Simultaneously chilling and empowering, War and Anti-War, the Tofflers' newbook (Little, Brown), left us awed by the power of knowledge and technology--and wanting to hide under the covers. In an exclusive excerpt and an interview with PT's editors, the authors plant images of nuclear destruction in our minds while at the same time instructing us to arm ourselves with nothing more concrete than information.
"On a bright spring morning recently," Toffler cowrites with his wife, Heidi, "eight of us met to decide whether or not to drop a nuclear bomb on North Korea.
"At precisely 9:26 A.M. two North Korean nuclear bombs exploded over an area where South Korean armor was massing for defense. Four more nuclear blasts followed three minutes later. The Second Korean War had begun with a nuclear bang.
"The task facing our team was to put practical options on the desk of the president of the United States. We had 50 minutes. Should we respond in kind to North Korea's use of nukes?"
The incident described is a think-tank game--a simulation designed to educate its participants and observers about potential nuclear crises. "But the real nuclear game," the authors continue, "is not over. In fact, it is becoming more ominous every day. For that game, like war itself, is being transformed by the arrival of Third Wave civilization and its knowledge-based technologies."
THE GENIE UNLEASHED
"Armies all over the world are racing to meet the realities of the 21st century. Peacemaking, by contrast, plods along, trying to apply methods more appropriate to a distant past. This much we know: The way we make war reflects the way we make wealth, and the way we make anti-war (or peace) must reflect the way we make war.
"No subject is as easily ignored by those of us lucky enough to be living in peace. After all, we each have our private wars for survival: making a living, caring for our family, battling an illness. Yet how we fight our personal, peacetime wars, how we live our daily lives, is deeply influenced by real, and even by imagined, wars of the present, past, or future.
"Today, as the world hurtles out of the industrial age and into a new century, much of what we know about both war and anti-war is dangerously out of date. A revolutionary new economy is arising based on knowledge rather than conventional raw materials and physical labor. This remarkable change in the world economy is bringing with it a parallel revolution in the nature of warfare. Anti-wars must match the wars they are intended to prevent."
PT: What is your view of the world of the future as we approach the millenium?
AT: It is distressing. We think it's a very dangerous situation. For instance, the average yearly number of military conflicts going on since 1945 has been about 30 to 35. In the last 12 months, there have been 62. And we're in the midst of an enormous transformation in our civilization. To expect that to happen calmly and peacefully and without all kinds of turmoil I think would be naive.
As far as Americans go, there's a shift in values regarding conflict, in that we not only want low casualties on our side, we also don't want to see a lot of body bags on the other side, either. The public simply won't allow it anymore. The mood of the country shifted, beginning with Vietnam, when on television every night we saw killing and flamethrowers and children and women. When it came into our living room, that was the point at which we said, "We don't want it anymore."
HT: Look at Somalia: One American soldier was dragged through the streets and the entire country goes nuts. In WWI, 600,000 British troops died in one battle. And in Berimny right now there is a terrible civil war and terrible bloodshed, but you haven't heard about it on television so it doesn't exist.
AT: Nobody knows the future. Nobody can predict with assurance anything about the future. But we can identify some of the large moving patterns and watch them as they develop or shift. And if we do watch them and are more or less right about where things are headed, then there may be some things we can do to prepare ourselves.
A TRISECTED WORLD
"It has belatedly begun to dawn on people that industrial civilization is coming to an end. Its unraveling brings with it the threat of more, not fewer, wars--wars of a new type. Today, the lineup of world civilizations is different. We are speeding toward a totally different structure of power that will create not a world cut in two but sharply divided into three contrasting and competing civilizations: the first symbolized by the hoe; the second by the assembly line; and the third by the computer.
"Third Wave nations rise to dominance based on the new ways in which they creates and exploits knowledge. They sell information and innovation, management, culture andpop culture, advanced technology, software, education, training, medical care, and financial and other services to the world. One of those services might well also turn out to be military protection based on its command of superior Third Wave forces. (That is, in effect, what the high-tech nations provided for Kuwait and Saudi Arabia in the Gulf War.)
"True military revolutions have occurred only twice before in history, and there are strong reasons to believe that the third revolution--the one now beginning--will be the deepest of all For only within recent decades have some of the key parameters of warfare hit their final limits. These parameters are range, lethality, and speed.
Tags:
bright spring morning,
genie,
korean war,
media,
military,
north korea,
nuclear blasts,
nuclear bomb,
nuclear bombs,
nuclear crises,
nuclear destruction,
nuclear game,
nuclear warfare,
observers,
plant images,
president of the united states,
private wars,
realities,
south korean,
tank game,
technology,
third wave,
three minutes,
War,
wife heidi
