At the summit
Tuesday, July 7th, 2009Unlike the one in BURNING SKIES, the summit between the U.S. and Russia was not crashed by elite Autumn Rain hit-squads. Nor did any of the participants wear powered armor. They did, however, dance around a couple of the key issues that arise in the Autumn Rain trilogy, to wit:
Missile defense: Russia would like nothing better than for the U.S. to dismantle its plans for missile defense facilities in Eastern Europe. This is unlikely to happen, but the key variables are (a) the administration’s overall posture toward missile defense (which is still being defined), and (b) whether Russia will ultimately insist on a formal linkage between that and overall arms control talks (in particular the still-unresolved questions around bombers/launchers). While the defense facilities themselves would appear to be directed at Iran rather than Russia, a heavy NATO presence in Eastern Europe is something that makes the Bear nervous. To say nothing of the possibility that the current “Son of Stars Wars” will ultimately be a stalking horse for a more robust space-based systems. The conversation so far has both sides biding their time, agreeing to study cooperation options, i.e., defer the key decisions to a later point.
Cyberwarfare: I’d be surprised if serious discussion occurred on this between the principals, but it’s definitely something getting discussed at the lower levels. Particularly given that the U.S. created CyberCommand a few weeks back (handing the whole thing over to the NSA—uh-oh). But while everyone agrees that cyberwar is a problem (if it’s aimed at them), no one agrees on what to do about it. Indeed, Russia has already launched successful attacks on both Estonia and Georgia. And China has been attacking the U.S. in cyberspace for some time now. Ongoing “warfare” of this nature may just be a fact of life in the 21st century, at least until/unless the major regional power blocs establish their own separate nets like they do in my books. (Of course, such “cyber-autarkies” would have to be accompanied by a comprehensive failure of globalization, but that could be the least of our problems in the decades to come.)
And of course there’s no better way to prepare for those problems than to read BURNING SKIES.
