Carroll Quigley - Tragedy and Hope - A History of the World in Our Time

As the technology of weapons, transportation, communications, and propaganda continued to develop, it became possible to compel obedience over areas measured in thousands (rather than hundreds) of miles and thus over distances greater than those occupied by existing linguistic and cultural groups. It thus became necessary to appeal for allegiance to the state on grounds wider than nationalism. This gave rise, in the 1930’s and 1940’s, to the idea of continental blocs and the ideological state (replacing the national state). Embraced by Hitler and the Japanese, and (much less consciously) by the United States and Britain, this growing pattern of political organization and appeal to allegiance was smashed in World War II. But during that war technological developments increased the area over which obedience could be compelled and consent obtained. By 1950, Dulles and others talked of a two-Power world, as if consent could be obtained by only two Powers, and as if each were hemispherical in scope. They were not. For, while the area of power organizations had expanded, they had not become hemispherical, and new counterbalancing factors had appeared that threatened to reverse the whole process.

Instead of power in the 1950’s being concentrated in two centers, each hemispherical in scope and able to compel obedience over distances of 10,000 miles, the Superpowers could compel obedience over distances in the range of 6,000 to 8,000 miles, leaving a considerable zone between them. In addition the neutralization of their real power in their Superpower confrontation made this zone between more obvious, and weakened their ability to obtain obedience to extreme demands even within 6,000 miles of their power centers (which were situated, let us say, in Omaha and Kuibyshev). In this power gap between the less than hemispherical Superpowers appeared the neutrals of the Buffer Fringe.

But there was more to the situation than this geographical limitation. The nature of power was also changing, although few noticed this. The role of force in politics had been effective to the degree that it was able to influence the minds and wills of men. But the new weapons, in seeking increased range, had become weapons of mass destruction rather than instruments of persuasion. If the victims of such weapons are killed, they can neither obey nor consent. Thus the new weapons have become instruments, not of political power, but of destruction of all power organizations. This explains the growing reluctance by all concerned to use them. Furthermore their range and areas of impact make them most ineffective against individual men and especially against the minds of individual men. And, finally, in an ideological state it is the minds of men that must be the principal targets. Any organization is coordinated both by patterned relationships and by ideology and morale. If the former become increasingly threatened by weapons of destruction, the organization can survive by becoming decentralized, with less emphasis on organizational relationships and more emphasis on morale and outlook. They thus become increasingly amorphous and invulnerable to modern weapons of destruction. The peoples of Africa are, for this reason among others, not susceptible to compulsion by megaton bombs. And Western peoples or Soviet peoples can become less susceptible by becoming Africanized.

This process has not gone very far yet, but it is already observable, especially among the younger generation of the United States, Europe, and the Soviet Union. To the young in all three of these areas there is a growing, if quiet, skepticism of any general abstract appeal to allegiance and loyalty, and a growing concern with concrete, interpersonal relationships with local groups of friends and intimates.

There is still another element in this complex picture. This is also related to weapons. The past history of weapons over thousands of years shows that the reason political units have grown larger in certain periods has been because of the increased power of the offensive in the dominant weapons systems, and that periods in which defensive weapons became dominant have been those in which political units remained small in area or even became smaller. The growing power of castles in the period about 1100 b.c. or about a.d. 900 made political power so decentralized and made power units so small that all power became private power, and the state disappeared as a common form of political organization. Thus arose the so-called “Dark Ages” about 1000 b.c. or a.d. 1000.

We do not expect any such extreme growth of defensive power in the future, but any increase in defensive weapon power would stop the growth in size of power areas and would, in time, reverse this tendency. There would be thus a proliferation in numbers and a decrease in size of such power units, a tendency already evident, in the past twenty years, in the great increase in the number of United Nations member states. No drastic increase in the defensive power of existing weapons can yet be demonstrated in any conclusive way, but the rising ability of guerrilla forces to maintain their functional autonomy shows definite limits on the offensive power of contemporary weapons. Any drastic increase in the ability of guerrilla forces to function would indicate such an increase in the defensive power of existing weapons, and this, in turn, would indicate an ability to resist centralized authorities and thus an ability to maintain and defend small-group freedoms.

Such a rise in the strength of defensive weapons, with a consequent decentralization of political power, would require a number of other changes, such as a decentralization of economic production. This probably seems very unlikely to us who live in the frantic economic expansion of the electronic revolution and the space race, but it is at least conceivable. Such a change would require a plentiful, dispersed source of industrial energy and the use of plentiful and widely scattered materials for industrial fabrication. These do not seem to be completely unlikely possibilities. For example, a shift from our present use of fossil fuels as a chief energy source to the use of the sun’s energy directly in many small local energy accumulators might provide a plentiful supply of decentralized energy. More remote might be use of the tides, or of differential ocean temperatures, or even of the winds. Possibly some development in the use of nuclear energy, or, above all, some method for cheap separation of the oxygen and hydrogen in ordinary water that could release energy, perhaps through fuel cells, as they recombine.

Such a decentralized energy source, if developed, could be used to build up a decentralized industrial system using cellulose or silicon as raw materials to produce an economy of plastics and glass products (including fiber glass). These two raw materials found in vegetation and sand are among the most common substances in the world. On such a basis, with the proper development of guerrilla weapon tactics, the costs of enforcing centralized orders in local areas might rise so high that a considerable process of political decentralization and local autonomies (including local liberties) could arise, thus reversing the process of political centralization that has continued in the Western tradition for about a thousand years.

In this process, a significant role might be played by the appearance of a major, nonnuclear, deterrence. This already exists, but is not publicly discussed because it presents such a threat to the existing world political structure. It rests in the existence of biological and chemical weapons (BCW) that can be just as devastating as nuclear weapons and do not require a rich or elaborate industrial system for their manufacture or use. Thus they might be more readily available or usable by the less advanced industrial nations, but are not being researched by such nations to any considerable degree because they might also be more effective as weapons against such backward nations. At the same time, the more advanced nations also hesitate to publicize the existence of such weapons because there is no assurance that they might not, while being readily available to backward nations, still be relatively effective against advanced nations.