Order and Chaos in the Twenty-First Century
Robert Cooper
2003
The worst times in European history were in the fourteenth century, during and after the Hundred Years War, in the seventeenth century at the time of the Thirty Years War, and in the first half of the twentieth century. The twenty-first century may be worse than any of these.
The first two periods were times when order broke down, when church, state and other ties of obligation were losing their power to discipline men's aggression. In the fourteenth century, the old order of chivalry was fading; feudal ties, weakened in endless wars, were giving way to patriotism; and the Church was divided by France's creation of the Avignon Papacy. After the Hundred Years' War, bands of soldiers roamed the ruined landscape of France terrorizing the countryside.
In the seventeenth century, the Church was split by the new Protestant movements and the wars that followed were both wars between states and wars of religion. Bringing together the power of the state and the fanaticism of the faithful, these wars without limit and without mercy laid waste to central Europe. Social order all but collapsed. By some accounts, a third of the population of Germany died. Every ten years in a passion play, the citizens of the Bavarian town of Oberammergau still give thanks for their deliverance from the Swedes. For most countries outside Europe, too, the worst memories of history are of periods of disorder: the era of the warring states in China, for example. Golden ages are usually times of strong government.
The European crisis in the twentieth century showed that the opposite can also be true. The wars of twentieth-century Europe were the first great wars of industrial society, wars of machines as well as men; they were also wars of over-powerful states able to mobilize their societies as never before; and they were made more deadly by nationalism and ideology. In this multiple catastrophe, the single most important thing that went wrong was that technology overran political maturity. Those who started the First World War had expected it to resemble the short wars of their childhood, not understanding the capacity of an industrial age to deliver men and munitions endlessly to the front. For the remainder of that half-century the machinery of propaganda, control and murder was turned against domestic and foreign populations in Germany, the Soviet Union and elsewhere. Then, for a moment, it seemed as if the nuclear revolution might complete the triumph of technology over mankind; but somehow political wisdom returned and there was a pause in civilization's pursuit of self-destruction.
The new century risks being overrun by both anarchy and technology. The two great destroyers of history may reinforce each other. And there is enough materiel left over from previous centuries in the shape of national, ideological and religious fanaticisms to provide motives for the destruction.
Both the spread of terrorism and that of weapons of mass destruction point to a world in which Western governments are losing control. The spread of the technology of mass destruction represents a potentially massive redistribution of power away from the advanced industrial (and democratic) states towards smaller states that may be less stable and have less of a stake in an orderly world; or, more dramatically still, it may represent a redistribution of power away from the state itself and towards individuals, that is to say terrorists or criminals. If proliferation were to take place in this fashion it would not only be Western governments that would be losing control, but all those people who have an interest in an orderly world.
In the past, to be damaging an ideological movement had to be widespread to recruit enough support to take on authority. Probably there had to be genuine grievances behind it. Henceforth, comparatively small groups will be able to do the sort of damage which before only state armies or major revolutionary movements could achieve. A few fanatics with a 'dirty bomb' (one which sprays out radiological material) or biological weapons will be able to cause death on a scale not previously envisaged. The Japanese cult Aum Shinrikyo's attempt to use anthrax in Tokyo failed, but sooner or later one of their successors will succeed somewhere in the world. A serious terrorist attack could be launched by perhaps sixty people, provided they were sufficiently committed, courageous and competent (or, alternatively, fanatical, foolhardy and fortunate). 0.000001 per cent of the population is enough. Emancipation, diversity, global communication - all the things that promise an age of riches and creativity - could also bring a nightmare in which states lose control of the means of violence and people lose control of their futures. Civilization and order rests on the control of violence: if it becomes uncontrollable there will be no order and no civilization.
The three essays in this collection are indirect reflections from different angles on this situation and on what can be done about it.
The first describes the state of the world and the state of the state, a decade after the end of the Cold War. The most obvious feature of this world is American power; but in the long run the most important facts may be the end of empire and the transformation of the state through globalization. The most hopeful feature is the emergence of the postmodern' system of security in Europe. And the most worrying is the encroachment of chaos on the civilized world - from around it and within it. Europe may be able to stop the approach of chaos through the Balkans or even from across the Mediterranean, but it may prove more difficult to deal with chaos in its own suburbs and declining industrial towns.
The descent into chaos will not happen quickly. There is still time to tackle the problems that will cause it. Dealing directly with terrorism and weapons of mass destruction may contain those threats, but it will not end them. The time bought by direct action must be used to solve some of the underlying problems. If states are to retain control, the first condition is that they should make peace with each other so that they can face the common threat of disorder together. A background of peace among states is essential both for a policy of containment and for self-preservation. States weaken and destroy themselves through war. Conflict fuels fanaticism and then gives the fanatics the means of destruction. Without the wars in Afghanistan there would have been no Osama bin Laden.
The second essay is about how to make peace. It begins as a general reflection on diplomacy, but concludes with a view of the conditions for the creation of a postmodern peace. It is written in admiration of the men and women who built the European peace and the transatlantic relationship after the
Second World War, the only example of a lasting peace among nations.
Eventually, the lessons of this success might teach us and others how to spread the peace more widely. The question is whether there will be enough time. Bringing European countries together after centuries of war was a remarkable feat, but it took a catastrophe to achieve it. And it was done against the background of a common history and culture. The most worrying thing about globalization is that it brings us new, more foreign enemies whose motives we barely understand.
It may be that modern science, which gave us the weapons, will also give us the means of controlling them. But history suggests that the solution to the problems of technology is better politics rather than better technology.
The third essay is a comment on Europe today. If we are going to keep out the storm that threatens us in the next decades, we have to harness for good the enormous potential that Europe represents. It will not be enough to leave the world to the United States. The conditions of peace in the twenty-first century are so difficult and the conditions of war so terrible that all must contribute together.
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