Alfred Street (University of Auckland Store)
Are you sure you want to delete this address?
Annihilation From Within The Ultimate Threat To Nations
Hardback Edition: 1/2006
Annihilation from Within predicts a revolutionary change in national security that few strategists have grasped. Fewer still are mindful of its historic evolution. Today's menaces - jihadist terrorism, rogue nations with nuclear bombs - are merely the rustling wind that foretells the gathering storm. According
to Fred Ikle, it is the dark side of progress that explains this emerging crisis. Globalization proliferates new technologies - both beneficial and harmful - and destructive technologies can seep beyond national control. One day soon anarchists, doomsday cults, and terrorists will be able to obtain weapons of mass destruction. The greatest threat is a ruthless leader obtaining such weapons and knowing how to annihilate a government from within. He could carry out such an attack without help from abroad, and our powerful deterrent forces would be useless. To understand this calamity, Ikle turns to history. Some 250 years ago, science was freed from political and religious constraints, causing a cultural split in which one part of our culture remained animated by religion and politics while the other became guided by science.Today, technological progress and the evolving political order march to different drummers: science advances at an accelerating pace while religion and politics move along a zigzag course. Ikle explains how this divergence will transform our strategic environment and shows how the United States must plan ahead to bring our defense strategy up to date.
...
more