THE SHIELD OF ACHILLES (127 page)

At the same time, corporate-led international policy was more successful in the developing world where its
innovative system of institutional “tithing” was coupled with the business codes' emphases on environmental protection as a basis for developmental aid
. Corporations could direct capital investment to those states committed to sustainable development and deny capital and expertise to states determined to despoil their own environments in an effort at too-rapid growth. What was lacking, as evidenced by the soaring levels of crime in these countries, was the mechanism for political cohesion. The market-state had survived by bringing international business leadership to bear on interstate problems and the society of such states was stronger for this move. But the State still had difficulty regaining its position as legitimate social arbiter of those moral and political questions to which business was indifferent, and for which an international institution, like the multinational corporation, was too acultural, too ahistorical to replace the State.

Nevertheless the new market-states of this era—roughly 2012–2030—had successfully used the business corporation to introduce decentralization and individuation into government, supplementing the role of citizens, who could only act in groups, with that of individual consumers, who acted individually and instantly. Historians looking back on the period between 2000 and 2050 will surely debate which of several factors was responsible for the sustained worldwide economic growth of this period: the technological breakthroughs of superconductivity and laser-fusion and gene modification; the spread of new and successful managerial techniques for both firms and countries; falling populations and a fall in the price of raw materials; a changing leadership that moved multinational corporations into a higher profile in providing transnational political direction; unexpected and heartrending events that exposed the lack of common ground among groups in the pitiless market-state. Much of the credit, however, must go to The Garden itself, which brought forth business leadership at a crucial time.

It is tempting to read these small narratives and conclude that there is an optimum course for the society of market-states to pursue. On the contrary,
these scenarios reveal instead that any choice burdens our values, for these values are both contradictory and incommensurable.
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In The Meadow pressures from population growth were mitigated by high average annual economic growth. Cities, however, became scarcely livable. Elites thrived but the majority of persons were not better off and their prospects for social and economic security were constantly threatened. High migration was beneficial for both the sending and the receiving states, but ethnic heterogeneity threatened the cohesion of some states and communal violence escalated accordingly. The advanced countries largely solved their resource problems but they stressed ecosystems causing increased CO
₂
pollution, deforestation, the loss of species, and widespread soil degradation through their dietary demands for animal protein. The Meadow was an hospitable place for technological innovation, the diffusion and implementation of information technology, biotechnology, and smart materials. But most countries fell further behind because they lacked the education levels, infrastructure, and governance systems to exploit these technologies. And new technologies could also be destabilizing, empowering terrorists and criminals and accelerating the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction. As the chief advocate and beneficiary of globalization, the United States assumed world leadership in The Meadow, but a U.S. economic downturn sent other states into a tailspin, ultimately eroding support for the United States. The Meadow managed low-intensity interventions with characteristic inventiveness, but the risk of regional conflict in Asia rose substantially.

In The Park regional integration increased rapidly, bringing robust initial growth. This growth was eventually diminished, however, by the effects of regionalism and protectionism. Growth within the developed states of The Park was less volatile than in The Meadow, and therefore more sustainable; furthermore, the benefits were more widely distributed within the leading societies of The Park, enhancing the quality of life for more persons. Nevertheless, increased regionalism resulted in irrefragable positions about markets, investment flows, intellectual property rights, and natural resources. The United States was confined to a single regional grouping, the Americas, which was neither in its interest nor that of the world, with which it ought to have had broader economic intercourse. International collaboration was reduced regarding terrorism, crime, cross-border conflicts, humanitarian interventions, and the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction, yet some national and international—though not global—institutions that had atrophied in The Meadow thrived in The Park. Regional identities sharpened political resistance to the United
States and to U.S.-led globalization in The Park; this was reflected in the uneven absorption of new techniques in biotechnology. So long as the United States continued to develop cutting-edge military technology, there was no prospect of great power conflict in The Park, but there were far higher levels of internal and crossborder conflicts in developing countries. Diversity (through federalism) thrived, but true multiculturalism shrank.

In The Garden, the seductive melody of withdrawal, almost isolation, contributed to U.S. disengagement in the world. Traditional national identities asserted themselves. Mercantilist competition strengthened the state while weakening global and regional intergovernmental institutions. As the United States withdrew its presence in Europe and Asia, China drove toward regional dominance, Japan rearmed, and the risk of great power conflict for the first time since the end of the Long War increased when the United States sought to reassert itself in Asia. Nevertheless, Korea was able to achieve normalization and unification. The cultures of emerging market-states were able to protect themselves from historical annihilation. The need for community, felt but ignored in The Meadow, was addressed in The Garden. Most important, the ability to develop business leaders who would take up the moral and political challenges abandoned by states was nurtured in The Garden, though scarcely tolerated in The Park and out of place in the entrepreneurial Meadow.

Think of The Meadow as “A,” The Park as “B,” and The Garden as “C.” If we rank these approaches with respect to the security decisions taken in each scenario, A is preferred to B, which is preferred to C. That is, peace with some justice (the protection of nonaggressors, for example) is to be preferred to simple peace (bought at the price of sacrificing innocent peoples), which is still preferable to a cataclysm that would destroy the innocent and guilty alike. Or perhaps we get B/A/C—no conflict is preferred to frustrating low-intensity conflict, which is still preferable to a high risk of cataclysm. In any case, we can agree that C (The Garden) presents the worst option for satisfying the world's security needs. But if we do the same sort of exercise with respect to the issues raised by the “culture” scenarios, preferring genuine pluralism to mere cultural protectionism, and yet preferring the protection of minorities to their marginalization, we get B/C/A. Or at least we get C/B/A, for some will feel that the protection of sanctified ways of life trumps pluralism. In any case, we can agree that A—The Meadow—is an inhospitable place for the serenity, continuity, and community that protect cultures. And if we conduct this same exercise with respect to the scenarios devoted to economic issues, ranking sustainable growth ahead of recovery, which is still preferable to stagnation, we get C/A/B. Or, if growth alone is our objective, we get A/C/B: the insatiable but impressive engine of dynamic, innovative risk taking is preferred to the methods of mercantilist competition. In any case we must concede that regional protectionism—the world created in the Park—is a sure route to high unemployment, slow growth, and the costliness (and uneven diffusion) of new technology.

Moreover, we are unwilling, or we should be, to trade off our economic or cultural or strategic well-being because these interests are in fact so bound up with one another. Even survival is not an ultimate value, for there are conditions of life that are intolerable. So we have this unstable
con-tredanse
, ABC/BCA/CAB, or BAC/CBA/ACB, contrived—of course—to make this point: that an optimal constitutional arrangement is one that permits peaceful change as states shift from one approach to another over time and as these shifts impose stresses on international society that mirror the stresses felt within states. In the stories, as I have written them, it is that constitutional arrangement that allows a society—even a society of states—to transcend its prevailing approach that proves most successful. It is human agency that avoids the plausible futures that on examination seem so intolerable.

We choose which questions to answer in life just as studiedly as we choose our answers. Societies are creatures of their decisions to treat certain issues as problems, because such decisions enable societies to respond to those problems. Because there is at this moment a growing confusion in our understanding of the role of the State, our usual habits of choosing certain problems and creating our history by means of crafting solutions to those problems is at present ill-formed and confused. We know the old rules—to uphold the international law of nation-states—no longer command us. Yet we are unclear about the choices we are making in the new society of market-states when we decide cases whose ultimate significance is still hidden from us. In the scenarios just described, we can get some picture of the problems and opportunities that may arise as a result of our choosing different paths for this society.

We do scenarios to help us define what kind of world we really want, among many possible worlds, to clarify how decisions taken today will effect large-scale results later, and to make us more alert to the meaning of unfolding events. Thus scenario-based planning is not about solving the hypothetical problems of some distant tomorrow, but about making deci-sions wisely today. To take one example from the scenario exercise above: the first decades of the twenty-first century will witness the acceleration of two trends already evident at the end of the twentieth: the withdrawal of governments from the task of providing for the ultimate welfare of their citizens and the increasing assumption of this responsibility by the private sector. All across the postindustrial world, governments will have to learn from the experience and knowledge of the private sector how to create opportunity, and business leaders will have to learn how to manage with an eye to the public acceptance of their actions. Business leaders are wholly unprepared to take up the moral and political responsibilities that governments are busily casting off, and politicians and bureaucrats are seldom well situated to make the long-term investments in infrastructure that create opportunity. Yet how many business schools, law schools, and public policy institutes will plan this next semester's curriculum with these shortfalls in mind? How many are even aware that they are contributing to these mounting intellectual deficits?

This chapter, “Possible Worlds,” is not the last chapter in this book because it is not really about the future. It is not a coda. It is not futurology. It is about current choices, as these can be illuminated by the imagination.