What is the Worst That Could Happen? The Politics and Policy of Crisis Management. Hugh Liebert, Thomas D. Sherlock, and Jack Morrow (Eds). Cornwall-on-Hudson, NY: Sloan Publishing, 2016.
“Cassandra. Chicken Little. The Boy Who Cried Wolf. We have ways of talking about those who talk too much about the worst that can happen,” writes Hugh Liebert, co-editor of What is the Worst That Could Happen? The Politics and Policy of Crisis Management.[1] But although these characters get a bad rep, “In the stories we tell of them, they are not wrong to do so. Troy falls; the wolf arrives. Their trouble is not excessive fear (or hope), but the difficulty of anticipating and discussing drastic change.”[2] What is the Worst That Could Happen? rests on the premise that it is necessary to discuss U.S. policy associated with catastrophic situations, and because it is so difficult to predict when crises will occur, there is no better time than the present to do so.
Anyone with an interest in security, stability, or associated analytical frameworks will enjoy What Is The Worst That Could Happen? The book was initially drafted for participants of the 66th annual Student Conference on U.S. Affairs, a four-day conference held at the United States Military Academy at West Point that involves key policymakers, thought-leaders, and students from more than 100 colleges and universities around the world. To inform group discussion, each conference participant was asked to read one of the sixteen chapters of What Is The Worst That Could Happen? before arriving at the conference.
Roundtable group inspired by “After Genocide: Rwanda and the African Future” at the 66th annual Student Conference on U.S. Affairs [U.S. Military Academy/Flickr]
The chapters of the book address issues ranging from instability in the Middle East, to genocide in Africa, to global health crises. “It doesn’t matter if the potential threat is a cyber attack, terrorism, a natural disaster, or even, God forbid, zombies,” New York Times bestselling author Max Brooks writes in the foreword, “…in our currently vulnerable state, every scenario is a worst-case scenario."[3] Academically rigorous yet juicy, the chapters captivate the heart as well as the mind. Numbers and cold facts are animated through colorful stories that compel the reader and enable “policymakers to learn to respond properly to the emotional experience of the worst case as well as well as to discover what novel crises might conceivably arise."[4]
Some chapters question what U.S. policymakers can do to prepare for or prevent cases set in the future. In “The Soldier and the Narco-State: Cartels, Federales, and the Future of Latin America,” John Kendall illustrates the case that drug cartels acquire a monopoly of violence and extractive power within an expansive region and argues that to prevent this situation, U.S. policymakers should “look on Latin America as a problem to be addressed not with a big stick, but with a range of multilateral ‘arrows,’ alliances, and agreements that can act in concert to disrupt threats asymmetrically and through the comparative advantages unique to the United States."[5] Other chapters are located in the past and raise questions of how to repair and restore existing damage. For instance in “Russia Gone Rogue: The Fate of Ukraine and the Limits of Global Integration,” Robert Person details the people and events that led Russia to its present state and explains how certain actions in Moscow, Washington, and Kiev could improve international relationships.[6]
Other chapters range from topics as probable as climate change, to as improbable as zombies, to the improbable-turned-possible like the disintegration of the European Union. Adam J Kalkstein, Wiley C Thompson, and John Melkon in “Globe, Warmed: Coping with a Hotter Planet” address ideas to assign the Arctic region to one combatant command and to develop public-private partnerships to build facilities resilient to climate change on Department of Defense bases. In “The Worst ‘Worst Case’: The Zombie Apocalypse and National Security Strategy,” Charlie Lewis develops a National Strategy for Combating a Zombie Outbreak through a process resembling military wargaming of the worst degree. The strategy synthesizes already established guidelines, plans, and strategies, such as the Homeland Security Act of 2002, National Health Security Strategy of 2009, Strategy to Combat Transnational Organized Crime of 2011, and the Zombie manual published by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, into a coherent and coordinated national effort. “Zombies combine a number of elements normally separated among real world worst cases—contagion, shocking violence, delusive borders, mad crowds, and, most importantly, novelty,” Lewis writes.[8]
Some might argue that there has never been a worse time to talk about the worst case. After all, as Libert notes, “By virtually every quantitative measure of prosperity, humanity has never had it better.”[9] But positive global trends in wealth, life expectancy, poverty, malnourishment, and disease will not stop natural disasters like Hurricane Katrina, the Indian Ocean Tsunami, or the earthquake in Haiti. Moreover, the rapid pace of technology and globalization heighten the risk of man-made disasters like the Great Recession. Indeed, even our wildest imaginations, let alone the cases illustrated in this book, cannot appreciate the real potential for catastrophe. Quoting Shakespeare, “The worst is not so long as we can say ‘This is the worst.’”[10] Or in Liebert’s words, “Imaginative fiction has limits."[11]
Let us not turn away in the face of unattainable limits. Instead, we should push those limits and make our best attempt to imagine the unthinkable and prepare accordingly. That being said, there is no free lunch. How much time and money ought the U.S. government allocate to wargaming worst cases, or on a smaller scale, ought you devote to reading this book? The first question is too large for this review, but I will say that What Is The Worst That Could Happen? was well worth my $37.95 and an afternoon’s time, and I am confident that any reader of The Bridge will feel the same.
Regina Parker graduated from the United States Military Academy at West Point with a double-major in Mechanical Engineering and American Politics. She is in China pursuing a master’s degree in economics supported by a Schwarzman Scholarship before she enrolls at Harvard Medical School in the fall of 2017. The views expressed at the author's alone and do not represent the official position of the U.S. Army, the Department of Defense, or the U.S. Government.
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Header Image: In Case of Zombies Break Glass (Flickr)
Notes:
[1] Hugh Liebert, "What is the Worst?" in What is the Worst That Could Happen? The Politics and Policy of Crisis Management, Hugh Liebert, Thomas D. Sherlock, and Jack Morrow, eds (Cornwall-on-Hudson, NY: Sloan Publishing, 2016), 1.
[2] Ibid.
[3] Max Brooks, "Foreword," in What is the Worst That Could Happen? The Politics and Policy of Crisis Management, Hugh Liebert, Thomas D. Sherlock, and Jack Morrow, eds (Cornwall-on-Hudson, NY: Sloan Publishing, 2016), ix.
[4] Liebert, "What is the Worst?" 2.
[5] John Kendall,“The Soldier and the Narco-State: Cartels, Federales, and the Future of Latin America,” in What is the Worst That Could Happen? The Politics and Policy of Crisis Management, Hugh Liebert, Thomas D. Sherlock, and Jack Morrow, eds (Cornwall-on-Hudson, NY: Sloan Publishing, 2016), 84.
[6] Robert Person, “Russia Gone Rogue: The Fate of Ukraine and the Limits of Global Integration,” in What is the Worst That Could Happen? The Politics and Policy of Crisis Management, Hugh Liebert, Thomas D. Sherlock, and Jack Morrow, eds (Cornwall-on-Hudson, NY: Sloan Publishing, 2016), 57-72.
[7] Adam J Kalkstein, Wiley C Thompson, and John Melkon, “Globe, Warmed: Coping with a Hotter Planet,” in What is the Worst That Could Happen? The Politics and Policy of Crisis Management, Hugh Liebert, Thomas D. Sherlock, and Jack Morrow, eds (Cornwall-on-Hudson, NY: Sloan Publishing, 2016), 125-136.
[8] Charlie Lewis, “The Worst ‘Worst Case’: The Zombie Apocalypse and National Security Strategy,” in What is the Worst That Could Happen? The Politics and Policy of Crisis Management, Hugh Liebert, Thomas D. Sherlock, and Jack Morrow, eds (Cornwall-on-Hudson, NY: Sloan Publishing, 2016), 209.
[9] Liebert, "What is the Worst?" 1.
[10] William Shakespeare, King Lear, Act 4, Scene 1.
[11] Liebert, "What is the Worst?" 2.