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a baby across a room in a little red wagon and watch his face light
up. He's doing nothing but going along for the ride, but he feels
as though the wagon's power is his. Put some speed on your car on
a clear and pleasant road and you'll feel the same way. True, you
bought that car with the sweat of your brow, and you're the one
who's driving. Still, there's some sort of "cheating"
going on. You feel as though the speed is yours, when it's really
the car's. Master the difficult and dangerous art of flying a fighter
jet off an aircraft carrier, push a button, and set a laser-guided
bomb on a course for your enemy. Here the problem of effort and
responsibility becomes more complicated. Now watch it all on television....
More complicated still.
I'm a tremendous
admirer of Peggy Noonan, but the other day she said something about
what we've learned since September 11 that troubled me:
We...learned
we are stronger than we knew. A nation that had spent the past
few decades trying to decide what kind of cashmere slippers to
buy found out is was, still, tough as old boots.
It's true that,
with the exception of some Leftist ideologues, the country has united
behind the war. Yes, our economy has been disrupted, and many of
us have personally felt the fear of attack. But for all that, I'm
not sure we can refer to this conflict yet, the way we once did
World War II, as the war effort. The ease of our military
success is a wonderful thing — up to a point, anyway. But we
have certainly not yet proven ourselves as tough as old boots, and
the relative lack of effort expended to this point in the war does
matter.
In more ways
than one, this war has been precipitated and shaped by technology.
The context for the war was set by the collapse of the Soviet empire
and the emergence of the United States as the world's only superpower.
Technology mattered there, in that the inability of the Soviet system
to adapt to the computer revolution hastened its collapse. Home
computers, faxes, television dishes, and the like were incompatible
with a totalitarian system. And the impossibility of matching our
"star wars" technology was a crushing blow to the Soviet
Union's economic, military, political, and psychological position
in the world.
Now the Muslim
world is struggling with the question of whether its own way of
life is compatible with the technologies of power and pleasure that
are synonymous with modernity. Muslims want these technologies,
but the sort of education, economy, and polity required to produce
and enjoy them puts much about traditional Muslim society into doubt.
And almost
everything important about the conduct of this war is tied to technology.
It's true that the attack on the World Trade Center itself was relatively
"low tech." Still, our vulnerability is tied to our technology.
The existence of skyscrapers allows those who can find their weaknesses
to commit mass murder. Our extraordinary infrastructure — skyscrapers,
subways, tunnels, gas pipelines, dams, water-treatment facilities,
nuclear power plants — makes us vulnerable to even a few determined
foes. And a relatively small country (or terrorist network) with
real technological facility now has the potential to create weapons
of mass destruction. So our new vulnerability is a function of technological
advance.
At the same
time, our unexpectedly easy success so far in Afghanistan is a function
of advancing technology. Our special-operations forces really are
"tough as old boots," but through their courageous and
brilliantly executed efforts at laser targeting, we have so far
been able to avoid committing significant numbers of ground troops.
This combination of special-operations forces, proxy armies, and
new targeting technologies (global-positioning systems, laser guidance,
moving-target indicators, etc.) portends a revolution in warfare,
the full political and moral implications of which we are only beginning
to feel.
In the Persian
Gulf War, the bombing of Bosnia, the bombing of Kosovo, and now
in Afghanistan, the United States has won a series of wars, largely
through air power, and with almost no casualties. With advances
in the new targeting technologies still to come, we face the prospect
of being able to dominate the world at the touch of a button —
and at virtually no cost in casualties. Technology appears to be
taking the human element out of war. Worries about American national
will, or the warrior fierceness of the Taliban, now seem almost
irrelevant. Nothing can stand against a combination of air supremacy,
the new targeting technologies, and a select few forces — mostly
non-American — on the ground. Or so it would appear.
There are lots
of ways in which this breezy scenario might be complicated. There
is still the possibility of serious guerilla resistance from the
Taliban, or ongoing civil war in Afghanistan. Despite our desire
to get out of the country as soon as possible, a significant number
of American troops could be tied down in policing operations for
some time to come — perhaps taking regular casualties. Even
so, our laser-guided victory from the air has probably saved us
from having to commit significant troops to Afghanistan.
The real test
will be Iraq. A month ago it was a safe bet that Iraq would have
to be taken with a Gulf War-like conventional force, even if heavily
dependent upon bombing to prepare the way. Now, taking Iraq through
a combination of special-operations forces, precision bombing, and
a Kurdish proxy army is at least a possibility. How extraordinary
that would be.
The danger
in all this is that we might in fact get to used to our cashmere
slippers when an old-boots moment finally arrives. This war is still
in the early stages, with great unpredictability and great danger
ahead. A conventional war in Iraq may indeed be necessary, while
Afghanistan may continue to be torn by civil strife. That could
break apart our coalition, forcing us to give up our hopes of getting
out of Afghanistan quickly. Without our coalition, an international
police force will be unreliable. We'd have to do it ourselves. And
the need to be certain that even small terrorist cells with weapons
of mass destruction aren't hiding out in some remote corner of the
world is going to make it more difficult than we may realize to
disengage ourselves from the international military commitments
that emerge from this war.
Nonetheless,
the new technologies of war may turn out to save us from the need
to commit massive numbers of ground forces, even as the war expands
to other countries. If that does prove to be true, there will be
calls to drastically reshape our armed forces to accommodate the
new conditions of war. And Americans will come to believe, even
more than they already do, that we can have our cake and eat it
to — that we can control the world, casualty-free, and without
conscription.
Technology
or no, that sort of situation cannot last. There are too many long-term
dangers on the horizon — North Korea and China, to name two.
Sooner or later, America is going to run into a potential conflict
with a massive Asian land power where the threat of force will not
be credible without a large conventional army and a willingness
to take casualties in defense of freedom.
In a thoughtful
and spirited reflection on the quantum leap in warfare that our
air victory in Afghanistan represents, Fareed
Zakaria recently argued that bureaucrats with an antiquated
belief in the irreplaceability of ground troops are blocking the
necessary transformation of America's military to a modern, high-tech
force. But surely we will have to do both — to expand our special-operations
forces and pursue the revolution in targeting technology, while
also keeping substantial forces prepared for a conventional land
war. A serious land conflict could easily come before the current
war is over. But sooner or later, it will come.
Advances in
technology appear to have made us at once unimaginably powerful
and unimaginably vulnerable. The loss of millions of Americans to
an attack by only a few terrorists using weapons of mass destruction
is now thinkable. The threat will not disappear, even after this
war is over. Technological advance has rendered us permanently vulnerable.
At the same
time, American control of the world through low-casualty, almost
push-button wars is now a realistic possibility. And while only
a few terrorists can do a great deal of damage, even great nations
will not easily be able to compete with America for world supremacy.
The Europeans cannot now even remotely compete with our defense
industries, and given the complexity of the new technology and the
need for a truly national high-tech infrastructure to manufacture
and maintain it, less developed nations haven't a prayer of challenging
American power.
So the long-term
prospects are for American hegemony. It could take 30-50 years for
any challengers with the technological ability to rival us to emerge,
and by that time they would likely be our economic and cultural
allies. The real danger — once we surmount the challenge from
sections of the Islamic world — is from East Asian nations
that are at least partially modernized and well-stocked with both
manpower and will. To forestall that threat, we must not allow ourselves
to be transformed into a push-button power. Technology is our irreplaceable
edge, but woe to us if we lose the ability or will to fight a serious
land war.
Technology
is both the embodiment and the enemy of our humanity. Our ability
to make and use tools that extend our natural physical powers is,
in a sense, the mark of human civilization. Yet something about
our technology has the ability to undercut our dignity, our self-command
— our very lives. In everything from our battles over biotechnology
to the Islamic world's struggle with modernity, we see the conflict
between machinery that serves and extends human power and happiness,
and the danger of a life in which humanity is turned into the lackey
of his own machinery. Now this conflict has been starkly put before
us in the form of advances in weaponry that can destroy civilization,
or protect it on the cheap. We shall stay in command of the situation
only if we avoid the childish mistake of believing that we are driving
the little red wagon when the wagon is driving us. In the end, it
will always come back to human skill, and sweat, and spirit.
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