US Army War College Quarterly, 1997: Constant Conflict, by RALPH PETERS

[Dirk39]

Hello from Germany,
I did just read the whole article and I have more questions than comments to offer. I would really appreciate, if I could get info on this:
What is the U.S. Army War College? What kind of significance has this institution?

A cold shiver ran down my spine, reading the entire article. I guess this guy isn't a serial killer, writing his memoirs in a prison?



"We have entered an age of constant conflict. Information is at once our core commodity and the most destabilizing factor of our time. Until now, history has been a quest to acquire information; today, the challenge lies in managing information. Those of us who can sort, digest, synthesize, and apply relevant knowledge soar--professionally, financially, politically, militarily, and socially. We, the winners, are a minority.

For the world masses, devastated by information they cannot manage or effectively interpret, life is "nasty, brutish . . . and short-circuited." The general pace of change is overwhelming, and information is both the motor and signifier of change. Those humans, in every country and region, who cannot understand the new world, or who cannot profit from its uncertainties, or who cannot reconcile themselves to its dynamics, will become the violent enemies of their inadequate governments, of their more fortunate neighbors, and ultimately of the United States. We are entering a new American century, in which we will become still wealthier, culturally more lethal, and increasingly powerful. We will excite hatreds without precedent.

We live in an age of multiple truths. He who warns of the "clash of civilizations" is incontestably right; simultaneously, we shall see higher levels of constructive trafficking between civilizations than ever before. The future is bright--and it is also very dark. More men and women will enjoy health and prosperity than ever before, yet more will live in poverty or tumult, if only because of the ferocity of demographics. There will be more democracy--that deft liberal form of imperialism--and greater popular refusal of democracy. One of the defining bifurcations of the future will be the conflict between information masters and information victims.

In the past, information empowerment was largely a matter of insider and outsider, as elementary as the division of society into the literate and illiterate. While superior information--often embodied in military technology--killed throughout history, its effects tended to be politically decisive but not personally intrusive (once the raping and pillaging were done). Technology was more apt to batter down the city gates than to change the nature of the city. The rise of the modern West broke the pattern. Whether speaking of the dispossessions and dislocations caused in Europe through the introduction of machine-driven production or elsewhere by the great age of European imperialism, an explosion of disorienting information intruded ever further into Braudel's "structures of everyday life." Historically, ignorance was bliss. Today, ignorance is no longer possible, only error."
http://carlisle-www.army.mil/usawc/parameters/97summer/peters.htm

Dirk

[tabasco]

1. The War College is a military school for officers

High rated officers attend as a Major or Lieutenant Colonel. Most officers complete the course via correspondence. The school is located in Carlisle, PA, not far from Gettysburg.

[ithacan]

2. this is very serious

Major (P) Ralph Peters is assigned to the Office of the Deputy Chief of Staff for Intelligence, where he is responsible for future warfare.

This is really so much Bush-it...

This though is telling. Of course in typical American style the guy is saying this as a way to bash the rest of the world. But I think that in the case of the US, in fact, it is right-on. I think psychologists call this "projection":

The majority of the world's inhabitants are prisoners of their cultures, and they will rage against inadequacies they cannot admit, cannot bear, and cannot escape.

I find it scary that this guy and other people in the US would actually think that they understand the rest of the world (the guy is a specialist in international relations...)

[Dirk39]

3. "democracy--that deft liberal form of imperialism"

"There will be no peace. At any given moment for the rest of our lifetimes, there will be multiple conflicts in mutating forms around the globe. Violent conflict will dominate the headlines, but cultural and economic struggles will be steadier and ultimately more decisive. The de facto role of the US armed forces will be to keep the world safe for our economy and open to our cultural assault. To those ends, we will do a fair amount of killing."

At least, I would have expected these kind of fashists, to tell more gentle lies, instead of revealing the truth.

It's kind of interesting, how he creates a kind of permanent threat with different faces: the eductated american leftist, the blue-collar worker, who has just lost his job and can't compete anymore, the muslime, the european, the terrorist.

All those, who lose their existence in the cold and hot wars of the american empire to come.

It's everywhere and around all corners and their heads have to be smashed. It resembles the nazi kind of antisemitism a lot, but it's even more brutal and reckless. The enemy is everywhere, the so-called allies are just future enemies. The appeal of the U.S. culture is exactly creating enemies at the same time, 'cause it's just propaganda.

To be just cynical: antisemitism was a huge step forward compared to plain racism in the history of terror, 'cause it somehow replaced a recognizable "enemy" with a somehow unrecognizable enemy, a permanent anonymous threat.

Might sound absurd to a lot of you, but the american war against terror seems to me as a kind of generalized antisemitism, being so radical that it has lost it's recognizable object. An antisemitism without jews.


It works, as far as I can tell: antisemitism has survived the jews here in Germany.
Every single human being is a potential victim.
It's everywhere and nowhere.
The writer's name sound so german to me.

Dirk