How to avoid sudden shock

Naval War College Review, Autumn, 2004 by Frank Hoffman

Schwartz, Peter. Inevitable Surprises: Thinking Ahead in a Time of Turbulence. New York: Gotham, 2003. 245pp. $27

The intelligence community is getting a bad rap these days as it attempts to help policy makers weather the myriad national security challenges in the Age of Disruption. The controversy over weapons of mass destruction and protracted post-conflict insurgency in Iraq are only two incidents in a series of surprises. Whether it is the demise of the Soviet Union, economic collapses in Southeast Asia, the development of nuclear weapons in India and Pakistan, North Korea's nuclear and missile programs, terrorist attacks on the United States, or the subsequent anthrax attacks, being taken by surprise is becoming the norm.

Peter Schwartz, however, was not knocked for a loop by many of these events--in some cases he predicted them. Schwartz is an expert at avoiding surprises. Starting with his work with Royal Shell in the 1970s, his efforts with the Pentagon's eighty-year-old futurist and director of the Office of Net Assessment, Andrew Marshall, and the U.S. National Security Commission in the last decade, up to his present consulting work with the Global Business Network, Schwartz has made a career out of helping clients avoid strategic surprises. He does not necessarily make forecasts, but he does predict that denial, defensiveness, and ignorance are the principal preceptors for sudden shock.

Schwartz's specialty is researching the innumerable drivers and wild cards in our environment from which he can craft scenarios that will help strategic planners and decision makers anticipate crises well before they happen. He is no stranger to naval readers, who will be familiar with his The Art of the Long View: Planning for the Future in an Uncertain World (Currency, 1991), once required reading at the Naval War College. In Inevitable Surprises, Schwartz points out that we will face numerous sharp jolts or major discontinuities in political, military, and economic areas. "If anything," he notes, "there will be more, not fewer, surprises in the future, and they will all be interconnected."

These interconnected surprises, which Schwartz calls discontinuities, will bring about a different world, one in which the rules of the game are fundamentally altered. The critical value of this work is the author's belief that many of these discontinuities have their roots in ongoing trends and that we can anticipate them. By realizing what today's driving forces are, we can alter our perception about today's emerging realities, anticipate the consequences, and avoid surprise.

Schwartz offers a simple process for thinking anew and avoiding major shocks. The first step is to pay attention and identify and monitor the driving forces that influence tomorrow's world, get ahead of the so-called inevitable surprises, and prepare for them. The second step is to remove ourselves from the rigid mental paradigms about what is fixed and what can be changed in the landscape. The final step is to envision new strategies for dealing with new circumstances.

Most of this book discusses macro-level factors in terms of social, economic, and technological change. Some of the discontinuities Schwartz deals with in chapter-length detail include: dramatic extension in human longevity based on improvements in medical science, with substantial influences on retirement, social institutions, and the political power of influential centenarians; a "great flood" of immigration with resultant social tensions in China, Europe, and the United States; continued economic growth in the developing world and a return to what Schwartz called the "long boom," predicated upon the enhanced productivity of the Information Age and the updated critical infrastructure that undergirds it; a series of interrelated breakthroughs in science and technology, especially nanotechnology, biomaterials, and regenerative medicine, quantum computers, and fuel cells; and a few environmental crises, including the impact of global climate warming and the coming of a great plague.

Military professionals and policy analysts will be particularly interested in Schwartz's range of geopolitical scenarios. In one scenario, the European Union consolidates into an effective bloc and begins to challenge what it perceives as America the rogue superpower. China also grows in political and military muscle, and it too seeks to check the global dominance and influence of the United States. On the other extreme, Schwartz paints a scenario of American preeminence, including complete dominance of space with instant global strike. In this scenario, because the benefits of a benign superpower are shared, a quiet and sustained Pax Americana emerges.

Before anyone gets complacent about American preeminence, read chapter 5, in which the author details the dismal prospects of the near future. His "catalog of disorder" includes an updated version of the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse, beginning with terrorism, religious wars--including evangelical Christianity in Africa--criminal statehood in Mexico, ethnic conflict, and HIV/AIDS. Schwartz's grasp of the interrelated nature of many of these depressing transnational problems is masterful. His grim projections of such disorders are largely predetermined, thus inevitable and therefore troubling. These future flashpoints are all too rarely identified as issues in the national security community until U.S. military forces are dispatched to provide some form of stability.