News, Recent Speeches and Articles
July 1, 2007: Clausewitzian
Friction and the New Cold War: How Population Growth,
Urbanization, and Globalization are Defining the Shape
of the Second Great Cold War, a study published in
Derfense & Foreign Affairs Special Analysis, 6-2007,
based on two recent speeches by Gregory Copley to the US
Army Command & General Staff College, and the Royal
United Services Institute of Western Australia in May
and June 2007, respectively.
June 27, 2007: The Pan-Macedonian Association�s
conference on �A Search for a Roadmap to Peace in the
Balkans�, delivering a lecture entitled
The Road to Peace in the
Balkans is Paved With Bad Intentions.
January 24, 2007:
The Art of Victory:
Leadership in Turbulent Times. A lecture to the US
Army Command & General Staff College, Ft. Belvoir,
Virginia. See also earlier lecture to the CGSC,
on September 15, 2006, entitled The
Art of Victory: Seizing the Strategic Future.
January 5, 2007:
The PRC � and the Global
Strategic Framework � Begins to Feel the Strategic
Impact of Beijing�s Failure to Control the DPRK�s Kim
Jong-Il. An article in Defense & Foreign Affairs
Special Analysis, January 5, 2007.
December 12, 2006:
The Art of Victory: a
Talk to the Descendants of Sun-tzu, A lecture to the
Faculty and Students of the National Defense University
and the War College of the Republic of China.
November 14, 2006:
The Rise and Fall of the
21st Century �City States�: The Emerging Strategic
Factor, an editorial in Defense & Foreign Affairs
Special Analysis and Defense & Foreign Affairs
Strategic Policy.
Latest on the North Korean Nuclear Situation:
Writings by Copley
October 20, 2006:
Strategic Vision
Beyond Instant Gratification. An editorial in
Defense & Foreign Affairs Strategic Policy
journal.
October 3, 2006:
Talking With
Radio Host Louie Free (audio link live on October 3,
2006; accessible from archive after that)
September 28, 2006:
Meeting the Burden of
Statehood: Is Kosovo Ready?
September 21, 2006:
It�s imperative
for us to know who we are. Op-Ed piece.
September 15, 2006:
The Art of Victory: Seizing the Strategic Future.
July 2, 2006:
Can the United Nations
Survive the Next 50 Years?
A Major
Address to US Army Officers, September 15,
2006
The Art of
Victory: Seizing the Strategic Future
By Gregory R. Copley Presented to the US Army Command & General
Staff College, Leadership Lecture Series,
Ft. Belvoir, Virginia: September 15, 2006
Turn and take one last look around at the
life you have known, at the life we humans
have built over the past few thousand years.
It is already gone. The granite columns of
antiquity remain, �though they crumble.
Humanity, more vast in its numbers,
remembers little of its past. This great
upheaval we see today is how the epochs
change.
Our ego tells us that this era of change is
different from all other past human
experience; that the future is unchartable
and unmanageable. But that is not so. We can
shape the future as we have always done, now
more than ever before. There are golden
times again for us to make.
And yet we are in the eye of the hurricane,
an Age of Global Transformation, a pivotal
time for humanity. The pace of change is
accelerating, not just in science and
technology: human numbers are surging, and
flooding into urban, mostly coastal, cities
and towns, creating a cauldron of friction
and potentially revolutionary heat.
Climates, too, are changing, and yet we
remain fixated on the status quo, and on the
promises and fears of the future. Forgotten
is the fact that in our past mankind was
more aware of the tools of survival with
which nature equipped us.
Officers of this Command & General Staff
College Course: you are, in the profession
of strategy, still young, and have yet to be
given great command, �though your mettle has
already been tested in harsh times. You are
now being called to even greater service for
your country because you have proven to have
the essential instincts of courage,
decisiveness, loyalty, and intellectual
curiosity. These are the noble
characteristics of youth, which has the
strength to respond quickly and efficiently
to the immediate challenges; to be able to
obey without question; to uphold the ideals
of a civilization handed down from heroes of
antiquity.
But, to quote the words from St Paul�s First
Letter to the Corinthians:
When I was a child, I spake as a
child, I understood as a child, I
thought as a child: but when I became a
man, I put aside childish things.
For now we see through a glass,
darkly �
Thus now you move from the golden horizons
of youth into a night of serried shadows.
With this Command course, you move from the
tactical to the strategic. From the
immediate and visible, to the indefinite,
the wraith-like, and the invisible. From
what, in youth, seems the certain clarity of
knowledge to that which, in growing
maturity, is the troubling uncertainty and
infinite nuance of wisdom. From follower to
leader. The marshal�s baton which has merely
weighed heavy and useless at the foot of
your knapsack must now be the altar which
you transport with you. For you are to
command the future, if you can but see the
broad horizons while retaining the
characteristics and vigor which made your
command of the immediate � the tactical
phalanx � so gratifying to grasp.
Our talk today is of victory, which goes
beyond military strategy � although it
embraces it � and which transcends any
single generation. And if we understand
victory, and the path to its achievement,
then we will truly contribute to the
endurance of our civilization. Once we grasp
the meaning of victory we can begin to
understand the arts and costs of its
achievement.
Victory is infinitely more important than
war and peace. Without victory � victory
over nature, victory over adversaries,
victory over self, victory over ignorance �
a society fades to extinction. Mankind can
tolerate the uncertainties and costs of
conflict, but without victory there is no
lasting peace, or any real peace at all: no
prosperity, no control over destiny, no
guarantee of survival. Victory at its
essence is the survival of the species, and
for each us the survival of our own clan and
society within the species.
The achievement or loss of victory directs
and contours forever the destiny of every
society. Victory is not just �winning�.
Winning � when viewed down the silent,
windswept plains of history � is tactical, a
phenomenon which is, by definition,
explosive, transitory, and ephemeral.
Victory is slow-burning, overarching and
transcendent. Victory requires, however,
that goals be won or achieved on an ongoing
basis. It is neither a permanent nor secure
phenomenon. Society too often mistakes the
process of conquest for victory itself, but
victory is the sustained delivery of a
complex pattern of successes. To be
victorious, then, implies the command of an
epoch and the fundamental alteration of
history. While a single success or defeat
may affect history, victory � whether
eventually undone or not � marks the path of
a society or of mankind.
And yet we take our continued survival for
granted, although history tells us that no
species is immune from obliteration; no
culture, language, ethnic community, nation,
or belief system is guaranteed its survival.
We fail to learn from history. We know that
the Neanderthals are no more. We know that
the languages and beliefs of ancient Egypt
are gone beneath the sands, interpreted � as
the writings of the Sumerian scribes and
poets of ramparted Uruk � from fragmentary
scripts, weathered into stone. Most of the
ancient languages of my native Australia
have flown on the wind, and the last blood
of their tribes who spoke them long soaked
into the red soil.
We know that there are other peoples,
cultures, beliefs, languages, genetic lines:
all lost without trace. We do not know how
many. They are as though they never existed.
Still we persist in the belief in the
inevitable linear progression and dominance
of our own cultures, tribes, religions, and
languages, without doing anything to ensure
the survival of our society.
So the survival and dominance of a society
through history is its principal victory. As
with the chance triumph of Duke William of
Normandy on Senlac Hill � the Battle of
Hastings � on October 13, 1066, the fate of
civilizations turns on unexpected things.
Hastings brought us the birth of Anglosphere
civilization, which today is the heart of
Western or modern civilization. The
languages we speak, the generations which
may � or, in defeat, may not � follow our
family line, the welfare we enjoy: all hang
upon pivotal events but must be confirmed
and compounded by the consciously-defined
processes of history.
So much of the destiny of humanity hangs on
what we do every day. The least we can do is
to understand what led us here, what ensures
our societal future, and how we can ensure
that this future � if it indeed is to exist
� is in the image we wish it to be.
In my new book, The Art of Victory, I
identified 28 maxims to achieve and sustain
victory, but there are more. Each maxim on
its own merits a book-length discussion, but
just let me go into one of the maxims at
this point.
In Maxim Four in The Art of Victory,
I said: �War is the most common and
successful catalyst through which victory is
commenced, but once victory is secured,
warfare should be the preferred option only
when considered against lesser forces.� We
cannot forget that it was the Continental
Army of the United States which, together
with the US Navy and Marine Corps, which
essentially initiated the victory of the
United States within what was to become the
overarching victory of the West. And the US
Armed Forces have sustained and defended
that victory. Meanwhile, in 1917, the Red
Army was used as an instrument to
reinvigorate or initiate what was intended
to be a great Russian victory, but in fact
the Red Army � or preoccupation with
militarism � proved, over 70 years, to be
what caused the Sovietized Russian empire to
fail. Russia�s drive toward victory was only
resumed, in 1991, after the military was
essentially put into a more balanced place
in the Russian equation.
Maintaining an understanding of these maxims
makes the crafting of national and military
strategies more contextual and long-term,
and expands the field of operations open to
a leader. But, as I attempted to show in the
book, these tenets apply equally to the
command of life at an individual level, as
well as within families, or other societies,
such as corporations.
In all of this we need to understand how our
past relates to our future
We know that global warming threatens
coastal environments and island communities
around the world and the viability of life
in regions like the arid lands of China�s
Xinjiang Province or in Africa�s Sahel. But
we cannot know how aware the people of the
lower Indus River Valley were that their
world was changing as the last Ice Age drew
to an end around 10000 BCE. By 8000 BCE, the
major cities of the lower Indus Valley were
beneath the sea. Higher up the Indus Valley,
a number of major population centers
continued to thrive for several thousand
years after the last Ice Age. But it was
only at the dawn of the 21st Century that
the secrets of the cities which had lain
hidden for ten millennia on the bed of the
Arabian Sea, began to be discovered and are
now being interpreted.
The changes faced by the inhabitants of
those cities were gradual. The waters lapped
incessantly higher over the years. Societies
had time to adjust, and drift away to higher
ground in what was a period of global
warming � such as we appear to be facing now
� which transformed the entire environment
and all societies. That era, which does not
appear in our history books, has direct
parallels with today.
Society has constantly transformed, in many
ways no more so than with the explosion of
literacy following the development of
moveable type and printing in 1450. The
portability of knowledge caused by this
development created new wealth and power.
Those societies with widespread literacy and
easily-reproduced languages became
prosperous and dominant.
All this is our heritage. Our egos tell us
that great upheavals are in the past, and we
do not need to learn them again. We are
different. The future is different. We have
tamed change. Or so we believe. But life
changes constantly, and we still have not
absorbed many of the changes which occurred
even during the 20th Century.
After World War II, in the triumphant
nations of the Allied West, a �baby boom�
created a population bubble in the rich,
industrialized societies. This demographic
trend skewed and paralyzed the economic and
political thinking of our present
generation. This moving demographic bloc of
�baby boomers�, who are now approaching
retirement, will also pass. Yet few are
thinking about the economic consequences
beyond this blip. And what if once again
totally new reproductive patterns transform
the shape of societies? Certainly, China�s
one-child policy has already dramatically
skewed the gender balance in the world�s
most populous nation, with as-yet unknown �
but significant � consequences.
The tectonic shifts in history � the
discovery of agriculture, the end of the Ice
Age, and so on � affected everything from
how wars were fought to who came to power,
to how societies became prosperous.
Those societies and individuals which
succeed do so by recognizing familiar paths
through what appears to be an alien
landscape of change. The laws of nature have
not changed; we have gradually, throughout
human development, discovered more and more
of what nature has always held in store for
us. But we have also forgotten some of the
tools with which we were equipped to cope
with change.
We are, in fact, better prepared to face the
strange new gifts of science and the chaos
of mass human concentrations than were the
humans who faced the onset of the last Ice
Age. And yet their survival forms the very
basis of the victory we share today.
The Context of Change
Strategic reality changes as the contextual
environment changes. And we are now coming
to a confluence of various strands of
profound change. We are on the brink of a
global shift of humanity which has aspects
in common with the end of the last Ice Age,
an era which brought the birth of
agriculture and the consequent rise of towns
and cities.
Some shifts are decided by nature; some by
human action. We are now engaged in a shift
which is the result of the works of both
nature and man.
Climate and Population
The new global shift includes climatic and
environmental change: new patterns of
weather, rising sea levels, transformed
ocean currents (further compounding the
altered weather patterns), the creation of
new areas of terrestrial aridity (and
revived fertility and productivity in
others), and so on. The shift will affect
agricultural and habitat viability, with
consequent ramifications for political
stability in many countries. This process
has already begun, and the results are
evident within our generation. The
timescales of these changes are
accelerating.
The new global transformation � the abyss as
well as the sunlit upland into which we now
stare � includes dramatic and epochal
changes in population patterns: the first
substantive reorientation of societies since
the Middle Ages (which led to the age of
colonial migration which essentially created
our present global geopolitical shape). The
new age of transformation � the result of
the impact of technologies of
transportation, computing and mass
communications, along with rising but
unevenly distributed wealth � has caused a
fluid and natural movement of large masses
of people from low-opportunity areas to
high-opportunity areas. This all changes the
nature of sovereignty, the r�le of
government, and the functioning of human
mechanisms of choice (such as democracy).
At the same time, we are witnessing the
first major and progressive population
declines in Europe and Africa for hundreds
of years, the result of demographic ageing
and birth-rate patterns on the one hand, and
disease and economic challenges on the
other.
But it is also clear from history that
globalization will likely lead to even
greater sweeping disease pandemics with
profound strategic consequences. Quite apart
from the impact on demographics, which can
distort economic models, disease can strike
at the heart of victory. Napoleon Bonaparte
would have created a Continental trading
system excluding Britain if his 1812
invasion of Russia had succeeded. The impact
on history would have been profound, and
French could have been the lingua franca of
the world today instead of English.
What defeated Napoleon, however, was not
only the onset of an extreme Winter in his
war against Russia but relapsing fevers
transmitted by body lice among his troops.
And while the health of leaders, armies, and
societies have always been key determinants
in history, today, however, perhaps the most
challenging � and overlooked � issue facing
societies is the question of population. Not
only has the growth of population numbers
become an issue of profound importance when
considering infrastructure and human needs,
globalization has ensured that the
phenomenon of population movement and
loyalty has, for the first time, become
something which must be considered in an
entirely new light. �Population strategies�
will become the major challenge for
governments in the 21st Century.
The Creation of Militant Societies
Change, chaos, and anomie � of which
terrorism and alienation within society are
but symptomatic parts � will lead rapidly
during the coming decade or two to a
reactive period of increasing militarization
and militancy on a near-universal basis.
Where this militant reaction does not occur,
the civilizations will perish or erode still
further. And the companion of the
militarization of society will be increasing
�political correctness�. This is a normal
coping mechanism of society to assert
control over change; to re-assert balance.
The Militarization of Space � and China
is in the Lead
The question of the militarization of space
is no longer open. Space is, and will
increasingly be, militarized. In some very
key respects, China has seized the
initiative in this arena. Not all of the new
space activity will be offensive in nature:
apart from contributions to science, space
holds the key to neutralizing the viability
of offensive strategic ballistic missiles
and their nuclear or other strategic
payloads. Dr Stefan Possony, the great
strategist, and Ronald Reagan � even before
he became US President in 1981 � saw the
prospects of such a system, the Strategic
Defense Initiative (SDI), which would have
been controlled by a consortium of all the
major powers, and which would have
effectively neutralized the capabilities of
strategic ballistic missiles. Few people saw
far enough into the future to realize that
this system could have brought benefits to
all of humanity by making nuclear war less
feasible.
But even if we were merely to extend our
present capabilities in a linear fashion,
terrestrially-based anti-ballistic-missile
systems have already reduced the chance of
success of North Korean and Iranian
ballistic missiles. The greatest potency
which lingers for those nuclear weapons held
by �rogue states� lies in their
psychological impact. Our collective minds
are held captive by icons of the past.
Science has already moved on, even if many
scientists, politicians, and journalists
have not.
Transformed Energy, Food, and Water
Production
The emerging new technologies will transform
food production and fuel efficiencies and,
indeed, the very question as to what
constitutes fuel. New, safe nuclear energy
technologies � which do not pose the same
risks as current approaches in terms of
waste material or the ability to produce
weapons-grade by-products � are on the brink
of viability. These will further transform
and revitalize human abilities to harness
power for industry and for the desalination
and movement of clean water, as well as
reducing emissions from fossil fuels.
In the late 20th Century, we were
contemplating the finite life of energy
resources; now we need not. We were
contemplating the finite availability of
safe drinking and agricultural water, and of
food; now we need not. The Age of Biology is
also now full upon us, and once again the
farmers will provide renewable fuels for
motive power: not hay for horses, this time,
but cornstalks, sugarcane, and other
agricultural growth into ethanol.
Agricultural powers once again will control
their own destinies, free from hostage
dependency on imported oil.
This comes just in time for the United
States, for example, which is now in the
last great fight for domination of the
fossil fuel marketplace. The US is gradually
losing its dominance over that arena, but no
matter: even that trend toward the loss of
dominance over world oil resources impels
the US to ensure the smooth transition to an
age dominated not by fossil fuels, but by
biofuels and other energies. But the energy
business � possibly the biggest single
economic factor in the world today � is like
a supertanker; slow to change course. And it
never will change course until it sights a
reef and the captain gives the order. The
reef is already in sight.
Productive Societies Surrendering to
Unproductive Societies?
We know that science and technology offer us
the options to take control of our
destinies; to avoid, for example, the
entanglements which the pursuit of oil has
brought. But have we the strength to grasp
our destiny in our own hands? Or is it
possible that we could succumb, through loss
of will, to a new dark age before we can
actually bring these stunning scientific
breakthroughs into use? It is up to us
whether we choose to be part of the re-birth
of a society or part of the slow and
geriatric failing and death of one.
Today, the productive nations of the world
(the ones which produce and export food
surpluses, technologically value-added
goods, and services) may squabble among
themselves, but their challenge comes almost
solely from societies in which the people
produce nothing of benefit to their fellow
humans. And yet these unproductive societies
are using the cheaply-acquired technologies
of the productive societies against them.
Think of these challengers to the industrial
societies: almost all of them produce
nothing of a value-added nature. Some of
them may sell oil, or coca leaf, or opium
and cocaine, but this is an accident of
geography, not a feat of scientific or
technological progress. Yet today, all of
the efforts by the industrial world are
focused on addressing the demands of people
who choose not to cherish education and
productivity, the tools of survival and
prosperity.
In less than a century, the oil-producing
states of the Middle East will have nothing
of great importance to sell unless they
become diversified economies. Oil, by then,
will be a minor fuel. We will look back on
them as we did, with bemusement, on the salt
sellers of old, or the dealers in tulip
bulbs in 17th Century Holland. To our
detriment, we still focus our attention on
the price of oil. To their detriment, the
oil-producing states of the Middle East fail
to move their societies to literacy,
science, and production.
An Age of Savage Wars and Global
Criminals
Few people today could name even 10 percent
of the countries which existed only, say,
300 years ago. Italy did not then exist as a
sovereign state; neither did the United
States, nor Germany, Italy, or Australia.
And more countries will appear or disappear
in the next few decades in a process which
in The Art of Victory I�m calling
cratogenesis and cratocide: the birth and
murder of nations. The wars of secession,
and the re-shaping of boundaries � largely
suppressed by the Cold War � begin anew. The
wars to break up Yugoslavia are still
unfinalized. And in many of the new wars we
will see savagery abound as groups
�re-discover� old identities, and seek to
capitalize on the permissive climate of
change and chaos.
From this turmoil we already see the rise of
new global criminal movements benefiting
from the globalization of technologies and
societies. The international banking
constraints imposed to restrict terrorists
have not hampered the new, more vicious
criminal movements. In all of these, the
Albanian criminals have displaced the old
Sicilians. If the 20th Century was the
criminal age of the Sicilian mafia, then the
21st Century is the age of the Albanian
mafia. Even the Russian mafia, let loose
after the collapse of communism, is no match
for the Albanian criminal industry, which is
now operating across Europe and into the
Americas, closely tied to the Islamist
jihadists. In many respects, the �al-Qaida�
phenomenon owes its success to the financial
links with the Albanian mafia, just as the
Albanian criminals owe their success to the
logistics and networks of al-Qaida.
The chaos of changing borders is fertile
ground for criminality. In the coming
decades there will be more and more �no go�
areas in the world. And this is partly the
reason why some societies will react with
greater militarization and rigidity. In many
respects, the terror has just begun.
Emerging criminal states, such as the Kosovo
Albanian �state� and even, potentially,
Venezuela, could profoundly change our sense
of security. We will all feel the
reverberations over the coming decade.
But it would be simplistic to say that we
are in a �Clash of Civilizations�. Rather we
are seeing new civilizations defined and
older ones re-defined. Globalization is
changing how ethnic and communal nations
interact. But the visible, iconic lifestyles
which divide us will continue to be the
essence of conflict. Still, within the
competition between societies, the
underlying thread that mankind is competing
for survival with the rest of nature will
come again to the fore. In the �peace� and
prosperity which followed the titanic
confrontations of the 20th Century, the
smug, safe, secure modern states embarked
upon the divisive social policy of
�multi-culturalism�, which created,
essentially, isolated and competitive
sub-states of communities within states.
Why should we be surprised, then, when
national unity � already pressured by
globalization � fails in modern Western
societies?
A Context of Victory
In the end, we can see that the world is
divided into two basic camps: one which
believes it must take responsibility for
defining its future; and one which clings to
the hope that someone, or something, else
will take care of its safety and welfare.
Most of us have a foot in both camps, but
lean more one way than the other. The first
group retains a more primal comprehension of
species survival; the second wants no
sacrifice in the standard of living and
wealth which our forebears created, heedless
of the cost to the future.
Even so, many of the things which impact us
are beyond our control: the last Ice Age and
the effects of its remission; the current
exponential growth in human population
numbers; and many aspects of the current
global warming pattern akin to the end of
the last Ice Age. How we react to things not
of our making is the mark of whether or not
we will survive and prosper. Those who wait
for someone else � government or God � to
resolve the problems will be in for an
unhappy time.
Nature � God, if you prefer � has already
given us the tools to survive against the
threats of man and the environment.
We just need to use them.
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