George Rebane
Some thoughts on violence and the blind.
Harvard psychologist Professor Steven Pinker asks, “Why has violence declined so dramatically for so long? Is it because violence has literally been bred out of us, leaving us more peaceful by nature?” In his recent book (as reported in the 24sep11 WSJ, ‘Violence Vanquished’) Pinker cites the history of human violence declining over the ages, and dropping at an astounding rate during the era after WW2, which he calls the “Long Peace” that was succeeded by the “New Peace” after the collapse of Soviet communism.
He attributes this progress toward non-violence to three primary factors – growth of governments, growth of commerce, and cosmopolitanism. The last is a cultural factor abetted by improved education and facile communication of ideas.
What I find missing in his broad analysis is that he does not seem to understand the role of technology in the suppression of violence. Most violence, ranging from states to serfs, was motivated by getting each other’s ‘stuff’. And in olden days stuff was stored in widely distributed repositories that were guarded by its owners. To get stuff away from its owners, one had to marshal and apply considerable force that left behind lots of bodies and bad blood to motivate the next forays.
Starting during the Industrial Revolution when nation-states and corporations became organized and capital intensive, there arose more and more opportunities to get the other guy’s stuff through outright fraud and other dodgy lawyer-intensive activities. 'Violence' to get stuff was done contractually and to your bank accounts with the attendant benefit of a greatly diminished body count. Today governments, corporations, and even sole practitioners have practically legitimized such wealth transfers, and elevated them to the celebrated impresario level. The good professor should redo his analysis, factoring in the effect of these more civilized ways of transferring wealth from its generators and owners to less deserving pockets.
Has our missile early warning system – the ever attentive eyes of nuclear defense – gone blind? Moreover, the announcement of this apparent malady has attracted the attention of neither politician nor medal-bedecked military brass, and it has been completely overlooked by our ever-vigilant journalists. A well tracked 6.5 ton research satellite in a decaying orbit streaked to its much anticipated fiery death somewhere over the North Pacific yesterday. And when asked, NASA said it really couldn’t tell us where its debris field was located.
The US military has emplaced and operated a critical part of the nation’s defense shield – a multi-satellite, ballistic missile detection and tracking system (remember Star Wars?). This is a 24/7/365 system that sends its data to NORAD’s nerve center under Cheyenne Mountain in Colorado (now also at Peterson AFB in Colorado Springs). Its thermal detectors constantly track literally all heat events on earth and in its atmosphere, which have expanded to include all air traffic over North America since 9/11. Fortunately, from meteor tracks to refinery fires, they have all been false alarms, and have been quickly identified as such.
My point here is that this early warning system can rapidly detect and pinpoint the location/dynamics of such heat events, whether they be the launch stage of a missile exiting its silo, or of MIRVed warheads buried in a cloud of decoys re-entering the atmosphere. But yesterday, they couldn’t see and track 6.5 tons of predictable space junk searing through the atmosphere, trailing bright thermal plumes against the background of a cold ocean, and then tell us exactly where the major pieces would splash down. Or did the mavens at NASA forget to call NORAD and just ask?
