If we want to affect our fates, we will need a new political force, whether we call it a "party" or something else. Otherwise our species as we've known it will believe it necessary to exit the scene.
Saturday, February 03, 2024
Ushuaia, the end of the world?
Predicting the end of the world is tricky, considering that, from the Book of Revelations on, all the predictions have been wrong. Or have they? It depends on what you mean by, "the end."
I'm writing from Ushuaia, Patagonia, where signs around town proclaim it "the end of the world" in the sense that it's the southernmost city on Earth, from which both ancient inhabitants and recent Europeans could not establish themselves further south towards the real end, Antarctica.
Patagonia, with its stark beauty, inspires me to consider that our major civilizations up north are coming to an end in another sense: Modern governments, in two areas fast becoming critical to human existence, do not represent their citizens' interests in a democratic fashion. This is not to say that there aren't elements of democracy in the world, for instance in the current US national election voters enjoy some representation with familiar campaign issues like immigration and abortion. But as important as these issues are, they are not as important as the following two questions- stemming from foreign and tech policy- neither of which has the status of campaign issue:
1. Will our children and grandchildren inherit a habitable planet, or one turned into a toxic wasteland by nuclear war? As the next post (Kissinger's nuclear war) suggests, this question will be decided with zero input from citizens at large. On the question of nuclear war, it will not matter whom or what you vote for or even if you vote.
2. What sort of humans will we become as the species takes charge of its own evolution with emerging technologies in AI and biology? In one hundred years or less we may not be recognizable as human in the currrent sense. Scientists, the military and business interests are driving our evolution. No influence on the process is available to voters in the 2024 US national election or any other election in the world.
This lack of representation may not seem worth any agitation at the moment, but its impact will be in our faces soon enough, compounded and confused by a spreading international culture of warfare. The existential transformations about to envelop us in what future evolutionary historians might call the Cyber-Bio Event (CBE) should already be presented by mainstream media as equally as critical to our imminent future as immigration and abortion, or the Israel/Hamas and Russia/Ukraine wars. But don't expect that to happen soon.
What to do? Options are limited without widespread recognition by the electorate that the CBE will entail more than new AI toys and servile robots. Its impact on our species will be like millions of years of evolution compressed into a few generations- an atom bomb of evolution- and no one knows the outcome.
When or how public recognition of the situation might happen is unclear, but it will happen, and at that time people will want to be protected from out-of-control change, and they might also want to have a hand in creating the new type of human that we will become. Where will they be able to turn politically? If the Democratic and Republican parties have survived ideological bankruptcy in the 2024 nation election and want to get into the act, hopefully they'll have policy ideas to address the CBE beyond used-up labels like "left" vs. "right." We'll need a party focussed on what sort of species we will be. If such a party is not forthcoming, we might turn to groups outside established politics that can exert media and other pressures sufficient to produce a response to the realities approaching (as suggested below in Party or Foundation? and Gaian Mentalics Unite!). Such a group could be enabled by scientists who care and thinkers in general- a billionaire or two wouldn't hurt. Let's not end so easily.
Sunday, December 03, 2023
Kissinger's nuclear war
Since former US Secretary of State Henry Kissinger died on November 29, 2023 there has been much commentary on his legacies, whether praiseworthy (e.g. rapprochement with China) or questionable (e.g. interventions in Cambodia and Chile). But, surprisingly, there has been little or no reflection on Kissinger's contribution to the theory of nuclear war, though that contribution today seems embedded in established policy.
In 1975, while a professor of government at Harvard, Kissinger wrote Nuclear Weapons and Foreign Policy, published by the Council on Foreign Relations. President Richard Nixon admired the book, with its call for nuclear war with rules, and brought Kissinger into his inner circle, launching his career in government.
Kissinger's book starts like an argument against use of nuclear weapons, detailing the horrors that a nuclear war would inflict on people subject to one, but soon the focus transitions to a discussion of two types of nuclear weapon: "strategic" and "tactical." The terms denote how many "kilotons" are contained in each type (one kiloton equals the explosive power of 1,000 tons of TNT). Strategic nukes, designed to engage in hypothetical global conflicts, deliver from 100 kilotons to one megaton (one million tons of TNT force). The less powerful tactical nukes, designed for confined engagements, deliver from 10 to 100 kilotons.
Kissinger saw little practical use for the giant strategic nukes developed by the U.S. after World War II (the newest, the Sentinel ICBM, delivers 300 kilotons). Instead he advocated for international agreements between potential nuclear adversaries on "limited" nuclear war, with pre-established objectives in designated areas, using only tactical nukes. This would, theoretically, keep the conflict from wiping out the whole world, merely wiping out parts of it.
Kissinger dryly explained, "The aim would be the attainment of certain conditions which are fully understood by the opponent." For instance the objective might be limited to destruction of a fleet of warships or a column of tanks, and the response might be limited to targeting a command center or a grouping of troops, with the objectives of each side understood by the other in advance.
We may have the unfolding of this idea in Russian President Vladimir Putin's announcement on June 16, 2023 that he is deploying tactical nuclear weapons in Belarus near the Ukrainian border (Update, 12/26/23: A spokesperson for the Russian government announced that it has "completed installation of tactical nuclear weapons in Belarus."). Putin has warned that the weapons could be used in Ukraine. If that happens, it will likely elicit a tactical nuclear response from the US and the other NATO nuclear powers, France and the UK.
Kissinger may have died on the eve of the realization of his nuclear war concept.