War for the New Century

by wjw on March 6, 2008

So. Heard of Henry Okah?

Probably not. But he’s invented a new paradigm for waging war, straight out of a science fiction novel.

The guy puts his army together from another country by cellphone, as if it were a flash mob. He has his own merchant marine to carry off his hijacked bunker crude, his own arms company to sell guns to his own army, and a thirty-billion-dollar business, funded by petroleum mostly stolen from Royal Dutch Shell and the Nigerian government. By disrupting the economy, he weakens his enemies by the same degree that he is empowered himself.

Call him thug or terrorist or freedom fighter, he’s leveraged 21st Century technologies into a brand new way of making war.

He’s in prison now, and unlikely to see freedom anytime soon, but you can’t as easily put a new paradigm behind bars.

This might be as powerful a model for future asymmetric warfare as the IRA example was for, say, al-Qaeda.

Thai McGreivy March 7, 2008 at 1:57 am

This is a very interesting/scary post

Foxessa March 8, 2008 at 11:21 pm

Blackwater.

Love, C.

Christopher Weuve March 10, 2008 at 3:53 am

John Robb is about the last person I would believe about anything…

Comments on this entry are closed.

Previous post:

Next post:

Contact Us | Terms of User | Trademarks | Privacy Statement

Copyright © 2010 WJW. All Rights Reserved.