Am I an Alarmist?
Washington DC 2 July 2022
Following was written 1 Jan 2020
Predictions for 2021
I responded to a LI poll about whether next year will be better. It was a quick snapshot off the top of my head. Figured it might be worth sharing:Trends vectors are bad. Supporters of President so riled up by stolen election talk that risk of violence is medium and growing. On one side they will be seen as patriots, on the other, terrorists (is the VIED in TN portentous?)
China and Russia, taking advantage of turmoil in the US, will use every means and opportunity to assert their increasingly virulent interests through cloaked-warfare. The big question for 2021 is will they cross the observable war threshold? [Ed: Russia invaded Ukraine proper in 2022. China has been delayed in attacking Taiwan by Olympics and Party Congress]
Authoritarianism still grows in the west and anarchy elsewhere. But aside from that, I foresee rainbows and unicorns.
[Edited, shortened, nothing added except link to the Nashville story]
Background
I have been dismissed as an alarmist before a number of times. The most notorious (to me) occasion was the external reader of a paper on terrorism I wrote as a post-doc in 1998. It explored whether cyber attacks on critical infrastructure was better suited for terrorism or as a prelude to major war. Within it I commented on the ‘new’ suicide terrorism then unfolding. What became known as al Qaeda had just simultaneously bombed American embassies in Tanzania and Kenya. I noted in passing that if terrorists now had suicide cadres, hijacking a plane and flying it into a building would be easier than using cyber to take over the controls of the plane (Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 is possibly an example of the latter phenomena). The external reader was head of Counter Terrorism for the Australian Defense Force and he wrote both examples off in red in the margin - “ALARMIST”. To my utter chagrin I did not fight to have them included in the subsequent publication.
The above commentary on Linkedin (where I used to publish before I started this and my related substacks) drew similar dismissive responses. The ‘partisanship’ outraged readers. When I responded that one party was pushing a terror agenda it was not well received. When I recently published this more detailed look at the same phenomena, LinkedIn when into free fall - my posting was banned and I was eliminated along with 60,000 accounts. My favorite from that episode was a military intelligence bubba demanding to know what the rise of fascism in America had to do with national security!
Civil Wars II
I started out in Jan 2020 to write a solid account of the crisis in democracy after the prediction above came to life on Jan 6. But as my research into the problem unfolded, the evidence was so overwhelming, the threat so immediate, and public awareness so low, I became more insistent.
Why we really are in an inevitable crisis
As an historian I know that society will be unable to see the problem and fix it in advance. The will and passion of the radicals is too high for compromise and the ability of the 'normals' to appreciate just how bad things have become, guarantees one thing: The system will only alter in the wake of a massive shock.
There has been a very long stretch of comparative stability in world order from 1945 to now. Ideas, treaties, institutions, and social contracts have held remarkably well. The idea that peace and democracy were the inevitable way of things created a complacency under which fascism slowly returned and got into a position to strangle what has become normal life.
That gradual change has shifted - it now appears sudden. This moment is more dangerous than 1933-39 because all the great democracies are being smothered from within. There will be no new world to rescue the old as Churchill put it. A new dark age is descending - ignorance and violence will rule everywhere. You will think this alarmist. Pls bookmark & come back in 5 years to judge.
