THE SHIELD OF ACHILLES (155 page)

Authors: Philip Bobbitt

SALADIN: (who, somewhat perplexed, has turned away)—Yes; I hear, I hear. But bring your story to an end…

NATHAN: Return we to our rings. As I have said, the sons appealed to law, and each took oath before the judge that from his father's hand he had the ring, —as was indeed the truth; and had received his promise long before, one day the ring, with all its privileges, should be his own, —as was not less the truth. The father could not have been false to him each one maintained; and rather than allow upon the memory of so dear a father such stain to rest, he must against his brothers, though gladly he would nothing but the best believe of them, bring charge of treachery; means would he find the traitors to expose, and be revenged on them.

SALADIN: And now the judge? I long to hear what words you give the judge. Go on!

NATHAN: Thus spoke the judge: Produce your father at once before me, else from my tribunal do I dismiss you. Think you I am here to guess your riddles? Either would you wait until the genuine ring shall speak?—But hold! A magic power in the true ring resides, as I am told, to make its wearer loved—pleasing to God and man. Let that decide. For in the false can no such virtue lie. Which one among you, then, do two love best? Speak! Are you silent? Work the rings but backward, not outward? Loves each one himself the best? Then cheated cheats are all of you! The rings all three are false. The genuine ring was lost; and to conceal, supply the lost, the father made three in place of one.

SALADIN: Oh, excellent!

NATHAN: Go, therefore, said the judge, unless my counsel you'd have in place of sentence. It were this: accept the case exactly as it stands. Had each his ring directly from his father, let each believe his own genuine. ‘Tis possible your father would no longer his house to one ring's tyranny subject; and certain that all three of you he loved, loved equally, since two he would not humble, that one might be exalted. Let each one to his unbought, impartial love aspire; each with the others vie to bring to light the virtue of the stone within his ring; Let gentleness, a hearty love of peace, benefiance, and perfect trust in God, come to its help. Then if the jewel's power among your children's children be revealed, I bid you in a thousand, thousand years again before this bar. A wiser man than I shall occupy this seat, and speak. Go!—Thus the modest judge dismissed them.

CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE: POSSIBLE WORLDS

1
. Joseph Nye, Jr., “Peering into the Future,”
Foreign Affairs
73 (1994): 82.

2
. Ibid.

3
.
See Scenario Planning: Forging a Link with Strategic Decision Making
(Corporate Executive Board, 1999), 51; and Arie de Geus,
The Living Company
(Harvard Business School Press, 1997); David Mason, “Scenario-Based Planning Decision Model for the Learning Organization,”
in Planning Review
, vol. 22, March/April 1994; Ian Wilson, “The Effective Implementation of Scenario Planning: Changing the Corporate Culture,” in
Learning from the Future: Competitive Foresight Scenarios
, ed. Liam Fahey (Wiley, 1998).

4
.
Scenario Planning
, supra n. 3.

5
. Ibid., 19 – 21.

6
. For an excellent treatment of the scenario process see Peter Schwartz,
The Art of the Long View
(New York: Doubleday, 1991).

7
.
Public Global Scenarios
1992 – 2020, 2 (Shell International Petroleum Company, 1992). “[T]he purpose of scenario planning is not to pinpoint future events but to highlight large-scale forces that push the future in different directions. It's about making these forces visible, so that if they do happen, the planner will at least recognize them. It's about helping make better decisions today. Scenario planning begins by identifying the focal issue or decision. There are an infinite number of stories that we could tell about the future; our purpose is to tell those that matter, that lead to better decisions.”

8
.
Global Trends 2015: A Dialogue about the Future with Nongovernment Experts
(National Intelligence Council 2000 – 02, Dec. 2000), 12. The following “assumed facts” for the scenario period are taken from this document.

9
. See
National Intelligence Estimate on Ballistic Missile Threat
, declassified (U.S. GPO, 1999).

10
. Walt W. Rostow, “2050: An Essay on the 21st Century,” 29 (ms.).

11
. Ibid.

12
. Paul Domjan, “Future Scenarios” (2001) (unpublished manuscript).

13
. Ibid., 9.

14
. William Greider,
One World, Ready or Not: The Manic Logic of Global Capitalism
(Simon & Schuster, 1997), 167 – 168; this is basically a description of Germany's policy in the late 1990s.

15
. Roger Rainbow, in
Scenarios for the Future
.

16
. Fukuyama, xiv.

17
. Ibid., 77.

18
. Ibid., 48.

19
. This is a paraphrase of Bernard Lewis, “The Roots of Muslim Rage: Why So Many Muslims Deeply Resent the West, and Why Their Bitterness Will Not Be Easily Mollified,”
The Atlantic Monthly
, September 1990, 48.

20
. See Benjamin Barber,
Jihad v. McWorld
(Ballantine Books, 1995); and Patrick Glynn, “The Age of Balkanization,”
Commentary
96 (July 1993): 21 – 24.

21
.
Seven Tomorrows: Seven Scenarios for the Eighties and Nineties
(MCB University Press, 1982), 150 et seq.

22
. Joseph Jaworski,
Synchronicity
(Berrett-Koehler, 1996): 164; see also
Tragic Choices
.

23
. Quoting a speech by R. Kako, who was chairman of Canon, Inc., at the time.

CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX: THE COMING AGE OF WAR AND PEACE

1
.
Global Trends 2015: A Dialogue about the Future with Nongovernment Experts
, 12.

2
. President Clinton's January 18, 1998, State of the Union Address.

3
. E.g. Don DeLillo,
Underworld
(Scribner, 1997), 76. “Now that power is in shatters or tatters and now that those Soviet borders don't even exist in the same way, I think we understand, we look back, we see ourselves clearly, and them as well. Power meant something thirty, forty years ago. It was stable, it was focused, it was a tangible thing. It was greatness, danger, terror, all those things. And it held us together, the Soviets and us. Maybe it held the world together. You could measure things. You could measure hope and you could measure destruction. Not that I want to bring it back. It's gone, good riddance. But the fact is… Many things that were anchored to the balance of power and the balance of terror seem to be undone, unstuck. Things have no limits now. Money has no limits. I don't understand money anymore. Money is undone. Violence is undone, violence is easier now, it's uprooted, out of control, it has no measure anymore, it has no level of values…”

4
. Richard Danzig,
The Big Three: Our Greatest Security Risks and How to Address Them
(Institute for National Strategic Studies, 1999).

5
. Michael Doyle, “Kant, Liberal Legacies and Foreign Affairs,”
Philosophy and Public Affairs
12 (1983): 205, 323.

6
. Thomas Schwartz and Kiron Skinner, “The Myth of Democratic Pacifism,”
Wall Street Journal
, January 7, 1999, A10.

7
. At the same time that the pope was condemning war among Christians the Church was murdering Cathars, Albigensians, Waldensians, and others. See Wolfgang Wacker-nagel, “Two Thousand Years of Heresy: An Essay,”
Diogenes
47 (Fall 1999): 134; or, for a more entertaining account, see David Roberts, “In France, an Ordeal by Fire and a Monster Weapon Called ‘Bad Neighbor’: Cathars, Nonviolent Christian Heretics, Victims of the Inquisition in the Thirteenth Century,”
Smithsonian
22 (May 1991): 40.

8
. R. James Woolsey, “On National Security Challenges in the 21st Century,”
National Security Law Report
23 (January/February 2001): 5.

9
. Rules, and also techniques.

10
. See testimony of Michael Beschloss, Ed Turner, and Ted Koppel before the House Foreign Affairs Committee in
Impact of Television on U.S. Foreign Policy
(U.S. GPO, 1994).

11
. “The defining moment was when Walter Cronkite announced on nationwide television after the Tet Offensive that he didn't believe we had any further reason to be in Vietnam.” Interview with Senator John McCain, March/April 2000, Association of Graduates, West Point.

12
. David Anderson, “Is Libel Law Worth Reforming?”
University of Pennsylvania Law Review
140, no. 2 (December 1991): 487.

13
. In the twelve months prior to July 1994, the Defense Department detected 3,600 computer intrusions on military networks. Admiral McConnell, former head of the National Security Agency (NSA), has stated that computer intruders, in his view, have already included foreign intelligence agencies, criminals, terrorists, and members of the computer underground. A 1996 GAO report estimates, on rather slender evidence it must be said, that as many as 250,000 attempts to penetrate Defense Department computer systems occurred in 1995, and that twice that many would occur in 1997. When the Defense Department has attempted to penetrate its own systems, it succeeded in over 7,800 attempts—an 87 percent success rate, fewer than 5 percent of which attempts were even detected and fewer than 1 percent of which were reported up the chain of command.

14
. An October 1996 Ernst & Young survey of corporate executives disclosed that 78 percent of respondents reported financial losses from the preceding two years that were attributable to information security problems and computer viruses. And there are escalating grounds for concern. In 1998 identified computer viruses increased from 8,000 to 12,000 within the past year, and they continued to grow at an estimated 300 per month. Intruders have compromised nearly all elements of the PSN: switching systems, operations, administration, maintenance and provisioning systems, and packet data networks. They have regularly attacked the networks linked to the PSN. And they have demonstrated great skill at manipulating data networks including the ATM (asynchronous transfer mode) networks and the synchronous optical networks (SONET).

CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN: PEACE IN THE SOCIETY OF MARKET-STATES

1
. For an excellent discussion of the debate surrounding this doctrine, see Richard Haass,
Intervention: The Use of American Military Force in the Post – Cold War World
(Brookings Institution, 1994).