By guest author Mike Corgan
“dreaming of systems so perfect that no one will need to be good.”
C.S. Lewis wrote those words for his verse play The Rock, but they could just as well apply to U.S. foreign policy and security affairs. (Witness the current daily National Security Agency (NSA) eavesdropping bombshells.)
We have always been dazzled by our technological prowess when it comes to security. In the American Revolution, the British had muskets, but we had rifles. The Civil War had aerial observation, repeating rifles, railroads, and steam-powered warships. In World War I, every machine gun on all sides had at least one American patent; in World War II, we had long-range bombers that could deliver the atomic bomb.
Nowadays we can listen to everyone everywhere.
Maybe we should take a lesson from our use of the atomic bomb. It took awhile, but many of us finally realized that this was something awesomely and terribly different. In spite of some impassioned calls to do so, neither the U.S. nor any other nation has used nuclear weapons since World War II ended in 1945. In my Navy days we used to deride “capabilities in search of a mission.”
Perhaps we can learn that our ability to eavesdrop on everyone, like our ability to deploy nuclear weapons, has a serious downside. We ought not to use this “system so perfect” everywhere without clear and agreed-upon restraints. Yes, terrorists do present a serious threat to our society–but so does the breakdown of trust between citizens and government and among those who should be our allies and partners in fighting this scourge.
We have incredibly effective, near-perfect systems, like “smart” weapons, drones, electronic intercept equipment, and so on. We humans need to be good and smart, too.