[IP] Shock, awe and Hobbes have backfired on America's neocons
Begin forwarded message:
From: Brian Randell <Brian.Randell@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Date: December 28, 2005 6:13:12 AM EST
To: dave@xxxxxxxxxx
Subject: Shock, awe and Hobbes have backfired on America's neocons
Hi Dave:
Here's a comment column from today's (UK) Guardian, by a Cambridge
historian, that you might want to pass on to IP.
Cheers
Brian
Comment
Shock, awe and Hobbes have backfired on America's neocons
Iraq has shown the hubris of a geostrategy that welds the
philosophy of the Leviathan to military and technological power
Richard Drayton
Wednesday December 28, 2005
The Guardian
The tragic irony of the 21st century is that just as faith in
technology collapsed on the world's stock markets in 2000, it came
to power in the White House and Pentagon. For the Project for a New
American Century's ambition of "full-spectrum dominance" - in which
its country could "fight and win multiple, simultaneous major-
theatre wars" - was a monster borne up by the high tide of techno
euphoria of the 1990s.
Ex-hippies talked of a wired age of Aquarius. The fall of the
Berlin wall and the rise of the internet, we were told, had ushered
in Adam Smith's dream of overflowing abundance, expanding liberty
and perpetual peace. Fukuyama speculated that history was over,
leaving us just to hoard and spend. Technology meant a new paradigm
of constant growth without inflation or recession.
But darker dreams surfaced in America's military universities. The
theorists of the "revolution in military affairs" predicted that
technology would lead to easy and perpetual US dominance of the
world. Lieutenant Colonel Ralph Peters advised on "future warfare"
at the Army War College - prophesying in 1997 a coming "age of
constant conflict". Thomas Barnett at the Naval War College
assisted Vice-Admiral Cebrowski in developing "network-centric
warfare". General John Jumper of the air force predicted a planet
easily mastered from air and space. American forces would win
everywhere because they enjoyed what was unashamedly called the
"God's-eye" view of satellites and GPS: the "global information
grid". This hegemony would be welcomed as the cutting edge of human
progress. Or at worst, the military geeks candidly explained, US
power would simply terrify others into submitting to the stars and
stripes.
....
· Dr Richard Drayton, a senior lecturer in history at Cambridge
University, is the author of Nature's Government, a study of
science, technology and imperialism
RHDrayton@xxxxxxxxxxx
Full story at:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/comment/story/0,3604,1674184,00.html
--
School of Computing Science, University of Newcastle, Newcastle upon
Tyne,
NE1 7RU, UK
EMAIL = Brian.Randell@xxxxxxxxx PHONE = +44 191 222 7923
FAX = +44 191 222 8232 URL = http://www.cs.ncl.ac.uk/~brian.randell/
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