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In "The Breaking of Nations," Robert Cooper assesses the state of the world in the 21st century, highlighting the growing dangers of chaos and the need for a new understanding of global order. He examines the role of small states, the impact of technology, and the potential for power redistribution. Cooper argues that the old security rules no longer apply and that a new approach is necessary to navigate the complexities of our modern world.
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The Breaking of Nations: Order and Chaos in the Twenty-first CenturyA book by Robert Cooper (interpreted by Tom Peters/01.11.2004)
“This is a dangerous world and it is going to become more dangerous.”“We may not be interested in chaos but chaos is interested in us.”Source: Robert Cooper, The Breaking of Nations: Order and Chaos in the Twenty-first Century
“What happened after 1945 was not so much a radically new system as the concentration and culmination of the old one.” —Robert Cooper, on the Cold War, from The Breaking of Nations: Order and Chaos in the Twenty-first Century
“What has been emerging into the daylight since 1989 is not a rearrangement of the old system but a new system. Behind this lies a new form of statehood, or at least states that are behaving in a radically different way from the past.” —Robert Cooper, The Breaking of Nations: Order and Chaos in the Twenty-first Century
“The image of peace and order through a single hegemonic power center [is wrong]. … It was not the empires but the small states that proved to be a dynamic force in the world. Empires are ill-designed for promoting change. Holding an empire together requires an authoritarian political style; innovation leads to instability.”—Robert Cooper, The Breaking of Nations: Order and Chaos in the Twenty-first Century
“The new century risks being overrun by both anarchy and technology. The two great destroyers of history may reinforce each other. Both the spread of terrorism and that of weapons of mass destruction point to a world in which Western governments are losing control. The spread of the technology of mass destruction represents a potentially massive redistribution of power away from the advanced industrial (and democratic) states and toward smaller states that may be less stable and have less of a stake in an orderly world; or more dramatically still, it may represent a redistribution of power away from the state itself and towards individuals, that is to say terrorists or criminals. In the past to be damaging, an ideological movement had to be widespread to recruit enough support to take on authority. Henceforth, comparatively small groups will be able to do the sort of damage which before only state armies or major revolutionary movements could achieve. A few fanatics with a ‘dirty bomb’ or biological weapons will be able to cause death on a scale not previously envisaged. … Emancipation, diversity, global communication—all of the things that promise an age of riches and creativity—could also bring a nightmare in which states lose control of the means of violence and people lose control of their futures.”—Robert Cooper, The Breaking of Nations: Order and Chaos in the Twenty-first Century
“The two systems—the modern based on balance and the post-modern based on openness—do not co-exist well together.”—Robert Cooper, The Breaking of Nations: Order and Chaos in the Twenty-first Century
“Before we can talk about the security requirements for today and tomorrow, we have to forget the security rules of yesterday.”—Robert Cooper,The Breaking of Nations: Order and Chaos in the Twenty-first Century
