convergence

Williams
would not be prudent to reply on magic bullets of this kind. Instead, the first step in avoiding a
lawless century is to acknowledge the portents of a gathering storm. Yet there is little evidence
of this in the United States, as the obsession with Iran, North Korea, and China is inexorably
nudging airpower and seapower back to the center of U.S. strategy. Ironically, intelligence agencies
are already highlighting the ways in which both current and emerging challenges suggest
an alternative threat paradigm that goes well beyond the parameters of conventional strategic
thinking. Unfortunately, these agencies appear to suffer from the same curse as Cassandra: in
spite of being compelling, the warnings are largely being ignored.
Notes
1 Thomas Homer-Dixon, The Upside of Down (Washington, DC: Island Press, 2006), 106.
2 Mette Eilstrup-Sangiovanni and Calvert Jones, “Assessing the Dangers of Illicit Networks: Why al-Qaida May
Be Less Threatening Than Many Think,” International Security 33, no. 2 (2008), 7–44.
3 Thomas P.M. Barnett, The Pentagon’s New Map (New York: Putnam, 2004).
4 Micah Zenko and Michael A. Cohen, “Clear and Present Safety: The United States Is More Secure Than
Washington Thinks,” Foreign Affairs (March/April 2012).
5 Chad Serena, A Revolution in Military Adaptation: The U.S. Army in the Iraq War (Washington, DC: Georgetown
University Press, 2011).
6 Austin Long, “The Anbar Awakening,” Survival 50, no. 2 (April 2008), 67–94.
7 The concept of vacancy chains is developed in H. Richard Friman, “Forging the vacancy chain: Law enforcement
efforts and mobility in criminal economies,” Crime, Law and Social Change 41, no. 1 (February 2004), 53–77, and
applied to Mexico in Phil Williams, “The Terrorism Debate Over Mexican Drug Trafficking Violence,” Terrorism
and Political Violence 24, no. 2 (Special Issue: Intersections of Crime and Terror, 2012), 259–278.
8 Private correspondence with author.
9 Zenko and Cohen.
10 Ibid.
11 Karl Weick and Kathleen Sutcliffe, Managing the Unexpected: Assuring High Performance in an Age of Uncertainty
(San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 2001).
12 James N. Rosenau, Turbulence in World Politics (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1990).
13 Janice Perlman, Favela: Four Decades of Living on the Edge in Rio de Janeiro (New York: Oxford University
Press, 2010).
14 “Freedom from Fear in Urban Spaces: Discussion Paper,” Human Security Outreach Program, available
at .
15 James Cockayne and Phil Williams, The Invisible Tide: Towards an International Strategy to Deal with Drug
Trafficking Through West Africa (New York: International Peace Institute, 2009).
16 Peter Fabricius, “West Africa hit by coups,” Daily News, April 24, 2012, available at .
17 Gitte Larsen, “Why Megatrends Matter,” available at .
18 Edward Glaese, The Triumph of the City (New York: Penguin, 2011), 1.
19 Stephen D. Krasner, “Abiding Sovereignty,” International Political Science Review 22, no. 3 (2001), 229–252.
20 Marc Levinson, The Box (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2006), 7.
21 Carolyn Nordstrom, Global Outlaws (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2007), 116, 159.
22 See Jonathan M. Winer and Phil Williams, “Russian Crime and Corruption in an Era of Globalization: Implications
for the United States,” in Russia’s Uncertain Economic Future, ed. John E. Hardt, 97–124 (Washington,
DC: M.E. Sharpe, 2003).
23 Grace Wyler, “Mexico’s Drug Cartels Are Spanning The Globe,” Business Insider, June 21, 2011, available at
.
24 James Mittelman, The Globalization Syndrome (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2000), 210.
34