131, 132 Musharraf, Pervez 205

INDEX 307

Mutual Assured Destruction (MAD) 128, 131–40 MX land-based strategic missiles 136 Myanmar 198 Myrdal, Gunnar 54 Nadong 1 strategic missile 153 NAFTA 77 Nagasaki bomb 6, 107, 109, 113 nanosatellites 170 nanoscience/technology 4, 24, 79, 195, 237, 260–3 Napoleon I, Emperor of France 39 NASA 150, 159, 169, 184, 246–9 Nasser, Gamal Abdel 14, 215 Nasser, Kamel 44 nation-rebuilding see state-rebuilding National Missile Defence (NMD) 4, 22, 28, 136, 139, 146, 148, 161, 165, 169, 202, 217 NATO 21, 36, 37, 39, 106, 128, 132, 145, 176, 178, 196, 202, 217, 219, 220, 222; see also Atlantic Alliance natural missiles 250–4, 253 naval culture 191 naval forces 193–5, 196, 221; defence 150, 165 NAVSTAR satellites 120 Near Earth Objects (NEOs) 250–4, 253 Needham, Joseph 98–4 neoconservatism 61, 222–5 nerve gases 96–2 Netherlands technology 182, 183, 245 Neutral Particle Beams (NPB) 135–4 New Cold War 33 New Deal 33–6, 208 New Frontier administration see Kennedy administration New Labour 214 New Left 13, 205 New Scientist 238 New Statesman 45 New Zealand 209 Newsweek 50 Newton, Sir Isaac 156, 158, 226 Nicaragua 14, 131 Nidal, Abu 45

Nigerian civil war (1967–70) 31, 47 Nisbet, Robert 72 Nixon, Richard 208 Nixon administration 54, 129, 130, 131, 224 Nkrumah, Kwame 13–14 NMD see National Missile Defence non-lethal weapons 9, 198, 199 North Korea 6, 62–5, 167–6; and arms moderation 190, 191, 198; biowarfare 100; missiles 92, 118, 141, 152, 153; nuclear facilities/weapons 109–15; perceived as part of axis of evil 26, 59, 61; state terrorism 50–3 Northern Ireland 27, 196; insurgency 45–8, 56, 63–6, 236 Northrop/TRW 181 Norway 81 NPT 108, 109, 128, 204 Nth country experiment 113 nuclear deterrence 39, 79–4, 113, 128, 203– 15 nuclear facilities 106–18; curbing proliferation of 109–15, 113; problem of waste disposal 111–17, 113 Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) 108, 109, 204 nuclear-pumped x-ray laser 132, 136, 145 nuclear weapons and nuclear warfare 2, 6– 7, 30, 37, 38, 39, 41, 103, 106, 107, 108– 14, 111, 132; arms moderation 197, 203–16; BMD 132, 145, 164–3; China 91, 92; first use 7; global security 217, 220–2; Iraq 57, 61; radiological attack 115–1; undercover attack 113–21 Nunn, Sam 139 O’Neill, Gerard K. 248 OECD 77, 78, 111 Offence/Defence dialectic 105, 197 Omar, Mullah 19

308 INDEX

OPEC 79 Open conspiracy 231–54 Operation Desert Storm 18 Operation Overlord 126 Operation Strangle 6 Organization for European Economic Cooperation (OEEC) 35 Orwell, George 7, 232 Osgood, Robert 39 Ottawa Convention (1997) 198–10 ozone depletion 259 Paine, Thomas 158 Pakistan 38; missiles 92, 141; nuclear warfare 114, 204–16; USA and 27 Palestine 15, 20, 22, 27, 44, 240; insurgency 44, 49, 50, 56, 197, 230; suicide missions 8, 55; see also Israeli-Palestinian conflict Palme, Olaf 225 Panama Canal 16 Panawave Laboratory cult 241 Panspermia 244 Papaioannu, J.G. 290n20 Papua New Guinea 171 Partial Test Ban (1963) 42 Pasechnik, Vladimir 100 Patriot missiles 145–4, 150 Pavic, Prime Minister 47 Pax Europa 173 peace shield 249 peacebuilding 239–1 Peacekeeper missile 122 peacekeeping 26, 196–8 Pedatzur, Reuven 145 Perle, Richard 61, 138 Pershing missiles 122, 132, 167 Pettersson, Otto 83 Pfister, Christian 82 Philippines 36, 47–48 Philips 182 picosatellites 170 Pigou, Arthur 11 Pitt, William, the Younger 38 Plagemann, Stephen 160

Planck, Max 242 Planetary Compact, working towards a 106, 231–64 Plato, Platonism 157, 222 PLO 44, 56 plutonium 107, 108–14, 110, 112, 113 poison gases 95–2, 197, 215 poisons in war, taboo against 95 Pol Pot regime 52 Poland 64, 131, 174; social instability 70 Polaris missiles 118, 128, 130 political economy 28 pollution 80–5, 211, 212 Pompidou, Georges 220 population growth 11, 74–9, 79, 85; as cause of war 30–3; Spaceflight as solution to 248 Portugal 14 positivism 141, 159 post-traumatic stress 8 Postol, Theodore 146 poverty 75, 76–2, 88 Powell, Colin 26, 27, 178, 223, 226 pre-emptive action see strategic preemption Priestley, J.B. 8 Project Air Force 162, 163, 168 Protívo Vozdushnaya Strany 129–8 Ptolemy, Claudius 157 pulsed lasing 163, 249 Pythagoras 157 quantum cascade lasers 257 quantum physics 254–7 quasi-orbital Space planes 201 Rabin, Yitzhak 229 radar 120, 152, 169–8, 191 radio astronomy 191 radioactivity 115–1 Raelians 241–4 Rapaport, Anatol 39 rationalism 141, 158–7 Reagan administration 2, 116, 132, 136, 138, 223, 246 reciprocal deterrence, framework for 133

INDEX 309

Record, Jeffrey 53 Rees, Sir Martin 248 regime change 57, 58–9, 189–190, 215, 216, 223 regions: diverse threats to 210–3; security 224–7 religion(s) 214; astronomy and 157–6; dialogue between 241–4; fundamentalism 23–6, 157, 241 Republic of Korea (ROK) see South Korea revolutionary movements see insurgency Rice, Condoleezza 61, 202 Right 71, 71; USA 16, 21, 23, 61, 163, 178, 222–5, 241; see also Fascism Roberts of Kandahar, Frederick Sleigh Roberts, Lord 98 Robespierre, Maximilien François Marie Isidore de 43, 45 rogue states 9, 141–50, 200, 222 Roman Empire 95 Romania 175, 176 Romanticism 11, 158 Roosevelt, Franklin 22, 207 Roosevelt, Theodore 186 Rotblat, Joseph 115 Rumsfeld, Donald 25, 57, 64, 178, 186, 191, 193, 222 Rumsfeld Commission on ballistic missile threat (1998) 22, 141 Rumsfeld Commission on Space management and organization (2001) 168–7 Rusk, Dean 30 Russia 92, 141, 237; and Atlantic Alliance 173, 178; biowarfare 100; ecology 12, 81; economic growth 78; exotic technologies 266; and global security 216, 217–30; Great Schism 129, 217; insurgency 51; and Iraq 63; Kyoto Protocol 210;

landmines 198; missiles 120, 149, 150, 168; nuclear facilities 108; Space exploration 246; sustainable development 76; see also USSR Rwanda 27 S-curve 4, 4 Saad el Shazli 187 Sadat, Anwar 229 Safeguard ABM programme 130–9, 134 Sagan, Scott 204 Sagdeev, Roald 2 Said, Edward 228 Sakharov, Andrei 205 SALT 128–7, 131 Saracens 95 Sarin 96–2, 241 SARS epidemic 94, 103 satellites 120, 128, 129, 169–9, 192, 201 SATKA 133, 134 Saudi Arabia 18, 50, 63; information 214; missiles 145, 146; WMDs 200, 220 SBI 163, 167 SBL 148, 154, 163–2, 166, 167–7, 200, 217 SBM 114, 115 Schelling, Thomas 39, 210, 216 Schiaparelli, Giovanni 160 Scientific American 86 scram jets 150 Scud missiles 117–4, 122, 123, 145–4, 150, 153, 165 Scythians 95 SDI see Strategic Defence Initiative SDIO 133, 138, 143, 145, 148, 182 security: versus liberty 232–8; see also global security sensing modes 255–8 sensor fused weapons 4, 122–8, 151, 195 Sentinel programme 130 Sentry system 237

310 INDEX

September 11th attacks 50, 72, 233, 237, 238; events succeeding 16–29, 61, 90, 186, 206, 222, 223 Seven Years War (1756–63) 173 SFW technology 4, 122–8, 151, 195 Shahab-3 ballistic missile 141 Sharon, Ariel 27, 62, 229, 230, 231 Shiro Ishii 98 Sicily 51 Sidewinder air-to-air missile 152 Sierra Leone 14, 27 Simon, Scott 62, 64–7 Singapore 77, 98, 225; science and technology 102, 239, 261 Slovenia 174, 176 SM-3 shipborne anti-missiles 165 Smalley, Richard 261 smallpox 103, 200 Smith, Adam 28 Smuts, Jan Christian 205 social cohesion 206, 212, 213, 239, 252; war and 70–5 social democracy 72 social instability 70–95, 205, 239; dot.com revolution 71–6; economic growth 76–88, 89–5, 93–8; and global security 37, 38, 207; and insurgency 56; mythic contradictions 75–76; relation between individual and society 72–8; and strategy 37, 38, 39, 42; urbanization 74–9; war and social bonding 70–5; Zen zone 88–9 soft power 219, 220, 222, 226 Solar Power Satellites 245 solid-state lasers 262–5 Somalia 26 Sophoulis, Themistocles 35, 46 South Africa: biowarfare 99; democracy 14; insurgency 43–6, 50; population growth as cause of war 31 South America, ecology 12, 80 South-East Asia, economy 212

South Korea: landmines 198; missiles 122; nuclear facilities 109; terrorism against 51; TMD/NMD 92, 148 Southern Africa 36, 42, 210 Southern African Development Community (SADC) 225 Space 237, 242–64; and BMD 127; information via 169–9, 248; problem of orbital debris 166–5, 168, 200, 249; writing about 159–8 Space-Based Infra-Red System (SBIRS) 135, 201 Space-Based Interceptors (SBI) 163, 167 Space-Based Lasers (SBLs) 148, 154, 163– 2, 166, 167–7, 200, 217 Space Liability Convention 162 Space Ship Freedom 246 Space Shuttle 134; Columbia disaster 247–60 Space Surveillance and Tracking Systems (SSTS) 134 Space weaponization 28, 40, 160–79, 256; arms moderation 193, 199–11; and global security 206, 217, 224; missile defence 127, 128, 132–5, 139, 143, 146–5, 184; progress towards a Planetary Compact 249–2 Space Weapons, Earth Wars (Project Air Force) 285nn23, 25 Spaceflight 159, 245–60 Spain 14 Spufford, Francis 289n14 Sputnik 37, 106, 127–7, 245 SR-71 Blackbird 169 Sri Lanka 12, 27, 55 SS-18 ICBMs 136 SS-20 missiles 118, 122, 132, 167, 254 SS-N-21 missiles 116 SSBNs 91 Stalin, Josef 4, 6, 10, 23, 142, 208 Star Wars 132–5, 241 Starfighter warplane 143

INDEX 311

state-(re)building 33–8, 67, 226, 228, 239 state terrorism 43, 48–1, 50–3, 52, 62, 70, 75–76, 94, 98, 100, 230, 235 Steady State astrophysics 159 Stealth technology 4 Stevens, Richard L. 274n36 Stilwell, Joe 127 Stinger surface-to-air missiles 3, 149 Strachan, Hew 74 Strachey, John 39 Strategic Arms Limitation Talks (SALT) 128–7, 131 Strategic Defence Initiative (SDI) 2, 39, 127, 133–7, 140, 151, 160, 177, 182, 183, 191, 241 Strategic Defence Initiative Organization (SDIO) 133, 138, 143, 145, 148, 182 strategic pre-emption 5, 7, 27–28, 139–9, 142, 202–14, 214–7, 219, 224 Strategic Revolution 39, 71, 178, 226; development (1985–2001) 2–16; events succeeding September 11th attacks 16–29, 30 strategic studies 30, 61, 154, 236, 249; development of 36–42; and global security 206–18, 210, 211, 224 strategy 252; inadequacy of 30–42; see also Grand Strategy Strauss, Franz-Josef 220 Straw, Jack 63 Strontium 90 115 student protests (1968) 39, 131 submarines 91, 193, 220 Sudan 27, 97, 100 Suez Canal 38, 187 suicide 73 suicide missions 8, 55–8, 141; biowarfare 105, 214 Sumeria 155 Sun Yat-sen 14 superlasers 263 supervolcanoes 252 surface-based defence 91–6, 148–62 surveillance technology 187–9, 215; see also military domain

Surveillance, Acquisition, Tracking and Kill Assessment (SATKA) 133, 134 sustainable development 76–1 Sweden: nuclear power 108; and social instability 70, 72, 73 Syria 190, 198, 222; biowarfare 100 systems engineering 91 Tabun 96 Tae’po-dong 1 missiles 141 Taiwan 77, 92, 95; biowarfare 100; military domain 91, 92, 122, 148; nuclear facilities 110; science and technology 239, 261 Tajikistan 199 Tamil Tigers 8, 51, 55 Tartars 95 Taylor, Maxwell 39, 48, 274n8 technology 10, 232, 239; EU 177, 181–6, 221; exotic 260–8; intellectual property 237–9; military 4–5, 9, 106, 122–9, 181–6, 187–9, 215, 262; surveillance 187–9, 215; see also biotechnology; information technology; nanoscience/technology Teller, Edward 127, 132, 136, 144, 163, 165, 205, 237–9, 247 Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA) 34, 213 terahertz surveillance 9, 257, 262 terror: biowarfare as 203, 223; semantics of 48–3, 93, 207; see also state terrorism; war on terrorism Thales 182, 184 Thatcher administration 137–6 Theatre High Altitude Air Defence (THAAD) system 143, 162–1 Theatre Missile Defence (TMD) 92, 139, 148, 166, 182, 202

312 INDEX

THEL programme 153 thermonuclear fusion 113, 263–8 thermonuclear weapons and warfare 2, 37, 128, 220 Thesiger, Wilfred 17 third world see developing countries Thompson, E.P. 80 Thule Society of Munich 211 Tickell, Sir Crispin 83 tilt-rotor aircraft 192 Tito, Josif 35, 44 Tocqueville, Alexis de 71 Tomahawk missiles 116, 120, 149 torture 238–50 toxins 95, 97; radiological materials 115–1 Toynbee, Arnold 156, 226, 239 trade see free trade Treaty of Versailles (1919) 29 Treaty on Principles Governing the Activities of States in the Exploration and Use of Outer Space (1967) 249 Trenin, Dmitri 218 Trident missiles 118, 122, 220 Trudeau, Pierre 232 Truman administration 32, 33–6, 40, 48, 187 Tuck, Stanford 191 Tupolev-16s 128 Turkey 198, 222, 240; and EU 175; missiles 122 TVA 34, 213 Twin Towers attacks see September 11th attacks typhoid 104 UAVs 24, 120, 152, 163, 182, 192, 193, 215 UFOs 160, 242 Uganda 199 Uighurs 93 Ukraine 120, 176, 210 Ulster see Northern Ireland uncertainty principle 255 UNESCO 66, 89, 170

Unidentified Flying Objects (UFOs) 160, 242 United Defense 184 United Nations: and Al-Qaeda 18, 19, 22; definition of WMDs 8; and economic growth 78; and global security 215, 216–30, 223, 224; and Iraq 58, 59–2, 63–7, 66, 67, 99, 106, 216 United Nations Charter 215 United Nations Committee on the Peaceful Uses of Outer Space (COPUOS) 249 United Nations Conference on Environment and Development, Rio de Janeiro (1992) 76 United Nations Declaration on Human Rights 106 United States of America: biowarfare 98–4, 101; BMD 116, 118, 127–55 passim; chemical weapons 97; civil uses of Space 170; and Europe 173, 173, 175, 177, 178, 181–3 (see also Atlantic Alliance, NATO); and global security 209–1, 219–5; immigration 239; and insurgency 48, 49, 50, 52–6; and Iraq 57–67, 187, 216; and Israeli-Palestinian conflict 230–2; Kyoto Protocol 209–1, 221; light pollution 245; and military developments in China 91– 7; military domain 4, 186–205; missiles 116, 118, 120, 122, 123; New Deal 33–6, 208; nuclear facilities 108, 109; Patriot Act 21, 233–6; progress towards a Planetary Compact 231, 232, 239, 241, 245; reflections of National Security Strategy statement after September 11th attacks 27–29;

INDEX 313

science and technology 261, 266; security versus liberty 232–8; social instability 70; Space 246–9, 251; Space weaponization 161–77; Strategic Revolution 4–5, 6, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20–29; strategy 32, 33–8, 37–38, 40; surface-based defence 148–62; UFOs 160, 242; see also September 11th attacks; war on terrorism and individual administrations United Technologies 181 University of British Columbia 169 University of Manchester, Centre for Applied South Asian Studies 38 Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) 24, 120, 152, 163, 182, 192, 193, 215 unmanned satellites 170 Unmanned Underwater Vehicles (UUVs) 193 UNSCOM 58–1, 99 uranium 106–12, 111, 115, 198 Urban VIII, Pope 158 urban management 65, 189–190, 191, 196, 219, 252 urban warfare 195, 197 urbanization 56, 74–9, 212–4, 217, 219 USAF College of Aerospace Doctrine, Research and Education 249 USSR 142; biowarfare 100; BMD 127–40, 135, 141; civil uses of space 170; and insurgency 48–1, 75; and Iraq 57; landmines 198–10; liberty 232; Marxism 9–11, 218–30; and Middle East 228; military technology 4–5; missiles 116, 118, 127–7, 189; naval forces 193; nuclear facilities 108, 109, 115; pollution 80–5; Space weaponization 166, 167; Strategic Revolution 2–3, 4–5, 9–11;

strategy 32–5, 37; UFOs 160, 242 Utley, Francis Lee 283n46 V-1 flying bombs 126, 202 V-2 rockets 120, 127, 136 Vafiades, Markos 35 Velikov, Yevgeni 269n1, 282n30 Velikovsky, Immanuel 159 Vernadsky, V.I. 76 vertical atmospheric zoning 259–1 Vietnam 71, 131, 137; insurgency 42, 49, 52–6 Villepin, Dominique de 64 Vision for 2020, A (EU) 183 Vision 2020 (USAF Space Command) 161 Volunteer armed forces 8, 196 Walker, J.Bernard 16 Wallace, Alfred Russel 211 Wallace, Henry 48 Wallerstein, Immanuel 12–13 Waltz, Kenneth 113, 203–15 Wang Enmao 94 war on terrorism 18–4, 23, 28, 43, 93, 206, 222, 232–8; semantics of terror 48–3; see also insurgency Ward, Barbara 42 warplanes 191–4 warships 193–5 Waterloo 191 Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMDs) 5, 9, 200–12, 202, 206, 249; arms control 197; and insurgency 56; Iraq 57–58, 59, 61, 62, 63, 67, 187–9, 216; UN definition 96 Weber, Max 74 Weinberger, Caspar 138, 140 Weizmann, Chaim 227 Wells, H.G. 15, 173, 231, 232 whaling 81 Whitesides, George 261 Wickramasinghe, Chandra 244 Widnall, Sheila 153

314 INDEX

Wilkinson, Paul 274n23 Wilson, Woodrow 49 Wittfogel, Karl 12 WMDs see Weapons of Mass Destruction Wohlstetter, Albert 40 Wolfowitz, Paul 61 Wood, Lowell 137 work 73–8 World Bank 74–9, 77, 85 World Conservation Monitoring Centre 81 World Health Organization (WHO) 97 World Ice Theory 211 World Peace Congress, East Berlin (1951) xi, 207 World Space Congresses 249–2 world systems theory 12–13 World War I 213, 240; chemical warfare 95–1, 154; conduct of war 7; social bonding 70–4 World War II 64, 66, 217–9, 240; air forces 6–7, 191; biowarfare 98, 105; climate change and strategy 31–4; commando raids 20; conduct of war 7, 8–9, 197; invention of cavity mechanism 257; landmines 198; liberty 232; military cultures 144, 177; military information 61, 187, 191; missiles 119, 120, 126, 127; nerve gases 96; philosophy of 23; pragmatism 6–7; Quirin Case 22; social bonding 71; suicide missions 55–8; surface-based defence 148; taboo on blinding 154; technology 184 Wren, Sir Christopher 158 Wright, Frank Lloyd 212 xenophobia 235 YAL-1A 152

Yeltsin, Boris 14, 100 Yemen civil war (1964–7) 96, 215 yob culture 73 Yom Kippur War (1973) 3 Yonas, Gerold 285n35 York, Herbert 215 Young, Peter 229, 231 Yugoslavia, former 44, 173, 176 Zen Buddhism 88–3 Zhdanov, Andrei 32 Zimbabwe 14, 44, 62, 210 Zionism 227, 231