Time Frame – ?
Civilian Conflict – Over the course of our 5,000 years of written history, it seems that violent conflict between individuals has consisted primarily of spontaneous attacks and corresponding self-defense or reprisal. There was one brief blip of about 300 years in which mutual combat in the form of duels of honor flourished in both Japan and in Western Europe (amazingly at roughly the same time), but then quickly reverted back to crimes of passion and of predation. Dueling could only exist in a society which valued the wearing of a sword, and that quickly died with the rise of practical pistols. A duel allows both parties to make the decision to enter into battle; refusal to fight is possible so long as you can at any time simply step away from the field, a choice not possible with firearms. There is no reason to expect any change in the near nor far future. The firearm cannot be un-invented, and laws prohibiting ownership will not dissuade people from having or even building those of their own. If the propensity to resort to violence does not change, the desire for weapons cannot.
Warfare – Warfare responds to technology slowly; warriors forever fight battles with the newest weapons while generals use the previous war’s tactics.
There is a great divide in the ability of the world’s combatants to wage war. Large armies like those of the United States, China, Russia and NATO can so overwhelm a less well-stocked opponent in a traditional war that achieving the standard objective [control of territory] is readily accomplished. That leaves smaller belligerents a limited choice when waging war: attack only those who are similarly or less-well armed, or, when fighting a larger force, change the rules. Of course I am not talking only about terrorism. Since traditional objectives are impossible to achieve, both terrorist groups and small armies simply strike at any weakness with no traditional “strategic” objective in mind. Any attack, successful or not, is a victory, for the only objective is to attack and cause disruption. Since no territory is gained, the attackers can melt away after each assault, therefore successful reprisals are difficult.
So the future of warfare will continue in three directions. Overwhelming technological superiority will be brought to bear wherever possible, with a specific focus on the use of high explosives and automated attack. A superpower such as the United States can wage this type of expensive war without bankrupting its citizenry or even putting large numbers of its soldiers at risk. This type of warfare will continue to rely on soldiers that can handle ever more sophisticated and remotely operated weapons. News stories will still be filled with accounts of individual soldiers involved in rifle firefights, but military planning focus is now all about delivering maximum damage while avoiding exposure to same. Since few other individual countries can sustain that kind of military cost for long, regional armies might be created to form “mini-superpowers” in Africa, Asia, or the Americas. China by itself stands at the brink of becoming the next unchecked superpower should it be able to combine a robust economy to its military advances and as of yet untapped resource wealth. In terms of pure military success, these large modern armies are nearly unbeatable once fully committed to battle. Only they can continue to wage decisive warfare.
In opposition to this technological superiority, we will see a continuation of terror attacks on exposed military positions and large civilian centers; in other words, provocative warfare. When performed by small nations or pre-national insurgency forces, those actions will exist side-by-side with guerilla tactics, but the lines will be increasingly blurred. One of the reasons that these forces rarely achieve military success is because of the nature of their goal. Since these groups are looking to achieve nationhood, they at some point need to expose themselves in number so as to obtain the standard objective of securing territory. Once done, their opponents can begin successful counterattacks using traditional military means. So these guerilla tactics at some point have to give way to political options.
No such problem exists for nontraditional groups who have only an ideological objective. Since these are transnational groups that need not exist in any one country, they can attack anywhere from anywhere. Counteraction is difficult. There is no identifiable central command headquarters, since the terrorist cell structure will not have a typical strict hierarchy. And since the objective is the attack itself, even ineffectual explosions are counted as successes. These TNI’s (transnational ideologues) depend on wearing down their opponents’ resources, commitment, and support from other political groups. As such, success strategies against TNI’s usually involve reducing their popular support, thus cutting them off from money, safe harbor and recruits, rather than concentrating all resources in a purely military defeat. (By the way, there is no such thing as a war on terrorism. Terrorism is a tactic used by an enemy, not the enemy itself. One can no more have a war on terrorism than one can have a war on the flanking maneuver. Defeating the use of the flanking maneuver does not defeat the enemy.)
The last form of warfare will be resurgences of the Congolese model: large scale attacks on unarmed civilians using very low tech weaponry, the idea being to destroy enemy populations without bringing in reprisals from the major powers. Usually this takes the form of a relatively small military force using assault weapons backing-up a large ad-hoc army of non-uniformed homogeneous partisans wielding simple impact weapons [machetes, knives, clubs], in other words annihilation/raiding warfare.
It is possible to imagine a successful defense against this kind of slaughter, one hearkening back to ancient Europe. Should local populations begin to develop township fortifications, they might be able to withstand these attacks. One can imagine the equivalent of the medieval castled protectorates, with semiautonomous political organization, cropping up in Southeast Asia and sub-Saharan Africa. We have seen one form of this in the warlord-controlled regions of Afghanistan, both pre- and post- the Soviet and US invasions. However, as this always requires a concurrent collapse of the viability of the nation-state of the affected region, this outcome is best suited to geographically isolated regions and is unlikely to provide success in other areas.
Politics/Economics/Fashion/Manners – How far can the crystal ball see? One of the problems with looking to the future is that we can only look at the past and hope to follow the trends in a straight line to guess what is in store. But history is a bad predictor, for the very things that have marked changes in culture and society have come about as surprises. In male fashion, for example, if we were to see an unbroken continuation of the trend of the last eighty years to ever more youthful appearance, the next twenty years should see us wearing diapers as day wear. But history rarely takes a straight line; it runs up against something unprecedented and bounces off, sometimes in several directions before lumbering down a new and unsuspected path. Who could have anticipated all of the circumstances that pushed Europe from medievalism and into the Renaissance? Who could have predicted the rise of the middle class and the throwing-off of monarchy in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, actions unprecedented in history yet now viewed as inevitable? But there is nothing inevitable in history, only the reactions made by rulers and masses to a string of circumstances, circumstances that occur without regard to experts’ sensibilities.
Some very long term trends bode well for us humans. We have given up slavery, infanticide, and human sacrifice, for instance. Oh, slavery still exists in many regions, but considering that it has been around from the first civilizations and was always defended by the countries in which it flourished, we have reached a point where it is universally condemned as a crime. There now exist no apologists for slavery, for even where it exists, the countries involved cannot admit to its existence. Even in that denial there is proof of its status as an obvious crime. Progress has been made. Will war go the same way? Unfortunately, the very long term trend has been to move over the course of 8,000 years to ever more destruction in each conflict, the only limit on casualties being an attempt to limit the duration of the battles by inflicting overwhelming damage in the shortest amount of time.
Some theorists have posited that the great trends are at their apogee, that we have exhausted the supply of new ideas, that we are at the “end of history”. It’s easy to take that view. Economic systems may still be debated in universities, but every country seems to have tied its boat onto some form of capitalism even if they continue to rail against its evils. Political systems, seemingly in mighty contrast throughout the world, are all moving steadily to republics (some democratic, some tyrannical) and away from monarchies.
But that stasis may be illusory. The passenger in a plane can be easily convinced that the jet has come to a complete stop even when traveling at 700 miles per hour. And even the most seemingly stable systems sooner or later begin to disintegrate. The great empires have had their moment in the sun, and then slowly faded from their place as the center of the universe. Following the western progression, Greece gave way to Rome, followed by France, then England, then the United States, and now …
When empires reached their peak, they not only exerted military dominance over all others, but their cultures also spread, so that even those societies dominated by the empire tried to emulate the manners and art of the dominators. This is well known, but what is also true but easily forgotten is how each nascent empire borrowed the culture of the fallen, borrowing its glory and by extension its legitimacy. Just as the art and learning of the Greeks were co-opted by the Romans, the glory that was Rome was emulated by the French. The English, as they gained power of the world in the 19th century, aped the manners and refinement of the French, but then when America dominated the world in the 20th century we kept the culture of the English and to this day still view it as superior to our own. Our American entertainment, our form of dress, our “culture”, is now rapidly devoured by all the world. But our position as the industrial and agricultural might of the planet might soon be more a memory than reality. From whence shall we see the next empire rise?
There is one country that has all of the elements to overwhelm not only its region but also the current “superpower”. China – converting successfully from an authoritarian socialist command economy to a nationally controlled capitalism with some free-market elements within a strict authoritarian structure – has established in essence the fascist system. But unlike the twentieth century Axis regimes, China is now realizing its ambitions primarily through economic dominance.
Both WWI and WWII (and the Cold War for that matter) were finally won because the United States was able to produce staggering numbers of tanks, ships, planes, munitions, and petroleum – not only for our own use but also for our allies. Those capabilities are no longer ours as our resources dwindle and our factory output drops. We prop ourselves up with borrowed money, but if China continues to take advantage of this trend, turning the United States into a net importer of goods, we will go the way of Europe, a large economic engine responding on the periphery of the true world power.
[Note to the gentle reader: I first wrote the above paragraphs in 1993, so it’s not as though I’m merely riding on the coattails of current events. The continuing trends of the past three decades have confirmed my opinions, but I feel saddened rather than vindicated.]
* * *
Western culture itself has really not developed any truly new ideas since the early part of the twentieth century. Clothing, architecture, visual and performance arts, all continue to take different elements of what has been done before and repackage it, deconstruct it, or simplify it so that it can be called new, but in reality are merely very minor variations on a reaction to the status quo. Until a new matrix takes hold, we will continue to use and reuse the elements solidified in the past century.
In art, we have completely embraced virtual realism over live presentation as our favored art form, so film, then TV and perhaps in the future interactive entertainment will have replaced all forms of live theatre as relevant performance art. By relevant I mean being an integral part of the fabric of our lives, rather than just responding to it from the edges.
Forgive yet another digression, but theatre is dead. Oh, there is certainly plenty of it out there and some of it earns some producers a ton of money. But it is no longer an entertainment that exists because society at large believes it has a compelling need for it. Whenever and wherever live performance art has had relevance it was when it served the needed value of ritual for that particular society. But during the past century we have excised ritual as an important element of activities large and small, largely because we associate it with being non-relevant, archaic, even repressive and antagonistic to personal freedom. Even the ritual of the nightly family dinner is fast becoming a quaint memory of a slower time.
Our society as a whole no longer believes that sitting with others in a darkened listening room and watching a live performance is a ritual worth preserving. Watching a movie still has some value, but even that has changed from a respectful communal experience to one that is more and more individualistic. The movie experience must now have comfy reclining chairs and allow the giant Tub-o-Nachos and 64oz ThirstBuster so that the viewer may believe she is really at home, and therefore can remain unconcerned about anyone else who might also be in attendance. It is noteworthy that 70% of cinema attendees – people who actually go and see movies – state that they prefer seeing movies at home. With every passing year, more and more are doing just that. Perhaps in the past, people put up with the discomforts associated with going out to see a live performance because there was no other alternative. That certainly is no longer the case, so people stay home.
Live theatre retains a limited role as a training ground for television and film actors. Granted, there are still blockbuster shows that pull in millions of dollars on Broadway, but these are the exceptions, not the rule. For the most part live drama has gone the way of ballet and opera – unable to pay its own way due to lack of viewership, the patient stays on life support so long as there are wealthy donors willing to subsidize an archaic form of entertainment. For better or worse, art that can’t travel through a cable no longer has an effect on our society.
I am not saying that is necessarily good or bad, merely pointing out that it is happening. Opera, ballet, live theatre, dance performance, modern visual art – all have their passionate advocates, and continue to produce wonderful works of art, but society no longer values this production and so it appeals only to a tiny audience of cognoscenti. This is no different than the disappearance of the family farm, the corner store, the brass band playing in the town square, or the doctor who makes house calls. The few extant specimens are exceptional because of their rarity. We enjoy hearing about them, and we even root for them to survive, yet we still shop at a supermarket and go to an HMO for our needs. People can be nostalgic for things and still contribute to their extinction.
The explosion of personal computer technology and the spread of the internet has led some to proclaim the birth of a brave new world, but it would seem merely to be a further development of the trends already established by the telegraph, telephone, and television. The grand hope of the computer was to usher in a new phase of development in human society, but mainly it just created a new version of the old Sears catalog, combined with the Encyclopedia Britannica and the world’s largest party line. But at least a party line required civil interaction between strangers. Now, even as vast quantities of material are shipped by truck and by train, people spend more and more time isolated from actual human contact. The ubiquity of cell phones, PDA’s, headset music players, internet – all are possible not only because the technology allows it, but because we currently would prefer not to have random interaction with actual humans. In gas stations, banks and in stores it is possible to go through entire transactions without having to acknowledge nor be acknowledged by another human being. Most automobiles still have four seats, and yet are occupied by only the driver. Even with family vehicles, there is a demand to include distractions (music, cup holders, video screens) that can keep the occupants isolated from each other. This is not forced on us by technological progress – we want this.
Is this a linear trend? I doubt it is, for it feels static. It seems unlikely that we can find a way to become even more informal, embrace even more public crudity, become more anonymous, demand even more entertainment values. All play and no work makes Jack a poor boy. Rome fell not only because the barbarians battered the gates but because the wealth of the empire finally all came from overseas while the local citizenry placated themselves with bread and circuses. All of the elements that together we can call the current period style have an uncomfortable similarity with other periods in which a series of primary trends merely feed on themselves until a dynamic redirection comes along. Many are the similarities to ancient Rome, but we seem to share many parallels with Europe of the Mannerist Renaissance, or even of the mid to late 1700’s Rococo. No one then could have guessed how things were going to change in the future of their children. No one could have foreseen the collapse of the feudal system, nor the birth of the age of enlightenment.
No, when the next big shift comes – the one that will affect fashion, manners, public and private conduct, governance, art, music and society – few will have predicted it. It may come slowly: the result of a thousand minor shifts over time which only in retrospect will be viewed as one surge. It may happen almost overnight: some cataclysm that shakes all of our previously held beliefs to the core. It might be some new technology providing perhaps an unlimited supply of power and water to every person on the planet, or a devastating cataclysm which causes a massive continental migration. Whatever it is, it will probably cause a geographic shift in power, possibly add a new religion or two, and cause a reevaluation of the nature of the individual in society and in the universe.
That is, if history is any judge.