30  Race & Class 51(3)

in merciless ‘virtuous destruction’ since ‘there is no substitute for shedding the enemy’s blood in adequate quantities’.75 Mass killing should not be limited by any attempts to spare the enemy’s infrastructure, since:

Such a policy not only complicates the achievement of victory, but extracts no serious price from the population. Consequences matter. Enemy populations must be broken down to an almost childlike state (the basic-training model) before being built up again. But war cannot be successfully waged – especially between civilizations, as is overwhelmingly the case at present – without inflicting memorable pain on the enemy.76

In the course of the twentieth century, unchecked militarism killed millions of human beings, destroyed entire cities and placed the existence of humanity in jeopardy. Today, as the Pentagon seeks to use its vast military budgets to populate the future with robot armies, super soldiers and airborne drones that ‘see’ inside buildings and kill their occupants, the dark visions of the military futurists are providing a justification for endless global war against enemies that may never exist. In doing so, they are laying the foundations for a militarised and weaponised future, even as they shape the wars and conflicts of the present. All this suggests, if nothing else, that the future is too important to be left to the military. And if we are to avoid the bleak dystopias that the military futurists would impose upon us, we need, perhaps more than ever, to work towards a future where human beings, not robots and soldiers, can find their place on earth. References   1 Press conference at NATO headquarters, Brussels, Belgium, 6 June 2002. 2 Tim Weiner, ‘The dark secret of the black budget – Pentagon’s defense budget’, Washington

Monthly (May 1987). 3 . 4 . 5 . 6 Justin Elliott, ‘Exclusive: inside the Pentagon’s idea factory’, talkingpointsmemo.com,

tpmmuckraker.talkingpointsmemo.com/2009/03/inside_the_pentagons_idea_factory_office_ of_net_as.php>. 7 Noah Shachtman, ‘Pentagon forecast: cloudy, 80% chance of riots’, Wired Danger Room

(9 November 2007), . 8 Mark Herman, Patrick Gorman, David Gallina, Juli MacDonald, Robert Ryer, Military

Advantage in History (Washington, DC, Office of the Secretary of Defense for Net Assessment, 2002), p. 79. 9 Ibid., p. 82.10 Project for the New American Century, Rebuilding America’s Defenses: strategy, forces and resources for a new century, . 11 Nathan Freier, Known Unknowns: unconventional ‘strategic shocks’ in defense strategy development

(Carlisle, PA, Strategic Studies Institute, 2008). 12 Robert Martinage, Strategy for the Long Haul: Special Operations Forces: future challenges and opportunities (Washington, DC, Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessment, 2008), p. viii. 13 Ibid., p. xii. 14 Ibid., p. xii.