Michael Hayden on interesting points

Some interesting points:

1. Non-nation state actors now pose a significant threat to nation states
2. Historical threats usually associated with bad nation states, can now be executed by non nation-states
3. Industrial Era, was about a consolidation of power, in the past only the Government could run something as complex as a phone network
4. In a Post-Industrial Era, it’s about the decentralization or power–today, modern economies privatize and decentralize important things like the phone network. (my comment: The internet is the epitome of this, a fully decentralized network controlled by no one single entity)
5. American Foreign Policy, Power Projection and Defence has been fully focused on hard power against nation states (hard power =  men with guns)
6. In order to address the threat of non nation-states, the US government has pivoted it’s attack vectors and tactics
   • Yesterday  : Killing someone from a foreign army in a designated war-zone
   • Today : Drone Strikes on enemy combatants that aren’t fully recognized
   • Yesterday  : Capturing Foreign combatants and imprisoning them
   • Today : Guantanamo
   • Yesterday : Intercepting enemy communications, disabling and sabotaging
   • Today : Programs that Edward Snowden revealed
   • (my comment: I don’t think the full surveillance of domestic internet traffic was a good idea)
7. We’re seeing the melting down of Post WW2 and Post WW1 global order, and maybe even the breakdown of Westphalian nation-states…ISIS is a response to Westphalian ideas of separation of church and state.
8. There is a fundamental similarity between what Christian Europe faced in the 16th-17th century and what the middle east today, both sides are debating the relationship between religion and power.
9. Christian Europe had the answer of separating them—we call this separation, modern!
10. No guarantee that Islam in the Middle East will come to the same conclusion, i.e. they may never become modern.
11. Less important stuff about Nuclear power, about how Russia is adopting a Nuclear first option, and considering it de-escalatory. And Hayden doesn’t like the Iran Deal, and not a big fan of Pakistan.
12. American foreign policy makers like Hayden are more concerned with Chinese failure than with Chinese success. Political, Economical and Social factors may hamper the growth of China, but a failure of the regime is going to a massive problem for the world, while a success for China would a relatively smaller impact that can easily be folded into the world order.
13. The Chinese claims on the 9-dash line, is a nationalistic approach to remedy the economical slowdown (Hayden’s opinion), what’s more interesting is that this is a diplomatic error, and ASEAN countries are running back to America to balance China’s power.
14. Fundamentally though, China has no reason to be an enemy of the US
15. His last slide on American foreign policy, the 4 different president types, as a fan of Wilson, and a World War 1 History freak—that was awesome!! I think one of the best historically precise frameworks for understanding US foreign policy, that isn’t based just the last 20 years
16. Only one country supports targetted killings by the US—Israel.