Monday, August 01, 2005
H. H. GAFFNEY ON GLOBALIZATION AND PROLIFERATION
The invited contributors to the NRSP newsletter keep getting better. Dr. H.H. Gaffney is a frequent consultant to the U.S. Defense and Intelligence communities and is part of the CNA Corporation. More importantly, Dr. Barnett credits Gaffney with teaching him " how to think horizontally". Here is an excerpt from H. H. Gaffney's " Globalization and Proliferation ":
"Are globalization and proliferation in some kind of symbiotic relation, growing with each other? Is the process of globalization as it makes technology, education, etc., available to more and more countries—and even individuals or private organizations—stimulating proliferation? Is proliferation in some kind of race with globalization to make it all break down somehow? I don’t think so. Rather, the next steps in proliferation—by North Korea and Iran—are being taken by the least globalized countries in the world. Proliferation is so incidental that it is hard to connect to globalization in general. It has only been a very small part of the unfolding of the world system as we have witnessed it. Any use of WMD would be catastrophic, of course, but across the long history of proliferation it hasn’t happened yet—except for the first and only use of nuclear weapons by the United States in 1945. It is probably a good thing the U.S. did that, for the awesome effects then have probably deterred further use more than anything else"
Read the whole thing ! ¶ 10:06 PM
The invited contributors to the NRSP newsletter keep getting better. Dr. H.H. Gaffney is a frequent consultant to the U.S. Defense and Intelligence communities and is part of the CNA Corporation. More importantly, Dr. Barnett credits Gaffney with teaching him " how to think horizontally". Here is an excerpt from H. H. Gaffney's " Globalization and Proliferation ":
"Are globalization and proliferation in some kind of symbiotic relation, growing with each other? Is the process of globalization as it makes technology, education, etc., available to more and more countries—and even individuals or private organizations—stimulating proliferation? Is proliferation in some kind of race with globalization to make it all break down somehow? I don’t think so. Rather, the next steps in proliferation—by North Korea and Iran—are being taken by the least globalized countries in the world. Proliferation is so incidental that it is hard to connect to globalization in general. It has only been a very small part of the unfolding of the world system as we have witnessed it. Any use of WMD would be catastrophic, of course, but across the long history of proliferation it hasn’t happened yet—except for the first and only use of nuclear weapons by the United States in 1945. It is probably a good thing the U.S. did that, for the awesome effects then have probably deterred further use more than anything else"
Read the whole thing ! ¶ 10:06 PM
