The concept of the New Middle Ages is discussed in Section II, which suggests that global politics are now characterized by fragmented political authority, overlapping jurisdictions, no-go zones, identity politics, and contested property rights.
The result?
Dr. Phil Williams argues that we have passed the zenith of the Westphalian state, which is now in long-term decline, and are already in what several observers have termed the New Middle Ages, characterized by disorder but not chaos. Dr. Williams suggests that both the relative and absolute decline in state power will not only continue but will accelerate, taking us into a New Dark Age where the forces of chaos could prove overwhelming. He argues that failed states are not an aberration but an indication of intensifying disorder, and suggests that the intersection of problems such as transnational organized crime, terrorism, and pandemics could intersect and easily create a tipping point from disorder into
chaos.
Dr. Williams suggests that analysts and policymakers are reluctant to acknowledge the pace and scope of state decline. He argues that continued assumptions about the central role and vitality of states—a phenomenon he terms “stateocentrism”— blinds us to emerging challenges.
I've mentioned the decline of the traditional state and commented that we risk going back to our past concepts of who generates and controls elements of military power:
After reading Thomson's book and really thinking about how recently we ended pirate kingdoms, privateering, armed companies, private mercenary units, and cross-border recruiting of troops and officers on a large scale, the idea of revived private warfare by the West despite our laws and international system seems far more likely to me than it did when I speculated on that possible future. (And I looked to recruiting globally, too.)
There are glimmers of the organization to sustain such a privatized military power and the demand for these services (and here's one that is free).
Once again, we see the war on terror as a fight between Westernizing the Moslem world to integrate it into our system or reverting to the pre-modern West's views on military power that is reflected in the Moslem world's use on non-state military power. It is a clash of civilizations--just not a clash between the West and Islam. It is a clash between the West and "pre-West." I may have been hasty in speculating about a retreat to a pre-Westphalian system, but a retreat only to the world of pirates, privateers, mercenaries, and other private military power within a sovereign state system is not a development we should be eager for, either.
And even if we beat Islamist terrorism, the price could be reverting to the "pre-Western" practice for who owns military assets. Will we like a post-jihad world where private military companies hire out their very lethal services to private or state entities? Where states hire and authorize violence from nonstate sources that they can deny responsibility for? I don't think so. (Though I admit it would almost be worth it to see the looks on Lefty faces if we let Exxon create their own military!)
Without addressing whether we want to see this world arise, it seems like we could be getting ready for just such a post-state campaign inside Pakistan's frontier areas:
If we can't get Islamabad to control the frontier area, it is time to bypass Islamabad and deal directly with the tribes who don't recognize the control of Islamabad in the first place. We cannot allow the fictions of sovereignty to keep us from defending ourselves from fanatics who straddle the gray boundary that lies between reality and international law.
Using limited military assets such as special forces and drones to back civilian armed assets such as the CIA or contract personnel (with either former or seconded special forces from Western countries, or perhaps even hiring security companies to provide the personnel) or even Arab special forces that would live and work inside the frontier areas, we may be able to turn the frontier tribes against the jihadis who target us.
I'm still not sure whether we should welcome a post-state world or not. We would see the number of actors who could decide to use force against us multiply, and surely more chaos with opportunities for threats to develop in that chaos. But we'd also have more actors who could ally with us against dangerous actors. And hasn't our main problem been not broken states but hostile states that exploit the chaos to generate threats against us? If we remain a unified state, won't our relative power increase against this splintered world?
It may be irrelevant what we want, of course. The world might be going this way anyway. I thought that the war against jihadis might bring about such a post-Westphalian world if we could not win the war in a reasonable amount of time. But maybe the jihadis are just a result of the opening moves of this trend and not a cause.
I remain skeptical that we should struggle against this trend rather than adapt to it and exploit it (but yes, fight it in specific cases, to be sure). If the world system is moving this way, we'd best be prepared to have fancy embassies in capitals as well as rough operators who head into the bush with a satellite phone and a lot of guts, so we can negotiate with whoever we need to talk to.
And maybe we should brush up on the Thirty Years' War just in case.
