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The Age Of The Unthinkable: Why The New World Disorder Constantly Surprises Us And What We Can Do About It (2009)

by Joshua Cooper Ramo(Favorite Author)

3.68 of 5 Votes: 3

ISBN

0316118087 (ISBN13: 9780316118088)

languge

English

genre

History & Biography

publisher

Little, Brown and Company

review 1: The book opens with a meeting between the author and chief of information technology of Hizb’alla. I am so repulsed by meeting that I am prepared to completely dislike the book. However, in the end, it has some compelling ideas. Ramo compares events to a sandpile that grows in an orderly fashion as grains of sand are poured onto it. It is stable and orderly until it isn’t. And you can never tell which grain of sand is going to be the one to cause an avalanche. I found it to be an interesting metaphor for foreign policy, civilizational development, etc. Ramo goes on to develop a theory of “deep security” that would help us to be more successful in an ever-changing and unpredictable world. Deep security focuses on the whole picture, not just the current focus... more; on resilience; and on using indirect approaches. I think the ideas all sound good on paper, but he doesn’t give concrete steps that the government could take to encourage this kind of behaviour.My greatest issue with The Age of the Unthinkable is what he doesn’t say. He doesn’t say a word about morality. He praises Hizb’allah for its success at “defeating” the Israeli army. He doesn’t say that they win by targeting civilians. He compares the collapse of the Soviet Union to the sandpile, but doesn’t mention that a catalyst was Gorbachev’s decision to not use violence (ie, invasion as in Prague and Hungary in the fifties and sixties) to keep Eastern Europe. Ramo derides the US for not winning a small war since WWII, but doesn’t mention that it’s because we play by the old rules and to move to the new rules would be to make a moral choice. Deep security sounds great for the long term, but in the short-term, it might mean sacrificing security and therefore sacrificing the lives of your citizens. For example, changing focus from possible terrorists on airplanes to developing a moderate Islamic citizenry sounds great except to the families who lose loved ones in the few planes that go down in the meantime. Resilience sounds great, but implies that you took a serious hit.
review 2: Ramo gives a good argument about how thinking in every sphere of life in the 21st century should be flexible, in order to face the challenges that will arise in a world where technology and societies are changing constantly. While I agree with his thesis, I am not sure how you easily make this operational, so I probably have missed the point. I also think that he is stretching a lot to make his point. Others have put forward some of his arguments, such as Chaos Theory. I am also not sure that I agree with some of his arguments, such as when he statest that no major power has been able to defeat an insurgency (p 88). I don't know why he states this because I can think of many which have done so - such as the failure of Che Guevara in South America, the Shining Path rebels in Peru and the current struggle between FARC and the government of Columbia. So, while I found some of his ideas very informative and interesting, the book overall did not grab me. less

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