Perhaps his blog posts are an accurate reflection of a coherent theory, and his (relative) unwillingness to engage in conversation merely limits the intelligibility of his ideas.
Perhaps he's holding back, and our questions will be answered in his upcoming book
Perhaps there is nothing there.

What strikes me, though, is considering that Britpop and cyberpunk novels seems to have just as many “interesting” ideas as Robb's theory, why are Robb's theories taken seriously while cyberpunk rarely is?

[1] http://www.tdaxp.com/archive/2006/02/25/guerrillaz-a-tdaxp-series.html

I'll be buying the book, for sure. Perhaps he doesn't want to preempt it on his blogs. What he needs to do on his blogs eventually, whether he's done so in the book or not, is begin to address what can be done to preempt the widespread emergence of GG he appears to predict. Else, his whole theory comes off as some sort of 4GW effort, itself: “Just give up; it's useless!” Perhaps even a self-fulfilling prophecy, since he is delivering a strategy to would-be GGs. But he tends to talk only about emergence — GG's will emerge, black globalization will emerge, local self-sufficient and self-securing city-states will emerge, and so forth. When he introduces an idea of something to be done, and willfully done, to fight the Great Collapse, it is in the abstract; such as, 'radical transparency.' He gives a great vision of Doom; but to prescribe Salvation he would need to begin considering the weaknesses of Global Guerrillas — something I don't think he's willing to do, by all evidence currently available — and how those weaknesses can be exploited.

Until he does, others across the Blogosphere will continue to try to to fill that void — either to fight the “GG” 4GW Robb is waging, or to fight a very real threat he is trying to describe.

I understand what you're saying. Like I said earlier, I think most of the anti Robb criticism is motivated by people who don't like the conclusion rather than by people who are seeing contradictory evidence appearing.

I, personally, don't see Robb as all that pessimistic. I don't think he believes that order in general is doomed. He just doesn't believe in a particular kind of order : that which is that imposed from another country, top-down, by military and other bureaucratic means. (In other words, interventionist projects of both the neocon and Barnettist flavour.)

In fact, I think the best way to read Robb is as a kind of libertarian “minarchist” without the naivity. He thinks a minarchy (or market state) is coming, (inevitably), and probably approves in principle, but he can see that there's going to be suffering on the way and people who will lose out by it.

As to your other questions, I imagine the reason that a religious fundamentalist faction believe that their kind of order will have more stability than the nation-state system is that they believe it's ordained by God. I'm not saying that GGs are *smart* or necessarily thinking the whole thing through. I'm just saying that they have a world view with absolutely does NOT require that they eventually realize that they're better off with the kind of nation-state that we'd like to put into Iraq. Which still seems to me to be what the argument against Robb seems to be based on.

That was not a criticism, let alone an attack. It is part of what makes Robb a gripping writer, even when I don't agree with him.

I once pondered [1],

“What I wonder, though, is this: Why is it that Robb and so many of the believers in GG can see clearly that 'order' is doomed or at least quite disadvantaged in that future World of Unending Chaos, but his GG's will still have enough faith in their ability to establish their own precious rule-sets that they actually get out of bed early to go out and fight?”

If GG's are only concerned with local “success”, how are you going to narrow down success to include no need for oil/gasoline, electricity and refrigeration, food, clean water, and so forth? Or will all that drop as manna from the sky, abundantly available on the local scale and not likely to be threatened by large systems disruptions globally? — even given the Doom and Gloom of Approaching Global Warming Catastrophe ™?

You seem to be arguing that we are reaching Doomsday, that so many ignorant people (unlike JR, who like a prophet of old can see all that occurs and will occur), will sit around playing their Playstation 3's — and, shadow-playing once mass electrical outages start happinging — until a pivot is reached and “It's too late!”

On what basis would you make that claim, that such a thing as “too late” is inevitable, a singularity after which order is forever banished from the Earth?

[1] http://www.fifthgeneration.phaticcommunion.com/archives/2006/10/barnett_and_robb.php#comment-1472

“I disagree. Robb's theory falls apart if one believes in emergent systems. Or rather, Global Guerrilla Theory stops being effective if one believes that order scales (emerges) well.”

Well, I may have to choose my words better, but I'll disagree with this. I may have been using the word “emergent” a bit loosely, but the general phenomena which people are interested in under whatever name you like : “emergence”, “non-linear dynamics” “complex systems” takes account of both spontaneous order *and* spontaneous disorder. They are two sides of the same coin. Phase transitions between more and less ordered states happen due to tiny fluctuations at the microscopic level. And they can go both ways : nuclear explosions, sudden traffic jams, mass extinctions etc. are all examples of complex systems going over a threshold and becoming spectacularly less ordered. Sure there's a lot of spontaneous order in nature and human institutions. It's beautiful and intriguing, but it doesn't somehow protect us from disorder.

“Global guerrillas are defined not for a desire for victory but by a desire for state-defeat.”

I think we need Robb's own position on this. It's not how I read him.

In the story you link to he doesn't say that they don't want victory, he says that they don't want to take over and become the Iraqi state. They may still want victory for their kind of order. Which just happens to be a non-state network.

It sounds like you are saying that GGs have to recognise that they are symbiotically dependent on a nation-state and so, at the end, they won't destroy the state entirely. To which there are two obvious responses :

1) do they need to be symbiotic with a state? I don't think the Caliphate needs to be. And we may have to look for evidence from Somalia etc. for whether criminal gangs can survive without states. I'd have thought some kinds can survive as parasites on types of order which are very different from our current one.

2) Even if they do need a nation-state, I'm not sure why you think they will necessarily be *aware* of this. Or where you get your optimistic : “GG theory is wrong because obviously people will not fall asleep and dream that the destruction of the state is more important than their local gains.”

The world is undergoing mass extinctions, deforestation, climate change and a dozen other global catastrophes that are directly caused by the way we organize modern life. And I see plenty of people sleeping on those facts. (Or misleading themselves and each other about them.) It's just “tragedy of the commons”. Humans are dumb enough to fall for them all the time.

“The things that you say are occurring in other domains cannot be translated to GG theory; violence & destruction cannot be equated to creativity & building as motivators and a foundation for viable open-source initiatives, markets (black or otherwise), and so forth.”

Exactly right. Nihlism is not a grand organizing principle. Global guerillaism will not work if its goal is state-collapse. Which leads to me Mr. Jones' comment…

Phil,

“All Robb needs is a) a belief in “emergence” : ie. that the sum of small actions add up to a whole greater or different from the intentions of the individuals”

I disagree. Robb's theory falls apart if one believes in emergent systems. Or rather, Global Guerrilla Theory stops being effective if one believes that order scales (emerges) well. His theory that the bazaar of violence is stable, for example, would be invalid if order emerges out of complex social interactions. See my reply to TDL on the subject [1]

“b) an assumption of “primary loyalties” that people are more concerned with the local victory of their gang or tribe or religious group than with their nation state.”

Incomplete. If a group wishes victory for their primary loyalty they cannot be a global guerrilla. Global guerrillas are defined not for a desire for victory but by a desire for state-defeat. This requires a large degree of negative altruism that simply doesn't exist.

Because Robb mentions that “Some of these networks would focus on the development of a feudal Caliphate while others would emphasis criminal enterprise,” [3] take each of these in turn. Is the Sicilian Mafia or the Japanese Yakuza, or the Chinese Triads, primarily concerned with the collapse of New York, Osaka, and Hong Kong police forces? Of course not! They are primarily concerned with their own success. Organized crime operates as an arm of the greater State, where the criminal network insources certain market niches (from prostitution and gambling to local patrol). Those rare attempts where organized gangs directly attack the state are examples where the organized gangs attempt to become the state. Organized crime is not interested in state takedown, only state subversion (to redirect some rents from the state to thsemelves) to state take-over

But there are also ideological groups, such as the violent Islamists. While these group locally attack a state (for example, the war in Iraq) their greater goal is the establishment of an extremely strong state. Islamist victories in Afghanistan and Somalia saw the rapid development of a totalitarian infrastructure which exceeded the order the previous government was able to provide. Every previous radical organization (the Communists, the fascists, and even the supposed Anarchists) follow the same structure.

“It seems you think that GG theory is wrong because *obviously* people will wake up and see that the wider costs outweigh the local gains.”

GG theory is wrong because obviously people will not fall asleep and dream that the destruction of the state is more important than their local gains.

PS: How about links to this thread on Phatic Communion or Platform Wars? :-p

[1] http://www.tdaxp.com/archive/2007/01/27/elements-of-global-guerrilla-theory.html
[2] http://globalguerrillas.typepad.com/globalguerrillas/2005/11/journal_insurge.html

More generally, I see value in Robb's GG theory. I don't think it's perfect, but I do see it as a way to define and discuss phenomena peculiar to our world right now in an interesting way. I look forward to his book as well. As to how well he fleshes things out, we'll see. It helps me to remember that 'a rose by any other name…' and that even the 'experts' have trouble with basic 'definitions' sometimes. http://www.strategicstudiesinstitute.army.mil/Pubs/display-papers.cfm?q=234
Isaac

Creation and destruction are two sides of the same coin.

I think we're falling for our own caractature of Iraqi “insurgents” if we believe they are nihilistic and have no constructive hopes (even if misguided ones) behind their destructive actions. And that's certainly not required for GG theory. Robb describes techniques of destruction but doesn't need nihilism. All Robb needs is a) a belief in “emergence” : ie. that the sum of small actions add up to a whole greater or different from the intentions of the individuals, and b) an assumption of “primary loyalties” that people are more concerned with the local victory of their gang or tribe or religious group than with their nation state.

I don't have to be nihilist to make a perfectly rational decision that siding with the local militia from our mosque (and helping to kill national police) gives my family more status and security in our neighbourhood over the next few months than if I tried to join the national police, risked getting blown up at the recruitment office, and tried to help crack down on that same local militia.

It seems you think that GG theory is wrong because *obviously* people will wake up and see that the wider costs outweigh the local gains. But equally obviously, we in the core ought to wake up and see that rampant consumerism is leading us to environmental destruction, or that driving our car today will lead to urban congestion. The truth is that humans always and everywhere are pretty *bad* at recognising the negative global consequences of their local actions. I wouldn't bet against Global Guerrillas on those grounds.

I began a comment quoting several sections of yours, but the number of quotes grew too long, and I realized that I'd respond better if I summarized “The Difference” you do not see. All the examples you give, from business to open-source software to blogs and so forth, are examples of various groups and/or individuals attempting to **build order**. The order may be a different order than previously existed, the order may be different for each individual, but at the end of the day, it's all about building order. While competition occurs and attacks between individuals and groups may occur, these fighters in the business and social sphere finish their days by seeing if they are any closer to the order for which they are aiming; increasing chaos which threatens to spin out of control and totally destroy any chance for building a resilient order would inspire a revision of activities — for all but those psychopaths who only care about destruction, i.e., for all but a very small minority — which would require scaling back aggressions, working harmoniously even with many former enemies, helping complete strangers, building alliances, protecting previous gains and reducing risk, and so forth. Escalations may occur, but as they prove futile (i.e., more chaos results or in fact the opposing orders gain by it, rather than a desired re-ordering), most people will not fight 'to the death' merely to prove a point.

The things that you say are occurring in other domains cannot be translated to GG theory; violence & destruction cannot be equated to creativity & building as motivators and a foundation for viable open-source initiatives, markets (black or otherwise), and so forth. Not even if you look only on the individual level of the players involved. Robb's assumptions behind GG require believing that none of the GGs nor anyone else will see what's happening (increasing chaos, loss of beneficial systems and networks, and so forth.) He requires mindless things to conduct his warfare. Sometimes, I think he wants them to be puppets while he is the puppetmaster, who assures them that if they only blindly follow his prescriptions they can't help but 'win' — and for others, that they should just give up and let his puppet GG win. But I suspect such blind faith in sufficient numbers of GG will not unfold, and Robb will be left holding so many baseless strings.