Virtual Militias

[marct]

Hi Wayne,

A big difference historically was overt governmental recognition involved in the delegation, at least in the US--things like letters of marque and reprisal being granted to privateers, posses being sworn and issued badges come to mind. I believe that Neighborhood Watch organizations have to do some kind of registration with local law enforcement too. I'm not sure that the folks Selil has in mind have that same approval. In fact I seem to recall a case of a guy being fired from his job and prosecuted for overstepping in a "cyber-sleuthing" effort involving Chinese interests.

We had the same thing here, although the situation was compounded (possibly confounded ) by the traditional rights of the gentry and aristocracy (and boy does THAT sound weird coming from Canada!). Under a monarchy, the different classes had both rights and obligations - almost a form of shared sovereignty as it were. While the vast majority of that has disappeared, you can still see parts of it running around.

I would suspect that the crowd Selil is talking about don't have official recognition, but do have cultural recognition via your militia meme (i.e. self organization for self-defense as a recognized "right").

The issue raised in your second paragraph is one that I find much more important and see it as having a lot of explanatory power for the current "devolution" of large nation states, which is following a 350 year aggregation of smaller jurisdictions into the national "empires of the 20th Century--only a few (the US, China, India,)are now left and they actually came on to the scene as "nations" quite late after the process began in Europe. Kosovo splitting from Serbia, the Baltic states, White Russians, Ukrines, and the -Stans all splitting with Moscow, are part of the swing of the pendulum that moves between the extremes of centralization and decentralization as the "right" way to meet perceived human needs. Isn't Scotland trying to repudiate the Act of Union?

That's my guess also. I'm not sure how it will play out in the long run, but I have a suspicion that we will see some form of "Imperial" layer added on top of increasingly small nation states - probably a sub-set of the UN, but also larger than the EU. Then again, it is also possible that we could see a fragmentation into "Imperial" factions along the NAU, EU, ASEAN, China, etc. line - sort of a reversion to te organizational style and form of the last half of the 19th century. I wouldn't want to bet either way right now.

[wm]

I have a suspicion that we will see some form of "Imperial" layer added on top of increasingly small nation states - probably a sub-set of the UN, but also larger than the EU. Then again, it is also possible that we could see a fragmentation into "Imperial" factions along the NAU, EU, ASEAN, China, etc. line - sort of a reversion to te organizational style and form of the last half of the 19th century. I wouldn't want to bet either way right now.

I don't doubt that something along the lines of the latter will eventually come along. However, my crystal ball says that we will need some pretty serious multi-regional, if not global, anarchy, of at least an economics/trade sort. When folks start hijacking petroleum and/or food shipments, the pendulum should swing back towards recentralizing power. Wait until the piracy off Somalia starts occurring near Venezuela or at the mouth of the St Lawrence.

[marct]

Hi Wayne,

I don't doubt that something along the lines of the latter will eventually come along. However, my crystal ball says that we will need some pretty serious multi-regional, if not global, anarchy, of at least an economics/trade sort. When folks start hijacking petroleum and/or food shipments, the pendulum should swing back towards recentralizing power. Wait until the piracy off Somalia starts occurring near Venezuela or at the mouth of the St Lawrence.

I'd say we already have a "pretty serious multi-regional, if not global, anarchy, of at least an economics/trade sort." As to it swinging back to centralization over a little piracy, nah, I doubt it. Resource theft by pirates can't even come close to resource losses imposed by inefficient bureaucrats . I am expecting that we will see a rise in KYFHOesque philosophies that will drive certain neo-tribes to act as strange attractors agains such a resurgence.

[Hacksaw]

Taken from the back cover of "An Empire Wilderness"...

"Everywhere Kaplan travels - from St Louis to Portland, from the fouty-ninth parallel to the banks of the Rio Grande - he finds an America ever more fragmented along lines of race, class, education and geography. An America whose wealthy communities become wealthier and more fortress-like as they become more closely linked to the world's business capitals than to the desolate ghettoes next door. An America where the political boundaries between the states - and between the US and Canada and Mexico - are becoming increasingly blurred, betokening a vast open zone for trade, commerce, and cultural interaction, the nexus of tomorrow's transnational world..."



This was written 10 years ago.

Live well and row

[Ken White]

or most of it anyway (Gated communities were rare...) over 30 years ago. A lot was written on that wall in the 1965-75 time frame. Including AQ (generic version) et.al. and todays hot spots. Anyone who paid attention picked up on it. I sure wasn't alone in seeing that at the time, I can recall a number of others who spotted those sorts of things before I did.

Perhaps surprisingly, the US did pick up on it. State informed Nixon after the Munich Olympics in 1972 that terrorism was going to be a problem. Nixon set up both the National Intelligence Council and the Cabinet Committee on Terrorism which in 1977 produced a report that was highly predictive of the coming fragmentation of States, notably, IIRC, predicting the demise of Yugoslavia -- not much was done about it. Carter figured out that oil dependency needed to go due to potential fragmentation in the ME. There were others over in many fields the years, mostly ignored due to domestic politics. So a lot of people realized what was coming -- even before Kaplan wrote that.

A massive number of folks can spot trends; not all of them are academics, writers, pundits or politicians.

Only politicians seem to diligently ignore said trends...

And I suspect I and some others also beat Kaplan in 1979 when the Tehran Embassy was seized or in 1982 when all the bad stuff happened in Beirut and we agreed that bad things would come of those events and our failure to respond...

[wm]

Marc,

I'd say we already have a "pretty serious multi-regional, if not global, anarchy, of at least an economics/trade sort."

The level of serious acts of anarchy I have in mind are something like blocking the St Lawrence Seaway by blowing an oil tanker in the Eisenhower Lock, taking out the Robert Moses Dam and generating plant at the same time, for example.

How about these as possible news stories:
Hijackers holding a few trainloads of grain headed across the the US and Canadian wheat belt (CN or UP trains maybe both) and holding their contents for ransom--"ship them to the people starving in "pick your locale" or we detonate the nuke/dirty bomb we have strapped to the train."
"And in Germany for the third time this week, crowds refusing to pay rising food prices have stormed into a BMA warehouse and taken what they wanted."
This is more what I mean by serious economic anarchy. Of course it would have to be more than just one or two isolated incidents like this.

[marct]

Hi Wayne

How about these as possible news stories:
Hijackers holding a few trainloads of grain headed across the the US and Canadian wheat belt (CN or UP trains maybe both) and holding their contents for ransom--"ship them to the people starving in "pick your locale" or we detonate the nuke/dirty bomb we have strapped to the train."
"And in Germany for the third time this week, crowds refusing to pay rising food prices have stormed into a BMA warehouse and taken what they wanted."
This is more what I mean by serious economic anarchy. Of course it would have to be more than just one or two isolated incidents like this.

Sounds like Paris . No, I understand what you mean by serious acts; I just take the position that they are already happening in some locales and may well spread. They don't really happen in North America yet (barring the mortgage "fun" right now ).

Anyway, I don't think "anarchy" is a necessary precondition to te breakdown of nation state sovereignty. Any sub-state (or trans-national organization) can produce a breakdown in national sovereignty and often has. To my mind, it doesn't have to be rioting in the streets per se; it could be the complete de facto rewrite of state economic policy by multi-national corporations or organizations such as GATT and the WTO.

[Ken White]

consistently promise more than they can deliver and refuse through political cowardice to lead instead of following the pleas of squeaking wheels. Said rejection by people who have just developed a really significant antipathy to the government of the place at the time, no anarchy or global corporations involved.

A not unheard of series of events...

[marct]

..........

[wm]

Anyway, I don't think "anarchy" is a necessary precondition to te breakdown of nation state sovereignty. Any sub-state (or trans-national organization) can produce a breakdown in national sovereignty and often has. To my mind, it doesn't have to be rioting in the streets per se; it could be the complete de facto rewrite of state economic policy by multi-national corporations or organizations such as GATT and the WTO.

My point about significant anarchy was not to identify when nation states would start to break down. It was rather to identify when we might start to see the pendulum start to move back towards reaggregation of smaller units into regional cooperative organizations or governmental units.

I concur that the world is already witnessing the rise of intranational breakdowns. However it is still trying to manage that with international conglomerations (the EU, NATO, ASEAN, etc.), but even those are now starting to get frayed at the edges, as we see with national lelvel debates over such things as continued involvement in NATO ISAF missions. Gaining international consensus has started to become ever more difficult as the centralizing tendency is questioned even more by those "have nots" who see themselves as bill-payers for the excesses of the "haves."

[marct]

Hi Wayne,

My point about significant anarchy was not to identify when nation states would start to break down. It was rather to identify when we might start to see the pendulum start to move back towards reaggregation of smaller units into regional cooperative organizations or governmental units.

This may just be another case of us saying the same, or similar, things with different languages . I'm just not sure when it will happen or if it will happen. The historical analogs were all predicated on low speed communications and fairly low technology, both of which make a major difference.