A Different World

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We may have an excess of military strength for the world as we see it, but not nearly enough for the world as it is getting to be.

Even as the Cold War ebbs away, the waves of the next threat are forming and cresting for an assault. But isn’t that a lesson of history? World War I was fought to end all wars; yet, the seeds of the successor conflict were planted even as the American Expeditionary Force was still mustering out. In World War II, the future confrontation did not even wait for the hostilities to end. Some of the war’s bloodiest battles were fought to coalesce World Communism. When victory came, it was followed not by peace, but by a world once again divided into opposing armed camps.

The overriding perception today is that the problems of Berlin, the two Koreas, and the two Viet- nams are nearer to a solution than ever before. Eastern and Western Europe have come to value trade more than confrontation. The United States and Russia, in a corn flakes and caviar marriage, are forging mutual dependency bonds, as shipments of wheat will, before too long, encounter deliveries of oil and gas in mid-ocean. Communist China is an eager buyer of Western technology. Japanese trading companies visualize Chairman Mao’s empire

as a gigantic bazaar for the sale of their wares. There is SALT, the European Security Conference, mutual balanced force reduction, and cooperation on pollution fighting and in outer space. Even Egypt and Israel may yet find a peaceful accommodation.

For an entire generation, these issues had consumed our attention and energies. Now that they are being liquidated, one by one, we are swept by a sense of euphoria. A golden age must lie ahead.

But will events grant our wish? Do we really believe that, in erasing the Cold War from the face of the earth, the words "Peace” and "Love” will magically appear, in psychedelic colors? New dangers are massing even now, undetected by us, not because they are cleverly concealed, but because we refuse to glance their way.

Once again, we are about to repeat a mistake of the past and let the mood of national relief, that invariably follows the winding down of a noxious task, lull our alertness to the next "gathering storm.”

What are the new dangers?

At first glance, they appear to be a melange of slogans, demands, and trends; of unpredictable developments and unforeseeable consequences; of meandering cause-and-effect chains; of unfulfilled expectations and blighted dreams; of backfiring solutions and punctured theories; of anachronistic beliefs and outdated dogmas; of greed, selfishness, and pride.

We have many names for these new perils: The population explosion, the energy crisis, hunger, global pollution, environmental decay, resource exhaustion and resource dependencies, trade balances, the rich nations and the poor, imperialism, neocolonialism, world hegemony, expropriation, economic nationalism, modernization, development, the impending Oklahoma land-rush for the seabed and marine resources, cancerous cities, and vanishing species.

Perhaps this multiplicity of names lends the threats concealment. Certainly much protective fog is generated by the abstractness of the concepts; the varied sponsorship of numerous scientific disciplines—biology, ecology, economics, and systems analysis; the mixing of political, social, economic, and physical factors; the blurring of causality and results; and the deceptive slowness of their advance.

But, as the fog burns off, it will be seen that these are not separate problems. Like so many tongues of flame reaching for a forest, they are part of the same fire. They are facets of man’s ongoing effort to achieve infinite growth in a finite universe.

And, as we struggle to grow, today’s statesmen—not their successors—must face up to monumental questions of this kind:

►    How and on what terms will nations compete for the earth’s diminishing resources?

►    How will nations respond to the inevitable disequilibrium which must occur when one power retains access to cheap sources of a vital commodity, like oil, while rivals and competitors are forced to reach for expensive substitutes?

►    Can responsible nations stand idly by while others plunder and upset delicate environmental balances for short-term economic gains, but with far-reaching, long-lasting, and border-jumping consequences?

►    Finally, there is the most complex question: What are the political and social consequences of economic inequality in a world of exhaustible resources?

Modern nations are so constituted that none could discharge its obligations by forsaking growth. All social, economic, and political processes are hitched to growth; and what frail stability there is—that keeps governments from being toppled—depends on unceasing forward momentum.

Governments in the developing world must pursue growth while under pressure from a population that is geometrically increasing, ever younger, relatively better educated, hungering for opportunities, keenly aware of the material gulf separating rich nations from poor, and highly intolerant of leaving it unbridged.

In the developed world, the drives leading to growth are more mixed in origin, less well-understood, but equally conflictive. Whether the demands originate with the poor for social services, the middle class for jobs and consumption, or the elites which press for a cleaner environment, the outcome is the same: growth must be sustained in order to generate the funds that will meet the demands.

Even when all reason or logic would point to the need for slowing down, the constituent pressure rules otherwise. The best any government can do is swim with the current rather than try to divert the river.

For the short-term, there is little danger in going along with the will of the people and catering to growth. A military plan might call this period Phase I. Resources, though not evenly distributed, are still more plentiful than demand. The one drawback is that the search for them brings nations into unexpected contacts. Arab oil is an example; if they want it, the Christian' and the Jew alike must bow toward Mecca.

If entry into one or more foreign resource-dependencies is worth the risk, a temporary encounter with' the finite universe need not become a permanent obstacle to continued expansion. The nation which reaches a natural population ceiling, for instance, can always raise more people by importing food. It can outflank a pollution barrier, without impairing production, by

A Different World 21

exporting its smoke-belching factories to less-developed parts of the world. Not even the exhaustion of native reserves of raw materials becomes a limit to growth. Stocks can be replenished through foreign purchases. However, any nation opting for this choice must be prepared to trade a serene existence for life on a dizzying carousel; henceforth, it must sell ever more manufactured goods abroad to generate the earnings which will pay for the raw materials that go into the production of the export goods, which are to be sold abroad, ad infinitum. By such evasive measures, it is entirely possible to postpone an encounter with the inevitable for 10 or perhaps 20 more years.

That is Phase I. In Phase II, however, resources are no longer plentiful; but consumption has increased. It is a seller’s market. Customers compete with one another for the shrinking supplies. Some may not get all that they need, and are confronted with a most difficult choice. They can accept the restriction, risking an uncertain future that could include any number of unpleasant outcomes, ranging from sudden collapse to a slow descent into faceless anonymity. Or they can reject the restriction and go after their needs, using any means at their command—even the employment of force.

The sellers, meanwhile, have raised prices many times over, have accumulated gigantic pools of foreign currency reserves, and have extended ownership of natural resources to include the processes which follow extraction: transportation, manufacturing, distribution, and merchandising. Rationing is being considered as a means to prolong the life of the resource. Political beliefs and friendships are being scrutinized; if they do not square with the seller’s view of the world, there may be no transaction. Or a bid may be turned down because the seller does not want to become dependent on a single, powerful buyer.

It is a tense environment. As dreams and realities collide, anything can happen. The customers may attempt to expropriate the resource-seller’s newly acquired transportation, distribution, and merchandising networks. Small, tough nations, not blessed with salable riches, could stimulate their earnings by operating black markets. Other nations might hire out to large powers to serve as their surrogate enforcers and intimi- dators. Still more may reject the service of the rich and elect to victimize them instead, using for that purpose strategies and tactics of the type now being perfected by international terrorists.

The world reached an annual gross national product of $2 trillion with relatively little inconvenience to itself. The first inkling of coming difficulties accompanied the subsequent advance to $3 trillion: A sudden awareness of environmental decay, power brownouts,

oil spills, water shortages, the disheartening spectacle of dying-off species, a beginning interest in the extraction of less economic ore bodies, and an increase in foreign dependencies.

The unfavorable trends have worsened as we approach the fourth trillion. We could be entering Phase II wherein the damage spreads; the search for minerals, fresh water, fertile soil, lumber, marine protein, and, most important, energy fuels, intensifies; the competition sharpens; tempers flare; dependency interests begin to loom larger than security interests, forcing nations into ambivalent actions or complete reversals of their past course; and the owners of natural resources drive an increasingly tough bargain in a frantic effort to catch up with the developed world before the wealth in their soil gives out.

If all this is happening on the road to the fourth trillion, what will be the consequences of reaching for the fifth, sixth, or even twelfth trillion—the gross world product for the year 2000 if the relatively modest annual growth rate of 5% is sustained?

The scientific community, for its part, has been feverishly at work, quantifying the implications of exponential growth and assessing the physical and social costs. Major projects have been sponsored by the Club of Rome, a consortium of world business leaders; the International Institute of Applied Systems, a 12-nation think tank in Vienna; the National Academy of Science; and innumerable lesser groups. Gigantic computers have been enlisted for the studies, possibly to lend prestige, credibility, and an aura of infallibility to the effort, but, in the main, to undertake the calculations which trace the reinforcing interrelationships be-

" An aura of antiquity clings to 'balances of power, ’ 'alliances, ’ and 'appeals to international action’—the major devices in the diplomat’s attache case. ”

tween population, arable land space, investment capital, natural resource reserves, and pollution.

The most disquieting single fact emerging from the studies is that man is on the wrong track. If he pursues his present course, he faces Phase III—a sharp reversal in all the growth curves that could lead to extinction, 50 or 100 years hence.

What can be done to avert the disaster of these visions? The scientists don’t know. The solutions which they advance are the weakest part of their work—well-

meaning, but distinguished more by idealism than by practicality.

World government is the most frequently voiced proposal. But which nation is ready to subordinate its independence to a rule by benign technocrats who assume control over all resource allocations?

The alternative recommendations seem equally farfetched. Are we prepared to throw the universal growth switch to the "off” position, thereby freezing all nations in their present state of development? Can we secure the acquiescence of the industrialized nations to suspend their growth, as another suggestion would have it, while the developing world catches up? Still more far-out—how realistic is it to attribute to the great powers a Franciscan quality that will inspire them to deny all comforts and donate their wealth to the poor?

If the proposals of the scientific community seem chimeric, the tools of the foreign policy establishment are hardly better suited for tuning and adjusting the new world order. An aura of antiquity clings to "balances of power,” "alliances,” support for "expanding trade,” and "appeals to international action”—the major devices in the diplomat’s attache case. The concepts appear like museum pieces from that distant past when the state of the environment could still be excluded from international affairs; when nations were clearly defined, border-enclosed entities; and when large powers exercised a reasonable amount of choice over selecting friends and foes.

The comfortable parameters may be gone, but the tools remain—cumbrous and unwieldy, better suited for replacing horseshoes than for changing tires. The environment has lumbered into the centrality of concern, pushed there by man’s insatiable, material expectations which exceed what the earth, in failing ecological health, its resources nearing depletion, could ever supply. Nations have become multinational in the literal sense of the word, existing wherever their technologies, capital, industrial processes, raw material sources, and markets can be located. And any two countries can be pushed together or pulled apart by economic and environmental forces that are far stronger than the combination of factors that made them friends or enemies in the past. Heritage and common ancestry, ideological differences, or strategic arrangements have, in fact, become luxuries which nations can no longer afford as a basis for conducting their foreign affairs.

In this emerging world, continued loyalty to traditional quests for security can only lead to insecurity and weakness. The old standby, balance of power, may be a marvelous instrument for keeping nations at arm’s length by removing from them the temptation to seize or destroy another’s territory and population. But reliance on the concept cannot preserve a country’s stand

ing and prestige for very long when the rules of the game are suddenly changed to de-emphasize physical aggression. The ambitious modern nation, in an expansionary mood, carries out its great designs through economic techniques. Money and commodities become its instruments of power, as effective as munitions and cannon were in their day for gaining the upper hand.

The balance-of-power adherent, meanwhile, continues with his fascination for relative military strengths. Like a latter-day Don Quixote, he sharpens his lance for a vanishing threat. As he meticulously adjusts armaments to balance the scale, a more knowing rival robs him of his markets, raw materials, and foreign exchange earnings—without ever rattling a sword or firing a shot.

How much security is found in alliances? Very little. In fact, a security edifice, even of the most massive design, which incorporates alliances, is far more likely to crumble and collapse than a smaller, seemingly more frail structure built entirely of homogeneous materials. Nations which joined hands for mutual aid may turn on one another, like members of the Donner Party, when energy, foodstuffs, or other vital commodities grow scarce. A common security interest will seldom survive the stresses of a common dependency on dwindling supplies.

But if the emerging order endangers the traditional reasons for forming alliances, it also creates, in a compensatory mood, brand new rationales for coming together. Common producers of a coveted raw material may unite to form a tough economic bargaining front, even though on all other counts—cultural, geographic, and strategic—the participating nations are thousands of miles apart. Ideological enemies may be harnessed together, in defiance of all instincts, by the overriding need to clean up and care for a common physical feature like an inland sea. Or partnerships may spring up where politicians fear to tread. Billions of dollars worth of trade goods move annually between nations which steadfastly deny and denounce each other.

Trade, likewise, loses its customary identity in the new world. Its comfortable image, as the highest form of peaceful intercourse among nations, is drastically altered when core necessities, like oil and wheat, join cuckoo clocks and cameras in the commercial channel- Perhaps the term "trade” itself should be replaced. Labels like "lifeline” or "ransom” or "plunder” would be far more descriptive of transactions which cease to be voluntary, mutually advantageous, take-it-or-leave-it' arrangements. The buyer cannot brook a cutoff of those items that represent a major interest, a vital dependency. But that is not to say that this is completely a seller’s market. The seller does not have total freedom of choice. He can milk the ties for concessions, but

A Different World 23

he may sever them only at his own peril. The resulting forced relationship is more likely to produce friction than friendship.

Can we settle the new issues through international cooperation? The world community can be easily rallied to oppose cholera and the Black Death. However, if experience is an indicator, it will be far harder to muster a like degree of unanimity in support of a common assault on the growth problem. The United Nations has tried. Much to its credit, the Secretariat has singled out aspects of the growth issue for closer examination. Major conferences were held on hunger

"Nations which joined hands for. mutual aid may turn on one another, like members of the Donner Party, when energy, foodstuffs, and other vital commodities grow scarce. ”

and the human environment. More are scheduled bn the subjects of population, the ownership of the oceans and the seabeds, and international terrorism (the weak’s weapon against the powerful). But the frustrating record of completed meetings, and the agenda disputes which threaten the substance of future sessions, leave little hope that, for the present, this channel can become anything more than a forum for voicing issues, albeit in language more forthright than is commonly used in normal diplomatic intercourse. There is still a pronounced unwillingness among nations to surrender a shred of sovereignty, to give up a gain, or to become party to any agreement, treaty, or covenant that might slow their growth.

All nations will be affected by the physical, political, and social pressures of the new environment, but none more so than the United States. America appears triply vulnerable to the developing trends.

The first vulnerability stems from our highly visible position as the world’s richest country and foremost consumer of resources. The plans and considerations of much of the rest of the world center on our wealth and appetite; the gigantic dimensions of our spending and tastes becoming, in turn, an objective, a constraint, and a threat. Whether u>e like it or not, every hope and ambition, every slogan, demand, or trend is affected, shaped, and transformed by the American presence.

In the period called Phase I, the dominant foreign interest in the United States is commercially inspired. Nations vie for the right to tap our riches or cater

to our wants. We are regarded as a source of aid, loans, and capital, and as a market for finished goods and raw materials. But we are also the symbol of the entire industrialized world, and its lightning rod, too. The poorer nations hurl their anger at us. The transfer of wealth moves too slowly for their taste. We are denounced as imperialists who owe whopping reparations for past exploitation.

In Phase II, perceptions change as the limits of the universe close in. Our wealth and appetite continue to be of major interest, but for different reasons.

No longer a sales target, our wants mark us as a threatening competitor in the scarcity environment. Other industrial powers fear that we will not hesitate to evict them, with our superior economic strength, from markets and raw materials supplies which they had come to consider their own.

The tension spreads to the developing world. The gap between rich and poor remains as wide as ever, but it has grown intolerable with the loss of hope that, 10, 20, or even 50 years hence, the poor will be where we are today. There are no unlimited horizons left, no El Dorados at the end of the next day’s march. There is only so much of what is needed; and most of it already is in the hands of the rich who own it, use it, consume it, and quarrel over it, and show no intention of abandoning their first-class passenger status on what has been called Spaceship Earth.

From the perspective of the poor, the choice seems clear: If confinement to steerage is not to be a permanent condition, the developing world will have to force a rollback in Western consumption, of which the United States again serves as symbol, and begin mining the wealth accumulated by the rich. The means for this endeavor must be suited to the resources. In any confrontation, the assembled military power of the poor would be quickly crushed. But there are alternatives to direct physical force. Expropriations, a sudden groundswell of nationalism, demands for a share of ownership in the transport, processing, or marketing of raw materials, the neutralization of strategic areas, the enlargement of territorial seas, and the employment of terrorism are but a few of the knives that can be used by the poor nations to cut themselves a larger slice of the pie.

The second vulnerability is associated with the first: We cannot avoid the turmoil by withdrawing behind our borders. The United States has become a have-not nation.

For most of its history, the United States was a self-sufficient power; it is hard to accept the fact that it no longer is. The needs and expectations of the domestic sector have outgrown internal resources. Jobs and incomes, prosperity and prospects, have become dependent on an expanding overseas investment, on

the relocation of power-hungry and labor-hungry industries to nations where energy and manpower are still cheap and plentiful, and on the increasing import of bedrock commodities.

The change in status, from self-sufficient to have-not, has profound implications for the assignment of responsibilities for safeguarding national interests.

Hitherto, national security managers were free to devote all their attention to ensuring physical survival. The well-being of the citizenry, on the other hand, could be excluded from their concern. Domestic means were adequate to sustain it; no wind, blowing from overseas, could upset it.

That narrow perception is about to end. The way of life, so long immune to foreign interference, is becoming as vulnerable to external disruption as survival itself. The new security manager will find himself with not one but two national interests entrusted to his care.

The third vulnerability is self-inflicted, of our own doing. All evidence and all reality to the contrary, we continue to view ourselves as self-sufficient, and plan accordingly.

The influential political science and foreign affairs communities of the nation, in particular, retain an image of a self-sufficient United States—America the Bountiful—and this assessment permeates all of their interpretations of world developments. Worse, it shapes their perceptions of both the threats to America and the resultant security needs.

This wrongheaded perception, which excludes the economic and environmental realities, might be likened to viewing a color television set whose antenna has been blown slightly askew by a recent high wind. Generally, the viewer continues to see the big picture in the rosiest of colors since some signals continue to come in as strong as ever—e.g., we can still see, with crystal clarity, those things which threaten our survival. But other signals aren’t coming in at all—we have no picture, for example, of the great number of trends which threaten our way of life.

And, of course, what we don’t see, we don’t miss. Mesmerized by our image of America the Bountiful, we sense no alarm, we create no force equivalent, we institute no research and development, we formulate no strategies, or assign any missions to counter the insidious threat to that most basic of our interests—our way of life.

Optimistically, one can hope that our way of life can be defended through the liberal application of good sense, persuasion, bargaining, aid, and development assistance; through nothing more violent than boycotts and sanctions. Possibly, there might be some domestic belt-tightening, retrenchment, and curtailment of wasteful resource expenditures. But it would be dan

gerous to stake all expectations on the outcome of these techniques.

If the aggressor seeks to gain his objective through ingenious, nonmilitary means, the defender should not feel obliged to respond in kind. No rule decrees that the international power game be played in the suit of the weakest hand, that trumps cannot be employed.

Still, we face a tall obstacle in readying forceful, backstop measures.

The security manager must learn to widen his perceptions.

►    The threats multiply. He cannot focus on just one or two easily identifiable powers, possessing the wickedness and strength to make them dangerous. Any number of nations, in changing combinations, and in reversible roles as owners, sellers, or rivals for markets and raw materials, can endanger the way-of-life interest to varying degrees.

►    He cannot limit his observation to the machinations of aggressive leaders; the threat can originate in the driving power of uncontrollable trends and deterministic forces.

►    He cannot restrict surveillance to weapons developments, subversion, infiltration, and revolution; his view must encompass the wider spectrum of unchecked population growth, trade deficits, environmental disruptions, and economic plans that went awry.

►    He cannot confine "capabilities” to the technological/ physical dimension. In the threat to survival, the enemy’s raw power was all-important. It triggered a balancing response, even when there was no conflict of real interests. The confrontation was one of instruments, not objectives. It took place almost entirely in the military arena. The threat to the way of life, on the other hand, does not grow from an enemy’s physical potential to inflict harm. Its source is in friction, the actual head-on collision of objectives that occurs between powers—often of unequal strength. This does not make the threat any less dangerous, though. The enemy seems to say, "Our interests are in conflict. Now,

I must find the means to advance my goals at the expense of yours.” The means he then designs could be military, in a conventional sense, and quantifiable. More likely, though, he will have to compensate for his lesser strength and settle on an unconventional mixture of many ingredients—social, political, economic, and psychological, with liberal doses of physical force—blended specifically for the unique task of securing a particular gain. One should expect the final package to incorporate any device capable of exerting pressure in an urbanized, technological, politically- conscious, and compulsorily dependent economic environment. The two sides, in other words, will battle each other both inside and outside the military arena.

A Different World 25

If the military wants part of the action, it will have to rethink and revise traditional roles to incorporate the new types of force in its mission.

^ Lastly, the new security manager must broaden his understanding of strategy. Bases, overflight concessions, and rights of passage remain important, but not as ends in themselves. They must be related to real concerns like present and projected energy needs; the status of fuel reserves today and tomorrow; their location, control, and access to them.

The defense planning system must change as drastically as the security manager’s perceptions. At present, it is a superb machine, but one-dimensional. Its design specifications are limited to the processing and countering of threats to survival. New capabilities must be added which can sense, with equal efficiency, the seemingly unpredictable and unquantifiable threats to the way of life and translate them into offsetting strategies and force structures.

What, for example, is the division equivalent of a deliberately precipitated energy crisis?

How many wings must be kept operational to prevent a foreign supplier from unilaterally tearing up a contract for one with harsher terms?

How many ships must be sent to sea to deter the new, unusual approaches to war—assassinations, kidnappings, hijackings, letter bombs, poisons emptied into the water supply, germs dusted over crops, moisture drawn from the atmosphere, or a city held in ransom by nuclear terrorists?

How much force is required to dissuade a nation from committing an ecological folly which could turn into a wider disaster?

What is force, anyway? Is it divisible into separately managed political, economic, military, or psychological components? Or should there be unity of command? Do the components duplicate or complement one another? Is a dock strike, which keeps a ship from being loaded, the equivalent of sinking the ship? Is the devaluation of a currency a more serious blow than a blockade? Should we still accept it as fact that physical action represents a higher form of force than an attack employing nonphysical means? Or can physical and nonphysical means be arrayed, in alternating order, on a scale, according to the harm that they cause? Then, i( one fails its task, the occupant of the next rung is brought in to tighten the squeeze. Only results are important; not the classification of the force used.

More important still, what is America? Is it a geographic entity, a space enclosed by borders, a colored spot on the map, physically definable and defensible? Or is America a larger concept—a vital process which embraces the domestic economy, foreign sources of supply, overseas investments, and the integral manufac

turing steps and job skills which multinational corporations have exported to all corners of the earth?

The answers, as noted earlier, will not fall out from existing planning processes. Let me suggest the design and use of three new tools which I shall call the Gross National Product Matrix, the Square-Off Projector, and the Capabilities Enlarger. The first two are predictive instruments; they alert us to threats. The third is intended to improve our responses. As a group, the techniques should expand national planning capabilities, while increasing the defense options in our arsenal.

The GNP Matrix. The controversial M.I.T. study, "The Limits to Growth,” plots the implications of exponential growth addiction on a universal scale. The computer-drawn curves, representing population, pollution, capital investment, and the remaining status of nonrenewable natural resource reserves, flow up and down, exert pressure on one another, and intersect on the assumption that the globe is one system.

The breadth of the study restricts its usefulness for national security planners who must be more concerned with the behavior of political subsystems than with the earth as a unit. The trends projected by the M.I.T. study will not occur everywhere, at the same rate, at the same time. In selected nations they will have started to turn down when the curves for all mankind are still on a favorable course. The reverse is equally true. Some countries, like Brazil, will continue to command room for expansion long after the overall curves have crested and started their decline.

The national security manager is in need of a more refined tool than the M.I.T. study, one which will portray for him the localized impact of growth limits. He must

"Military force enjoyed a unique monopoly throughout history ... it was a ruler’s one and only means for projecting or resisting power. That monopoly is over. ”

know, with some degree of precision, when Nation A or Nation B must start its expansion outward to circumvent the closing-in of the local ceiling.

The GNP Matrix is intended to be this sensitive tool. It is a planning device that assumes, for any nation, a programmed rate of growth and assesses the implications of its progress at selected points on a time scale. What must Nation A consume to reach a GNP of $100 billion, 120, or 150? How much of this growth

can A provide from within its own resources? How much must be imported from abroad? Are the supplies available? From whom? Are foreign exchange earnings adequate to finance the purchases? If not, by how much must exports be increased? Are there markets for the exports? Where?

The anticipated relationships are plotted on a map. The process is repeated for every industrial power. Then the major exporters of raw materials are scrutinized. How adequate are their reserves? When will rationing start? When will the resources be depleted?

From the double perspective of consumer and seller, and the time scale, various conclusions should fall out. At what point, for example, must A enter into new dependencies to maintain the pace of its economic development?

Obviously, the GNP Matrix has its faults. It projects trends on a linear scale, but no advance can continue indefinitely. It cannot predict major technological changes which may render obsolete a currently vital raw material. (But this is a minor defect: Technology cannot remove the limits—it can only postpone their arrival). Finally, quantification can be carried only to a point. Before the exercise has gone very far, the security manager must contribute large doses of personal judgment (or imagination) to anticipate the various lateral actions of which nations are capable if their forward momentum is in jeopardy.

Still, the matrix can be a useful device for predicting the power shifts resulting from new pressures. Certainly, it should spare us the surprise of having a trusted ally suddenly inform us that the pursuit of his way-of- life interests is severely constrained by the nuclear umbrella which we are holding over his lands. Would we fold it up, please.

The Square-Off Projector. The Square-Off Projector is a second warning device. It serves to bracket potential conflict situations by approaching them from a different direction.

The GNP Matrix used individual nations as a starting point for analysis, and projected the actions which they might take to close the gap between resources needed and resources available, between expectations and realities.

The Square-Off Projector, on the other hand, begins with the identification of elemental trouble areas and trans-national problems and seeks to forecast their impact on the behavior of countries, no matter what their size, wealth, or form of government.

Totally different assumptions underlie the two techniques. The GNP Matrix ascribes to nations considerable freedom of action. The Square-Off Projector denies freedom of choice. It assumes, in Emerson’s

words, that "Things are in the saddle, riding mankind.”

What are representative trouble areas?

Scarcity. In shortage situations that cannot be resolved through economic means, what is the most likely course of action for a powerful consumer? Gain control over the supplier or eliminate competitors?

Imbalances. Is harmony possible between those nations which are overpopulated but resource poor and those nations which control their populations and, in a cautious mood, preserve reservoirs of resources for future needs?

Poor vs. Rich. Which conflict is more likely? One that pits the poor against the rich, the South against the North? Or one that sees the rich vying among themselves for influence and control in the part of the world owned by the poor?

There are other basic situations: The width of the territorial sea; energy consumption versus energy supplies; nutritional needs versus arable land and food production; population; air and water. Each situation of this type sets in motion major political, economic and social forces which, by following their own logic and creating their own events, escape the restraining control of the world’s political processes and leadership-

Capability Enlarger. Military force enjoyed a unique monopoly for most of recorded history. In an era when no other linkages existed, it was a ruler’s one and only means for projecting or resisting power.

That monopoly is over. Nations have been joined by vast networks of dependencies and interdependencies. In the modern have-not world, strength and welfare rest on the uninterrupted, border-crossing flow of technology, jobs, commodities, capital, and raw materials.

The linkages formed by these movements have become rivals to military power by offering a range of paths over which influence, often of a decisive degree, can be conveyed without resort to physical force. Tactics which include the freezing of foreign exchange accounts or the withholding of vital shipments can now be employed with devastating effects.

Other nations have taken an early lead in grasping the possibilities inherent in the new channels. They offer strength, without offsetting manpower and financial costs, long lead-times, or an overpowering technology; and they offer a strategic advantage if we understand, by this concept, that one side possesses weapons for which the other lacks a defense.

Under these circumstances, we cannot lag behind. We, too, must enlarge our capabilities by tasking the military with responsibility for inventorying, mustering, and projecting the many types of non-physical force that can be employed in this new world.

A Different World 27

Why the military? There is no alternative. Force is indivisible, no matter how governments tend to fragment its employment among various departments. In the absence of a centralized assignment, the formidable power inherent in the non-physical means will remain untapped, uncoordinated, divided among many agencies, and in the custody of men who have not been taught to think in terms of vulnerabilities, disruption, and destruction. We would be in the position of having the most powerful navy, keeping open all sealanes, but no resources would be moving our way.

What about physical force—swift, direct, and highly visible? The opportunities for its use have also multiplied. The communication networks are quite vulnerable to disruptions. Planners today are faced with an infinite choice of location for blocking, cutting, snipping, or tearing apart the frail linkages. But traditional concepts of targeting must first be revised to take

account of the new, emerging vulnerabilities.

The world is becoming a more difficult place in which to live and plan. The threat of annihilation by nuclear means may have receded for a time. But other insidious threats to the way of life are ascendant. The planning mechanisms, strategies, and force structures which brought us through the Cold War are not designed for tomorrow’s problems. We must adapt our power to the new threats. Otherwise, we will start our decline.

Since entering the Army in 1952, Colonel Leider has held numerous staff and command billets in Vietnam, Korea, Germany, and the United States. His writings on military subjects have appeared in Orbis, Survival, the Journal of Military and Political Sociology, Army, the Marine Corps Gazette, the Army War College Parameters, the National War College Forum, and many others. He is presently a member of the Strategic Research Group at the National War College.