The Oil Drum | John Robb: Power to the People?

27 comments on John Robb: Power to the People?

Comments can no longer be added to this story.

| Show without comments | PDF version

oldhippie on April 3, 2006 - 8:24pm

Let's see. A sidebar to John Robb's original article says "A new, more resilient approach to national security, one built not around the state but around private citizens and companies, will change how we live and work." Now would 'private citizens and companies' be a lot like vigilantes and mercenaries? Would 'national security...built not around the state' be a lot like a Hobbesian free-for-all?

The original article here is just an ex-Seal looking for employment. Try to be a little more critical, a little more analytical people.

Comments can no longer be added to this story.

joule on April 3, 2006 - 9:38pm

oldhippie -

I tend to agree with you.

Robb's concept of "a new more resilient approach to natiaonal security, one built not around the state but around private citizens and companies will change how we live and work" isn't so innovative at all.

All you need to do is just go back to the Dark Ages for a similar model: a ragtag array of warlords and minor despots ruling over their small turfs, exploiting their impoverished subjects, and continually making war upon each other. Or if you want a more current model, look no further than urban street gangs. Same basic idea. Robb's little private entities are not much more than slightly better developed versions of the Cripps and the Bloods.

It doesn't take too feverish of an imagination to picture two neighboring self-contained armed gated communities making war on each other over such things as access to water, roads, waste disposal, etc. Or in resolution of incidents in which a member of one community claims to have been wronged by a member of another one. How does that get resolved and by whom?

So this is supposed to be the 'new way'?

Comments can no longer be added to this story.

eric blair on April 3, 2006 - 10:14pm

So this is supposed to be the 'new way'?

See? This is the kind of thing I was talking about.

Mr. Robb has covered the new twists to 'cripps and bloods' idea - that the violance and the tools to commit the violence are bartered in an electronic and physical bazzar.

So it is a bit different than the old 'warlord/despot' model. And the info is 'put out there' such that anyone with a grudge and a willingness can become a participant.

I don't believe the 'cripps/bloods' are busy sharing their toolsets of violence, nor did warlords of old share the siege weapons/technology of its day.

Mr. Robb has many, many articles on his site. Go spend hte weekend reading through them all. The black swan and systemplunket stuff if you only want to spend an hour.

Comments can no longer be added to this story.

eric blair on April 3, 2006 - 10:06pm

The original article here is just an ex-Seal looking for employment.

Ok. So, how does that make what he's said and BEEN saying for some time wrong?

Try to be a little more critical, a little more analytical people.

Go ahead, show us all your analytical chops.

Mr. Robb likes to run things through an 'open source' model, just like most TOD readers run the news and evens through a 'oil is limited' filter.

So tell us all how Mr. Robb is wrong. Like most pundants, he's not 100% right, but his observations are FAR more accessible than what the US Military and think-tankery is doing. Because, well, he has a web page and all.

Comments can no longer be added to this story.

jeffvail on April 3, 2006 - 10:22pm

I'll be kind and just call myself an "ex-spook looking for answers to his own dumb questions," but here are a few of my thoughts on the topic:

The New Map

Rhizome Military

The Logic of Collapse

One Time Shot

Swarming & Open Source Warfare

SETEC ASTRONOMY

~Jeff

Comments can no longer be added to this story.

Subkommander Dred on April 4, 2006 - 11:16pm

It would seem that what Mr. Robb is proposing is nothing new or original. Caligula hiring Germanic warriors to be his bodyguard, the French hiring Swiss mercenary crossbowmen for the battle of Agincourt, the British East India Company creating their own army and navy, the enlistment of Pinkerton gunmen by the robber barons of the late 19th century. Whenever I hear anyone start to tout 'market forces' (as I believe he did so) to control security in a changing world, I get really nervous, kind of like watching a snake oil salesmen hustling his product while I keep a firm hand on my wallet. In short, what he is advocating is protection for the rich and powerful while the rest of us have to manage to get by however we can. There is something not only very frightening about this worldview, but also very anti-American. Private armies and hired goons are not what are country is supposed to be about.
I would of course be interested in hearing any other views on this matter. What do you think?

Subkommander Dred

Comments can no longer be added to this story.

Don Sailorman on April 5, 2006 - 9:04am

Various science fiction writers (perhaps most notably, Mack Reynolds) developed the theme that multinational coporations with their own armed forces would displace the nation state as having a "legal monopoly" on the use and threat of violence to impose ordere. The stories were interesting, but to me, unconvincing.

The nation-state has only been the biggest player on the political field for about 500 years; earlier we find alternative arrangements, whether empires, feudal estates or city states.

For what it is worth, my guess is that something along the lines of a city-state may displace the nation-state as a focus of power--combined with some sort of (am not clear in my mind on this at all) world order to suppress pirates and terrorists.

Rarely do I venture on predictions, but here is one: The twenty-first century is going to be as different from the twentieth as the twentieth century was from the seventeenth century. In other words, I think we live in a time of major discontinuity. I suspect that different regions of the world will have extremely different outcomes over the next hundred years. Or to put it differently, I think the "prophets of globalization" who predicted a convergence of living standards and lifestyles throughout the world were and are 100% wrong.

Comments can no longer be added to this story.