[thechat] [OT] FWD: Some possible scenarios for "What Now" - incl. from Bruce Sterling

[Joe Crawford]

I'm always interested to read Bruce Sterling's musings - and this from
9/21 is certainly worth a read. I'm hoping that the current bombing and
seemingly unstoppable escalation won't lead us to F. -- colorful - but
maybe we'll get lucky and get D(2) but C feels like a reality we may get
stuck with.

Worth a read.

	- Joe
--
...........  Joe Crawford : thinking and design about the web
.... enigmatic narcissism and miscellany : http://artlung.com
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All: http://www.edge.org/documents/whatnow.html
This one: http://www.edge.org/documents/whatnow/whatnow_sterling.html
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		    AN EDGE QUESTION
		        WHAT NOW ?


From: Bruce Sterling
Date: 9.21.01

In addressing the question of "What Now?" I want to speculate freely on
what might happen on a large scale in the near term. Here are some rough
scenarios, with my even vaguer estimate of their likelihood.

A. Aum Shinry Kyo II. The malefactors of September 11 are rounded up with
little effort, because they are not genuine provocateurs of a Clash of
Civilizations; they are merely nuts. Only distantly connected to any
serious revolutionary terrorist, they are in fact an obscure splinter cult
who are mostly dead at their own hands. The suffering of New York City is
seen in retrospect, not as a grand battle over any principle worth
fighting for, but as a simple aberration that is both tragic and crazy, a
loathsome, Jonestown-like phenomenon. No particular lessons are learned,
very little changes in the global scene, but there's a lasting blow to
general morale and to humanity's assessment of itself. Society is saddened
and sickened, and people around the world are often seen to hesitate
before setting foot in a subway or airliner. Probability: 15%

B. Gulf War III. After a great deal of angst and sword-sharpening, there's
a quick, surprising Coalition victory. Those who promised a ruthless
struggle to the death in the Mother of All Battles are revealed as
blowhards. Suicide bombing cells turn out to be careless and
unprofessional terrorists, who are easily rounded up by street-wise cops.
Americans and allies go back to their barracks, leaving a few extra
Southwest Asian bases to keep guard on the troublemakers. A war-leader
President with the gratitude of a relieved nation loses his re-election
due to economic troubles. Probability: 25%

C. Cold War II. A sustained ideological and economic struggle sets in
between the G-8 and the world's poorest and bitterest countries. There are
numerous hot-war flare-ups, much narco-terror, a great deal of ruthless,
paramilitary spy skullduggery, and considerable civil dissent from
dissidents in the West unable to morally stomach this grinding,
Balkan-style dirty war. McCarthyism and witch-hunts flare up, while the
sentiment of "Viva Osama" moves to a simmering Central America. There is
huge, inflationary spending on imaginary, symbolic, and unusable
super-weapons. The general American population is put under a level of
police surveillance previously available only to American black people.
This grinds on for decades, with America gamely bearing-any-burden, on
until the opposition loses all heart and begins drinking itself to death.
Probability: 15%

D (1). Pearl Harbor Straight to Bretton Woods. Since there really is no
military enemy to fight -- a few nasty guys with boxcutters -- there is a
general economic and diplomatic rearrangement, without WWII's ugly bother
of bombing and sacking whole continents. The original enemy -- a rather
vaporous notion of "terrorism" -- is quickly lost sight of in a general,
very wide-scale, geopolitical emergence into 21st century Modernity. This
global New Deal moves Russia, China, Cuba, Vietnam and other longterm
pariahs into the "Civilized" camp, while the broken nations that are today
considered basket-cases are made into blue-helmet protectorates. The
Second World vanishes. From now on, there's just two sides: Real People,
and some pariahs.

Among the Real People, there is a great deal of general housecleaning:
currency reforms, arms reduction, climate treaties, economic
rationalization, demolition of trade barriers, labor laws, emigration, all
that sort of thing. Everybody else -- The People Without Plumbing,
basically -- have to live off a combination of empty threats and emergency
handouts.

Oddly, the one major power least likely to join the Real People is
probably the United States, but the USA may have a grudging unilateral
role as a kind of Third Way or Loyal Opposition.

D (2) . 1989 Redux. Upset and alarmed by the unnecessary global mayhem so
cynically triggering by madmen, civil society takes to the streets
worldwide in a touching display of aspiration and political maturity.
Democratization sweeps the Moslem world in a second wave of Velvet
Revolution. A grateful mankind sees the martyrs of New York as the
unwitting harbingers of a better and kinder way of life, which is full of
caring, solidarity, human rights and social justice. This scenario is
basically the same as D(1), but seen from the other side of the WTO fence
and the Genoa barriers. Since Al Qaeda can't distinguish a Western radical
from a Western capitalist, they are both in the same boat now and can
henceforth work in tandem. Probability: 20%

E. Greater Afghanistan. The Coalition suffers an outright military defeat
at the hands of indomitable armed peasants, in a ruthless, bloody,
punjee-stick dirty war, possibly combined with an unconventional use of
weapons of mass destruction. NYC 9.11 turns out to be just the first of a
series of bloody Tamerlane-style attacks from a growing and increasingly
frenzied horde of enemies of the West. Nerve-shattered, the West takes the
last copter from the Saudi embassy and sues for peace.

This Qaeda victory scenario has a number of variants, which could exist
singly or in combination.

E1. The Empire Formerly Known As NATO. The US bears the blunt of blame for
its clumsy handling of the global conflict, which relied so fatally on the
so-called strength of America's arrogant and untenable free-market
ideology. The defeated Alliance splits up much like its former mirror
image, the Warsaw Pact. Without Persian Gulf oil, the American economy and
its war machine both collapse. Severe discord and disillusionment ensues,
with crime and corruption skyrocketing. Desperate Russian women leave the
streets of every capital in the world and are replaced by desperate
American women.

E2(A). The Great Terror. A victory by fanatics careless of life becomes a
giant Khmer Rouge-style death machine for Islam; the Aztec charisma of a
Qaeda cult requires ever-greater human sacrifice, especially of one's own.
A 12th-century lifestyle can only sustain a 12th-century population.

E2(B). A Grand Caliphate. With malignant American and Jewish influence
finally scorched from the holy lands of the Umma, a new Golden Age of just
and tolerant Universal Islam ensues. It's ruled by Sharia law, under a
wise and merciful Caliph who re-unites Sunni and Shi'a and outshines
Haroun Al Rashid. A grateful mankind erects many grand and glorious
mosques in memory of the warrior saints of Islamic fundamentalism; men
whose tactics were rather rough, but in the eyes of history, fully
justified. Combined probability of any of the E variants: 10%

F. America Goes Bonkers. The globe's worst fears of a paranoid "Cowboy
America" come true, as further terror provocations decapitate the American
nation. A ferocious nuclear power, eyeballs gone rigid with a crazed lust
for vengeance, launches a massive thermonuclear lynching spree.
Probability: 2 %

G. Many More Wild Cards. This is neither an "age of terror" nor an "age of
freedom". This is an age of random calamities. It's a genuine end of
history, in which the passage of time in human affairs no longer has any
rules as we previously understood them. There is no great historical
narrative at hand, nor is there any grand scheme by which a rational
analyst can make useful sense of events. NYC 9.11 is quickly eclipsed by
other, biggest factors even more untoward and shocking: perhaps dumber
acts of terror by even smaller groups, plus some Greenhouse calamities, an
asteroid strike, some brand-new plagues, or even free beer and five cent
nano-genetic intelligent cigars. Humankind has lost all control of our
destiny and nothing can restore it. Probability: 3%

H. None of the Above.
Probability: 10

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