William Lind comments on John Robb’s ideas in Brave New War:

“Finally, Robb correctly finds the antidote to 4GW not in Soviet-style state structures such as the Department of Homeland Security but in de-centralization. What Robb calls “dynamic decentralized resilience” means that, in concrete terms, security is again to be found close to home. Local police departments, local sources of energy such as roof top solar arrays – I would add local farms that use sustainable agricultural practices – are the key to dealing with system perturbations. To the extent we depend on large, globalist, centralized networks, we are insecure.

Source: D-N-I.net

Tom Barnett also reviews Brave New War, but despite his comments to the contrary (see doppleganger observation) his desire to focus on his “optimistic builder/white hat and John’s more the pessimistic breaker/black hat” is somewhat unfortunate.

He comments “my synthesis tends to be additive (politics and markets are all about adaptation and compromise, so every new thing helps), while John’s is more destructively revolutionary, like Marx (the brittle old order must die and be replaced by a new, technocratically-tinged order that’s vastly different in form and function).” I do not read Robb in this totally negative way. More appropriate adjectives are adaptive and resilient. Is Robb’s distrust of political structures absolute as Barnett seems to indicate? As represented by Barnett there seems to be a much wider gap between the two sets of ideas, where in truth there is probably much more agreement to be found within the worlds of structural hierarchy and open source.

Source: Thomasbarnett.com