Gregory R. Copley :
Long-range planning – or at least a superficial view of it – is back in vogue, but modern societies are paying the price for their inattention to history, and the stove-piping of intellectual skills. So how can the “grand strategy” matrix be re-introduced before it’s too late?
Winston Churchill once said that we shape our architecture and thereafter it shapes us. Roman roads and city structures still guide us. We are captives of the infrastructure and modalities created in the past, and they keep us stable, but on a narrow path, unable to easily achieve radical twists and surprises to grasp the future.
Most great infrastructure – and most major military platforms – last a half-century; the doctrine associated with these investments of a nation’s exchequer and particularly its pride can last a century and often more. We can break a little from our shackles, but are often unable to travel far from our past. Change, and planning for change, then, becomes merely incremental. At least that holds comfort and safety … until an adversary surpasses us, and then the pleistocene tar pits in which our feet of clay are mired turns comfort and safety into fear and defeat.
Few things sweep away the constraints of the path like strategic, societal collapse or defeat. Perhaps Russia benefited from the collapse of the USSR in 1990-91 more than its rivals could comprehend. Many old structures and ways disappeared. Russia could adopt new approaches without fear or shame; it had no other choice. And where, today, Russia finds difficulty, it is where old ways and old infrastructure remain intact.
In planning for the indefinite future (or even the coming few decades), we need to be aware of the extent to which we are bound by ancient assets and ancient doctrine. And recognize that what we build today will, equally, both empower and constrain our successor generations.
We recognize that the success of the Industrial Revolution and post- Industrial Revolution society created enormous wealth which facilitated strategic dominance and urbanization. And that urbanization in itself compounded the growth of wealth, largely because wealth was able to become more flexible due to abstractions of the concept of “value”.
We will not discuss here the psychological (belief) structure which ascribes value to currencies and the like, but assume that “wealth” in modern terms is not merely about sufficiency in life’s essentials. Moreover, we should assume that the attributes of post-Industrial Revolution society have translated across “civilizational divides”, and have now become the hallmark of almost all societies.
So although the attributes of modernism seem to dominate most societies, it is in the areas of marginal differences and geography where the potential for conflict lies. It may be argued that population movement – disrupting cultural unity and therefore identity security – has become the dominant underlying factor of early 21st Century strategic change, whereas technological growth was the hallmark of the Cold War and immediate post-Cold War period.
Technology and population movement into urban areas are drivers of immediate thinking and planning for the “foreseeable” future. This means that our current thinking – and our ability to think about the longer-term future – is governed by this framework (technology plus urbanization), and our present belief in the inevitability and sustainability of this matrix. In UnCivilization: Urban Geopolitics in a Time of Chaos in 2012, I attempted to show that this linear extrapolation of present trends may not endure because urbanization trends, caused by and contributing to the rise in global wealth, could well mature in the coming few decades into:
· Reduced global population as falling reproduction rates result from urban lifestyles (already commencing);
· The inevitability that reduced population size will – once the distortion of population because of migration patterns eases – diminish demand for urban real estate, reducing values and therefore capital formation and flexibility (already happening in some areas);
· Healthcare issues caused by economic distortions and trends which will decrease live birth rates and life expectancy in many pockets of populations, thus compounding population decline;
· A continuing reduction in scientific and industrial innovation (already happening) due to a rise in urban governance and social patterns which inhibit investment and creativity; and so on.
These are short-term trends, out to perhaps 2035 or 2050. But within these trends are the seeds of the destruction of the “city-state” mentality which has been eroding the viability of the Westphalian state model which evolved as a result of the “re-set” which was the 1648 Peace of Westphalia. The models for the destruction of city states by applications of “crude power” can be seen in Philip of Macedon’s victories over the Hellenist states, and the destruction of the Italian medieval city states by nation-state power.
So if we can foresee the re-balancing of human society to the point where population numbers and movements fluctuate wildly and decline; where we can see our present value systems (that is, in terms of currencies and assets, not necessarily moral values) completely change; where our technological and scientific growth no longer promises uniform growth and widespread wealth … If we can foresee all of that within the short- to medium-term, how then do we position ourselves to see beyond that?
We have seen cycles come and go in the past. We have seen the creation of infrastructure – such as Roman roads and bridges – transcend the cycles, and remain in use 2,000 years after they were created. Can we (and perhaps should we) envisage the creation of infrastructure which would remain viable beyond our comprehension of future societies?
But let us not get too far ahead of ourselves. We are obligated to continue to think about the next 30 to 100 years as “the long term”, and must prepare for that. Coping with a world in the process of transition on a scale which may have happened only once in the past, say, 1,500 years ago (perhaps the onset of the Dark Ages; or perhaps the end of them) already throws up massive uncertainties. It is the scale and complexity of this new wave of uncertainty which need to be understood and managed. Some find comfort in retreat to the monasticism of compartmentalized specialization, and with dreams of the linear extrapolation of uninterrupted progress in their area of skill. But that will not give them shelter from the storm.
What we are witnessing, and about to witness even more, are the intersections of a range of seemingly unrelated trends, which will terminate linear progress in many areas now considered vital to humanity. This could preface a slide, commencing as soon as the coming decade, into a new Dark Age, or a new Age of Enlightenment. But it is a period where options – as well as threats – abound.
(History shows that most political decisions are based on short-term expediencies and pressures. The narrower the focus, the more difficult it is to comprehend contextual threats and opportunities. That is not to deny the energy and possibilities created by xenophobia and ignorance; not knowing the impossibility of a task is sometimes an essential ingredient of success. But the mere short-term application of willpower, unsupported by strategic capability and depth, rarely achieves historical durability.
To be continued)
