Excellent comment!

“let's not forget about black swans.”

Agreed, but what black swan counts as a systempunkt? 9/11? It's hard to imagine a higher-impact black swan that doesn't involve nuclear weapons, yet the City of New York, the State of New York, the State of Pennsylvania, the Commonwealth of Virginia, and the Untied States of America continued as before. If 9/11 doesn't count as a systempunkt — what does? And if it does — then what a useless concept! (Remember that Robb discounts the psychological impact of systempunkts, instead focusing on their supposed catastrophic economic impact.)

“I would argue, however, that monopolistic, political systems are their own systempunkt waiting to happen”

This helps answer the previous paragraph… the assassination of Kim Jong Il might well be the “right bomb, at the right place, at the right time” that collapses the North Korean system. Not that such would last long, though. With China and South Korea sharing land borders, a northern Korean state would quickly be rebuilt even in the worst possible case, and would doubtless be more functional than what preceded it.

“The ROI analysis that Robb employs is faulty, because no new wealth is created and the funds needed to maintain pressure upon the systems under attack are quickly being depleted (since that capital is destroyed and not deployed in a productive manner.)”

Excellent point! ROI compares like and like, such as money in / money out. Instead, Robb compares dislike things (money and systematic impact). It's as foolish as the late 90s fixation on “eyeballs,” when the measure of profitability is not eyeballs but money.

Mark,

“they ” rule vertical scenarios” not horizontal ones.”

Yup. There's a blog literature in this area [1] that John's ignoring. That's too bad — we're missing out because his theory has not been strengthened by give-and-take.

[1] http://zenpundit.blogspot.com/2004/10/reviewing-deleted-scene-on-system.html

Regards,
TDL

Which is not to say they could not do tremendous, tremendous, damage – think Bhopal or a smallpox-carrying sucide bomber – just that they ” rule vertical scenarios” not horizontal ones.

I can't find the reference either, but I agree with your read. I think Robb would classify 9/11 as some more vanilla form of terrorism (perhaps “insurgency”? [1]) because

a) its impact was designed to be largely psychological
b) it was not aimed at destroying the United States government

That said, I think it's pretty much as close as you'll come to finding an example of something that doesn't exist

Which perhaps makes it more of what Robb would call a “plausible premise”.

As for “not existing” I think you're always looking to read Robb as being far more absolutist than he really is. There doesn't need to be one bomb that brings down the house. Every time a couple of guys blow up a pipeline and cause a drop in oil production for 3 months, you're looking at a little systempunkt. The fact that after 4 years of American occupation oil production is *still* so reduced, does tremendous harm to the capacity of the Iraqi government to fund itself, its capacity to impose its authority in Iraq and for the US to demonstrate its ability to rebuild Iraq and hence to the US's moral level.

[1] http://web.archive.org/web/20020817215800/http://www.policyreview.org/AUG02/harris.html

It is true, I think, that a more interconnected global system may become quite dependent on what happens anywhere globally, ultimately; however, the dependence that would allow effective systempunkt attacks against strong states via attacks on fringe (Gap) states, will not obtain while those states are weak and failing.

Does the fact that the systempunkt is “always identified by autonymous groups within the bazaar” mean that non-autonymous groups couldn't attack a systempunkt? That is, the a punkt may or may not be a systempunkt depending on whether it is being attacked by global guerrillas or insurgents? (I don't know — this is an honest question.)

Curtis,

“I think, that a more interconnected global system may become quite dependent on what happens anywhere globally, ultimately; however, the dependence that would allow effective systempunkt attacks against strong states via attacks on fringe (Gap) states, will not obtain while those states are weak and failing.”

Isn't it the reverse, with less globalized states being less resilient?

I don't see how that is the reverse of what I was saying, since I was referring to a 'globalized system' and not 'globalized states'.

My general point is that the so-called systempunkt attacks which Robb highlights are those occurring in less globalized and weak states, and that such attacks will not have the kind of force for causing the cascading effects which he predicts will bring down the stronger states. (Disregarding for now the limited attacks, like 9/11, happening in more globalized states.)

My second point is that a more globalized system, depending on how it is ultimately arranged, **may** become more susceptible to such systempunkt attacks happening anywhere globally — an attack pretty much anywhere on key targets will have global cascading power sufficient to affect the whole system very negatively. While true that globalization in the interim allows for much resiliency, the ultimate result of globalization may or may not be as resilient, depending on the sort of dependencies and interconnections which may ultimately form: Does it remain resilient, or does it grow ossified?