Deconstructing Our Dark Age Future
Abstract
Since the end of the Cold War, security analysts have built a veritable cottage industry dealing in gloomy global futures. The rise of so-called super-empowered transnational actors whose competition with states threatens to deepen critical sovereignty deficits is central to many of these assessments. Consequently, observations of fragmented political authority, fluid territorial boundaries, divided loyalties, amongst other discomfiting trends, represent the decline of the Westphalian state system and portend a new Dark Age. This strategy research paper (SRP) proposes, however, the system of Westphalian states is not in decline, but that it never existed beyond a utopian allegory exemplifying the American experience. As such, the Dark Age thesis is really not about the decline of the sovereign state and the descent of the world into anarchy. It is instead an irrational response to the decline of American hegemony with a naive emphasis on the power of non-state actors to compete with nation states. Moreover, this SRP concludes that because our current paradigm paralysis places a higher value on overstated threats than opportunities our greatest hazard is not the changing global environment we live in, but our reaction to it.
Document Details
- Document Type
- Technical Report
- Publication Date
- Mar 16, 2009
- Accession Number
- ADA501234
Entities
People
- Paul M. Phillips
Organizations
- United States Army War College