Annihilation from Within: The Ultimate Threat to Nations

by Fred Charles Iklé

In this eloquent and impassioned book, defense expert Fred Ikl� predicts a revolution in national security that few strategists have grasped; fewer still are mindful of its historic roots. We are preoccupied with suicide bombers, jihadist terrorists, and rogue nations producing nuclear weapons, but these menaces are merely distant thunder that foretells the gathering storm.



It is the dark side of technological progress that explains this emerging crisis. Globalization guarantees the spread of new technologies, whether beneficial or destructive, and this proliferation reaches beyond North Korea, Iran, and other rogue states. Our greatest threat is a cunning tyrant gaining possession of a few weapons of mass destruction. His purpose would not be to destroy landmarks, highjack airplanes, or attack railroad stations. He would annihilate a nation's government from within and assume dictatorial power. The twentieth century offers vivid examples of tyrants who have exploited major national disasters by rallying violent followers and intimidating an entire nation.

To explain how we have become so vulnerable, Ikl� 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. Since then, 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. This divergence will widen and endanger the survival of all nations.

Drawing on his experience as a Washington insider, Ikl� outlines practical measures that could readily be implemented to help us avert the worst disaster.

160 pages, Kindle Edition

First published September 15, 2006

About the author

Dr. Fred Charles Iklé was a United States Department of Defense official during the presidency of Ronald Reagan who is credited with a key role in increasing U.S. aid to anti-Soviet rebels in the Soviet War in Afghanistan. He successfully proposed and promoted the idea of supplying the rebels with anti-aircraft Stinger missiles, overcoming CIA opposition. Iklé was director for the U.S. Arms Control and Disarmament Agency in 1973-1977 and later Under Secretary of Defense for Policy. Iklé is a Distinguished Scholar with the Center for Strategic and International Studies. Iklé's expertise is in defense and foreign policy; nuclear strategy; and the role of technology in the emerging international order. He is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations and the International Institute for Strategic Studies.

Reviews

[Ietrio · Rating 1 out of 5]

A Nation is an abstraction. The threat is not to the ”nation”, but to the ones serving the King's apparatus. As long as one individual still lives, the ”nation” is there, but there aren't enough people from whom to collect the value needed to make the machine going.

Ikle not only happens to be directly interested to make the machine going for the good of his clan, but also is one of the main butchers engineering the Afghanistan mess, and the millions of dead, many Americans themselves.

[Sahil Raina · Rating 3 out of 5]

A book detailing the conflicts of the coming years and decades as per Mr Ikle, an advisor to several former presidents. I didn't particularly like it, but that might be because of my severely liberal bent. I read it to get a sense of how Cold War advisors used to and still think.