"European elites frequently deprecated gunpowder. By taking the
muscle out of killing, powder favored the weak over the strong. It
was the weapon of cowards.
"The repeated effort by European elites to blame gunpowder for
the decline of chivalry was in part a smoke screen to obscure more
profound changes in society that had long been undermining the
role of the knight. Their objections were rooted in an
understandable desire to maintain their monopoly use of force -
gunpowder threatened to make violence too freely available."
- Jack Kelly, Gunpowder
Substitute nuclear weapons for gunpowder and civilization for
chivalry in the quotations above, and all of a sudden you have a
modern re-enactment of the same violent dynamic that defined so
much of Europe in the 16th century.
John Keegan has said that fortresses with low ramparts on the
frontier were the prime force in defining the borders of modern
European states. Those fortresses had low brick and earthen
ramparts instead of stone walls. But the very creation of those
fortresses was a reaction to the destruction of feudal castles by
gunpowder and cannon.
With the debut of siege guns and cannons, gunpowder and iron and
stone balls destroyed the stone walls of older fortifications. The
best example is in 1453, when Turkish Sultan Mehmed II began
the Siege of Constantinople. He was, by the way, just 21 years old
(note that nearly half the male population of Saudi Arabia is under
20).
According to Kelly, Constantinople has survived over 20 sieges. It
was considered impregnable, and its double walls dated to the fifth
century. Kelly tells us, "The inner wall was 40 feet high. In front
was a stretch of cleared ground, then a 25-foot wall fronted by a
15-foot-deep ditch. Properly manned, the walls could withstand
virtually any onslaught."
A Nuclear Mercenary
Mehmed met Urban, a man whom today we'd compare to the
father of the Islamic atomic bomb, Abdul Qadeer Khan. Khan was
the Pakistani nuclear scientist at the center of a global black market
in nuclear weapons technology. He aided and abetted Libya, North
Korea, and Iran in their respective pursuits of nuclear weapons. His
special knowledge has put nuclear bomb building know-how in the
hands of some aspiring regimes (and two-thirds of President
Bush's "axis of evil").
At the New Orleans Investment Conference, former director of
Central Intelligence George Tenet cited the busting of Khan's
nuclear network as one the greatest and most painstaking
achievements during his time at the CIA. History will judge if the
network was broken up in time to prevent widespread nuclear
proliferation. But we'll get to that in a moment.
In 1451, Mehmed was approached by a Hungarian-born gunsmith
named Urban, the Khan of his time. History is full of ironies, and
the fact that a gunsmith named Urban would play such a large role
in the evolution of urban warfare is one of them. Becoming a
gunsmith in the 15th century meant knowing how to mix
gunpowder and being your own metallurgist. Hungary was rich in
metal ores, and Urban knew a thing or two about casting cannons.
Urban offered to work for the Byzantine emperor, but the money
wasn't good enough. So he took his offer to Mehmed, who asked
him if he could build a gun to knock down the walls of
Constantinople.
Urban set to work and produced what today we'd call a
"supergun." It was a giant bombard built in two parts and screwed
together. It took him three months. Mehmed mounted the cannon
on a fortress overlooking the Bosporus strait and used it to interdict
sea traffic in the narrow channel - "shaping the battle space," you
might call it today, or leveraging one of nature's natural choke
points for commerce.
Mehmed was so happy with his first gun that he had Urban cast a
second one. The barrel on this gun was 26 feet long and capable of
hurling a stone ball more than half a ton in weight. Kelly tells us,
"Fifty yoke of oxen could barely move the giant piece. Seven
hundred men were assigned to the crew that would operate it.
Urban gave a day's notice before his first test firing so civilians
would not panic...The stone flew a mile and buried itself 6 feet into
the earth."
Mehmed began bombarding the Byzantines in Constantinople on
April 12, 1453. Even though the ordnance was stone, it was
effective in a way that nothing else ever had been. Some of the
stone balls had been carved from ancient Greek temples - yet
another irony of history.
Soon after May 29, the Turks threw open the Kerkoporta gate, and
Constantinople was taken. Mehmed said his afternoon prayers in
the Hagia Sophia, which was converted from one of Christianity's
great monuments into a mosque. The geopolitical map of the world
had been redrawn, thanks in large part to the advent of gunpowder
and the cannon.
European fortress design changed to accommodate the increased
firepower. New fortifications had large earthworks and brick walls.
These were designed to absorb the kinetic energy of cannon balls
and prevent the destruction of the fortress or city wall.
What's more, in Italy, Renaissance artists like Michelangelo and
Leonardo da Vinci actually became fortress designers, resurrecting
the classical study of math and geometry to create angles of fire for
city and fortress defenders that allowed the defender to fire on the
cannon of the besieging army.
In modern warfare terms, you could say that the cannon compelled
fortress designers to rethink their design strategy. Fortresses
became strategic strongholds. The result was a new design that
"shaped the battlespace." That is, it channeled attacking armies
into clear lines of enfilading fire.
You can still see these designs in the old French forts, along what
would later become the Maginot line (which were built much later
than the post-Renaissance forts I'm talking about). The designs
usually incorporate the use of a pentagonal fortification, which
allowed for multiple lines of crossfire for the defenders (the
pentagon is also an excellent geometric shape for office building
design).
You see this fort design especially at Fort Douamont in Verdun.
The design worked so well that after the French lost the fort early
in World War I to a German infiltration, it took them years and
100,000 lives to capture it back.
The fort design also held up astonishingly well under
bombardment, which is exactly what it was designed for. It wasn't
until another military sea change - the triumph of maneuver over
firepower with the German blitzkrieg - that the old borders of
Europe were fatally compromised and redrawn.
Today's questions:
Will the proliferation of nuclear weapons
represent another sea change in military affairs?
If so, what effect will it have on the world's
geopolitical map?
Are the cultural and military borders of the world
about to be redrawn because of the dispersion of
nuclear power into more hands?
Gunpowder helped define the borders of modern Europe because it
led to fortresses that could withstand iron balls shot from cannons.
Borders hardened. And within those borders, backed by the
tremendous firepower of cannons (and the enormous taxes it took
to finance them), modern nation-states began to spring up.
The possession of cannons and fortresses was the difference between
surviving as a state or being subsumed into a stronger neighbor.
Today, you have to wonder if the acquisition of nuclear weapons is
the equivalent of having large fortresses and cannons with
gunpowder. Or in plainer terms, is possession of a nuclear weapon
a guarantee of your existence as a nation-state in the 21st century?
Is it the only sure way to prevent yourself from being challenged
by an aggressor?
The North Koreans would probably tell you yes. And the Iranians
probably think the same thing. And here we arrive at heart of the
issue, at a question whose answer no one knows: If nuclear
proliferation continues, how will the world's geopolitical map
change?
To answer that, we have to look at how gunpowder and nuclear
weapons are different from all other weapons. We'll call it the
study of the asymmetric use of violence for both coercion and
defense.
Whether it's tanks, aircraft carriers, or nuclear weapons, nation-
states have acquired expensive weapons in order to guarantee their
survival. They have, of course, also used them to prosecute wars of
aggression on their neighbors.
But the weapons have always been in the service of the state. After
all, few of us individually have the resources to build a weapon that
can alter the world's geopolitical setting. Capital-intensive weapons
are beyond the reach of individuals.
But guns are not, and neither, perhaps, are nuclear weapons.
Let's deal with guns first. It took awhile for the technology of
gunpowder and arms-making to evolve to the point that an
individual could carry a concealed weapon with lethal power.
But it eventually happened, and in America, at least, it became one
of the essential ingredients in preventing the state from
overreaching its powers arbitrarily. You are guaranteed the right to
bear arms.
In that respect, gun ownership is the last defense against
the power of the state, and thus one of the most important rights
worth protecting.
At the micro level - if you consider the individual the building
block of society - guns and gunpowder secured the individual's
right at least to defend himself from coercive power, whether it
was from his neighbor or the state.
It is the asymmetry of self-defense that one man with one gun
can resist much larger forces. Not always with success, of course,
but always in principle.
But what about nuclear weapons?
Thus far, only States have had the resources to develop them.
And only States have been in possession of them. And States, at least
in the Western world, have tended to act in their own interests. That
means you have not seen States use nuclear weapons like handguns.
The costs, of course, are simply too high.
Nuclear weapons give States legitimacy. And to the extent that
more States get them, you can probably expect to see a lot less
meddling in the affairs of other states. The diplomatic world
suddenly becomes more like Texas, where you don't try to mug a
passerby on the street because you know he's probably packing
heat.
This is one very Western way of thinking about nuclear
proliferation. Essentially, it doesn't signal the beginning of a
nuclear holocaust. But it DOES signal the beginning of a new
world order, where no one single state (read: the United States) can
mold the world in its vision, because other States have a deterrent
against regime change.
In some ways, this should come as an enormous relief to
Americans. Now, rather than giving in to the temptation to
reorganize the institutions of failed States, we have an out: "We
can't do anything, because we're not willing to risk nuclear
attack."
There are only two real objections to using the above logic as the
premise for a non-interventionary American policy. The first is that
the States that are pursuing nuclear weapons are inherently
dangerous to American interests (free trade, low oil prices, liberty)
and will be even more dangerous when they get them.
Now it could be that these states - Iran and North Korea, for
example - simply want to be left alone and are pursuing the bomb
for that reason. A genuine transnational progressive defender for
human rights might justly ask the question of whether we
SHOULD leave alone regimes that were not elected by their
citizens and that throw thousands of their citizens into virtual death
camps or enforce strict theocratic morality codes at the penalty of
death.
In other words, should we care if the North Korean regime
acquires a nuclear weapon in order to preserve the power it has to
starve its people into a medieval submission?
And should we care if a minority of older Shiite clerics in Tehran create
an unpopular theocracy that tyrannizes anyone who believes in liberal
values - and guarantees its right to do so by building a bomb that will
keep the Americans at bay, to the west in Iraq and to the east in
Afghanistan?
Are states that pursue the bomb to protect nonelected regimes and
secure the right to put the jackboot of authority on the backs of the
necks of their citizens to be left alone because they pose no real
threat to American interests?
Taking the question out of moral terms, let's put in practical terms.
If you can live with a tyrannical, autocratic, or theocratic fascist
state in principle, as long as it's not yours, the next question you
have to answer is whether these states are expansionist. If they're
not, then the only real struggle left is with your conscience. And
that is our lot in life every day, whether we know about all the
various evils in the world or not.
But if, say, a nuclear Iran is an expansionist Iran and acts like a
belligerent state bent on the destruction of Israel, what, then,
should America's response be?
A cynic or a realist or a skeptic might ask what the difference is
between an expansionist Iran and an expansionist America. It
would be a good question.
An essentialist would tell you he's not capable of knowing the
difference and it's not his business. It's God's business, and the
minute we think differently is the minute we've made an enormous
mistake.
But let's be willing to make a mistake of commission for a second
and ask the question: What is the difference between an
expansionist America (freedom on the march) and an expansionist
Islam (death to America)?
It depends on whom you ask, of course.
The idealist in America says that for all its faults, America
advances the liberal order that's been at the heart of the West since
the so-called Enlightenment. This order - at least in word, if not
always in deed - defends individual liberty, freedom of worship,
and representative democracy. It defends freedom of association
and the right to self-defense and promotes the growth of wealth
and private property.
The pessimist or realist says that no real liberal order can be
expansionist and call itself legitimate. The defense of such an
expansion is just an apology for the growing power of a state.
A Henry Clay might try to say that liberal orders do need
defending so liberties at home can remain liberties, but that one
doesn't defend them by going on the attack.
Whatever opinion you have of the American liberal order -
whether it's really liberal, how it ought to be defended, whether it
ought to be expanded - you can at least say that there is still
lively and open debate about what it ought to be.
Sure, there are those who worry about Bush the dictator, the
crushing of dissent in America, and the end of the press as an
institution to hold the government accountable.
But there is an awful lot of free speech being let loose for a country
that is rumored to be careening into fascism.
History will tell the tale. But for now, America's political discussions
are held in the political realm, not in street fights between red precincts
and blue precincts or border wars between red states and blue states (for
now, anyway).
Is expansionist Islam qualitatively different than the Western
liberal order? Well, perhaps I've begged the question by calling
Islam expansionist. Or perhaps I've taken the ravings of Osama bin
Laden too seriously. The real question is whether Iran will aim
to spread its version of Islam in the Middle East…and if so, how
would it be any different, better, or worse than American attempts
to do the same thing?
I don't know enough about Islam to say. But I think it's safe to say
Maureen Dowd would not be writing for The New York Times if
the mullahs were running America. There wouldn't be a free press.
And women would be behind the veil.
Michael Moore might get work, the same way Leni Riefenstahl
found work and the same way the folks at Al-Jazeera stay busy:
cranking out the propaganda. It is unclear whether the ACLU,
Human Rights Watch, or Amnesty International would have a role
in the Greater Middle East, Iran-style. That is, would they be
critics from outside the borders, or would they be rotting in
theocratic jail cells, waiting to be shot in the back of the head or
hung publicly from a soccer goal for asserting their right to liberty?
You can argue whether the American liberal order in its ideal looks
anything like a real liberal order. But you would have to be a liar to
call the Iranian order a liberal or free order. And I suspect the
mullahs would proudly call it neither.
You'd be well within your rights, as we fortunately are in the
West, to say you don't care what happens in Iran or the rest of the
Middle East. You could say it is not our place to remake their
political order and that political orders take hundreds of years and
complicated, organic institutions to work. And you could say, as I
mentioned earlier, that revolutions are the work of men and not of
God. A modest Christian is not the revolutionary type.
But only a complete amoralist or relativist would say there's no
difference between an illiberal order and a liberal one. Is it
judgmental? Surely it is. But surely it's not difficult to say that
allowing divorce is better than stoning women for adultery.
The West is full of many moral evils. That's because men often do
things with their freedom you and I may not like. But the law is not
designed or empowered to enforce moral judgments about what
people do with their freedom, with the exception of the moral
injunctions that are the same in nearly all cultures: thou shalt not
steal, thou shalt not kill, etc.
And so, rather clumsily, I come to the point again:
Is the creation of illiberal orders based on theocratic law an
expansionist threat to America?
Are we genuinely threatened by nuclear regimes that are
politically illegitimate and that govern by terrorizing their
populations?
These things may morally offend us. But do we have any
compelling reason to do anything about it, to enforce regime
change in Tehran and prevent the Islamic republic from going
nuclear?
Your answer to that question reveals whether or not you believe
George Tenet.
Tenet, along with the Bush administration, is convinced that a
nuclear and theocratic Iran would become a discount wholesaler
of nuclear devices to the same kind of terrorists that attacked
us on Sept. 11. He believes, in essence, that Iran will distribute
nuclear handguns for use on American streets.
It's a belief that says this kind of radical Islam IS at war with the
West, whether we have chosen it or not. The bin Laden
justification of the war changes from day to day. One day, it's
Americans in Saudi Arabia. The next (after the Americans had left
Saudi Arabia), it's Americans in Lebanon in 1982.
And always, it's Americans supporting Israel...
One wonders whether we would be free of the terrorist menace
if the United States simply abandoned the Jewish state to the
destruction wished upon it by Iran.
It's an ugly thing to say. But let's put it out in the open light of
discussion. That, after all, is one of our great privileges in the West.
So maybe Israel is the next Sudetenland or Poland. Maybe if we
just give the Islamofacists their spiritual Lebensraum, the problem
- along with the Department of Homeland Security - will
simply go away. Goodbye Ariel Sharon and the nuisance of
terrorism; happy days are here again!
It could happen that way, right? Who knows?
On the other hand, here's what I suspect: Illiberal orders must
always find an external target towards which to direct their
frustration at not becoming wealthier and more technologically
advanced.
Decadent America will always be the enemy of cultural
conservatives (Islamic, Christian, or the reactionary and atheistic
European left) because dynamic cultures, in addition to making it
possible for Michael Moore and Britney Spears to flourish,
produce more ideas, lead to more opportunity, and reward more
free thinking than static, autocratic cultures.
Liberal orders and dynamic cultures (not governed by autocratic
power and religious diktat) destroy older traditions, let many
people fall through the cracks, and spit in the eyes of social and
religious planners who think they know what we all ought to be
doing with our lives. They are a threat to stability, tradition, and
established authority - which is why the European and American
left now find themselves drifting toward common cause with the
avowed enemies of the liberal order. How's that for historic irony?
In other words, we could sell out Israel tomorrow and all we'd
have accomplished is putting ourselves at the top of the mullahs'
Most Wanted list. What else are you going to do with millions of
angry young men who have no job prospects and a dearth of young
women? At what else can you direct their anger to keep it from
being directed at you?
Better to send them off to jihad in Amsterdam, Paris, London, and
Chicago. Already, in the Netherlands, we see signs of a more
urbane kind of Fallujah. A Jewish father of four and outspoken
critic of human rights abuses, shot in the head on the way home.
Theo Van Gogh, ritualistically murdered. Expect more of the same.
And here's the fear: Instead of guns and knives, we also have to
worry about bombs and radioactive fallout.
In the 18th and 19th centuries, the British sent their surplus young
men, criminals, and entrepreneurs off to the corners of the world.
They took the British Navy and British institutions with them. As a
result, you got India, Australia, Hong Kong, Singapore, and of
course, America.
What will be the impact of an expansionist Islam backed by an
Iranian bomb and eager to export its teeming masses of angry
young men? Take a look at Europe now, and you begin to see
what's in store.
The alternative to this future, if it's possible, is to do what the Bush
doctrine advocates: Turn the restiveness of the decayed illiberal
regimes of the region back on itself so it's not directed at us any
longer. The illusion of stability - doing nothing but paying Egypt
and Jordan billions a year - is nothing but coddling. It only costs
you time; it doesn't gain you security. The risk of getting
something worse is outweighed by getting more of the same.
This is the strategic gamble, of course. That by parking a couple of
nascent would-be liberal democracies in the heart of the region, the
Bush doctrine is essentially one of ideological containment. Force
the illegitimate regimes of the region to collapse on themselves by
showing their populations what a liberal order looks like.
If it's next door in Baghdad, and it's led by Iraqis, it's much harder
to spin it as a Zionist-Yankee conspiracy to humiliate the Arab
world. Don't let the regimes direct hatred outward, goes the theory.
But instead, force the anger in on itself at its root, which is not the
oppressive West, but the oppressive regimes in Cairo, Riyadh,
Damascus, and Tehran.
Or to put it in organic terms, prevent inflammation (all disease is
inflammation) by smothering the reaction. Early gunpowder mixes
failed because the fine powder was so densely packed it didn't
allow for the fire to spread and release the oxygen in the mix. The
chain reaction could not expand and collapsed on itself.
Similarly, as John Boyd penned in his 1976 essay "Destruction and
Creation," the character or nature of a system cannot be
determined unless one goes outside of it. Without outside
sustenance, all systems collapse on themselves, as will militant
Islam if it is denied the ability to blame the Arab world's failure on
America. A free Iraq in the middle of it all puts the lie to Islam as
victim of the West.
The West finds plenty of oxygen for its explosive creativity, first
and foremost by recognizing that creativity comes from individual
freedom. This is why the West so relentlessly reinvents itself and
why Marx was so wrong about capitalism falling in on itself.
The free market constantly invites in new outside influences to
reinvigorate itself. It is dynamic and organic, allowing people and
ideas to mix in ways that no authority could ever imagine or plan
for.
Cut off the inputs that sustain a thing, and you kill it. It slowly
collapses on itself.
You starve tumors; you don't feed them. The Bush strategy aims
to isolate Islamic fascism, cut off its cultural oxygen, and kill it from
within.
At least, I think this must be the goal of the Bush strategy in the
Middle East: to snuff out the oxygen that keeps anti-Americanism
burning. No, not by selling out Israel, but by directing the
destructive cultural energy of the region in on itself.
Eliminating Iran's ability to project nuclear power is one way of
containing the expansion of Islamofascism. But will it generate
more oxygen to feed the fires of anti-Westernism? Or will it tip the
margins in favor of the large majority of Iranians who don't
support the regime and are waiting for the West to signal this?
I'll say this: Condi Rice is a lot more likely than Colin Powell (or
Richard Armitage, who actually called the Iranian government
democratic in testimony before Congress) to come out and say that
the administration doesn't recognize the legitimacy of the Iranian
mullahs. That would certainly direct a lot of energy on the Iranian
regime. As it is, the regime is leading Europe, willingly it seems,
by the nose.
Either way, the days are racing by. There is a lot of historical
context and import to what's happening in Iran. But we don't have
much time to think about it. Either the West will do something, or
it won't.
This decade and this year - perhaps these next six months - will
be the most important times of the 21st century. They will shape it
every bit as much as the use of gunpowder and cannons shaped the
face of Europe. Only this time, it's not stone and iron balls
smashing city gates that will change the strategic picture. It is the
threat of mushroom clouds smashing entire cities.
Anyway, Interstate seems to be doing fine on its own, as you can see from the chart above. Until the Chinese make their Twinkie acquisition bid, I suppose we should keep our eye on the Autoparts and automotive business. The excerpt from an article in today's Telegraph shows that Europeans are already deeply concernced.
In my most recent report, I predicted GM would be a Chinese company by 2050. Maybe I should have said Volkswagen...or Mercedes-Benz.
From today's 